The Kadeshi Mothership, commonly referred to as the Needleship or Needle Mothership, was the Mothership Class vessel of the Kadeshi and these served as the flagships of the Kadeshi fleet in the Great Nebula.
Overview[]
The Kadeshi Mothership fills the traditional role of all known Mothership-Class vessels as it spearheads the Kadeshi fleet and serves as the mobile shipyard for all crafts ranging from starfighters to frigates. However, it is unique in that is designed as a sort of "space needle", designed to ensure its rapid movement through the treacherous reaches of the Great Nebula in which it resides. The Kadeshi Mothership is designed as a deep-space raider in that it can rapidly pursue unwelcome foes while also maintaining the acceleration necessary for it to outrun enemies more powerful than the Kadeshi. Loaded to the brim with swarmers, advanced swarmers and their accompanying fuel pods, as well as multi-beam frigates as a final line of defense, the Mothership unleashes the merciless wrath of the Kadeshi against any foe unfortunate enough to encounter these vessels. It is equipped with a hyperdrive much like all other Mothership-Class vessels, but unlike most Mothership designs it is capable of both defensive and offensive actions. Equipped with a powerful series of hyperspace inhibitors, the Kadeshi Mothership can effectively disable the jump capabilities of any capital ship, allowing it to unleash its vast waves of Swarmers against its enemies. It is furthermore equipped with two Ion Cannons for defense against any enemy vessel that comes within its immediate range. as a secondary armament it has twelve Projectile Cannons that serve both as an additional defense against vessels as well as point-defensive purposes to deal with smaller craft and projectiles, with these distributed throughout its exterior . It also has a rather unique tactic it employs against larger capital ships such as Destroyers, attempting to rotate into and ram them, immediately destroying the target with little to no effect against the Mothership. The Mothership is able to rotate its significant mass fast enough that capital ships have little chance of dodging such an attack.
Construction and Design[]
The three Kadeshi motherships were con- structed with materials cannibalized from ships that passed through the Great Nebula on trade routes or mining operations. It is presumed that construction of these ves- sels began as a result of the transport ship the Kadesh arrived on no longer being fit for its purpose, or due to the Kadeshi develop- ing an extreme xenophobic attitude toward anything connected to their exile or outside of the nebula. The three motherships would have been repaired and added to over this period, and perhaps no longer resemble the motherships their Hiigaran ancestors would have begun to build over 4000 years ago. In order to move through the vast and dangerous nebula with ease, the Kadeshi motherships were designed in a needle-like shape. This allowed them to move quickly, both to catch up to invading ships and to run from them if necessary. Built for combat, sporting ion cannons and projectile weapons, they are also capable of constructing and releasing smaller swarmer pod vessels and the fuel pods that they require, making even a single mothership a formidable foe in battle. Alongside these reinforcements, the Kadeshi motherships have a rotating hull that can spin at thousands of revolutions per minute before ramming into ships as big as super capital-class with little damage done to the mothership itself. Dodging such an attack is difficult due to the mothership's speed.
The internal architecture of the motherships is similar to that aboard the Kushan mothership, as they are both based on the designs of the original Hiigaran transport ships. The heights of interior ceilings, door frames, and consoles are much taller, however, as the Kadesh live in a gravity-light environment, meaning that over time they have developed elongated bodies compared to the Kushan.
Despite being shipbound since arriving in the nebula, never trading with others, and having to survive by repurposing and cannibalizing passing ships, the Kadeshi possess advanced technology. The greatest examples of this are the hyperspace inhibitors that each of the three motherships possesses. Not only do these prevent capital and super capital ships from advancing on the fleet quickly in combat using Short Jumps, they also prevent ships from leaving the nebula via hyperjump. This gives the Kadeshi swarmers time to ravage invading fleets before they can attempt to flee, now lacking the ability to Short Jump. With all three motherships capable of using hyperspace inhibitors, they can cover a large area of space, and even if one of them fails the inhibitor effect is not lost. Alongside this, they also have an array of weaponry. Unlike the Kushan mothership, the Kadeshi motherships sport projectile and ion cannons, salvaged from vessels that passed through the nebula. This gives their ships heavy firepower, even without the ability to unleash hundreds of Kadeshi swarmer pods—small fighter craft that fly in formation and can tear a ship apart in a matter of minutes. The outer hull is capable of moving at incredible speed, allowing the ship to ram capital and super capital-class vessels at high speed, causing little damage to itself but devastating a target ship.
Life Aboard[]
Community, work, and preservation are the motivations aboard the Kadeshi motherships, and life revolves around them. Each mothership must ensure that production and recycling of necessary resources does not fall behind. Crews work at all hours to ensure these processes keep running, and to ensure that the sensor operations keeping a close watch on the nebula are always manned. Lack of resources or production, or crew members who fall behind on their duties, are taken seriously. Being unable to provide for the rest of the community can result in the offending crew being ostracized from Kadeshi society until they find a way to redeem themselves. While community and the religious tenets of the Kadeshi make their life of isolationseem more idyllic than it is, all three of the motherships still suffer from dissent and crime among their crews. Theft of resources or the deliberate interference with resources are the most common crimes, often committed either to ensure a crew does not fall behind on production, or to slow the production of another crew so as to look better in the eyes of the mothership leaders. Despite the extreme religious views and strict tenets of the Kadeshi, there are some who believe far less than they allow others to see. Sometimes these are ostracized crew members who lose their faith; other times it is Kadeshi who, with the true hopefulness and will of youth, have grand ideas of a way of life without the fear of the great evil and living for survival. Openly holding these views or associating with those who do can have extreme consequences in Kadeshi society, resulting in permanent exclusion, severe punishment, and sometimes even death. The leaders of each mothership regularly receive reports from crew members tasked with looking for signs of crime or loss of faith, and are in charge of deciding upon an appropriate solution.
Key Areas[]
- Construction Bay. Like most motherships, the Kadeshi motherships each have a large construction bay. As the Kadeshi only produce a few varieties of ships— multi-beam frigates, swarmers, and their fuel pods—the automated systems here can complete construction on these ships incredibly quickly using the materials that come from the ship's recycling center. This bay also has room for over a hundred swarmers to dock for repairs and maintenance.
- Recycling Center. This is an area adjacent to the construction bay where resources and captured ships are taken for recycling. All shipboard waste is also recycled here, including water. Ships are broken down to their base components, and any that can't be used as-is are broken down further into raw materials, which are then sent over to the construction bay. Other resources, such as gases or materials collected from the nebula, are also reduced down to their base elements here and sent to the construction bay. Food waste is broken down and either sent as a compost-like material to hydroponics to help grow food, or has any remaining mineral and vitamin content extracted so it can supplement food or help in making medicine. Water filtered and processed here is either sent back shipboard to be used by the crew, or is sent to be used in the fusion reactor systems of a ship if it is too contaminatedto effectively filter.
- Sensors Operation Center. The Kadeshi keep a close eye on all that goes on within the nebula in order to prevent trespassers from entering—and if they do, prevent them from leaving. While many ships have issues with their sensors in the nebula due to the abundance of gas pockets and heavy elements, the Kadeshi motherships’ sensors are tuned to filter the interference out, giving them a tactical advantage against any who enter. From the operation center, the three motherships can triangulate their sensors, as well as see through those of their ships, giving thema wide view of anything within the nebula.
- Cleansing Temple. On the rare occasion that a trespassing ship surrenders to the Kadeshi without protest, accepting the offer to stay within the nebula over destruction, the cleansing temple is where the crew are taken. The ship is stripped of its technology and then recycled, preventing the crew from leaving the nebula or having anyone track it down. They are then taken through to the cleansing temple. In a religious ceremony, the “unclean” crew members are forced to renounce their ties to anything outside of the garden, swear themselves to a life of maintaining and caring for the garden, and be ritually cleansed in water. At the end of this, they are given new clothing, with their old being recycled, and are recognized as “clean” by the Kadesh. It is here that they are educated on Kadeshi life and customs so they might integrate into the rest of the population.
Service[]
The Kadeshi Motherships are constructed within the sanctuary of the Great Nebula.
The Kadeshi Mothership came into being sometime after the Exile after a small band of survivors from Hiigara fled to the safety of the Great Nebula to escape their merciless Taiidan enemies. These survivors eventually came to call themselves the Kadeshi and as they grew in strength took to raiding civilian vessels seeking passage through the nebula. The Kadeshi Mothership was eventually conceived as a vessel capable of raiding enemy vessels while also ensuring the safety of the Kadeshi, who sought to isolate themselves from those who resided beyond the nebula.
There was not a single Kadeshi Mothership in existence, but instead at least three such vessels were confirmed to have existed in the Nebula during the Homeworld War. Together, these Motherships acted as the guardians to the Garden of Kadesh, the holy land within the Nebula which they would gladly fight to the death to ensure its survival.
In 9510 GSY, the Kushan and its Mothership Fleet arrived in the Great Nebula while on its quest to reclaim its homeworld, Hiigara. When the Kushan began to harvest the Garden of Kadesh, the Kadeshi Mothership arrived and sent its Ambassador to greet the newcomers. The Kadeshi offered the Kushan an opportunity to join them within the sanctuary of the Nebula, but upon rejection the Kadeshi Mothership sent its vast armada of Swarmers and Fuel Pods to destroy the Kushan. In the battle that followed, the Kushan were overwhelmed and attempted to jump into hyperspace, but were halted in mid-jump by the Kadeshi Mothership's hyperspace inhibitors. Trapped within the Nebula, the Kushan fought off the raiders and attempted to disable the enemy Mothership, which fled into deep space before it could be intercepted, thus disabling the inhibitor field. The Kushan then attempted once again to flee the Great Nebula.
However, the hyperspace jump again failed as the Mothership Fleet found itself pulled out of hyperspace and surrounded by three Kadeshi Motherships within the Cathedral of Kadesh, all of whom trapped the fleet with their powerful inhibitor fields. After the Kushan again refused the opportunity to join them, the Kadeshi attacked in full force, and the trio of Motherships sent Multi-Beam Frigates to destroy the Kushan Mothership. The Kushan and Kadeshi again fought for their survival within the boundaries of the Garden while the Kadeshi Motherships oversaw the battle from afar.
Destruction[]
Despite suffering heavy losses at the hands of the Kadeshi, the Kushan broke the siege on their fleet and proceeded to attack the Kadeshi Motherships one-by-one. After concentrated assaults, the Kushan destroyed the first and second Motherships, forcing the third vessel and all surviving Kadeshi forces to retreat to the far end of the Garden. The Kushan hunted them down and eventually discovered their staging point: a debris field containing the wreck of a Khar-Toba-class Transport identical to the vessel discovered on Kharak. Upon arrival, the Kushan were ambushed by the Kadeshi survivors, only to be pushed back as the Kushan launched a final assault on the last surviving Mothership. The third Mothership was eventually destroyed by concentrated fire, effectively eliminating the Kadeshi threat and granting the Mothership Fleet safe passage through the Nebula.
