FC

Nhál passage vessel. ⚠ Builder, class, age and propulsion are open canon and are NOT supplied here.

Havren

A working Nhál hull with a human crew living inside somebody else's ergonomics. Nothing about her is hostile and nothing about her was designed for the people now aboard: the handholds are set above where a human hand goes, the deck of the main passage steps up twice on the way aft, four mounts are the wrong pattern and have been since before the engineer was born, the ship's lighting does not reach where a person working needs light, and the warmest room aboard is warm because one man has been running the environmental exchanger through it for nine years in a way the ship was never drawn to allow. She is plated the colour of weak tea, she has one working head and it is aft, and she is the coexistence theme rendered as a general arrangement.

Operator
Nhál, under the Keller's Field compact; Commander Rhea Rourke commanding, Porhal holding wound-domain authority
Registry
None recorded. ⭐ The name is on the corridor sheet and has been since the day the human party came aboard — nobody aboard says it, and Mehta stopped saying it because nobody else did.
Series
Closed Sky
Drawn as
As handed over to the human party after the Keller's Field compact, with the two high-stabilisation units removed in daylight in front of everybody and the spaces they came out of shut.
Sheet 1 General arrangement — profile, looking to port 91.4 m overall · 300 stations at one foot
F1 F2 F3 F4 The coaming and walkway — First flat — the transfer bay and forward hold · stations 4–20 · published 1-01 The transfer bay — First flat — the transfer bay and forward hold · stations 20–74 · published 1-02 The forward hold — First flat — the transfer bay and forward hold · stations 74–118 · published 1-03 The run, second flat — Second flat · stations 118–196 · published 2-01 Stabilisation rack (deckhead) — Second flat · stations 140–158 · published 2-02 The shut spaces — Second flat · stations 158–176 · published 2-03 Crew compartments — Second flat · stations 176–196 · published 2-04 The bank, second flat — Second flat · stations 196–208 · published 2-05 The run, galley flat — Galley flat · stations 196–250 · published 3-01 The galley flat — Galley flat · stations 206–240 · published 3-02 The after plant — After plant · stations 250–268 · published 4-01 The bank galleries — After plant · stations 268–284 · published 4-02 The after gallery — After plant · stations 284–296 · published 4-03 FIRST STEP UP — the deck of the run rises here, at the second flat. SECOND STEP UP — forward of the galley. THE COLD PLACE — the run abaft the transfer bay's back bulkhead. The bay is not heated and never has been; work this end in a coat. THE AFTER GALLERY — isolation is on the INBOARD side of the door. To isolate it, somebody has to be inside it. 1 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 220 240 260 280 300 STATION
Sheet 2 Deck plans — 4 decks, looking down 14.0 m maximum beam

The forward end, the way aboard, and the cold. Unheated, and never has been.

The coaming and walkway · stations 4–20 · published · Keller's Field, chapter 31 — 'The step was four feet in from the coaming and there was a white line painted a foot short of it' The coaming and walkway The transfer bay · stations 20–74 · published · Keller's Field, chapter 31 — 'a passage down the middle of it from the transfer bay to the after plant'; 'the bay was not heated and never had been' The transfer bay The forward hold · stations 74–118 · published · Missing, Presumed, chapter 4 — 'The forward hold was shut and had been shut for nine months with a third of a patch missing out of it' The forward hold 1 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 220 240 260 280 300 PORT STBD
  1. 1-01 The coaming and walkway Stn 4–20 published Keller's Field, chapter 31 — 'The step was four feet in from the coaming and there was a white line painted a foot short of it'

    ⭐ There is a step four feet in from the coaming, and a white line painted a foot short of it to warn you. Rourke found the step anyway on her first morning, because she was looking at the deckhead. The line is very good. Everybody says so.

  2. 1-02 The transfer bay Stn 20–74 published Keller's Field, chapter 31 — 'a passage down the middle of it from the transfer bay to the after plant'; 'the bay was not heated and never had been'

    Bay doors that open to space. Never heated — anybody working at this end wears a coat, and the cold place on the whole ship is the length of run immediately abaft this bay's back bulkhead.

  3. 1-03 The forward hold Stn 74–118 published Missing, Presumed, chapter 4 — 'The forward hold was shut and had been shut for nine months with a third of a patch missing out of it'

    ⭐ Shut for nine months, because a third of its hull patch is missing. The missing third is not lost: it stands on its edge against the bulkhead in the galley flat, at the end of the bench where the light is, and everybody coming in for a meal walks round it.

Key

  • Science
  • Propulsion
  • Power
  • Habitation
  • Galley & mess
  • Cargo
  • Access

Grade of every figure on these sheets

  • published Stated in the books. If a drawing disagrees, the drawing is wrong.
  • derived Arithmetic on published facts; the working is given.
  • fixed Canon was silent here and the drawing decided.

Principal figures

Each figure carries its grade: published (the books state it), derived (arithmetic on what they state) or fixed (the sheet's own decision, bounded by what the books rule out).

  • Length overall

    91.4 m

    publishedKeller's Field, chapter 31 — 'The ship was three hundred feet long'

    ⭐ Three hundred feet, stated outright. 91.44 m. One of very few hull lengths given anywhere in the franchise, and the ONLY dimension this sheet does not have to invent.

  • Beam

    14 m

    fixedspec ruling 2026-08-31

Systems

Nhál ergonomics

published

The ship is the right size for somebody else

  • HandholdsAbout three inches above where a human hand goes
  • Convenient forOne person aboard – Dlamini, six foot one
  • The stepsTwo, and everybody finds both with their feet for a fortnight
  • The headOne working, and it is aft

Keller's Field, chapter 31; Missing, Presumed, chapter 4

Lighting

published

Does not reach where a person working needs light

  • Ship's ownDoes not reach a working position
  • RemedySzymanski's lamps, rigged on wire off the second-flat bank
  • In the casualtyThe ship's lights went; Szymanski's did not

Missing, Presumed, chapter 4

Environmental exchanger

published

Run through the galley flat for nine years, against the drawing

  • ByNeshar, for nine years
  • As drawnNot how the ship was drawn
  • Condition of useThe door shut. The last lot left it open and it took two years to get back

Keller's Field, chapter 31

The wrong-pattern mounts

published

Four of them, wrong since before he was born

  • CountFour on this ship
  • Wrong sinceBefore Devran was born
  • RaisedEleven times

Keller's Field, chapter 31

Live translation

published

Tuned for four days and still an inch behind

  • LatencyAbout an inch behind
  • ⛔ NotA universal translator. Somebody is always doing the work, and the prose keeps naming who

Keller's Field, chapter 31

What was checked

The books state distances aboard this ship. The drawing has to produce the same ones or it is wrong — so it is made to, and the working is shown. These run again on every build; a compartment moved by a metre fails them.

  • “The ship is three hundred feet long” Keller's Field, chapter 31

    300 stations at one foot. 300 × 0.3048 = 91.44 m, which is hull.loa. The only published length on this sheet and the only one it does not invent.

  • “The run goes from the transfer bay to the after plant, down the middle” Keller's Field, chapter 31

    The transfer bay (1-02) ends at station 74; the after plant (4-01) begins at 250; the three run segments 2-01, 3-01 cover 118–250 on band 'centre'. Down the middle, bay to plant.

  • “The run steps up exactly twice, at the second flat and forward of the galley” Keller's Field, chapter 31; Missing, Presumed, chapter 4

    Two step annotations only, at stations 118 (second flat begins) and 196 (galley flat begins). Flat z rises 0.0 → 0.9 → 1.8 and never falls. Stated identically in two books two in-world years apart.

  • “Rourke walks the whole ship in eighteen minutes” Missing, Presumed, chapter 4 — 'it took her eighteen minutes, and it was the last time she did it'

    Sanity, not arithmetic: 300 ft of hull, three flats, two steps and a stop at every compartment is a comfortable eighteen minutes. A 300 ft ship that took an hour to walk would fail this sheet.

  • “The missing third of the forward hold's patch is in the galley flat” Missing, Presumed, chapter 4

    Compartment 1-03 records the hold shut nine months for a third of a patch; compartment 3-02's note places that third standing on its edge against the galley-flat bulkhead. Two facts, one object, and the sheet says so in both places.

  • “The plant makes a noise at the top of every hour, and about nine seconds later something in the after part of the hull answers it” Missing, Presumed, chapter 4

    ⛔ NOT A CHECK — A STANDING PROHIBITION. Sarah has never been able to make anybody else hear the second noise and has stopped asking. The entity file rules: DO NOT RESOLVE. No sheet, legend or annotation may explain, locate or name the answering sound. It is recorded here so that a future spec cannot 'tidy' it.

  • “The handholds are about three inches above where a human hand goes” Keller's Field, chapter 31; Missing, Presumed, chapter 4

    Resolved 31 Aug 2026 by author ruling. Keller's Field, chapter 31 and the entity file both read FOUR inches until the Closed Sky adversarial pass corrected Missing, Presumed, chapter 4 to three; Closed Sky is still in drafting, so no figure was immutable and all three were harmonised down to THREE. Grep returns zero occurrences of 'four inches' against this hull.

Service history

Compiled from

  • Keller's Field ch31, ch32 — the handover and the ship's own description
  • Missing, Presumed ch04 — the last walk-round