Introducing...the Scheherazade

Now that I've finished with the Starships book from Traveller, I'm going to build a starship using the rules in that book. I'm going to use the starship I came up with for the Bard Conley stories, collecting in Bard Conley's Adventures Across the Solar System. While the stories in that collection do not use interstellar travel (since all ten stories happen in our own solar system), the existence of faster-than-light travel is clearly established, so I'm going to use the Traveller jump system for this exercise.

But first, a little bit of an introduction for this fine, stalwart vessel, which takes a bit of a beating in the book but comes out shining through. Spoiler alert: The good guys win in the end. Hey, it's pulp science fiction; what else do you expect?

Anyway, the Scheherazade gets its name from the famous Arabian Nights stories, where the doomed queen Scheherazade, scheduled to be killed the morning after her wedding night like many other women before her, tells a story to the Prince, but leaves it unfinished before going to sleep. Determined to hear the rest of the story, the Prince lets her live another day. She continues (but doesn't finish) the story the next night, and once again he lets her live. When she finally does finish the story, she starts another one, and so on, and so on, until three years (and 1,001 nights) have gone by, and he stops promising to kill her.

That's the extremely condensed version. Anyway, the name Scheherazade speaks of many stories to be told, stories of excitement, adventure, and romance. It's the perfect name for a starship, and thus it became one of the integral parts of my stories about the intrepid hero and his faithful crew.

I'm going to include the only existing picture of the Scheherazade from the cover of the Bard Conley book. Here it is:

Beautiful, isn't it? Sure, it's not the 'typical' starship, but let's be honest: What is? Every science fiction book, show and movie has come up with its own designs. This one is credited to Alex Lechev, aka the Grey Ghost on fiverr.com, who I have used for three book covers (and will soon, again). It's got a very sleek design that works in the atmosphere but also in space, which is perfect for this ship and its crew, who do get around. The whole solar system, in fact, from Mercury to Pluto and back.

So, it's not a huge ship, carrying a crew of four (with room for some passengers if need be), a missile weapon system, and good speed and maneuverability. I'm not going to use a stock design from the book, but rather start from scratch and make it something spiffy, using the rules from Book 2 only. No later supplements, no house rules. Just what's in the book. Let's see how that works out...next time.