Ruvelkan Battlecruiser Khoytka

Khoytka in 1907.
History
Ruvelkan Socialist Republic
Name:	Khoytka
Namesake:	Battle of Khoytka
Ordered:	1 February 1904
Builder:	Soós, Barna & Antal, Mátészalka
Laid down:	23 June 1904
Launched:	16 September 1906
Commissioned:	5 October 1906
Fate:	Transferred to the Imperial Navy.
Principality of Ruvelka
Name:	Khoytka
Namesake:	Battle of Khoytka
Acquired:	11 January 1915
Commissioned:	15 January 1915
Struck:	12 March 1938
Fate:	Scuttled on 11 May 1934 during the Invasion of Ruvelka to prevent capture; hull eventually broken up for scrap in 1940
General characteristics
Class and type:	Khoytka-class battlecruiser
Displacement:	22,979 tons standard 25,400 tons fully loaded
Length:	186.6 meters
Beam:	29.4 meters
Draft:	9.19 meters
Propulsion:	4 × steam turbines 24 × water-tube boilers 4 × shafts each driving four-bladed propellers 38,246 kW (51,289 shp)
Speed:	25.5 knots (47 km/h)
Range:	4,120 nmi at 14 knots
Complement:	1,053 officers and crew
Armament:	Guns: 10 × 28cm/50 (5 × 2) 12 × 15cm/40 guns (12 × 1) 12 × 9cm/45 guns (12 × 1)
Armor:	Belt: 76 – 280 mm Deck: 25 – 76 mm Barbettes: 90 – 230 mm Turrets: 75 – 230 mm

Khoytka was a battlecruiser built for the Ruvelkan Red Navy leading up to the Third Chryse War and Ruvelka’s first post-dreadnought warship. Khoytka was to be the first of the planned Khoytka-class battlecruisers, but complications with her construction and the shelling of the second hull during the Third Chryse War rendered Khoytka the only ship of the class to be built and put to sea. Although there were later plans by the Socialist Republic to revisit procuring her sister ships, the outbreak of the Ruvelkan Civil War cancelled any tentative plans for expanding the Ruvelkan Navy.

Although the overall performance of the Red Navy was poor during the Third Chryse War, the Khoytka was the only notable exception. Khoytka was often sortied on her own or in battlegroups with allied Górska. She was a very modern design prescribing to the new uniform battery seen in dreadnought designs across Tyran; it was later revealed in the lead up to the Siduri War that the Ruvelkans received significant assistance from communist-sympathetic Cacertian naval officer Ninnia Regula.

On 30 November 1914, then Captain Sára Vörös—by then a member of the Imperial Separatist Movement—ordered the Khoytka to put to sea from its homeport in Mátészalka. When the 1914 December Uprising began the next month, Captain Vörös informed Red Navy command the intention of her crew to defect. The Khoytka played a key role in the Imperial capture of Mátészalka in February, spending the remainder of the war providing naval gunfire for Imperial operations along the northern coast of Ruvelka. After the civil war, the Khoytka continued to serve in its capacity as the flagship of the navy and ferried Princess Rózsá Prohászka to several state visits.

In late 1933, the Khoytka was put in for a refit at her homeport in order to modernize her equipment and armament. The refit was only partially completed by the time of the Invasion of Ruvelka. Crew of the Ruvelkan Imperian Navy attempted to bypass the engine repairs to get the vessel underway, but these efforts proved unsuccessful. With elements of the Army of the Syaran Republic quickly advancing, the decision was made to scuttle the ship to prevent it from falling into enemy hands.

The Syarans refloated the ship in 1936 and commissioned her as the Repentant Sinner , although she never left port and was utilized as an anti-aircraft platform during the Liberation of Ruvelka. The Syarans scuttled her again in January 1938. Her wreck was again raised after the conclusion of the Siduri War, but deemed to costly to refit and repair. She was eventually scrapped in 1940.