Pirates of the Coal Sack #21

Nov 29, 2022

This turned out to be a much longer issue than I thought. (I’m sure everyone is outraged.) The action on board Kintampo turned out to be more involved than I realized. There were a few curve balls during production where one character or another revealed something to me that I didn’t know about them, so of course that had to be addressed.

We get our first glimpse of the Uruk, the Terran Federation’s primary astropolitical rival. The Uruk Clans are my analog of the Klingon Empire, but the Uruk are not the honorable samurai-inspired Klingons Star Trek fans have known since TNG. They have a deserved reputation for cunning and brutality.

I enjoyed having the crew confront just what piracy is. In almost all “pirate” media, pirates prey only on other pirates, or they’re really privateers raiding in service of their country. The fact that their livelihood is basically mugging people at sea or in space is glossed over. Many of the Phoenix crew initially had this romanticized view of piracy; how they deal with confronting the ugly reality will be an ongoing point.

See you in the comments!

The Uruk destroyer is a build by Tobias Richter, the Klingon D6 from Axanar, and released through Metlesits Fleet Yards, with some modifications by me. S.S. Kintampo is my own build, modeled on the Huron-class robot cargo ships from TOS and TAS.