Safa Ship Catalog ยท Chapter 3
The Safa Look
A Safa ship looks purposeful, ceremonial and dangerous, and nothing on it looks accidental. Spacers read the maker from the silhouette before the transponder resolves.
Materials and Marks
Plating. Matte ivory over dark basalt. The ivory is the Caliphate's Nur Ivory, a pale warm stone color; the basalt shows at the seams, the keel and the engine housings. Panels are large and joined by narrow gold certification lines.
Reactor glow. Red-gold light at the nozzles, and a thin band of it along the spine on larger hulls. It brightens when the reactor is pushed, and a Safa engineer can read the load from across a dock.
Symmetry. Severe bilateral symmetry. Nothing is added to one side without its twin on the other, and nothing is bolted on.
Concealed apertures. Weapons and sensors sit behind closed, flush covers and open only when used. A spacer counts covers to count guns. The covers do not move when the ship is idle.
Seals and marks. Formal inspection seals, luminous service marks and cryptographic certification plates are common. They are plain bands, ovals and arcs. The art in this book shows no letters or digits on any seal or plate.
Interiors. Clean, controlled and hierarchical. Compartments are separated by security doors, crew movement is monitored, and the lighting is low and exact. A visitor is escorted. Unauthorized modifications generate warnings at once.
The logo. The Safa Celestial Arsenal mark appears on the cover and in the maker chapter.
The Three Hull Styles
Blade-and-Keel. A narrow, spear-like body with a deep ventral keel and swept engine housings. Used for the courier-racers, the pursuit craft, the fighters, the boarding craft, the patrol boats and the corvettes (Scales 2 to 5, except the strike cutter).
Radiator Crown. A compact, faceted ovoid hull around a raised reactor housing, with about eight large rectangular radiator vanes folded around the midsection on visible struts. The vanes open when the reactor is pushed. Used for the strike cutter alone.
Cathedral Axis. A tall, upright reactor spine rising above and below broad lateral docking shoulders, with stepped, ribbed towers and protected docking courts. Used for every Safa hull at Scale 6 and above: the security frigate, the strike carrier and the security cruiser. The three are told apart by proportion: the frigate is the reference, the carrier has wide hangar courts open on its shoulders and a shorter spine, and the cruiser is the same silhouette about one third larger, with a taller spine and a second tier of towers.
Telling a Version by Sight
A version is a sharper ship, and the hull shows it. A spacer who knows the line can read a ship's version from a distance. The designation is on the Seal, but the Seal is read at a checkpoint, not across a dock.
| Line | Version | What shows |
|---|---|---|
| S2 | S2.1 | A longer, gold-edged engine housing and an extended afterfin |
| S3 | S3.1 | A dark containment collar with a gold ring at the stern; a deeper red-gold glow |
| S3 | S4 | A slimmer, longer blade with a shallower keel; no landing-skid housings under the keel; a fifth closed weapon cover; the canopy narrowed to a slit |
| Talon | Talon 1.1 | A thicker dorsal spine plate and a second gold seam along the spine |
| S17 | S17.1 | A thicker prow plate and a second gold seam on the dorsal line; two of the four side berth hatches blanked over |
| S11 | S11.1 | A longer hull plate amidships; one more pair of thruster blocks on each flank |
| S11 | S11.2 | One more closed Standard-mount cover on the port chin; a raised sensor ridge on the dorsal line |
| S13 | S13.1 | Larger engine nozzles and a longer engine housing; the vanes unchanged |
| S5 | S5.1 | A layered dark basalt armor band over the ribs |
| S5 | S5.2 | A deeper keel and a ventral sensor housing |
| S6 | S6.1 | Stepped armor plates on the lateral shoulders |
| S6 | S6.2 | Two more covered turrets on the shoulders; the flank cargo hatches blanked over |
| S19 | S19.1 | One more closed Standard-mount cover on each shoulder; the lit flight-crew windows along the spine blanked over |
| S7 | S7.1 | Stepped armor plates over the lateral shoulders; a deeper armor collar at the base of the spine |
| S7 | S7.2 | One more closed Standard-mount cover on each shoulder; the central cargo gate sealed with a plain gold-edged plate |