Discussion Lizardmen Temple Ships

@Tepec-Inzi posting the link to the Malign Portents story got me thinking: what do these ships really look like, and what is in them?

We have this pic from the story itself to show an idea of what the basic shape might look like:



And we also have a general "size" of how big one of these might actually be, as drafted up by @pendrake :



Link1 (How Spawning Pools Work) and Link2 (Lizardmen Temples and Worship) to some threads that have touched on this subject, and have featured this picture.

So my questions:

1) What do the ships really look like?

• Got the picture labelled above, I think @Phoedinn has done a 3D rendering of this version but I couldn't find it.
• Another option is something along the lines of one of the floating temples from Total War Warhammer 2:

• A third option is similar to the second, based on some artwork, and then used as inspiration from Steven Foote's excellent diorama.

2) What is inside these space-faring temple-ships, and what is the layout?

I like maps, and I like Mayan history. I designed and populated my own Lizardmen temple-city inspired by ancient Mayan cities, and then I went ahead and did a 3D model of the city just for fun. AAAAAAND I also like star trek... so I figure coming up with a space ship design can't be too hard...

THAT BEING SAID there is precious little information on what is inside these cities, until the Malign portents piece got me thinking. Here is a short list of what I came up with based on a quick read:

• Bridge. Every good ship has gotta have a bridge for the captain to sit and direct the ship. Is this where the slann sits, or more likely a crew of skink priests? Who flies the ship?
• Stellarium (also known as the Star Chamber). (don't forget to lay on the cellestial-themed names real thick). Giant room that is a mass of whirring stone circles, as wide as a city square, orbitted by glowing spheres and cascades of vibrant color. Very complex, too difficult to skinks to decipher, only for the likes of the Slann to understand. Shows lots of info on the cosmos, potentially this room is used to navigate the ship? Had enough information for Maq'uat to understand that something really wrong was happening (Malign Portents storyline--> depicting the realm of Death taking over the universe). Several galleries and levels within this chamber leading to other parts of the ship. Reminds me a bit of the lore I have come up with for the lizardmen great calendar.
• Corridors: "maddening series of switchbacks an spiraling ascents within the ship, passing gleaming ziggurats surrounded by moats of blinding starlight." Very difficult to navigate for any mere mortal, skinks seems to know where they are going though (probably programmed to know since spawning).
• World Chamber. Vast, spherical cavern with a single bridge of gleaming tiles leading across empty space, with a great jungle expanse held within. Essentially a giant jungle habitat within the ship, complete with trees, swamps, hunting grounds, and a multitude of jungle flora and fauna.
• Slann Chamber. Later in the story the slann's altar seems to be off the bridge in a side passage (not sure why he had to travel through the whole ship to leave the bridge, go through the stellarium and the world chamber, just to go back to the bridge... but I digress). Seems to be built like a giant pyramid, with tons of snakes and serpents living across it. Good descriptive quote: "At the top of the altar a throne of carved obsidian hung in the air, beneath a storm cloud of aetheric energy. Upon this throne sat Lord Xuatamos."
  
• Spawning Chamber. Has the controls to create more lizardmen, normally ordered and controlled by the direct commands of the Slann, to be accelerated or altered as campaigns change. Glyph-controls can be controlled by the skinks in the absence of their slann masters, but they do not innately understand the controls. Chambers are equipped with numerous, bubbling spawning pools, and their contruction/operation is unknown.

Other options not strictly mentioned within the Malign Portents piece:

• War Room: Where the skink priests along with the most experience Saurus leaders plot out future campaigns, maybe with a 3D model of the planets/realms they are about to strike.
• Engines. How do they work? How does the ship travel between realms? Probably just magic.
• Transporter Rooms. Do the lizard armies all line up in a transporter room to get magically beamed down to the realm they are about to attack? Or does the slann just snap their fingers and the armies are instantly transported?

3) Ship Names

Only tracking one ship right now, anyone know of any more?

• Aximahotl- commanded by Slann Lord Xuatamos until his death in the Malign Portents story arc, then commanded by the Skink Starpriest Maq'uat to combat the surging forces of the Realm of Death.

 

I believe the 3D rendering was this monstrosity:


It was a rush job, I think the official artwork is better...

Always loved the idea of these ships. Personally, I prefer the giant temple/pyramid style.

Thinking back to the days when these great constructs were buried under the Lustrian continent, maybe it would make sense the spawning chambers were near to the base of the temples. If this were the case, then after countless ages the exits would be buried and connected to the surface only by long tunnels or caves. Perhaps this would have severed the link between the temple ships and the spawning pools in the minds of the lizardmen.

As an added bonus, when the ships would have first landed on the old world the exits would have been at ground level, perfect for quickly offloading large groups of freshly spawned lizards!

 

Found a sketch of a possible cross-section of what one of these ships could look like:



Got me thinking about space habitats now.

 

In that first sketch is water pouring out of the bio-sphere into....space?

 

Yeah it does look what way.

How does it work? --------------------------> Magic.

 

Well Space in AoS isn't Space. The Mortal Realms exist surrounded by the Aetheric Void, which is an expanse of loose unaligned magic. Presumably beyond that, there's true Space. However, the Slann don't live out there; they live in the skies above Azyr.

 

Considering that the Slann are lords of space and time, one might also be left with the impression that their temple ships are stone & gold versions of a TARDIS in that they're smaller on the outside.

 

Probably true, it would make sense that some magic was at work to make more space available. Maybe even with gateways to extant realms from directly within the ships?

Looking forward to seeing what you do for this game board... have you sketched anything out yet?

 

So if a Mortal Knigget is sitting on his horse...
The horse would be standing on dirt?
The horse could look down and chomp on some weeds?
But if the Knigget looked up:
He might see some clouds, but beyond those clouds, at night, he would see no stars? or moons?
Do realms have their own suns?

 

Stars yes, they're commonly mentioned especially in reference to Seraphon constellations. Dracothion the Star Drake lives up amongst the stars too.

The Realms don't have their own suns however. Hysh, the Realm of Light, and Ulgu, the Realm of Shadow, orbit each other perpetually. When Hysh is in front of Ulgu, it's daytime in the Mortal Realms. When Ulgu is in front of Hysh, it's nighttime.

As to dirt, the Realms are pretty normal in their centres. That's where you'll find most civilisations and populations. But as you travel out from the centre the magic of that particular Realm gets stronger. Get to the Realm's Edge, where it meets the Aetheric Void, and things get really weird. Get close to Chamon's edge in the Realm of Metal and you might turn into a clockwork version of yourself. People who get too close to the edge of Ghyran, the Realm of Life, start spontaneously giving birth (mind you that's the Realm where continents mate). The exception is Shyish, which used to operate like all the others, until Nagash enacted his grand plan that was the climax of the recent Malign Portents campaign. On each Realm you can find Realmstone, essentially crystallised essence of that Realm. It's very powerful since it has so much magic attached to it. Well Nagash was getting annoyed at people stealing souls that he considered rightfully his so he spent millennia building an inverted Black Pyramid made of Shyish realmstone in the centre of Shyish. When it was completed, he cast a spell that inverted the flow of magic across the entire Realm of Death. The result was that now the flow of magic is strongest in the centre of Shyish, as opposed to the edge. Things didn't go entirely according to plan however; Tzeentch manipulated some Skaven into going into the Black Pyramid right when the spell was cast, and their presence tainted the ritual. As a result magic across the Mortal Realms is currently going wild, and the centre of Shyish has such a concentration of death energy that not even Nagash can go near it.

This video by GW is a great and quick little introduction to the Mortal Realms:

 

Uhhh.....so the other [7?] realms all experience daylight at the same time?

 

Yes. So far as we know.

I mean I don't know what's particularly odd about that. If anything, given that you travel between the Realms via Realmgate, it would be rather odd if you looked through a Realmgate and it was night on the other side.

 

@Phoedinn
Do you want to share that design, to be able to print it in 3D, here?
http://www.lustria-online.com/threads/articles-to-print-in-3d-lizardmen-seraphon.22394/

 

Some pics I posted in the Mayan Art thread, but they are some great inspiration for temple-ships!

I could see a giant set of temples being built on the top of this craft:



And this one could probably house an entire jungle arcology within it, complete with its own artificial spinning gravity.

 

the Templeships being a Rama? that would be interesting.

Wiki link

when i first heard of the templeship thing, my first thought was Ithorian herdships of star wars.. only with a forcefield bubble ala the macross 7 colony ships and their transparent domes.




kind of the idea that the ships just surrounded the jungle and city above them in a bubble and carried it off as it flew away. perhaps even having the bubble extend far enough that the jungle grew over the side, creating a double sided effect like Asgard in the Marvel cinematic universe, where water and jungle hang off the edge before being sucked back to the center and circulated back up to the top..


the end effect being it looking like there are these islands just floating through space.


edit... found this, it is a rendering of General Systems Vehicle of The Culture for a culture novel cover. based loosely off in novel descriptions.

i think this will be my go-to image now.. multi-score KM space going islands atop hyper-advanced ship, with hundreds of separate parts held together by forcefields which also protect the exterior 'terrarium'
[link to version superimposed vs popular scifi ships for scale]

 

We got some interesting new information in the new battletome about temple ships, with some of them being pretty modular in nature (entire spawning pools for things like skinks floating in seperate veseels alongside the larger ships, or entire sections being independently detachable) which opens the way for a lot of cool ideas to be played with

 

In Animorphs there is an alien race called Andalites (centaurs with scorpion tails and eyestalks and they have no mouths and communicate telepathically) who have Dome Ships.




The Animorphs, morphed as dolphins, come across the dome of the GalaxyTree dome ship on the ocean floor, where they find Ax, who had sent out a distress call.