Falco Millenniorum Quarters
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The Clan
The Falco Millenniorum boasts an extremely family-friendly culture. Unlike most voidships, aboard which crewfolk tend to be separated according to shift and station, it has long been tradition aboard the Falco for personnel to bunk together with their families, even if they should be assigned elsewhere. While it is still considered traditional for the void-born to progress along their family’s trade, many ambition young voidsmen and -women develop specialisations in other areas, especially when there’s a shortage of a particular skill, in in order to secure higher pay and faster advancement; many of these aspirants nonetheless continue to live together in the tight-knit communities from which they come, ‘commuting’ to work via the rail-lines. While some captains may sniff at these arrangements as being inefficient, the da Solos have long held that the strong bonds of family and community their crewfolk enjoy are more than worth time and resources lost to commuting. The various clan-holds, scattered throughout the ship, do not resemble the dormitory-like bunks that characterise most accommodations at void: instead, they tend to resemble small villages, with their own amenities, quirks, and character. Many elderly personnel, rather than retiring to settled planets, choose to continue residing with their relatives aboard ship, and these energetic oldsters contribute continuity of culture and various cottage industries to the ship’s population, such as brewing, scrap-scrimshaw-artistry, horticulture, and so on. While each clan-hold is unique, they all share a single common property: each is designed and sited for maximum defensibility, and when the time comes to repel boarders, the clan-folk close ranks. Noncombatants reload arms, prepare meals, stand watch, and brave enemy fire to stretcher the wounded to safety; combatants fight doubly hard to protect not just their shift-mates, but their family and communities from harm.
Of the ship’s senior staff officers, only Voidmistress Chastitia billets with a clan, but she makes up for that exceptionalism by billeting with all of them. There is never any way of knowing when Chastitia will descend on some lucky crewperson and demand to be let into their quarters, but its generally considered a great good omen if she awakes refreshed and revitalised. Those who have managed the rare honour of playing host to the Voidmistress are held in high regard by their peers, and are often given additional rest-cycles after their feat of athleticism to give them time to recover from their ordeal. She technically has quarters (a suite adjoining the Collegia Aeronautica, where shift-pilots are trained and astrogation is taught to promising candidates) where she stores, but has rarely occupied it for any length of time, although her recent attachment to Kitten and their combined need for shelter from the bridge has led to Chastitia staying home more often of late.
The Star-wreathed Spire
Rank hath its privileges, even for those who make their way in the relative privation of void-travel. Even the meanest captain enjoys the privacy of his own quarters; the captains of some larger ships can even boast sumptuous apartments. The Falco Millenniorum, designed and built as the pleasure-yacht for a Rogue Trader Dynasty, surpasses them all in the ridiculous opulence of its staterooms, putting at the disposal of its captain accommodations more suited to a stately manor than anything belonging aboard a void-ship.
Whoever commands the Falco occupies his own spire, that protrudes from the skin of the ship. That he has his own bedroom and study go without saying; he also has at his disposal a private library, chapel, and dressing-room. He has his own private gardens with their own gazebo, situated at the top of the spire, where the captain and his honoured guests may picnic under the stars. His spire includes its own kitchen, banquet hall, entertainment room, and servants’ barracks: the complex has the potential to be its own self-contained household, and some Lords-Captain in the past have employed entire contingents of household servants who did not even consider themselves crewfolk.
Lord-Captain Giovanni da Solo has made his own adjustments to his quarters, with a touch that shows his inner conflict between his acclimation to Spartan conditions from his time in the Imperial Guard, and the accustomed decadence of his upbringing. Instead of a dedicated household staff, his maids and manservants are drawn from a rotating roster of crewfolk due for a reward: at any time, only about a third of his assigned servants are on active duty with chores. The others are considered guests of the captain, and may make use of the spire’s facilities and amenities, which are, it goes without saying, immeasurably more luxurious and beautiful than those available to the general crew. At each meal, a different watch of servants takes on the duty of food preparation, service, and cleaning, while the others can dine at the captain’s table. In this manner, Giovanni rewards good performance, builds greater rapport with his crew on a personal level, and also fosters closer relationships with those exemplary crewfolk who might one day hold positions of responsibility aboard the ship.
Giovanni’s quarters are finished in panels of dark wood, varnished and polished to a deep, glossy lustre, here and there bearing tasteful, delicate embellishments in gold. The fittings tend to be of antique brass. Leather and velvet upholstery are in great evidence. Those portions of the spire he has chosen to identify as his own would not be out of place in some 18th or 19th century Terran lord’s genteel hunting lodge. Even the many servitors and automatons which habitually attend dignitaries are scarcely present: Giovanni prefers a human touch, so his clothes are laid out by a valet, his coiffure attended-to by a barber. Perhaps the only needs not seen-to by human members-of-staff are his carnal ones: very early on in his captaincy of the Falco, the Lord-Captain had his predecessor’s fine selection of concubines either retrained to fill other crew positions, or generously pensioned-off at the nearest port-of-call. It is rumoured that the captain masters his baser urges through sheer piety, retreating to the chapel instead of the harem when fell moods fall upon him: certainly, his inspired, if irregular, sermons are a source of goodly guidance to the crew, and those who attend him whisper that his devotions in the chapel often leave him bright-eyed and weak-kneed, and thoroughly drenched with sweat. Truly, the crew is privileged to have such a pious man to call Lord-Captain.
The spire’s other notable resident is Lord-Seneschal Andrew Langsbury, who is, among other things, Steward of the Captain’s Household. He and his crack crew of full-time butlers, maids, and sundry servants form the dedicated core of the spire’s labour force. While general crew on rostered duty can be expected to cook, clean, and stand on service, it is Langsbury’s elite cohort that directs them in their duties: Langsbury’s butler-adepts are the ones who remember how many folds in their napkin a visiting Planetary Governor warrants, and his scullery-savants who hold the keys to the captain’s larder and who know where the regulation poisons and their antidotes are stored. Rumours that the Seneschal’s housekeeping heroes are also expertly-trained infiltrators, spies, and assassins are unfounded: there is no secret death-cult among the dedicated servants of the captain’s household that preserves the Dynasty’s honour through covert murder, there is no Invisible College that oversees the prospering of the Dynasty’s trade and assets, and they do not make troublesome crew-members and interlopers conveniently vanish during the jubilation of shore-leave or the chaos of void-battle. They do not secretly venerate an archaeotech prosthetic of a long-dead scion of the Dynasty, they do not wear intricate gauntlets beneath their uniforms, nor do they practice clandestine arts of unarmed combat in honour of his legendary skill in battle.
The Ossuarium
Unlike many ships that carry armed detachments aboard, the Falco does not house its rangers aboard a central barracks. Rangers are instead encouraged to seek accommodations like other crew folk, living as family units rather than according to shift and station. The hab-unit that Marshal Vertix has chosen to occupy, however, may soon become the exception to that norm. While most rangers still stay with their families, many off-duty rangers now choose to congregate at the hold that has come to be known as the Ossuarium, which they use as part-clubhouse, part-training-barracks, part-trophy-room. Under Vertix’s watchful eye, the various squads of her Bonehunters have set up little shrines and have begun to decorate them with trophies taking from fallen foes, competing amongst themselves to build larger and more ornate shrines out of whatever prizes they can claim. Vertix dwells among them like a barbarian princess, except with an impeccably modern and fashionable wardrobe. She can make an incongruous sight standing on her balcony, attired in the Imperium’s latest and most exquisite fashions, yelling coarse encouragement to the rangers as they drill, exercise, and engage in games of skill and strength.
