I wanted a very specific look for these ships to make them menacing and to make the Kaagan-Vas look recognizable for any future appearances. I always planned for the ships to be prominently marked with the KV symbol, since they’re the kind of people who would want their presence known for psychological impact. I originally also planned to do something with red paint markings all over the ships, but I realized that would be too much like the Reavers in Firefly.

I decided instead to go with heavy use of “black metal” and spiny shapes, neither of which, looking at the page now, seem very pronounced here. But I’ll make them more prominent in any future appearances. I’m not sure just yet if the “black metal” is anything special, but as a visual aesthetic, I just thought it would be cool to have their ships covered with haphazard patches of really dark metal tech. In some places, they might be patches to fix where the ship took damage; in other places, they’d be where the KV added weapons onto the ship.

As for the spines, I thought something with a lot of protruding sharp points would be intimidating, visually. They’re not literally sharp points, since it’s not like they actually use them in a stabbing or puncturing capacity. I figure they’re more like extended guns. It seems like a lot of sci-fi ships these days have weapon arrays that are very “internal” and hidden within the body of the ship, mixed in with sensor arrays and the like. I thought it would be cool to have the KV ships look more like old-time pirate ships, with cannons sticking out all over the place. So the idea is that all the spines are external weapon arrays, still controlled from the inside, of course, but much more visually prominent than on most other ships.