The world came to an end in the 321st year after the first planetfall in the Sirius sector. A group of dishonorable cutthroats, who called themselves the Samura Industries brought their cronies and money-bought soldiers against the Celestial Dragon. The fight was epic, but in the end the Dragon had to yield to the force of numbers. From the spilled blood, as the elders spin the tale, from the spilled blood as it hit the ground a new Dragon was born, a vengeful dragon, the Blood Dragon.
We retreated to a new nesting ground, but never forgot the corruptness, the pettiness, or our vow of revenge. For three hundred years the Blood Dragon came forward again and again to bite in the soft underbelly of Samura and their cronies. We came and died for the Hideyoshi dynasty.
In the 600s A.S. we found new allies. Corporations of the Kusari people came slowly to realize the evil that is the Samura and people, training and funding flowed to our nests. We joyed and fought even harder for their efforts. We rescued the descendants of the dynasty from their captors, and gnawed at the heart of the new corrupt regime. But it was not yet enough, and time was becoming our enemy fast.
The year 800 A.S. brought war to the whole of Sirius. A new enemy pounced upon the Sirius sector from the depht of space and drove the world mad. Ever the enemy of our people, the Rhineland fell to the sway of the aliens and flung itself against the people of Kusari. We found ourselves in the first line of a desperate battle we never wanted to fight, nor were prepared to do so. The fleets of the Blood Dragon scrambled and found themselves fighting hordes once again. Less than 500 years passed and a Dragon was bleeding for the good of the Kusari people again. We died by the dozen while we manouvered the enemy until they could be crushed by the people's might. But we were not erased.
We crawled back to our nests, the few of us who remained. We saved our people, but our victory was bittersweet. The Dragon lost many fangs, and not only did our people survive, so did our enemy. Rebuilding takes time, but we are nothing if not patient. Our men are slowly recovering, our fleet is rebuilding from its scraps with the help of our allies and benefactors.
Ten years after our near distruction we reacquired the remains of one of our old Line Cruisers from the fields of wreckage that now cover most of the Sigma-13 system, where the great battle had taken place. It took seven years for the destroyed superstructure to be rebuilt at Mito. It took even more money coming from our benefactors, and donators. The hull itself was salvaged by Junkers from Yanagi station. The repairs were financed by other Sigma 13 parties and the weaponry came from various sources including the salvagable systems of her own and other ships in the field of wreckage, new weapons from the Blood Dragons' own factories, and the allies' weapons caches.
When she was finally completed once again, the honor of her command was given to Ikoma Kazuo, nephew of the propagandist Ikoma Keiko, author of the bestseller 'The Chrome Serpent' and grandson of the late chief gunner of the KNF gunboat Daitsuchi, who defected so adventurously to the Blood Dragons directly from her comissioning ceremony in 759 A.S.. Kazuo graduated officer training in 792 A.S. and served as second mate on a gunboat in the Great Battle. The gunboat lost all power and was left drifting seriously damaged with 70% of her crew lost in the battle. His good family connections notwithstanding Kazuo got the Hashidate's command mostly due to the recent shortage of experienced senior commanders among the Blood Dragons.
Ship profile:
Date of comission:
--> 01/12/763 A.S.
----> Destroyed in combat in 801 A.S. against the Rheinland invasion fleet.
----> Rebuilt and recomissioned: 02/02/817 A.S.
Full name:
--> The True Emperor's Own Line Cruiser Hashidate
-----> Chusa Akodo Ieyasu (tactical officer, second mate)
-----> Taii Kato Etsuko (defense systems officer)
-----> Taii Yamamoto Akira (damage control officer)
Engineering deck crew: (17)
-----> Shosa Harada Reika (chief engineer, third mate)
--------> Chuii Suzuki Hiro (chief damage control tehnician, master of the bow section's damage control crew)
-----------> Saito Naoki Masahiro (damage control assistant)
-----------> Watanabe Isamu (damage control assistant)
---------> Shoi Matsu****a Kenzo (master of the stern section's damage control crew)
-----------> Fukubashi Masao (damage control assistant)
-----------> Honda Shiro (damage control assistant)
-----> Shoi Akano Kimiko (master of engine maintenance)
--------> Toyowara Sachiko (engine technician)
--------> Shimazawa Daisuke (engine technician)
The Hashidate is a line cruiser. A rather old design among line cruiser to boot. The recent breakthroughs in automatization were not yet available sixty years ago, when her blueprints were first drafted. In fact she was designed as a slight improvement of an even older cruiser, and some technological solutions can still be traced back to that original model. The Hashidate thus contains many needlessly manual processes, redundancies and patchwork improvements. She requires a comparatively large crew even for day-to-day operations.
The Hashidate was designed to fly in formation with other capital ships under an effective fighter cover and take on a number of enemy capital ships in a large scale battle. Her anti-fighter capabilities are thus fairly limited. Her offensive capabilities are also mostly designed for full frontal assault, and fare weaker against flanking attacks. In the Blood Dragons' present situation where large scale battles among capital ships is not an option, the Hashidate finds employment as a system control vessel and base ship for smaller crafts, rarely leaving the Chugoku system or its immediate vicinity.
This ship must never leave the safety of the Blood Dragon systems without appropriate escort.
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