• Registered: 2005-06-12
  • Posts: 27

Topic: Non-Humans of the Deltan Sector: The Thoran Holds

The Thora are a race of cold-weather mammals who evolved somewhere in the galactic northeast.  Their fiercely independent spirit and utter recitience, however, make it entirely possible to determine which of their oldest Hold-Worlds is their home.  Thora resemble Terran badgers, but are bipedal and stand between 5 and 5 1/2 feet tall, weighing between 260 and 240 lbs, most of which comes from thick layers of muscle and bodyfat evolved for their high-gravity, cold and mountainous homes.  Although their society has evolved in diverse directions since they began to explore space, they still tend towards a gruff and unhelpful exterior which conceals extremely violent tempers, and government formats that give their solitary ways preference.  It is not uncommon for a single world to constitute a perfectly valid, well-respected insular political entity, though such entities will sometimes band together for defense.  In ship design, they tend to mirror their own physical features, designing squat, slow, heavily armed and armored vessels.  Now inhabiting a fairly large united sector of worlds to the galactic NNE and N of Terra, the Thoran also show up in isolated pockets throughout the sector, due to the unique survivability of their social structure and its transplantability.

Only slightly more advanced than human beings, the Thoran have long had use of hyperspace technology, but exhausting civil wars and recurring periods of isolationism have kept them behind other older races, as has an enduring racial enmity with the Kitaro Empire, which has taken its toll on their race.  Their ships exist in essentially two class types: Battlecraft, which are deployed in defense of homeworlds or as supplementary ships in larger battles, and Hold Ships or Fortress Vessels, vast leviathans with survivability and armament to match their size.  Many Holds posses no more than one or two of the huge Hold ships, and their designs and dates of construction can date back many hundreds of years.  Battlecraft, while more common, are also far less prestigious, and are seen as little better than glorified police ships – after all, the Thora value system frowns on the ‘weakness' of these craft.

  • Registered: 2005-06-12
  • Posts: 27

Re: Non-Humans of the Deltan Sector: The Thoran Holds

Because of the mineral richness of their worlds, and the adeptness with which they have pursued materials technology, the Thora weapons set and technological orientation is primarily kinetic.  Most ships are armed primarily with a highly refined form of the basic railgun which overcomes most of the range and accuracy limitations of the design, and uses tried-and-true superheavy projectiles to inflict serious damage.  Many are armed with secondary ‘bombardment cannons,' or their lighter cousins, ‘flak cannons'.  These extremely long ranged batteries utilize a unique two-part detonation which allows the shell to be extremely light, and for each shell to cause a ‘contstellation effect' of explosions.  This system also allows the shells to be accelerated to ranges only within the missile envelopes of other races. However, the shells must stabilize in flight, and their targeting computers are calibrated only for long range – hence, these guns quickly lose their effectiveness as the railguns come into range.
    Finally, the Thora also make limited use of one significant energy weapon, the arc cannon.  Utilizing the ambient electromagnetic fields of ship's power generation and shielding, arc guns transmit powerful spreads of raw electric concussive energy from their modules to the enemy ship, until such time as the capacitors in the arc burn out and are replaced (like one would replace the ammunition in a normal weapon).  This is particularly useful against fighters, among whom a ‘cascade effect' can develop, but the weapon's discharge is also ill suited to overcoming more than the most basic energy shielding on full sized ships, though it does rip apart frigates with alarming speed.

  • Registered: 2005-06-12
  • Posts: 27

Re: Non-Humans of the Deltan Sector: The Thoran Holds

Although Battlecraft vary widely in design, there are two essential templates for these support ships.  The Sok'ta, or Strong Willed Warrior, is designed to operate on its own or in small groups, and is equipped primarily for combating corvettes and light cruisers.  Its slow speed and lack of serious fighter procection put it at a disadvantage against highly maneuverable opponents or fighter-heavy forces, but the Sok'ta, like all Thoran ships, can usually take even the beating it receives in these situations and still return fire.[/img]

  • Registered: 2005-06-12
  • Posts: 27

Re: Non-Humans of the Deltan Sector: The Thoran Holds

The Yhorak'ta, or Axe Warrior, is a slightly slower design still, but it boasts a more flexible rail cannon assembly and a pair of arc cannon for fighter defense, as well as more modern electronics than the Sok'Ta designs.  Together, these two ships make up roughly seventy percent of the non-fighter tonnage of the Thoran race, and are quite capable of coordinating to handle most threats.

  • Registered: 2005-06-12
  • Posts: 27

Re: Non-Humans of the Deltan Sector: The Thoran Holds

When there is a need to impress, or when a true-scale invasion threatens a Hold, though, the Gunda Shi (Mountain Warchief) Holdships are called out.  These powerful vessels not only mount a vicious array of weaponry, including the infamous bombardment cannons, they operate a full twenty-four of the squat, powerful fightercraft the Thorans have used for decades, and are capable of boarding enemy ships with a full five squads of Exo-Armored Thoran Warriors. 

Their main advantage, though is that they are incredibly tough to even damage, much less destroy.  Gunda Shi have been recorded wading into enemy formations and missile patterns that would daunt Human task force commanders, but with heavy armor on all eseential systems, and full redundancy in all generators and targeting systems, the Gunda Shi simply shrugs it all off.  Many navies have adopted the operational doctrine of attempting to disable the slightly more vulnerable weapons batteries themselves, but this is a spotty tactic at best.

  • Registered: 2005-06-12
  • Posts: 27

Re: Non-Humans of the Deltan Sector: The Thoran Holds

Sometimes even a Gunda Shi does not suffice to impress the need to leave Thoran space on intruders, and sometimes Hold Worlds, after long deliberation, decide to mount wars of their own.  In these cases, a Borak Jin (literal translation: “Anvil of War”) inevitably leads the way.  Only five or six of these craft have ever been documented since first contact with the Thoran worlds, and two of these were destroyed in the Battle of Cayman's Reach.  These immense ships, with an operational crew probably numbering about 7,000 and reaching a length of up to a kilometer, the Borak Jin is an awe-inspiring ship. 

          Combining fierce long-range firepower in the form of flak and bombardment cannon arrays with six notoriously large-scale rail cannons with a full wing of fighters, the Borak Jin is a deadly combatant at any range.  However, where it really shines is its longevity.  Extra retractable plating and shielding over the weapons batteries renders the ‘castration' tactics used against Gunda Shi useless, and fully armored engineering sections prevent easy crippling of the ships manuever capacity.  Truly, no one without a decisive advantage or a major concussion picks a fight with a Borak Jin – at Cayman's Reach, it took the forces of an entire Kitaro House Navy along with half of a task force from the Mirandan Expeditionary Forces to destroy the two ships deployed by the Thoran Holds.