The Kushan Mothership is the Best Ship for Rediscovering Your ‘Homeworld’
The Mothership of the Kushan served as colony ship, battle carrier, and last hope of an exiled people searching for their homeworld.
On the desert world of Kharak, once lived the exiled people known as the Kushan. In the ancient past, as the Taiidan built their great empire, the Kushan were driven from their world. While some hid inside a Great Nebula, most were exiled to the desert world of Kharak where they forgot their once-might stature. Until they returned to space, and a satellite found an ancient starhship buried beneath the wastes.
Using recovered technology, the Kushan people built a great Mothership, designed to serve as exploratory vessel, colony ship, and as it happened, the last, best hope of the Kushan. But what made the Kushan Mothership so formidable? And how did it come to be?
The answer lies in the secrets of a sub-light transport ship called the Khar-Toba.
Kushan Mothership: A History Long Forgotten
The Kushan Mothership was a vision of the past, granted to an exiled people on the brink of discovery. As mentioned, the Kushan lost their ancient home to the sands of time. And also the sands of Kharak. Sand has a way of wiping many things clean.
But, there was no mistaking the ruins of an ancient city built out of a sub-light transport ship. This ship, present on a world whose people seemingly were discovering space travel for the first time, unlocked the history of the Kushan. The Khar-Toba was the first city founded on Kharak, and its power plant proved to leap Kushan technology hundreds of years into the future.
It also contained a Guidestone, an ancient artifact that would allow the Kushan to retrace their steps home. But to get there, they would need a vessel. The Mothership. Envisioned by Rachel S’jet, a passionate leader and the first Kushan to enter Khar-Toba since the exile, the Kushan Mothership was purpose built to serve her people on the long voyage to their forgotten homeworld, Hiigara.
Building the Mothership – Construction and Capabilities
The Kushan Mothership took 57 long years to construct. It was a massive undertaking that required the Kushan to first build orbital infrastructure, including an orbital shipyard known as the Scaffold, as well as a construct known as a Phased Disassembler Array that used fusion torches to break materials down into its constituent atoms, which were then recombined by robots into whatever configuration necessary.
The Kushan Mothership used the entirety of the Kharak system’s asteroid built, every last scrap of mineral was used to finish the ship. And it was a potent vessel.
Equipped with a hyperspace core, the Mothership was capable of faster than light travel. And it was massive. Capable of constructing anything from Strike Craft to Capital Ship class vessels, the Mothership was mobile fleet command as well as battle carrier.
It had a state of the art point-defense grid system built along its hull, using mass driver turrets that could repel fighters and missiles alike. While the central supercomputer of the Mothership opened up a whole new door for the Kushan. Because the only computer even close to being complex enough to process the Mothership’s signifcant needs was a human brain. And one brave neuroscientist volunteered to merge her brain with the machine, and became hardwired into the ship.
The Mothership would also open the doors to the world of the Unbound, but that’s a story for another time.
