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Blood Mountain Clans

Source Starship Operations Manual pg. 69
Ancient Veskarium Shipbuilders
Manufacturing Centers: Conqueror’s Forge, Vesk Prime
Specialties: Military fighters and attack craft
Famous Models: Devastator, Dmolangari, Mauler, Predator

Based on the Veskarium capital world of Vesk Prime, the Blood Mountain Clans (BMC) trace their heritage back to before the Gap, when vesk inhabited only their own home world. The Veskarium had conquered all of Vesk Prime and looked to neighboring planets for its next conquest. Betting on a future beyond a single world, several vesk warrior clans inhabiting the Doshkoraz Mountains around the volcanic Blood Mountain joined forces and created an aerospace consortium that would catapult the Veskarium into space. The Blood Mountain Clans built the first spaceships that carried vesk to other worlds, and they have remained a major force in the Veskarium military-industrial complex ever since.

Now one of the Veskarium’s most powerful corporations, the BMC prides itself on its warrior heritage, producing military starships for the Veskarium as well as for private sale. Based on Pact Worlds designs, the BMC built the Veskarium’s first Drift engine, which took the vesk empire to the stars and into interstellar war with the Pact Worlds and the Swarm.

The BMC fared well in both the Silent War and the Swarm War, as its famous Mauler fighter was the Veskarium military’s primary starfighter, used to great effect against both enemy factions. The core design of the BMC Mauler has remained virtually unchanged for almost 300 years, though its components have undergone regular updates. The Mauler remains the standard fighter of the Veskarium fleet, and the starship has been so successful and is so well known that many vesk use “mauler” as a synonym for any starfighter, whether or not it was built by the BMC.

The BMC’s history and the Mauler’s success have given the company a reputation for fierceness in both its corporate behavior and its starships’ combat performance, a belief enhanced by the tendency of enthusiastic vesk pilots to ram their Maulers into opponents’ ships in overzealous or last-ditch attacks. As a result, BMC ships are widely regarded as good ramming vessels, and ramming prows (page 16) are a common weapon on larger BMC ships like the Devastator (page 111). The Mauler’s usefulness for ramming has also made the fighter a favorite among the nihilistic Cult of the Devourer. Cultists can’t usually acquire Maulers by legitimate means, however, instead resorting to theft, piracy, or hastily constructed shell corporations. BMC’s leadership now faces a dilemma: how to prevent association with the Cult of the Devourer from tarnishing an otherwise famous brand.

Manufacturer Perk: BMC ships are known for packing a punch when they ram other vessels. When using the ramming speed pilot stunt, a starship with a BMC frame is considered one size category larger when determining collision damage for a successful ramming attack.