The Tharrn are a brutish lizard race, inspired partially by Star Trek’s Gorn – though we certainly had our original take on this concept. In general, the Tharrn are probably the least sophisticated, and one of the more aggressive species out there. They form a very ritualistic society filled with customs other races would find barbaric, even repulsive; cannibalism and eating foes as a point of honor is something other races would probably appreciate less than the Tharrn.
In terms of their ship design, this translated into ships that had to look less advanced than those of other races. With this idea, their ships are also bulkier and overall larger than most other race’s ships of the same class, to further drive home the idea that this race goes with simpler, "just go with what works" solutions, and needs more volume and mass to achieve the same result. Their ships also feature exposed modules such as easily identifiable reactor housings towards the back of the ships, tied directly to the engines. The ships almost look like the were built around these reactors; the Tharrn approach to design the next big ship could have easily been to first come up with a large reactor, tie as many big engines as they could into it, then see how much weapons and other systems they could tie into it all.
Going along with the low tech look, the engines look like classic circular shaped nozzles, close in general appearance to rocket engines we have today, apart from the green/yellow exhaust glows. Though obviously way more advanced than humans of today, they may be brutish and less sophisticated than the humans of the future, but they are still a space-faring race, only less sophisticated in their designs compared to other races of the time.
The weapons systems look similarly simple, with the Tharrn once again going for what is simple and works, rather than going with anything fancy that has multiple fire modes for different purposes. Tharrn weapons would probably deliver the highest punch they could at a time and then reload for another shot. They have two main types of energy guns; the smaller, cannon looking ones usually located in the front sides of the ships facing forward, with larger ship classes also sporting much larger, green glowing cannons mounted on the ship’s "head", which, along with the "neck" contains the vast majority of the ship’s habitable areas, containing crew quarters, command decks and escape pods. Tharrn ships also feature large numbers of missile launchers, eliminating the need for complicated fast reloading systems.
The ship’s escape pods and airlocks utilize circular shapes with round frames around them, which I found associated with a lizard skin look and was therefore appropriate. For the same reason, the ships feature an overall drab green look, only broken up by gray reactors and engines, and red tribal looking markings placed on the tops and bottoms of the hulls.
Tharrn hangar bays are located at the bottom of the ships, and function like drop hangars, with additional bay entrances to the sides of the hangar pits utilized for docking.
In general, this was a very enjoyable fleet to design for me. Though it took several attempts to come up with a look we were all happy with; once that look was found it was a lot of fun to design these brutish, simple yet menacing looking ships – even if you opt not to play as our resident space-lizards, I do hope you’ll have fun blowing their ships up!
