Corpse Fleet

Corpse Fleet

(Organization)

Type

Non-state military

Leader

Undying Admiral Shathrava

Goals

Shatter the unity of the Pact Worlds and install Eoxian supremacy

Scope

Multi-system

Structure

Military hierarchy

Members

Undead

Source: Splintered Worlds, pg(s). 44-46

The Corpse Fleet is a military organization from Eox that turned renegade and left their homeworld in protest of the Absalom Pact. Officially disowned by the Eoxian government, it's speculated that the bone sages are still secretly communicating with and offering aid to the Corpse Fleet.

History

In 41 AG, five years after the Battle of Aledra that marked the first violent contact between the planets of the Pact Worlds system and the Veskarium, the historic Absalom Pact was signed, binding most of the worlds in the system in a mutual defense and governance agreement. Many Eoxian officers were dissatisfied: their homeworld had held its own against the Veskarium, and they refused to cooperate with the 'mewling infants' of the other worlds. In protest, these officers took their ships and troops away from the Pact Worlds into deep space and created the Corpse Fleet.

How the Corpse Fleet managed to mobilise and escape without drawing the attention of the Stewards is a mystery; it's suspected that the Eoxian bone sages secretly aided the Corpse Fleet's escape so that if the Veskarium overran the rest of the system, they would still have a sizable armada to defend Eox itself. Officially, the bone sages have severed all ties with the Corpse Fleet and denied all accusations that they ever endorsed it.

During its early years, the Corpse Fleet established and abandoned countless hidden outposts and shipyards across Near Space and the Vast. Each forgotten installation was stripped of equipment to forge newer and more efficient facilities elsewhere.

The Corpse Fleet was first sighted during the Stardust Plague, during which they raided plague-ridden ships and offered the passengers undeath in exchange for service. The Corpse Fleet significantly grew during two decades, while the Stewards tried to investigate but never successfully pinned them down in a fight.

When the Swarm invaded the Pact Worlds, the Corpse Fleet did not return to defend their homeworld and continued to raid both Pact World and Veskarium ships alike.

Organization

Commander Malakar, a Corpse Fleet security officer.

The hierarchy of the Corpse Fleet was directly adapted from that of the Eoxian navy. The head of the Corpse Fleet is the Undying Admiral Shathrava, who oversees all Corpse Fleet operations and coordinates individual task forces. Each task force is several dozen ships strong and led by an admiral, who rarely work in the same system with each other and act independently so enemies aren't able to pin down the entire Corpse Fleet in a single engagement.

Rear admirals and commodores command four to eight ships each. Rear admirals are tasked with extended missions that might last for decades, while commodores' fleets usually only see deployment for two months or less. Each individual ship is commanded by a captain who in turn is assisted by a commander, usually of a different disposition so as to ensure a mix of caution and ferocity.

Below the rank of commander are the lieutenant commanders who usually fill the roles of engineer, gunner, pilot or science officer and command shifts of grunts. The lowest commissioned ranks in the Corpse Fleet are lieutenants, who fill key positions on ships and act as infantry specialists, and ensigns, who act as reserves and students under superiors. The enlisted branch of the Corpse Fleet, called the converted, is filled with mindless or near-mindless undead, raised from the dead by mystics stationed in bases or in capital ships.

When it first defected, the Corpse Fleet took with it a great number of Eoxian starships. While continuing to maintain and upgrade these old ships, the Corpse Fleet's engineers and scientists have since invented many original designs to keep up with the advancements of their enemies and replace destroyed ships.

Goals

The primary goal of the Corpse Fleet is to shatter the unity of the Pact Worlds and return their homeworld to its former glory. To achieve this, the Corpse Fleet constantly establishes factories and harvests troops in the hope of growing large enough to rival the entire Pact Worlds fleet and force the other Pact Worlds to acknowledge Eox's supremacy.