- Built By: Humans
- Used Primarily By: Humans
- Tonnage: 2 tons
- Hull Points: 2
- Crew: 1/2
- Maneuver Class: B
- Landing-Land: Yes
- Landing-Water: No
- Armor Rating: 5
- Saves As: Metal
- Power Type: Major or minor helm
- Ship's Rating: As for helmsman
- Standard Armament: None
- Cargo: 1 ton
- Keel Length: 30'
- Beam Length: 5'
The lightest ship in space next to the elven flitter, the sparrow is the tiniest ship in use by the Space Fleet.
Crew
The pilot/captain enters through the beak into the small cockpit in the head, where a sliding glass window offers a view of space beyond. The second crewman, if any, has access to the outside by means of a retractable hatch between the wings.
Ship Uses
Messenger: Sparrows are good for carrying messages and/or small important shipments to other ships or bases. They are often used to ferry small payloads between eagle ships or war birds.
Scout: Small and maneuverable, this ship is ideal for quick exploring jobs and patrol details.
Landing Craft: Like their elven flitter cousins, most sparrows are used as depowered landing craft and shuttles. Depowering helps to insure that no unauthorized groundlings will acquire a spelljamming helm.
Small Fighter: These fragile ships are used to soften up targets for a bigger attack force. Archers or magic-users can attack freely from the open ports.
Other Configurations
Depowered Version: These ships are equipped with a mussel engine, a Mutator product that uses a large, photo-sensitive mollusk that pulsates when exposed to light. The mollusk is fitted with pistons which pump the craft's wings. This ornithopter sparrow has an SR of 2. Mussel engines big enough to drive a sparrow take up 1 ton of cargo space.
Combination Power: A sparrow fitted with both a spelljamming helm and a mussel engine have a Maneuver Class of A, making it one of the most maneuverable of ships in the Known Spheres. The S.F. use these as fightercraft, arming pilots with missile weapons or magic wands to attack other ships.
Sparrow Hawk: This is a super fighter built around the basic sparrow hull. It is a fixed-wing craft powered by a furnace of velocity and armed with two wing mounted magic missile guns. These small, quick ships have MC B, AR 3, and can move at an SR of 9!
Custom Magic Items
Magic Missile Gun
Cost: 25,000 gp
This is a smaller version of the cannon detailed for the hummingbird ship in Crystal Spheres. It can discharge one magic missile-like bolt that delivers 1 hull point of damage, costing one charge. At the cost of two charges, a bolt twice as powerful is fired. The gun can be recharged by simply casting the spell magic missile into the large silver orb at the rear of the device. It can hold up to 30 charges, one per missile cast into it. The weapon has a THAC0 of 17, a ROF of 1/1, and a range of 3 hexes. It is usually mounted fixed or turreted on small, fast ships. The weapon scores a Critical Hit on a roll of 20.
Furnace of Velocity
Cost: 20,000 gp
This spelljamming device differs from regular spelljamming furnaces because it is designed to provide maximum SR at tactical speeds, sacrificing spelljamming speeds and duration. For every 1000 xp of magic burned, the furnace delivers high speeds for one turn, or low speeds for two turns. Like other furnaces, these cannot be used in the phlogiston. Also, a furnace of velocity can only move vehicles between 1 and 5 tons in size. The maximum speeds vary with the tonnage (see below).
Tonnage Maximum Speed Max. Low Speed * 5 tons SR 6 SR 3 4 tons SR 7 SR 3 3 tons SR 8 SR 4 2 tons SR 9 SR 4 1 ton SR 10 SR 5 * Fastest speed while still getting -low speed- durations.
Illustration
Deckplans
