Tartarus-Class Destroyer

The Jiralhanae have never been an imaginative species, especially technologically, but even they saw the need to create a ship class to replace their rapidly depleting stockpiles of Covenant-grade ships. This time, it was to humanity that the Blood Covenant turned, almost literally - the Tartarus-class shares many design features in common with UNSC ships, sometimes entire hull sections being used from the vast scrapyards formed during the Human-Covenant War. Raiding these for usable parts and sections, sometimes even usable ships, the Jiralhanae used what little scientific understanding they retained to cobble together the Tartarus-class destroyer. Intended as the next generation of Blood Covenant frontline warship, the Tartarus would be produced in large numbers, but its performance never matched their counterparts, and barely matched that of the ships they were created from.
The Tartarus-class were a mismatched set, using a chaotic ensemble of UNSC and Covenant technology. The Jiralhanae retained the functional 50mm CIWS turrets and Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engines, and grafting on plasma turrets and pulse lasers where they could. Propulsion was provided by a combination of repulsors and chemical rocket thrusters, though the Jiralhanae's inexperience with the latter would see the human thrusters eventually abandoned. On some hulls, the Jiralhanae even retained the MAC weapons that had proven so troublesome against the Covenant, and tried to improve on them where they could, boosting their rate of fire and kinetic force imparted. The entire class sported a sculpture mounted on the prow, modelled on a massive skull with the MAC or plasma turret protruding, intended to strike fear into their enemies - the fact that space combat is fought at distances so vast that visual contact is rare is something that seems never to have occurred to the Jiralhanae designers.
The Tartarus-class would see continuous service during the War of Vengeance, as the Blood Covenant fought both on its own turf and invaded UNSC and Sangheili space. In combat,t hey proved to possess a combination of firepower, agility, and flexibility that larger ships lacked, though never in sufficient amounts of each to be particularly successful. When the Blood Covenant qas conquered by the New Covenant, the ships were largely discarded as worthless hunks of scrap by the new Naval commanders.
==History==
While Unmoving Virtue was certainly not their only shipyard colony, it was their largest and most productive, and its loss was a nearly devastating blow to the Blood Covenant Navy. With it went most of the hulls that had been produced under Prophet rule and were nearing completion, as well as much of the infrastructure for the development of new starship designs. While other shipyards would continue to churn out warships for the Jiralhanae war machine, these would be of a noticablty poorer quality, and designs created after 2555 were even poorer. Nevertheless, the Blood Covenant needed to rearm and regrouip, and to this end commissioned the Tartarus-Class Destroyer.
Many Blood Covenant worlds had once been major Covenant colonies, especially Expansive Judgement and Unfathomed Grace, which had essentially become dumping grounds for old or damaged warships, good only for scrap. Under the Covenant, these scrapyards had dealt with a variety of different of different ship classed - in the war against humanity, such places had seen more activity than any time in recent Covenant history, and would handle Covenant and even UNSC ships, towed through slipspace and scrapped for material reclamation. In the end, very few would be decommissioned - the nature of Covenant and UNSC starship design, and especially the different design philosophies, mean that there was little of interest to the Covenant. Many UNSC warships would simply be left in their entirety, the Unggoy scrappers preferring the more valuable Covenant salvage.
Ironically, it was the comparatively primitive nature of the ships that attracted the Jiralhanae to them. Still a primitive society, they had only regained the knowledge of rocketry and radio technology by 2490 - though still well beyond native Jiralhanae technicians, they were better suited to Jiralhanae ship captains. The Blood Covenant would set to work, deriving much of its scientific understanding from the wrecks, and even incorporating large portions of them into the Tartarus class.
The Tartarus-class was designed as a stopgap measure, until a better solution could be found, and were never intended as the main frontline combat warship of the Blood Covenant Navy, although this would eventually be the case. The design philosophies featured a mix of human and Jiralhanae ideas - what operable weapons and equipment continued to function, such as point-defence autocannons, Magnetic Accelerator Cannons, slipspace drives and thrusters, etc, were grafted on - the Jiralhanae lacked the infrastructure to manufacture Covenant-grade equipment from scratch, and were forced to appropriate far more human technology than even they were confortable with. Salvaging of pre-Schism Covenant wrecks allowed the Blood Covenant to mount a number of pulse laser CIWS turrets and plasma torpedo launchers on many of them, though this was far from a standard feature. Even fewer were able to support energy shields, and these were classed by UNSC naval authorities as "heavy destroyers." The result was a class of ship that, while including a small number of advanced features, was not even close to comparing to modern Sangheili or even UNSC warships, and barely matched the performance of the older UNSC ships they were based on. The ships would be fielded in significant numbers, but were never very popular among Jiralhanae naval personnel.
Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the Tartarus-class destroyer was the giant skull mounted on the prow. Traditionally, the Thakartha was the greatest hunt possible for a Jiralhanae, their remains forming the basis of small villages, and the skull was used as the personal hut of a Chieftain to signify their high status. When the Tartarus-class was introduced, however, many ship captains set them to work killing these massive predators in order to adorn their ships as a sign of prestige - indeed, the resulting slaughter would leave hundreds of skeletons lying across Expansive Judgement, and the dramatic population decline would have an effect on local prey animal populations. The original intent was that these skulls would intimidate rivals and enemies alike, taking from ancient Jiralhanae mariner traditions - the fact that opposing space fleets operate at ranges so extreme that visual contact is a secondary concern seems never to have occured to them, and the first evidence of the practice was found by UNSC salvage teams poring over wreckage for intelligence on the Blood Covenant. Sangheili sapce teams are reported to have burst out laughing at the absurdity of Jiralhanae design, and a number of the skulls were salvaged for the establishment of the Schism War Memorial Center on Unmoving Virtue.
The Tartarus-class would see service well into the War of Vengeance, especially in the Blood Covenant's various offensive operations and in the defence of its colonies against Sangheili and UNSC incursions. Less well known is the role that they played in the delaying of the New Covenant as the two fought on the other side of Blood Covenant territory, and the many stands they made against the New Covenant's inexorable push further into Blood Covenant territory. After the end of the war, most of them would be decommissioned during the merger of the remaining Blood Covenant naval forces into the New Covenant Fleet, especially given the quality of the vessels they were replaced by, although a number of mercenary groups would acquire Tartarus-class vessels, the only ships available outside of the New Covenant Fleet, and would continue to prove a thorn in the side of the New Covenant as it attempted to purge itself of secessionists, privateers and warlords. Still more would be hijacked by rogue Unggoy, intent on escaping the yoke of the New Covenant and settling themselves on methane-rich worlds far from New Covenant territory. In the end, the New Covenant began. Eventually, in order to prevent such a massive outflux of Unggoy personnel, the New Covenant began disposing of these ships in the gravity wells of stars, preventing further exodus.
==Remarks==
*"You know the skulls on the front? Apparently they're taken from real creatures on Expansive Virtue - my god, what a hell hole that place must be."
*"Even by Jiralhanae standards, they are utterly pathetic. A ship has a soul, and can be as courageous and tenacious as its crew and Shipmaster. Even the humans know this. This goes beyond simple Jiralhanae barbarity - there are even Jiralhanae that detest such dishonour."
*"They use verything they can on the ships. Everything. On the one hand, the massive scrapyards mean that the Blood Covenant had a virtually limitless supply of these things - on the other hand, they're moving hunks of scrap. And since they use our own old technology, we know exactly how to counter them..."
*"Tartarus would weep in shame at the ships they have named after him. Even we Jiralhanae have standards, and these monstrosities fall well beneath them. The Blood Covenant are barbarity defined."
Category:War of Vengeance
Category:Destroyer classes
Category:Brutes