The Raven started her life as the TRS Andes. Originally commissioned in 2467, she saw part of the fourth wave of Triumphs to come out of the shipyards. Pressed into service with a short shakedown cruise of only two months, she immediate saw success in the Fourth Interstellar War. Her Captain and crew were one of the first to start organizing 'wolf packs' of Triumphs and helped ensure the class's legacy.
In the following 27 years, her performance was so exemplary that she was one of ten ships used to measure the overall success of the design as part of a long term study to decide what changes to make for Refit I.
The TRS Andes continued to serve with distinction, participating in several pivotal battles of IW V. She was a solid performer, not reaching the level of being prodigious enough to receive any special honors, but she was known through the fleet as a solid ship to be assigned to.
She was one of the first ships to be upgraded to Refit II, given her history and the overwhelming amount of documentation they had on her prior performance. Her refit very smoothly, and both her and her sister ships the TRS Rocky and TRS Cascade were assigned to the TRS Bulawayo, as a sort of appology for the fiasco with the delay in her commissioning.
The Andes was selected as one of the first ships to receive the proposed Refit III in the lead up to the Sixth Interstellar War. As this was a draft proposal, there were several issues with the upgrade, and while the yard succeeded in getting her upgraded, the issues they encountered forced a decision that only ships built with Refit II from the yard would get the new Refit III. The engineers blamed it on her age, and proper resources were never put into solving them for older ships.
Her sister ships were never given the refit, a constant source of contention for the Captain of the Bulawayo.
The Andes was one of the ships to survive the destruction of the Bulawayo. Her captain was in communication with the Bulawayo, so they knew the extent of the impending detonation and that there would be no way a Triumph would be able to survive in subspace. Contacting the TRS Moskva, they were discussing options for evacuating other Triumph classes should the Bulawayo situation become a worst case scenario, when the evacuation order came. The Andes immediately burned for the Moskva, only making it due to her Refit III reactor upgrades. Unfortunately, she had to watch as her sister ships the Rocky and Cascade were still two hundred kilometers out when the Moskva was forced to jump. Given the emergency nature of the situation, the Andes had to physically wedge herself in the bay, causing minor hull damage, but also keeping the bay from being properly sealed.
Almost immediately after escaping, The Andes's captain was found to have somehow received a massive dose of radiation poisoning, as well as several other crew members. While the rest of the crew eventually recovered, the captain was completely unresponsive to treatment and died of acute radiation poisoning.
The Andes's systems were almost completely fried from exposure to the explosion as they were escaping. Give their massive losses, the decision was made to repair her. Her systems were extensively overhauled, however she has some strange electrical gremlins so she never passed her recertification. Normal operations were fine, but under hard normal space acceleration and firing her weapons, she'd brown out, despite the reactor giving plenty of power. The more they dug in, the more random system glitches they'd find. The subspace system is the only stable system that never had issues, so they ended up wiring half her critical systems to the subspace power grid.
Considering her age, the difficulty in her previous refit, and the state of her systems, it was recommended to mothball her. However, given the mysterious nature of her captain's death and the rumors starting to come out about what happened at [Charlemagne][], the decision was made to decommission her.
Unfortunately, the bureaucracy was slow in getting to making the decommissioning official, so the yard had some fun with her, modifying her for use as a tug and portable repair/diagnostic platform. The never got rid of the gremlins, and after only a few years, the rumor was the ghost of her last Captain roamed the halls. Yard workers would report every time they made a modification to the ship, they would see a woman with raven black hair walk the deck of the ship, inspecting their work.
Eventually in the 2670s she was sold off in a bulk auction and officially decommissioned.
The Andes, now stripped of her "TRS" designation was sold to House Simon for 'house defense'. She was required to be 'demiliterized' at one of a few trusted ship manufacturers, however, the hull simply sat in in the family's personal breaker yard untouched since her arrival.
Looking for a reliable craft, Simon found the Andes and looked up her history, finding it 'endearing'. He figured with a history like hers, she should suit him just fine, haunted or not. (As someone who saw themselves as a 'thing that goes bump in the night', he figured he would be at home with whatever ghosts and gremlins called the ship home.)
Taking advantage of the Oslo StarDrives's new Glorious Class Conversion, he had the hull transported to their yards, where he personally requested modification on top of the modification. He was incredibly particular about the upgrade, and it was noted in the ship's construction log that he toured the ship no less than three times, each time with the ship being 'complete'. He would then go spend time in the Captain's Office, sometimes for hours, before coming out with detailed lists of changes and modifications to make. The sales representative didn't mind, as Simon paid for all continuing modifications every time, but the engineers hated working on the ship. One of the crew found the reports from the Yard Workers after her attempted repairs, and almost immediately people began reporting seeing the 'Andes Ghost' wandering the ship, inspecting their work.
Once she was completed, Simon refused to name her, saying that he would once he'd decided how he intended to use her. She sat for several years at a family dry dock, before Simon turned the ship over the Linore Charon.
As part of his ongoing relationship with Linore and his desire to help her and her sister, Simon gave her The Andes, on the condition she rename her. He said her time as the "Andes" was over, it was now time for her to start a new chapter. He also told her about the rumors of a ghost, but informed her that "The former Captain is simply a touch particular about the work done to her ship. She won't give you any trouble, as long as you're true to your crew and respect her ship." Hessa turned to Linore and said, "A ship with a ghost captained by a woman named 'Linore'? It sounds like something out of a Poe poem."
The ship was christened the "Raven" within minutes.
After taking command of the ship, it became obvious that the gremlins from her [Charlemagne][] repairs were not gone, despite all the work done by Oslo StarDrives. Linore had enough issues with the ship that her limited mechanical skills couldn't solve, only to have them magically be fixed some time later, when she really needed the ship to work. Her and her sister's lives were never in danger from a failure, but they were often enough that Linore sought out someone with the skills to tackle them, and the willingness to ignore the 'haunted' history of the ship. It didn't take her long to find someone with as dubious a reputation as the Raven herself.
When Sonja Leist was offered the position, she immediately went through the ship from stem to stern before deciding to take the job. Her hatred for Terran technology aside, she had to respect the ship and her history, making special note that while Oslo did what they could with the strange systems failures, the ships still often experienced strange power system glitches, and she believed she could solve those issues.
Leist has since made her own modifications and tweaks to the ship, refining what was done and somehow reducing the system glitches to just the most minor of inconveniences. When asked how she did it, Leist would respond, "So, most of it was going back to her original plans and realizing she wasn't some modern Triumph; she's an old girl with old wounds. You gotta respect that. The rest? Keeping the ghost happy. She's tough... but fair."
From Case:
This ship was mainly just a vehicle for the Bedlam crew. However, I saw a chance to make a really fun bit of lore surrounding the ship and her history.