Ships, Crews & Fleets

You can own more than a seat on someone else's ship. In Nephibis you can keep a crew, run a ship, and eventually fly a whole fleet — with a city-ship as home, escorts riding alongside, and your tamed creatures berthed aboard.

Your crew

Your crew is the people who travel with you. On your character sheet that is party (who fights beside you) and companions (who helps without enlisting). On a ship that is currentCrew (everyone aboard) plus stations on each deck (who runs helm, guns, dock control, the stable).

Hire people you trust, then put them where they shine. A pilot belongs at helm or fleet ops. A mechanic belongs in engineering or as stable master. People left without a post drift — give everyone a station and they hold the ship together when things go wrong.

Crew have their own sheets, needs, and loyalties. Feed them, pay them, back them up, and they stay. Treat them as furniture and they leave at the next port — or worse, mid-crisis.

Your ship

A ship you own works like any vessel: it has a type (corvette, transport, capital), a class name, a crewCapacity, a status, and systems your GM tracks in a fight. Small ships carry a single interior. Big ships like the Harbor of Tomorrows carry multiple decks — command, housing, hangar — each with its own map when a fight or emergency needs one.

You do not need to map every corridor. Your GM builds interiors on demand, when you board, get boarded, or something catches fire. Until then, the description and atmosphere are enough.

Look after her. Damage sticks: systems go offline, decks breach or seal, overall status slides from operational toward derelict. Field repairs hold her together; a dockyard makes her whole.

Distances at sea, in the air, and in space

Fights stay in feet. Travel reads in the domain's own unit: land in miles/km (klicks), sea and air in nautical miles at knots (altitude in feet/flight levels), deep water in meters of depth (+ fathoms), space tactically in km and on charts in AU / light-minutes / ly / parsecs, stations and interiors in meters and deck numbers. Your GM's charts already speak that language — you just read them.

Your fleet

One ship is transport. Two or more is a fleet — and that is where the request you made lives.

A fleet file holds:

• Flagship — your primary vessel and command. If you own a city-ship, she is almost always the flagship.
• Vessels — every ship sailing together, flagship included.
• Commander — who is in charge. Usually you.
• Home base — the port, station, or planet you stage from.
• Purpose and status — what the fleet exists for and whether she is active, docked, in transit, or scattered.

Fly like this: escorts scout ahead and screen threats, tenders ferry cargo and animals, and the heavy hull stays out of trouble. Docked escorts ride along when the flagship makes luminous conversion — the whole formation blinks together. A hull too big to land never lands; she stays orbital and works through shuttles and tenders.

Losing a ship does not delete the fleet. Update the vessels list, mark what burned, and remember it in lore. Fleets shrink and grow in play.

City-ships

A city-ship is a capital hull turned into a home: housing ring, mess and clinic, school nook, market concourse, docking cradles, and animal pens arranged around a command spine. She is slow, hungry, and expensive — fuel, food, and morale are the real stats — but she lets you carry crew, families, passengers, and creatures in one mobile port.

Run her like a neighborhood, not a warship. Shortages, arguments, births, and breakdowns are world events, not numbers on the sheet. Keep the hydroponics running, keep the peace in the hab ring, and the city flies for you. Let either fail and she stops feeling like home fast.

Pets and mounts aboard

Earth animals came with humanity and never left. Dogs work kennels and corridors as guards and friends. Cats run the cargo bays as mousers and consider the warmest vent their throne. Horses need stalls, ventilation, and daily exercise, and travel in padded livestock berths — they are your ground transport and your first riding lessons.

Aliens berth alongside them. A bonded void manta wants a dark quiet berth and silence. A storm wolf wants respect and space from the horses. A crystalback tortoise wants room, warmth, and crystals to bargain over. Give predators separate berths from prey, keep the air and noise right for each species, and assign someone as stable master — Dren-style, wrench in one pocket and brush in the other.

Care rules do not stop at the airlock. Missed meals, no exercise, no grooming, and loyalty ticks down the same as planetside. Below 20 a pet looks for a better life; below 10 a turned animal is dangerous in a sealed hull. Keep loyalty above 40, respect limits, and never force an impossible berth. A ship that feeds its animals keeps them; one that cages them loses them.

Taming still earns the bond and training still earns the ride — loyalty 40 to begin riding work, 60 for reliable combat riding, 75 for charges and zero-g maneuvers. The tender ferries what the city-ship cannot land. Ride out, ride back, stable them warm.

Starting points

If you want this life, start here: take the Harbor of Tomorrows as your flagship, the Lantern's Edge as your screen, and the Quiet Tender as your pickup truck. Sign a pilot like Mira for helm and dock control, a mechanic like Dren for engines and animals, and a dog, a cat, and a horse before you chase aliens. Your GM will tell you what upkeep your table tracks — then fly like you mean to come home.