Falco Millenniorum Arboretum
The Millennial Gardens, a location from Invictus Igni
As an act of unthinkable extravagance, one of the Falco Millenniorum’ earlier Lords-Captain had the ship redesigned around a series of integrated parklands, gardens, arbours, and vineyards. Each of the designated Clan-Kin Crew Quarters has at least a small patch of greenery integrated into its hab-block, of sufficient size to allow for the cultivation of some fruiting shrubs and root vegetables, as well as for the disposal of waste through composting. The fast-transit rails that run the length of the ship, conveying personnel from section to section, are also surrounded by trellises of fantastic variety, putting forth flowers and fragrances. The onboard Auto-Temple, the Parish of St Samuel Ligonem, features artful patterns of ivy that intertwine with the carvings and murals on its domed ceiling, lending the sanctuary an air of terrestrial idyll and allowing worshippers to feel that much closer to Holy-Terra-that-once-was-green. Even the bilges and calorie-reclamation facilities play host to the unique Algal Orchards, where different strains of algae and fungi are cultivated.
While sustaining all this terrestrial extravagance in the middle of the airless, waterless, and often lightless void requires a significant strain on the ship’s power supply (to operate irrigation, ultraviolet lighting, and air circulation, not to mention the servitors that help to tend and cultivate the greenery) and life-support capacity, it also yields some unexpected benefits. Having a perpetual supply of fresh food on hand does wonders for morale, and has sufficiently awed visiting voidsmen that some of the family-groups that call the Falco home are actually deserters from other vessels. The ship’s Life-Sustainer has also been calibrated to take advantage of the photosynthetic potential of the ship’s on-board greenery, providing air that is that much fresher and more healthful than even the best STC apparatus.
Perhaps the most profound impact of the Gardens is on ship-board culture. Any of the Falco’s voidsmen who has seen the prevailing conditions aboard other facilities, from other voidships to permanent installations like Footfall and Port Wander, know that they enjoy in their former Lord-Captain’s foresight a most singular blessing, and symbols of greenery and growth feature most prominently on the ship’s official insignia, as well as the arms of the ship’s most influential and established families. In honour of the Gardens, the ship’s corps of armsmen refer to themselves as ‘rangers’, and each member bears from their induction to the moment of their deaths a cutting of the ship’s greenery on them, even when venturing onto alien worlds or enemy ships in boarding actions. Even the Lord-Captain must, when parleying in good faith, bear with him a flowering bough, and when officiating at the ship's various festivals, wears a wreath of seasonal flowers.
In fact, practices involving horticulture have permeated even the ship’s version of the Imperial Cult, as encouraged by the ship’s Ecclesiarchs. At birth, every crew-member has a shrub or sapling planted in their honour, which they cultivate throughout their lives aboard. If they disembark permanently, they take the plant with them; if they die aboard, they are buried beneath their shrub or tree.
