Asteria

The Asteria is the Flag Ship of Bhelith Arleigh. It is notably shaped like a tree, though some think it also resembles a fancy fish.

Following the subjugation of the nomadic, spacefaring tatiya hini who settled on Liang by the Tai Pen human empire, the pursuit of seperate technological innovations by the tatiya hini ground to an essential halt. Magic was too complex a science, drawing too heavily on situational or contextual elements to be reliably utilized in Tianese shipbuilding. The Artificers of the elves were either subjugated, therefore, or fled into obscurity.

One notable exception, the artificer of the House of Arleigh, planted a seed which, on a planet, might have grown into one of the great tatiya hini houses. However, with words of power and as the last defiant gasp of elven artificery, Bhelith Arleigh spoke words of power to grow the tree into a ship's pattern instead, and Archmagister Tenaryth Willowquille of Kowloon used her expertise, gained through service in the Alliance, to provide it with a hybrid weapons and propulsion system - the first self-replicating, integrated system of its. The Asteria was born as a result; as a Tatiya Hini vessel, it can operate directly off of the power of several rare Embers, who serve the house of Arliegh, or it can collect energy for its various functions organically by landing on a planet with an awoken Minia Hini - a world's heart.

The merger of elven artificery and human ingenuity distinguish the Asteria from other tatiya hini vessels by providing it with an advanced shielding suite, along with an installed heavy fusion core, which powers its weaponry and shielding systems, alongside a modern navigational computer and advanced targetting technology. Taianese targetting and sensor systems are used as supplementary systems to enhance and give precision to the organic, and often sentient Tatiya-hini artificery to make the Asteria one of the most precise and wildly powerful ships to have ever sailed the star ocean.

However, due to its unique and rare nature, the Asteria can only be reproduced by waiting for the ship to bear fruit; that fruit is then taken and shaped by an Artificer, and the more mundane systems must be separately and carefully installed, so as not to interrupt the ship's growth or development.

Its full abilities and arsenal are kept a deliberate secret by the Shield of Kowloon, as until it bears such fruit, the ship is considered a national treasure and remains rooted in the mountains above the Capital, Soran Nast.

In later years, the Asteria reproduced - creating the first line of truely Kowlani ships based upon the technology.

The ships take about 1 year to grow to the size of corvettes, about 20m in length, or the size of the average air fighter. As opposed to regular ships, the Asteria's offspring grow, slowly, over the course of years - from corvette, to frigate, to destroyer, and upwards. Not all of the Asteria's offspring are alike, or grow similarly.

The Magisters believe that the soil that the seeds take root in has something to do with their gestation and growth, along with the types of space they are exposed to, and the types of sunlight.

A Kowlani woodship is named after its progenitor. Thus, a direct seed of the Asteria would be named Carlotte tu Asteria, and a seed of Carlotte would be Evanes tu Carlotte, marking the line of descent.