The Cairn · Vessel
MV Capstan
Guld's hull. The only constant among his keels, and the only one he will not rename.
Designation
motor-vessel
T5 The Guttering Age · 2312–2349 Merchant derived
What her era can carry. Full ordinary armament: coil and rail accelerators · finite kinetic magazines · guided munitions and interceptor missiles · point-defence guns · defensive and sensor-directed lasers · drones, decoys and electronic warfare · advanced kinetic boarding and surface weapons.
The boundary-weapon family exists and is constrained — expensive, signature-heavy, politically fraught. Most hulls of this era are civilian and carry nothing. ⚠ Ordinary traversal needs no chain; a merchant hull is a merchant hull.
Merchant. Holds and margins. Ordinarily unarmed; a merchant with a magazine is a plot point, not a default.
⚠ A ceiling, not a fit — what a hull of this class could carry in this era, derived from the capability ladder rather than stated for this ship. She may well carry less; she is never shown carrying more. Source: Era tier T5 (bible/48 §2) · role inferred from class/description.
The record
Class and design
MV — the mundane civilian prefix. ON A TRAFFIC BOARD HE IS INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM TALLOW, FETTLE AND KEDGE. His other hulls carry whatever name was on them when he got them, and the names change. A BOARD CANNOT TRACK HIM; A PERSON WHO HAS MET HIM CAN.
Service history
• B1 · 2334→2335 · Threap — He is already there and he has the means. He does the far side; Kestrel does the near; between them everyone lives who was going to live. It is not a trick, there is no double-cross, and the reader is meant to be pleased. Then, after the people are off, he takes the marks and the drums off the approach they all just used. Kestrel's people learn it after the fact, from an instrument, not from him. - During the cooperative salvage, Guld's people help Halloway lift the dead shore-plant stack that becomes Kestrel's lance. NOBODY REMARKS ON THIS, EVER, IN FOUR BOOKS. • B2 · ~2336–2337 · Mireth — he strips the approach at scale, deliberately, over days, while Kestrel is still working. Kestrel fires the lance for the first time at his ANCHOR AND TAKE-UP RIG — not at his hull and not at people. It does not stop him. • B3 · 2342 · concurrent with Cairn B5 — he holds the far end. He does not know he is completing anybody's measure. He knows he is holding a works. DISPLACED AND DAMAGED — NOT DEFEATED AND NOT KILLED (P-W4). AND B5 NEVER SHOWS HIS FACE. • B4 · 2342→2343 — Capstan and a small changing number of renamed keels under masters who owe him, Fabri first among them. They look like tenders on every board. The hunt is for the GEAR — the stripped marks, drum sets, ranging gear, cradles and take-ups, cached at places only his people know. The man is where the gear is.
Compiled from the canon file for this hull. Only sections that are settled canon are shown — drafting notes and anything belonging to an unpublished book are held back.