| Vecordean Fleetworks | |
|---|---|
| |
Details
| |
| Allegiance | Unaligned Shipwrights |
| Home sector | 12, 7, -6 |
| Notable sites | VFW Prototyping Yard D07, Surfeit of Savings |
| Notable members | Dash O Seven, Chutney |
What is Known[]
Vecordean Fleetworks (AKA The VFW) is rumored to be a massive corporate enterprise focused on warship construction and sales. The true scope and reach of their corporation is unknown at the moment, though there are rumors that they have methods for bridging dimensions. Fortunately, they will likely remain distant and disinterested in anything save selling a few of their low-end ships to the locals.
Until recently, the tensions between Lunaris and Solaris haven't warranted the inscrutable attentions of the VFW corporate aggregate. However, their agents have noticed and upswing of third-party party sales of some of their low-end warship designs to the local Pirate Baron Von Dougal and his Fanty Raiders. In response, they've sent a single marketing drone into the region with enough resources to set up a small prototyping yard and to gauge local interest in their designs.
The local base, Vecordean Fleetworks Provisionary Prototyping Yard D07 and it's accompanying Super Duper Interlocutor Fleetworking Funnel is located in orbit around the VFW-owned planet Surfeit of Savings. Just look for the abomination with a dapper chapeau.
Corporate Operations[]
The local VFW Prototyping Yard is responsible for determining the relationship Corporate has with various cutomers in the Solaris/Lunaris region. To a rather limited extent, at least. The local marketing rep cannot, for instance, call in the full wrath of the Corporate Warfleet or offer favored parties technologies beyond what is cleared for local sale.
The VFW operates on the ideal of reciprocity rather than impartiality. Gruff, irritable customers are dealt with in as gruff and irritable a manner as the local marketing rep can manage. Generous customers are treated generously. Powers that impose onerous constraints on local VFW operations can be expected to have the same demands made of their own vessels in the small area of space around the Prototyping Yard. Those that abuse VFW employees and corporate assets can expect that to be recpirocated as well, at least until the cost of doing so exceeds a credit limit determined by the Johannite Vengeance Calculation.
VFW Vessels[]
VFW Vessels are easily distinguished by their yellow-and-black color scheme, exotic Fantail Drive (tm) and WingDrive (tm) reactionless impeller drive assemblies, and rapid-fire rail cannons.
In addition to the aging and under-maintained vessels operated by Baron Von Dougal, the VFW prototypes new designs for use in the Lunaris/Solaris region. These include the following:
The VFW Hymn-class Light Destroyer , prototype designated as "Hymn of Disquiet", has finished construction and has been sold to the Solaris Royal Navy. Despite it's Light Destroyer designation by VFW corporate HQ, it's closer to a cruiser in terms of performance and armament by local reckoning. Additional vessels of this type are currently unavailable.
The X36 Boaz is a salvaging vessel made from a heavily modified and ancient Arkham-class light cruiser. It maintains the original hull's powerful reactors, drives, and heavy shielding, but has comparitively light armament and has had much of its insides gutted and repurposed. It is very much a custom vessel and not, properly, a VFW production design. The Boaz was comissioned by Xiea Salvaging Company, who will claim ownership of the vessel once it is completed.
The VFW Valkyrie-class Assault Corvette is a fast, tough combat vessel that employs the "WingDrive" variant of the VFW Fantail Drive (tm). It has relatively luxurious accommodations for a single pilot, but can be modified to house additional crew. These can be purchased from the prototyping yards for a reasonable sum. Dash O Seven has access to a Valkyrie named "Seraphina".
The VFW Cantata-class Salvage and Recovery Vehicle is, in local reckoning, a small but heavily armed corvette. Unlike the Valkyrie, it is not designed for long-term independent operation and is mostly used to recover, repair, or salvage disabled vehicles. It has four Quartet Mk 2 turrets and multiple tow cable booms. it can be purchased from the VFW for a modest sum.
The VFW Sotto Vocce-class Blockade Runner is an expensive, cramped ship capable of disrupting enemy scanners. Ideally used as a smuggling vessel or EWAR ship. These are available from the prototyping yards at a ruinous cost.
The VFW Tremolo Mk II Interceptor is a mass-produced carrier-fighter/interceptor. It's considerably faster and tougher than the older Mk I. These are also available for purchase from the prototyping yards.
The VFW Beat Mini Fighter is useless at single combat, but relatively zippy. They are cheap, easy to automate, and require a single, unenhanced docking port, making them best employed in drone swarms. The VFW sells these in bulk.
The VFW Omnidrone Incredibarrel is an inelegant space barrel that is capable of engaging in a wide variety of tasks. It can mine, fight, salvage, act as a turret, as an escape pod, or a general runabout in Lunaris space, where things like "proper defensive armaments" consist of angry notes and rubber bands waved irritably at pirates. Please note that the ODI is not good at any of the things it can do except the bit where it's an escape pod. Available from the VFW Prototyping Yards and endorsed by VFW Celebrity Drone Rike Mowe.
What is Unknown[]
Note: The following story has been relayed to us by Dash O Seven and it is not certain how much is actually true, how much is false, but believed by Dash to be true, and how much is the product of his strange whimsies.
Vecordean Fleetworks was originally founded in 1832 by Johann Von Vecordeanfleetworks, a native of the sleepy hamlet of Vecordeanfleetworks, located in the Palatinate of the Rhine. He started by selling his patented Glowing Mystery Effluvia Jam, an enigmatic and gently glowing substance with a wide range of useful applications, before moving on to steel refining, heavy industry, and something he called "Hermetic Phlebotomy". After many long years, his company reorganized and started building warships for use in space, a change that brought the ire of the embattled Terran government.
After seizing many of the VFW's corporate holdings, the Terran authorities were stunned to realize that the current head of the VFW was the same man who founded it centuries before. They forced their way into his remoate manor only to find the place empty. Most of the officers involved would go on to suffer from terrible nightmares in the years to come. All recalled the small red door in the upper floor that no one could bring themselves to touch and that frightened their dogs so terribly.
For many years, no one heard anything more of the VFW or it's mysterious founder until VFW designs started popping up in the fleets of small independant worlds, pirates, and alien navies, but by then, Terra's troubles were too great for them to do anything much about it.
Johann still runs the VFW, too, after all these centuries, as a vast, tentacled entity located within the Johannite pocket dimension. From his sprawling, mountainous headquarters building, he directs the more abominable elements of the VFW corporate aggregate, including various Prototyping Abominations, Repurposement Maws, and Fleetworking Cloacas, as well as a whole lot of paperwork.
It is quite likely that the VFW's corporate HQ still possesses and has improved upon pre-fall Terran Hegemony technology along with other, more esoteric technologies, but they do not seem inclined to share it. Indeed, they take great measures to ensure that it doesn't fall into the hands of civilizations that aren't already capable of replicating it themselves. VFW vessels in Vivacitas space are all built on ancient, pre-fall technologies.
Currently, the VFW is persuing an agenda referred to as "The Path Forward". VFW agents are sent to promising human cultures and tasked with the difficult job of helping them to help themselves against the ever-present threat of alien invasion. This is mostly done through carefully controlled market competition and propaganda. Local shipwrights and naval yards are driven to improve their technological and industrial base in order to compete more effectively against ever-improving VFW designs. VFW stations broadcast propaganda (disguised as advertisements) designed to help nurture a sense of disgust for and awareness of the tendency for corporate ventures to treat human beings as a commodity. Promising individuals are recruited, slowly, to the VFW cause. Bits of advanced technology occasionally finds its way to groups that can make effective use of them. It can take years, but the end result is a strong, independant polity with a reasonable chance of defending itself from outside invasion.
Despite all of this, the VFW does not see itself as the guardian and caretaker of mankind. It is a humanstic rather than humanitarian enterprise. The goal simply seems to be to ensure that humankind will survive in order to continue doing business. Strong, independant polities already made distrustful of outsiders will not be easily consumed by or become dependant upon the VFW's corporate and ideological rivals. They will make for good trading partners in time. Or, perhaps something else. With Johann it is always difficult to understand exactly what's going on.