3788 Scale Carnivon Early Command Cruiser (YCC)

The Carnivons are a species that is often described as “wolf-like,” but they are in fact genetically related to the Kzintis and Lyrans, and all three apparently descended from some ancestral species. How they came to be on such widely separated worlds is unclear. Curiously, the felinoid species (descended from solitary hunters) were able to create fairly unified stellar empires, while the Carnivons (descended from pack hunters) remained a species rather than a nation. There is no such thing as a Carnivon “government.” Instead, at any given time, there are anywhere from a dozen to two dozen hordes (each of millions of members), each subdivided into packs (each with hundreds of thousands of members).

Carnivon ships are different from those of almost any other empire in that the crew do not have cabins or staterooms but sleep in relatively small cubicles reminiscent of caves. Most of the Carnivon crew’s off-duty time is spent in common areas engaged in various sports or other social activities.

The Lyrans and Kzintis hated the Carnivons on sight more so even than they hated each other. It took just over 50 years for those two empires to slaughter the Carnivons.

The Kzintis encountered a Carnivon Early Command Cruiser (and codenamed the class “Gray Wolf”) about 30 years after they first encountered the Carnivons; it is not clear when the Lyrans first encountered one but it may have been the same year and may have been the same ship. Analysis showed that the hull of a Wolf-class heavy cruiser (the Carnivons’ heavy cruiser during the Early Years) had been lengthened slightly, allowing additional systems to be installed. Cruisers were relatively rare in the Carnivon Hordes, and not many ships of this type were seen in a given year. The last reported sighting was the year the Carnivons were annihilated. A Lyran task force destroyed a ship of this type along with four frigates while looking for Carnivon-occupied star systems. The ship did not operate very differently than the standard Carnivon heavy cruiser, and it was thought that each sub-pack of a given horde had one such ship, but this has never been confirmed.

The ship is available in a variety of materials. Ships are unpainted, use standard flight stands available from many sources, and, while designed for gaming, make fine display pieces.