Skydock G13

Probably the oldest piece of still functioning war machinery in use by the Great Empire of AnKrae.

The Logistics and Rearmament Skydock G13.

During the end of the Age of Sail - specifically the Battle of the Rhyrkian Straits in 1691 - it became clear that Airships had proven themselves as the superior in means of taking and defending territory more than navies ever could, however since airships by this point were still in their infancy and easy targets for long range artillery pieces.
This all changed by 1713 when the first Kardian Airships passed the Rhyrkian Line, a previously established height limit that airships just couldnt pass due to the lack of enough lift, by passing this line however airships could soon simply fly out of range of ground mounted artillery leading to a movement to put the same navy deterrent bases of the Age of Sail into the air.

And thus for the following 12 years the Empire built and designed, culminating in the G1 Class of Skydocks by 1725 and the official launch of the Skydock G1 "Magnus Dei", in addition it was the first implementation of crystal mana reactors in a military installation. In the years that followed the Empire built ever grander and bigger Skydocks up until the year of 1775 when the last of the G1 line was built.
The Skydock of G13 "The Anchor in the Sky", the largest of the G1 docks ever built and the largest skydock over all ever put into service measuring in at just shy of 25 Kilometers in length and during its initial launch was armed with as much as 72 350mm Artillery Batteries.

However just 35 years later in 1810 the skydock was sent off to be retrofitted, as the technology the skydock was built with was largely outdated as by then doctrine had shifted massively in favor of the use of Skydocks as purely defensive or pure logistical platforms, it took 17 years of grounding the platform and expanding it to fit the new doctrine.

As part of the retrofit however the G13 lost all of its armaments to make space for the added service platforms, as such the newest platform of the G3 line G3/9 was assigned to its sole protection and make up for the artillery the older platform lost.

By 1827 as its retrofitting had come to an end it was reassigned as central logistics platform above Volkertra where it remained until the invasion of AnKrae in 1857 in which it was tragically brought down along with the 327,000 crew and 75,000 elite rangers that served and trained aboard it.

Besides its history as the largest manmade object ever carried into the sky, G13 also served the unique function of training the aforementioned rangers.
These rangers formed a specialized unit among the Empire's infantry that reportedly has been behind some of the monarchy's worst acts crime against humanoidkind in recorded history and also its only saving grace in fending off the invasion in its early hours.

By the end of the war as whole the war had consumed all but a single ranger, the last survivor of the G13 tragedy.

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Thanks to all of you for being so patient with me to finally upload this megaproject of mine! \ ^^ /

(Edit: My notes on the Stations notes are bit of a confusing mess so the article about its history will be reworked soon)

This is definitely not the last you've seen of my megaprojects but for now I'd like to go back to working on some smaller projects again.