**DISCLAIMER** This post contains a great deal of information. If you just want to see pictures, scroll down. If you like Star Trek-esque fictional alien empire history, please read on. Hi guys. I've finished my work for Amarillo Design Bureau for the year of 2009, so I figured I'd get a jump on next year's projects. Federation Commander: War and Peace is set to be the next big expansion for FedCom, which adds the Interstellar Concordium(or ISC) to the game system. I plan to show my progress building 3D models of the ISC fleet for the next round of covers and art. My work currently consists of no more than a "3D sketch" at the moment for the standard ISC heavy cruiser hull, so I figure I'll give a bit of history to keep you guys interested first(for those of you keen on such things ). The Interstellar Concordium is, in many ways, similar to the Federation. It is a cooperative government set up by five very different alien races dedicated to their mutual protection and prosperity. However, their heavy-handed philosophy of peace at any cost managed to make them an enemy of every major empire in their octant of the galaxy. The ISC is located east of the Federation, beyond the far borders of Romulan and Gorn space. Due to one of the many oddities of evolution of in the milky way galaxy, the five member races of the ISC developed on planets in relatively close proximity to one another(in galactic terms) in a large volume of space that was otherwise devoid of sentient life. The five races all developed primitive warp drives at roughly the same time, and came into contact with each other early on in their space-faring history. Because of the limitations of their FTL technology, ships were short-ranged, and the few known planets that possessed the resources to drive forward their new warp-powered industries were intensely fought over. Alliances were made and broken. Deals between the corporations of the five races disintegrated as they opportunistically grabbed what they could when it was convenient. Many minor wars were won and lost. Eventually, the future races of the ISC developed more advanced warp drives which exponentially extended the range of their ships. The primary 'resource worlds' became a drop in the bucket of what the five races were capable of discovering and exploiting. To them, war became both obsolete and unprofitable. The five races found they had more room then they could possibly imagine to expand and grow without disturbing one another. Due to another oddity of galactic evolution, the five races of the ISC happened to exist in a large portion of space that also happened to be a breeding ground for a space-borne organism coloquially known to certain members of the Federation as 'space boars'. These creatures would ultimately provide the motivation for the formation fo the Interstellar Concordium between the five races. As they explored and expanded, they found themselves in increasingly frequent hostile encounters with the space boars. There were many occasions where a ship of one race would call for help and a ship of another race would respond. So many times did this happen that eventually a pact was formed between the five races that they would always help each other in times of distress. This was the origin of the Interstellar Concordium. As the years went on, the Interstellar Concordium became more all-encompassing. Joint starbases were set up by the five races as locations for far-ranging exploration ships to resupply and refuel, as well as a place for sailors to get drunk and blow off steam. These bases were soon patrolled by ISC peacekeeping forces, basically cops with stun phasers. As the five races expanded further and further, the ideas behind the ISC became more firmly rooted in the minds of the citizens. Before long, the five races had joined together into a single political entity with a combined standard fleet, in much the same way as the Federation had, many thousands of parsecs away. The status quo of the Interstellar Concordium went on happily for many years. The ISC basked in the prosperity that their enlightened cooperation had brought to all their peoples. For a long time, it was an assumption to them that similarly advanced races would enjoy the same benefits. As the decades passed, it became a belief. For this reason, it came as shock when a ship(the farthest-ranging exploratory ship the ISC had sent out up until that point in time in fact) detected the energy flashes of a vicious and bloody battle between Romulan and Gorn forces. The ISC was not only surprised to find out that they had neighbors, they were also very surprised to find out their their neighbors were apparently violent psychopaths. The revelation that there were equally advanced, star-faring empires out there who were fighting devastating wars frightened the ISC a great deal. They immediately set out to explore further, to examine the situation. They discovered many more empires beyond their immediate neighbors, and were even more shocked to find that nearly all of them were in a constant state of brutal conflict. The point in time when this occured just happened to be during the height of the General War, which could best be described as the World War II of the Star Fleet Universe. To the ISC, this shattered the very foundations of their beliefs. Realizing that they were the only sane empire in their corner of the galaxy, the ISC decided to act. They would build a grand, unstoppable fleet that they would use to save the galaxy from itself. To design this fleet as best they could, they spent many years observing the technology and tactics of the various warring races. They learned from the victories and defeats of their neighbors, and worked exhaustively to design a peacekeeping fleet that would not be victim to any of the technological or doctrinal shortcomings of any of the other empires. They remained mostly hidden and unknown for the duration of the General War, silently building their power base. While the insane savages destroyed one another, they were building and building and building. The ISC bided their time for years,watching every move the savages made. Finally, their day came: the General War sputtered to a halt. Economic exhaustion had basically crippled every major power and left them in a state of broken helplessness. The Federation, the Klingons, the Romulans, the Kzinti, the Lyrans, none of them any longer possessed the means or the will to seriously fight a war. On this day, the vast ISC Pacification Fleet announced itself, and declared that they would no longer allow these devastating and insane wars to continue. To be continued.... Anyway, here's what I have so far. ISC starships of different classes all share essentially the same configuration, just scaled up and down. Before I start modeling any details, I plan to lay out the basic proportions and relative sizes of their various hull types. Once that is complete, I'll begin the fine detail work. So check it out: Size comparison of ISC heavy cruiser versus a Fed heavy cruiser: Anywa, thanks for putting up with this excessively long post. I hope at least a few of you find it interesting. More to come....
I've never been able to figure this out: which is the front end? I played the Gorn in "Accursed Are The Peacemakers" a couple months ago. The ISC player stayed in character, firing warning shots, but I zigged when I should've zagged. Marian
The end with the prongs is the front end. If you look at the model, I've added the hangar door to the back end, that gives an indication of which way is forward. And yeah, the ISC are nasty customers in a fight. They've always been my favorite race to play as in SFB. Gotta love PPD's and those rear-firing plasmas. I've had some epic battles with my echelons versus my low-down dirty Andro-loving friend.
Of all the SFU political entities, the ISC is by far my favourite. If only they could be fleshed out more to absorb sci-fi concepts that are not in Star Trek so much. I did some fantasy work about Veltrassa in the regular Trekverse and not SFB-verse. In it, the planet is a very highly urbanized core world, with arcology skyscrapers littering the continents, Rovillian and Hydran sea colonies like the one seen in a Voyager episode, cloud city centers, and underground megacities in the northernmost and southernmost continents. The Meskeen from SFC Volume II were written as an offshoot of the Veltrassai that left in opposition to the urbanization. Were it not for the fractured continents and extensive water mass, that world would be one huge ecumenopolis. Indeed, I originally thought of this world as being a mere Coruscant copycat. Veltrassa and the new Meskeen homeworld were written to be planet-sized moons (smaller than Earth in the Meskeen case) in a large gas giant system, in order to take advantage of the SFC depiction of the Hydran homeworld.
As a long-standing fan of the Inter-Stellar Concordium* (who was quite delighted to see the pre-contact region get its first fleshing out in SFB Module Y2) I'm looking forward to seeing what Adam's work will turn out like! Oh, and as an aside, there was also an ISC colony system (PX 123) which was transferred to the Federal Republic of Aurora in Y178 - thus adding to the range of species and cultures found within this outpost of more familiar faces in the midst of the Omega Octant! So, if you ever find yourself flying an FRA ship in a scenario set after that year, you could well imagine having one or more crewmembers from the five planets on board... *ADB like to go with 'Inter-Stellar' rather than 'Interstellar' when referring to the ISC nowadays.
Finally! An update! I've been working on this model in bits and pieces, and I finally have enough to show off again I think. Ive re-worked the aft end of the ship so that the shape more closely matches the miniature sold by ADB. I've also started add some fine detail to parts of the ship, just enough to maybe give guys a sense of how it'll look when it's done. Check it out: A close up of the Auxiliary reactor coolers(the circular fan-looking structures): This is the aft structure that contains the impulse engines and hangar. The impulse engines are mounted in the top half, with the round ports. The 'wing' tip. This is a location where one of the ship's phaser banks will be.
Coming along nicely! The ISC are generally accepted as some of the best looking designs in the SFB universe. This ought to look great when you're finished.
Um, yes? Here's another site with some miniatures for reference on what they look like: http://jgray-sfb.com/Miniatures/ISC/iscmini.html
Of course, you can leave the side phasers and rear-firing aft torpedoes off, if you wanted the model to represent the pre-refit ships from the 2560s and early-to-mid-2570s - the ones which pushed forth in the first efforts at securing the outermost provinces of the Concordium, while making sure the Gorns and Romulans kept on their side of the new frontiers! And Saquist, they do look quite different in the regular Star Fleet Universe than in SFC, true - something which caught me by surprise when I first started getting into the setting. But you get used to it. (I like to paint my ISC ships in a SFC-esque scheme, though.)