The Warden is a
vast slab of metal, ungainly yet somehow majestic. Within, there are nine main
decks and a labyrinth of interdeck passages, spaces, and sub-decks. Even the
outer hull of the great vessel is bristling with blisters, turrets, and domes
that are, in effect, their own decks. Lift tubes run to every part of the ship,
carrying passengers in small cars, traversing the length of the ship in
minutes. For shorter trips, ladder tubes and stairwells are located in many
locations. It may be vast, but Warden
was designed to be accessible. Accessible to those with the proper credentials,
that is.
The entrances to all these tubes and access ways are
airtight and kept sealed unless they are presented with authorization. In the
days of the original crew, this simply involved being recognized by the Warden’s omnipresent AI. Now, of course,
the AI recognizes a scant few authorized personnel, at least until the back-up
crew is on duty.
The majority of the life on Warden that is ambulatory and awake exists on its nine vast decks.
Each was designed to prevent space madness caused by the constant
claustrophobic knowledge that the world of the Warden was a relatively tiny mote in a great cosmic void.
Pains were taken to conceal the walls and ceiling of each inhabited
deck with appropriate holographic camouflage, giving the illusion of unlimited
room to move and a living, dynamic world. Of course, the original crew and
passengers were aware the Warden was
merely a ship, but the illusion helped ameliorate that. And ameliorate it the
camouflage did; very few cases of space madness ever manifested themselves.
The nine decks of the Warden each have their own function
and, where appropriate, ecology. After a number of traumatic centuries, though,
some of those functions and ecologies have changed, in some cases drastically.
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| The decks of the Starship Warden. The quality isn't great, but it gives you the general idea. |
Deck Nine is the main cargo space of Warden. A seemingly ceaseless maze of pallets, shelving,
warehouses, and horticultural stations, this entire deck hums with robotic
activity. Even during its most chaotic times, the ship’s autonomic routines
kept every area supplied with everything from foodstuffs to axel grease. In
addition, raw materials procured from beyond Warden’s confines are brought onboard here by robotic mining and
survey craft to be processed and stored. Most importantly to the ship’s
original mission, the bulk of the cryogenic storage facilities are located
here, housing genetic samples and full-grown specimens of humans, animals, and
plants. These facilities were hard-hit by the radiation the Warden passed through centuries ago,
decanting a stream of strangely mutated creatures.
Deck Eight is the factory deck, taking the raw materials of
deck nine and manufacturing all the complex parts, tools, machinery, and
automatons that kept the ship running. Sometime in the lost centuries, the deck
was overrun by tropical flora and fauna, and the ship’s AI adjusted the
atmosphere here to accommodate it. The resulting heat and thick humidity caused
the factories here to gradually break down, with Warden’s androids and robots working ‘round-the-clock to keep at
least a few of them online, if only to build more androids and robots. The city
built on this deck to house the factory workers has been long abandoned,
overgrown and rusting.
Deck Seven is the farm deck. One of the more climatically
pleasant decks, with rolling land and verdant green, spangled with quaint
farmhouses and processing plants built to look like old-fashioned barns. Though
it looks like a rustic idyll, this deck was as affected by the turmoil of the
past centuries as any, and intruders would do well to be on guard.
Deck Six is colloquially known as the jungle deck. In fact,
it is a rainforest deck, consisting of the thick green flora of equatorial
Africa and the Amazon, as well as the coniferous trees of the Pacific
Northwest. The ship’s enviro controls make the transition from a tropical
climate to a cooler temperate one gradual. This deck is riotous with life, the
most vibrant deck on the Warden. Intelligent plants have effectively claimed
this deck for their own, but animal life is abundant, including small tribal
cultures of intelligent species.
Also present on deck six, except from outside, is an alien
vessel that has attached itself to Warden
via a number of tendrils or tentacles that burrowed their way through the ship’s
massive metal side. Designated the Tick
Shallop by the Warden’s AI, this
vessel is a mystery. No record of its arrival, subsequent attachment, or the
presence of any crew can be found in the AI’s memory banks.
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| The Tick Shallop, mysterious alien intruder vessel attached to Warden's hull. |
Deck Five is the ranch deck. The livestock here – cattle,
swine, poultry, etc. – was intended as an alternative source of fresh genetic
stock. While the slaughter of animals for meat had long since been obviated by
the generation of meat via carno-replicators, there was still a call for
variation in the genetic material used for replication. Unfortunately, the
replicators and their genetic samples were particularly vulnerable to the
radiation belt the Warden passed
through. Now, the deck is overrun by strange amalgamations of humans and
horses, humanoid cattle, and intelligent forms of every type of animal to be
found on the deck, from pigs to ducks.
Deck Four is the water deck. Huge reservoirs of fresh and
salt water are found here, with the attendant purification and waste
reclamation equipment. While the source of the ship’s water, it is also a preserve
for various aquatic environments. There are also islands scattered in a
pleasant distribution. These are used as preserves for appropriate flora and
fauna, as well as recreation for the crew and passengers. While the water
helped serve as a barrier for a good part of the radiation that engulfed the Warden, there is still a spectrum of
mutations to be found here, though many are subtle and difficult to detect.
Deck Three was another cargo space for the Warden. The difference between this deck
and deck nine is that deck three contained much of the terraforming equipment
used on the planets that were Warden’s
destination. While the prefab cities and factories were offloaded and put into
place, they were intended to be replaced onboard the Warden by new construction produced by the facilities on deck eight. With
that deck’s production facilities brought to a virtual standstill, deck three now
lays mostly empty. That includes atmospherically, as well over a century ago a
meteor managed to make its way past Warden’s
point-defense systems, creating a hull breach that evacuated the atmosphere
here before the crippled AI could halt it. While the hull breach has been long
repaired, the AI decided to not waste resources on pumping in new atmosphere.
After all, with so much of the ship’s complement dead or hostile, the fewer
places usable as bases for hostile mutants, the better.
Deck Two is the wilderness deck. The climate and terrain is
much like that of Yosemite, and the deck once served as a haven for those
people on the Warden who sought the
solace of rugged uplands. This deck ended up being one of the most war-torn
sections of the ship during the worst of the chaotic years. The most evil of the
mutant factions ended up destroying each other and themselves, leaving the deck
to the sapients who wanted nothing to do with any faction. In the intervening years,
the deck has become a true howling wilderness, with isolated homesteads and
rustic villages of mutants and non-mutants standing as points of civilization continually besieged
by hostile monsters and remnants of the factions that once dominated the deck.
Deck One, or the Command Deck, isn’t a deck, per se. It’s the topside of Warden, and consists of several domes or
protrusions on the ship. These range from the large, clear-domed city and
garden domes, to the blisters of the observation domes, to the outrigger-like
Command Nucleus. The remnants of what life on Warden was like before the
radiation disaster can generally be found in these areas.
This overview is to give a taste of what's to come. I tweaked a good bit of it from the original source material to suit my taste.
Next: Part 5: Deck Nine: Cargo Deck
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