The Alazar
A mid-tonnage long-hauler, two hundred years old, converted so many times that no two decks agree on what she was built for. Cargo capacity of a freighter, engines of something faster and angrier, and a hull patched in eleven visibly different alloys. She is loud, she smells like hot metal and cardamom, and she has never once failed to arrive.
The first ship to make landfall on a world nobody could see last month.
Interior
Deliberately unspecified. Layout follows whatever deckplan gets used at the table.
Crew
- Captain Ilessa Sarneth (she/her), master and owner, for nearly the whole of the ship's service life.
- Open slots. The Alazar has been short-handed for a century and the captain is about to meet several people with nowhere else to be.
Her Condition
The mismatched plating is not neglect. Most of it is one repair, done badly and in a hurry, a long time ago, and Sarneth has never had the money or the inclination to make it look better.
Why She Was There
Not luck, and not a beacon. Sarneth has spent one hundred and sixty-seven years staying near a blank stretch of sky that every chart marks as empty, insisting there was something hidden inside it, and taking whatever contracts would keep her in the region. The lapsed registry, the junk survey work, the permanent shortage of crew and money: all of it is what two centuries of one obsession looks like from the outside.
When the fault resolved and there was a world inside it, she did not need to be told. She was already the closest thing to it, and she had been for most of her life.