User:Quirel/Sandbox

Starspeck-class Medium Freighter

'"... so then we apprehended the slaver in the Proxima Centari system and impounded his ship. That was the first time I ever laid eyes on a Starspeck. It's a small ship, looks like a conga line of horseshoe crabs riding on a trout. It might not look like much, but we searched that ship from bow to stern, and we were still finding hidden compartments four weeks later. It was hard to get a feel for where everything was because the compartments weren't laid out in flat decks. You could walk through every compartment and gravity would pull you in ten different directions."'

The Starspeck-class medium freighter is a class of cargo vessels in use throughout the Covenant Empire, instantly recognizable by the profile of its cargo bays. Its unique design is a product of its provenance. It is one of many designs created by Kig Yar engineers for use in the Y'Deio Special Economic Zone, extensively borrowing sanctioned technology from the Covenant Empire. Unusually for such designs, the class gained acceptance abroad and is now extensively used throughout the Covenant Empire.

Firearm ideas
Gaubika PR (пистолет гаубиkа)- .50 caliber handgun/PDW issued by the Siberia Prime Civil Defense Force in 2528. The Misriah M6 was rejected by the CDF for reasons of ergonomics and practical accuracy. The M6 was too large, too heavy, and the pistol grip was too wide and too deep for smaller members of the CDF to wrap their hands around.

The Gaubika addresses these issues by placing the magazine forward of the grip. This allowed the engineers at ___ to shrink the the primary grip to a normal size for a pistol, and stabilize the weapon with a forward grip around the magazine housing. While this should have resulted in a longer weapon, the engineers 'bullpupped' the pistol by making it extract cartridges from the rear of the magazine, similar to how some machine guns pull cartridges from a belt.

A degree of modularity was planned for the pistol. The forward magazine housing could be replaced with one that contains a reciprocating weight linked to the slide, reducing muzzle climb. The magazine housing could be removed altogether to make room for a fifty-round helical magazine, and the rear grip was machined for a stock attachment. In practice, few of these modifications were issued, and they were nowhere near as common as their presence in action films would indicate.

Zakat Automatic Carbine PPZ (пистолет-пулемёт Закат)- Caseless personal defense weapon/submachine gun in 7,5mm caliber issued by the SPCDF in 2461. Straddling the line between a pistol and a submachine gun, the Zakat was intended for use by vehicle crews, police, and special forces.

The 7.5mm caseless cartridge has its origins in the early days of the Decision War. Students at Posadka Gorod Polytechnical University took it upon themselves to design a firearm cartridge that could be made in small shops and garages, allowing citizens and paramilitary groups to arm themselves in self defense. The result was a stable propellant that could be extruded through a 3D printer and capped off with a cast or machined bullet. Though far from the first such designs, the 7.5mm Posadka was by far the easiest for end-users to fabricate, and it adapted well to mass manufacturing.

Pozitsiya PPS (пистоле́т-пулемёт)- Caseless pistol in 7.5mm caliber issued by the SPCDF from 2459 to 2535.

Moroz Rifle AM (avtomát мороз)- Main service rifle issued by the CDF, and exported throughout Sector 1, 2, and 3 in the leadup to the Insurrection. While it was nothing pretty to look at, its cheap yet rugged construction meant that it would function as well as an MA5 for half the price. Initially chambered in a hot 6mm cartridge, the rifle would be redesigned for 7.62 NATO for the export market, and then adopted by the CDF in 2540 to standardize with UNSC logistics.

Bazalt-3 RPG- Reloadable anti-tank rocket launcher, carrying four guided 67mm rockets. The launcher relies on a Follow-On-Target system to defeat heavy armor, launching multiple rockets in quick succession. The rockets follow each other, striking the target in the same place. While this system is far from foolproof, the Bazalt-3 was deadly against smaller vehicles and infantry, and cheap enough that every squad in the CDF was able to carry at least one.

Covenant Caste system
Covenant society is much like the society of modern-era India, in that it is theoretically divided into a discrete number of rigid castes, but is instead composed of many millions of communities. The hierarchy of these communities is fluid, and even the relationship between Elites and Prophets has been re-litigated over the years.

Sangheili Castes

The basic building block of the caste system is the Tarshan, an old Sangheili word meaning "That which belongs." The word is thought to have originally denoted the members of a community who belong there, rather than outsiders who provided labor and services. Tarshans are often loosely bound by family lines, and strongly defined by meritocratic placement. Artisans in a guild may have family ties, but they have gained their position by their mastery of the art.

The Docha is the next major grouping.

LEXICON: Black Debt: Sangheili term. A debt of vengeance, or an evil act which must be repaid.

White Debt: Sangheili term. A debt of gratitude, or a kind act which demands recompense in kind.

Chantet- Brotherhood of hate. Affiliations formed by mutual hatred of a third party. Rarely used as a name for a martial order that is formed to vanquish a foe and quickly dissolved after victory is won.

Alfoa: Portmanteau of aluminum foam. While it's properties are not as good as titanium foam, foamed aluminum is cheap and well developed enough that it is still used in many civilian and military applications.

Orbital Factory: Any factory built in orbit around a planet or star. Microgravity and hard vacuum have many industrial applications, especially in 3D fabrication and high performance alloys. Orbital factories take advantage of the conditions in space to precisely fabricate exotic materials and machine parts.

Microfac: See Orbital Factory

Sunset Promise: Sangheili term for a hasty or deceitful promise, made in the evening and broken at dawn.

Surlume: Any FTL sensor that lacks the prodigious data-sifting computation of a Luminary. Although surlume sensors are more common than Luminaries, they are far more limited, often little more than a primitive radar system.

Tenoch: The price of freedom. Legally a price that a slave may pay to emancipate himself from his master.

Tenokch-al: Payment in deeds. Whereas a slave may purchase his freedom with money, other bonds may only be paid by fulfilling obligations or making some other kind of restitution.

Tenke: Any self-propelled sled that carries fuel for starships.

Typho: Portmanteau of Titanium Foam, a structural material used in aircraft, spacecraft and starships. Just as Titanium-A is a blanket term for titanium alloys used as armor, Typho is a generic name for many different kinds of foamed titanium.

Parangosky
There are certain classes of stimulants that let a person operate on as little as two hours of sleep per night for a long time. They are popular with college students, workaholics, and government officials who simply don't have time to get a full night's sleep. Staying awake for twenty-two hours at a time takes a toll on the body, and so prolonged use of the stimulants exacerbates the effects of aging. Specifically, a person who uses it regularly for their entire adult life will have their lifespan cut by thirty to forty years, and display significant signs of old age by 60.

Parangosky was a well-known stimulant user, and it is said that she took them every day from the beginning of the Human-Covenant War to the very end. She became famous and infamous for her ceaseless management of ONI, and she continued into the last year of the war and a few months beyond in spite of her doctor's orders. It was only her titanic willpower that kept her going long enough to patch ONI into a working state and hand it over to her successor. A few days later, without the affairs of a vast intelligence organization to keep her busy, she passed away. That's the official story, and to her credit, it's only slightly embellished. Sealed away in hardcopy files that few in the UNSC have read are the testimony from her close assistants and her medical staff. These files paint a less rosy and rather terrifying picture of a capable but ailing leader who should have retired a year earlier. Starting in February 2552, Parangosky started suffering from psychotic breaks. These were innocuous enough at first. She would mis-remember the details of her briefings, or sometimes require prompting to remember her scheduled appointments. By June, her directives contained enough glaring errors that they were regularly 'massaged' before being sent out. One of her assistants recalled a meeting where she "wandered off into a surreal fantasy world where we still held Arcadia and the strikes into Covenant territory that we dreamed about fifteen years ago were a roaring success" before touching back down with reality a few minutes later as if nothing had happened.

Although incredibly hostile to the suggestion that she might be suffering from dementia-like symptoms, Parangosky was forced to acknowledge her own shortcomings after her spectacular mismanagement of Operation: Red Flag cost the UNSC both Reach and a Covenant Supercarrier. But she would not step down. She instead became more reliant on her AI assistants to handle her day-to-day activities and augment her deteriorating mental faculties. For a while, she appeared to improve. Then the Covenant invaded Earth. Parangosky went to ground with her inner circle, communicating with the rest of the UNSC only by radio. Both her secretary and her doctor characterize her mental health as "Robust" during this time period, "As if she knew this was the end and she wasn't going to let her attention lapse, not now, not for one second."

Not long after the ceasefire, Parangosky had a relapse and her condition worsened rapidly. Directives that were archived yet never issued showed that she was giving orders to entire divisions of ONI that had either perished earlier in the war or had been planned but never formed in the first place. She would request updated intelligence on UEG officials who had retired decades ago. Her lucid periods were not much better. She rebuilt ONI's depleted forces by reassigning desk jockeys to field positions and fast-tracking promotions of officers who were originally passed over for promotion for very good reasons. Operational plans that had only a tenuous connection with reality were given the green-light. After one such operation almost sparked a war between the UNSC and the Arbiter's forces, Parangosky was quietly hospitalized. In a secluded room in Luna General, Parangosky was convinced to step down. She spent the next four days reading her journal and writing letters to old friends, many of whom perished during the war. It is likely that she died not knowing the damage she'd done nor remembering the feats she achieved. Her last words, spoken to her nurse, were: "It has been a long time since I have heard good news. I am beginning to fear that this war cannot be won."