Broadsword class Mercenary Cruiser

The Broadsword class Mercenary Cruiser is an 800-ton spherical hulled starship designed for a wide range of military and quasi-military missions, and is essentially a type C cruiser. Some changes, alterations, and modifications, however, have been imposed to make the ship more adaptable to a variety of different operations.

The ship itself is unstreamlined, although it has sufficient lack of projections to allow it to skim hydrogen from gas giants in order to refuel. It may land on vacuum worlds, but generally interacts with the surfaces of worlds through its complement of 50-ton cutters, their interchangeable modules, and the ship's single air/raft. The cutters can carry cargo and supplies from a starport to the ship, troops and ATVs to a world surface for battle, or passengers from point to point. The air/raft, while slower, also has orbital capability and can be used when the cutters are otherwise occupied.

Class Names

The first ship of this class bore the name Broadsword, and following ships of the class have been named for edged weapons and polearms. As the class grew and more ships were built, the general category of non-missile firing weapons was assumed for naming of additional ships.

Some basic ships in the class are Broadsword, Blade, Cutlass, Dagger, Foil, Rapier, Sabre, Tulawar, Claymore, Flamberge, Gladius, Zwiehander and Kukri. Later ships of class include Kris, Scimitar, Scramasax, Bowie, Pugio, Misericord, Spatha, Claybeg, Mace, Clave, Francisca, Chemin-de-fer, Morning Star, Oxtongue, Battle Ax, Scythe, Pilum, Javelin, Hasta, Lancea, Framea, Assegai, Halberd, Pike, Kontos, and War Spear.

New Frontier Trading Partners, a limited corporation based on Excalibur in the Sword World Confederation, procured a fleet of ten mercenary cruisers for use in operations outside the Marches far to spinward. Those vessels carried the names of ten planets within the Sword Worlds— all of them incidentally cognomial swords and thus appropriate to the ship name class. Incidentally, there is some conjecture that the swashbuckling name for the class was a clever marketing decision intended to appeal to the mercenary units that need these vessels; it apparently did influence the Sword World decision, as the competing ship class for the contract was named for Imperial naval heroes.

- Source: Adventure 7 Broadsword

Non-Canon

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