Shadows Cruiser Class

**Craft**: Shadows Cruiser
**Type**: cruiser
**Scale**: capital
**Length**: 1,500 meters
**Skill**: capital ship pilot
**Crew**: 1
**Crew Skill**: Astrogation: 12D+1; Capital Ship Gunnery: 9D; Capital Ship Piloting: 12D+1; Communications: 12D+1; Sensors: 12D+1
**Passengers**: 4,000
**Cargo Capacity**: 8,000 metric tons
**Consumables**: 75 months
**Hyperdrive**: x0.3
**Nav Computer**: yes
**Maneuverability**: 3D
**Space**: 27
**Atmosphere**: 725; 2,050 km/h
**Hull**: 10D+2
**Sensors**

* Passive: 60 / 1D+2
* Scan: 120 / 3D+2
* Search: 180 / 5D+2
* Focus: 6 / 7D+1

**Weapons**

* **Molecular Slicer Beam**

Fire Arc: turret
Crew: 1
Scale: death star
Skill: capital ship gunnery
Fire Control: 6D+1
Space Range: 1-60/150/300
Atmosphere Range: 2-120/300/600km
Damage: 6D+1
**Miscellaneous**:

* Artificial Gravity: Yes
* Crew: 1

* Pilots: 1

* Average Crew Experience Level: Shadow Elite
* Stealth: 28 (Base Difficulty to Detect Ship)
* Adaptive Armor
* Atmospheric Capable
* Biological Engine
* Fighter Dispersal Tube
* Living Ship Matrix

**Ship Complement**:

* Fighter: 36

**Notes**:

* Despite only having a single pilot, shadow cruisers are not considered a solo craft.

**Shadow Vessel Traits**
All Shadow ships have the following traits in common, which may allow them to break some common space travel or combat rules.

* **Shadow Jump**: Shadow vessels can enter hyperspace as desired, and do not need to open a jump point.

* **Shadow Scream**: A Shadow ship emits a partially psychic screech when it wishes to do so, unsettling nearly anyone who ‘hears’ it. When a Shadow ship ‘screams’ anyone within Close range (25 Space) of it must immediately make a Willpower check at Difficulty 10 or suffer a –2 pip penalty to all rolls in the next round. A ship’s crew can only be affected once per encounter in this way.

**Description**: Thought to be fearless and unstoppable, there was no ship among the younger races’ collective fleets that could stand against a Shadow vessel in open combat – not a one. Fast, agile and possessing molecular weapons of immense destructive power, Shadow ships are monsters of the space lanes, bogeymen that go about slicing an enemy to pieces whenever they were encountered. They appear from out of nowhere as dark shapes with forward-sweeping black limbs sprouting like legs from its main ‘body’. Shadow ships resemble nothing as much as alien spiders in design and function. They are surprise predators, preferring to strike from concealment. Shadow ships can simply shimmer in from hyperspace, attack swiftly and efficiently, then re-enter hyperspace at will as if they were never even there. This makes them very difficult to combat with current technologies and even deadlier than originally thought.

Before the last great Shadow War it was generally accepted that the only reasonable course to take when encountering these vessels was to retreat as quickly as possible. Until superior numbers or underhanded tactics thought up on the fl y could be brought to bear under Captain Sheridan’s growing makeshift alliance, there was no vessel in the galaxy that could withstand the might of the warmongering Shadows.

**Source**:

* The Babylon 5 Project: Shadow Vessel
* Babylon 5: Ships of the Galaxy (page 84)
* thedemonapostle