CLASS NAME: P'vael       CLASS TYPE: Destroyer       GOVERNMENT: Romulan Empire
Dorsal view	Port view
	Bow view

BRAD'S COMMENTS:  I sometimes think this is the most creative fanship design I've yet come up with.  Mainly because it's not a Starfleet ship, but also because I managed to maintain the Romulan 'bird' motif without necessarily replicating an existing design, while also creating something that, I think, is a modest bridge between the apocryphal ships of the FASA books, and the official TNG-era Romulan 'warbird' ships.  I could shoot myself, too, because the graphic above is actually a scan of a color inkjet printout I did of the P'vael shortly after I created it in 1997.  The original bitmaps for this ship got lost in one of many self-induced computer crashes (back in the day, curiosity killed this computer cat a hundred times over, let me tell yah!) so I was unable to format the graphics exactly as I'd have liked.  The different shades of gray in the paneling are due to the fact that my original bitmap was colorized (this was back way, waaaay before the MU&A, when I was sending an occasional fanship to other trek sites) in order to conform to the submission rules of some Trek fan site that I don't think exists anymore.
     Recently, a group of enterprising Star Trek 3D modelers plucked my design and rendered it!  What a gas to a) see the P'vael all fleshed out in three dimensions and b) know that somebody liked this design so much, they put in all the time and effort to bring it more to life than I've ever been able to do with my 2D line art drawings.  As Larry Niven once noted, where people bringing his writing to live via artwork was concerned, few things are as gratifying.  So a ton of thanks to the group that made it happen, and please check out the larger images below.  Terrific stuff!

FANSHIP DESIGN & STATS: Brad R. Torgersen, 1997
P'vael Class Destroyer
Known sphere of operation: Empire-wide, with heavy concentrations along Klingon border.
Data Reliability: B
Major Data source: Starfleet encounter scans, Romulan Sector Intelligence
     Brief history: The P'vael class is named after a small, extremely strong avian predator native to the Romulan planet Remus.  Constructed as a direct response to the union of the Federation with the Klingon Empire, P'vael class vessels soon became notorious amongst both Klingon and Starfleet personnel as an unusually rugged and effective combat ship. Operating in squadrons of three to six ships and using a mixed bag of plasma bolt and disruptor beam technology, the P'vael did much to harass the Klingon Defense Force and Starfleet during the little ship's prime years.  By 2365, with over half the total production run of P'vael vessels having been lost in combat, and their spaceframes proving increasingly small and vulnerable when compared to the larger and much more advanced Klingon and Starfleet ship designs, the Romulan Star Navy began mothballing these old destroyers.  That changed, however, with the advent of the Jem'Hadar and the Dominion.  Seeing the immediate threat posed by the small and agile Jern'Hadar attack craft, and suffering from the loss of numerous Warbird class ships during the failed Romulan-Cardassian invasion of the Gamma Quadrant, the Star Navy began a rapid reintegration program that brought all available P'vael ships back into service.  Sporting improved technology on nearly every level, the P'vael is once again taking its toll on the varied foes of the Romulan Empire.

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