Ue'Orsi
 | |
| Name | Ue'Orsi |
|---|---|
| Class | Skrellian Refugee Flotilla / ~1100 ships |
| Owner | Ue-Katish Flotillas / Ue-Katish Captaincy |
| Constructed | 800CE |
Ue'Orsi, or "No Honor", is the oldest, largest, and most politically stable of the Ue-Katish flotillas. Founded almost two thousand years ago, Ue'Orsi has been continually growing, improving its internal infrastructure, and moving rimward in the face of expansion by more traditional Skrell. Ue'Orsi has distanced itself from the violent piracy of its fellow flotillas, instead serving as a black market and cultural, logistics, and supply hub for the other Flotillas and Natuna Bhūmi Bariśāl.
Contents
Layout
Unlike many flotillas, Ue'Orsi flies clustered together in a loose sphere, to facilitate trade and communication and protection from law enforcement and other undesirable elements. Weak and heavily-populated ships stay in the center of the sphere, while warships and automated drones line the outer reaches to protect them. At the dead center is Talum-Qeoka, the shipyard-ship and unofficial capital.
Infrastructure
Ue'Orsi is rich in metal and ship parts and poor in everything else. The vast majority of the flotilla's economic activity revolves around getting enough atmospheric gas, water, and fuel to allow its population to continue surviving. Power is generated by ramshackle solar arrays focusing the feeble light of distant stars and fusion/fission/supermatter reactors scattered throughout the flotilla like wildseed. Food is grown in large, slow ships in the center of the flotilla and distributed outwards to the warships and guests. All food is Skrell-safe, and a very small subset is also human-safe. The beating heart of the flotilla is Talum-Qeoka, a huge ship retrofitted from a captured SDTF capital ship and used as a shipyard. The engineers of Talum-Qeoka are among the most resourceful in the galaxy and are skilled at creating functional (if ugly) ships from parts scavenged from wildly different species.
Population
Almost all of Ue'Orsi is Skrellian, mostly Ue-Katish with a handful of first-generation defectors. A very small number of human and positronic extremists and exiles live there, and a slightly higher number of Unbound Unathi. Much of the population is transient, but infrastructure limitations put a soft cap of about 40,000 inhabitants.
Industry and Economy
Ue'Orsi is desperately poor. Keeping a flotilla of its size intact and breathing is extremely expensive, and it has been under embargo by all major space-faring nations since its existence. It primarily subsists through trade with more violent flotillas of raiders (both human and Skrell) and Natuna. It provides a safe place to fence stolen goods and sells food and repairs to pirates, and then pays out the nose to smugglers for fissibles, deuterium, supermatter, and necessities like clothing, plastic, and medical equipment. Its perpetual poverty has lead to Ue'Orsi's entire permanent population repeatedly requesting asylum in human and Unathi space, requests that have been denied for the last several hundred years.
Government
The caste system and monarchy that defines society in Qerr-Katish space is viciously hated by the population of Ue'Orsi. However, Skrellian nature is to tend towards rigidly-defined roles and hierarchies. To that end, each ship in Ue'Orsi is controlled by a Captain. The Captain chooses their successor from the population of their ship, and defines day-to-day life inside its confines. The Captain (and their staff, in large ships) assigns every permanent resident a role they are to fulfill while aboard, which they are expected to perform to their utmost ability or risk exile. These roles are decided upon through interview and negotiation, not fiat, and are considerably more fluid than the caste system, with many ships practicing role rotation to reduce monotony and discomfort. Balancing the absolute authority of the Captain is a deeply held belief in the right of mutiny, and unpopular or tyrannical Captains often find themselves floating outside the confines of their ship.
The Captain of Talum-Qeoka is called the Admiral, and during crisis situations is the ultimate commander of the fleet. Otherwise, their only power outside of Talum-Qeoka is deciding when the flotilla as a whole should move positions, and that power stems less from authority and more from the fact that Talum-Qeoka is vital to the function of the flotilla.
Notable Locations
Talum-Qeoka
The Heart of the Builder. Holds almost five percent of the flotilla population. A massively important cultural and economic hub for the station, Talum-Qeoka is a massive, ramshackle behemoth of a ship with huge, delicate moring spires running out either side. It is the best-equipped and largest mobile shipyard in the galaxy, producing drones, shuttles, and fightercraft internally and larger ships in the moring spires. Each of the great agricultural ships is a custom design from the engineers at the heart of Talum-Qeoka, while other craft tend to be refurbished versions of captured ships.
Xuor-Maqa
The Shield of the Parent. Xuor-Maqa is a huge, ramshackle network of solar arrays stolen from installations all over Skrell and human space, augmented with focusing mirrors manufactured on Talum-Qeoka, and bolted together into one messy installation attached to oversized tugboats. Xuor-Maqa provides the most reliable source of electrical power available to the inhabitants of Ue-Orsi. This power is sufficient to keep the entire population alive, so long as the majority of them are in cryostasis and all the lights are off. The fact that the flotilla has more people than cryostasis berths is a problem.
The name of the installation hints at its other function-- in the event of a major attack by a SDTF, Xuor-Maqa functions as a mobile screen, blocking enemy fire long enough for more populous ships to jump away. In the event of a more orderly movement, Xuor-Maqa must first be disassembled and stored in the flotilla, as its shape and size prevents it from moving faster than light.
Suqot-Th'oom
A vulgar term for "Face of the Th'oom". The largest agricultural/civilian ship, and consquently home to the largest black market. Suqot-Th'oom is noticably more wealthy than its neighbors, a fact that breeds resentment and insulting political cartoons. Suqot-Th'oom is home to a small detachment of Qerr-Glia and a comparatively large number of human merchants in permanent residence. One of the hydroponics arrays grows rice, a fact that has made it incredibly popular among humans looking for something to eat that doesn't taste like salted cardboard.
History
Coming Soon!
