All I ask is a tall ship, and a star to sail her by...

So we have our captain, what about his ship?

While the ship is associated with the crew as a whole, in our case it is most closely connected to our captain. Therefore the player and I worked together to lay the groundwork of what the ship was, where it came from and how it came to be in the captain's possession.

That said, an early suggestion from my son (who plays our Ship's Mechanic) was that the ship itself ought to be a Firefly class. I could immediately understand the rationale: it's familiar to everyone who's seen some of the show or the movie, it's a prolific ship within the setting, multiple "standard" versions have been documented and it's stated that they are easily customisable, plus I have all the stats from the Firefly RPG Gen Con exclusive and the poster size floor plans from the Serenity RPG. That said I also wanted to make sure that this was our own ship and not just Serenity with a different crew. It had to be unique.

Therefore we came up with the concept that this ship was, for all intents and purposes an ol' Firely but Flori's father had a hobby of renovating old starships (using high quality newtech components hidden behind the original bulkheads) so it became a bit of a mismatch leading the player of our Doctor to suggest it was a "White Elephant" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_elephant) and so it was christened the Bei Xiang (and hence the name of this blog...).

From the basics that we'd worked out we then took it to the group and everyone suggested which Distinction Triggers and Signature Assets we should have. Taking one suggestion from each player (except or Reader who wanted to leave it to the others) we ended up with our ship - which had become a little bit of everyone:

Bei Xiang  "The White Elephant"
ENGINES d10 HULL d8 SYSTEMS d6

FIREFLY CLASS TRANSPORT d8
Gain 1 Plot Point when you roll a d4 instead of a d8.
Connected Operations: When rolling to fix a ship’s Complication, you may step up the difficulty die to fix two Complications at once. Step up any Complication that results from this roll.

STOLEN d8
Gain 1 Plot Point when you roll a d4 instead of a d8.

EXPERIMENTAL d8
Gain 1 Plot Point when you roll a d4 instead of a d8.
Experimental Settings: When using a ship’s Signature Asset, you may step up or double that die. Step up any Complications that arise from that roll.

SIGNATURE ASSETS:
Medsuite d8
Pimp'd out thrust booster d8