Star Home

"It's thousands of years old, and rather eccentric in design."

- Isolder

The Star Home was the flagship of the Hapan Queen Mothers, one of the most unique and luxurious spaceships in the Galaxy &mdash; quite literally, a castle set among the stars, equipped with the military capabilities of a fleet carrier.

Designated by the Old Republic as a "Custom-built Royal Conveyance", Star Home had originally been constructed shortly after the end of the Mandalorian Wars, but he&mdash;all Hapan ships are referred to as "he"&mdash;continued to serve as the personal transport of Hapan rulers until at least the time of the Galactic Alliance.

Characteristics


The Star Home was a large ship, with the massive centrally-oriented hull measuring 2,500 meters in overall diameter. But although visually imposing, the Star Home was actually rather fragile &mdash; even the rugged-looking basalt base had been extensively hollowed-out internally, and structural integrity was retained by powerful molecular-shield generators. As well as simply holding the spaceframe together, these were strong enough to allow the ship to fight its way out of an attack and escape unharmed to hyperspace, although the underlying weakness of the hull mean that Star Home could not charge headlong in the heat of battle.

Although not designed primarily as a warship, the Star Home also carried a relatively heavy defensive armament, including twenty turbolaser batteries (of the slow-recharging Hapan variety), twenty anti-starfighter laser cannon, and six tractor beam projectors. His most deadly weapons, however, were his sixty Miy'til starfighters, which were housed along with the Queen Mother's personal shuttle in a suite of hangar bays located in the base of the main hull, between the roots of the encircling pylons. There were also servants aboard to do the women's biddings composed of heavily muscled, beautiful young men dressed only in skimpy loincloths.

Above the hangars, one-third of the volume of the basalt base was taken up by the Star Home's six Kerts-Bhrg power generators, capable of operating for a hundred years without a major overhall. These in turn drove four linked Froond-class hyperdrive engines and twenty-four sublight engines, each of which would have been capable of powering a Victory-class Star Destroyer on its own.

History and role
The Star Home was constructed by the first Queen Mother just after 4000 BBY. In form, he consisted of an exact duplicate of the Fountain Palace, the royal seat on Hapes, set beneath a vast dome of transparent crystal on a massive baulk of black basalt, with five massive pylons built from the same ebony rock, thrust outwards to give a star-shaped appearance. From the outset, the Star Home was designed as a showpiece for the splendours of the Hapes Star Cluster and the Hapan monarchy: every world in the Hapes Consortium contributed to his construction, and one important aspect of his purpose was as a royal treasury, housing a luxurious and legendary collection of priceless objects and artifacts from the 63 inhabited worlds under the Queen Mother's rule.

The Star Home was never truly forgotten in spacer circles, but the royal ship had apparently not been seen by outsiders for 2,000 years until shortly before the Battle of Yavin, when Ta'a Chume used him to recover her wayward son Prince Isolder, just beyond the Transitory Mists on the very edge of Hapan space. Although this event was recorded by pirate Grov Bricker in his sensationalist memoirs, bringing knowledge of the ship's existence to a wider audience; in 8 ABY, the Galaxy was still stunned by the Star Home when Ta'a Chume brought him to Coruscant on an impromptu state visit.

Although New Republic Intelligence believed that the Star Home could land on the bluffs overlooking the Hapan capital Ta'a Chume'Dan, it appears that this was incorrect, as the Star Home did not have any protection against atmospheric entry. Rather, the castle here is likely to have been the real Fountain Palace, with the Star Home remaining in orbit around Hapes when he was not required to convey the reigning Queen Mother to other locations in the Hapes Cluster.

Behind the scenes
A passage in Cracken's Threat Dossier, written as a New Republic Intelligence report, claims that Star Home was able to land on a "mountain-like" platform in the heart of the Hapan capital city of Ta'a Chume'Dan, but more recently Hapes: Ladies First has stated categorically that the ship was incapable of atmospheric reentry, and other canon material suggests that it was the original Fountain Palace which overlooks the capital.

Further discrepancies between these sources also occur concerning the disposition of Star Home's weapons, the size of the ship's crew, and its cargo capacity, although these could potentially be retconned by supposing that the ship was refitted between the timeframes with which the two sources are concerned: Ladies First focuses on events shortly before the Battle of Yavin, while Cracken's Threat Dossier relates to the situation in and after 8 ABY.

Be that as it may, Cracken's Threat Dossier states that each of the protruding pylons mounted four turbolaser batteries, four laser cannon and a tractor-beam projector, with the sixth projector being mounted in the hangar complex. According to Ladies First, however, all the weaponry is mounted on the "equator" of the circular central base, with only two lasers, two turbolasers and one tractor beam being capable of bearing on any one target.

Cracken's Threat Dossier says that Star Home was operated by a crew of 9,500, plus 112 gunners, and had accommodation for 1,000 passengers, a cargo capacity of twenty-five thousand metric tons, and four years' supplies. Ladies First, however, says that the crew was just 740, divided among 500 engineers and technicians, 90 fighter pilots, 50 command staff, and 100 soldiers, but on the other hand, cites a maximum passenger capacity of 2,000 with an "average" of 600 courtiers aboard at any one time. The cargo capacity is stated here as just 7,000 tons, but the ship is said to carry supplies for five years.

Appearances

 * The Courtship of Princess Leia