Hyborean Orkney Strike Cruiser

When the Howard expedition vanished from its planned course, few on Earth suspected that they might have been transported far across both time and space. Emerging onto a seemingly deserted stretch of space with a plethora of habitable planets, they began building and expanding swiftly. Resources were plentiful and all seemed well.

Within a few decades, nationalist tensions among the colonists drove the nascent confederation into division. What had been a united series of colonies fractured into a half-dozen states each proclaiming their own sovereignty. Contact with the Draconian Empire and the Tharkad Supremacy complicated the colonists' defense needs even further.

Founded by colonists hailing from Scandinavia and the British Isles, the Kingdom of Hyborea was one of the largest of the human realms in what would come to be known as the Hyborean Reaches. They would bear the brunt of the assault in the First Draconian War, and despite their early losses they would fight hard and long for their freedom.

The Orkney class is a specialist variant of the ubiquitous Caledonia-class cruiser. While the Caledonia can be adapted to many roles, the Orkney is designed to specialize in hit and run raiding, a classic 'outrun anything it cannot outgun' design. 

The entire engineering section has been replaced, with a new and enlarged set of reactors to provide power to her systems. While the hyperdrive units are the same quad Worcestinghouse Kestrels as the Caledonia, they are set further out from the hull for greater efficiency, and the higher power levels available from the new reactor drive them to even greater heights of speed. For STL regimes Penn-Sylvan has outdone themselves with three brand new Mark IV EMPulse thrusters, supplemented by four Whitehall-Adams 'Greyhound' boosters. 

With more limited space, the Orkney class cannot carry quite the weapons suite as her sibling. Two positron turrets provide her primary firepower, supplemented by a pair of wing-mounted turrets of a slightly smaller caliber. An octet of single-mount laser turrets surrounds the engineering section, primarily to discourage fighter attack. Finally, her internal missile bays are supplemented with an external ordinance rack, six armored cannisters each carrying a Sulin Systems "Hellblaster" torpedo.