World Ship

A World Ship is a super massive, very heavily armed, self propelled colonial vessel. They serve as the primary home of the Buyyor, but also operate in the service of several other races, but only on a limited basis. For the Buyyor, however, their World Ships are the only place they live, as they have no planets anywhere in the galaxy that they call their own. A world ship is typically a completely self contained biosphere, with life support, agricultural, living quarters, and so much more, all contained within one large, blimp like ship of extraordinary size. The largest World Ship in the entire galaxy, the Buyyor prime world, is slightly larger than Earth's moon and boasts an onboard population of several billion. The prime world even boasts of having oceans as much as several hundred miles across, and thousands of feet deep. There are even small mountains, rivers and other natural features contained within, like a planet within a planet.

However, some of the smaller ships, like the one found near Sebius during the events of Destiny's Mission only support a population of around three to four hundred million. Even so, they too enjoy large natural expanses within their sizeable structure, and "world within a ship" construction much like the prime world, only smaller, and less extensive. All World Ships are also fully warp capable, save only for the Buyyor prime world (and only because of its sheer size), and are thus able to move around at FTL speeds. However, due to their super massive size, most World Ships are slow, being limited to no more than a paltry speed of just 40 light years per day. But, given that they're a home away from home, and an entire world unto themselves, speed is not important for these ships, so even that slow pace is completely acceptable to the Buyyor, and all other races who use ships like this.

By comparison, most other ships in the galaxy are able to travel at speeds of somewhere around 1400 light years per day. Due to the slow speed of the World Ships, and their inability to move around quickly, they also contain a sizeable fleet of merchant and trade vessels, allowing the World Ship to absorb resources from other worlds and bring them back to the colony. World Ships, and their support vessels, are also able to harvest asteroid belts, debris fields, and abandoned, or unused planets, in order to collect outside resources to be used to support their own substantial, and perpetually ongoing needs. And, despite being able to supply all of their own internal needs, World Ship colonies do periodically need to ingest new resources periodically to replace anything that may have been lost with time, or to add to the World Ship's already substantial structure and internal systems, or living areas.