Five Parsecs From Home: We Have The Power

 

Ship's power has been a recurring trope and plot device in all of Trek and in TOS it was quite rare that Mister Scott happily replied job was a good one and reported and the space pistons are firing at 100%.  My Five Parsecs campaign is unlikely to be any different but in this instance on the terrain building front we can have a moment that would make Scotty smile.  We have the power, or more appropriately Reactor Alpha is online.

I approached this imaginary terrain piece in the same way I would a historical or natural one.  If I'm trying to build a barn, I look at images of barns, so if I'm going to build a warp core I look at pictures of warp cores.  My inspirations came from the front end of the Trek franchise because I wanted the terrain piece to feel like it it could have fit in there somewhere.  The TOS period offered up a block, The animated series a transparent cylinder, and the TNG period a big glowing boiler conduit ensemble.  While the campaign will be based in a TOS analog I didn't find that core particularly inspiring.  The chamber in the back of the shot is another matter, but we will get there eventually.  The TAS design was more to my liking and the palette I wanted for my reactor was going to lie somewhere between TOS and TAS.  The form of the TNG warp core was hard to ignore.  I'm a sucker for shiny lights so the desired form was somewhere between TAS and TNG.

It turned out that I had a battery lamp laying around that would be perfect.  Years ago I'd used a more tapered one to turn into a more futuristic reactor when I was making Infinity terrain.  The upright, more rigid lines of this one caught my eye so I tore of the handle and slapped it into this gantry to be sure.  Eventually the finished reactor will be housed in the gantry so the crews can reach it.  The gantry is a terrain piece for a missile launch site I grabbed for Spy Fi gaming.  If I put a cap on the launch port I can seat the reactor on top, or not depending I'm what I'm playing and use it for both.  Modular terrain is the way.

Here is the painted reactor. I stuck to the grey scheme with red and black accents. I tinted the seethrough chimney with a transparent blue Tamiya spray so at the push of a button we have a reaction occurring in the reactor chamber. In story I don't see this as a warp core, but a more mundane reactor. It's the one that would be found in the engineering section but it is dedicated to all ship systems excluding the warp engine. This unit would power, weapons, defences, sublight engines, life support, the popcorn maker in the recreation space, while a second more powerful (and possibly more dangerous one) is located further aft in a heavily shielded section well away from the crew and the rest of the ship. I imagine if one reactor failed power could be redistributed/reallocated to service the ship at reduced effectiveness.