Holding I, Technology and Arcanum.
Authorised Year 14. Installed Year 20. Never revised.
A spelljamming helm turns a seated pilot’s will into motion. That much is not ours and is described well enough in the common literature of the Astral. What follows is what we changed, and why the lock is on it.
What we changed
A helm is normally built to the hull it drives. This is not a hull. The Stone outweighs anything a standard helm was made to shift, by a great deal.
Our modification trades response for capacity. The result moves the fortress and moves it slowly, slower still anywhere near a gravity well, better across the open Astral. What it will never do is handle like a ship.
The helm sits at the Command Terminal rather than in its own chamber. A pilot who cannot see the state of the fortress is flying a fortress he does not understand.
The lock
The helm answers to a Remnari and to nobody else.
It cannot be argued with, overridden, or worked around. Nothing in it can be handed to another person, copied, or extended to another people. It does not check permission. It checks what you are.
The reason is in the authorisation. A fortress anyone can fly is a fortress anyone can take, and this Enclave had already lost one home to a hostile power. The Exemplars judged the risk of losing the Stone greater than the risk of being stranded in it, and keyed the helm accordingly.
They wrote down what that costs, in the same document. If nobody aboard is Remnari, or nobody Remnari aboard can sit, the Stone does not move. Not slowly. At all, whatever else is working.
Three Exemplars dissented. Their objection is filed with the authorisation and printed in the register.