40K Old Tyme Novels analysis thread: Necromunda, EoT, PoC,

[Cykeisme]

Ork gunfire seems to both penetrate and deflect off the Lightning's hull. Maybe it depends upon attack angle or range?

With Ork armament, I wouldn't be surprised if individual rounds of ammunition had inconsistent projectile masses and propellant loading, either.

[Connor MacLeod]

Part 3 of Crusade for Armageddon.


Page 109

Sergeant Jelkus Bane looked out of the rectangular viewing aperture in the rockcrete bunker at the baking dunes beyond. The building had once been sealed to protect the people inside from the toxic conditions outside. The only windows were narrow yet long horizontal rectangles
set into metre-thick walls. Once they had been blocked by thick, clear plasteel, but now that too had gone and the bunker was no longer safely sealed from the deadly environment of the wastes.

Bunker on Armageddon has metre thick walls, and Armageddon is at least partly hazardous (this may differ once we get into Conquest of Armageddon.) May or may not apply to other bunkers built in 40K, but Its a safe bet that STC would guarantee it likely

Also note the "visible" plasteel.

Page 109

They had been deposited, by Imperial drop ships, over a hundred kilometres east of Tartarus Hive.

Use of drop ships on armageddon to airlift Steel Legion troops, so I'm guessing it may have carried the Chimeras as well.

Page 110

The soldiers of the Armageddon Steel Legion were used to the gas masks, of course. They were as necessary as helmets, padded, chemguarding knee-length trench coats, boots and heavy kevlar gloves. But that didn't make living in them any more bearable. They were sweaty
and stank of a combination of hot rubber, chemical disinfectant and the soldiers' own sour breath. Whenever they could go without the hoods safely for any length of time, everyone did so and relished the often all too brief respite.

Standard outfits/gear of Steel Legion troops.

Page 111

Bane adjusted his own helmet-hood and let out a puffing breath. He dearly wished he could remove his gas mask and heavy tan coat altogether, at least temporarily. It was stuffily hot in the bunker and his heavy legionnaire uniform didn't help make him feel any more comfortable. It might provide a man with some protection against the chemical agents in the toxic environment around them, but in it you roasted like a hive fowl.

Part of me thinks they're thermally insulating like Valhallan greatcoats. Probably also double as flak armour

Page 111

Their chronometers had stopped working almost as soon as they had been abandoned by the drop ships: some kind of electromagnetic interference, Trooper Verhoef had said.

EM interference messing with their watches. And this is something one of the troopers is aware of. This might suggest the Steel Legion (possibly hive Regiments in general to the Guard) are more educated in technical matters than other regiments. If we take Necromunda or Gudrun as examples, this is quite likely.

Page 111

The still-smoking shell of their Chimera lay only twenty metres away. It had been spray-painted in the grey and white camouflage patterns used for ash wastes incursions but now it was a uniform scorched black. Not far from it stood what remained of Sentinel One: just two birdjointed hydraulic legs, the cabin having been destroyed by another direct hit from an ork smoker.

..

They had been lucky to get the other two scout-walkers into cover as the ork planes made a second pass.

1 Chimera and 3 Sentinels along with the troops dropped into this area.


Page 112

To begin with the platoon's mission had been a success. Incredibly, out in the barren wilderness, with long-range comms and reconnaissance down, and relying on hand-held short-range auspexes and vox, they had found Agent Braxus, but not before they found the wreckage of a
bike, blown to smithereens by an ork mine.

With only one Chimera and 3 Sentinels this is hardly a "platoon" per se, unless the 3 Sentinels are counted as a sort of squad (it would be a small platoon then.) The troops seem to have their own (hand held) gear for detection and communication for short range purposes, with implied "long range" stuff that the current enviroment is messing with.

Page 112-113

A lone man, dying from the terrible wounds he had sustained at ork hands, but still, against all the odds, dragging himself through the caustic sands, high on pain-suppressors and muscle stimulants. He was wearing a black bodyglove, incorporating padded flak armour, which was torn
and punctured in a dozen places, the flesh revealed beneath a red ruin.

...

Trooper-Medic Liser had made a cursory examination and quickly diagnosed a broken arm, a fractured pelvis, a shattered kneecap, a broken tibia, several cracked ribs and a collapsed lung. Then there was the blood loss the man had suffered from numerous external injuries, and no
doubt just as many internal ones.

Bane would have expected a man in his condition to have been dead already. But Braxus, knowing that he was dying, had managed to defy death just a little longer, to pass on the precious information he had recovered and for which he had paid the ultimate price.

Bodyglove with "padded flak armour" - again flak like clothing (as if we needed further proof of that.) surviving (albeit briefly) severe injuries on "pain suppressors and muscle stims". Showing the degree 40K humans (at least with some medical aid) can push themselves to if need be. Also the squad has its own medic.

Page 113

Gargants were the orks' blasphemous parodies of the noble titans of the Adeptus Mechanicus. The ork roks had brought scores of the monstrous war machines down with them to the planet's
surface. Yet more had been teleported in from the hulks waiting in orbit. Many had been lost in the opening engagements of the ork invasion but not before they had wrought untold damage against the infantry, armour and cities of Armageddon.

"Scores" if not more of Gargants invaded aRmageddon, landed by Rok as well as brought in via teleporter.


Page 114

Then the spy, for truly that was what he was, had died in Bane's arms, the stimms no longer able to keep his heart beating.

Again the stimms had (temporarily) enabled the man to function despite severe injury. If one were unconcerned about casualties (eg certain siege regiments of meat droids who shall remain nameless, penal troopers, etc.) this might be useful.

Page 114

They had not gone far on the return journey when the ork planes had found them.

..

Before the Steel Legionaries could lock on with their own weapons, the first strafing run had taken out Sentinel One and exploded a crater in the ground, two metres deep, directly ahead of the troop carrier, shrapnel taking out the left hand track. Their transport had slewed into the hole.

Ork fire blasts a 2 meter deep crater in the ground somehow (which implies 4 meters across) - maybe 1-2 kilos of TNT equivalent, although it depends greatly on the means of damage. either way it takes out the Chimera.

Also curiously is that the Chimera and Sentinels (if not the trooper weapons) are implied to be able to engage Ork Warplanes (which are known for rivalling Imperial fighters for speed)

Page 115

On Bane's command its crew had immediately bailed out, and not a moment too soon. The orks' second strafing ran had dropped a bomb directly on top of the chimera. In the process they had lost their mortar as well. All of the guardsmen had made it out apart from Liser, the squad's medic, and Tamb Keyes, who had been driving when they crashed. There had been a number of minor shrapnel wounds but nothing worse that a gashed arm. That in itself had only been thanks to the trademark helmets the troopers wore as part of the Armageddon Steel
Legion's uniform.

Again squad medic, and an Ork bomb destroying the Chimera. They also had their own mortar stowed in the Chimera. The helmets protected them from shrapnel injuries from the exploding Chimera.

Page 115

Mabe Reiner half of Bane's mortar team, had taken a shot in the back that had punched out the other side, taking half his intestines with it.

Justan Neff had caught a glancing shot to his left arm as he ran. The impact had spun him round and sent him rolling over, screaming, into the sand. Their fellow legionaries had immediately gone back for them and hauled them to safety.

Oddly this implies they are very lightly or totally unarmored, or maybe that the shrapnel was just that nasty (maybe they have no inserts to match the protection fo their helmets?)


Page 116

The lucky shot from the ork cannon had shattered half the bones in his arm. Rumi had closed him up with tranqs and painkillers, dressed the flesh wounds and put the rained limb in a sling to keep it out of the way. The only way Neff would get any use out of his left arm now would be if it were replaced with a bionic replica. He was still conscious – just. Rumi had him lying down to help his body recover from the massive shock it had received.

..

With Reiner it was much more serious. He hadn't regained consciousness since being hit and was losing a lot of blood. He needed the help of a surgeon, not a stand-in field medic. He didn't need pain-suppressors: his nervous system was being flooded by naturally produced morphine, such was the physical trauma he had suffered.

Backup medic I suppose, or maybe all the Steel Legionnaires cary medical gear (or they salvaged th medic's.) His arm was shattered by the fighter's cannon I guess. Even if it was a glancing shot, rather amazing the arm wasn't obliterated. Maybe they ARE wearing body armour, and it shattered from blunt trauma momentum transfer but not obliterated because the armor stopped/deflected it just enough.

Also oddly the other guy had survived having a hole torn through his middle via shranpel.

Page 116

The question came from a figure squatting in the middle of the bare floor, polishing the barrel of his sniper's long-las with a piece of oilcloth. Practically all of the legionaries' bodies were covered, so that only a few patches of skin came into contact with the frequently caustic atmosphere of the wastes. Beneath his heavy uniform, the man's body was short and wiry. The smallest among the squad, Scout-Trooper Vin Steinbeck was the nimblest and their sharpest shot.

Steel legion troopers wear nearly total full body coverings (at least cloth). They also have their own sniper as well as a mortar crew.

Page 117

The sallow trooper had joined Bane's squad on this mission as a last minute replacement for Socar who had come down with a nasty case of pathogen poisoning.

It happened quite frequently amongst the Steel Legion troopers. No matter what precautions they took, the regular tours of duty in the polluted wastelands of Armageddon Secundus continually exposed them to the chemical, bacterial and radioactive fallout of years of battle and millennia of industrial pollution. Sometimes it just proved to be too much and the human body succumbed. All but the worst cases were treatable but it could leave men bed-ridden for weeks or even paralysed for the rest of their lives. Of course sometimes there were complications.

And there were rumours that other, even more terrible, things had left their mark on the ash wastes, when, five centuries before, the legends had it, daemons had walked upon the face of Armageddon and carried out unspeakable atrocities against the planet's human defenders.

Apparently part of Armageddon's fucked up enviroment comes from repeated use of, for all intents and purposes, WMD (not unlike Krieg it seems) as part of the wars. This creates additional hazards and casualties amongst the STeel Legion, naturally.

It is worth noting however, that the Legionnaries operate for many hours or days (if not longer) in this enviroment, which says something for their NBC gear and/or innate toughness. Especially considering how fucked up Armageddon's enviroment is (given that part of the regular climate involves what are, for all intents and purposes, naturally occuring firestorms.)

It's also not unusual - as I've noted in the Necromunda novels, you get cases of nomadic tribes who manage ot live/survive (somehow) outside in the ash wastes there. As well as the usual underhiver gangers who survive in the hadardous (toxic and radiation filled) underhive with little or no mutation (relatively speaking.) and then there are the Goliaths...

These passages also hint that it may not just be "normal" pollutants causing problems, it may be an aftereffect of Angron's assault (which persists in rumours obviously, despite the best efforts of the Inquisition to be total dicks.)

Page 118

It had been the same for the last hour, since they had taken shelter in the bunker, although it had actually started several hours before that, when the northern horizon had been lit as if by a second sun that had leeched the light from the rest of the world for a vision-searing second.

This implies the nuclear detonation lasted for about a second, which might suggest around a hundred kilotons or so yield.

Page 119

Their helmet mics were still working, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to hear each other so clearly through their gas hoods, but they had no long-range communications. Strevicz had been unable to raise Tartarus High Command or any allied troops in the area, if indeed there were any.

The nuclear detonation or whatever didn't affect their comm beads, whatever it was. Also note the Steel Legion troops in this case *do* have helmet comms.

Page 121

Chunks of rockcrete flew from the external walls of the bunker and blackened craters appeared in the ground in front of it under the ork barrage. In response, lasfire burst against the metal bodies in firework sprays of sparks but the legionaries seemed unable to halt the orks' advance. The only weapons that appeared to be having any real effect on the stomping kans were Sentinel Two and Three's heavier armour-penetrating lascannon and devastating multi-laser. But even that would not be enough to stop the orks' inexorable advance, Bane feared.

..

A las-blast sent a mechanical cutting arm flying from the side of a killa kan and a lascannon blast from Sentinel Two sent the first dreadnought reeling, but neither were killing shots.

Assault on the Steel Legion by Ork Kans and Dreandoughts. Normal lasfire unsurprisingly does nothing, but multiasers and lascannon are effective.

las blast severs a metal arm from a killa kan - whether it is a lasgun (or the long las) or a multilaser we don't know. Assuming an "arm" around 10 cm "thick" (diameter wise - not much thicker than a human arm, and judging by Killa Kan images thsi is probably grossly conservative) and a "blaster" type laser it would still require at least hundred of kilojoules, probablty thousands (esp if it were thicker) to blast through. It's at least the multilaser, and a long lase (with a hot shot) probably could do it too, but its not impossible for it to be a lasgun (on max power, for example.)

A melting/slicing beam on the other hand could do it more safely, probably no more than a 100-200 kj or so. Pulsed cutting might be an order of magnitude less

Page 122

It was three times the height of a man, larger and heavier than the biggest of the ork machines, armoured with adamantium plates and carrying an arsenal that rivalled Bane's entire platoon's firepower combined – and that was including the two Sentinels. One huge arm of the armoured body was a massive assault cannon. The other was a huge, robotic power fist. The legionaries' liberator strode into battle on solid, servo-powered legs, each as thick as a siege-tank cannon.

Brother Jarrold packs firepower to match both Sentinels AND Bane's remaining troopers. And this is impressive considering his only ranged weapon is an assault cannon (matched up against a long las, over half a dozen lasguns, a multilaser and a lascannon.)

And yes this is Brother Jarrold. So this implies that the Ork Dreadies/Killa Kans are rather puny, less than 2 tonnes.

Page 124

An hour after picking up the first ill-boding sensor readings and Speeder Excalibur's sweep of the Hellsbreach base, Fighting Company Adlar reached ground zero. An air of solemnity hung over the Space Marine squads as they observed several minutes' silence, casting up prayers to the Emperor and Primarch Dorn in remembrance for all those who had lost their lives in the explosion that had wiped out the titan pens. The only sound was the clicking of auspexes and the bleeping alarms of the warriors' armoured suits, alerting the Templars to the dangerously high levels of radiation present in the area.

Thanks to implanted organs such as melanchrome and mucranoid, as well as the enhanced natural healing abilities granted them by the surgery that had transformed them into Space Marines, the Black Templars were able to survive in environments that would kill an ordinary human. They could breathe underwater, if need be, and could even survive in the vacuum of space for a short time, but in time the effects of radiation could still adversely affect a Space Marine. However much it might appear otherwise, the warriors of the Adeptus Astartes were not indestructible. But they would be long gone from this Emperor-forsaken place before the radiation caused any lasting ill effects. They had a mission to fulfil and now they had yet another atrocity to avenge.

The blakc templars reach the obliterated Titan pens. Of note are the enahcned radiation levels (in the suits and on auspex.) but their organs and healing abilities protect them against radiation at leasts in the short term. (Oddly this suggests that nuclear radiation can penetrate, at least in some measure, Power armour, which is something hinted at in Mark of the Xenos with neutron blasters.)

Page 125

Hellsbreach had been turned into a heat-fused crater, towering adamantium-armoured war engines, rockcrete buildings and perimeter defences all melted, practically beyond recognition, at the heart of an atomic firestorm. The broken buttress spans of gothic structures arched over them. A coating of wind-blown grey ash already covered the explosion-fractured and reformed ground: in places it glowed. As the Marines stood in solemn silence, taking in the horror of the destruction, the only sound to disturb their prayers was the dull keening of the desert-born wind.

..
Ansgar separated himself from the rest of the company and began to walk towards the broken curtain wall of the ruined titan pens. The shattered remains of a titan gantry had been toppled in the blast and smashed against a section of the defensive perimeter. There, much of it had melted under the intense conflagration and fused with the surface of the wall which, in turn, had been burnt to ceramic smoothness.

the atomic detonation had melted a good deal of the internal stuff, including melting some of the titans it seems, although to what extent is unknown (other than the fact they are recognizably titans, rather than being solidified puddles of metal.) so only their exteriors may have been melted.

Page 125

How many had died in this one strike, he wondered? Hundreds? More like thousands. A Titan Legion, like that of Legio Magna, could number a dozen mighty war machines. Each of them could carry a crew of up to a hundred. Then there were the servants of the machine whose lives had been devoted to repairing and maintaining the walking war gods when they returned to what had once been considered the safety of the Titanicus base.
...

He [Techmarine] had spent a number of years on Mars, the capital planet of the Adeptus Mechanicus. There he had been inducted into the machine mysteries of the tech-priests. He venerated the machine as a living, cybernetic deity. Some among the crusade fleet whispered that the beliefs of the techmarines bordered on the heretical but Ansgar found such a thing unthinkable in warriors dedicated to the most devout of all the Chapters.

Implies the size ofa Titan Legion typically averages around ad zoen or so machines, although thats probably an estimate. Titan crews seem to average a hundred. This might imply only the "Battle Titans" -the Warlords and Readvers, but not sneccesarily scout titans.

Also the Black Templars seem not to trust their techmarine cousins.

Page 126

Ansgar turned away and continued to make his way across the ruins. He looked around and high above him as he paced his way across the crater taking in the devastation wrought by the detestable greenskins.

...


The crater created by the triggered atomic device was a gently curving glass-smooth, concave bowl two kilometres wide. The irregularly pierced barrier of the curtain wall reared up before him. It seemed that he had lost all track of time and distance, lost in his reveries.

Implied upper limit for a 1-2 km crater would be several hundred kilotons to 1-2 megatons at least.
It is described as "gently sloping" so the depth can't be nearly as deep cratering wise. What likely happened is that either a ground-contact airburst happened (And only a shallwo crater formed) or a deeper but smaller crater forme and surrounding melt from the edges fell in to fill the gap. The crater was deep enough it hid the devastation of the titans. Assuming it was melted to a depth of a few centimeters, it would require at least ~200 kilotons, which would only be half the yield. And that is probably, grossly conservative - even if the total melt was a few hundred meters in diameter and 10 meters or so deep, we'd be talking half a megaton easily.

Either way we're talking about mid to high kilotons to low megatons taking out the Titan base and a number of Titans. However as noted, while some appear at least partly melted, they aren't totally melted, and more than likely were caught by surprise (EG with void shields down) so the effect is mitigated somewhat.


Page 127

It was all so chillingly familiar. Reminiscences of the quest-vision that had come to him in the bitter watches of the night on the eve of battle flooded his mind, overlaying what he was seeing before him. Like solid reality rather than insubstantial echoes of the future.

Ansgar stopped dead in his tracks. He looked up at the partially buried idol-edifice that erupted out of the sand like a creature released from Armageddon's underworld by the tumult of war on the world above: it was a fallen dog-headed colossus.

Ansgar's visor display flickered with amber and green runes and overlaid vectors as his suit's sensors analysed the Warhound's carcass. But he could only see the iron monster from his Emperor-sent vision, that had set him on the path to becoming one of the Emperor's chosen warriors, and the sole champion among the forces of the Solemnus Crusade.

A gust of cold, desert wind swept between the chemical rusted girders and joints of the titan's buckled legs, keening like a wailing widow, whipping up sand and ash into a spinning dust devil.
The armour glass windshields of the canine titan's eyes were splintered and broken. Beyond, inside the dog-headed cockpit, Ansgar could see the vitrified skeletons of the Warhound's crew, still strapped into their age-cracked leather seats on the command deck, the surface of their charred and fused bones bubbled and blistered.

As I noted long before, Angsar's vision was accurate. Of particular interest is his observation of the Warhound Titan. His Artificer armour has its own inbuilt sensors that can do analysis vectors or suchnot. This scene tells us several things: First, the Warhound survived intact enough and unmelted sufficiently that its shape/profile was still distinctive enough for casual identification. That a Warhound (the weakest of Imperial Titans) survived this says much about the durability of other Titans (unshielded.) Second, the Warhound appears to be at least partly sunk into the ground, which suggests that the melting depth of the crater may be far more than a few centimeters, possibly several metres if not more, which further suggetss my earlier calcs were greatly conservative.

Page 138

It had taken Dvorad's engineering squads several hours to replace all the burnt-out circuits, to repair the damage caused by the electromagnetic pulse, and recalibrate as necessary. The task had been made more difficult than normal since, as a result of the EM-pulse, Tyrannus Maximus had lost thirteen servitors and seven tech-adepts. The massive electrical short circuits, that had wracked the ancient, had burned out critical components and had caused devastating strokes or explosive coronary failure to those frail human bodies wired into the war machine's vital systems. But the surviving adepts had not failed the god-machine or its mortal master.

Electronic circuitry in the Titan (which is why it was vulnerable to EMP of ocurse.) but the EMP also disbaaled/killed several servitors and techpriests, not least of which because of all teh electrical wiring connecting the crews ot the Titan. Dangers of such connections, I suppose.

Page 138

Through scanner eyes he saw the two gargants, less than two kilometres away, powering towards Tyrannus Maximus through the dust storm on stomping tank-sized feet.

The ork war engines were shorter than the towering, noble Tyrannus Maximus, but they were both still immense monstrosities, topping out at over thirty metres each. Their squat bodies were a mass of riveted, disparate elements, almost as broad as they were tall. Smoke belched from factory chimneys protruding from the top of the gargants and steam vented from various rifts in their armoured hides.

Ork gargants heading towards the Warlord. Less than 2 km away, 30 metres tall, nearly that as broad.

Page 141

Another barrage of missiles and mass-reactive shells fell on the titan. The command crew felt their detonations even through the metres-thick armour of the great tyrant. On reflection, they were lucky the orkish machines hadn't turned up earlier when they were utterly defenceless.

Metres thick armour resisting missile and shell fire from the gargants.

Page 145

A blast of super-heated energy, like that found only at the seething molten heart of a planet, ripped through the upper body of the giant ork war machine. The gargant was torn apart by the blast as it was consumed by an expanding ball of oily, green fire.

Pieces of shrapnel the size of tanks pounded Tyrannus Maximus's shields and adamantium hide. But the clattering tattoo of the bombardment was drowned out on the command deck as the princeps's scream rang through the cockpit of the titan. The initial pain of the vice-grip was nothing compared to the agony of losing the empathically impulse-linked arm.

All that remained of the gargant was the burning shell of its lower body. The rest of it was nothing more than scrap metal dotting the industrial desert around the battle site.

Volcano cannon again - magma comparsion useless (except implying that the name is more than just decorative. Blasts apart Gargant.

Page 149

Jarold's adapted drop pod had been thrown horrendously off course by the ork aerial assault, its main engine destroyed in the attack. Just before the tumbling pod hit the ground, at a speed of over three hundred kilometres an hour, the retro jets had fired, almost righting the pod and dramatically slowing its descent. The base of the pod had crumpled on impact and then the whole twenty-tonne craft had rolled as it hit the steep side of a rocky, ash-blown valley. It had come to rest at the bottom of the high-sided ravine, a battered wreck, its Black Templar markings obscured by the abrasions caused by its crash-landing. And yet, remarkably, Brother Jarold had been preserved, the ancient armoured shell of his body intact inside the pod, and he had been able to tear himself free using his mighty power fist and his sheer mass. He had thanked the almighty Emperor, Primarch Dorn and Lord Sigismund that he was able to walk away from the wreckage of the deployment craft.

Now on the ground, he knew that he was several hundred kilometres away from the point of planetfall that had been decided for Fighting Company Adlar's assault on the ork reinforcements. He also knew that by the time he was able to reach the original deployment zone the battle would have been over long ago and his brethren would have moved on.

The first thing he did was to try to contact his battle-brothers and alert them to his survival, but he could get nothing but static in response to his hails. It was the same with the fleet in orbit and even with Tartarus Hive Command. He did not know if his long distance communicators had been damaged in the crash, or whether there was something about the savage toxic environment that was blocking his signal. As far as his battle-brothers were concerned the venerable Brother Jarold was lost to them, and there was no way he could inform them otherwise.

Jarold's contact with the ground, and survival. His communcations, like others, are fucked up by the enviorment. Also implied he could not cross "several hundred kilometers" in enough time to reach his comrades, however long that was (less than ad ay maybe?)

Page 149

Fortunately, as his pod plummeted towards the surface of Armageddon, its surveyors and cogitator had still fed information into the dreadnought – data regarding wind-speed, air temperature, telemetry and topography – right up to the moment it crash-landed. As a result he knew where he was now and he knew the co-ordinates of the Black Templars' secondary rendezvous point, at the titan legion base of Hellsbreach.

His pod had computers and sensors that constantly fed him data en-route.

Page 153

Like as not, these ruinous landmarks were the legacy of the first battle fought to repel the arch-warlord Ghazghkull Mag Urak Thraka, fifty standard years before.

They could even date from the time when the planet had been overran by the forces of the Fell Powers, five centuries before, Jarold considered. These wastes had been claimed by the incessant pollution of the hives and their never-sleeping manufactories thousands of years before the daemon-marines of the World Eaters traitor legion stepped foot on Armageddon. Jarold sincerely hoped not, and formed a hasty prayer to the Emperor. There were still a few relics of that dark time, dotted across Armageddon, cursed forever by the foul taint of Chaos, and to venture into such places was to invite soul-destroying insanity and a lingering death.

Again remnants of Angrons attack on armageddon, something that (oddly) Jarald knows about as well.

Page 153

Jarold was impressed by the constitution and resolute attitude of the guardsmen. None of the men had complained at all since they had left the bunker – not even the trooper with his arm bound up in a sling – although one of the men seemed more sullen and withdrawn than the others. They just seemed glad to be alive and to have a purpose to their actions again. Of course they were not as fast as a company of Space Marines on a forced march, but it was easy to forget what sort of tolerances the human body could take when you were a genetically-modified superhuman, and these men were bearing up incredibly well.

But then again he and the legionaries were not so unalike. They all needed assistance to help them breathe in this polluted atmosphere. They all relied on their weapons to mete out the Emperor's retribution against the alien hordes and they all wanted to see Armageddon, if not the entire Imperium, rid of them. They all had vital reasons to reach Imperial-held territories, and they all had the same determination to make it.

And this, folks, shows you why I like Jarold and why I like this portrayal of the Black Templars. They arne't fucking assholes and they show respect and admiration for their fellow troopers, even their "inferiors." They provide a nice contrast to the Iron Hands and Gdolkin in the novel of the same name.

Also Space Marines move fasteR (at least on a forced march) than humans.

Page 154

Bane took out his magnoculars and put them to the lenses of his protective goggles. The distant desert was suddenly thrown into magnified detail.

Approximately a kilometre ahead of them was the beginning of another black scar running across the desert. It had been gouged through the sand and ash for a distance of roughly half a kilometre, from the southeast to their right. It intersected their path at a forty-five degree angle and ended in a smoking mound ahead to the northwest.

Straeker's plane.

Page 155

Within half an hour, with the sun sinking behind the distant horizon looking like the red eye of Ghazghkull Thraka himself, the entire party had collected at the crash-site.

They made about a kilometer or so in half an hour or so. 2-3 km/r Which gives us an idea of "forced march" for the Guard, albeit it is worth noting that several of them were injured and it is debatable whether the STeel Legion are used to footslogging.

Page 155

Despite being a burnt-out, smoking shell, the plane was still distinguishable as an Imperial craft. It was a Lightning, a one-man fighter plane that utilised plasma engines unlike the crude fossil fuel jet engines of the ork smokers. The power core had ruptured and resulted in the destruction of the plane, but something else entirely was responsible for initiating the chain reaction. Large bullet holes riddled the side of the fuselage and the remains of one wing. The other had been sheared off at some point in the crash and flung away into the desert.

Imperial Lightning fighter, using "plasma engines' which suggests in turn it was powered by a plasma reactor Which just goes to show you that like tanks, not all fighters are "Forgeworld" standard.


Page 157

With a single sweep of his optical sensors, Jarold locked onto the speeding jerrybuilt harpoon-gun carrying vehicle, calculating speed and trajectory in a millisecond. His storm bolter fired. The buggy exploded in a ball of burning promethium. Grains of mica glass were whipped up by the blast of wind produced by the swelling fireball and skittered over the dreadnought's adamantium body.

Approximate reaction time (at least as far as his computers and senses go, not neccesairly movement) of Jarrold's Dreadnought body - in this case at least.

Page 158

Sentinel Three and its pilot, Trooper Gohbah Kames, was gone. Some monstrous weapon – a hugely powerful energy cannon – mounted on the aft-section of the battlewagon had obliterated the scout-walker with a single blast. The shrapnel that had bombarded Jarold's body had come from the Sentinel. There was now virtually nothing left of the walker. Trooper Gohbah Kames had been vaporised by the massive energy discharge of the explosion.

Ork weapon on a battlewagon had "vaporized" a guardsmen. I'm calling it at least double if not triple digit megajoule, because that is "Dakka" for an Ork


Page 159

Rumi was seeing to a number of minor scratches and gashes which, if he didn't act quickly to sterilise the injuries and seal the torn garb of the victims, could prove just as fatal if the poisons in the atmosphere got to them.

An indication of the importance and level of medical attention and capability available to the Steel Legion squad - they can treat and sterilise injuries (and seal/repair their outfits) in the field.

Page 159

Slower moving and larger than the other vehicles, it had been the target for a fair amount of Imperial fire. And it had soaked it up. Despite being holed by Jarold's cannon and having riveted glyphs and pieces of armour plate blown free by lasfire, the battlewagon was still operable. It was only the ork passengers that hadn't proved impervious to the weapons' discharge. After the monster trukk's driver had died the ork-tank had obligingly trundled to a stop.

Imperial Guard lasgun fire had both penetrated and blown off sections of riveted armour plate. According to IA8, Ork battlewagons have between 20mm and 110mm thick armour plating (Between 2-11 cm thick) and assuming a 5mm diamter, microsecond duration pulse laser train composed of a score of 4 kj or so pulses (80 kj total) you get a lil over 2 cm of penetration and 2 cm or so hole (which is the usual witdth of a lasgun shot), while pentratign 10-11 cm inside requires over a hundred pulses (and hundreds of kilojoules in similar paramters. Broadly speaking, we are talking high double digitt to low triple digit kjs for the lasgun. Whether it is single shots or a barage of shots, of course, we don't know, but its hardly beyond their established capabiliites - either as single shot or a burst of multiple shots.

Page 160

Having looked inside the cabin and taken in the crudely-fashioned, over-sized orkish controls, Verhoef, the platoon's mechanical specialist, had declared that he would be able to drive the monstrosity, or at least make a competent attempt at it. Bane had agreed.

I imagine having to run mechanised vehicles the Steel Legion needs a sort of mechanical specialist.

Page 160

Due to its size, the battlewagon was perfectly capable of carrying the hulking six-tonne dreadnought as well. It also came with its own on board armoury.

Now Jarold is six tonnes

Page 160 - Sergeant Bane has a hellpistol.

Page 160

"We didn't see him at first." Broek explained. "He was lying under the body of one of the orks. It had fallen on top of him after one of our party blew half the brute's head off."

Lasfire (unknown number of shots) blows "half" an Ork's head off. Should be at least equal to blowing apart a normal human's head. Considering the size and durability of Orks - definietly double digit kj at least. Someone will doubtless suggest this is hyperbole, and I would consider that... except that in this book (and others) we've seen lasfire do it with single shots. So it doesn't really matter if I take it seriously or not, as it actually happens later on.

In any case I'm not really seriously trying to account for the superior durability and damage resistance of the Orks, and worst case the Order of magnitude estimate falls into single digits. HORRORS.

Page 163

The ork tank began to move forwards in jerking hops as Trooper Verhoef became accustomed to the bulky, brutal controls. In no time at all the adaptable mechanic had familiarised himself with the battlewagon's operation, despite the fact that the controls were designed for a creature almost twice as big as he was in every proportion. And so Bane's platoon, with its two unexpected additions, was on its way again.

Orks are twice as tall/wide/broad as a human, or they may mass only twice as much. This may suggest the Orks are twice as heavy, up to 8 times as heavy, depending on source. Given what other sources say, It can go either way easily, Orks can mass only a few hundred kilos, or they cna mass half a ton or more.


Page 164-165

This was no ordinary storm. According to Techmarine Isendur's auspex readings, it looked like the building tempest was rapidly turning into one of Armageddon's deadliest killers. Far worse than any ork bommer raid, potentially more destructive than an orbital strike, and more threatening even than Ghazghkull Thraka's Waaagh! – a radiation storm was heading their way.

This was a meteorological monster – a creation of thousands of years of unchecked industrial pollution, the aftermath of several world-devastating wars and a climate traumatized by the resulting series of ecological disasters. The only things that were capable of withstanding the battering of a rad-storm were the shielded hive-cities of Armageddon and the mountains themselves. Everything else was at the mercy of the storm's primal fury. At its heart a rad-storm could create an environment ten times more inhospitable than the burning Fire Wastes at the planet's northern pole.

It could have begun as a dust storm, blowing out of the ash wastes, but as it had passed over the irradiated wilderness it had picked up the malignant sickness that war and engineering contamination had left on the plains. The tempest had mutated and grown until it had become the beast that was now approaching the Space Marines' position.

Rad storms.. an indication of how fucked up the enviroment on Necromunda is. Suggested to be potentially as devastating as an orbital strike and worse than the fire wastes. If we compared the rad storm (low end) to real life storm power/energy outputs, we're probably talking kiloton/megaton range orbital strikes - again this is not beyond stated capabilities (Battle of Macragge mentioned in the 'Nid codexes, planetstrike, abilities of lance strikes on planets, Atlas class ground bombardment warheads, etc.)

And again Space Marine armour does not seem well suited to standing up against prolonged radiation.

PAge 166

"We have to get under cover." Adlar said, addressing the ornately armoured Marine standing at his side. The dying rays of Armageddon's sun caught the burnished edges of the metallic leaves encircling his helmet.

"Agreed, my lord." Emperor's Champion Ansgar said. "Exposing the men to the radiation of the storm would be an unnecessary risk. I suspect it will be worse than the levels present at Hellsbreach."
"Isendur, how long do you think it will take the rad-storm to pass us?"
"Without accurate long-range sensor readings I am having to rely on what I can calculate from my auspex." the techmarine explained.
"Give me an educated guess."
"I predict that it will have passed by morning."

Techmarine auspex can give very (rough at least) estimates of weather conditions and predictions.

Also the rad storm is considered an "unneccesary" risk - in that it might be survivable for them, but might inflict some undesirable long term damage (to the gene seed) and survivability seems more due to their own physiology rather than armour resilience. Maybe the Solemnus crusade was unfortunate in the power armour department.

Also the suggestion that the rad storm woudl be worse tha conditions at Hells Breach Titan facility (the one turned into a 2 km crater by the nuke) again hints at orbital strikes being potentially as powerful as nuclear weaponry - which if we think about it is not all that surprising.

Page 168

The edifice was truly immense. It rose from the vitrified plain more like a mountain of rusted metal than the wreckage of a spacecraft. And that was part of the cause of Gervais's appalled horror, the novitiate Space Marine realised. The fifty metre tall, angled sloping hull, was only one tiny fraction of the whole vessel. All that was visible above the smooth surface of the glassy plain were the massive rocket boosters that had powered the hulk through the frozen depths of space – and these alone stretched for half a kilometre across the blast-transmuted wastes.

Conjecture was that the ork ship – for it was definitely orkish in nature – had crashed at this spot fifty years ago, during the Great Beast's last invasion attempt. Thrown down from the heavens by the might of the Emperor, and trailing a tail of fire, the dying hulk had hit the wastes. The impact had buried it under the tonnes of sand and spoil laid down over the millennia, and the intense heat-blast of the resulting explosion had turned the silicates to glass. It was not unlike the polished black obsidian produced by the fires of volcanic eruptions, spreading for several kilometres in every direction.

Gervais could see a section of the hull's plating that had been scarred using some industrial process or a melta to form letters five metres high. These markings triggered some impulse within the machine spirit-mind of his suit's cogitator unit and a name appeared in glowing runes on the heads-up display of his visor. It was the closest that human speech could come to translating the ork glyphs: Zaggraskar.

Gervais (not a full Marine, mind) has a suit machien spirit that can translate Orkish directly onto his visor.

Also the Ork ship in question is at least 50 metres tall, at least half a kilometre wide, and survived an impact implied to be kilometres across and that sunk it fairly deep in molten sand. A possible testament to Ork construction, such as it is.

[Connor MacLeod]

Part 4 and I'm done with this. Moving on next time.

Page 169

Then the Space Marines began to troop through the torn hole into the vessel-wreck, the beams of lamps attached to their armoured suits piercing the darkness with cones of hazy white light.
Although a Space Marine's enhanced vision allowed him to see in almost total darkness, inside the wreck it was as black as oblivion itself, with little ambient light to help their sight. It was better to go in prepared than have one of the brothers suffer some accident in the darkness that could ultimately alter the outcome of the whole company's mission.

Even with good night vision, light helps it seems.


Page 171

Before he could fire, a red blur the size of a wolf hurtled out of the end of the pipe, smashing into Fiamain's chest. The Space Marine was thrown backwards, the meltagun knocked from his hands.
Gervais looked at the creature now squatting on the Black Templar's chest plate in horror. It was about the same size as the wolves that inhabited the foothills of the mountains back on Solemnus and it had the fangs to match. But that was where the similarity ended. It appeared to be little more than a bloated, spherical body – mostly made up of a large fanged maw – supported on two, muscular, almost amphibian legs, and with a stub on a blunt tail. Its pockmarked skin was the colour of dried blood and dotted with patches of hardened scales.
..

Bolter fire tore into the creature, exploding chunks of meat from its bulbous, bloated body and tearing it apart in seconds.

Some sort of Feral Squig, I suspect.

Page 174

"Techmarine Isendur," he called into his helmet-mic, "can you scan the layout of this part of the wreck?"

"Yes sir," came the techmarine's monotone reply. "What are you looking for?"

Adlar stamped down hard, crushing a squig's face beneath his ceramite-shod heel.

"Away out of this passageway. A room. Somewhere we can make our stand as one, with the support of our brethren, not fighting lone battles against a common foe."

"Understood."

It wasn't that Adlar minded being trapped inside the wreckage of the ork hulk, dispensing the Emperor's justice, and purging it of its alien infestation, but he and his men had another mission to complete. Chaplain Wolfram and Brother Ansgar might have had a hard time convincing him that to follow the champion's Emperor-sent vision was the right course of action at first, but once he set his mind to something he would not cease in his pursuit of that path until either he had succeeded or had died trying, in the Emperor's name.

"Scan complete." It was Isendur again. "This corridor opens out into a large chamber forty-two metres further on, around a right-hand bend. I am detecting several heat sources there. The path we have already followed will lead us back out but I'm reading a large number of bio-scans heading towards us from that direction." the techmarine stated impassively, his voice devoid of any emotion. Adlar sometimes felt Isendur was rather too like the machines it was his calling to minister to.

"Squigs?"
"No, my lord. The bio-readings are ork in origin."

The Techmarine's auspex can make a complete scan of the surrounding part of the reck, identify heat sources and differentiate between different species of Orkoid.

Page 176

He kicked a squig clear of the fighting warriors, and destroyed it with a blast of glowing energy from his plasma pistol.
..

The burning body of the squig fell to the floor, fizzing and popping as its unnatural, alien flesh dissolved in the flames.

One of those "non powerful" plasma pistols that doesn't instantly cremate Probably still at least hundreds of kilojoules if not several megajoules to dehydrate the thing enough to let it catch fire if the plasma isnt burning it directly, not to mention quite probably flash burning the bugger.

Page 176

Secured to rings in the floor at the centre of cavern was a creature that looked just like the things that had attacked Fighting Company Adlar as they advanced into the wrecked spacecraft, only it was many times larger. At least twice as tall as a Space Marine, the beast's skin was almost black in colour, making it look more like a dreadnought than a squig.

Super Squig, or more probably a Squiggoth.

Page 177

Sergeant Pendaran took a bead on a stringy-limbed creature clambering hand-over-hand up the rungs set into the wall beneath his position. The bolt pistol roared in his hand and Pendaran felt the recoil kick in his strong wrist. The feral ork was thrown from the ladder and blown into chunks of bloody green meat as it dropped back towards the floor of the chamber.

Bolt pistol kncoks back and blows apart an ork with a burst from the pistol (single or multiple shots we dont know.) Either way this is damn powerful considering it is *probably* grenade level damage.

Page 177

Halwn took aim and fired. A single bolter shell exploded the ork's skull.

As impressive as above in its own way, an Orks skull is going to be many times bigger than a normal human's (at least 2 and as many as 8, given the aformentioned hint about differences in human/Ork dimensions) Definitely at least several grams if not tens of grams of TNT equivalent.

Page 178

He had heard it said that both orks and the related squigs developed from fungal spores. After the hulk crashed into the ash desert during the conflict five decades before, spores scattered by the resulting destruction of many orkoid creatures had in time found themselves in an environment that caused their propagation. The various fungi had developed and had eventually somehow produced yet more of the tenacious aliens. Isolated in the atomic-scarred wilderness, away from any form of established ork ''civilization'', the green-skins had developed in a feral state, preying on the squigs that developed alongside them in their primitive culture.

This seems to grant credence to the spore theory, despite Angsar's earlier doubting of its validity. and it also shows how Orks can thrive in almost any enviroment, even a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland.

Page 178

A feral greenskin, wearing a clattering string of squig bones around its neck, flung itself at Bliant who blasted its chest open with a stuttering blast from his bolter pistol – an instant kill-shot.

Bolter pistol barrage (severla bolts) blows open the Orks' chest.

Page 179

Bliant saw the krak grenade gripped in Elazar's right hand as he drew back his arm to throw it. Then the events of the scene unfolding in front of him seemed to slow before the apothecary's eyes.

The squig, its red coal eyes locked on Brother Elazar, moved far more quickly than seemed possible for something its size. It was on Elazar in a split second. The Marine had begun to hurl his arm forwards again as the beast lunged towards him. It caught the armoured warrior between its jaws and with a sickening crunch bit through ceramite, flesh and bone with equal ease.
His body severed in two by the monster's terrifyingly powerful jaws, Elazar's lower body collapsed onto the floor, spilling intestines. The squig tossed the rest of him up into the air. It caught the Marine's upper body in its mouth and swallowed with an audible gulp.

The very next moment the alien monstrosity was blown apart as the krak grenade exploded, the squig's body turning into a red mist under the force of the detonation. Everything within a twenty-metre radius was showered with alien ichor and the remains of brave Brother Elazar.

Super Squig (dreadnought sized implied, many times bigger than an ork probably) blasted apart by Krak grenade. Probably at least a kilo or two of TNT. Rather interesting that Krak grenades seem to have an "area of effect" once more in this case.


Page 183

But where the desert had been a baking chemical hell during the hours of daylight, it was now bitterly cold. Sensors in the gigantic man-machine's surveyor arrays indicated that temperatures had dropped to well below freezing.

Methane ice formed on the outer hull of the titan. With every massive stride, sheets of frozen chemical fluids cracked and splintered, and icicles crashed down to the ash-sands from adamantium greaves and creaking joints.

The men and servitors inside the god machine were insulated from the freezing cold by the metres-thick armour. They were warmed by the massive amounts of heat produced by the war machine's various systems which kept the atmosphere on many decks of the land-leviathan uncomfortably hot and humid. The core of the plasma reactor itself generated ferociously hot temperatures, like those within the boiling magma chamber of a volcano, that provided the means to power the god engine through the desert wastes.

Titan surviving a frozen night time on Armageddon. Metres thick armour provides insulation from cold as well as the internal heating of the machine (which is incredibly hot.) Implied temperature of a plasma reactor is "hot as a boiling magma chamber" which is going to be thousands of degrees at most. This is not even remotely close to temperatures needed for nuclear fusion, so plasma reactors in this case are either some sort of "cold" (EG magical) fusion, or they aren't fusion at all.

Page 184

With every colossal step, the ancient covered a distance of twenty metres. The war machine had been powered down, repaired, and powered up again. Since then they had travelled just over one hundred and twenty-four kilometres, according to Kasl Varne's readings.

Ekhardt had not slept for long after his latest battle. His crew did not disturb him. It was not their place to do so, for the princeps gave more than any other man aboard the god engine. It was not uncommon for the princeps of a titan that had suffered traumatic injuries in battle to suffer some form of sympathetic trauma, either physical, mental or emotional, and sometimes a combination. It was the duty of his crew to allow him to recover in his own time, in his own way.

..

He had felt fire consume his arm from inside and out during his desperate attack on the crocodile-jawed gargant. It had taken servitor fire fighting teams two hours to finally extinguish the fires burning within the devastated laser cannon. The weapon was now utterly useless and Ekhardt still found his left hand locked into a clenched claw, barely able to bend his fingers.

A matter of hours, certainly less than a full night (given our princeps did not get a full night's rest) happened. and again a 20 metre stride. In a 4-8 hour period the speed owuld be between 16 and 30 km/hr (off road.) Either slightly slower than or more than 50% faster than an off-road Reaver by Forge World stats

Page 186

It was certainly true that in the opening days of the war the Great Beast's forces had deployed via the many ready-made asteroid-fortresses classified as roks. Wherever the massive mountain-sized strongholds landed, right across the planet, the orks were able to instantly establish mighty citadels from which poured warmongering, battle-hungry orks, rumbling battlewagons and terrible idol-gargants.

Ork Roks are "mountain-sized"

Page 187

"The Gatling Blaster is operating within standard parameters and we still have Turbo Lasers as well as most auxiliary weapons platforms." Orrek responded.

"How would we fare in a fight?" Ekhardt asked, his tone grim.

"Without the Volcano Cannon, our capability has been severely compromised."

"I don't want problems!" the princeps snapped. "Give me solutions."

"It might be possible to divert some of the energy channelled to the laser cannon via the power couplings to the Turbo Laser shoulder mounts.' Orrek suggested, 'but I'd need the chief engineer's expert advice on that to be absolutely certain."

"Dvorad, could it be done?"

"With the Machine God's blessings, if the correct hexes were cast, I think it could. I'd need to get half my teams on to it."

The Volcano cannon made up a significant fraction (even majority) fo the Titan's firepower, - quite possibly several times more powerful than the other systems combined. Althoguh its implied the turbolasers coudl be rigged to at least temporarily close this gap somewhat.

Page 188

"I picked something up, just briefly, through the static and interference, but there was something."

"What was it?" Orrek asked, his voice urgent and anxious. "Are we about to come under attack again?"

"No." Varne reassured him, "at least not as far as I'm aware. It was on the long-range sensors."

"But I thought you said our long-range surveyors and auguries weren't operating." Ekhardt insisted.

"They weren't, but the machine spirits slaved to them have been on-line and have still been scanning our surroundings nonetheless. They just weren't detecting anything through the static." the tactical officer explained. "For some reason – don't ask me why – there was the merest break in this damned interference and the surveyors were able to take a scan of what lies ahead of us."

..

"It will just take a moment for the cogitators to decode the signal and make sense of the data, my lord." Varne said deferentially.

The princeps began to dram the fingers of his liver-spotted right hand on the carved mahogany arm of his command-throne. Varne held his breath as the logic engines interpreted the information collected by the augury arrays.

"The surveyors have scanned the higher ground to the east and have detected the contours of what appears to be a wide crater." Varne began tripping over his words in his nervousness.

"Volcanic?" Ekhardt asked, bluntly to the point.

"Quite possibly." Varne replied, "particularly when you consider the high levels of volcanism across the planet. But these readings would suggest that it's no longer active. However, the sensors also picked up readings of a huge radioactive source." Varne turned his pupilless eyes on Ekhardt. There was an appalled look on the tactical officer's face.

..

"Do the readings suggest that whatever happened to Hellsbreach happened there?"

"No, sir." Varne said. "The readings I have here do not suggest radioactive material of a weapons grade."

"A fuel source then." Engineer Dvorad contributed.
...
"And an unstable one." Varne added.
"Orks." the princeps hissed.
..

"And you say that this radioactive source Tyrannus Maximus detected is of immense size?"
"Yes, sir."
"Can you tell if it is contained within just one construct?"
"No, sir. Without further scans to confirm, the reading could denote one fuel source or several smaller ones contained within close proximity of one another – say a kilometre apart at most."

Discussion of the detection capabilities, despite the intereference/static, of the Titan's sensors, in detecting and idfferentiating radioactive materials of a type. Also, the long range sensors are quite clearly slaved to servitors, which feed info to the officers.


Page 189

" How far are we from the crater?' Ekhardt asked his tactical officer.
"Approximately one hundred and eighty-three kilometres."
"And how long will it take us to reach it?"
"I estimate that, at our current speed, we should reach it within another six hours, sir."

6 hours to cross 183 km, and the passive sensors, under these conditions, can detect the crater and the radiation sources they identified at that distance as well. which is impressive to say the least, IMHO. 183 km in 6 hours comes otu to 30.5 km/hr, which definitely makes this Warlord far faster than a REaver Titan, despite suppsoedly massing as much as the damn thing. Yay for Forge World? This may not even be "top speed" as they suggest it is current speed, rather than going all out.

Incidentally, this suggests the Titan is also far faster (off road!) than even a Leman Russ Conqueror, which was a Tank designed to allow the Skitarii to keep up with Titans. This in turn suggests Conquerors should be capable of an off road speed at least of 30-40 kph.

Page 193

The two of them had taken turns at piloting the battlewagon, changing shifts every hundred kilometres or two hours.

BAttlewagon making off road speed of maybe around 50 kph or so, maybe a bit faster.

Page 200

Gynt could see the massive, steamroller-wheeled battlewagon motoring around the end of the ridge into the open mouth of the valley. It was traveling at about forty-five kilometres an hour, kicking up dust behind it from its caterpillar tracks and huge wheels. The huge kannon, and two twin-linked shootas, mounted on the back of the machine were spewing forth high-calibre death into the backs of the surprised orks.

..

Orks either fell before the haphazard hail of fire, or were obliterated by the heavy kannon shells. They whined as they fell spinning all around. But it was not only the battlewagon that was creating such heavy casualties amongst the greenskin horde that scrambled for cover across the airfield.

Striding towards them, parallel to the tank-like wagon, was the black-armoured, halo-crested hulking form of Brother Jarold of the Black Templars Adeptus Astartes.

Muzzle-flash and smoke obscured the barrels of his spinning autocannon and blasting storm bolter. Alien flesh turned to a green sappy mist under the pounding blasts as orks and gretchin were torn apart by the heavy weapons' fire.

Brother Jarrold AND our battlewagon are both moving at 45 kph. By battlewagon standards this is not insanely fast, but by Dreadnought standards it is blindingly so. One possible explanation why Jarrold is slightly more than half the mass of a regular Dreadnought

Certain sources (like Mercy run from Planetkill) implie Leman Russ tanks are faster than Battlewagons, which may suggest that Russes can achieve an off road speed of 45 kph (which is echoed by IA8 anyhow.) and echoes the implication that Conquoerrs can achieve 30-40 kph off road (which is also demonstrated both in Gunheads and Honour Guard.)

Page 204

The ork smoker banked and turned, as if in preparation to make a strafing ran on the airfield. Jarold's suit-cogitator calculated the craft's projected trajectory and fed the result directly into the Black Templar's surgically altered brain.
..

Jarold stood his ground in the middle of the cratered runway, six tonnes of immovable, braced metal. Autocannon fire tore up the rough tarmac, spitting shards of asphalt into the air.

Jarold is six tons again, and faces down an Ork fighter, his Dreadnought cogitator providing tracjetory predictions of its path.

Page 205

In a roar of fire Jarold opened up with both his weapons. Fragmentation shells tore from the autocannon at a terrifying rate, in a welter of fire, smoke and noise, while the mini-missiles that were the storm bolter's ammunition also found their mark.

Autocannon fire raked the ork plane as Jarold's weapons gave vent to the anger and injustice of the wrongs done to his Chapter by the greenskins. Metal tore from weapon's sponsons, wings and fuselage as hard round shells spanged from the armoured hull.

The windshield shattered. The engine manifold tore open. Shoota mountings buckled. Ailerons were holed and black smoke began pour from the plane's wounds. Ork blood and brain matter splattered the inside of the cockpit as an autocannon shell took out the pilot.
Then the fuel tanks erupted.

Sheathed in flame, trailing fire, the fighta-bommer went into a spin. Only metres from the ground the burning plane soared over the immobile dreadnought. As the plane completed another death-dive rotation, a wingtip clipped the dreadnought and Brother Jarold was spinning after the wreckage of the plane, tossed aside by the impact as if he were no more than a child's doll.

The dreadnought rolled for almost ten metres through the dust and sand thrown up by the Shockwave of the passing smoker before coming to a stop. Behind him the burning wreckage of the fighta-bommer ploughed into the fractured tarmac of the runway.

Jarold's autocannon (assault cannon? Maybe an auto cannon rigged up as an assault cannon, which would be INSANE) not only obliertares the fighter (not just explosive, but fragmentation shells) whilst the Ork gunfire ricochets off his own armour. Even more insane is that Jarrold's suit survives the collision with the Figtha-bomma (which masses tens of tons easily compared to Jarrold's mere six tons) without suffering worse than having one of his guns torn away.

PAge 206

Troopers Gynt and Steinbeck rounded the back of the second hangar to the right of the runway and immediately ducked back into cover as fire from some, as yet unknown, ork weapon tore up the dusty ground in front of them. The rattling blasts continued and the corrugated wall of the hangar became peppered with holes a couple of centimeters across.

Some nasty ork weapon is firing 20-30mm wide bullets.

Page 206

Steinbeck snapped off a killing shot, putting a cauterising las-bolt through the skull of the ork as Gynt hosed the gaggle of smaller greenskins with his flame-thrower.

"cauterising las bolt" through an Orks' skull, suggesting thermal damage. although no idea of size of wound or depth (except it must be a kill shot to the brain.) Assuming a 1 cm diameter hole 10 cm deep and raised to boiling point around 150 kilojoules. Call it double or triple digit kj for purely thermal (rather than explosive) damage.

Also the Steel Legion had a flamer as well as a sniper and a mortar. They're rather well equipped troops, aren't they (magnoculars, helmet comms, a medic, auspex, chronos, etc.)

Page 206

There was a dull boom and through the smoke drifting across the runway from the burning wreckage Gynt saw the battlewagon emerge like some growling beast of metal. Its main kannon fired again and the front of the grounded fighta-bommer was torn apart as the kannon-shell detonated.

Kannon shell obliterates another fighta-bommer.

Page 208

There was a sharp crack and the ork crashed into the dust next to Straeker, with half its head missing. Half-kneeling on the ground was Broek, his just-discharged lasgun in hand.

Single lasgun shot blows away half an Ork's skull. Again Orks are 2-8x more massive than humans, which goes for the skull, envermind being innately much, much tougher. At least equal to blowing apart a normal humans head, and more probably to blowing apart several. Single to double digit without a doubt (explosively) and quite possibly low triple digit on the high side.

Of course if its vaporization the calcs can get more insane

Page 212

Verhoef considered Brother Jarold's new arm to be his greatest achievement. They had been right to salvage the Sentinel's lascannon and bring it with them.

At first the dreadnought had rejected the idea that the Sentinel's weapon be spliced onto his ancient armoured body, even though he had lost his autocannon attachment. He had soon come round to the idea, however, once Verhoef and Sergeant Bane calmly suggested that it would mean the devout crusader would be able to carry on his fight to purge Armageddon of greenskins.

But the venerable brother had doubted Verhoef s ability to accomplish such a task. He was, Jarold pointed out, only a man after all and not an Astartes techmarine. Verhoef had taken the slight with good grace and had at last managed to persuade the dreadnought to let him make an attempt, having explained in minute detail exactly how he was going to perform the procedure.

The task finally complete, after several hours of bodged engineering and the assistance of four legionaries, Verhoef was rightly proud of his handiwork. He had managed to get the Sentinel weapon attached, with minimal functionality, but such a temporary repair was miracle enough.

Yet another testament to the improvisational skills of the steel legion's impromptu mechanic, an indication that Steel Legion guardsmen are rather more educated than most other guardsmen, proof that IG forces can and do learn to do things that the AdMech probably would crucify them for (or send them to the penal legions, as we see in Kill Team and most importantly, a testament to what a fucking great character Jarold is - what you aren't told is how Jarrold praises Verhoef for his efforts, rather effusively (enough to embarass the Guardsmen.) How many Space Marines who aren't Salamanders or Ragnar Blackmane would do that?

Like I said Brother Jarold fucking ROCKS.

Page 213

"I don't know, sergeant," Straeker said, looking at the auspex-scanner Verhoef had managed to patch into the plane's primitive sensor array. "This ork equipment is pretty basic. I'm reading a spike on one wavelength of some sort. I'm guessing it's radiation."

I dont know where they got the auspex/scanner from, but yet again we see the Guard mechanic has the skills and knowhow to improvise.

Page 215

The Land Speeder crested the rise of the slag-dunes. Suddenly there it was, spread out before them: a rift-edged valley over twenty kilometres across at its widest point, or so the Speeder's sensor-augurs were reporting, delineated by rocky outcrops and projections. And rising from the broad valley floor, still ten kilometres away from the Speeder, was the vast caldera crater of a dormant volcano.

Brother Horek gasped. Despite all the things he had seen since being inducted fully into the Black Templars Chapter, following the liberation of Solemnus, it was still an impressive sight. And it was just as Brother Ansgar had described it.

The Land Speeder's auspex was telling its crew that the cone was two point three six seven kilometres across its diameter. Its mountainous sides were steep and ridged with jagged projections, the cone rose to a height of two hundred metres.

Land speeder scouting run, detection ranges, and such.


Page 215

He tightened his grip on the trigger handles of the pintle-mounted heavy bolter, while the cogitor-slaved lascannon whirred and clicked, as it flitted from target to target as one rocky outcrop after another came within closer range of the gliding Speeder.

Given their approximat erange form teh crater, this may or may not give an implication about the effective ranges of such weapons - kilometres at least moere than likely.

Page 217

Thank Sigismund their short-range communications were still operating, despite the Land Speeder patrol being at the limit of their effective operations.

"short range" comms for the Astartes seem to coincide with the operationla limit of the Land Speeder, I guess.

Page 218

There was a bleep as the Land Speeder's cogitator received the data relating to the Fighting Company's current position, transmitted to the Excalibur by Techmarine Isendur.

Data relay from Techmarine to Landspeeder.

Page 226

Chaplain Wolfram's men came to a halt beneath the colossal jutting maw of the pipe as a jet of searing flame erupted over their heads in a deafening, animal roar. It was just as the techmarine's readings had predicted. The readings from Isendur's visor went off the scale. If any of the Space Marines were caught inside the pipe when the power plant vented a blast of burning exhaust gases like that one, even with the shielding of their power armour, they would be vaporised as if suffering a direct hit from an orbital laser strike.

Techmarines visor seem to have thermal sensors. Squad of (armoured) space marines vaporized by exhaust gases comparable to "orbital laser strike" ASsuming iron this would be at LEAST double digit gigajoules... probably way more. We aren't told what kind of laser strike, how many, etc. though of course.


Page 227

Tortain depressed the triggers and sent a volley of bolter shells directly into both the ork gunner and several of the smaller, gretchin-creatures milling around him. As he did so, the slaved lascannon peppered the rock-face beneath the emplacement. Then two shots hit a crudely bodged power feed. It was only a matter of seconds before the resulting chain reaction turned the laser turret into an expanding ball of vaporising energy that wiped out the rest of the screaming gretchin and took out the rock-face around it. All that was left was a fire-blackened, smoking hollow above the reinforced gateway.

"vaporising" las turret obliterates multipel gretchin.

Page 228

Before he died, Brother Tortain saw the swirling ochre sands rushing up towards him, his visor-display morbidly counting down the microseconds to impact.

visor display can count in microseconds, and Space Marine reactions can slow enough to actually notice this. (again note this does not mean Space Marines neccsarily MOVE with microsecond speeds. This is more an indicator of thinking/analytical speed or mental time dliation that we know some Marines can undergo through various ways.)

Page 228

The archaic heads-up visor display of Ansgar's armour flickered with information about the composition of the burning exhaust gases and flashing red runes informed him of the blistering hot temperatures all around him. Nonetheless, the heat of the blasts here was less intense than in other sections of the tunnels.

More on the quality of Angsar's gear and its sensory capabilities.

Page 229

The same safeguards, both biological and mechanical, that had stopped the Marines cooking in their suits whilst exerting themselves in the desert came into play even more vitally in the power plant's burning exhaust tunnels. If it was not bursts of magma-hot fire that had assaulted them, or gusts of super-heated steam, it had been the ambient furnace heat of the pipe-tunnels.

More on the resilience of armoured, s uperhuman Space Marines.

Page 229

The gas-blast ceased and Force Wolfram resumed their infiltration of the ex-Mechanicus forge-base. Brother Ansgar found himself wondering what arcane activities the clandestine servants of the Adeptus Mechanicus had once pursued here to need the star-like power provided by this geothermal station in the bed of the dormant volcano.

Draw your own conclusions

Page 230

Holstered at a belt around the creature's waist was a large, custom-built gun that looked like the orkish equivalent of a las-weapon.

Only bigger, noisier, and probably ejects casings and spews smoke. Probably a Blasta.

Page 236

Slugga firing wildly, the ork pounded towards Neophyte Gervais. The novice brother felt the bullets impacting against his body armour but they did nothing to stop his advance.

Slugga bullets utterly useless against Gervais armour.

Page 237

Gervais tried to jerk his body out of the way as the blasta fired. Then he was lying on his side in the sand as his fellow battle-brothers pounded around him engaging the orks. He felt like he had been hit by one of the aliens' bodge-job trakks. There was a hole the size of an ogryn's fist blown in his left shoulder plate, the ceramite blasted away down to the reinforced adamantium mesh beneath. The punch from the ork's blasta had caused a frightening amount of damage at such close range.

The blasta manage sto punch a "fist sizeD" hole through Gervais' pauldron (implied probably to be a good 20 cm or more wide, which is pretty damn nasty) Also shows that power armour is ceramite laid over adamantine mesh, or the mesh is woven into the ceramite itself as a reinforcing element (like reinforced concrete Is uppose.)

Page 240

The Warlord Titan was a monument to the artifice of the techpriests of Mars. Its head swayed thirty metres above the ground, searching out the greenskins. Then, with a cataclysmic roar, its batteries of weapons fired. Great bloody swathes were cut through the ranks of the aliens as the orks were blasted with laser fire as well as huge earth-shaking shells fired from the spinning barrels of a Gatling Blaster bigger than a Thunderhawk gunship.

Again the command center for ht eWarlord is 30 meters above the ground. Gatling blaster bigger than thunderhawk.


Page 242

The war machine's ancient, but religiously-maintained, weapons of mass destruction fired and the enemy died in their hundreds.

The secondary weapons (Gatling blaster, turbolasers) kill hundreds of Orks per shot. Still qualify as WMD apparently too


Page 257

Clouds of oily black smoke roiled from the cruciform shell of what had once been a power plant, abutting the caldera wall. No doubt it was tapping into the geo-thermal energies of the magma reservoir beneath the dormant volcanic cone to provide the manufactorum with the energy required to power its production lines and foundries. Ekhardt had seen such cathedral-plants on half a dozen forge worlds in his two hundred years fighting on the frontline of mankind's endless wars with its implacable enemies.

From his vantage point thirty metres above the battleground, Princeps Magnus Ekhardt could see somewhere in the region of thirty Marines engaging the orks in hand-to-hand combat.

Forge worlds seem to commonly use geothermal power taps.. which is interesting because according to some sources geothermal power is effectively lost-tech

Page 261

The orks fell before him, blood spurting from the stumps of limbs, heads severed, bodies bifurcated by the molecule-sharp blade.

The Blakc sword cutting through Orks.

Page 263

The wartrukk hit Adlar at full speed. He was smashed into the kannon, that shifted physically behind him, and pinioned there by the thick lance-head spikes welded to the trukk's front bumper. What had caused the three-tonne vehicle to jump the barricade – whether it was the pilot's design or the result of something the Space Marines did – Adlar would never know.

Castellan Adlar rammed by 3 tonne Ork truck flying throught he air, with spikes on the front, which only makes it worse. I'm not sure if he's wearing terminator armour, but he's probably wearing better than regular line astartes armour (Artificer grade easily) Does not buckle armour or kill him outright.


Page 266

Despite his predicament, Adlar still gripped both his humming thunder hammer and his plasma pistol in his gauntleted hands. The pistol had recharged since the last time he had used it, scant minutes before. That now seemed to him like a lifetime away. With slow deliberation, the Marine commander raised the plasma weapon and blew the ork's head off. It gave him little satisfaction for he knew that he was already dead. Then his greying vision was filled with emerald faces as orks swarmed over the emplacement in the wake of the smashed trukk. And Adlar knew what he had to do.

His only regret was that he would not be there to witness the destruction of the gargant for himself. Delivering his soul into the Emperor's keeping, with one last mighty effort Castellan Adlar brought the crackling head of his hammer down on top of a kannon shell that had been dropped, so that it rested point up, by the ork loader. The Templar dispatched it to whatever alien hell awaited it.

Seeing what Adlar was doing the gretchin barely had time to scream before the shell exploded, incinerating the tiny greenskin in the ground zero blast. A split second later, the shell lying ready in the breach of the huge gun and the other munitions casually placed around it went off. The explosion left a crater fifteen metres across in the middle of the gargant-factory. It was a fitting memorial to a man such as Castellan Adlar of the Black Templars' Solemnus Crusade.

Adlar detonates an Ork Kannon shell and "incinerates" a Gretchin (single digit or double digit MJ at least, if not more) and the rest make a 15 m diamter crater in the ground (600 kilos of TNT at least) aSsuming 30-40 shells apiece, we're talking 15-20 kilos of TNT per shell, which are large enough for a Gretchin to pick up, and would be well enough to more or less "incineratE" one no matter how you intepreted that.


Page 269

And here he was facing a warboss who not only commanded troops, alien armour units and the might of a gargant – and a mega-gargant at that – but one who also had a whole fleet of warships at his command and a hundred kilometre-long space hulk as his flagship!

A hundred km long space hulk

Page 276

It took six of the surviving troopers to haul the Templar up against the side of the battlewagon so that Brother Jarold could then hoist him on board with his preternaturally strong, clamping power fist.

Black Templar is heavy enough that 6 normla humans need to drag him - a good many hundreds of kg at least.

Page 277

Tyrannus Maximus's plasma reactor exploded with the force of a small sun. The titan was consumed by a vaporising ball of white light that swelled to engulf the grappling gargant in annihilating radiance. Pieces exploded from the two war machines as the ork idol was utterly destroyed by a series of detonations that increased in devastating effect, until the mega-gargant's filthy atomic power core overloaded and blew.

The crater-factory was consumed by a raging storm of nuclear fire. What had begun with the detonation of an atomic device ended the same way. Tiny vehicles and burnt corpses were picked up and dashed against the quaking sides of the caldera cone. Everything disappeared beneath the hellish inferno – cathedral spires, towering cranes, the titans – everything, as a swirling, swelling cloud mushroomed from the crater into the upper atmosphere of the planet, making it seem like the dormant volcanic crater was erupting again for the first rime in a thousand years.

...

The entire manufactorum-base had been destroyed, along with the noble titan and its ungodly antithesis. The Adeptus Mechanicus cathedral-factory, so foully desecrated by the orks and put to their own blasphemous use, had been cleansed by the Emperor's divine retribution

Mega gargant and Titan going up seems to be nuclear grade easily (several kt at least for the titan vaporizing, certainly, and more liekyl far more than that. Implied to encompass the entire crater, which may be well into the megatons range. Also the gargant running on ana tomic source (rather than fossil fuels or, say, steam.)

[Connor MacLeod]

This will be a big, double book update to post two whole books because I want to be done with the Green novels and move on to other stuff.

Part 1


Page 14

The gargantuan vessel, now named the Devourer of Stars, emerged from the warp in a screaming blaze of sick white light at the furthest reaches of the Armageddon system. Appearing there in the coldest reaches of space beyond the ringed gas giant Iandai, its presence was immediately detected by the system's perimeter monitoring stations.

As the unnatural agglomeration had drifted through the outer regions of the system, blotting out the light of distant stars like an unholy shadow on the face of the universe, in a panic defence craft had been scrambled from the naval facility of St Jowen's Dock. Those same ships made contact with the derelict as it passed the strange, uninhabitable world of Pelucidar, five days after it had first appeared within the Armageddon system. And those same ships, along with the thousands of damned souls trapped aboard them, were obliterated as – pathetic in their defiance – they attempted to halt the approach of the primarch's new flagship.

5 days for defence craft form St Jowen's Dock to Pelucidar - 2.3 AU to 7.1 AU - 4.8 AU travel distance. about 1700 km/s, but only requires 1.6 gees constant acceleration to pull off, at least. Probably more, considering there would have to be time to slow odnw.. so a couple gees is likely.
Not super fast, but not exactly slow either. Adn considering it is "defence craft" that probably is forgivable.

Page 15

But the Imperial attack had, incredibly, dealt the Devourer a dolorous blow. The propulsion drive of an ancient vessel that made up part of the hulk's gargantuan bulk had been blasted free. As this city-sized section tore free from the rest of the hulk, the resulting plasma eruption had incinerated thousands of Lord Angron's troops, before the propulsion unit was caught in Pelucidar's gravity well and dragged down towards the planet's surface.

The loss of the drive section slowed the progress of the derelict so dramatically that the Devourer of Stars did not reach Armageddon until after another month of drifting relentlessly through the planetary system.

The attack on the Devourer of Stars had bought the forces of Armageddon valuable time in which to prepare for what everyone on the planet's surface now knew was the inevitable invasion to come

7.1 AU to 1.1 AU in a month, average velocity of 350 km/s or so. If velocity had remaind constant before passing Pelucidar, they would have covered about 1 AU in 5 days. Call it 1-2 AU and .5-.7 gees constant slowing down. not exaclty super faster either, but its a Space hulk as well. Emergence point into the system was about 8-9 AU or so at least, which is consistnet iwth what we know elsewhere.

The fact the first quote mentioned the monitoring defense stations picking them up immediately suggests they are close (within a few LS) of the edge of the system, which makes sense given thats where threats will arrive at, and where you want you rearly warning to be.

Page 15-16

As Angron's unholy vessel entered orbit above the planet and the primarch's forces prepared to make planetfall, treachery and sedition showed its blasphemous face in hive-cities across the planet. Nearly half the Planetary Defence Force had turned on their ignorant brethren, now revealed to be followers of the true masters of mankind, their numbers swollen by hordes of cultists who had kept the worship of their secret masters alive in clandestine cells, right under the noses of the Imperial faithful.

Inevitably, and just as the devotees of the Dark Gods had intended, anarchy and mayhem had swept through the hives of Armageddon. In the wake of such planet-wide sedition, Angron's forces were able to make planetfall practically uncontested.

The insidious trick so fChaos cults, not unlike those of Genestealers really. If we knew how many PDF on either side we'd get a number.

Also rather interesting that they slowed to orbitla velocities, that implies losing most of their 350 km/s ina short time (some alien or Archeotech on the hulk, or possibly just antigravity.)


Page 16

Creatures that should never have existed beyond the realm of Chaos that was warp space – the red-skinned, behorned, daemonic manifestations of violence, slaughter and bloodshed – rampaged through the factory and hab-districts of the massive mountain-cities. In their hellish wake, mutants and renegades massacred the civilian population. Monstrous hell-titans – more daemon than Mechanicus creation, being an amalgam of war-machine and warp-spawned entity – stalked the ash wastes battling those feeble-minded princeps and their land battleships that remained loyal to the corpse enshrined within the Golden Throne of Earth.

Angron unleashes his forces. The possessed Titans being the nastiest and most notable.

Page 17

Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, perished.

Which if literally taken is probably a paltry number compared to the typical populations of a Hive world, no matter which defniition you accept.

PAge 17

But there had been more to the massacre than just the veneration of the Lord of Skulls. The sheer scale of the slaughter committed in the Blood God's name lent power to Angron and his daemon horde, enabling more and more of the offal-drenched creatures to manifest within the physical realm.

As Angron's invasion was taking place, warp storms of terrifying strength and ferocity blew up around the Armageddon system. In the initial phase of the battle for Armageddon, the presence of the warp storms gave potency to Angron and his daemonic horde, enabling the warp-creatures to maintain their physical corporality all the more easily. However, such power always comes at a price, and the surging energy of warp storms is always unpredictable. Angron was playing a game with time, racing to complete his conquest.

But the nature of Chaos is fickle, and before he could finally bring Armageddon to its knees, the warp storms, unable to maintain such ferocity and magnitude indefinitely, began to abate. As they blew themselves out, so Angron's power diminished.

Daemon armies, not unlike Ork Armies, are self-sustaining to a point. That is, the more successful they are, the bigger/stronger they grow... as long as they keep succeeding. A bit unlike the Orks, however, I suspect that when the "limit" is reached, it happens because the daemons failed (were stopped by defneders or lost their link to the warp storm) or because they managed to tear the boundaries betwene the warp and realspace nad plunged it into the warp, creating yet another warp-materium interface.

Of course, as noted, the inherent unpredictability of Chaos is an issue too.

Page 18

And so it was that the primarch's advance mired amidst the stinking swamps and sweltering jungles of Armageddon's equatorial belt. The daemon primarch, a being of such power that he had been on the verge of conquering one of the most strategically vital worlds in the Segmentum Solar, found himself on the verge of losing all the advances he had made, so tied to the fluctuating power of the warp was he.

Unless he could somehow establish a permanent link to the immaterium, without the unnatural vigour of the warp to empower him and sustain his equally unnatural army, all his efforts would be for naught.

One of the more obvious drawbacks of daemonic armies. THey have very little staying power/permanance in realspace by themselves. I assume that "link" means a portal of some kind.

Page 19

It was then that he saw the first of the warp-channelling stones – a roughly sculpted rock ten metres tall, carved with the snarling features of some ravening daemon-beast – and Furor was minded of what Angron had ordered following the dissipation of the inconstant warp storms.

The primarch had immediately decreed the construction of a monstrous monolith, an esoteric creation of stone and warp essence, that would feed his armies with the energy they needed to sustain their existence in the physical universe.

The building of Angron's monolith had taken many weeks and thousands died in its construction. First there were the bodies spent by the brutal, backbreaking labour. Then there were the thousands more – cultists, mutants and prisoners alike – butchered to consecrate the megalithic structure to the Lord of Skulls, that Khorne might grant them a boon, and Angron's hordes might complete that which the daemon primarch had undertaken in his murderous name. The power of Chaos was certainly growing in that auspicious place now, as acres of jungle withered, blackened and died, or flourished once more with new, unnatural life, drawn to the blasphemous, arcane construction.

At the same time, other smaller, yet similar, structures were erected throughout the jungle – sometimes singly, sometimes as stone circles, as decreed by warp-seer cultists of the Blood God in light of the blood rites they had enacted and the reading of augury-spilled intestines. But all had been constructed with the sole purpose of channelling the energies of the shifting Sea of Souls and containing them on Armageddon, so that Angron might complete his conquest of the benighted hive-world.

Again I suspect they act as portals/focal points betwene the warp and realspace. Interesting tactic. You wonder why other daemonic forces never try this shit. You would think that sort of logisitcs would be an early goal for them. This does assume, of course, that Chaos thinks in anything like "common sense" of course, but daemons do have their practical sides. Sometimes.

Page 28

Furor twisted the barrel of his bolter up under the edge of Skrell's horned helmet and fired twice.

The explosive rounds obliterated his head inside his helmet. A third round exploded the helmet itself.

Annuz Skrell's headless body slumped to the ground, black-red fluid soaking into the mulch.

Two boltere rounds blow apart skull. Third round blows apart helmet, althoug I suspect the first two might have contributed to weakening it.

Page 33

From the bridge of the mighty battle-barge Divine Fury, Marshal Brant of the Black Templars Chapter and the other assembled crusaders looked down on the cloud-wreathed world of Solemnus and at the orbital laser strikes igniting the atmosphere above the largest continent on the planet below. From the Divine Fury's position in high orbit, the coruscating explosions looked like blossoming crimson flowers amidst the dense white cloud cover, incongruously beautiful considering the abominable sacrilege to which they were a testament.

POV of the Ork assault on Solemnus from Black Templars battle barge. It implies that some part of the atmosphere is being ingited across a continent (hundreds, if not thousands of km) but the extent/depth to which this occurs isn't specified (and even if it is, most of the atmospheric density is closer down towards the ground, and we never really saw significant atmospheric heating that lwo in the early book) I'm not inclined to try and calc it, but who knows, someone else may whatever the number turns out.

Also implication once again of ships in geosynch orbit. This implies strongly it may be a natural orbit.

Page 34

Several of the larger predatory craft hung in geosynchronous orbit over the broiling cloud beneath them. Beams of rippling energy blasted from the gaping maws of their blunt, archeosaur-headed prows, piercing the cumulonimbus with their intense laser barrage and boiling the water-laden air around them.

Laser strikes "boiling the water" in the air around them. Again this might be calcable if we had more data. I suppose if we assume a 20 meter diameter, 100 km long column of air (34,500 tons roughly) heated to around boiling point for water in a 300K enviroment (300 kj per kg, roughly) would be 10 TJ. That isn't neccesarily upper or lower, since while it only measures the energy transmitted to the air, it also assumes air density remains constant (which it won't.. at most maybe 1/3 to 1/10th the height will be of the density I used.. the rest will be much less dense) and really.. the numbers are arbitrary anyhow. At most it provides us only the roughest sort of benchmarks as to the intensity of bombardment.

Page 34

Ultimately the alien armada would have found the keep, their own crude communications system picking up comm traffic from the ancient bastion, but the Divine Fury had been tracking the ships ever since the Lugnasad Crusade had dropped out of the warp at the edge of the Solemnus system. They had been only a matter of hours behind the invading xenos fleet.

Implies that The Black Templars fleet crossed the system in a matter of hours - tens or hudnreds of gees, perhaps for 1 AU, hundreds or thousands if we go out to 10 AU.

Page 35

What dread ability did the aliens possess? Had they looted some devastatingly powerful doomsday weapon from another vessel... perhaps one of the drifting derelicts they were prone to colonize as they drifted through space, dropping in and out of the warp at the whim of who knew what powers, carried unguided on the currents of the Sea of Souls?

"Helm, lock in an intercept course. Full power to the plasma engines!" Brant commanded.
Space Marines, blank-faced servitors and servants of the Machine God, hurried to do his bidding.

"Lock every Omnissiah-given weapon onto those abominations and hit them with everything we have!"

The Divine Fury's weapons arrays charged and then, in a supernova fusillade, unleashed the fury of a thousand volcanic eruptions at the ork armada.

As the battle-barge's weapons charged again, the other ships of the Templar fleet discharged their own weapons batteries and moved in for the kill, ploughing through the chill void to engage with the xenos vessels.

"hitting them with everything they had" on the Battle barge constitutes a "thousand volcanic eruptions", vaguely echoing the statements before. Honestly, I'm not sure how to calculate it. It would depend on the volcano for one thing. I know for example Mt Saint Helens was around 20-30 Megatons for its erupton, Krakatoa was some 100-200 Megatons, etc. And supervolcanoes have hit gigatons (or more) for their eruptions. But there's no way to say if that is typicla, and those tend to be high on the Volcanic Explosivity index (there are less dramatic ones, including some non explosive ones.) Hell, are we limited only to volcanos on Earth? (Olympus Mons on Mars is bigger, but whether it would erupt nastier I have no idea.)

More to the point, is it measuring just the "explosive-ness" or is it measuring thermal effects as well? Is it doing an "equivalency" with ash and debris (that would, in my mind, be a major threat, possibly more than the eruption and heat would) I imagine with a powerful eruption quite a bit of hot gas and magma would be ejected, which could also count (and may or may not be significnat.)

Furthermore in context, is it measuring the energy the battleship unleashes in firing its guns, or the total destructive force? What is it unleashing? We know they have lasers, but does this include bombardment cannon,s etc? Is it just the energy of the shot or does it factor in explosive payload?

If I was pressed to put a number on it I might just go with Krakatoa or Mt Saint Helens, because they're the ones I've only uncoverd anything close to consistent numbers on. I would not, however, defend such a number because I have no idea if it works or not. The "average" output could be much higher, or much lower... who knows.

Still like with the "igniting the atmospherE" bit I'll note it and maybe someone else will calc it (reliably one hopes.) The other thing to bear in mind is the "Divine Fury" is only 5 km long, which makes it a rather small battlebarge, about the size of a current-era Navy Cruiser.

Page 36

The capital ships of the crusade fleet – the Hammer of War, forge-ship Goliath and the Divine Fury herself, fired again. Laser lances pulsed with vaporising light. Gun decks shook with seismic vibrations as weapons crews loaded and fired their artillery pieces, before clearing the breach and re-loading, ready to fire again. Outraged by the sacrilege, the orks were perpetrating against their chapter world, the ships of the Lugnasad Crusade bombarded the rabble of ork ships with everything they had, closing in on the alien constructs in a spearhead formation.

The rusty skin of the nearest of the ork vessels fractured and then detonated from within, its ugly bulk disappearing within an expanding ball of roiling nuclear flame

An indication of the armaments of the ships - lances and projectiel cannons it seems. Probably lasers as well (although those might be the lances.) The Forge ship curiously seems as heavily armed as a warship.

Ork vessels running on nuclear power, it seems. Well that beats fossil fuels!

Page 36

The chapter keep of Solemnus usually housed up to as many as one hundred battle-ready brethren and neophytes, enjoying a time of solitude and monastic prayer between conflicts. A vital part of the role of those left behind was to protect the planet from invasion and to search out new recruits for the most zealous of the Astartes Chapters.

Roles and size of the Chapter Garrison. Again despite the fact they were mentioned as having "hundreds" of such places, there was no explicit mention that they were all garrisoned (indeed Index Astartes and the Black templars codex have suggested otehrwise.) In any case, it would suggest the BT can possibly range up to the "tens of thousands" of battle brothers range, which would be consistent with them being compared to a "Legion" in size (although that in turn could suggest 100,000 battle brothers or more.. which I.. kind of doubt, considering that would mean the BT make up close to 10% of the total number of AStartes in the Imperium. But who knows )

Page 37

And now the marshal's war fleet had returned from its pilgrimage to the Apollo subsector only to find Solemnus and its ages-old monastery-fortress at the mercy of the filthy alien orks. And the ships under Brant's command – the grand battle-barges, strike cruisers and their escorts – were bringing down divine retribution upon the enemy for what they had dared to do.

Implied to be multiple battle barges as well as sTrike cruisers and escorts. Assuming only 2-3 battle barges, there might be 3-4 strike cruisers, and probably half a dozen to a dozen escorts estimated. With between 3-14 crusades, that suggests the BT have a truly massive fleet a half a dozen to dozens of battle barges, close to a dozen, if not scores of cruisers, and scores if not hundreds of escorts. On the other hand, if the Divine Fury is an example of their battle barges, the smaller sizes offset the greater numbers (although the one doubling as their monastery is rather huge.)

Page 39

Those same people maintained their own method of government via a system of petty kingdoms and vassal lords. But it was the castellan of the chapter keep who was the true overlord, and effectively governor, of the planet, who represented Solemnus to the greater Imperium. The tithes it paid to the Imperium were the warriors it provided for the Adeptus Astartes. That and the unwavering faith of its populace, numbering several million according to the last census performed by the Ministorum, with the hallowed brotherhood's consent.

The status and representation of the world to the Imperium at large. Again the implications are that the Black Templars are quite a dominant force in the galaxy, considering they must have mayn scores if not hundreds of ships, hundreds of worlds claimed (though not neccesarily all garrisoned) and thousands, if not tens of thousands of Battle Brothers. I imagine the Fists might be on a similar scale (in terms of ships and territory at least, not to mention Phalanx. I'm pretty sure they haven't dramatically differed from the Codex Astartes in organization.)

also Minisoturm providing census numbers on a feudal world's population, rather than the Adminsitratum (with Black Templar permission.)

Page 42

The Templar had been crushed under several tonnes of rubble, a huge corbel sculpted with the equal-armed cross of the Chapter having crushed his head completely.

Several tonnes of debris crushes an (armoured) Black Templar



Page 42

An Apothecary was a Space Marine trained to undertake the routine medical and surgical duties of the Chapter, particularly on the front line of battle. But first and foremost an Apothecary was a Space Marine, trained to be one of the Emperor's finest warriors. Although those chosen to serve in the Apothecarion of the Chapter were expert medics, they were also expert killers, having been trained to kill the enemies of the Imperium in a myriad ways.

So they're doctor-assassins?

Page 43

Bolt pistol in hand, Colber threw himself at the greenskins. Pulling the trigger, he felt the reassurance of the weapon kick in his left hand as it hurled round after explosive round into the alien marauders. Green flesh exploded in sprays of foul ichor. Two of the hideous, tusked creatures fell, one with half its head missing, the other with daylight visible through the cavity blown through its chest.

Bolter fire on Orks.

Page 44

Those who served the Apothecarion were the keepers of the Chapter's holy biological legacy, the guardians of the Chapter's precious gene-seed. The source of the gene-seed was the Space Marines themselves, each one having been implanted with the mysterious replicating progenoid organs as part of their induction into the Chapter. These miraculous Emperor-created implants absorbed genetic information from a Marine's body. When a battle-brother died, his progenoids could be removed and used to produce further zygote implants for future initiates of the Chapter.
Without the progenoid glands, no further implants could be cultivated, and no new Marines created. And if no neophytes could be engineered then, in time, the Chapter itself would die, as so many had in the past. The Sons of Gorgax and the Silver Stars were now no more than dusty memories, the only evidence of their existence being a record within the Index Astartes. So it was that the life of the Chapter was totally dependant upon the medicae work of the Apothecaries.

Da Progenoids and mention of two defunct chapters.

Page 45

Then there the swollen slug-like gland appeared on the monitor. Colber activated the arcane device with a thought-impulse and the reductor set to work removing the implant. The progenoid extracted, with practiced speed and ease, Colber did the same with the second of the gene-seeds buried deep inside the Marine's chest, behind the fused bone shell of the ribcage. Cutting tools built into the reductor automatically came into play before the second implant could be taken out successfully.

Black Templar reductor.


Page 45

The two gene-seeds recovered, Colber transferred them to his narthecium unit, where they would be preserved within a self-regulating, cold-stasis compartment.

"Cold stasis" device for geneseed.

Page 46

It soon became apparent to the avenging Black Templars just how devastating the greenskins' attack had been. Under some colossal bombardment the chapter keep's shield dome had failed.
The ancient bastion had suffered both an orbital laser assault and heavy shelling by devastating ordnance that had flattened Earthshaker and Hydra battery emplacements, and levelled whole areas of the fortress-monastery that had withstood every siege ever thrown at the holy citadel in its thousand-year history.

The formidable firepower levelled at the keep had obviously eventually overloaded its ancient void shield generators. When the generators went critical, the very bedrock of the planet had melted and the arsenals of siege guns in the base of the walls had cooked off. The combined explosions brought down a half-kilometre stretch of the west curtain wall.

With that, the keep had been blown open and the orks had stormed in, destroying all before them like a devouring locust swarm.

Commentary on the firepower that had taken out Solemnus. We dont know how big the Chapter-fortress was, except htat one seciton was half a kilometre. Interesting that the "bedrock had melted" as that could have some curiosu implications (depending on how much regolith, if any, might be covering it, and given the location.) it could imply significant melting as a sid effect of the bombardment.


Page 53

Brother-Apothecary Colber of Fighting Company Gerhard raised his bolt pistol, meeting the savage greenskin's charge head on. The gun kicked in his gauntleted hand and the ork was thrown violently backwards, as if yanked by a heavy chain, the front of its thick skull shattered and its tiny brain liquidized by the explosive round.

Bolt pistol round obliterates Ork skull and shatters the front part of the skull.

Page 56

Besides, the Scarred Ork himself was dead anyway, for nothing could have survived the nuclear firestorm that engulfed the volcanic caldera in which the gargant factory had been constructed. Ansgar had only just escaped with his life himself, thanks to the beneficence of the Emperor and the primarch.

Implies the death of the Warlord titan had created a "firestorm" that engulfed several kilometers. Not neccesarily a fireball, per se.

Page 60

Cerbera Base, the nearest Imperial station, was at least one hundred kilometres away by Techmarine Torrek's reckoning.

And although short-range comms were still operational, for some reason they had been unable to signal the Solemnus fleet in orbit one hundred kilometres above them.
It seemed incredible that the feral orks could be in possession of something so complex, and no doubt requiring huge amounts of power, that they were able to jam the Space Marines' signalling devices.

short range comms hav ea range less than 100 km (also the robital distance of the Black Templar fleet above Armageddon.) Also jamming by Orks is conisdered unsuual if not impossible.

Page 60

His auto-senses detecting swift movement above him, Brother Baruch turned his heavy bolter on a pair of bounding orks that were leaping through the canopy of the treeline. The heavy weapons-fire tore great holes through the broad-bladed leaves of the forest vegetation, filling the air with a sticky sap-mist. Through the emerald haze, Colber saw several rounds rip through the shoulder of one of the leaping aliens, tearing a thickly-muscled arm from its body and rupturing the creature's stomach. The greenskin's flight came to an abrupt end as it plummeted from a vine, crashing to the ground amidst the thick foliage covering the jungle floor.

Heavy bolter vs Orks.


Page 63

The castellan's black and white power armour was slick with alien blood and the slime of pulverised bio-fungal flesh, the prominent Templar cross on his chestplate gouged by the traces of solid munitions fire.

Despite the weapons-fire skimming past him through the air and the occasional shell spanging off his ancient ceramite armour, Castellan Gerhard understood that this would be his company's last stand against the greenskin menace...

Black Templar armour resisting Ork gunfire.

PAge 63

"The warriors of the Adeptus Astartes are fear incarnate! Did our noble forefather, Primarch Dorn, not say that one hundred of the Astartes are worth a thousand of any other fighting force loyal to the Imperium?"

1 Space Marine = 10 other troops.

Pgae 64

The castellan broke off abruptly, took practiced aim with his plasma pistol and sent a screaming ball of roiling blue liquid fire hurtling into a mob of galloping orks. The aliens died with the flesh melting from their bones.

Bolt pistol melts flesh off Ork bones. This could mean it literally cooked it off (which could be double digit MJ per Ork, easily) or it means it behaved like a frigging flamethrower (which is probably still at least single digit MJ per ork, but considerably less joule-y. However, given how plasma weapons have been portrayed, this is an equally likely possibility.)

Page 65

There were fewer of them, but every one of the new arrivals had been extensively 'modified' by the addition of crude bionic components. Such a practice was common amongst the ork hordes, but the orks now entering the clearing were more rusting metal augmetics than green flesh. They were what the Magos Biologis classed as cyborks.

Where had they come from, Apothecary Colber wondered? But their arrival gave him an inkling as to how the orks had been jamming their long-range comms. The more technologically proficient cyborks would be more likely to have the ability to interfere with the Templars' communications. Colber found himself asking the same question again: what were such highly mechanized orks doing in the untamed depths of the equatorial jungles?

Cyborks. Heh.

Page 66

Not many warriors who had given their whole lives to His service had the privilege of knowing the precise hour of their death that they might fully prepare their souls for it. It was time for him to shed the vestiges of his mortality and be reborn as a warrior angel of the Master of Mankind.

But until the moment when that pre-ordained cleaver took his head from his shoulders, or that explosive round detonated inside his chest, or that particular accursed las-discharge fried the flesh from his augmented skeleton, he would fight to the end to fulfil his duty to protect the precious narthecium that contained the gene-seed of his dead brothers.

"las dischrage" frying flesh from the skeleton (boil or burn off?) - thats damn impressive, especially considering it is doing it without blowing the guy apart - eg purely thermal, and possibly wide angle (flamethrower-like.) This doesn't tell us what kind of las-weapon it is though - Ork or human. Probably not a normal human lasweapon but who knows. If it menas just inflicting third degree burns on a Space Marine frame - at least a couple megajoules. If it means something more intense (like boiling flesh off) we're probably more like triple digit MJ or more. In the case of the former it could be a lasgun or a multilaser (although that doesnt rule out lascannon either..) In the case of the latter? It's more likely to be a heavy laser weapon of some kind.

It also doesnt say a damn thing about armor, so...

I'll also admit its possible that he marine wasn't being serious, but these are Black Templar, and they aren't, to my knowledge, well known for their humor or tendency towards hyperbole.

page 70

The gunmetal grey craft skimmed over the forested peaks and followed the line of the deep-cut valley paths. The Valkyrie's pilot kept her low, wanting to avoid modar detection by the enemy or any of the numerous Imperial factions at large within the southern equatorial jungles.

That pesky modar again! I want to fucking know what the hell MODAR is!


Page 70

The lush vibrancy of it was in dramatic contrast to the filthy firmament above it. The sky was a soiled brown, streaked with wisps of chemical cloud, an ever-present reminder, even here, of the reason why Armageddon was such a strategically vital world and such a precious possession to the Imperium. It was a vital node at the centre of the sector's navigational channels and its thousands of weapons shops supplied arms to Guard regiments many light years away.

Comment on Armageddon's importance to the Imperium. Not only is it a major industrial/hive world, but it is an important nagivational/shipping nexus (which, in my mind, is greater justification for wanting to keep hold of it, considering how deep into Segmentum Solar it is.) - of course much of this book is unsurprisingly lifted directly from the Armageddon material (This is, except that instead of "many light years" it was "several thousand light years")

Thats also thousands of weapons shops in 8 or so hives.

Page 71

The Valkyrie was flying roughly south-east on a bearing of one-three-six, Tremayne judged from the position of the morning sun. He glanced at his wrist-chronometer. It was still only 07.04 hours Imperial standard. They had departed from the wind-swept and sandblasted landing field on the Anthrand Plain at 06.15 hours. They had been flying for less than an hour and in that time had probably covered over four hundred kilometres.

49 minutes and covered 400 km or so - suggests close to 500 kph speed.

Page 71

Strapped into the aisle seat, one seat away from him, was Kurn, the leather harness barely managing to restrain his hulking frame. Kurn was Tremayne's personal bodyguard. He was built like an abhuman ogryn. In fact, Tremayne could well believe that there was an abhuman strain in Kurn's genetic heritage at some point in the long distant past.

Yet another Imperial Guardsmen of truly hulking, superhuman proportions and strength.

PAge 72

The two of them – lieutenant and bodyguard – had an unusual bond. Kurn, Tremayne knew, would be faithful to him unto death. And Tremayne would keep Kurn around as long as he was still useful to him.

Kurn was as loyal as a cyber-mastiff and came with a vicious streak to match. He had been a trooper in the Armageddon Command Guard before Tremayne seconded him to act as his personal protector. Before being conscripted into the Guard, Kurn had been a hive-ganger in the lawless under-stack regions of Hive Volcanus.

The first time Tremayne had encountered Kurn had been in the opening days of Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka's invasion of the world Tremayne had sworn an oath to protect on his admission to the upper echelons of the ACG.

Armageddon, being a hive world, has an underhive. And since it is an underhive, I guess they breed their own abnromally huge, beastlike gangers. This would make Kurn something akin to a Goliath lite, I suspect.

Also mention of the Armageddon Command Guard as an actual regiment, with actual troops. This is important given who the Valkyrie belongs to.

Page 73

As well as Tremayne and his bodyguard, the Valkyrie's pilot and navigator, the rest of the mission team was made up of a squad of four Imperial storm troopers. They were dressed in black-grey camo fatigues and carried their trademark hellguns, the power source for each weapon harnessed to the back of the man that carried it.

The lieutenant took in each of the elite soldiers accompanying him on this mission. The team had been handpicked by his superiors in the Command Guard. They were men of the utmost discretion. Tremayne did not recognize any of them. The stony-faced storm troopers all looked alike, especially now that many of them had their faceless, black plastek visors down, in operational readiness.

IG storm troopers I suspect. Note the lack of carapace, but they have hellguns and a bakcpack power source. The fact the ACG picked them suggests that they themselves are part of the ACG. Also, they have helmets and visors, like other storm trooper force.

[Connor MacLeod]

Part 2



Page 74

The storm troopers sat on the opposite side of the gangway to Tremayne and his bodyguard. The elite Imperial soldiers were all focused on the mission ahead as well, carrying out their own subtly nervous habitualised actions, some checking the targeting scopes of their hellguns, others testing their weapon's connection to its power pack energy source.

Hellguns have copes and connected ot a separate power source via cable.

Page 75

From where he was sitting, the unsettled lieutenant could also just see out through the windshield of the Valkyrie. The pilot sat to the right, his navigator in the co-pilot's position to the left. They were both wearing the innocuous, grey flight coveralls of ACG flyers.

ACG pilots run the Valkyries. This does not neccesarily mean that they aren't on loan or detached from the Navy, but Armageddon is a pretty important world, so it wouldnt surprise me if they can't make at least some Valkyries for their own purpose. And ACG seems to be one of those high-end regiments, so that they might have organic air support probably isnt unusual.

Page 75

The snap-shot sniper behind Tremayne kept putting his gunstock to his shoulder and then lowering it again. The red-dot laser-spot of the hellgun's targeter kept flicking up onto the bulkhead in front of Tremayne.

Red dot laser sight "targeter" whethre it is a feature of the scope or something else (an added fucntion) we dont know.

Page 76

There sat the storm trooper, his expression indiscernible, hidden behind the emotionless black glass of his visor, the muzzle of his hell-gun pointing into the lieutenant's face. The sparkling laser made the lieutenant blink.

Glass, full face visor. And a visible laser.

Page 76

And it was at that moment that fate – or perhaps it was some higher power, maybe even the Emperor Himself – intervened and a flock of white-winged ibises rose from the jungle canopy in a cacophonous panic as their treetop roost was disturbed by the broiling downwash of the Valkyrie's engines.

At that moment, the pilot's heart lurched in his chest. He knew, of course, that when travelling at approximately five hundred kilometres an hour, if so much as one of the two-metre spanned ibises passed through the turbine of an engine or hit the cockpit's windshield head-on, the results could be catastrophic and would almost certainly spell an end to the mission.

Confirmation of the Valkyrie's low level flying speed. And their vulnerability to rather large birds at that speed.

Page 76

At that moment the storm trooper's finger tightened on the trigger, even as he was thrown sideways in his seat. A pulse of intense laser energy zinged past Tremayne's ear; he felt a burst of sudden heat at its passing. The viewing port next to the lieutenant's seat exploded, sending glass spinning into the cabin.

Hellgun blast emits heat laterally, for some reason. Possibly heating of the atmosphere.


Page 78

The hellgun spat again, a mere two seconds after the first shot.

Tremayne still lived. Sergeant Keifer did not.

The sergeant's body toppled backwards onto the grilled companionway of the cabin with a loud clang, watery blood, bone fragments and cerebral matter covering the bulkhead behind the dead man. Keifer's pistol clattered to the mesh floor next to his corpse. He had had the gun aimed and ready without a moment's hesitation.

A split second later, the killer adjusted his aim fractionally and dropped a second storm trooper – a high-intensity las-beam popping a targeter-shielded eye and scorching a hole through the man's head, cauterising the grey matter of his brain before the elite soldier could level his weapon.

These men were meant to be the best Command could field, Tremayne's mind reeled. And one man had killed or apparently incapacitated three of them in as many seconds.

What we seem to have here is a case where a hellgun shot (within a second of each shots) explodes part of a skull (at least the back of the skull and the brain, partly) and cauterizing/burning it in another case. It seems contradictory (and it might be) but there could be two possibilities.

- The lasbeam is highly penetrative pulse-train laser (again Luke Campbell style "blaster" lasers), and drilling a hole of unknown size through the target, cauterizing/burning the surrounding tissue. The explosive effects blow out the back of the head. It certainly isn't specific enough to say "the whole head blows apart" and the brain need not totally cauterize. More to the point, extreme penetration is a consistent trait of hellguns (power output is going to vary depending on deisgn, power source, charge setting, etc.) A few kilojloules could easily inflict third (or even mild fourth, I suspect) degree burns on the surrounding tissue, assuming a 2 cm diameter hole through a 15 cm diameter head..

- the tissue along the path of the beam (and possibly in the surrounding matter) is boiled rapidly and creates a steam explosion. AGain it isn't neccesairly boiling all the brain, and boiling point should be enough to cauterize (or close enough so as not to matter - you only need to cauterize the surrounding tissue really so only part of it needs to reach those temps.) If the beam has high penetration (like a particle beam) then it might not do this significantly until it reaches the back of the head (hence the larger exit wound, which isn't unprecetended for lasweapons of certain configurations.) It would be less efficient than the first idea, but not significnatly so. assuming similar dimensions as used above.. 10-15 kj should probably cover the hole, and surroudning tissue wouldn't be much more (a few kj more maybe, depending on depth.)

Of course we could assume it boils/cauterizes the ENTIRE brain.... it could get several times higher (50-60 kj to inflict 3rd/4th degree burns over the entire brain surface area, while boiling it would be 300-400 kilojoules.) Boiling the brain (or evne part of it, sy the back part) probably would result in a steam explosion too.

The other detail of note is the "targeter shielded eye" - implying that the visor, or some part of the headgear, links to the targeter. Perhaps it shows where the red dot sight is pointing at?

Page 79

The bodyguard moved surprisingly quickly and with deceptive agility for a man of his size – akin in height and mass to one of the abhuman degenerates that populated the deepest and most polluted fractured dome caverns of the Volcanus underhives.

AGain Kurn the ganger is implied to be be similar to an abhuman (although I suspect they mean something like an Ogryn, akin to the Kanak skulltakers) and we see that there can be superhumanly strong and huge humans recruited into the guard (Which in Necromunda terms, I suspect makes Kurn something like a Heavy. A very stupid Heavy, but a heavy nonetheless.

Page 79

Tremayne would have thought that Kurn's retaliatory assault would have left the man winded – if not with several broken ribs and a punctured lung – gasping for breath and unable to move, existing in his own private world of pain. But not this man.

He did actually suffer those injuries, but he keeps going. I dpont kn

Page 80

The assassin occupied, Tremayne dared to look to the pilot's position. Beyond the iron-runged steps Tremayne could see little through the cockpit, the pilot's brains having splattered across the inside of the windshield. The assassin's second shot had found a target after all.

again implication of at least partly blowing out the brains of a human with a hellgun shot. Same values as above apply.

Page 89

"The warriors of the Adeptus Astartes are fear incarnate! Did our noble forefather, Primarch Dorn, not say that one hundred of the Astartes are worth a thousand of any
other fighting force loyal to the Imperium?"

The 10:1 ratio again. You leanr to expect alot of this from a Jonathan Green novel.

Page 89

The castellan broke off abruptly, took practiced aim with his plasma pistol and sent a screaming ball of roiling blue liquid fire hurtling into a mob of galloping orks. The aliens died with the flesh melting from their bones.

Oh yes, more liquid "flamethrower" plasma weapons. Honestly I suspect it is less "energy weapon vaporizing/blowing apart" and "setting on fire/combusting"s tyle burning, so it probably is more single digit MJ, although perhaps double digit if it dries out enough flesh before igniting it.

Page 91

A Templar was hurled back against the trunk, the force of the impact rocking the tree in its soggy hollow and splintering its rotten bark. The direct hit the Marine had suffered from a missile and its subsequent detonation cracked the chestplate of his armour open and a thin trail of smoke now rose from the smouldering crater in his flesh.

Missile/rocket impact against a Black Templar. Rather amazing (surprisingly so) that it didnt blow him apart, but of course hard to know what sort of weapon or yield it had (If it was a shaped charge it might penetrate well but do little surrounding damage. Or it could be devoted for antipersonnel use.)

Page 94-95

Through the mists – the indistinct outlines overlaid with orange wire-frame models by the arcane auto-senses built into the laurelwreathed helmet of the Armour of Faith – Ansgar saw huge snorting behemoths advancing to meet the Imperial tank lines and striding war walkers. The beasts' rumbling bellows and guttural lowing was muffled by the mist, which gave it an even more
unsettling, unearthly quality.
Warning runes started to flash at the periphery of his visor. One of the wire-frame models was blinking red, the suit's cogitator trying to reconfigure as something large began to move at speed towards the Space Marines.

more of Angsar's Champion armour, and its super duper autosensory capabilities and having a built in cogitator.

Page 95

But how could there be such a thing, out here, over the equatorial rainforests, Ansgar wondered? The radiation storms of Armageddon were the unholy offspring of millennia of unchecked industrial pollution on a planet-wide scale and several ecology devastating wars. Ansgar had understood that for the most part, rad-storms were restricted to the polluted wastes of Armageddon
Prime and Secundus.

Long term warfare in 40K seems to be yet another cause of Hive Worlds - like Krieg, Tallarn, Vraks, andnow Armageddon (although Armageddon has the industrial side of things too.)

the curious thing about Armageddon is that the pollution/devastation is fairly localized - the jungles for example, seem relatively okay - at least in the short term. Who knows? Maybe the jungles are still in the process of dying off and the places is nasty in the long term.


Page 104-105

It had begun as an attack by the frenzied, flesh-bonded warriors of the Blood God. The subhuman Chaos creatures had taken the Solemnus fleet by surprise after the holy armada was lashed by the treacherous currents of Warp Storm Gewitter-Wolke.

The Red Slaughter rammed the Divine Fury, breaching the hull of the battle-barge with the cleaving blade of its prow. The bloodhungry hordes that it carried in its festering belly poured from airlock portals and even torpedo tubes, rampaging through the chambers and sacristies of the crusade's flagship.

It had ended with the Black Templars carrying out their own boarding action against the unholy Chaos vessel. Led by Marshal Brant himself and the Sword Brethren terminators of the marshal's own household, the crusaders had sabotaged the Red Slaughter's engines and made their escape. The Divine Fury had then dragged the disabled vessel with it as the battle-barge
thundered towards the nearest star. As soon as the collision-locked ships felt the pull of the star's distorting gravimetric forces, the Divine Fury fired up its plasma drive and powered free of the deathly embrace of the traitor vessel.

The Chaos craft had slowly spun towards the six thousand-degree surface of the sun, hemorrhaging its internal atmosphere from sundered boarding umbilicals, which burnt off in a superheated flame thirty kilometres long.

Eventually the Red Slaughter had crashed into the broiling corona of the sun, burning up in the unimaginable, planet-melting heat of the star, its shields failing in a matter of seconds under the incomprehensible temperatures and gravimetric pressures.

Red slaughter is a Carnage class cruiser. Several interesting things bout this:

1.) The Divine Fury had enough engine power to pull free of the Star's embrace. I'm not sure how close to the star the ship had to get for the Slaughter to be caught, but it is worth noting that the Sun's escape velocity can go up to 617 km/s... It probably wouldnt be that high unless they got very close though. It also doesn't help not knowing how long it takes to pull out, but its implied to be short (minutes or seconds maybe if it was close, but if it was longer away it could be much less.)

2.) The Chaos ship melts up in the Star's corona in "seconds" - the temperatures (at that pressure) burning it up. The curious thing here is that, despite saying it "crashed" into the Corona.

We really dont know much about the star - "planet melting" heat suggests implications about the star (it isn't too different from ours, although to be fair it doesnt say how long it takes to melt either.) and this being 40K and in proximity to a warp storm, something weird coudl be going on with the star allowing it to have a 6000-degree corona that is somehow physical enough to crash into. Alternately it wasn't the Corona it crashed into but something else (Such as the photosphere.) It also can't hurt that the ship is moving at speed when it "collides", so... There is of course the little matter of feats like (for example) the Essene in Xenos, but there could be other reasons here (battle damage, power diversion between different systems, just a poorly armored ship, etc. Atlas Infernal implies that Khornate types favor fast moving ships to facilitate boarding actions.)

The gravimeticr stuff is kidna vague but may also hint at something odd.

Just to be difficult I could point out the context of "planet melting" could imply the starship was absorbing "planet melting" energies

3.) the Divine Fury dragged the cruiser across the entire system towards the star before pulling out - pity we don't know how long as that would help.

Page 106

Marshal Brant was a wise leader, having served his Chapter for two hundred and forty years, sixty-three of those as commander of the liberation force that now bore the title of the Solemnus Crusade. He was certainly wise enough to listen when a Chaplain of his most devout order offered him counsel. Besides, Wolfram was a true veteran of the crusade as well, being eighty-seven years older than Brant, and having served the crusade as an ordained initiate even longer than the marshal himself.

Brant is 240 years old, and Wolfram is 327, not neccesarily upper limits either.

Page 108

Marshal Brant did not like to speak in haste. It was one of the qualities that made him such a wise commander, and indeed one of the qualities that had raised him to the position of marshal of an entire war fleet of the Black Templars Chapter.

Brant then fixed his gaze on Wolfram alone and spoke directly to him. "But I am still not certain of the surety of a course of action that would mean deploying warriors where those who went before them have already died. We cannot afford to waste the resources of our crusade before we can fulfil the vow we made to deliver the Emperor's divine retribution upon the orks of the Blood Scar
tribe, and indeed all their vile, green-skinned kin."

Brant proves himself indeed a decent leader of Space Marines. This isn't the first source to point out that what makes a good Captain or Chapter Master is the ability for the Marine to look past his own petty, narrow perspectives and prejudices and look to the bigger picture - the good of the Chapter, the good of the war, the good of the Imperium. It echoes the BEn counter Short story which also featured the Templars.

Page 110

"However, we must temper our zeal by remembering that this is just one theatre of war across a world subsumed by war." Brant said, submitting his old advisor and the crusade's champion to the flickering, seemingly divinatory, red stare of his artificial eye.

"We cannot commit our entire force to this one mission."

Again Brant proves he's a clever boy by putting the bigger picture ahead of mere zealotry.

Page 114

Veteran Sergeant Agravain had agreed that veteran brother Kemen could join Ansgar and Wolfram on their mission. Kemen was renowned for his strength and battle-hardened tactical wisdom by the men of the Fighting Company. He stood now, his helmet held in the crook of his left arm, his head entirely shaven, and almost a whole head taller than any of the other brothers gathered there at
that time. In his right hand he held his lascannon as if it were no heavier than a bolt pistol.

Really strong marines cna really heft a lascannon. Of course its possible the dude is also using suspensors, since it's not just weight but center of gravity/balance that matters.

Page 116

The two-tonne dreadnought's steps rang from the flagstoned floor of the chapel and echoed from the fog-obscured vault of its roof.

The smoke from Ugo's censer swirled around the colossal form of the war walker body-carriage in a coiling dance of vortices as Brother Jarold strode up to join the line of penitent Templars.
He was at least twice the height of Veteran Brother Kemen, the tallest of the remaining crusaders present. The dreadnought body was constructed from armoured adamantium.

Jarrold is 3x the height of a normal man, 2x the height of a marine, implying Space Marines (in armour at least) are 1.5x taller than a person (for a 2.5 m tall marine, around 1.75 m tall - about 5' 10")

PAge 122-123

What greeted them when they arrived at the Imperial station instead was at first glance an apparently ramshackle, yet vast, Imperial camp. Instead of curtain walls there were concentric rings of razor wire enclosing further minefield defences. Wooden watchtowers kept a sentinel lookout over the entirety of the base, with heavy artillery emplacements sunk into the ground ready to respond to any enemy assault. Trench works crisscrossed the long low hill on which Cerbera Base stood – giving the loyal Imperials an unobstructed view of the wilderness beyond for several kilometres in every direction – and bunker roofs peeked out from beneath artificially raised mounds.

Indeed, anyone attempting to enter Cerbera Base had to negotiate a veritable maze of defensive works – trenches, minefields and razor wire – all overlooked by heavy stubber positions, lascannon gun crews and secreted sniper posts.

For a kilometre in every direction around the camp the ever-present jungle – the Green, as the ork hunters called it – had been uprooted, burned and cleared. The uneven, scorched and shredded ground between the base and the encroaching jungle was riddled with crater-holes: evidence of the numerous battles that had been fought over this patch of land alone.

At the centre of the camp, set just below the crest of the hill, was the heavily armoured entrance to the command bunker. It was beyond those steel doors that Sergeant Borysko had been summoned as soon as his team had arrived back at the base only an hour before. A profusion of comm masts sprouted from the top of the hill in their own wire forest, the means by which Cerbera
Command communicated with their units out in the field and received messages from Armageddon High Command elsewhere on the planet and even in orbit above it.

Cerbera Base and the Armageddon Ork hunters - Armageddon's very own Vietnam War within the greater war.

Page 123

There had been another ill-advised attempted ork infiltration the night before. The greenskins had paid dearly for their daring. It was camp policy that any ork bodies were burned. The ork hunters of Cerbera Base knew better than most of the Imperial ground forces fighting on Armageddon that a dead ork could be as lethal as a live one if not dealt with properly. For whenever a greenskin
was killed, its alien physiology caused spores to be released into the air. Spores which, if they landed somewhere favourable for growth, would mean that in time more of the foul xenos monsters could sprout and grow to maturity beneath the ground. And this was all thanks to the death of just one of their forebears

The Ork Hunters treat the "spore growth" idea as true. Which provides an interesting contrast to the previous book (of course the previous book wasnt consistent here either.)

It would be interesting to knwo what official Imperial policy on this is, since that would show an interesting case of "forces in the field doing different than what the higher ups tell them." Lack of micromanagement may actually be the best thing to happen to the Imperium, for all its flaws.

PAge 124

Then there was Coburg, called Ox by the other skinners for obvious reasons. He was as big and strong as an ork but not even Raus had such a death wish that he would give Coburg the name ork for a moniker, even if it did suit him.

But it wasn't only his size and strength that made them liken Coburg to an ork, and made them feel uncomfortable whenever he was around. Even now he was preoccupied with attaching another ork tooth to the leathery cord tied around his bulging neck. The fang had been taken from one he had killed on the last day of the team's most recent patrol.

Implies that the Ork Hunter is perhaps powerful enough to fight an Ork close up (similar to some sort of Ork in size and strength.) Or, like Kurn, another super-strong, super tough hive dude.

Page 129

It was then that Kole became aware of Priest pacing in agitation. Priest was what the Ecclesiarchy referred to as 'Emperor-touched', a holy fool, and what the rest of the ork hunters called a religious madman.

Such characters were not uncommon among the myriad Guard regiments. The unimaginable horrors they had witnessed on the battlefields had proved too much for their tortured psyches and had broken their minds. Those same horrors had not broken their spirits, however, and emotionally they had taken solace in the one thing they still managed to cling on to – their spirit. As a result
their faith became all consuming, the one constant in a universe of terrible, traumatic change, immovable as an Earthshaker cannon, as unshakable as the Palidus Mountains.

One of the fringe benefits of being a guardsmen. And the Ecclesiarchy apparently supports this sort of thing.

Page 129

Along with Gunderson he was the other sniper of the team – the best. And here he was now, pacing up and down, wringing his hands frantically.

Borysko's unit has two snipers. Of course I'm not sure its a squad or not.

Page 132

A huge map hung on one wall, covered with red and blue annotations and code-symbols. A group of officers were busying themselves with the map, scribbling on the well-used note blocks and data-slates held in their hands.

the ubiquitousness of data slates, once more.

Page 133

The ork hunter sergeant followed the officer, passing through the doorway himself and stepping into a chamber lit by the ambient light of the myriad servitor-manned comms panels and pict screens. A computation of lexmechanics chewed through the information coming into the command hub, making sense of the endless streams of data and transcribing it back into a form that
the human operatives could easily understand. Screeds of parchment covered the floor, the fruit of their scribing labours. A coven of whistling and beeping tech-priests moved between the various monitor stations and comms panels, making adjustments here, anointing them with holy unguents there, and all the time intoning the prayers of Optimum Operational Performance.

None of this was new to Borysko, of course. He had been here before. Just as he had met the broad man wired into the metal throne by the stumps of his truncated legs on the other side of the nerve centre. The marshal's greying hair had been cropped close to his skull, unlike his thick moustache.

More data/intel/40K version of computer stuff (Eg the lexmchanics, which seem to be servitor analogues specializing in data and with less mindless tasking) I like the techpriest prayers too.

Also the guy in charge of the camp is wired into a chair like a titan princeps or Starship captain.

PAge 135

"Two hours ago, at approximately 07.11 hours, an ACG Valkyrie went down in the jungle south-west of here. On board was some big shot lieutenant of the ACG. Your orders are to
find him and bring him back to Cerbera."

This would seem to point to the Valkyrie before belonging to the ACG - whether it was gifted, requisitioned, a permanant detachment, or they had it from teh beginning, we dont know.

Page 140

There are always the orks. Magi of the Genetor Biologis estimate there to be as many as twelve ork tribes claiming territory in and around the Minos swamps alone, merging and breaking up as the aliens' inherent drive towards battle and their natural animosity continue to play a part in their existence, no matter how inspiring a unifying force the Great Beast might be to the other ork clans that have come to make war on Armageddon.

The feral orks have had their own unique influence on their environment and on the ecosystem of this habitat, and it has been a detrimental one at that. With their arrival on Armageddon five decades ago, and with their continued presence in the jungles ever since, the feral orks have effectively become the alpha predator. Without doubt some are killed by the inherently dangerous native flora and fauna, such as the pernicious death-cup and the strangler vine, but the deadly environment of the jungles – with its unbearable humidity the perfect breeding ground for dozens of deadly diseases – seems not to have troubled their alien metabolisms at all. In fact, the greenskins, and all the various degenerate offshoot subspecies that came with them to Armageddon, seem to be uniquely adapted to this environment or, at least, uniquely adaptable.

It might surprise some to learn that creatures from an ork 'kulture' that has effectively developed in isolation from an ork waaagh can use – and indeed do use, in great proliferation – technology, but more particularly weaponry, that they could have had no means of creating themselves. It would appear that this is part of an inbuilt genetic predisposition.

Once a feral ork tribe has reached a critical size, led by a particularly cunning and strong ork, they will learn to fight against the indigenous natural predators already living in the jungles and surrounding swamps and ultimately overcome them, steadily expanding their territory. However, these orks will also learn to scavenge weapons and other pieces of equipment that they find,
left behind by their foul xenos brethren or make use of, and even customise, any Imperial technology they can get their claws on.

Much of what they scavenge is too technologically advanced for them to make use of, but it does not take them long to realize the effect and power of any weapons they find, although many of the tribe will die during the ourse of such investigations and
experimentation.

Commentary on Ork tribes, particularily the Feral orks on Armageddon.

Page 142

It is believed that several greenskin sub-species, originally brought to our planet during Ghazghkull Thraka's first invasion fifty years ago, have stabilized and colonized areas of the marshes. The humid, foetid swamps also provide perfect conditions in which the ork-genus fungi can propagate. After any skirmishes against the greenskins, ork hunters will always carry out a 'scorched earth' policy on the area, burning anything and everything within a predetermined range, to prevent the ork spores from germinating and, in time, producing more of the rampaging greenskins. But no matter how thorough the ork hunter regiments are,some spores are always dispersed more widely by the wind and come to rest in remote areas where they can grow to ork-bearing size.

More on the "Ork Spore Propogation" angle - even burning cannot totally eradicate them, it seems.

Page 142

Squiggoths vary hugely in size from that of an immature grox to something on a par with
an ancient archeosaur. Indeed the most gargantuan of the breed are referred to as orkeosauruse

I'm not sure what I can recall about archeosaurs as far as size go, except for that Barrington J Bayley Story of Dinosaur-analogues vs Titans. I'm just going to say "Dinosaur sized." Then again as I recall Orkeosaurs are basically one "Feral ork" analogue to Titans (the other being.. steam gargants. )

Page 144

And everywhere the subsonic reports of firing cannons shuddered the rippling pools, the air thick with the zip-zip of heavy lasfire.

"Reports" I take it to mean the cannon propellant, a sound travels.. at the speed of sound. This isnt really surprising as I recall - cannon propellant is supposed to move slow rather than fast as I recall it.

Page 147

The vanguard of the feral force was made up of several mobs of fur-clad orks carrying solid shot firearms and heavy-headed cleaver weapons. There were other units advancing behind them that were even armed with crude rocket launchers. The presence of such armaments among the tribes was a sign of just how much junk Ghazghkull Thraka's waaagh had brought to the planet. It
was evidence that the orks and their blasphemous invasion were everywhere, even within the untamed regions of the planet.

Ghazzie's been arming the local feral tribes. Sneaky bastard.

Page 147

Flanking the first wave of orks were several larger brutes riding on the backs of bizarre creatures that were a wild amalgam of bristling bad-tempered boar and maniacal mechanical augmentation. Their mounts might once have been simple forest pigs but after the orks had got their hands on them, they had become ferocious cybernetic beasts, their tiny brains and savage appetites
driven into a frenzy by the introduction of crude adrenal stimulants into their bloodstreams. These same cyboars and their boarboy riders were charging ahead of the infantry frontline, hooves splashing through the muddy channels and stagnant pools, eager to engage with the enemy at the earliest opportunity. They were apparently oblivious to the fact that they were simply putting
themselves into harm's way all the more quickly.

Ork Boar cavalry. Have you ever wondered how Feral Orks could build augmetics for their boars, but they couldnt (supposeldy) build guns? yeah, me too.

Page 148

The elephantine squiggoths were terrible to behold indeed, the largest of the beasts – known as orkeosauruses – dwarfing even the mighty Land Raider Avenger. But what made them all the more terrible, and an even greater threat to the Imperial armour, were the huge howdahs they carried on their broad backs. Constructed from thick pieces of pillaged adamantium, ceramite and steel-plate, lashed together with huge chains, these riveted creations had been daubed with the same basic symbols, reminiscent of the patterns produced by the orks with war paint on their own leathery green hides. Mounted on top of these haphazard platforms were all manner of heavier looted weapons, from chugging cannons to primitive laser devices and temperamental flamethrowers, manned by ork weapons crews.

Apparently these ferals can make their primitive versions of energy weapons as well as augmetics. I can't decide if its meant to be Green confusing Kroot with Feral Orks, or if he's suggetsing Ferals got hold of Flintstones technology.

Also more implication of OMG huge squiggoths.

Page 150

However, the red-lensed augmetic had been put in at Camlann's request
and had replaced a perfectly healthy organic specimen, rather than an injured one.

But through the implant Camlann saw what the cogitator core of his tank saw – projected trajectories, damage assessments, weapon locks, potential targets located, velocities of other armoured vehicles within the scope of its sensor arrays, reactor temperature levels. Through Old Baleful, as the commander called it, he saw what the Avenger registered.

And at that moment he saw a great many things as the battle between the Imperial armoured units and the massed feral ork tribes unfolded.

To Camlann's left an enemy shell hit a stalking sentinel as its lascannon pulsed with blue-white energy bursts. The cabin and the sentinel's pilot were vaporised in a blinding flash of incandescent flame. The scorched and smoking backward-jointed legs of the machine took another five unsteady paces before keeling over into the mud and slime.

A rather useful Space Marine augmetic that provides a link to the Land Raider's computer showing what it sees. We aren't sure whether it is wired or wireless.

Ork shell "vaporizes" pilot and enclosure of sentinel - leave your own interpretations to that

Page 150

Urged on by their battle-crazed riders, cyboars charged at the armoured units head on, legs iston-ing, breaking their blade-tusks, iron skulls and distorted bodies against the hulls of the huge vehicles, but leaving their own impression in the ceramite and adamantium plates nonetheless. The orks riding the cyboars were catapulted from their saddles, some landing on top of the gun
carriages and transports from where they proceeded to run riot with their guns and axes.

Feral orks charging IG armouered vehicles.

Page 151

The over-enthusiastic advancing greenskin infantry was slowly but surely being decimated by the combined barrage of Armageddon-pattern sentinel lascannons and sustained heavy bolter fire. The zip of lasfire and the chugging roar of the tank hullmounted bolters were accompanied by the crump of battle cannons and even heavier, more destructive weaponry. The bombard detonations were followed by the squeal of recoil as the armoured vehicles rocked in their advance, quaking as their massive cannons fired.

Implied recoil of the tank's battle cannon presumably. Note its not lifting the treads off the ground or anything, but it does appear to be rocking the tank enough to (briefly) pause it - but the tanks may or may not be moving all that fast (like a few kph perhaps) can't be more than 50,000 kg*m/s tops (what is known I believe as the Ogorkiewicz limit for gun recoil - about 900 Ns/tonne) but I would guess it is at LEAST as much as a modern tank, if not slightly more.

Page 152

Through the scanning devices of the Avenger, relayed via his ocular implant, Brother-Commander Camlann saw another urban camo-painted Sentinel stumble and topple backwards, kicked over by the clawing hoof of a squiggoth sporting a ring of bony spines around its neck and with an ungainly missile-throwing weapon bolted to its scratch-built, scrap metal howdah.

A foot as large as a flat-bed half-track smashed down on top of the walker, forcing it down into the clinging mud of the swamp as its frame and cabin crumpled under several tonnes of pressure.

Probable Armageddon-pattern Sentinel can be crushed by "half track" sized foot generating several tonnes of pressure (for comparison 1 tonne-force equals about 9800 newtons or so IIRC).

PAge 152

Runes flickered and scrolled over the blood-tinged lens of his augmetic, reporting damage sustained by the ancient leviathan, as the Land Raider came under sustained fire from pillbox constructions hanging over the side of a passing squiggoth. At the same time the Avenger's logic-engine was calculating distances and angles of fire with which to return fire and eliminate this latest threat to the Templar tank's continued survival.

More on the useful augmetic-cogitator link.
Page 155-156

The huge lumbering beast did not slow but turned its heavy tusked head away from the Hellhound and then swung it back on the great muscled joint of its neck, smashing it into the side of the tank. The Hellhound was rocked by the colossal impact, the tracks on its starboard side lifting free of the fens altogether, shrieking as they freewheeled in the tractionless air.

The turret of the Inferno cannon swivelled and was then trained back on the squiggoth. The monster swung the massive pendulum of its head again. Tusks like adamantium-tipped warheads punctured the armour plating towards the rear of the Hellhound.

Black fluid, wet with an oily sheen, sprayed from ruptured promethium tanks as the turret-mounted flame-thrower fired. Fire and fuel mixed, and the inevitable combustion followed. A sheet of incandescent flame blasted from the side of the tank. Two seconds later the reserve promethium tanks erupted, which in turn cooked off the munitions of the tank's arsenal, the intense heat detonating the bolter rounds inside its loaded heavy bolter.

The Hellhound was torn apart by a searing ball of flame and tarry black smoke that boiled away the surface-water of the swamp in a roiling cloud of steam, hurling pieces of twisted metal, fused engine parts and strips of splintered track across the marsh. Several segments of track clattered off the hull of the Avenger. Runes flickered and scrolled over the blood-tinged lens of Camlann's
augmetic.

As the smoke and steam cleared, blown away by the shockwave of the blast, lying amidst chunks of burning shrapnel, Camlann saw the squiggoth keel over into the swamp, throwing up another wave of rippling black water. Its head was a blackened an crisped mess, its tiny brain cooked inside its skull by the fiery blast. The orks clinging to the gun-howdah on its back whooped and
screamed as the jerry-rigged platform fell apart around them, the kannon the beast had carried crushing several of the greenskins beneath its heavy barrel.

Squiggoth vs Hellhound.

Page 157

The ramp of the Land Raider dropped open, lowered by whining hydraulics, and the LCD-shot gloom of the interior of the tank was suddenly bathed in the dirty sepia light of the contested marshlands.

LCD displays inside the Land Raider.

Page 159

Warning runes started to flash at the periphery of his visor. One of the wire-frame models was blinking red, the suit's cogitator trying to reconfigure as something large began to move at speed towards the Space Marines.

It was too close, too large and, incredibly, too fast for them to take evasive action, weighed down as they were by their armour in the boggy marsh.

More of champion Angsar's neat gear.

Page 159

With a screaming roar of its own, Brother Jarold gave fire with his assault cannon, the spinning weapon becoming obscured by smoke and muzzle-flash. Empty shell cases rained down around the dreadnought and splashed into the swamp as Jarold's ammunition hoppers maintained a ready supply of explosive bullet-shells to the cannon. The dreadnought's assault tore great chunks of meat and muscle from the squiggoth's flanks but did nothing to slow the beast.

explosive ammo for Jarold's assault cannon.

Page 160

Inside their all-enclosing suits of power armour, each Templar's body temperature was regulated so that he did not overheat in the extreme humidity of the jungles or cook in the direct heat of the sun, when it actually managed to break through the miasmic cloud hanging over the marshlands.

Temperature regulation of power armor.

Page 160

But the sting-flies did not trouble the Marines, enclosed within their power armour. Neither did they trouble the orks, the aliens' war-painted hides apparently as tough as leather
armour.

Ork hide given equivalence to leather armor. A testament to their natural durability, I'd think.

Page 161

...Brother Jarold on overwatch behind them like some adamantium colossus amidst the spindly trunks and capering root-boles, as the Chaplain checked Koldo's auspex readings. Then he pointed with the bladed head of his crozius through the trees into the cloying gloom.

another Black Templar auspex carrier.


Page 164

Still, it paid to stay alert out in the Green. There were more things than just orks that could take a man down within the primordial depths of the festering forests, and some of them were a darn sight worse. There were vicious carnivorous strains of flora that were possessed of an insidious and malign intellect. And there were the predatory creatures that had been native to the region before the arrival of the green-skins with Ghazghkull Thraka's last invasion attempt, fifty years before.

The orks were a fairly recent arrival on the planet, but within the last five decades it seemed that the feral tribes had made the jungles their own. In fact there didn't seem to be a place on the planet that they weren't suited to. From the sulphurous Fire Wastes to the frozen Deadlands, and everywhere in between, the orks thrived. There was something grotesque about their alien physiologies that meant that they could quickly adapt to extremes of environment, including many that would kill a man, if he was without the appropriate protective gear and breathing apparatus, such as the toxic deserts of Armageddon Secundus.

It sometimes seemed that there were signs of the greenskins everywhere within the equatorial jungles. Scenes of savage battles where ork hunters and their offworlder Guard allies fighting alongside them had died to protect the environs of Cerbera Base and stop the orks making any further advances on the Imperial station.

It seems Armageddon's jungles have more than a little Death World in them. It may be that Armageddon's fucked up enviroment has had some impact on the jungles, just not the sort that would render it into an ash-blown, irradiated wasteland. I imagine the mobile Orkish ecosystem spore delivery has not improved things.

And speaking of Orks, we see yet again how their brand thrives even in fucked up territory.

PAge 169

The figure straightened, the curious rifle held in its right hand. The weapon looked relatively primitive in its design and manufacture, certainly compared to the shotguns and las-weapons of the skinners. It had a curved wooden stock and sported two hunting knife blades, one at the base of the stock and another under the muzzle of the rifle. The gun had been given additional decoration in the form of feathers and small bones that had been tied to it, for some savagely primitive reason.

Kroot rifle.

Page 172

Kole had heard campfire tales of the alien mercenaries known as the kroot. They were primitive creatures and practised all manner of barbaric alien rituals. Word was that Guardsmen fighting alongside the kroot on frontier worlds, or against them in the Imperium's battles with the nascent Tau Empire in the Ultima Segmentum, had witnessed acts of depraved head-hunting and even cannibalism. Even their mercenary units were referred to as carnivore squads, and rightly so. But what troubled any right-thinking Imperial Guardsman, more than the fact that the kroot were happy to consume their own dead and that of other xenos races they killed, was that they would, if given the chance, just as readily devour the remains of human beings, even if they had been fighting on the same side.

The kroot were most well known for selling their services to the growing empire of the equally alien Tau, but it was not unknown for the forces of the Imperium to make use of them as canon-fodder in their campaigns against mutual enemies.

rumors of the Kroot seem to get pretty widespread, since we're talking about rumors coming from halfway across the Imperium itself. Also the Imperium having xenos mercenaries (well them and the Orks at least.)

[Connor MacLeod]

Part 3.. and the Armageddon novels are done. Say goodby to Brother Jarrold.



Page 174

The kroot held the rosette out to Borysko. Such objects were more than just badges of office; they were also often potent devices in their own right, capable of storing as much information as a data-slate, including details of security clearance codes and encrypting comm-interfaces, and containing all manner of other useful devices such as lock overrides, digi-weapons and signum trackers-cum-homing signals.

Inquistiorial Kroot agent. I believe in DH terms they are considered "sanctioned" although as we will learn this doesnt make them immune from being harassed and attempted killings. Also I'm pretty sure they don't hand the rosettes out per se to the agents, the agents get their own symbols, which arent qhite as fancy.

Page 175

Kole had heard tell from some of the grizzled off-world Guardsmen that sometimes served alongside the ork hunters at Cerbera Base, that kroot were able to learn the languages of other species at an astonishing rate. They were able to achieve this through a combination of bird-like mimicry and knowledge of language gained, it was said, from consuming the brains of other creatures. In the case of Low Gothic, human beings.

The longer a kroot lived in human society, the more competent and assured it became at using the common tongue of the Imperium and its associated dialects. Until they achieved that level of surety, they had to make do with communicating in a form of pidgin Gothic, parroting the phrases and speech of others.

Kroot hav elanguage skills it seems.

Page 178

Three kilometres further on, having followed a worsening trail of devastation, they found the grounded Valkyrie. The craft was recognisable as such, but only just. It was now nothing more than a large, bullet-shaped airframe. The wings had been torn from the hull of the craft as it hurtled towards the ground through densely growing trunks. Holes had been ripped in the Valkyrie's hull, the carapace of the flyer being shredded by the unkind attentions of tearing branches. The windshield of the cockpit and every viewing port in the craft had been shattered: not one piece of armaglas remained intact. Pieces of the downed flyer were scattered throughout the thickets of red-barked trees.

'

The remains of the downed "at 500 kph" Valkyrie.

Page 180

A shot to the head had also exploded the pilot's skull. Pieces of brain matter and bone shards still adhered to the twisted, structural struts of the windshield – although none of the armaglas panes remained intact – and ruddy gore painted the instrument panel.

Implies the pilot had his head blown apart more completely by the hellgun shots.

Page 186

Then there was the Chaplain's sworn protector, Bodyguard Koldo, his auspex readings keeping the Templars on track for their target destination.

Auxpex mapping/GPS like functions, I guess.


Page 187

"According to my auspex readings and the last signal received by the fleet, we should be almost there."

The kill-team advanced for another two hundred metres through the dense green growth, and then Ansgar stepped through a screen of vines and into a clearing. The green shadows gave way to dazzling sunlight. For a moment Ansgar was blinded as the auto-senses of his helmet visor adjusted to the dramatic change in light levels.

Light adjustment functions for autosesnes, and again gps like auspex/tracking functions.

Page 189

Ansgar's heads-up visor display was attempting to calculate the speed and trajectory of the approaching threat, overlaying its image with a flickering orange-barred wire-frame of lines and polygons, as his ancient artificer helmet's cogitator made adjustments to keep up with the rapidly approaching leviathan.

Helmet HUDS and doing calc shit. Again.

PAge 189-190

The beast was enormous, a good twelve metres tall at its heavily muscled shoulder, so big that it would have been classed as an orkeosaurus by the xenos-genetors of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Underneath the brow of its armoured helmet, the monster's face was a blunt, homed visage – not unlike that of an ork itself – set in a permanent expression of bestial anger. Incredibly, despite its furious charge through the forest, the squiggoth's weapons platform was still attached to its back by the heavy chains, which had been hooked directly into the armour-like hide of the animal's sides and wrapped round under its belly It soon became apparent that the howdah was actually the recycled body of a Krieg-pattern Siegfried tank, minus its locomotive traction units. The shoulders of the orkeosaurus were covered with interlocking plates of beaten plate. The rattling armour covered much of its flanks and templum-pillar legs as well. It was only really the creature's head and underbelly that had been left unprotected.

The Sigfried Tank comes from Epic Armageddon: Swordwind, and is a low-grade "quality over quantity" type vehicle. It's also a fucking huge beast.

Page 191

Weighing in at around sixty tonnes of almost solid muscle, a few blasts from an assault cannon were not easily going to stop the enraged beast.

The remainder of the kill-team gave fire as well. Bolter rounds spanged off the riveted adamantium and wrought iron sheets of the beast's armoured plating. But if the dreadnought's deadly arsenal could do little to trouble the orkeosaurus, what hope had the other Templars with their markedly less powerful weaponry by comparison? Weapons that could vaporise a man or bifurcate a body with one explosive shell seemed little better than slings and catapults against the resilient gargantuan squiggoth.

60 tonne beast vs Dreadnought and Templars. Implied weaponry that can blow apart and vaporize people are no use against such a beast (which tells you something about tank weapons, methinks, given what we saw Earlier and then in other novels like Gunheads.

Page 192

A galloping mastodon-like foot swept towards Jarold. For a moment it looked like it was going to miss him and sweep over the armoured hull. But a two-tonne, four-metre tall colossus of adamantium, ceramite and steel was hard to miss.

Jarrold is 4 metres tall. This suggests the average Black templar is 2 metres tall, and your average human is slightly less than 1.3 metres tall Also he's gone down to 2 tonnes again.

Page 193

Ansgar could now see the older massive gouged wounds quite clearly, dark and raw, burnt to a fatty crisp at the edges, the legacy of a lascannon blast, he guessed.

In the battle for the Plague Marshes, Ansgar had seen a squiggoth gutted by a blast from a Leman Russ, thick cables of intestines pouring from its guts. It looked like the orkeosaurus had only barely escaped such a fate itself.

Nonetheless, the injuries were terrible indeed, enough to drive the orkeosaurus into an uncontrollable, pain-induced rage; but not enough to finish the monster. It must have been these injuries, sustained during the battle against the Rustung Armoured Fourth and their Steel Legion supporters, that had caused the squiggoth to go rogue.

Again testament to what kind of firepower it takes to down a Squiggoth/Orkeosaur - battle cannon (or lascannon) basically gutting a huge (tank sized) creature, it would seem.

Page 194

The orkeosaurus had a stub of tail, which helped balance the massive bulk of its body, but proved no direct threat to the Space Marines. However, the studded ball and chain – the size of that employed by a hive demolition servitor – did.

HAH.

Page 195

Recovering himself again in the next instant, the thankful Kemen turned his lascannon on the orkeosaurus and its gun carriage. His shoulder-mounted weapon flashed as something akin to man-made lightning ripped from the muzzle, lashing the armoured plates of the monster, scorching paint and rust from the jerry-rigged carapace and lacerating the paler flesh of its lower flanks, so that the smell of cooked squig-flesh threatened to overwhelm the Marines' enhanced olfactory organs.

Lascannon vs Orkeosaur. Note the BT is using a shoulder mounted lascannon


PAge 196-197

Brother Clust was having greater success with his chugging heavy bolter, the furious fusillade he was managing to keep up with his weapon tearing chunks from the orkeosaurus's pale underbelly. Viscous black blood ran from the holes peppering its side. But the orkeosaurus had turned itself so that its head was out of range of their guns.

If Clust and Kemen could sustain this level of damage for long enough, the giant squiggoth would eventually succumb and fall. But the monster wasn't going to simply stand there and take such a beating without trying to defend itself.

Ansgar heard the jerking, clattering snap of the crushing ball-chain. Over the roars of their weapons, Clust and Kemen did not. Even as Ansgar was screaming a warning into the comm, the spiked orb smashed into Brother Clust, carrying him into the air with it on its arcing journey.
Incredibly, none of the cruel spears of steel projecting from the rusting mace ball pierced his body. Clust found himself caught between the metre-long spikes instead. Then he and his heavy bolter ere flying through the air unaided, to come crashing down on top of a sundered tree trunk.

I think the guy survives. But it shows that heavy bolter + lascannon miht eventually wear down a Squiggoth.


Page 199

Ansgar pushed himself up into a standing stance as the beast thundered over him, plunging his immediate surroundings into twilight shadow. The vast columns of the orkeosaurus's legs passed either side of the champion, the span formed by its bunker-sized ribcage. For a brief second it seemed to Ansgar as if he was inside an Ecclesiarchy shrine, only one papered with pachyderm hide.

"bunker sized ribcage." that gives you something of an idea of how nasty an eviseration might have been done by the Russ mentioned earlier.

Page 201

Larce's flamer belched and two of the greenskins died screaming, caught within its cone of fire. Their stinking green hides blackened and crackled as they first cooked and then burned under the intense, inescapable heat.

Flamer vs Orks.

Page 201

As the initiate brought his boltgun to bear the ork brought its heavy club – fashioned from a tree branch and an old munitions casing – down on Lairgnen's arm, knocking his weapon askew. But before the ork could follow up its attack, Brother-Initiate Gildas was there. His bolter coughed in his hand and the alien's shoulder and half its head was vaporised in a cloud of green mist.

Literal vaporizaiton ro exploding? You decide!

Page 201

The zzap gun, the main weapon it had carried, broke the skulls of another pair of orks. Moments later, the unstable power cells of the primitive laser – fractured by the fall – went critical. The zzap kannon exploded, bathing the smashed cycads in a searing green-tinged ball of expanding energy.

Ork laser weapon. Self destructs. It can't be a "real" fireball since its green. Probable indication fo the weird WAAAGGH effect influencing Ork technology.

Page 210

As well as his own lasgun and combat knife, Kurn had equipped himself with one of the stormtrooper's hellguns and a spare chainblade. In the rucksack he now carried on his back he had spare ammo clips and power cells, as well as a couple of det-charges. There was also what food, water rations and med-supplies they had been able to find on the Valkyrie.

Kurn is packing a ton of shit in other words,

Page 213

The first of the feral orks burst from between the trees in front of Tremayne, howling in insane glee, a monstrous machete held in the meaty paw of its right hand. While the greenskin was still in the air Tremayne fired his laspistol, the zinging high-powered shot hitting the creature in the arm. The ork hit the ground, howling in pain, and dropped the machete. The lieutenant took aim again. There was the roar of an autogun opening up behind him and the ork fell, arms flailing, as solid shot rounds opened up its chest in a spray of alien blood.

Autogun fire "open up" Ork's chest. How many shots or how nasty torn up.. no way of telling.

Page 214

The laspistol whined, winging a bounding greenskin that tumbled head-over-heels into a clinging bed of mosses. The autogun coughed twice and an ork fell, the top of its skull exploded by the solid shot cartridges. The hellgun spat and another brute dropped, a smoking, cauterised hole blasted through its open mouth.

Hellgun puts a cauterized hole through mouth and head of Ork. Cauterized. double digit KJ maybe? Hard to say depending on wound size. Ork heads are bigger so they'd have to penetrate deeper, and would be harder to burn.

Also the autogun shoots twic eand blows off the top of an Ork's skull. Lasgun should be capable of similar if not better.

Page 215

Tremayne had won numerous competitions for marksmanship run between the regiments of the ACG.

ACG have their own regiments, again. So they are an actual Guard unit.


Page 216

Tremayne heard a distinct choom! A second later an ork bearing down on him with a nocked cleaver raised above its head disappeared in an explosion of dirty smoke and stony soil, as if it had trodden on a land mine.

As another ork fell, one arm torn from its body by a hail of autocannon fire, the lieutenant dared a glance over the top of the outcrop.

Self explanatory. One ork blonw apart, another amputated. Probably Ork Hunter grenades, and the autocannon (support/heavy weapon)

Page 217

Another grenade hurled an ork, wearing a horned skull, back down the gully. A chainsword, wielded with no little skill by a grizzled, scarred, unhandsome man, with close-cropped greying hair, eviscerated an ork. Kurn's hellgun blasted a hole in the side of a greenskin and took its gun-arm off at the elbow.

Hellgun amputates an arm and appears to overpenetrate into the side of its body. Considering Orks are bigger than humans I'd expect a good 10-15 cm diameter for the arm. 100 kj or so (ignoring cauterization/burning) should more than cover it, maybe another 20-50 kj for flash- burning the ends of the stumps.

Page 218

Tremayne saw a cloaked figure, half hidden by the trees at the top of the gully, return fire with what looked like a primitive, black powder rifle. But the rifle's appearance belied its deadliness and he was startled when a pulse of charged energy tore from the muzzle of the gun, streaking down the side of the defile in a blaze of brilliant blue-white light and caving in the ork sniper's thick skull with its powerful punch.

Pulse round of the Kroot Rifle seems to have extreme kinetic/impact effect against Ork skull, but not quite blowing it apart like an explosion. Nor burning, it would seem. Could the Tau have different kinds of pulse ammo? Would make sense.

Page 219

The stink and smoke of cooking ork corpses wafted up the defile to where Borysko and the lieutenant were arguing. The hunters had collected the bodies of the greenskins at the bottom of the gully and Yeydl had ignited the bonfire with a heat pulse from his meltagun.

Meltagun used to ignire ork bonfire. They also have a meltagun as well as two snipers and an autocannon.

Page 221

The platoon's vox-trooper eased the precious vox-caster and its harness off his back, pulling his arms out of its harness straps, and set it down on the ground. Crouching next to it, he began flicking switches and fiddling with knurled dials.

There was the sudden fizz and subsequent bang of a las-bolt exploding the caster.

Borysko turned to Lieutenant Tremayne with genuine shock written all over his face, his mouth agape. He saw the aimed laspistol gripped tightly in the officer's right hand.

Lasgun blows apart backpack mounted vox caster. I assumed a roughly boxlike construction 10-15 cm on a side, made of high density polyethelyne on the laser death ray calculator. 10-20 kj seems like it could cover it, not including any burning. The dimensions and mass at that value would match roughly what I know of voxes from the munitorum manual (for example)

Ork hunters we should note don't seem to be using micro beads (contrasted with the Steel Legion in the first book) either they lack the supply, or they chose not to ues them.

Page 223

Night was coming, and with it a whole new facet of the forest came to life.

Then, having checked the charge on his weapon, he too left the shelter of the treeline, no more than a swiftly darting shadow in the dusky gloom of the forest.

Ignoring the stabbing pains in his back, the lacerations on his legs and the aching bruises of his shoulders, he followed after them, scampering down the defile, past the smouldering ork pyre, and back into the clinging, foetid jungle.

Our injured storm trooper buddy, still plodding along.


Page 226

The combination of the Space Marines' biologically enhanced eyesight and the auto-senses of their power armour meant that they were hardly disadvantaged by any lack of light. If need be, their eyes alone could see well enough to know where they were in almost total darkness.

Space marine night vision.

Page 227

They also didn't need sleep, at least not as a trooper of the Imperial Guard would understand it. It was another trait inherited from their primarch Rogal Dorn, bequeathed them by their genetically manipulated heritage. The Marines could consciously switch off one half of their brains at a time, passing all autonomic functions and reactions to one hemisphere.

Such incredible genetic manipulation was beyond the genetor-magi of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the medicae of the Imperium or even the Apothecaries of the Astartes Chapters. Such superhuman medical accomplishments now seemed so incredible and unfeasible as to be like magic.

More on the ability of Astartes to function without sleep.

Page 230

As a consequence, Koldo's auspex was of little use to them directly now, in terms of helping find the lost company. Koldo had been using the augury device to lead them to the coordinates of that last crucial transmission. The way ahead was a mystery to them now. They could pray for guidance and trust in the visions of the Emperor's Champion. But for the time being they were also going to have to rely on the skills of the scout, as taught to the warriors of the Chapter during the endless hours of training and indoctrination they endured on board the ships of the fleet, and honed during the long days, weeks and months spent traversing the Empyrean.

Auspex tracking function. Also "days, weeks and months" of warp travle.

Page 237

The longer they were in hunting down their missing brethren and their precious gene-seed, the more likely it was that their mission would prove to have been futile. If they took too long, even if they did recover the gene-seed, the narthecium could keep the progenoid glands stored within it healthy and in a usable condition for only so long. And if the stasis vessel had been damaged, for proportionally less time.

Gene-seed again has a limited lifespan before it goes bad, which goes some way to explaining why prompt removal is often such a big deal.

Page 238

The radiation storms of Armageddon were the result of millennia of unchecked industrial pollution on a planet-wide scale and several ecology-devastating wars. Ansgar had understood that for the most part, rad-storms were restricted to the polluted wastes of Armageddon Prime and Secundus.

Some more on the scale of warfare and pollution on Armageddon. I imagne "ecology devastating wars" implies stuff on the scale of, oh, Vraks or Krieg, where you get WMDs of some kind or another deployed as part of the conflict. Krieg turned into a hive world, after all...

Page 247

The party had stopped for Sergeant Borysko to study the platoon's maps Ertz carried with him, comparing their position to readings he was taking with a hand-held auspex. They were all glad of the chance to rest and get some rations inside them, none more so than the half-crippled Masursky and his human crutch Coburg.

again hand held auspex used in mapping/navigational functions as well as Detection. Presumably its mapping or scanning the area and providing a readout to compare to. Rather useful for Guardsmen, I'd think, even if only the officers carried them.

Page 250-251

He played the cross-hairs of his gun scope over the figures, one by one. There was his target, standing next to the skinner sergeant, and his adjutant, the three of them poring over the charts spread out in front of them. If he moved forward a fraction he would have a clear shot.

Targeter scope of the Assassin-storm trooper's hellgun.

Page 251-252

Tentatively, he stretched and tensed his leg muscles, his back and his arms, in an effort to avoid the onset of cramp. His body still ached from his rather unceremonious landing, but then he was lucky to have been able to walk away from it at all.

When he had been sucked out of the back of the Valkyrie, the assault craft had been flying low, just above the jungle canopy. The spreading palm leaves of the cycads had broken his fall, as had the network of whiplash branches beneath. He had plummeted through the canopy, sending ibises flapping away, squawking in panic. His ribs and limbs had taken a battering, in spite of the body armour he was wearing, but his helmet had protected his head.

His crazy descent had come to an abrupt stop several metres from the ground, with him trussed up in a tangle of creepers and liana tendrils.

More on the Storm trooper/assassin's survival of the Valkyrie crash. Also, apparently they were wearing body armor, but it doesnt look to be very obvious (eg its not hard metal plates- or if it is itn isnt mentioned as such.)

Page 253

After the scowling, silent Klim, still carrying the mangled, scorched wreck of the vox-set on his back, came Coburg and Masursky, with the witchy-looking Priest and uncharacteristically sullen Geist.

Vox set seems to be at least partly intact. Previous calc might be generous

Page 258

An autogun opened up with a clattering roar. Masursky, usually so cool-headed, was straddling the log, firing into the undergrowth on the near side of the ravine, yelling like a maniac. His injured leg making him feel even more vulnerable, panic had seized him and he had lost it completely. Some of the other skinners joined him in futilely blasting the treeline.

Over the cacophony produced by the autogun there was the zing and zip of a high intensity las-shot and Masursky, suddenly silent, slipped off the bridge. His autogun fired for a full five seconds before it emptied its ammo clip.

5 (or more liekly more) seconds worth of auto fire implied to empty a clip. Assuming between 30-50 rounds (probably more towards the lower) it would be 6-10 rnds a second, or 360-600 rpm. Not exactly fast as far as "automatic" fire rate goes, but.. *shrugs* Its not impossible for automatic weapons to be that slow.


Page 259

Then the hulking Kurn was on his feet again, blood welling from the semi-cauterised hole of a las-wound. His bellow an unintelligible roar of fury, the massive bodyguard thundered forwards to meet the assassin.

Semi-cauterized wound.

Page 260

The hellgun spat. The back of Kurn's skull blew out in a spray of blood, bone and brain matter, but the assassin had left his shot too late again. Momentum carried the bodyguard's body forward three more stumbling steps and Kurn's shambling corpse collided with the assassin.

The abnormally large Guardsmen Kurn (likened to an abhuman in many ways) has his skull blasted out by the hellgun, and probably his brain blasted apart. No idea of cauterization (but probably) so at least single, probably double digit kj at least.

Page 265

The physical trauma of the psychic echoes of the Marines' deaths was too much for the Emperor's Champion. Overwhelmed by a flood of raw emotion and psychic agony, Ansgar fell to his knees, his grip on his sword relaxing.

Angsar's visions. Much more believable than Gabriel's episodes in the DoW novels, I must say.

Page 275

As the Black Templars progressed through the jungle, their ancient suits of power armour maintained a stable, comfortable body temperature for the Marines locked inside them. But since the battle with the orkeosaurus and the fell blow Brother Clust had suffered from the massive spiked wrecking ball, the veteran's suit's systems were struggling to regulate temperature and humidity for the warrior.

More temp control functions for power armor. Also the borther who took a mace to the body survived, albeit damaged.

PAge 279

z
A mob of orks was closing on the dreadnought from above, reckless in their descent of the rock face. A pair of the creatures had stopped half way down, still six metres above Jarold, and was worrying at a jagged rock protruding from the cliff with their axes, trying to break it loose. And they were succeeding; Ansgar could see the cracks appearing in the base of the outcrop.
..

Jarold heard him and following the line of the champion's sword as it pointed towards the hazard above him, fired the rocket launchers that topped his armoured hull.

The shelf of rock exploded, blasted into a million tiny fragments, as did one of the orks kicking away at it. A shower of stone shards and other debris rained down amidst the pouring rain, clattering from the dreadnought's scripture-inscribed hull.

Effect of Brother Jarold's rockets.


Page 281

Whatever the self-serving ork dok had intended by recovering Grimskar's ruined body from the firestorm-ravaged ruins of the caldera, he would soon learn that this warboss would not be a pawn in another's plans. He had his own plans to bring to fruition. The half-death he had suffered at the hands of the Templar champion had only delayed things temporarily.

Yes we had an Ork who actually survived what amounts to a nuclear detonation, and death at the hands of Angsar's weapon. That my friends is durability.

Page 293

The hollow was filled with soupy, green water. Emerging from the centre of the pool, to a height of three metres, was a fleshy trunk two metres across, ripe with tuberous pods. The top of the trunk formed a lip and was thick with the red flowers, although the petals had begun to draw themselves shut as dusk spread its dark mantle over the twilight gloom of the forest. The boughs above the skinners' heads were draped with trailing creeper-vine, more of the flowers budding amidst the lianas.

No, this does not seem dangerous at all.


Page 297

"Concentrate your fire at the stem." Borysko shouted over the roar of the autocannon and the whoomph of the meltagun, turning his own laspistol on the tuberous trunk at the centre of the stagnant glade.

The trunk of the plant was shredded, roasted and blown apart under a hail of autocannon shells, sizzling las-rounds and the inferno-heat of a melta firing at maximum intensity. Blood-red petals filled the hollow with a blizzard of wine-dark flakes, looking like frozen drops of plasma suspended amidst the whirlwind of the plant's destruction, as if spilled by the vampiric plant itself.

And they destroy it promptly with combined fire. Note the melta firing at "maximum intensity" suggesting possibly variable power, variable focus, or perhaps both.

Page 302

Through the night-sight setting of the magnoculars the nighttime world was revealed in shades of green and black. Where illuminators glowed like cadmium and tungsten stains in the darkness, through the night-sight they blazed flaring white.

Night vision function on magnoculars.

Page 318

Aboard the vast derelict-cum-spaceship, the massed forces of the Blood God's primarch hungered for the lives and souls of a population billions strong. Angron the Accursed, daemon primarch of the World Eaters Space Marines, stood at the head of this awe and terror-inspiring Chaos army; the stuff of nightmares made unholy flesh, driven by a terrible appetite for blood.

Armageddon "billions strong"

Page 319

The presence of the battle-brethren of the Space Wolves Chapter, assigned to this sector only recently, was unknown to the forces of Chaos. The defenders gained valuable time when Angron – complacent following one successful conquest after another – spent weeks erecting blasphemous monuments in homage to the Fell Powers rather than pressing home the advantage his hordes had won him.

The daemon primarch's failure to run down the shattered fragments of the Imperial armies and destroy them utterly would prove to cost him the ultimate prize when the final reckoning came. Emerging from the sweltering jungles at last, his army found a well prepared, dug in force of defences reinforced by the Space Wolves, commanded by the Chapter Master Logan Grimnar himself.

Angron, unsurprisingly, has not learned much in the way of tactics since becoming a daemon prince it seems.

Page 320

Supported by a bodyguard of no less than twelve greater daemons of Khorne, the daemonic primarch carved a bloody path through the Imperial lines, urging his forces towards the hives of Helsreach and Infernus.

..

An entire company of Grey Knight terminators – superhuman warriors of the Ordo Malleus's Chamber Militant, rigorously trained to deal with otherworldly, soul-taking threats such as those of Chaos manifest – teleported directly into the midst of the traitor primarch's host.

Only the unique abilities of the Grey Knights would be able to truly defeat a monstrosity such as Angron. Rematerializing at the very feet of the Chaos demigod, at the pulsing heart of the roiling mass of corruption that was the daemon prince's unholy army, the knights joined in battle with Angron's brass-skinned bloodthirsters.

Of all the company of crusading Ordo Malleus warriors mat Grimnar committed to the conflict that day, only ten Grey Knights survived, their commander having paid the ultimate price in his personal battle with the daemon prince. But regardless of the price mat had been paid, Angron of the World Eaters had at last been defeated, his tainted spirit banished back to the hellish miasmic unreality of the warp.

And this, my friends, is yet another reason why the Space Wolves fucking kick ass, and Logan Grimnar is one of the bestest Chapter Masters in the Imperium (Next to Dante of course )

the sad part is aweseome shit like this gets rendered pretty meaningless compared to the stuff in the new SM and GK codexes...

Page 322

When the storm broke, as inevitably it must, a magnitude of force would be unleashed upon Armageddon akin to that of an orbital strike, devastating enough to surely tear open a hole in reality, a rift between times, between universes.

A storm compared to an orbital strike - something Green does a few times in his books. I should note, however that this being Armageddon the climate/enviroment is not only severely fucked up (Season of Fire, anyone? RAdiation storms?) but this area is fucking warped up to the gills, including the storm (henc ethe "tear open a hole in reality" bit - I kinda doubt orbital strikes normally do that.)


Page 330

Brother Jarold's symbiotic machine-spirit chimed a warning, alerting him that weapons-lock had been gained on him as, through artificial eyes, he saw the exhaust flare of the rocket launcher fired from the remains of a watch-tower.

Jarold had no time to do anything other than brace for impart. The rocket struck him a split second later, its warhead exploding in a flash of oily flame. The dreadnought was enveloped in a thick cloud of greasy smoke that completely obscured him in the pre-dawn gloom.

..

A gentle yet insistent breeze blew from the river through the jungle. The smoke cleared. Brother Jarold still stood, a last persistent wisp of fumy vapour clinging to his tank body. The left hand flank of his armoured hull was dented and cracked, the devotional passages of scripture that had been inscribed there burnt away and unreadable now.

Jarold is Ork rocket proof, mostly. Also his suit's systems can warn him of opposing target locks (Implying also these orks were using targeting systems!)

Page 331

The dreadnought had received a direct hit from a crashing ork plane and survived to recount the incident. Did these stupid greenskins really think that a simple rocket attack would halt his indomitable advance?

NO FUCKING WAY! (something that happened in the previous book as well one migh tremember. The only thing happening wa slosing a weapon arm.)

Page 332

His machine-spirit notified him of target-lock just as the chime-alert warned him that the orks had acquired weapons-lock on him again as well.

..

With the shriek of rocket engines firing, three Retribution-class rockets were launched. For a moment their spiralling flight seemed haphazard and chaotic, then tiny cogitator relays kicked in and the three missiles turned groundward again.

Jarold gets targeted again, just as he gains a target lock, and his missiles fire once more ,and are cogitator guided.

Page 343

\
The adamantium-shielded door had been partially melted by the fire that had ravaged this block, but the opening mechanisms appeared to still be intact. There were signs that the new occupiers of this facility had tried their best to open it; the uneven scars of lasfire and great scorch marks attested to the various methods the greenskins had used to try to force their way into the vault. All had failed. After all, the vault had been built to withstand everything other than a direct orbital blast from a battleship in low orbit over the planet.

fuckoff-huge adamanitum doors resistant to a low-orbit orbital strike from a "battleship" either literally (or figuratively meaning any warship.) In the case of the former it means it can resist cruiser and escort guns., which may put limts on those. Depends on the kind of cruiser and the kind of gun too, of course

Page 352-353

Some might like to believe that the Imperium was one solid mass of star systems, covering the five segmentae of the galaxy, but in reality it was no more than a series of loosely-connected sectors and planets, separated by the unimaginably vast gulfs of wilderness space and the domains and dominions of a myriad other races.

On all sides disparate worlds were beset from within and without the boundaries of Imperial space by countless alien races, all of which sought to extinguish the divine light of the Emperor's knowledge and civilisation. The voracious entity that was the utterly alien, extra-galactic tyranid race. The ancient, unfathomable eldar. The young, yet aggressively expansionist tau and their kroot carnivore kindred allies. The skulking hrud. The spear-ship fleets of the sheed. The demiurg. And more recently, in terms of the ten thousand-year history of the Imperium, the insidious evil of the awakening aeons-dead necrontyr and their vampiric star gods.

And yet currently there was no greater sustained threat to the dominance of the Imperium of Mankind than the pugnacious resilience of ork-kind. On a thousand worlds the greenskins had waged war with asteroid-fortresses, death-ships, gargants, squig war-beasts, improvised firearms ands axes. There were just as many worlds that were already under ork rale, clusters of these worlds forming the petty tyrannies of the mightiest warlords of their savage, warring kind.

A general assessment of the Imperium. generally a collection of loosely-grouped islands of sanity trying to stay together. Implies that the sectors rater than individual planets are separated by vast gulfs (hundreds or thousands of light years.) rather than indivdual planets within the sector or subsector. Orks are cited as being a bigger threat to the Imperium than the Nids. I'm not wholly certain of this myself. The 'Nids are more unified, they've been around less of a time and yet imposed an even bigger danger - certainly the Orks have not prompted some of the insane responses that Tyranid hive fleets have.

Page 363

His bolt pistol was in his left hand. Eurys raised the gun and fired as the Berzerker pressed home his newly won advantage. At point blank range the high velocity mass reactive shells, blessed by the Relictors' own warp-aware reclusiarchs, exploded against the Chaos warrior's shoulder guard, detonating on impact. The sudden, unexpected force of the bolter blasts sent the World Eater staggering back.

Relictors use "blessed" (by warp aware priests?) bolter rounds (also "high velocity mass reactive shells").


Page 375

f
With a cry born of anger, desperation and a holy zeal, leaping from the press of greenskin bodies onto the altar stone, Captain Eurys swung his humming power sword over his head, double-handed – the blade screaming as it cut through the psychically-charged air, the splatters of blood-rain cooking off its white-hot cutting edge – and brought it down on top of the wyrdboy's simmering skull.

It seemed to Eurys that there was a moment of uncanny silence, before he was hurled from the altar, across the circle of standing stones, by a blast like an orbital strike.

The battling Marines, traitors and greenskins, the lightning-scarred standing stones, the crater, the portal and even the warp storm boiling above were consumed in an explosion of cold, green fire, as the energy of the ork waaagh was released in one cataclysmic explosion.

Warriors on every side were knocked flat like grass-stems in a storm. Fully half the remaining orks died as their skulls exploded under the force of the psychic Shockwave.
Eurys lay where he had fallen against the side of a black granite monolith and looked back across the scorched ring of stones. Apart from the momentarily halted battle, something else had changed. It took him a moment to realise what it was as he gazed across the altar stone to the clawing menhirs beyond and the withered, hurricane-devastated treeline on the opposite side of the crater.

He could no longer see the burning jungles of Armageddon from half a millennium ago. The warp portal was gone.

Thermal-effect powers word, and another warp effect compared to an orbita strike of some kind.

Page 380

During his journey through the churning white water, the linked machine-spirit of the war machine had struggled to process the flood of information that the mechanical senses relayed to Jarold's brain. For much of his journey through the gorge – bouncing from the submerged rocky walls and the boulder-strewn bed of the river – he had not known which way was up, let alone project trajectories, speed, and direction or accurately assess damage sustained by his ancient dreadnought body.

More on Jarold's interior dreadnought systems.

Page 387

Sergeant Borysko could see the landing pad painted in shades of purple in the violet light of dawn: a rectangle of daylight beyond the smoke-shot gloom of the interior of the compound. Behind him his boys followed, each bearing one of the precious canisters, the Kid carrying his as though it was a krak grenade on a motion sensor hair trigger

An interesting kind of trap. Do Ork hunters normally carry motion sensors around? Or do some Krak grenades come sensor equipped?

Page 389

Pounding around the western wing of the complex were a pair of the largest orks Borysko had seen in a long time. For a split second the question crossed his mind as to why these two were not involved in the battle for the compound elsewhere. Perhaps the Astartes' avenging angel had eventually succumbed to the greenskins' determined resistance.

As well as being half a tonne of alien muscle each, already their bodies had been surgically augmented with crude mechanical components. With servo-powered legs and arms, weapons built into their metal exoskeletons, and snapping iron mouths, they looked like they would present a warrior of the Emperor's finest Adeptus Astartes with a challenge. To any ordinary soldier of His Imperial Majesty's armies they were terrifying examples of how serious the xenos threat was to mankind.

Nobz or Cyborks I'd guess. Massing half a tonne (large for Orks,b ut not the largest) and heavily cybenretic. Seem to be Space Marine equivalent.

Page 390

Gunderson snapped off two more zinging las-rounds, both finding their mark in the middle of the unprotected forehead of the first of the augmented greenskins before the creature could bring its own weapons to bear. Ork skulls were notoriously tough, reputed to be as hard as ceramite, but the sniper's longlas could penetrate the hull plating of a Leman Russ. With dark blood running from the clean puncture wounds in its head, the cybork's mechanised body powered forwards for another ten metres before it crashed to the ground, its pistoning legs kicking futilely against the weed-cracked rockcrete.

Ork skull vs longlas. We dont know if it is using a hotshot round (possibly not, it seems supsiciously non-explosive) but not definite. Ork skulls likened to ceramite (either jokingly or seriously) either way it suggests increadibly tough.

A long-las being able to penetrate Russ Hull plating depends largely on the side/facing. front/turret seems to be 200 mm, so a 2 cm hole through that would require some 500 kj (20 25 kj pulses) at least. A lil over 100mm (gun mantlet, probably rear or bottom) would require half that.

Page 394

They could all see the semi-cauterised exit wound oozing dark blood, and smell the acrid reek of ozone and cooked brain matter. There was no doubting that Tremayne was dead.

Semi-cauterized, bleeding exit wound (blowing the skull apart probably, but the brain is definitely cooked. Probablly double to triple digit kj from the thermal effects alone.

And yes I believe this was the hellgun again.

Page 403

With a screaming of grating metal, Captain Oberon Eurys's power sword broke through the armoured carapace of the gore-streaked warrior before him, the crackling disruptor field generated by the blade exploding the monster's black hearts inside its chest.

Power weapon "exploding" a CSM's twin heart s(simultanoeusly?)

Page 412-413

It transpires that H-363, or hybrid pathological agent 363, is a biological weapon developed by the genetor-magi of Biologis Facility VI since the last ork invasion. The pathogen combines anti-fungal agents with other aggressive self-replicating bacteria. However, it remains an untested anti-ork weapon. There has not been the opportunity to carry out a test confirming its authenticity. Neither do we know why the genetor-magi did not use H-363 themselves when their base was attacked, and consequently overrun, by the orks during the opening stages of the invasion prosecuted by the Great Beast's forces. What we do know, however, is that agencies other than our own were prepared to go to great lengths to acquire the pathogen.

An Ork sort of virus/bio weapon used against them. This is one of those reasons why I believe weedkiller isn't horribly effective against ALL orks, the way Xenology speculates they would be. Of course maybe the Orks would also adapt to it like they adapt to every other fucked up condition on Armageddon and other worlds, or in fighting the Tyranids. They're wacky that way.

On the other hand there's the whole "taking Xenology at face value given the context and such) too

[Connor MacLeod]

Iron Hands. This one is actually the first Iron Hands (and only up til the Horus HEresy and Space Marine battles) to deal with the Iron Hands, and the reason is probablty that the Iron Hands in the 'modern' 40K era are dicks. Gdolkin is a dick. A massive dick. I wanted and prayed for Gdolkin to die throughout the novel, and I got gypped.

Anyhow, 2 parts, and then we can kiss this thread goodbye. Part 1


PAge 12-13

It could take centuries to master the Emperor's tarot, to learn every combination of cards, every subtle nuance of meaning, read every play of warp-light on the psychoplastic-impressed images. Time few practitioners were ever graced with.

One scribe-artist would labour his entire lifetime lovingly hand-crafting a single card. The deck of seventy-eight cards on the plinth in front of the seer was itself worth a planetary governor's ransom.

Laid out in their entirety, the cards formed an allegorical image of the entire Imperium - a realm that spanned a million worlds and untold billions of souls - its heroes and its enemies. In the Emperor's Tarot there were cards representing the champions of the mankind including the noble warrior, who was prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice in his service of the Imperium, the superhuman Space Marine brother of the mighty Adeptus Astartes; the truth-seeking inquisitor; the rabble-rousing preacher of the Imperial creed; the shadowy, death-dealing assassin; the inspiring Chaplain of the Astartes Chapters, the unequivocal judge and the warp-seeing astropath, of course.

Conversely, there were also cards bearing terrible, soul-searing images depicting the myriad enemies that threatened the human race. These were the cards of the Arcana Discordia. There was the vile, faithless traitor; the sorcerous alien warlock; the disgusting mutant, and the blasphemous-tongued heretic. There was the hulking tusk-mawed form of the beast ascendant, the leering horror that was the daemon and the notoriously guileful, ambiguous character of the Harlequin - the wild card of the Emperor's tarot.

But of course the most potent card in the tarot was that of the immortal Emperor himself, bound within the ancient, unfathomable technology of the Golden Throne of Terra.

A skilful astropath could discern the shape of things to come from a reading of the tarot. The many paths that fate might tread in executing its grand designs could be seen in the pattern of the cards since the pictures on their faces were psychically attuned to the constant flux of that otherworldly half-reality that existed beyond the physical universe.
...
It was man's greatest hope and yet also his gravest peril. Humanity's link to that realm of raw emotion, the spiritual counter-universe, enabled mankind to draw upon the infinite power that lay there waiting to be exploited. And yet his very presence in that place attracted the interest of predators born of mankind's own imperfect psyche.

General summary of things pertaining to the warp, divination, and the Imperium. It's mostly useful as a detailed depiction of how the Tarot is used in divination, and how ambiguous or open to interprtation it is. The interesting thing is that it seems to involve a bit of "psychoplastic" judging by this. although the Imperium's understanding of and capability with such is vastly crude and limited compared to the Eldar.

Page 15-16

Psykers - the name commonly given to those with psychic talents - had appeared in the human race long before the founding of the Imperium. Psychic ability was the human race's curse as much as its gift. Without this mutation the Imperium could not survive. Without psykers, messages could not be sent tens of thousands of light years to all corners of the Emperor's galaxy-spanning realm. Ships could not traverse the empyrean and make journeys between worlds that would otherwise take a thousand lifetimes. The servants of the sinister Officio Inquisitorum could not defend the Imperium's loyal servants from those who would pervert the Emperor's Will, and see His works undone and all creation overturned. And the Navigator Houses of the Navis Nobilite would not have their position of privilege brought them via their stranglehold of power on the Administratum of Terra.
..

For it was through the psyker that the Fell Powers could work their corruption in the physical universe. Thanks to the psyker, daemonic creatures, born of base unchecked human emotions, could break through into the material realm. It was they who could bring the Imperium to the very edge of destruction and then take it over into the abyss.
...

Through her psychic sight she could see other darting images superimposed on the mundane world that existed within the reclusium. Creatures that looked like disc-shaped sharks swam through the ether, circling her visitor, who was totally unaware of their presence.

In contrast to the uselessness of her crippled body, the warp-seer's soul-fire burned so brightly that it would normally obliterate the faint flickers of those nearby. But the cloaked figure's aura shone brightly too. Fate obviously had a purpose in mind for him as well.

The warp predators circled both her and the magos, drawn to the lustrous brilliance of their souls, frondlike feelers waving in the unknowable currents of the immaterium, snapping at their glowing outlines with horribly fanged jaws.

More general stuff on psykers, their importance to the Imperium, the risks they represent, and how it they attract daemons. The frightnening bit is how the astropath must be constnatly aware of Daemons being aorund her and wanting to eat her.

Also we learn astropathic messages can span (somehow) tens of thousands of light years, and that Warp travel can cross distances that would take "a thousand lifetimes" - implying perhaps thousands or tens of thousands of light years.

Page 19

In a blaze of sickly light the ruddy-bronze hull of a baroque leviathan re-entered the physical universe. After the hull came kilometre after kilometre of gargoyle-encrusted weapon decks, strike craft launch bays, baroquely ornamented weapon ports as the ancient battleship slipped smoothly from the warp.

Finally, the con tower of the capital vessel broke through from the realm of daemons along with the ancient, power plant-sized engines, the method of their construction and even the science-mysticism behind their operation now lost across oceans of time.

Vox Veritas, Word Bearers battleship, returns to realspace after several thousand years.



Page 20

...crab-like steps the daemon-engine emerged from the bowels of the blasphemous landing craft. Six massive steel claws, each weighing-over a tonne, came to rest on the fractured mound of the spoil heap. From the oil- and slime-dripping thorax the savage machine rose to a height of twenty metres above the crater-scarred earth. The rusted outer metal skin of the baroque monstrosity bubbled with rust and suppurating ulcers oozed stinking, yellow, infected pus.

Despoiler.


Page 21

Slime-encrusted mechadendrite tentacles reached for the men. Its rattling autocannon roared into life and its belly-cannon gave a throbbing boom as it fired into the pack of panicking soldiers, turning an entire squad into a spray of bloody mist and powdered bone

More Despoiler - ifrepower.


Page 26

The organic part of the tech-priest's nose twitched. The acrid foundry smell of hot metal assailed his nostrils and implanted artificial olfactory sensors. He glanced away from the crippled psyker to see that the platinum, gold and silver that picked out the warding patterns set into the marble floor had liquefied, smoky vapour welling up from the molten metal.

metals used in various wardings, that melted in response to extrmee psychic activity threatening.

Page 27

He realised that the astropath was lost but he was not done with her yet. She had become a conduit for entities that had no place in the temporal universe, and would have to be destroyed, but there was still much that could be learnt from such creatures. Knowledge was life, after all. In their desperation to be unleashed upon the physical world of the senses, the things manifested from man's most primal emotions would readily reveal the secrets of the future to those who knew how to listen.

Daemons apparently can be a source of intelligence and truth as well as a risk, if sacrifices can be made. Inquisitor Horst has done this before, in Shadow Point.

Page 27

The magos levelled his pistol again. There was nothing more that the warp-seer could offer him and so he would put an end to the possession, and her suffering.

Rather caring of him, all things considered.

Page 34

His right hand had lasted two hundred years longer than his left. Space Marines of the Iron Hands' Chapter had their left hands removed on joining the brotherhood and replaced with an entirely augmetic replica, in honoured memory of their primarch, Ferrus Manus.

Iron Hands tradition.

Page 34-35

Already slowing his breathing to help him enter the trance-like state he would enjoy whilst the surgery was being performed, Gdolkin took the laurel-leaved talisman of his Mechanicus Protectiva in his bionic left hand. The tiny internal pistons and tension cables of the fingers operated so smoothly that Gdolkin could almost forget that they were not of flesh and blood, were it not for the fact that the replacement of body parts with augmetics was core to the Iron Hands' belief system, and ultimately a result of their genetic predisposition.

The Mechanicus Protectiva was the sacred badge of office of an Iron Hands' Iron-Father and a potent device in its own right. The rank of Iron-Father combined that of both Chaplain and Techmarine amongst the Sons of Ferrus Manus. In the same way, the Mechanicus Protectiva combined the rosarius worn by the Chaplains of other Chapters with the force-field technology granted to those Marines who studied under the Priesthood of Mars - red planet of the Machine God and the resting place of the Omnis-siah itself- as part of their induction into that branch of the Adeptus Astartes.

This all served to make the Mechanicus Protectiva a powerful arcane piece of equipment. The blessings of the Emperor and the Omnissiah were channelled through the amulet to protect the Iron-Father from the assaults of the Emperor's enemies in battle. Gdolkin's Mechanicus Protectiva hung from the breastplate of his armour on a strong iron chain, the red gem set at its centre glowing with an unearthly light as he made his prayer, and the air around it crackled with mystic energies.

Mechanicus protectiva - Techmarine rosarius.

Page 37

The crawler-trains never came this far north into the mountains, the terrain was simply too treacherous. The landscape was one of glacier-carved valleys, rent asunder by unimaginably terrible tectonic forces working away beneath the surface of the planet, huge boulders littering the scarred, grey wastes.
...
His epic journey had taken him from the temporary, tented barter town, where his family's crawler had stopped to refuel and trade ore, further than he, or anyone else in his clan, had ever been before.
There had been another mining-clan caravan hauled up at the edge of the town too, belonging to the Granislatt clan.

Familes and clans on Medusa all live on and exist on land trains or crawlers, basically up-armoured mobile homes. Some hive worlds like Necromund ahave similar conveyances.

Page 38

As he had left the barter town, his father's bolt pistol heavy in its holster at his side, amidst the scurra-fur hides, he looked back on his clan's caterpillar crawler. The Aes Metallum was practically a mobile town, manufactoram, mining operation and processing plant in itself, and easily large enough to carry the whole family. The Aes and the crawler of the Granislatt clan...
...
Either Medusa would claim him, his carcass scoured clean by the dust winds and acid atmosphere, or he would achieve his goal and the Sons of Ferras Manus would take him to be counted among their number.

Clan crawler, and its various functions, as well as the hard, cruel traditions of Medusa. Survival of the fittest (or most assholish.)

Page 39

There had been no tears as Anatolus's father gifted him with his own precious bolter, for that was not the way of the people of Medusa, only pride. There was no room for sentimentality in a world where daily survival against the elements was a constant battle. The gun felt heavy with age in Anatolus's hand.

The bolter had been handed down throughout the generations, father to son and heir, throughout each generation, just like the name Anatolus. It had been given to his father when Anatolus's grandfather had set out on his last journey into the absolving elements, the sulphur-rot having taken hold deep in his lungs: better to die while some strength was still in him, than to die a feeble weakling, like a mewling babe-in-arms again, coughing and puking on the discharge of his own lungs. Weakness and infirmity could not be tolerated in a society that relied on everyone being able to pull their weight, for the survival of the entire clan. A man who could no longer fulfil his function within the group had no place in it any more.

As Ferrus Manus had taught the people of Medusa, all those thousands upon thousands of years ago, infirmity was a plague that threatened to destroy mankind. In the same way that sickly infants were offered to appease the elements and so as not to place an unnecessary encumbrance on the rest of the community, the honourable thing for the infirm to do was to face their death with honour intact.

More on Medusan traditions. Get used to this sort of thing.

PAge 43

The last connections were being made now from the nerve-endings in Gdolkin's wrist to the electro-impulse receptors in the technoartisan-crafted hand. The iron gauntlet that would now forever take the place of the hand that the Iron-Father had been born with, more than two centuries ago. It might look brand new, but it had in fact been in the Chapter for over two thousand years since its initial creation by the legendary Mars-trained Iron-Father Menestus, during the days of the Dark Crusade. The hand, which in some texts was referred to as the Gauntlet of Menestus, or the Fist of Iron, had survived the centuries intact. This was the hand that had felled the arch-heretic priest of Statholos. Since the fall of Brother Telamon at the Battle of Occas Hive, the bionic hand, which was still infallible in its operation, had lain in the armoury of fortress-monastery Weyland, until the day when it had been selected to be bonded to Iron-Father Gdolkin.

Yes, they revere and hold onto sacred augmetics of better marines, and pass them on as tradition demands.

Page 54

There was the Iron Hands' Chapter itself and its successor Chapters, including the Red Talons and the Brazen Claws, formed when Roboute Guilliman, primarch of the Ultramarines and revered composer of the Codex Astartes, had decreed that so much power could never again rest with one man, and the existing Legions be broken into smaller forces.
..

The intruder into the peace of the apothecarion was a thrall of the clan, one of those young men who, in ages past, had been forwarded for selection by the scouts of the Sons of Ferrus but who had failed at some level of the induction programme. Whether it was that their bodies had not been able to cope with the bio-genesis of zygote implantation or that their minds could not adapt to the psycho-conditioning that went with it, they had not proved strong enough to be counted among the Iron Hands of the Emperor's elite. And yet, even though the Iron Hands hated weakness in all its forms, their non-brethren still had a role to play within the Chapter, tending to the needs of the noble battle-brothers and maintaining the fabric of the fortress-monasteries, as thralls.

..

In mimicry of the Iron Hands' brotherhood, the skin of the thrall's left hand gleamed with the filigree tracery of electoo circuits. The implanted circuitry marked the thralls out as members in part of the Iron Hands' Chapter but was nothing like as magnificent as the bionics the battle-brothers were granted on translation from neophyte to initiate of the order. It was also a constant reminder of their place within the mighty Chapter - that they were members of the servile underclass, duty-bound to wait upon their overlords' every whim. They could never receive the honour that could have been theirs on the battlefield, only bask in the reflected glory of those who had passed the initiation trials and successfully endured the many surgical procedures that made them Space Marines.

A bit on Iron Hands successor chapters. The Iron Hands seem rather fond of Guilliman (suckups), and we learn the origin of Iron Hands Thralls. Since they represent the failed initiate,s Thralls are not thought of very well.

Also electoo-circuits. Whether they are decorative or serve a function (like glavian circuitry) we don't know.

Again, get used to the ego and assholishness that represents Gdolkin.


page 58

The means by which the massive insignia remained suspended, rotating slowly, above the council chamber was a secret still preserved by the techno-magi of the Adeptus Mechanicus. The servants of the Machine God of Mars had built the vast land-behemoth, as large and as threatening as a mobile volcanic crater, in return for some debt owed by them that had occurred in ages past. Only a few amongst the most ancient and revered of the brothers of the Chapter, encased forever more in the adamantium shells of their dreadnought war machines, knew what the debt was but it was enough for the Iron Hands to know that there was a special bond between the Adeptus Mechanicus and Sons of Ferrus Manus.

Yes, wasting power on a floating antigrav symbol is a time honored tradition of iron hands and AdMech. note that this does not make me like the Iron Hands any more.


Page 62-63

Pelles was tall, even for a Space Marine, standing over two and a half metres in his power armour, but towering over the iron-commander, like some leviathan monster from the legendary trials of Ferrus Manus, was the first of three dreadnought-armoured battle-brothers. The name inscribed on the ornamental scroll-work on the dreadnought's sarcophagus read ‘Talumech'.

Although Gdolkin was himself a bold, confident warrior, he was awed and cowed by the presence of, not one, but three venerable dreadnought brothers. It was rumoured that there were only eight such ancient battle-suits in existence within the entirety of the Iron Hands' Chapter.

The dreadnought's magnificent adamantium body gleamed dully in the reduced lighting of the fortress monastery's council chamber. On the right-hand panel of the dreadnought's adamantium casing was a bas-relief image of a clawed iron gauntlet, the millennia-old insignia of the Iron Hands' order. The image was not unlike the monstrous power fist that the dreadnought bore on the end of its left arm.

Just as the battle-brothers of the Iron Hands had their left hands replaced with bionic replicas on being inducted into the Chapter, so the left arm of every dreadnought was always equipped with a close combat weapon, with a built-in storm bolter. The right arm of each machine was another matter, however. These were outfitted with such armaments as assault cannons, multi-melta attachments, heavy bolters and devastating plasma weaponry. In the case of Dreadnought Talumech, a twin-linked lascannon stood in place of a right arm.

Iron Hands Dreadnoughts, one of eight in the Chapter. And 2.5 m in power armour is conisdered tall for an Iron Hand.

Page 64

Then there was a brother in full Terminator armour, although he too was unhelmeted, his dark hair cropped short, a skull-drone sporting an array of augury and auspex scanners hovering in the air at his shoulder, the units of its grav-assembly humming softly. One knee was entirely artificial, as was the entirety of his right arm. Gdolkin recognised who he was by reputation alone. This man surely could only be Brother Avidan. Gdolkin had never fought alongside him personally, even in over two hundred years of campaigning, from the far reaches of the Segmentum Tempestus to the burning shores of Armageddon, as a fully invested Space Marine.

I'm guessing the skull dome is an augmetic.


Page 69

There had been twelve before in the long history of the Imperium and there were the lost and ravaged worlds to attest to that fact. The greatest Black Crusade to date, and from the Imperium's perspective the worst, had been the Gothic War, more than eight hundred years ago.

The novel is thus taking place a bit before the 13th Black Crusade as I recall. Rather interesting that they treat the Gothic War as yet another.. when I read BFG it wasn't nearly that serious (it was a major skirmish but that's it.) I mean as far as crusades go that's pretty minor - Abbadon brings hundreds of warships n stuff in to the Gothic Sector, does not even devastate the entire sector, and gets away with a couple Blackstones? Meh.

Page 70

"'We have received an astropathic message from the Adeptus Mechanicus based on the forge world of Fornax Orbis Majoris. The Chaos forces have already made devastating advances in their initial push throughout the Achilles subsector. The forge world is besieged by traitors from within the billions-strong indentured workforce on the planet as well as by the traitor brethren of the corrupted Death Guard. The Adeptus Mechanicus there have requested our aid for what they describe as a vital mission."

Forge world under assault, has a "billions strong" workforce.

Page 78

Sergeant Vessig of the Cadian 108th - the Wyverns - looked out across the broken carcass of the tank manufactory and caught sight of the enemy. They were advancing in small, squad-sized groups, but each one of them was a hulking giant of a warrior.

Vessig and his squad were hunkered down inside the splintered shell of an abandoned operations tower. Their position gave them an unhindered view of the ruins to the south for almost five kilometres, the sergeant reckoned. Unhindered, that was, apart for the ceaseless smog cascading over the barrage-formed wasteland. It was between breaks in the roiling, polluted mist that the Cadians could see the enemy advance through the ruins. From here the squad had a sniper's view of District XII. They could take pot shots at the enemy from their position.

Trooper Hacker was the man for that task, Vessig considered, but such an action now would compromise their position, and besides, Vessig was not sure how much of an impact their las-shots would make on the heavily armoured forms moving towards them from such a distance. No - better to harry the enemy from up close, surprising them from amidst the smoke and shadows of the manufactory wrecks.

And yet, despite their advantageous position, the Cadians still hadn't been able to clearly make out the nature of the enemy moving steadily towards the Imperial lines six kilometres behind them. What were they going to find out there in the polluted hellhole of District XII?

Having taken a fix on the positions of the advancing enemy scout units, Squad Vessig descended the operations tower via rusted wall ladders and shattered rockcrete staircases until they were out in the warren of the manufactory complex again. Ranpol and Irving having checked that the way ahead was clear, the squad emerged from the base of the tower into a street that ran parallel to a huge pipeline that rose above the manufactorum district in now-disconnected segments.

Now, I could be wrong, but this does sort of imply that the enemy is up to five kilometres away and they thought they could hit them from that distance. It's impressive if true, but it would be a bit hard to reach, I would think. Also, it kinda runs into Larkin's comments in latter ghosts novels of sometimes making a hit at 3-4 km away. The fact he can see them is also telling, although there might be a scope or magnoculars involved. Still, its likely we're talking less range.,. maybe a kilometre or two ("snipers view" would support that, I'd imagine they'd at least have marksman range of maybe 800-1000 metres from their vantage point.)

Also we learn that las fire (unsurprisingly) seems to be influenced by range as far as lethality or penetration goes - this may be do to energy loss, coherency/focus (the beam diverges over longer distances) or other reasons, but it apparently does happen.

Page 81

The 108th had been called in following disturbing developments on the forge world. Normally the population of Fornax Orbis Majoris - indentured workers, tech-adepts and mindless servitors - was busily employed producing the weapons with which the armies of half a dozen systems were supplied.

Forge world uspporting half a dozen systems with its resources. This may or may not be a ratio, since not all forge worlds are alike.

Page 81

This was no ordinary plague that could be tended to by the medicae of the Administratum or even the genetor-magi of the Adeptus Mechanicus. This was a sickness of the soul. This was the same affliction that had infected dozens, if not hundreds, of worlds surrounding the Eye of Terror, if rumour were correct. This was what the Imperial forces had termed the Plague of Unbelief.

The Plague of Unbelief and its scope - dozens if not hundreds of worlds. Which of course, must be purged with fire.


Page 82

Their ships had appeared on the planet's observation station surveyor screens like pus-ripe buboes. The Chaos fleets of Nurgle's own Death Guard. These putrescent plague ships had launched the first barrage from space, an orbital strike that wiped out a third of the remaining faithful PDF and tech-guard forces already stationed on the planet.

Then the rebels had joined the attack on those precious few who remained loyal to the Emperor, launching their own barrages using tanks and gun platforms newly birthed from the enemy-held manufactories and immediately put into the service of the very blackguards they had been built to be used against.

Ships had been dispatched from other nearby Mechanicus outposts, with full complements of tech-guard, and engaged the Chaos fleet in orbit before delivering their precious cargos of men and weapons.

These included six tank companies and even, Guard rumour had it once again, one of the legendary Ordinatus engines of the tech-magi of Mars.

Nurgle forces invade the hive world, with the ships appearance timed with an uprising (standard Chaost actic.) They're accurate on the bombardment you can say that, wiping out a huge chunk of the defense forces. Interesting that they have PDF AND TEch-Guard (which echoes some of Titanicus in that regard.)

Also the rebels seem to have been able to rapidly build tanks and armour from captured manufactories (days, weeks?) in the time the invasion occured, giving us a rough idea of tank production.

Also we get an idea of Mechanicus response forces - I'm not sure if "outposts" means minor stations (resarch stations) or perhaps mining outposts or monitoring stations or what, but it does suggest the AdMech spreads their resources out, and in enough amount they cna converge on any Mechanicus asset under threat.


Page 83

That was why the Wyverns had found their troop transport redirected at the command of the master magi of the Adeptus Mechanicus from its passage from Kaynar VI to Celestino in the Veritas system. Their transport ran the gauntlet of the Chaos ships still in orbit over Fornax, then, escorted by two frigates of the Navis Nobilite, the dropships of the 108th had descended on the northern continent of Fornax inside one of the protected industrialised areas still under loyalist Imperial control, along with the Tradaran Rifles and the Joparin 24th Cavalry.

One troop transport carrying 3 regiments. Also note 2 frigates apparently owned by Navigators (allied forces) - possibly conscripted or offered for use to either Mechanicus or Naval force.


Page 83

Within the day the Cadians had been deployed south-west into one of the most toughly contested planetary sectors, to assist the Imperial forces trying to hold back the enemy forces laying siege to the manufactory complex two hundred kilometres square, designated Ferroturitus Prime by the Adeptus Mechanicus forge-masters.

200 km square implies[/quote] that the complex is 200 km to a side (rather than 200 square km, which would be ~450 metres per side).

Page 84

This particular manufactory had been laid out on a grid system and covered an area, Vessig guessed, of some ten kilometres square. The initial enemy bombardment had flattened much of the factory plant.

Again 10 km square rather than 10 suqare km suggests a 10x10 km area rather than 10,000 square metres (100x100 metre area) Depending on the kind of bombardment laid it might come out to high kt/low megaton (if relying more on blast effects) to someting bigger if it relied on something else (thermal effects, or highly penetrative weapons, or..)


PAge 85

There was a sharp squeal and a creature the size of a Cadian wolfhound scurried out into the road. But this was no dog. Once, it might have been a rat, but now it was something else entirely, mutated almost beyond recognition into a vile, oversized scavenger. Long spines protruded from the vertebrae of the creature's back whilst its mouth was malformed by tusk-like fangs. Green tinged fur clung to its lean form in wet clumps but in places patches of bare, scabrous skin were also visible. The long hairless, white tail that lashed behind it ended in a cruel-looking sting.

Before he was really aware of what he was looking at, Sergeant Vessig fired.
...

The shot rang out through the ruins only to be muffled by the enveloping fog. The silence that came after it was worse that the lonely crack of the lasgun.

The mutant rat dropped, smoke rising from a large, cauterised wound that had opened up one whole side of its lank body.

Giant mutant rat assaults the Cadian troops. Its kinda freaky tha tthings can get that huge on hive worlds, but given Necromunda its not terribly surprising. Just to get an idea of how big a wolfhound is, note [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfhound]here If you google them, they can be nearly as tall as a person standing on their hind legs - they are not small dogs. Which makes that a truly freaky rat.

Anyhow, a single lasgun bolt to "open up" one side of a wolf-hound sized rate in a large-cauterized wound. Not sure really how to calc this, since we don't quite know the depth of the wound. One way, and the original way I did it, was to assume it created a cylindrical/hemispheircal wound along the side. I assume the wound was deep enough to reach internals (10-15 cm) so call it 20-30 cm diameter, 30 cm "long" wound either way. 5-15 kg for a 30 cm and 1.5 to 6.6 kg for 20cm. Assuming something akin to 3rd degree wounds or boiling (culminating in a steam explosion.. call it 150-250 kj per kg) you could get ~225 kj to nearly for MJ. That does, however, assume the whole volume is affected (which it probably isnt) although that may offset with ineffiicences. It assumes a mostly thermal lasgun, which isn't the most efficient means.

A variation of this is to simply assume the edges of the wound were burned to a certain depth. Assuming .5 cm diameter "burn area" we might get between .19 and .5 kg burned, which is alot smaller than the previous calcs, it might also allow for higher temps. Allowing for between 3rd degree and boiling again (150-250 kj) we might get something like 30 and 125 kj. Slightly more of course for cylindrical wounds.

Using Luke Campell's death ray calculator, and assuming similar dimensions (20-30 cm wound diameter, 30 cm across) with 20, 5mm diameter pulses at 5 microsecond intervals we get around 200-300 kj total energy for the 20cm diameter shot. Maybe twice that for close to 30 cm. Of course whether that cauterizes or not.. hard to say.

Third method is rather simple. Using flash burn intensities comparable to a nuclear warhead. In this case the severity would be pretty much, it implies its blasting a sizeable hole out of the side, not to mention its badly burning. Call it between 100-1000 J/cm^2. Assuming a 20x30 cm area (600 cm^2) or 30x30 cm area (900cm^2) you would get between 60-90 kj (100 j/cm^2) to 600-900 kj (1000 J cm^2) At 400 J cm^2 (240 to 360 kj) you should get steam explosions flaying to the bone. This might mesh somewhat with Campbells death ray calculator.

Overall I'm probably calling it several hundred kj for the shot, within an order of magnitude.


Page 86

Katsulas fired, putting a las-bolt through the front of the worker's skull and blowing out the back of his head in a puff of blood and bone shrapnel.

Not quite as impressive as above, but again we dont know how efficiently "explosive" the las weapon is. If it created as team explosion in the skull, for example...

single or double digit kj for a "blaster" style should handle the above easily. if its less efficient? double to maybe a few hundred kj. I'm banking more on double digit kj either way, tops. It could simply reflect different charge settings or different modes to the las weapon (heat ray vs blaster, for example) Then again Nurgleite creatures are known for being ugly, diseased, and horridly resilient against weapons fire, so the difference may be that the zombie is just much more durable

PAge 88

They seemed to glow with a malevolent intensity. Its face had been scarred by the acidic rainfall and even by rodent bite marks. On the half of its head that had not been gnawed down to the bone was an unkempt mess of hair and weeping sores. These abominations looked more like living, rotting corpses than men.

Vessig's shot took the creature's head off at the neck, and its body crumpled into an untidy heap on the road.

Another head shot. whether it severed it at the neck or blew the head up, I can't say. Call it single or double digit kj again either way.

Page 88

It was all over in a matter of moments. The pack had numbered only seven; against ten highly trained Guardsmen armed with lasguns and a flamer the zombie workers didn't have a hope.
Saul, the most devoutly religious of the squad, made the sign of the aquila over his chest. The pack was now nothing more than smouldering corpses and dismembered body parts. But the horror of the situation alone could have been enough to overwhelm the squad.

I'm assuming the flamer burned the corpses (mostly) the lasguns did the dismembering (blowing off limbs, heads, etc.) Again potentially single to double digit kj.

Page 89

One breath was all it took, on a pollution-ruined world like Fornax. The Adeptus Mechanicus really didn't care what environmental disaster was the consequence of the advance of their devotion to the Machine God. They wouldn't have got away with it on the windswept island-colonies of Cadia.

Cadia apparently has better enviromental regulations than your typical AdMech Forge world. Then again Forge worlds are industrial powerhouses for a reason, not unlike certain hive worlds. Can't make an omlette withotu breaking eggs.. yadda yada..

Page 92

"Sergeant Vessig, sir." Dundas's voice came over the vox. "We have contacts approaching."
In an instant Vessig was with the door sentries.
"They're advancing from the west." Trooper Ranpol explained. "Some sort of interference is distorting my auspex readings but there's at least six of them, sir."

The Cadians have personal comms and auspex.

PAge 92

The sickly fog, shot through with putrid yellow vapour, had spread thickly along the roadway, almost to the door of the manufactoiy shed. Then Vessig saw what the shaken trooper had seen.

Shadows loomed in the smoke and cloying chemical mist, the shapes of armoured giants over two and a half metres tall. Sergeant Vessig didn't need to give the order. His men didn't need to be told when to fire. Their training and experience told them all they needed to know.

Red pulses of laser light cut through the smoke and battle fog accompanied by a fizzing zip, as Vessig's own las-fire joined that of the two troopers posted on sentry duty. There was the sound of direct impacts but the shadows barely faltered. A gust of hot, ember-filled air rolled down the crater-pitted walkway, washing over the gas-masked Cadians, and parted the thick smoke before them

Death Guard.. 2.5 M tall. Lasfire from a Cadian squad does nothing.

Page 93

Over the vox he heard one of the troopers throw up into his helmet. That was another of his squad effectively incapacitated.

I guess the noxious odors of the Death Guard aren't stopped by the respirator.

Page 96

The first of the Death Guard raised its rusted bolt-gun and fired. A burst of corroded shells tore through the air in a roar of gunfire and Ranpol, who was standing right next to Vessig, exploded, splattering the sergeant with steaming blood and gobbets of sizzling flesh.

Bolter fire explodes a cadian... oddly the rounds seem to have a not-inconsiderable thermal effect as well as explosive.

Page 97

Vessig watched in horror as Irving's head exploded like a shot melon, as a bolter shell punctured the toughened material of the Guardsman's helmet.

Single shot blows apart head of helmeted cadian - through the helmet.

Page 97

"The Emperor protects." Vessig voiced into his helm-vox.
"The Emperor protects." those among Squad Vessig still standing replied.

Specific reference to helmet vox, if we needed more.



Page 98

The loyalist Marines doused their traitor brethren with bolter fire, searing beams of las-fire and screaming plasma discharge. Vessig watched with grim satisfaction as the corpulent armour of one of the Plague Marines disintegrated under the concussive blast of an autocannon. Stinking offal and viscera slopped from the rent armour only to be cooked by the blast from a plasma gun.

Iron Hands.. they seem to be using antipersonnel las weapons (lascannon?) plasma and bolters and autocannon.

Page 102

The ferrocrete structure that formed the headquarters of Imperial operations was plain and functional compared to the grand design given to the noble veneration of the primarch in the Vurgaan clan's land-leviathan monastery-fortress, and lacked the extravagant gothic detailing of the cathedrals of the machine temples of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

It was all brass-framed cogitator banks, walls of oscilloscope augury displays and at the apex of an amphitheatre section of tiered plasteel benches he could see the concave bowl of a holosphere projector. Currently the image displayed in three-dimensions within its static flickering light-sphere was that of some monstrous Chaos-engine trundling across the oily estuary spilling from a promethium processing plant. The engine, which looked like a great, wheeled war tower, appeared to be covered with some sort of rough tarpaulin or animal hide. Slime dripped from holes in the skin of the tower, leaving a trail of tar-like excretion in the deep grooves left by its wheels.

From this spot the Imperial tacticians and Guard commanders could oversee the Imperial defence of half a dozen districts in the industrial cityscapes of Ferroturitus Prime. The one obvious ornamentation in the command bunker was a huge double-headed eagle, its monstrous, steel-bladed wings outstretched above a widescreen pict-display.

Military command center for the assault on this planet. Holosphere and varied pict displays showing events of outside world (remote viewing, in some manner.)

Page 104

. Just one of those boltguns was a terrifying piece of destructive equipment, so large that an ordinary man could barely lift one. The ammunition they fired made them more like small rapid-firing rocket launchers when compared to standard Guard issue firearms.

Space marine bolters, and their ammo, are considerably larger than "normal" (EG Guard issue) weapons.

Page 109

"Our surveyors and calculus logi have been assessing and matriculating the information culled from a variety of sources: the Imperial fleet in orbit, ground scanning devices, as well as drone-probes and augur satellites in geo-stationary orbit."

Various information and intel sources gathering intel on the battle.

Page 110
[quote[]
"Our calculus logi estimate that there are twenty-two thousand eight hundred and sixty-one heretics centred upon the target.: Ludd said, his tone clipped and mechanical.
[/quote]

This represents an 'inordinately large percentage' of the cultist forces. Which seems odd given a rioting of the "billions strong" workforce. This may refer to the "directly deployed" Chaos elements - eg the CSMs, traitor Guardsmen, etc.

Page 111

They all looked. Revealed before their eyes was a monstrous cannon mounted on a carriage formed from three traction units. The weapon seemed huge against the backdrop of the jagged Argentum peaks until Gdolkin realised that the specks crawling around the base of the tracked units and over the holed hull itself were in fact human-sized figures -Death Guard, Imperial soldiers, traitor PDF troopers and the tech-guard of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Then the weapon appeared gargantuan beyond all reason. It was certainly bigger than any Mechanicus creation he had even seen, other than the starships of his Chapter. The monstrous gun was on a par with the land-behemoth fortress-monasteries of the Iron Hands themselves back on Medusa.

Yes, that is an Ordinatus platform.

Page 119

Brother-Librarian Melchor sat with his head bowed, as if in a state of prayer. There barely seemed room in the restraining straps of the steel seat for the huge man's Terminator armour. The bionics of his face glinted in the ruddy cabin light. Silver tracery picked out the sigils that warded against possession by warp entities, the crimson light making it look like the holy runes were written in fresh blood.

Fluttering on wings made of swan feathers and steel pinions was a grotesque psyber-cherub, scroll scraps wrapping its body, illuminated with prayer passages from the Liber Psykana, to help mould it to its purpose of boosting Melchor's already formidable psychic powers.

Melchior the Librarian, and his psyber-cherub sidekick.



PAge 120 - Iron Hands go into battle with two command units rathe rthan one.. a response to the Horus heresy basically so no one man has absolute power (the first commander can be relieved by the second if need be.)


Page 121

Then there were the battle-servitors. In the Iron-Father's personal slave-machine bodyguard at present, following the Inohver Incident, were combat cyber-drones Gibeon XII, Joab XIII, Gigal 674 and Ishmael
The servitors swung from restraining clamps attached to their heads as the Thunderhawk bucked and yawed to avoid flashes of anti-aircraft fire. They rattled around in the back of the main hold on the tracked runs of their deployment assembly, connected to nutrient feeds, oil-pressure regulators and tactician cogitator download units, feeding their unprogrammed minds with the information they would need to fulfil their function protecting the Iron-Father as he fought to purge the forge world of its invaders.

- Gdolkin has 4 battle servitor bodyguards.

Page 122-123

The ordinatus engine rose up before them, a colossal construction of Mechanicus might, all monstrous tracked traction units, defence cannons, augur arrays and command spires.

The ancient war machine was dominated by an enormous barrel, larger even than one of the giant warrior-gods of the Titan Legions, that rose from the centre of the largest of three traction units. It was a leviathan creation of a gun dating from even before the birth of the glorious lmperium. Surrounding the monstrous cannon were all manner of archeotech devices, such as building-wide tesla coils to help focus and maintain the devastating, mountain levelling beam the gargantuan gun produced.
The mouth of the barrel opened like the top of a volcanic crater. At least half of the city-sized war machine was made up of the generarium units needed to produce the incredible amount of power needed to fire the apocalypse cannon.

But now the ancient war machine was a shadow of its former glorious self. The Gehenna had suffered a relentless barrage from the enemy's guns, determined not to let the ordinatus complete its mission. The vanes of its augur arrays had been holed, command spires toppled and its gun emplacements were now nothing more than smoking pits in its side. Its front track unit had been twisted and fused by the detonation of some enormous mass-reactive warhead; indeed the unit teetered on the edge of a deep scorched crater. The ancient engine's hull had been breached in several places, all across its structure, and figures swarmed all over the ordinatus like flies.

Ordinatus platform. Cannon produces "mountain levelling" beams - probably kiloton at the very least, if not megatons.

Note mention of a "mass-reactive" warhead which seems to have thermal and explosive effects. source of the warhead not specified though.


Page 123

As they flew lower Gdolkin's enhanced and augmented eyesight was able to pick out the symbol of the Plague God blistered onto the carapace of one of the Chaos dreadnoughts. The triangular darts of targeting icons homed in on the blasphemous insignia, magnifying lenses in his optical implant whirring and clicking as they did so.

Gdolkin's optical implant - seems to have sensory/targeting functions.

Page 128

Iron-Father raised his boltgun in his left hand and, taking a step forward, rammed it into the topmost of the three eye-lenses, cracking the grimy, green tinted glass as he did so. He pulled the trigger. Several rounds of destructive shells blasted into the horned helm of the Plague Marine, exploding out of the back of it in a welter of cauterised brain matter and bone fragments.

Gdolkin's boltgun blows out the back of a CSM's helmeted head (2 rounds maybe?) including cauterising brain matter (Again significant thermal effects) He may be using special ammo here (possibly becaues its Death Guard?)


Page 130

Gdolkin followed through with a swing at his opponent's body with his axe. The curved blade smashed through a ruptured fissure in the Plague Marine's distended gut, cooking the organs inside.
Gdolkin pulled the axe free again only to find ropey intestines knotted around the blade. Making pathetic, unsettling mewling sounds, the Nurgle worshipper began to advance again, rolling in the viscera connecting it to the Iron-Father.

Gdolkin's power axe also has significant thermal effects.

Page 130

..the Plague Marine faltered again as armour-piercing shells pounded its body. The servitor Gibeon XII put a fusillade of shells into the resilient plague-thing's body from its rattling belt-fed assault cannon arm, one of the rounds detonating inside the corpulent body, finishing the Nurgle worshipper dramatically.

Assault cannon from servitor firing armour piercing, explosive rounds.

Page 131

Servomotors squealing, Gdolkin leapt into the air. The servo-assisted exoskeleton of his power armour carried him over the fallen body of a Death Guard with a worm-ridden face and sent him crashing into the plague Terminator. As he hit his target he swung his power axe at the cultist, removing the trophy spikes as his opponent doubled up under Gdolkin's impact.

G'dolkin can leap high enough to clear a fallen CSM (maybe hlaf a metre to a metre in the air?)

Page 136

There was a throaty boom as the daemon-machine's main cannon fired, a few seconds' pause, and then somewhere behind the Space Marines' position Gdolkin heard the crump of an explosion accompanied by the shrill screams of men dying.

Despoiler cannon fires followed by a delay of a few seconds. Maybe 1-2 km assuming a supersonic passage (400-500 m/s maybe?)

Page 140

Then Gdolkin saw it: the blocky shape of a Chimera chassis, not thirty metres from his position. The vehicle was lying on its side, tracks torn and missing, bodies spilling out of it haphazardly, wearing the uniform of the tech-guard of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Whatever had taken out the Chimera and its crew hadn't damaged its shell magazine, otherwise there wouldn't have been anything left of the vehicle at all.

...

There was the subsonic retort of a heavy weapon firing and Gdolkin flung himself forward just a split-second before the ground erupted behind him at the shuddering impact of a shell fired from the defiler's main cannon.
..

Gdolkin's servo-arm clamp pulled open the damaged panel covering the Chimera's fuel cell whilst with his two free hands he planted more of the frag grenades he was carrying in the battery breech.
...
Gdolkin took aim, his ocular implant targeters locking onto the breach in the battery core, and fired. A single miniature mass-reactive missile shot from the gun and struck one of the grenades planted inside the fuel cell cavity. There was the explosion of a frag grenade detonating followed a split-second later by the boom of the battery core detonating and the contents of the Chimera's magazine with it.
....
As he blinked his vision clear he saw the broken carcass of the Chaos-engine lying at the edge of a wide crater where the wrecked Chimera had been only moments before. The defiler was lying on one side, claw-limbs buckled and fused beneath it. Its other legs twitched in the air. There was a grating, clunking sound as the daemon-machine tried to turn its ruptured turret-body and right itself.

Mechanicus Chimera has a fuel cell (battery) and a shell magazine with enough power to destroy same Chimera (what kind of shells we dont know - autocannon? Bolter?) Despoiler cannon implied to be subsonic Range of maybe half a km to a km in the above scene based on that.

Defiler taken out by the exploding fuel cell, which seemed to make a crater bigger than the chimera (10m maybe?) which gives an idea of how powerful it was. Gigajoules of energy, probably.

Page 145

Adepts relayed the arch-magos's commands to a bank of servitor-drones, locked into their console positions. A hundred cogitator-melded minds calculated firing solutions. The bridge echoed with the rattle of digits inputting algorithms into console-lecterns accompanied by the whistles and hums of the praying tech-priests intoning their various incantations of operation, to appease and encourage the machine-spirits of the ancient ordinatus.

Targeting system of the Ordinatus platform.

PAge 146

A tech-guard captain had run onto the command bridge, the red of his uniform stained even darker by his own blood, a thick wound opened up across his forehead and a mirroring gash through the electronics of his targeter-sight.

Tech Guard captain has a head-mounted targeter sight (probably overlaid over his eyes)

PAge 147

"Are the batteries charged? Is the apocalypse cannon ready?"

"Currently at sixty-three point seven-five per cent of optimum power levels. Operative capability at eighty-two per cent," the adept intoned.

Charge level and minimum firing level for Ordinatus.


Page 149

What there was left of the tech-priest's skin was wrinkled with age. Of course there was no way of accurately determining the man's age. His face might physically appear to be that of an octogenarian but the Iron Hands were more aware than most of the anti-aging effects cybernetic augmentations had on the human body and it was common knowledge that the acolytes of the Cult Mechanicus extended their longevity beyond the natural span through the use of juvenat treatments.

It was rumoured that the masters of the Adeptus Mechanicus were able to extend their lives for hundreds, possibly even thousands, of years by means of ancient genetic replication vats. In this way they maintained their stranglehold on the secrets of technology that lay buried beneath the Cult Mechanicus's planetary realm of Mars. According to the technomagi of the Machine Cult, knowledge was the supreme manifestation of divinity, and all creatures or artefacts that embodied knowledge were holy and worthy of veneration as a consequence. So it was their belief that an individual's worth was only the sum of his knowledge, the human body simply an organic machine capable of preserving intellect - and an imperfect one at that.

Hence the servants of the Machine God manipulated their own bodies, replacing parts wholesale with archaic bionics, implanting cogitator chips directly into their brain tissue, the better to retain the information they so voraciously hunted and jealously hoarded.

The dark irony of the matter was that the minds of the technomagi continued to decay no matter what life-extending techniques they applied. As the endless centuries wore on, the masters of the Cult Mechanicus grew increasingly mentally unstable, their grip on reality slipping into a haze of superstition that had more to do with blood sacrifice and madness than archeo-science and occult technology.

Jonathan green has a habit of directly references and even copying fluff into his novels this way, sometimes expanding on it. This is a reference from around 3rd edition, particularily the bit about living thousands of years and going insane, although as I recall they extended it also through organic replacement not just artifiical. Either way it implies that the AdMech bionics techniques are more effective at long term survival than juvenat (Juvenat seems to be limited to hundreds of years, which fits every other acocuntw e've had of its operation - from the Inquisition War, to the Blood Angels novels, to this.)

We also learn they can use some methods to augment or substitute their brains, but there are of course certain limits - you need at least a little organic material it would seem.

"REplication vats" is probably a reference to cloning, given clones are described as "replicae" and "vat grown" is another reference for a cloned body. Whehter they just harvest parts or transfer from one body to another, we dont know.


Page 152-153

"Apocalypse cannon energy levels now at seventy-nine point nine-nine per cent." the adept informed his master.
...
"Prepare final firing solutions." Schrodinger commanded, ignoring the Iron Hands again, his orders being passed down the line to adepts, gun-crews and senators throughout the leviathan land-gun.
"What is going on?' the towering Iron-Father demanded, tact and patience clearly not amongst his virtues."

..
Eighty-two per cent achieved. Battery levels still rising.’
"Prepare to fire." the arch-magos instructed his attending adepts.

Given that it takes a matter of seconds to rise between 79.99 and 82%, we might get an idea that it takes minutes for the weapon to charge to minimally acceptable levels.


Page 157

Deep inside the bowels of the ordinatus, a full four hundred metres from the command bridge, the adamantium-pillared hall containing the archeo-machinery of Generarium Primus was as large as an Ecclesiarchy world's major shrine.

Ordinatus platform at least 400 metres across.

PAge 159

With a cry of, "For Ferrus and Medusa!" Librarian Melchor, his bald head and psy-sensitive hood crackling with lambent lightning, turned on a Plague Marine with slime dripping from its breathing tube and, in a blaze of magnesium bright light, obliterated the disease-ridden abomination with a single blast of thought.

Melchior in action.

Page 162

"Power levels at seventy-seven per cent, and rising." the monitoring adept stated. "Seventy-eight, seventy-nine, eighty-"
...
"Eighty-one, eighty-two-"
...
"Fire!" Schrodinger spat the word with vehemence, giving the command even in the face of Magos Thule's protests.

Again the implied charge rate suggests the weapon takes several minutes to recharge betwene shots.

[Connor MacLeod]

Part 2. Actually going to be 3 parts..

Page 163-164

In the distance, still some kilometres away, amidst the stripped bare bedrock of the Argentum Mountains, lay the focus around which the Plague God's forces had gathered like flies around a corpse.

...
The cannon's beam hit the mountainside with all the force of a crashing meteorite. The mountain exploded, shards of rock the size of hive towers splintering away from the face of the target. The foothills of the Argentum range were buried by a tumultuous landslide, sheets of rock plummeting down the mountainsides. Cataclysmic booms shook the spine of the mountain range.

The beam continued to bore its way through the bedrock, into the planet, like a Mechanicus mining machine, the land for a radius of twenty kilometres around suffering seismic disturbances violent enough to topple tall buildings. The very ground beneath great Gehenna shook, so that barely a man was left standing on board the monumental vessel. It felt as if the recoil forces unleashed by the firing of the cannon were going to shake the wounded ordinatus apart.

A great gout of broiling lava vomited skyward as the apocalypse cannon's beam finally punctured a magma vent deep beneath the earth. Whatever lay within the mountains that was of such importance to the Death Guard and the other heretics was buried, destroyed in the volcanic heat of the gushing lava flow. Thousands of ravening cultists and their Nurgle Marine overseers dissolved in the fiery flood that erupted from beneath the planet, as if Fornax Orbis Majoris was at last being avenged upon its pillagers.

But if the violent seismic activity caused by the apocalypse cannon's blast had seemed terrible, it was as nothing compared to the devastation that came in its wake.

It was as if all sound was sucked into the crater that had been created by Gehenna's cannon, for the briefest moment, only to be replaced seconds later by a subsonic whomph that passed through everyone and everything within a ten kilometre radius. And this was only the atmospheric pressurising precursor to the Shockwave that was coming.

The Firing of the GEhenna cannon, with considerable side effects. Blowing up a moutnain, crashing with the "force of a meteorite" creating a 40 km area quake effect. 10 km or so blast wave radius. Possible size of a meteorite can be found here. Assuming a basketball sized one as "typical" it might be 5-10 kilos depending on composition. That would be 600 MJ impacting. Probably not as impressive. Technically most meteor/asteorid impacts tned to break up early in the atmosphere (EG Tunguska event) so we'r eprobably looking at nuclear scale yields again even with breakup.

Blowing up the mountain of course is more impressive. Assuming a 1 km crater it could be 180 kilotons. Several km (including the mountain) could go up to several megatons easily. Significnat blast effects out to 10 km (widespread devastation) could again be up to several MT, but that is less certain. Earthauqkes? I'd guess somewhere between magnitude 6 (15 kt) but less than magnitude 8 (15 MT) - hard to be very precise, but tens/hundreds of kt seems likely for that.

Overall one imagines the effects may combine (The quakes and the blast at least), so high kt to low MT seems likely, at least as a broad Order of magnitude calc.

PAge 165-166

Whatever it was that Arch-Magos Schrodinger had ordered the destruction of had been an artefact of immeasurable eldritch power. Waves of green energy doppled outwards from the epicentre of the ordinate's strike, rolling across the ravaged landscape in a wave-front a hundred metres high. The bow-wave consumed all before it. Troopers, both loyalist and traitor, were vaporised where the coruscating tidal wave touched them. The only combatants who were safe from the devastating attack were those who had been able to take cover within dugouts and sheltered trench formations, but even they suffered terrible burns from the heat-wash that subsumed them.

Manufactory sheds were flattened, tanks were thrown kilometres away to come crashing down amidst the trenches of the battlefield outside the ancient war engine itself. Chaos creatures were eradicated, men died. Nothing was left whole as the bow-wave of rippling energy ate up all before it, bathing Fornax Orbis Majoris in its deep-ocean glow; nothing but scorched earth was left.

And there was something else. Shapes flickered and capered in the retina-searing light. Those hypnotised by the roiling energy field before it consumed them, believed they could see eldritch creatures writhing within the explosion of light from the epicentre of the blast.

After forty-two seconds the Shockwave hit the mighty Omnissiah's ancient leviathan Gehenna. The esoteric energy beams blasted through the gaping holes torn in the damaged hull as the massive war machine rocked under the phenomenal battering. Those not protected inside the undamaged parts of the ordinatus were killed just like the Chaos forces who had sought to unleash the same terrifying power to further their own ends. Two hundred and fifty-six tech-priest adepts, crew ratings and tech-guard troopers died, immolated by the atomic heat of the all-destroying energy waves. Not one Iron Hand was killed.

The blast was registered by the Imperial commanders buried within the bunker command post of Ferroturitus Prime Guard HQ, the lights going out for twenty seconds and dust falling from cracks that appeared in the ruptured ferrocrete ceiling.

It was even detected by the Iron Hands' strike cruiser waiting in geo-stationary orbit above the northern land mass of the poisoned forge world. The dissipating energy waves buffeted the Ajax, causing a drop in operating efficiency of thirty-three per cent across its void shields, and knocking out ship-to-planet comms that were not restored for another six minutes.

The released energy continued on and out into the black void, drawn inexorably towards the roiling boundaries of the distant, red-tinged gaze of the Eye of Terror.

FTL magic warp beam and its effects on the enviroment, including weakening shields on the Iron Hands Strike cruiser in orbit.

Page 172

With a turbine scream of jet-wash, Dagan's jump pack thrusters activated. A second later Brothers Accin, Tyur, Gamen, Csarte and Sered activated theirs.

For a moment the desert vista blurred, streaking away in a distortion of speed as the Iron Hands' pixelated heads-up display took a moment to compensate for the dramatic increase in velocity.

pixelated HUDs on assault marines. using jump packs to slow descent.

Page 173

Dagan's bird's-eye view of the sandstone city showed it to be a maze of twisting streets, like an unearthed fossil within the expanse of the parched wilderness, criss-crossed by only a few featureless desert roads that connected it to other mineral trading centres across the equatorial band. The crystals yielded from the desert mountain mesas were used in the manufacture of las-weapons across the Achilles subsector.

Lasweapons use magic crystals mined from this planet to power themselves. Not the first time magic crystals implied in lasweapon manufacturing. OF course we know they use magic lenses too.

Page 173

Targeting icons flitted from one ant-like figure to another, as Dagan's suit cogitator assessed the threat potential of each in turn, ready for the moment when he decided to fire. Dagan currently held his plasma pistol and deactivated chainsword close against his chestplate, for the duration of the descent, almost as if in an attitude of prayer. The rest of his squad were similarly armed although the other Space Marines bore bolt pistols.

This combination of powerful side arms and scything close-combat weapons gave the assault squad great flexibility. They could fire whilst still at a distance and yet also meet any opponent in close combat immediately upon entering the fray, dropping right into the heart of a conflict thanks to their jump packs, as they planned to do here.

Assault troop capabilities. Helmets have cogitator-assigned targeting icons.


Page 174

Thirty seconds after disembarking from the Thun-derhawk, two thousand metres above Antipax, Assault Squad Dagan touched down on the battlements of the Citadel...

67 m/s average descent velocity.


Page 175

Suddenly Dagan saw that the madman was carrying an antique-looking grenade.
...
If Dagan fired now the blast would detonate grenade and like as not blow him, his squad, as well as the rest of the cultists, into oblivion. If he did nothing the same thing would happen anyway: it would be as the cultist's ruinous masters demanded, no doubt.

Sergeant Dagan leapt forward through the throng on the battlements and grabbed the screaming Shinarii. With one deft, effortless movement, the Iron Hand hurled the man over the precipice of the battlements. A second later the grenade detonated, as the cultist plummeted down the side of the Citadel, the resulting explosion taking out a gun emplacement as well as vaporising the suicidal Chaos-lover. The explosion shook the battlements but the assault squad stood firm as their enemy stumbled and fell.

That must be one poweful grenade. Whether it literally vaporizes or not I'll leave for others to dbate, although blowing an entire squad of Marines nevermind a greater number of cultists apart would take quite a bit of energy so why not?

Page 176
[qote]
A blast from his plasma pistol burnt the flesh from the face of a black-robed Shinarii devotee, hurling his body backwards so that the spiked mace he had been wielding above his head fell
backwards onto the skull of the madman following him.[/quote]

Plasma pistol burns flesh off cultist's head (well the face at least) assuming 400 J/cm^2 and 20 cm diamter head is 160 kj.

Page 179

Within a matter of days the situation was returning to normal. But now they were tied up in a cycle of recriminations and backstabbing squabbles, petty blame-passing and excuse-making, which frustrated Gdolkin. He was a man of action, not of words. And besides, it was clear to him where the blame lay. It was a Planetary Governor's responsibility to see that the world entrusted to his care and supervision was policed and governed appropriately. For a cult like the Shinarii to gain such a strong foothold, being able to threaten the security of Herod in its entirety, Governor Sardis had failed in his duty to the Emperor and should pay the price accordingly.

But the organisations that made up the Imperium were as much subject to the wily manoeuvrings of politics as they were bastions of strength, valour, honour and retributive vengeance; as much affected by the political wranglings as they were the whims of Chaos or the predation of xenos races.

Governor Thaslos Hellek Sardis was weak, and if it had been Gdolkin's place to sit in judgement over the man who had allowed such an uprising to occur effectively unchallenged, he would have executed him there and then. But to do so would only serve to destabilise the political situation on Herod still further. He had been lucky to escape the crucifixions, considering how many other members of the government bodies based in Antipas had been victims of the cultists' cruel executions.

The rule of the Imperium on Herod had to continue, and it had to be seen to continue by the populace at large. The old regime had to be restored, else anarchy and confusion would like as not persist and Chaos would doubtless regain its foothold on this contested world. Since the Governor himself had played no part in the Shinarii uprising, his position had to be restored, at least for the time being. Had a member of His Holy Majesty's Inquisition been present, from the shadowy Ordo Hereticus perhaps, things might have gone very differently for the Governor. For them the ends always justified the means, no matter what anarchy might come to pass for those very ends to be achieved.

Imperial politics and the problems it creates. Inquisitors can play a role in removing commanders from authority if they deem it important.

Page 188

On the three-hour flight from Antipax, Gdolkin had seen what the pilot-servitor had seen, the view through the armaglass of the windshield relayed to his own visor display via the augury monitors of the Thunderhawk.

Relayed telemetry data.

Page 189

...like one of the crystalline formations that were found buried beneath the shifting surface of this world and that were then employed in the manufacture of the standard issue Imperial Guard lasgun across this subsector

Again lasguns (IG at least) use magic crystals in their functioning in this subsector.


Page 192

Gdolkin's aural receptors were picking up a sound that was barely registering on the decibel scale, but as the Iron Hands advanced further into the cavern complex it became steadily more discernable.

Auditory capabilities of Astartes autosenses.

Page 193

The carvings looked not unlike the geometric patterns of a cogitator circuit board, chiselled into the rock, all at the one height, with nodes of crystals protruding from the pattern at particular points, which were no doubt critical junctures.

Cogitator circuit board.

Page 194

This was no natural crystal formation. Gdolkin could see that the obelisk had eight sides, that appeared to be of the same dimensions - according to a brief scan carried out by his cogitator-linked artificial eye - and perfectly smooth.

Gdolkin's augmetic eye can do scanning/assessment of dimensions of objects.

Page 200

Gdolkin's bolt pistol coughed in his hand, the bionics in his wrist meaning that he barely even registered the recoil that could have broken a normal man's arm. The tattooed face of the ravening cultist burst like an overripe ripe watermelon.

Bolt pistol has recoil. Head explodes again.

Page 205

Gdolkin brought his axe across in a scything blow, the monomolecular edge of the disruption field-sheathed blade slicing through not one, or even two, but three sabre-wielding fanatics. Three more swift strokes turned them into just so many bundles of black cloth-wrapped body parts

Power weapon disruption fields creates a monomolecular edge.

Page 217

At his request techno-surgery had been performed to fit him with an anti-grav assembly, beneath his waist, not unlike those used in the manufacture of servo-skulls.

In Strake's mind the machine was the ideal, and if the physical was not good enough, why keep to the pattern set by inadequate biological forerunners? Whilst others were thrown about by shuddering impacts or the turbulence created by spatial anomalies, he was able to keep a clear grip on the situation, no longer in physical contact with the floor. No matter how much the Ajax might pitch or yaw he stayed forever upright.

Augmeti anti-grav.

Page 220-221

"Unlike on Fornax, we were not in the path of the dissipating warp energy-wave and so our systems were not knocked out by the blast. Our void shields remained at full strength and our surveyors remained one hundred per cent operational," Strake explained. "As a result, we were able to monitor what happened to the energy wave as it travelled out into space."
...
Strake had been studying the screen set into the lacquered mahogany top of his command pulpit when Gdolkin had entered the bridge. The Ajax's captain turned back to it now and was joined by the Iron-Father. The pict-display showed a projection of the edge of the roiling Eye of Terror, located to the galactic north-west. The detail was hard to pick out on such a small projection.

...

"It is a spatial anomaly which according to the Imperial catalogue has been designated "Warpstorm Araken"."
...

"Well, as you can see, this system lies a mere seven light years from the anomaly." Strake said, drawing up the name 'Herod' on the screen so that all present might clearly see what he already knew.

"After the destruction of the Araken artefact, the energy wave travelled out into the void, in the direction of the anomaly. Only a matter of hours after the destruction of the Bei'bul Stone, our augur-arrays detected a two hundredfold increase in activity within the warpstorm."

"Two hundred-fold? Gdolkin said in astonishment.

"Indeed. The Araken Anomaly has also increased in size by a factor of three. Whereas before it was approximately two light years across it has now tripled in size and is now six light years across. Not only that, but it is becoming less dense."

Warp storm detected by Strike cruiser's sensors from 7 LY away. activity detected "hours" later. Note thres are passive sensors, and they detect stuff involved with warp stuff. we know they have warp sensors, so this makes some sense. The propogation rate of the "activity" would be thousands or tens of thousands times c at least, but there is a definite implication it is realtime or near/realtime. They also could evidently track and identify the destination of the warp anomaly energy blast thingy (which had similar propogation rates, and gives interesting ideas about communications perhaps, if there were some way to "catch" it. Hell it has implications for weapons tech if they could create warp beams like that.)

This may account for examples of "realtime" sensor detection. we know 40K ships use a fair bit of warp tech in them, which may show up realtime to other universe' sensors (similar to how gravitics work in the honorverse.)

Page 224

Iron-Captain Strake keyed something into the pulpit console in front of him. A moment later the image on the screen homed in on the shape of the warpstorm. Gdolkin could see the tendrils of dust and ice particles streaming off the anomalous nebula, out into space. At the heart of the roiling mass the Iron-Father fancied that he could see the cold darkness of empty space appearing beyond the veil of the storm. Only it wasn't empty.

'What is that?" he said, pointing at the screen.

"You see it too then?" Strake said, a hint of satisfied vindication in his voice.

"There's something there, at the centre of the warpstorm."

"Yes. A star system."

They can also apparently detect or discern a star system in that warp storm. From 7 LY away. At FTL. Which is rathre odd since I haven't seen or heard much of this ability elsewhere, at least this directly stated. Possibly only because the places is a daemon world and inundated with the warp it is more readily detectable as a planet.

Alternately its like those weird "Warp telescopes" in the Eye of Terror novel, which is also possible. It may also have something to do with astropathic scrying. And on the other hand we do know that they maintain observation and monitoring stations in/around the Eye of Terror which would imply some FTL detection capability.

Page 236

"So what purpose did these artefacts serve?" Melchor asked, intrigued. "Who was it that built them?"
"I do not know who built them; the sources are unclear on that matter. Some suggest they were of xenos origin, others even propose that they were creations of the Adeptus Mechanicus. If so, then the techno-art of such lith-engineering is lost to us now, like so much else. Which is why we must see this quest through to its conclusion!"

As Thule spoke a rotating wire-frame image of an eight-sided obelisk appeared on the pict-screen, overlaid with various pieces of data and cogitator references.

"As to their purpose, the readings I was able to take from the Bei'bul Stone before it was destroyed suggest that the artefacts, linked to their associated cave networks that somehow helped amplify the planets' own energy-fields, kept Warpstorm Araken in place."

Sounds like pure technobabble to me, but an artificial means of sustaining and creating a warp storm, somehow. May have been AdMech engineering of an older time. Not sure how a planet's own "energy fields" would keep a warp storm in place, but eh. Maybe they have Eldar world spirits or something.


Page 239

"According to the Scriptorium of Iron, Great Ferrus spearheaded the assault on Istvaan V against the traitor Horus and his treacherous allies but those forces that should have backed up the initial attack themselves turned traitor. It was a dark day for our Chapter indeed. Ferrus Manus and his warriors were outnumbered. After the terrible and bloody battle his body was never recovered."

Gdolkin could sense the anger rising in Melchor at his recollection of the events of those fateful times.

"Precisely." the Iron-Father said smoothly. "The primarch's body was never found. That is the commonly held version of events, but there are a number of different accounts that suggest Ferrus was found, and that he somehow survived. One tale says that his wrecked body was rescued and restored, that he was taken to Mars and that he resides there still."

"But that is a rumour refuted by our Chapter, put about by certain factions among the Adeptus Mechanicus." Melchor declared, outraged.

"I know, brother. But there are other apocryphal writings in the annals of our Chapter, that I have studied, which speak of a similar series of events. These histories refer to Primarch Ferrus Manus as the "Ironclad", in a number of places in the text, and hint at what might have happened to him. In this text its now unknown author says that Ferrus Manus was rescued, on the brink of death, but rather than being taken to "the crucible of Mars by its servants", as the other legend tells, that the primarch was taken by, "the servants of Mars to the Crucible" and that he slept there for an eternity."

This novel was written prior to the details of the Horus Heresy series or Collected visions artbooks being all that well known (the HH series itself is heavily influenced by the Collected Visions stuff, so Green may not have known that Manus actually died in that at Fulgrim's hands. It certainly wasn't well established until the Fulgrim novel itself.

In-universe, its made worse that Manus' death is basically proclaimed Imperium-wide. We might figure that the lack of a body (coupled with the fact that things would be very confused and disrupted Imperium wide during the HEresy, nvermind the devastation that follows) may have muddied the waters, and the Iron Hands may have evolved a highly emotional refusal to accept Manus' apparent death, which results in this continued belief he might exist. After all the Salamanders never recovered their leader's body, and its up in the air (despite some comment in the HH itself) that Vulkan is probably dead.

It's still a kludgy answer, but it will perhaps do to explain the apparent inconsistencies, and its not impossible for details to have been forgotten or erased (lots of other details about the Heresy were eradicated, and we might figure the Iron Hands in their anger refused to acknowledge the truth.)


Page 240

A course was set and strike cruiser Ajax broke orbit around Herod. Within twelve days the vessel had reached the roiling boundaries of the dissipating warpstorm and the Iron Hands, and their guests, felt its effects for the first time.

The Ajax was tossed about like a leaf in a hurricane or a twig trapped within a tempestuous ocean whirlpool. Tendrils of discharging energy, with the force of solar flares, lashed the shields of the ship, draining power levels across the strike cruiser. The craft's ancient engines battled to keep the Ajax on course, flying in the face of the dissipating warpstorm.

12 days to cross maybe 5-7 Light years.. 150-200c. OF course in proximity to a warp storm this is hardly surprising.

Warp storm is discharging energy tendrils with the "force of solar flares" at the ship. Whether this means actual size, or what, we don't know. It may mean that the whole energy of a flare is striking the ship (which might account for fluctuating power levels and the difficulties of keeping stable) or it may only be a fraction of that energy. It may also mean pwoer rather than energy.

The Energy of a solar flare is up to some 6e25 joules (but I gather may be less, as well) but they may take minutes to tens of minutes to endure - one took nintety minutes. They are also quitelarge - tens of thousands of kilometers across, probably more since they would spread out in space.. it would be easy for the ship to absorb only millionths or even billionths of the total energy output, nevermind the sustained power output. Of course even at that the ship is likely taking many kilotons or megatons of abuse per "tendril" in ssutained effort, and the shields are not exactly getting weakened or knocked down, so even that is fairly impressive considering this sort of bombardment must be going on for hours, if not days on end.

Page 245

The Iron Hands' strike cruiser Ajax drifted at the edge of a star system that had been lost to the Imperium for as many eons as it could take for entire civilisations to rise and fall. Its shields were down, its adamantium hull sporting gouged ruts. The largest was sixty metres long and as wide as a Space Marine was tall. These injuries had been caused to the ship by the ethereal talons of warp-born entities that clung to a spectral existence amidst the spaceship graveyard in which the Ajax now found itself. The Astartes vessel wore its battle scars with pride.

Aftermath of the passage through the warp storm.

Page 247

There were Ecclesiarchy missionary cruisers, rogue trader vessels, massive Titan transporters and an Adepta Sororitas ship bearing the towering image of sightless fate: a maiden, blindfolded and holding a sword and shield. Her face had been forever scarred by meteorite fragments. Gdolkin even saw the long, threatening dagger-form of one of the black ships of the Inquisition, bearing the image of a trisected T, a hundred metres high, on its flank.

Ships lost inside the warp storm, note the Eccelsiarchy ANd the Sisters of Battle both have their own vessels. Also an Inquisitorial ship with a 100 metre tall "I" on it. If we use the "Black ship" mentioend in BFG as a benchmark, its between 1500-2000 metres long, and maybe 300-400 metres tall - about the size of an 'old' Strike cruiser or BFG era light cruiser.

Page 257

The Corrupter of Colchis hove into view from amidst the derelict shapes of the spaceship wrecks, gliding through the asteroid field like some submarine predator. Away from the shadow of the desolate derelicts that had hidden it, the shark-like form of the battleship was clear, its distinctive outline threatening against the backdrop of the void, the ruddy bronze of its hull the colour of dried blood.
Seven kilometres of gargoyle-encrusted weapon ports, arched launch bays, and baroquely ornamented torpedo tubes cut through the space between the ancient battleship and the exposed strike cruiser, closing the gap between them, as the Corrupter bore down on the Ajax.

Word bearers battleship. 7 km long.

Page 257

The ancient vessel's prow lance battery charged again and fired. A beam of intense energy, more powerful than a planet-bound electrical storm covered the distance between the two craft and smashed into the port side of the Astartes strike cruiser a second time. The Ajax lurched to one side as its void shields failed, allowing the laser blast to rip through six decks, breaching the hull and knocking out twenty-two guncrews. Hundreds of servitors, thralls and their adept supervisors were incinerated in the blast or sucked out into space to explosively decompress as their barrier with the unforgiving vacuum was removed.

Lance fire striking a ship. Stated to be "more powerful than a planet-bound electrical storm". If it means a thudnerstorm, it could be 20 kt although that isn't exact. this source says within a minute equal to a 120 kt bomb.

However, "electrical storm" I take to merely mean it has lightning or electricity, which could also include some hurricanes (which get into 5e19 joules per day) although electrical hurricanes are relatively rare.

There's also the fact it doenst specify what kind of planet. Jupiter is bigger and may very well have nastier (more energetic) storms, for example. On the other hand is it talkin about total energy or sustained output? And how much more powerful? Like the "atomic weapons" and "volcano" bits in the Armageddon novels, its hard to pin a hard figure on this.

+

[Connor MacLeod]

Part 3. I'm done. This thread can now drift off page 1. Hooray.

Page 258

The remaining operational portside weapon batteries fired, cannons that would dwarf the size of ground-based static Earthshaker platforms, launching shells three times the size of a man at the Chaos cruiser. With the Corrupter closing on the Ajax many of the macro-cannon shells found their mark. The explosives detonated but with the shrapnel clouds expanding slowly into the void the battleship came on, having suffered little apparent damage.

Space based guns fire macro cannon shells much bigger than earthshaker shells. Probably vastly bigger than any ground based gun (which can reach hundreds of kilos to several tonnes depending on source. If "size" was mass we could be talking a few hundred kilos (assuming a 70-80 kg man) or a bit less (a 50-60 kg man) If we mean volume, it could mean .3 M^3. Assuming iron composition it could be 2.5 tonnes, but less massive would lean towards the previous assessment. If we mean individual dimensions it would be 3x the lenght (5-6 meters long, 1-1.5 meters diameter) which could be several tons to several tens of tons, depending on composition and exact dimensions.


Page 261

"Iron-Captain, what exterminatus measures do you currently carry aboard the Ajax?" Gdolkin asked.
"Cyclonic torpedoes. But why do you ask? Are you expecting to need them?"

Exterminatus measures onboard the starship.

Page 261

"Full power to the engines! Take us in with all haste. And watch out for those space rocks, by Medusa. Omnissiah bless us, we don't want to lose a laser battery or comms spire to one of those damned asteroids, but we don't to be too shy of them either."

Risk of losing a laser or comms spire to asteorid impact.


Page 262

In minutes the salvo of torpedoes launched at the strike cruiser by the Corrupter of Colchis would make contact, despite Iron-Captain Strake's evasive manoeuvres. The smaller torpedoes' engines were designed for a much shorter, but more powerful burn, so that they could cover the distance between a battleship and its target - which might be as much as several thousand kilometres - in the shortest space of time possible. It was hard for a spaceship to avoid a torpedo salvo once launched, even if the target was moving, as it still took some time to move several kilometres and many, many mega-tonnes of spacecraft out of the line of fire.

And when the barrage did reach the Ajax, the battle-brothers of Squad Vincien would be waiting to repel boarders.

The six Chaos-consecrated torpedoes tore through the void towards the Iron Hands' vessel, travelling at hundreds of kilometres a second. Gyroscopic stabilisers and daemon-spirited cogitators kept the massive ordnance projectiles on course. But it was not enough, thanks to a combination of the ever-changing maze of the asteroid field, the gravitational pull of the larger, rotating rocks and Iron-Captain
Strake's skill married with centuries of experience, plying the spaceways and encountering almost everything the void could throw at him.

Boarding torpedoes moving at hundreds of km/s, penetrate shields, and arrive in "minutes". Assuming 2 minutes and 200 kps we're talking at least 24,000 km. Upper limit would be 3.6 million km (1000 kps in an hour) Tens or hundreds of thousands of km range seems likely

Also implies a Starship could not move out of range of the torpedoes in "minutes" which would imply similar accelerations (singel or double digit gees.)

Strike cruiser is "several kilometers and many mega-tonnes" which is roughly consistent with Rogue Trader assessment.

Torpedoes use possessed computers and gyroscopes for guidance and stability.

Page 264

The tortured grinding of metal reverberated throughout the compartment as the torpedo's las-drill nose-cone bored its way through the remaining metres of adamantium hull that had not ruptured under the force of the initial collision, and into the belly of the strike cruiser.

"las drill" heads to penetrate hull.. "metres" of hull not penetrated under impact.

Page 270

The Iron Eagle hit the surface of Crucible travelling in excess of three hundred kilometres per hour, the nose section crumpling. Iron-Father Gdolkin was hurled forwards through the already splintering armaglas windshield and clear of the crash-site as a spear of rock entered the cockpit, its tip pulping the calculus logi's head. An electrical fire broke out in the cockpit, consuming the seat-locked pilot.
Forming himself into as tight a ball as he could manage, Gdolkin rolled another twenty metres, away from the wrecked Thunderhawk, the abrasive rocks grazing paint from his armour.

Iron Hands hit planet at 300 kph in Thunderhawlk. Gdolkin obviously survives intact and unharmed.

Page 279

The asteroid practically filled the main viewscreen now, a colossal grey spinning rock sporting its own mountainous crags, deep crevasses and the crater marks of impacts from other, smaller pieces of space debris.

"Prepare to come to the new heading on my mark."
"Three seconds."
"Enemy weapons firing."
"Mark!"

At the Iron-Captain's command, servitors and thralls carried out the operations they had been charged with in a split second. The cruiser's plasma drives fired and the beak of the Ajax dipped under the leading edge of the asteroid.

In the same instant the Chaos vessel's laser lances fired. On the first occasion they had hit. This time, however, the Ajax was too quick. Devastating laser blasts pounded the asteroid. With a cataclysmic explosion, the laser beams blew the space rock apart, the shockwave throwing shards weighing as much as the strike cruiser itself out into the close-packed mass of the asteroid field.

The Ajax shook and lurched violently as smaller rocks crashed into its void shields, and in places where the shields had been weakened by the Corrupter's pervious attacks, into its hull, sending the cruiser careering to port

Mass of the asteroid implied to be many times greater than the Ajax, and impact with enough force to move cruiser aside where shields don't block them. We dont know how big the asteroid is, but presumably big enough to screen the ship (at least several km) which might suggest kiloton-megatons for the prow lance salvo (assuming explosive-like effects only) but tat is pure conjecture.

The Ajax seems to also be able to shift its mass in a few seconds, suggesting accelerations of a few tens of gees to move most of its mass out of line of sight.)

Page 287

When it had climbed to a height of at least a hundred metres, in a matter of mere seconds, the Raptor released the tech-adept with a screech of exalted delight.

Raptor reaches 100 metres in "mere seconds" suggesting metres, if not several tens of metres a second velocity

Page 289

Gdolkin looked up at the towering cliff-face in front of him. It was at least two hundred and fifty metres to the natural rocky rampart of the sheer rock wall, which meant that the massive doors had to be over a hundred metres tall and the portal they sealed fifty metres across. The doors appeared to be constructed from huge plates of plasteel-reinforced adamantium, and the Omnissiah alone knew how thick they were. However, the Iron-Father suspected that they could endure a direct laser barrage from a ship in orbit.

Laser barrage-resistant doors.

Page 297

The sight stole the breath from all who saw it.

Here lay the Ironclad, sleeping in sepulchral-stasis; not one warrior but an entire legion.
Titans. God-engines of the Adeptus Titanicus.

Enough firepower to raze a planet.

An army that could turn the tide of the war.

A titan army big enough to raze a planet (in an unspeicfied period of time.)

Page 300

They always had half an eye monitoring the information being relayed to their visor displays from sensors built into their ancient power armoured suits, on the lookout for anomalous readings or any sudden movement in this tomb of Titans.

visor relyayed info from, I gather, sensors.

Page 300

As the Space Marines looked up into the gloom at the gigantic sinister figures, cones of light traced the greaves of massive legs to armoured adamantium torsos, huge arms bearing enough power to level a city, and up to the sinister helmed heads.

Weapons arms have enough power to "level a city".

Page 303

The scouring torch beams of the buzzing servo-skulls of Thule's party criss-crossed the monstrous solid black shadows of a gatling blaster, as big as a Baneblade super heavy battletank, and a power fist capable of dismembering another Titan or tearing down the walls of any fortress it came up against. Over its right breast a heraldic shield, forged of steel six metres high, proclaimed that this was the Iron-heart.

To the right, the Titan was incomplete. The multiple rocket launcher that should have stood in place of its left arm still hung in the chain-cradle of a gantry crane assembly, waiting to be attached, as it had been for centuries. The other arm had already been fully equipped with an imposing laser burner, a close combat weapon. This colossal war machine was a Titan-killer. Its rockets could find its target from a distance whilst the intense energy beam of the laser burner would cause bare metal to vaporise and electrical systems to burn out when the god-beast closed for the kill. A piece of adamantium scrollwork named this Titan as the Animus Indomitus.

Titan weaponry described.. most of this is from earlier sources, and some of the data (like the las burner) is paraphrased directly from material.

Page 303

The next pair of war gods were armed with a volcano cannon and chain fist, bigger than the mighty Land Raiders of the Adeptus Astartes, and a plasma cannon as well as another gatling cannon. And beyond them again, other Titans could just be discerned looming out of the moribund darkness. And still the Space Marines had not reached the end of the vast chamber.

More Titan weapons.

Page 304

Although built according to the design templates of ancient STC designs, each Titan was in reality a unique construction, hundreds of servitors, tech-adepts and enginseers labouring for thousands of man hours to create each in turn, lavishing on them the ornamentation and individual detailing deserved of the cybernetic godhead of the Omnissiah incarnate as a living machine of iron and adamantium, forged of the furnaces of the mighty Mechanicus manufactories.

Titan construction. "hundreds" must labour for "thousands" of man hours to create a single Titan. Assuming that "thousands" per person it might take months, up to a year to build a titan. Alternately, if that is collective, it would be 10 man hours per person, within a day. I suspect the former is more the case, I don't recall Titans being mass produced Timeframe would likley be between 3 months and a little over a year.

Page 305

The party moved on. As he advanced, Gdolkin kept one eye on the readings of his suit's signum device. The scanner was counting ten of the monstrous humanoid war machines within a radius of fifty metres and the Iron-Father had no reason to believe that they stopped there. The signum also told him that as yet, and as far as it could discern, the Chaos host had not yet breached the complex.

Signum/radar evice. There are at least ten titans present. Probably far more (hundreds?)

Page 306

There had been the assault on the Black Fortress of Vania, during which the Titans of the Firesword Legion had brought down the walls allowing the Iron Hands into the heart of the place. Those Titans had numbered only twelve, a number which, at the time, had seemed impressive to the younger Gdolkin.

12 Titans in a single legion. We know from other sources that Legion sizes vary.


Page 307

The Imperator rose above them like the Omnissiah incarnate. It was set back into its own massive recessed maintenance alcove, which was riddled with walkways and runged staircases amidst carved stone gargoyle heads, ten metres high, that projected from the bedrock of the moon that the hangar had been carved from. The massive machine was a giant amongst Titans, dwarfing those others that only topped fifty metres in height; its battlements, bristling with gun emplacements, being seventy metres above the ground.

50 metre "other" titans (Warlords) and a 70 metre tall Imperator.

Page 307

The battlements of the largest class of Titan ever to be constructed by the genius of the Cult Mechanicus, and fielded in battle by the Adeptus Titanicus, supported gun-towers with spire-like armoured roofs containing autoloaders and void shield generators.

Its tower-like legs were massive, wide structures with tiered cathedral steps formed from the metal of its splayed toes, which led up to the entrance ports of the great machine. These huge armoured pillars, dotted with bolter gun emplacements, were ornamented to an incredibly detailed degree, the work of millions of man-hours lavished on the Titan-engine by those in service of the Machine God of Mars. The legs, made large to support the colossal weight of the Titan, above rose up to piston-linked hip joints as big as static Earthshaker platforms.

The torso of the Titan was covered in armour so thick that it would have not been out of place on a planetary defence installation. More weapon emplacements - autocannon, bolter gun and rocket launcher batteries - could be seen protruding from shadowy arched ports. Slung low between the massively broad shoulders of the Titan was the burnished steel of its knight's-helm head. Above that, of course, rose the fortress battlements of the war machine, with their massive main battery gun, weapon emplacement towers and strategic defence laser turret.

Emperor class Titan described. "millions" of man hours to build one. I'm almost certianly betting that is combined, because otherwise it would take thousands of years to build one. although that wouldn't be impossible.

Page 308

But the articles that demanded the most attention were the Imperator's two colossal weapon arms, each one capable of levelling a city or blitzing a whole armoured company from the face of any battlefield. First there was the Hellstorm cannon of its right arm. Like other barrage weapons, the Hellstorm was most effective when fired into closely grouped targets. A single deadly barrage from the weapon was enough to break an ork clan in one go. The Imperator's plasma annihilator was the ultimate tank-buster and Titan-killer. Volleys from this almighty cannon could pulverise a daemon plague tower or slaughter a tyranid hierodule bio-construct.

Each Titan weapon arm can level a city (again.) This might mean that the weapons arms (together) on smaller titans could onyl do that. Or maybe it means a single shot.

Page 313

There were the smaller, but no less effective or threatening Warhound scout-class machines, which in the arena of war were the eyes and ears of the Titan Legions. Their high speed allowed them to range far and wide, spying out the movements of the enemy as well as the lay of the land. Their ability to outpace many larger war engines meant that packs of the canine-headed Warhounds made effective flanking forces, sowing the seeds of terror and confusion within the enemy's ranks.

There were also Reaver Battle Titans, their variable configuration allowing them to be tailored to a broad spectrum of battlefield roles. They combined the massed firepower of gatling blasters, laser weapons and rocket launchers with the Titan-hunting volcano cannons and a myriad of close-combat weapon emplacements. They were mighty machines indeed, but not as powerful or resilient as the Warlords, which had formed the backbone of the Titan Legions since the days of the Horas Heresy.
In total there were eighty-one Titans. Thule's adepts and Gdolkin's Marines counted an impressive forty Warlords, three-quarters of them in battle-ready condition, sixteen Warhounds and twenty-four Reavers.
There was only one capital Imperator amongst the whole Legion. To paraphrase Thule, it only needed one.

The entire Legion. 71 Titans.

Page 318-319

Locating a small port in the console Gdolkin slid the spike into it. Closing his remaining human eye, a look of intense concentration creased his features as he attempted to commune with the machine spirit of the cogitator core.

Gdolkin's mind swam through the digital sea of the cogitator's mind-core. The sensation was similar to an out-of-body experience. It was as if his whole body was gliding through the outer layers of the thinking-machine's digital consciousness. It was as if he was inside a vast sphere, the interior surface of which appeared to be liquid metal. It changed, chameleonlike, from glistening gold, through burnished bronze and dull grey to mercurial quicksilver.

Frozen images flew past him connected by streams of lingua-technis symbols that even he could not interpret as he travelled deeper into the logic-core. It was as though he were penetrating different layers of stasis-locked information. Some of the pictures appeared blurred or out-of-focus. Some had almost darkened entirely to black, their symbol-connector lines corrupted. Other links were broken entirely, as if some information had been lost altogether.

The cogitator's machine spirit materialized before him, appearing in the Iron-Father's mind's eye as a nebulous red cloud with a tightly focused electrical storm sparking and flashing at its heart. The machine spirit challenged the Iron-Father's right to access its data-files. Gdolkin dredged up the necessary protocol responses from the depths of his mind. It was not only the Adeptus Mechanicus who could reap the benefit of secret knowledge shared in the past thanks to the ancient oaths sworn between the Temple of the Machine and the Iron Hands' Chapter.
The machine spirit acquiesced and the secrets of its millennia old memories were Gdolkin's for the examining.

Gdolkin hacking into a compute

Page 332

As far as the Iron Hands were concerned, the mutants' primitive solid-shot weapons and looted laspistols did not have the power to really cause them concern, the ceramite plates of their power armour absorbing the worst. The less well-protected tech-guard were more reliant on the screen of the Space Marines to provide them with enhanced protection but, as became apparent, some of the soldiers, squad leaders mainly, possessed their own personal force fields.

laspistols and solid shot weapons can threaten tech guard, but the squad leaders (usually) have personal forcefields (indicator of AdMech sophistication) and Marines are of course largely invulnerable.

Page 333

Something that had black ophidian body parts and fanged serpent heads emerging from holes in its rusty armour turned the barrel of an archaic ripper gun on the Iron-Father. His power axe cut through the iron tube of the firearm, its rough wooden stock and its magazine of scatter-shot shells. As the weapon fell apart in the mutant's hands, Gdolkin rammed the muzzle of his blessed pistol into the visor slit of his opponent's plate metal helmet and blew out its brains, the bolter shells ricocheting inside the can of the helmet.

Another head/brain exploding scene.,

PAge 338

Raising his bolt pistol he fired off one round. The man's head burst like a ripe fruit.

One round head exploding.

Page 340

The missile found its mark, its spear-like tip piercing the grotesquely rippling flesh of the second Chaos spawn before detonating. The warp-horror found itself at the centre of an expanding ball of bone shards, pulped gristle and coiling, purple viscera, all swallowed up by the hungry fireball of the explosion. Gobbets of still writhing, charred flesh rained down on the loyalists' line.

Missile blows up Chaos spawn.

Page 346

To every Chaos Havoc his heavy weapon - be it lascannon, autocannon or daemon-possessed flamer - was a trusted ally of a thousand battles, an extension of his own corrupted form. The Havoc bearing the missile launceher did not miss his target. Without having time to utter a sound, Brother Sered died in a crimson ball of greasy flame and hellish black smoke, blown apart by the daemon-blessed rocket.

Chaos Havocs and their weapons.

PAge 347

Sergeant Braxus and his Devastators were also having a satisfyingly destructive impact on the enemy host, in spite of Brother Alculus being knocked back by reaper autocannon fire from a Chaos Terminator. Alculus had risen, the chestplate of his power armour pock-marked with shell craters, hefting his chugging heavy bolter in both gauntleted hands.

Termiantor armor not much harmed by daemonic autocannon.

Page 348

Braxus depressed the activation stud on the side of his heavy weapon. The missile rocketed out of the end of the launcher with a roaring whoosh, but Braxus remained unmoved by the recoil of the armament, the sheer weight of his Terminator battle-suit helping him maintain his braced position. The
Devastator sergeant watched the missile close on its target through the crosshairs of his aiming-sight. The krak missile hit the Havoc full in the face, detonating on impact. The Chaos Marine's head was blown apart as was the cursed lascannon and much of the Havoc's torso.

As the next missile was loaded into the chamber, Braxus was aware of Brother Samson locking onto a target. Samson's plasma cannon coughed and a ball of energised matter that dissolved both armour and flesh enveloped an axe-wielding Word Bearer. Zuriel's lascannon fired, taking a flailing cultist's head and left arm off in a single, searing blast, whilst Caucor's heavy bolter-fire tore through a pack of ravening mutants, the bionic left-hand side of his body absorbing the recoil from the mighty weapon.

Misssle blows apart Havoc's head and torso. Lascannon removes head and left arm (slicing attack?) plasma cannon "dissolves"

Page 350

He felt a rush of pride as he saw Librarian Melchor striding into battle, his psychic hood crackling with barely contained esoteric energies and his eyes alive with white fire. The facade of his personality might have been flayed from his mind by the ghost-storm that had assailed him, but his raw psyker-power remained.

A cultist's head melted in the face of a blast of unrestrained, wild psyker-magic. Melchor threw a hateful look at a looming Word Bearer and the Chaos Marine collapsed to his knees, holding gauntleted hands to his armoured head.

Melchior again. Head melting.. high kj to low MJ maybe depending on how you interpret it?

Page 353

The three abominations Gdolkin faced now were members of the Obliterator cult and their allegiance lent them a terrifying, mind-twisting metamorphosing power. The Iron-Father watched in fascinated horror as the daemon-machines turned semi-organic autocannon-like growths on their foes, mowing down tech-guard and Iron Hands alike with their withering fire - both Brothers Ibrus and Taudis being blown apart by the devastating barrage - before laying into the Imperial troops with weirdly reshaping adamantium-ciawed power fists.

Obliterators described.. with enough firepower do waste several Iron Hands.

Page 356

Holding on by the axe, Gdolkin let go of the spike and dispensed a handful of grenades from his suit's utility belt.

"For Ferrus and Medusa!" he bellowed and, activating each one, thrust the explosives charges into the gaping rent in the Obliterator's carapace. He felt the Chaotic flesh of the creature sucking at his bionic hand. The Iron-Father pulled his hand free of the sucking flesh that was at the core of the shape-changing monster and saw the indentations of teeth-marks in the metal of the augmetic.

...

Then he was flying through the air, crashing to ground ten metres away, flattening and killing a tech-guard beneath him as he landed, hearing the crunch of grinding gears in the augmetic of his left shoulder.
...

The grenades detonated.
For a second the Obliterator seemed to swell, stretched skin tearing, blood-wet flesh appearing between separating armoured plates; but only for a second.
The Obliterator vanished in the expanding angry fireball of a cataclysmic explosion. Gdolkin's olfactory' senses detected the stink of cooking daemon-flesh and burning machine-oil, as pieces of fused metal and mutating warp-flesh rained down amidst the Word Bearers' host and the Imperial troops.

Gdolkin taking down Obliterators.

Page 359

Their task was made all the easier, the host soon realised, since the outpost world of Crucible had been subject to the dominion of the warp for many centuries. In all that time the holy warding sigils of the enginseers and technomagi had slowly but surely been broken down, the insidious influence of the warp seeping into the sleeping mind-cores of the time-frozen machines. Once there the cancerous malignancy of Chaos had steadily eaten away the very sanctified security protocols and hallowed subroutines of the god-engines that were supposed to keep Chaos out.

Centuries of neglect lead to the Titans becoming corrupted.

Page 360

The Titans of the Ironclad Legion would then lead Abaddon's forces to victory against the Imperium in the Despoiler's conquest of
Cadia and the galaxy beyond. A million million worlds and populations in their untold trillions would be converted to the true faith of Chaos, and the universe would belong to the Dark Gods at last.

A million million worlds? There's not a trillionw orlds in the Imperium. Maybe 2 million.

And "untold legions"

Page 363

The first energised matter blast sent a shocked Gdolkin stumbling forwards and overloaded his much abused Mechanicus Protectiva.
The Iron-Father turned round in bewildered surprise, distracted for a moment by fatigue and the crackling of the failing force-field generator. He looked at Magos Thule, astonishment etched across his face. The tech-priest had got hold of a plasma weapon from somewhere.
In the split second it took Gdolkin to realise this Thule fired the plasma gun again, this time expending its energy charge in one almighty blast.
The ball of plasma struck the Iron Hand in the middle of his chest, burning right through his body, and out through the exhaust fin of his suit's reactor pack, in a blaze of light.

Gdolkin hit by a plasma weapon.

Page 366

The body of the Iron Hands' commander lay there still, face down on the grilled deck, wisps of acrid smoky vapour rising from the hole that had been burnt right through the middle of his chest, melting reinforced ceramite, bionic components and bio-engineered flesh.

Melted at least 2-3 inches of cermaite, unknown sized hole.

Page 368

The magos had hoped that, having intoned the correct prayers and blessings, and having anointed the Titan with the sacred unguents, that they would be able to awaken the Titan's mind-core without recourse to direct human interface. With the Deus Mortem conscious, at least in its own way, he would order the great god-engine - razer of cities, bane of Chaos, waster of worlds - into battle.

Titans can be ordered about or operated (to a limited extent at least) by machine spirit without princeps connection. That might be more limited though.

Page 373

But the tech-priest had lived for over five centuries and would not die so easily. There was very little of him that hadn't been mechanically enhanced or doctored with rejuvenation processes at least once in the last five hundred years.

A techpriest at least 5 centuries old.

Page 375

Gdolkin had been an Iron Hand for over two hundred years. He had been invested as a Chaplain-Techmarine of the Chapter fifty-five years ago. He had suffered countless injuries in his life of service as a warrior-monk of the immortal God-Emperor, and there had been times when, he was sorry to say, his flesh had failed him. When that happened it had been replaced with something better. As a result there was very little that was still flesh and blood of the Iron-Father any more.

Gdolkin glanced down at the ragged hole in his chest. Flickering hazard lights could be seen flashing redly within.

Although the plasma blast had vaporised the place where Gdolkin's primary heart had been, the secondary heart - the first organ he had been implanted with on his way to being made an Iron Hand Space Marine - had been replaced long ago with a bionic counterpart after an encounter with a tyranid splinter fleet on the herd-world of Hamooth. It had never let him down since and it wasn't going to let him down now.

Gdolkin's blood-clotting Larraman cells had already taken effect, sealing the wound and preventing the loss of his precious haemastamen-enhanced blood, so that he could heroically battle on. Red warning icons still flashed on the Iron-Father's visor display.

Gdolkin survives. Apparently a heart-sized hole was punched through him. Assuming 2 kg of silicon (cermaite.. fron tand back plates)... 4-5 MJ to melt at least - ignoring the backpack, and vaporized his heart... (or vaporized a tunnel through 3 kg worth of flesh for 10 cm diameter - boiling to vaporize is 1-7 MJ) call it between 5-12 MJ.

Page 395

The Imperator flexed its iron and adamantium muscles. It strode forwards crushing dozens of the scurrying mites beneath its massive hooves. It reached out with its mighty arms, testing the power at its terrible, weapon-cannon fingertips. The Hellstorm cannon fired, immolating a score of the black-robed traitors. An energized matter blast tore from its plasma annihilator, vaporising the chainfist of a waking Warlord.

Truly was it a god of death.

But there was something wrong, a savage burning pain building within the Imperator's reactor heart. The Iscariot-Titan focused internally on itself for a moment, seeing the generarium core, the fuel rods overheating in the boiling fluid of the reactor chamber. The generarium was on the verge of overloading. The Titan's priest-thing servants were unable to do anything about the crisis, lying dead as they were at their posts.

Titan fuel rods with "boiling fluid" - fission reactor maybe? Biut I'm pretty sure fission reactors don't blow up...

Maybe its like the isotropic fuel rods, which are more like glorified capacitors.

Page 398

The Imperator strode through the shattered remains of the Mechanicus complex entrance portal and onto the blasted, basalt plain before the towering cliff-face. The daemon Titan's surveyor arrays could visualise the ruddy arrowhead-silhouette of the Chaos battleship waiting in low orbit over the Mechanicus moon below the band of asteroids circling the satellite. Landing craft capable of transporting constructs as large as Titans from the surface up to the Corrupter were even now descending from the Word Bearers' vessel, in readiness to retrieve the newly consecrated daemon-engines of the Legio Metallum Armaturum.

With a roar like a hundred atomic warheads detonating, the Ajax's cyclonic torpedoes entered Crucible's atmosphere and exploded. In seconds the entire moon was swallowed up beneath a planet-razing firestorm as the very atmosphere caught fire, exploding into flame. An apocalyptic roar broke across Crucible, a sound so loud it was as though the sky itself was breaking - which it was.
A terrible chain reaction had been set in motion and nothing could now stop it. A tide of destruction swept over the moon's surface, a hundred times more devastating than anything initiated by the destruction of any of the Araken artefacts.

No other sound could be heard as the apocalyptic firestorm raged across Crucible, sweeping away all before it, not the screams of the melting Chaos host as the air in their lungs caught fire, not the roar of the Titan transporters as they were incinerated, nor the frustrated bellowing of the possessed Imperator.

The nuclear fires enveloped the Iscariot-Titan, its void shields burning out in a few seconds. Its adamantium armour held out just long enough for the Imperator to suffer agonising pain on a deific level, as only a god can, before it too was utterly destroyed, its immortal body melting under the unimaginably fierce heat. Its reactor core exploded with the force of a small sun going nova.
The Corrupter of Colchis fired its plasma drives again, as the atmosphere of the moon beneath it became a roiling sea of molten fire, desperately trying to pull clear while it still could. But even the mighty seven-kilometre long vessel that had fought the Long War for ten thousand years could not escape the satellite-wide inferno. Void shields failed, engines caught fire and the plasma drives detonated. The warp-thing dwelling at the heart of the Corrupter within the sarcophagus of the ancient Word Bearers' battleship screamed its frustrations to the warp with the soul-searing death-scream of a billion devoured souls.

The wrath of the Emperor and the Omnissiah was terrible indeed.
As Crucible died, one lone hull-battered strike cruiser powered away from the dying moon. Silhouetted against the backdrop of the sea of molten fire enveloping the Mechanicus outpost world, the ship set course for the borders of the Araken system and was swallowed by the eternal darkness of the void.

Strike cruiser's cyclonic warheads go off... 7 km long battleship lost in the aftereffects. Hard to calculate however, because we dont know the conditions on the surface (its not earth like totally)

Page 404

The might of the land-behemoths was awesome indeed. Looking like vast mobile ziggurat cities, each commanded firepower equivalent to the mighty ordinatus engine Gehenna. When the fortress-monasteries moved it was as if the very landscape of the Chapter-world had come to terrible life, Medusa herself opposing the Chaos invasion.

Iron Hands Land Behemoth fortress monaasteries have power equal to ordinatus (EG mountain shattering firepower.) This is describing the land war against Chaos mentione din the Eye of Terror guide book (the largest battle since the land war on Tallarn during the Heresy)

Page 408

Dreadnought Gdolkin marched down the metal ramp ready to call down the divine retribution of the Emperor and his holy son, Ferrus Manus, upon the heads of the enemy ranged before him; an unstoppable killing machine, three times the height of a man, the ultimate fusion of the biological and the mechanical.

He was now one of only eight such dreadnought-brothers in the whole of the Iron Hands' Chapter.

Yes... Gdolkin's happy ending is to become a Dreadnought. Told you I was cheated out of my wish.

[Cykeisme]

An obelisk, possibly of xenos origin, that was covered with what appeared to be cogitator circuits but with crystals involved in its construction, and waves of green energy released upon its destruction.. and it was part of a mechanism that held a warp storm in check.
Any possibility that this may be a C'tan/Necron construct?

Perhaps not, because if it was, it should have looked familiar to Imperial forces, from Cadia and the phenomenon of the Cadian Gate.