The Black Knight and the Vindicator-class Heavy Cruiser
Since I've gotten a few questions about the Black Knight and how I can justify its compliment and capabilities. I decided that it would be a good idea to add this in. So I hope you enjoy as I show you how this ship was created.
At the start of the Clone Wars the Republic Fleet consisted predominantly of Acclamator-class Assault Ships and Venator-class Star Destroyers (to my knowledge these are the first two vessels that can be recognized as the precursors to the modern Star Destroyers). Near the end of the war other, larger warships such as the Victory, Imperator/Imperial, and Tector –classes of Star Destroyer were introduced to the fleet to provide more powerful ship to ship capabilities. When the Republic was reformed into the Empire at the conclusion of the Clone Wars, both the Venator and Acclamator were slowly phased out in favor of the newer warships. However as the Empire grew in power and policing actions became more common the Imperial Fleet realized that it couldn't afford to send Star Destroyers to every system and it was decided to design a scaled down version of the Star Destroyer. Thus the Vindicator-class heavy cruiser was born, a smaller warship that bears passing resemblances to its larger Star Destroyer stable mates that could operate on its own or in small task forces and take care of all the hotspots that didn't warrant the presence of a full sized Star Destroyer.
When I started work on the original story that became Hades Wing I needed a ship for the wing to operate off of. Originally I went for a variant of the Strike-class cruiser but as the story progressed I realized that this ship did not fulfill the needed role and while versatile was not able to allow independent operations for extended cruises which was what I needed for my story. So I did some digging and discovered the Immobilizer 418 Cruiser, better known as the Interdictor Cruiser, which was apparently based off a Heavy Cruiser design. This seemed to fit my needs nicely as I didn't want the wing to have a full on Star Destroyer, even one of the smaller Victory-classes (at the time I didn't know about the Venator-class which is roughly the same size but even if I had the type would already be phased out by the time my story takes place). So I decided to create the Heavy Cruiser design that the Interdictor was based off of and the original Black Knight was born, able to carry a full wing of fighters (an Imperial Fleet wing is 72 fighters/bombers/scouts while an Army wing is smaller, consisting of 40 fighters/bombers/scouts) as well as a troop compliment and operate separately for extended cruises.
Later, when I started to revisit the original idea for Hades Wing, I found the Vindicator-class, the actual ship type that the Interdictor was based off of. Surprisingly I found that the type was nearly identical to the design I had envisaged. A compact well armed ship that could carry a large craft compliment in addition to ground troops and was able to operate solo for extended periods. So when I finally began work on the re-imagined story I decided to make the Black Knight this class instead of one of my own imagining. The Vindicator-class can carry a full fleet wing (six squadrons) in addition to various support craft. On top of that it can carry 400 soldiers. Finally, while it was not as heavily armed as say the Victory-class (it is also much smaller, the Victory is 900 meters and the Vindicator is 600), it was armed well enough to deal with virtually every Rebel Alliance ship barring a Mon Cal or Bulwark cruiser. These specifications fit my needs perfectly and so the Black Knight was born into its current configuration and blessedly within canon which pleased me to no end.
I might also add that I snafued at the start of Hades Wing, the frigate that Garin and his friend's are deployed on is a Nebulon-B2 frigate, a sturdier version of the earlier Nebulon-B frigate (which is the ship that The Empire Strikes Back ends on, that same ship later reappears in Return of the Jedi) at the original time of writing the story I didn't know what the ship class was called so I created my own name and unfortunately forgot to change it when I published it here.
Author's Note: for those that were hoping for an actual chapter, never fear, chapter 11 is well underway and will be up in the next few days.