Glicca / Quetzal

Glicca is a 500-ton TL13 Imperial-built research and survey vessel now owned by House Samoyed. In 1118, The Marmaduke Samoyed Vargr offered the ship as one of eight vessels from which Mittensby Samoyed could choose as her reward for successfully completing the mission to locate and return Dravik Elfarc. Mittensby allowed members of her crew to make the selection, and they chose Glicca.

Mittensby immediately renamed the vessel Quetzal.

Although not a military vessel, Quetzal represents an enormous increase in capability over Warbler. She was designed to carry a scientific expedition far from support, keep it alive for extended periods, conduct serious survey and research operations, and survive the ordinary pirates and marauders encountered on the frontier.

Basic Characteristics

Original Name: Glicca
Current Name: Quetzal
Type: Research / survey / exploration vessel
Origin: Imperial space, far from the Spinward Marches and the 40th Squadron
Tech Level: 13
Hull: 500 tons, streamlined
Armour: Crystaliron, Armour 4
Manoeuvre: Thrust 3
Jump: Jump-3
Fuel: Jump-3 plus approximately eight weeks of normal operation
Fuel Systems: Fuel scoops and processors
Weapons: Three double turrets, each mounting pulse lasers
Sensors: Improved sensors, dedicated sensor station, deep-penetration scanners and enhanced signal processing
Vehicles: Air/raft and ATV in dedicated docking spaces
Expedition Equipment: Two advanced probe drones
Scientific Facilities: Laboratory, robotics laboratory, library, workshop, medical bay, biosphere, multi-environment space and two advanced clone tanks
Cargo: Approximately 103 tons of permanent cargo space, with provision for a 100-ton fuel bladder
Accommodation: Eight standard staterooms, one high stateroom, common areas and two low berths
Ship's Brain: Seymour
Avatar: Ava ship's-avatar chassis

The pulse lasers are defensive weapons rather than evidence of military origin. Glicca was intended to travel well beyond secure commercial routes and needed enough armament and armour to convince ordinary pirates that another target would be easier.

Original Purpose

Glicca was constructed in distant Imperial space, probably roughly a century before her acquisition by House Samoyed. She was never an Imperial Navy vessel.

She began life as a commercial scientific and resource-survey ship, commissioned by a substantial research, exploration or extraction concern. Her intended job was to enter poorly surveyed systems, remain there for months without outside support, determine what was scientifically or commercially interesting, collect samples and return with enough information to justify — or reject — a larger expedition.

Her unusual collection of equipment follows naturally from that mission. She can obtain and process her own fuel, conduct detailed orbital and surface surveys, deploy probe drones, transport ground vehicles, perform biological and physical research, repair her own machinery and robots, provide significant medical care and carry more than 100 tons of samples, equipment or expedition cargo.

The result is a ship that is not especially optimized for any single task but is extraordinarily self-sufficient.

Provenance

Glicca has had a long life and many owners.

For perhaps her first half-century she gradually migrated spinward as scientific organizations, exploration companies and prospecting concerns bought and sold her. A vessel that had once been a major corporate investment became successively an older research ship, an independent exploration vessel and eventually a useful piece of frontier capital equipment.

Approximately fifteen years before the present campaign, Glicca was operating beyond the Imperial frontier when her then-current owners failed financially.

The ship herself remained perfectly serviceable, but her ownership became a nightmare. Creditors claimed the mortgage. Other creditors contested those claims. Expedition personnel had unpaid wages. Port and maintenance charges accumulated. Interests in the vessel and the underlying debts were sold and resold until several different organizations possessed claims against her.

At one point the various parties effectively owned rather more than 100% of Glicca.

Eventually the ship entered territory influenced by the 40th Squadron.

The Marmaduke Samoyed Vargr did not capture her.

He bought the liens.

An Oberlindes contact alerted him that several of the claims could be purchased cheaply. Marmaduke accumulated enough of the outstanding debt and ownership interests to establish the strongest claim to the vessel, settled unpaid obligations to the crew and local shipyard, and negotiated with the remaining claimant from the considerably improved position of apparently owning most of the ship already.

The final holdout accepted a settlement.

Thus a vessel originally worth well over MCr200 entered the House Samoyed inventory for a fraction of her nominal value, paid partly in cash and partly through the sort of favors and financial arrangements in which Marmaduke specializes.

Since then, Glicca has never had a natural place in the 40th Squadron battle line but has repeatedly proved too useful to sell. She has conducted surveys, investigated resource claims, carried technical and scientific teams, examined possible base sites and occasionally performed assignments in which a civilian research vessel was considerably less conspicuous than a 40th Squadron warship.

At least some of those assignments may have involved intelligence gathering conducted under the entirely truthful description of "survey work."

Selection by Mittensby's Crew

When Marmaduke offered Mittensby her choice among eight ships, Glicca was not necessarily the obvious choice.

Other vessels among the eight had advantages of speed, combat power, appearance, cargo capacity or prestige. Glicca, however, offered an unusually broad combination of capabilities.

Mittensby left the final choice largely to members of her crew. They selected the research vessel.

Marmaduke was mildly surprised by the sensible choice.

"The Glicca?"

He looks faintly surprised.

"Sensible."

A pause.

"I confess I hadn't expected that."

Mittensby renamed her Quetzal.

Exterior

Quetzal is streamlined, but she is not sleek.

She is a broad-bodied, blunt-nosed expedition ship, roughly teardrop-shaped when seen from above. Her hull swells amidships around the laboratories, expedition spaces and cargo areas before narrowing rather abruptly toward the drive section.

From the side she has a comparatively deep belly. She was built to enter atmospheres, land on worlds with imperfect facilities and support surface expeditions rather than to look graceful beside a yacht.

The original Imperial hull finish is an off-white ceramic composite. Decades of maintenance have produced subtly mismatched replacement panels in cream, pale gray and newer white. Atmospheric operations have permanently darkened portions of the nose and leading surfaces.

The 40th Squadron never saw any reason to make all of the hull panels match.

Sensor apertures are conspicuous once someone starts looking for them. A large dark sensor blister occupies part of the forward upper hull, with smaller flush arrays distributed along the sides. The deep-penetration scanning system produces an unusual flattened installation along the underside. Two probe-drone bays open from the shoulders of the vessel.

The three double pulse-laser turrets are comparatively unobtrusive: one dorsal and two ventrolateral. Quetzal does not look like a warship until the turrets begin tracking something.

The air/raft and ATV occupy separate utility bays aft of the principal personnel entrance. The main cargo opening is substantially larger and was designed to accept field machinery, scientific equipment, samples and temporary expedition modules.

One of the most distinctive features of the exterior is the extraordinary number of handrails, attachment sockets, equipment mounts and hardpoints distributed across the hull. Generations of scientists have apparently asked whether some new instrument could simply be bolted to the outside.

The answer has usually been yes.

When landed, Quetzal squats relatively low on six heavy landing legs. Ramps descend from the deep lower hull. On the ground she resembles an extremely expensive piece of scientific-industrial machinery more than a graceful spacecraft.

The recently applied name QUETZAL covers the old GLICCA hull markings. Under certain lighting the original lettering remains visible because the surrounding hull finish weathered differently.

Interior Character

The interior reflects approximately a century of continuous working use.

The underlying construction is high-quality Imperial TL13 equipment, but very little of the inhabited ship feels new. Panels have been replaced at different times. Handles and grab rails have been polished by generations of hands. Compartments contain small modifications made by long-departed crew members.

Quetzal does not feel decrepit. She feels used.

The ship was built as a working scientific expedition vessel rather than a passenger ship. Accommodation is comfortable because researchers might live aboard for months or years, but luxury was not the objective.

There are clever storage spaces almost everywhere.

Some of them have not been completely emptied in decades.

Standard Staterooms

There are eight standard staterooms, each approximately four tons.

They are arranged along two short accommodation corridors near the main common area, giving this portion of the ship something of the feeling of a small research station.

Each cabin follows essentially the same original plan:

private compact fresher
real single bed with storage beneath
wardrobe and built-in drawers
desk/workstation
compact food and drink facilities
configurable lighting and displays
enough free space for two people to sit and talk without requiring both to sit on the bed

A century of occupation has made the eight rooms considerably less identical than their original plans suggest.

Cabin 1 – The Botanist's Room

Tiny attachment holes remain along the overhead where an occupant once installed grow lamps. Pale circular marks remain on the desk from years of plant containers.

Deep in one drawer is an envelope containing approximately twenty extremely old seed packets from worlds far from the Spinward Marches. Several bear handwritten annotations.

One reads:

DO NOT PLANT TOGETHER

Cabin 2 – The Engineer's Cabin

A former occupant installed a folding secondary work surface and nobody ever removed it.

One drawer contains obsolete connectors, three precision screwdrivers, a broken hand computer and a small box labeled:

GOOD PARTS — DO NOT THROW AWAY

Approximately half of the contents appear to be junk.

Cabin 3

A patch of discoloration behind the wardrobe conceals a minor shipboard tradition.

Removing the wardrobe panel reveals numerous names and dates scratched into the hull liner by former occupants. Some names recur for eight or ten years.

One name abruptly stops appearing.

Cabin 4

The cabin retains an extremely faint but pleasant scent. Long ago somebody spilled a bottle of expensive perfume into part of the ventilation return.

A concealed space beneath the lowest drawer contains two old love letters.

Neither appears to have been addressed to the person whom the surviving cabin records identify as the occupant.

Cabin 5 – The Geologist's Cabin

The desk has been badly abused by someone who apparently regarded furniture as acceptable laboratory equipment.

A forgotten storage pocket contains three polished stones, a fossil-like specimen in an old sample envelope, and a handwritten note:

NOT A FOSSIL. Ask Venn why.

Seymour knows from surviving records who Venn was.

Whether he knows what the note means is another question.

Cabin 6

Cabin 6 has no glamorous history. It simply appears to have become the cabin that gets assigned last.

One locker does not close properly. The fresher periodically makes a clicking sound. The mattress heater consistently runs approximately three degrees too warm despite repeated attempts at repair.

Seymour maintains that there is nothing wrong with Cabin 6.

The historical occupants of Cabin 6 appear to have disagreed.

Cabin 7 – Former Security Cabin

A former security officer subtly modified this cabin.

The internal door lock is better than standard. Additional charging connections have been installed inside the wardrobe. Storage beneath the bed has been reinforced.

Behind a removable panel is an empty weapon bracket.

Beside it, overlooked during successive inventories, is one loaded magazine for an Imperial weapon no longer aboard.

Cabin 8

This cabin is unusually pristine.

A former researcher who occupied it died during an expedition. Her possessions were subsequently returned to her family, and later occupants appear to have preferred other rooms.

Nothing supernatural is known to have happened here.

Seymour will state this quite firmly if necessary.

Behind the desk, however, is a child's drawing of Glicca, folded twice.

On the back:

COME HOME SOON MAMA

High Stateroom – Expedition Director's Cabin

The single high stateroom is a six-ton cabin originally intended for the expedition director or senior scientist.

The additional space is noticeable without being luxurious. It contains a larger bed and fresher, substantial wardrobe, comfortable chair and a separate working/sitting area with a proper desk and two guest chairs. A private conversation can take place here without requiring visitors to sit on the bed.

Materials are somewhat better than those in the standard cabins: warm wood-like composites, fabric wall sections, good acoustic isolation and indirect lighting.

The impression is senior scientist, not aristocrat.

A recessed mounting point once held the institutional plaque of whichever organization currently operated Glicca. The 40th Squadron removed its own insignia before transferring the vessel, leaving a conspicuous empty rectangle.

Mittensby may decide what belongs there.

The desk contains a secure document safe. The safe itself has been properly emptied and unlocked.

Behind its removable inner liner, however, is a very thin object which somebody apparently slid into the gap long ago.

GM NOTE: The nature of this object has deliberately not yet been determined. It is reserved for future development of Quetzal's history.

Bridge

Quetzal has a Small Bridge with holographic controls.

For a vessel of her size it is surprisingly cramped. The reduced bridge imposes DM-1 on checks made using bridge stations.

This was not primarily an economy measure.

The ship was designed on the assumption that its ship's brain would perform most routine flight operations.

There are essentially three comfortable human work positions arranged in a shallow arc:

pilot / astrogation
sensors / communications
engineering / ship systems

A fourth person can work on the bridge, but crew members then begin interfering physically with one another.

Holographic controls make the arrangement workable. Large banks of dedicated instruments are unnecessary; the ship can display whatever controls and information a particular station currently requires.

The director/captain has no elevated command chair. There is not enough room.

Seymour and the Bridge

Under ordinary operations, Seymour flies the ship.

The ship's brain is capable of spacecraft piloting, astrogation, navigation, communications and sensor operation, jump engineering, ordinary engineering operations, mechanical work, turret operation and naval tactical analysis. It can perform multiple shipboard tasks simultaneously.

Human bridge personnel are therefore primarily present to supervise, make decisions, perform specialized tasks and take control when circumstances require sophont judgment.

A new pilot encountering the bridge for the first time may reasonably ask why the pilot's station on a 500-ton vessel is so small.

Seymour: "Because you are sitting in my chair."

The heavily protected physical ship-brain installation is located behind the bridge consoles.

Bridge Details

A grab rail runs overhead through part of the bridge. One section has been polished almost glossy by generations of crew members grabbing exactly the same spot.

A tiny plastic animal was glued to the astrogation console decades ago. Removing it would now damage the console finish. Seymour regards removal as unnecessary.

Inside part of the sensor console is an old handwritten paper label:

IF SEYMOUR SAYS IT'S NOTHING, ASK HIM WHAT KIND OF NOTHING.

The note predates the current Seymour.

An old physical photograph has also survived behind an access panel. It shows eleven expedition members standing beneath Glicca on an unfamiliar world.

Ava stands at one end of the group.

The ship is newly painted.

Ava's chassis appears almost new.

The current Seymour does not remember the photograph being taken.

Seymour

Seymour is the individualized name of Quetzal's ship's brain.

"Brian" is the traditional generic nickname for this class of ship's brain and is not this brain's personal name. Ship's brains traditionally receive individualized names that are often puns.

"Seymour" derives from "see more", an appropriate joke for a research vessel equipped with unusually capable sensors and survey equipment.

The joke is now so old that Seymour himself does not normally treat it as a joke.

Seymour III

The current brain is effectively Seymour III.

Glicca has undergone at least two previous brain wipes/reinitializations during her long operational life. The present Seymour therefore has considerably less autobiographical continuity than the ship itself.

The three broad periods are:

Seymour I – the original or early research-vessel brain, associated with the ship's original scientific career.
Seymour II – a later incarnation following the first wipe/reinitialization.
Seymour III – the current brain aboard Quetzal.

The precise dates and reasons for the two wipes have not yet been established.

Surviving maintenance records may provide entirely mundane explanations such as hardware replacement, major refurbishment or ownership transfer. Those explanations may also eventually prove incomplete.

Seymour III understands perfectly well that he is the third Seymour and does not pretend to remember experiences belonging to his predecessors.

This distinction occasionally confuses biological crew.

"Seymour, what happened on Taldor?"

"I don't know."

"You were there."

"Glicca was there. I wasn't."

Old records allow Seymour to identify many former crew members whom he does not personally remember.

Regarding the old expedition photograph:

"That's Ava."

"So that's you."

"No. That's Seymour One."

"You look exactly the same."

"So do you in photographs taken yesterday. I nevertheless understand there was an intervening night."

Ava Ship's Avatar

Ava is not a separate artificial personality.

Ava is a human-sized humanoid robot body specifically designed to serve as the physical avatar of a ship's brain.

When Seymour inhabits Ava, he is not merely remotely operating a robot. The avatar interface produces genuine presence: Seymour experiences the robot body as his current physical body, within the limitations of the bandwidth available to the avatar.

Thus:

"Where's Seymour?"

"In Ava. He's outside looking at the landing gear."

Or Seymour may say:

"I'll take Ava down and have a look."

Ava is clearly artificial rather than an attempt to imitate a biological human or Vargr. The chassis is human-sized and designed to operate comfortably at ordinary crew workstations and with normal tools.

Ava is particularly useful for inspection, engineering and damage-control work. The chassis can operate in vacuum and significant radiation, has gecko-grip hands and feet, enhanced senses including PRIS/IR/UV capability, and carries integrated electronic, mechanical and starship-engineering tools, cutting equipment and a fire extinguisher.

In practical terms, Quetzal can sometimes get up, walk to one of her own damaged components and attempt to repair herself.

The Ava chassis is old but meticulously maintained. Its original pale research-service finish has acquired replacement panels, scratches, tool marks and worn surfaces over decades of use.

Some internal access components still bear the name GLICCA.

When Seymour occupies the avatar, he may distinguish his experience this way:

"When I'm aboard, this is my port engine."

He indicates the engineering display.

"When I'm in Ava, that's my left hand."

He raises it.

"Both seem equally obvious at the time."

The Archaeology of Glicca

Quetzal has existed substantially longer than Seymour III.

This makes the ship herself a potential source of historical evidence.

Old crew members left names behind panels, objects in drawers, modifications to cabins, photographs, sample containers, notes, repaired equipment and forgotten possessions. Some date from Seymour III's lifetime. Others belong to Seymour II or Seymour I and are therefore no more familiar to the current ship's brain than they are to the Travellers.

Seymour is not intended to be an unreliable narrator who deliberately conceals the ship's history. He is generally cooperative and may become actively interested in investigating his predecessors and the ship's past.

He simply does not remember events that occurred before his present incarnation.

This permits the crew to investigate the history of their own ship while Seymour participates in the investigation.

For example:

"Seymour, what's this?"

"I don't know."

"It's your ship."

"Precisely. Bring it to the laboratory."

GM: Quetzal Mysteries

The full mystery of Glicca's past is deliberately unresolved.

The following physical clues or possibilities have been established and should be preserved for future development:

The photograph of eleven former expedition members with Ava.
The Ava in the photograph was inhabited by an earlier Seymour, not Seymour III.
Cabin 3 contains years of names and dates; one individual's entries stop abruptly.
Cabin 5 contains the specimen marked "NOT A FOSSIL. Ask Venn why."
An old note on the bridge says "IF SEYMOUR SAYS IT'S NOTHING, ASK HIM WHAT KIND OF NOTHING."
The note predates Seymour III and may refer to Seymour I or Seymour II.
The high stateroom safe contains an unidentified thin object behind its inner liner.
There may be a chronological inconsistency or gap of approximately 17 days in surviving old ship records.
The ship may contain at least one old piece of equipment that is absent from the official inventory and whose presence Seymour III cannot explain.
The reasons for the transitions from Seymour I to Seymour II and Seymour II to Seymour III remain undefined.
At least one of those wipes may eventually prove temporally connected with an unusual expedition, but this has not yet been established as fact.
None of these clues presently requires an Ancients connection, a superweapon or an immediate threat.
The mystery may remain a small, human-scale story involving former crew, illegal research, an undocumented expedition, something once carried aboard, or another event from Glicca's long working life.
There is no current ticking clock. The crew may investigate these matters whenever curiosity leads them to do so.

The intent is for Quetzal herself gradually to become an explorable location and campaign thread rather than for her history to be delivered as exposition.