(urth) Hethor

[Jeff Wilson]

Rex Racer wrote:

> I remember the Citadel being not a ship, but a spaceport with any number 
> of the towers being "landers" as Silk calls (though the nomenclature and 
> descriptions in the BotNS makes it pretty clear that the towers are old 
> spaceships repurposed when the age of space flight (at least the part 
> coming from Urth) came to an end- walls being added, stone structures 
> and extensions slowly accreting through time.
> 
> I can claim no authoritative positon without the books at hand to 
> reference, but I remember nothing to indicate the whole Citadel being a 
> massive ship on par with the Quasar, rather than Nessus old space port.

The Wall, with the peculiar positioning of the guardsmen inside it, 
could be a huge, grounded spin-gravity generation ship, similar to the 
Whorl, but hollow on the inside and roofed over.  During flight gravity 
would be outward, along the radius, rather than along the axis, so some 
furnishings and fixtures would be seen as pointing the wrong way, or 
swiveling crew compartments could likewise be worth remarking on.

Any sizable ship landing under thrust would clear the ground for some 
distance around, so its possible that you have a circular ship forming 
the wall around Nessus, only it landed far outside of town, then the 
town grew out to meet and enter it. Or it could merely be the wall of 
the Citadel, created when smaller ships landed inside it to avoid 
blasting the countryside or to be convenient to the other ships and 
shared utilities.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >