Romulan Warbird Fleet Assembled for Battle — Print & Oil Painting

Count the green marks. There are more than a dozen of them across the width of the frame, each one a pair of drive blocks belonging to a hull, and the eye finds them well before it finds a single ship.

The composition is made out of scale alone. One silhouette has been repeated at eight or ten different sizes and pushed to different depths, the nearest cutting across the lower left at full length, the furthest reduced to a smudge with a spark in it. Between them the artist has laid in dust and haze so that the distant hulls lose contrast in the right proportion.

At the left a grey-green moon hangs half lit with small dark rocks tumbling in front of it. Gold and olive nebula cloud banks into the lower left corner and along the upper edge, warm against all that cold green, and the black between is thick with fine stars.

Assembled is the right word and it is also the point. An Empire that spent generations perfecting the art of not being seen has here chosen to be seen, all at once, which in practice meant the talking was finished. From our Star Trek collection, and Romulan Warbird Cloaked in Green Light brings one of them near enough to read.