On the heels of the last couple of announcements about January’s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: War series, Dark Horse for its Star Wars Friday has released art including page one of the series, with dialogue. Of interest to many will be the new version of Republic frigate which appears in the first panel by artist Andrea Mutti.
I won’t name the ship or class which appears — that’ll give a bit away — but for a peek behind the curtain, you can see my (really rough) concept which I provided the artist here. The Republic Hammerhead cruisers are mainstays of the era, but they’re also somewhat impractical for landings, as we saw in Knights of the Old Republic #14. For the troop-toting frigate I needed for the series, I imagined an offshoot to the design — slightly smaller (thus the frigate name) but flipping the forward section over 90 degrees. My mock-up simply drew from the Bioware design for the cruiser. (Of course, as with any of my notes — or Lego designs — none of it is canonical. Only what appears in the books, of course!)
As we see in Andrea’s drawing on the Dark Horse site — which is canonical — there are actually two “assault decks,” above the central axis of the ship for aerial vehicles, and below, where we see one of the doors opening.
We’ll learn more about the specific ship we see on panel — which, KOTOR buffs, already exists in the series history — when the issue comes out. Be sure to order Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – War #1 from your retailer when it appears in the November catalog!