Enigma of Hours

The Enigma of Hours is cigar-shaped, approximately one hundred miles long and a tenth that in diameter. It is open to vacuum at its bow end and sealed at the stern where the crew section and drive cores are located. The ship generates centripetal gravity through rotation and has a blank sable hull. Nazzareno states that it travels at speeds several thousand times light.

The interior of the Enigma is city-like: deep trenches of colored lights form streets, groundcars or trams move through them, and towers of sufficient height to obscure internal lighting rise from the hold floor. The scale is such that Tanaran says it reminds the Cielcin of the hollowed-out asteroids its people inhabit. Other ships are docked inside its hold, including Durantine galleons, a Jaddian whale-shaped vessel, a Demarchist ship from Tavros, and Imperial ships with heraldic crests.

The visitor's port is a single road looping in a great circuit around the ship's entire circumference, with berths for visiting ships on either side. The concourse is open to air held in by static fields at the ship's open mouth, and the far inner surface glitters with a regular grid pattern of lights distinguishable from native stars. The ship is described as always in darkness -- pale white sconces flicker on fluted, black metal walls and in ceiling recesses. Holographic signs hang above stalls, and a diverse marketplace operates there, crowded with merchants, chimeric Exalted, androids, and representatives of many human factions.

The Enigma's passenger policies forbid weapons in the visitor's port and unauthorized entry into restricted zones, with violation resulting in immediate ejection from the hold regardless of the offending ship's fuel reserves. The ship possesses the ability to remotely seize and pilot visiting ships from their berths, guiding them in a slow procession out through its drum without warning.

Hadrian Marlowe and his companions visit the Enigma of Hours during their travels. The ship serves as a waypoint and trading hub, its vast interior hosting ships from multiple human factions and civilizations.

Years later, Eidhin offers the Enigma of Hours and its twelve Exalted crewmen for use in fighting, in exchange for a writ of trade afterward. Hadrian Marlowe recognizes the Enigma of Hours as the vessel that spirited him to Vorgossos many years before.

Captain Eidhin commands the Enigma of Hours with a crew of twelve Exalted.