therealraxxis on DeviantArthttps://www.deviantart.com/therealraxxis/art/Cardinal-s-Frigate-120302043therealraxxis

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Cardinal's Frigate

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This is a sketch of an older VIP vessel used during the "Great Purge" to ferry cardinals and their inquisitors around the Dominion. Although not heavily armed, they were almost always accompanied by other Dominion warships. They were equipped with gravity harness drives and were able to descend to planetary surfaces - some only a few classes of the day the day that could. The prow of the vessel was dedicated to the cardinal's sanctum, an expansive space in which the cardinal or other VIP would be able to receive dignitaries, conduct negotiations and meditate. A typical Cardinal's Frigate would carry a crew of 100 as well as 50 inquisitors and was equipped with a gaol and inquisition chambers where confessions were heard and the guilty punished for their crimes.

Few Cardinal's Frigates remain as they are outdated, although some of these ships can be found far beyond the rim doing service as VIP transports for crime lords.
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© 2009 - 2024 therealraxxis
Comments25
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TheBloodPhoenix's avatar
I seem to be arriving long after all the other comments, but I am just now seeing your ships for the first time, while browsing through starship art on the D.
I'm an artist, but I paint my pictures with words.  Any attempt at visual art on my part will just end badly for us all.  That said, I know what I like when I see it.  And I like this.  Now, I will bore you by telling you WHY I do, lol.

In my not-so-humble opinion, too much Sci-Fi  space-craft design seems to be entirely "functional" producing a predominance of the "flying boxes" type designs.  There's nothing inherently wrong with that.  Ships built in orbit for travel through a vacuum, that are never intended to land on planets, don't need to be even remotely aerodynamic.  If you've got an interstellar empire that spans dozens of star systems, and you're designing a class of 500 freighters that's going to haul ore from mining outposts on 100 worlds...they're going to be designed to be cheap, not pretty.  In fact, they're probably going to be little more than cargo holds with a crew module at the front and engines at the back.  Accepting that reality, I like some of your drawings for freighters, like your Merchantman.

But I also believe that what is missing in many settings is the portrayal of ships that emphasize form as much as function.  The same Star Empire that built those dirt-cheap freighters, also might well have incredibly ornate, exorbitantly expensive yachts owned by wealthy nobles or the CEOs of mega-corporations.  A wealthy and powerful Noble House might well have a yearly income that exceeds the gross annual production of the planet Earth today!  Imagine the ships they might commission to transport their leadership!  I don't think I ever really saw this portrayed in a Science Fiction movie until I saw the decadent opulence of the starships in the movie "Jupiter Ascending" (hanger bays with chandeliers!)  Whatever you might think of the plot or acting, some of the visuals were stunning.  It makes complete sense to me that a powerful Religious Order would have craft like this one.