Two more fell to his weapon’s retort, their chests exploded as the volatile rounds did their gruesome work;

What was left of Ko’tan Kadai’s corroded power armour was chained to a pyre-slab along with his half-destroyed body.
...
Two thick chains were piston-drilled to one of the short edges, and the rectangular pyre-slab hung down lengthwise.

Ceramite coated its surface, so the pyre-slab would be impervious to the magma heat.

A vast reservoir of lava dominated the cavern’s depths. The hot, syrupy magma came from beneath the earth and was the lifeblood of Mount Deathfire. It was held in a deep basin of volcanic rock, girded by layers of reinforced heat-retardant ceramite so that it pooled briefly before flowing onwards from one of the many natural outlets in the rock.

Though the chain links would not dissolve when they touched the
lava, they were still red-hot from the rising heat.
...
The captain’s armour and the remains of his body were quickly
ravaged. The intense heat would render the last vestiges of him to ash.

Tradition held that whenever an old captain died and another took his mantle, the ascendant would wear the previous incumbent’s armour.
...
Ko’tan Kadai had met his end before a traitor’s multi-melta. There had been little left of him to salvage, so his armour was given unto the mountain instead. It seemed a fitting offering. N’keln’s armour then was forged anew, an artificer suit fashioned by Brother Argos, Master of the Forge.

Fugis saw it as a dim black line
where the tall spire of Epimethus, Nocturne’s only ocean-bound Sanctuary City, jutted like a dull blade. It was surrounded by other, much smaller satellites, the numerous drilling rigs and mineral harvesting platforms that raked the ocean floor or mined its deepest trenches for ore.

Close up, the artificer armour he wore was rarefied indeed. Encrusted with the sigils of drakes and wrought with super-dense bands of adamantium that bound its reinforced ceramite plates, it was a masterpiece.

“Librarian Pyriel has been probing the star clusters out in the Belt and detected a resonance, a psychic echo of Nihilan’s presence. We will use that as our marker.”

The Hadron Belt was the last known location of the Dragon Warriors.
...
“With respect, sir, our last encounter with Nihilan was months ago. They will be far from there by now, likely returned to the Eye of Terror.”
...
"This remnant Brother Pyriel has found could be
weeks old. What makes you think they will still be lurking in-system?”

Blinking, he caught fragments of his surroundings through his optical lenses.
Biological data, relayed from his power armour’s internal systems and linked to his Space Marine physiology, materialised on his helmet display. Grainy crimson resolution revealed heightened breathing, accelerated blood pressure and a spiking heart rate. Myriad screens of diagnostic information flickered by between Dak’ir’s slowing heartbeat, his ocular implant absorbing it all and storing it subconsciously.

Engaging a series of calming routines, hypno-conditioned for automatic and instinctive activation, Dak’ir fought his body back to equilibrium again. It was only then that he realised where he was.
..
Re-scanning the battle-helm’s data array, he accessed mission schemata and encoded briefings through a series of sub-vocal commands.

Nocturne was months away. Brother-Captain N’keln had assembled his sergeants, just as he told Dak’ir he would, and outlined his plan to return to the Hadron Belt. Librarian Pyriel had been present, explaining to the officers of 3rd Company that he had detected a faint but distinct psychic echo out amongst the debris and star clusters of the system.

The dream-visions had at first only surfaced during battle-meditation. They were rare, occurring once or twice every few months.

Four Space Marine crew worked at the vessel’s controls: a pilot sat in a grav-couch situated in the Fire-wyvern’s stub nose; a navigator carefully monitored sensor arrays and complex avionics; a co-pilot and a gunner filled the other two positions. Each wore power armour but with their back-mounted generators removed — all of their suits’ internal systems were maintained by the Thunderhawk’s reactor.

It was a ship, not a small fighter like the Fire-wyvern but a vast cruiser, akin to a floating city of dark metal.

The ship was evidently of Imperial design: long, but bulky like a long-hafted mace and with a slab-ended prow like a clenched fist. There was obvious damage to the hull, charred and laserblackened as it was by munitions fire. Several of its numerous decks were breached. Ragged
wounds in the metal...
...
...vast banks of laser batteries bowed down as if crestfallen along its ruined flanks. Auto-turrets, forward-arc lances and much larger ordnance made up the rest of the ship’s guns.
...
Clusters of factorum and munitoria comprised the vessel’s hard-edged core, and gargantuan foundry-engines filled its belly. Deep crimson and black, and displaying the symbol of the cog, the cruiser had clearly originated on Mars. It was an Ark-class forge-ship, a vessel of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

“No energy signature from the shields or engines. No radiation reading from the reactor.”

“But no enemy in sight, no plasma wake or warp signature. Adrift in
realspace for us to find.”

Most of the damage the Salamanders had seen outside during their approach appeared to have only affected the ship’s ablative armour. Internal puncturing of the hull was restricted to only a few locations, and those areas had been sealed off.

Massive forge-engines loomed in the next chamber, banks and banks of pistons, foundries, kilns and smelting vats filling an expansive machine floor. Conveyors chugged with monotonous motion, steam spat in sporadic intervals from pipes and vents, unseen gears churned noisily.

It was a hive of industry, a slow-beating heart of metal and machines, oil and heat. Yet, for all its labours, the forge-engines had achieved nothing. The vast machineries were merely turning over and over, going through their production cycles bereft of raw materials. Spent bolts piled up on the floor beneath an array of heavy-duty riveting guns, their ammunition long spent; hammers pounded the vulcanised rubber tract of a running belt, their concussive force impotent without plating to beat; oil spilled across the deck and seeped down through cross-hatched grilles, no joints for the empty needle-dispensers to lubricate.

With no independent servitors in sight, no adepts to instruct them, the many and multifarious apparatus continued in their various indoctrinated routines uninterrupted. The only creatures in the forge were those servitors attached physically to the machines, but they too merely worked by rote, implementing their protocols like automatons. There was no evidence of crew or even skitarii armsmen or Martian praetorians,

For a fleeting moment as the radiation of the fusion beam stroked his battle-helm
and power armour,...
...
The end of his multi-melta still exuded vaporous accelerant created during the chemical reaction engaged to fire the heavy weapon.

The Librarian opened his palm. With gauntleted fingers splayed he engulfed the servitor in a blast of psychic fire from his hand, burning out its eyes, rendering its flesh to charred hunks and scorching machinery black.

..the Librarian moved out of formation, a hot core of crackling fire building inside his now clenched fist.
...
..Pyriel went down on one knee, head bowed, focusing his power.
...
They had enough for Pyriel to raise his head, his entire body now swathed in an
aura of conflagration. It sped from his hunkered form in a violently flickering trail, its head that of a snarling firedrake that arced around the Salamanders, encircling them as the elemental swallowed its own fiery tail.
...
..the wall of flame exploded outwards with atomic force, the nuclear fire burning all within its path to ash. The servitors became darkened silhouettes in the haze,
only to disintegrate like shadows before the sun.
...
Pyriel’s unleashed holocaust had drained him..
...
Scorched metal, the forlornly dripping remnants of votive chains and the ashen corpses of servitors littered the ground...
...
The conflagration had been devastating. Hundreds of automatons were dead.

Psychic fire spilled from his eyes like an optical laser, tearing
through a line of servitors and severing their mechanised torsos. A clenched fist, and the summoned firedrake roared into being, the elemental burning down automatons as it swept over them in a fiery wave.

...plus a Techmarine who manned a battle-scarred mobile gun platform. The war machine rumbled on steel-slatted tracks, cushioned on a bed of vulcanised rubber. Its design was narrow, ideally suited to the close confines of the Mechanicus ship that had prevented Brother Argos’ much-needed, as it transpired, inclusion in the mission. The STC used to construct the gun, a pair of twin-linked autocannons with a modified belt-feed, looked post-Heresy but pre-Age of Apostasy. Similar in essence to the Space Marine Thunderfire cannon, the platform also bore the hallmarks of a Tarantula-cum-Rapier-variant mobile weapons system — something the Adeptus Astartes hadn’t used in either form for many millennia. The example before the Salamanders was evidently based on archaic designs.

Bolters were no different. Lengthened stocks with the extended shoulder rest were an antiquated version of the Godwyn pattern Mk VII carried by the Salamanders — albeit with Nocturnean refinements. Drum-fed and carrying sarissas — a saw-toothed bayonet-style blade affixed to the gun’s nose

Despite the Salamanders’ obvious paucity of ammunition, the Marines Malevolent had neglected to supplement them. The fact that their guns were so antiquated that neither the drum-mags nor the individual shells would have been suitable for their bolters made the point moot.
...
“The old drum-feeds are prone to jamming,” Ba’ken continued. “I’m surprised one hasn’t misfired in their faces before now.”

“They are certainly not wasteful,” agreed Dak’ir, “But aren’t all our weapons relics to one degree or another?”
...
“Aye, but there are relics and there are relics,” he said, obliquely. “These guns should have been stripped down for parts and re-appropriated years ago. A warrior is only as good as his weapon, and these dogs with their patchwork armour and archaic ideas are ragged at best.”

flash. Then came pain, so raw and invasive it was as if his organs were twisting inside out, as if the very molecular structure of his being was breaking down in a nanosecond, atom by atom, reforming and disintegrating again a moment later. Sulphur and cordite wreathed his nostrils, so overwhelming he couldn’t breathe. The acrid taste of copper filled his mouth as all notions of time and existence bled away into a soup of primal instinct, like being born. The tangible gave way to the ethereal as all meaning fled from his senses.
...
A sensation of nausea followed, supplemented by a bout of sudden vertigo making Dak’ir stagger as the corporeal world reestablished itself.

Teleportation was a dangerous and inexact science. Even with the
benefit of a homing beacon, the chances of becoming lost in the warp or translating back as a gibbering morass of fleshy blubber as your insides became your outsides were still uncomfortably high. To engage in teleportation when those translating had not been primed or were not wearing Terminator armour to protect them from the physical rigours of the process was even more hazardous.

Not wishing to risk the capriciousness of the Purgatory’s teleportarium or its captain’s spite, Pyriel transported the errant Salamanders back aboard the Archimedes Rex by psychically opening a gate of infinity into the immaterium. Invoking such power was not without risk, but Pyriel as an Epistolary-level Librarian was accomplished in his craft. The three Astartes arrived back in the cryo-vault aboard the forge-ship without mishap.

Teleportation was instantaneous, and the confines of the receiver pad resolved around them. It was one of ten such translation points within the teleportarium in the fortress-monastery on Prometheus.

Ethereal warp vapours rolled off the hexagonal plate, which was large enough to accommodate an entire squad of Terminators, let alone three battle-brothers in power armour.

Crackling energy sparked then dissipated across three conductor prongs that arched over the pad like crooked fingers. Warp dampeners, psychic buffers and other safeguards were in place on the remote chance that anything should go wrong.
...
Dak’ir adjusted to translation quickly this time. Forewarned, he had steeled himself, and with Nocturne’s stable teleporter array the process was smooth. Automated servo-gun systems powered down, having not detected a threat...

“There, at the cusp of the Veiled Region in Segmentum Tempestus, is a system benighted by warp storms.."

"Deep space augurs have revealed the small system it inhabits is a volatile area, wracked by solar storms."

N’keln’s mood was idle and restive as he watched his Brother-Librarian guide them by the Emperor’s Light through the vagaries of the warp. Pyriel was forward of the command throne, on a lower part of the platform. He was encased within a pseudo-pulpit, standing bolt upright. It was not for the purpose of preaching that he was so ensconced, rather his psychic hood was connected integrally to the pulpit’s internal circuitry, augmenting his abilities.

A series of tactical plans and schematics, deep-augur maps, blind-sketched by the ship’s astropaths, were arranged on a strategio-table to N’keln’s right hand.

“Preparations for our landing are already underway?”

“Since before we left Prometheus, brother.” N’keln’s gaze had shifted to the plans that Lok was annotating with arrows and battle-symbols.

A massive shudder wracked the Vulkan’s Wrath, a sudden shock wave ripping down its spine. The bridge shook. Dak’ir and several others lost their footing.
...
Klaxons whined urgently, their warning drowned out by the raging tumult battering the Vulkan’s Wrath from outside.

“Alert status crimson!” N’keln bellowed into the command throne’s vox, gripping the arms tight to stay seated. “All hands to emergency stations.”
...
“We must have translated into a solar storm,” he growled loudly, seizing the ragged edge of the shattered pulpit for balance as the ship was smashed again.

Dak’ir felt the danger before he saw a thin line of ultra-bright light creeping into being at the bottom edge of the shielding.
...
...multiple shafts of super-heated light reached into the bridge. An ensign nearest the viewpoint spontaneously combusted as the deadly solar energy washed over him. Others at the consoles suffered a similar fate. A shipmaster spun, crying for the Emperor’s mercy, the left side of his face a blackened ruin.
...
Dak’ir felt the heat against his armour tangibly.
...
Not wearing his battle-helm, the view for Dak’ir shimmered through a heat haze. His naked skin was untroubled by it, though he saw a blistering servitor less resilient to the solar flare. It ravaged the inner walls, setting cables aflame and burning out circuitry.
...
Pyriel threw up a force dome around the crew, who crawled into it on their hands and knees. The blinded and the burned were dragged, mewling, into the psychic sanctuary whilst the dead were left to crisp and blacken, their bodies becoming human torches in the blaze.

The crack in the shielding was only centimetres thick when Dak’ir reached the override panel and threw back the lever.
...
The smoking ruins of men lay all about the bridge, their charred corpses like dark shadowy husks on the scorched deck.

“Hull engines are non-functional, aft thruster banks three through eighteen are showing sporadic power emissions. Shields are down and decks thirteen through twenty-six are showing critical damage, possibly an integrity breach.”

It was a grim report.

“What hit us?”

“The port-side of the ship was struck by a light beam from the solar storm. It burned through our outer armour, took out our shields and strafed most of the sun-side decks. Entire sections were ripped out. The worst hit areas were totally burned. Everything there is ash. I’ve shut them down already.”

“Imagine a melta gun at point-blank range against a suit of ceramite.”

“We are still aloft.”
...
“How long will that be the case whilst we are breached?”
...
“Not long,”
...
The breached decks would have to be purged and sealed. Hundreds, if not thousands, of human serfs worked in those areas of the ship — N’keln would be condemning them all to death.
...
"..assist in the evacuation. Save as many as you can, brothers. I will order the decks locked down in fifteen minutes.”

Iagon was pitched off his feet as a violent tremor rippled across the solitorium. Zo’kar yelped in pain as he was torn from the Salamander’s grasp. A low rumble echoed through the chamber, followed by the sound of tearing metal and a crash of steel. Something fell from the ceiling...
...
The ceiling of the solitorium had collapsed.
...
Something had struck the ship and continued to assail it, that much Iagon knew as he leapt over the wreckage and fought his way into the outer corridor.

The Vulkan’s Wrath was shuddering badly, jolting with severe force every few seconds or so.

Torn deck plates bled away into the darkness of the lower levels, pitch-black pitfalls that he discerned through his battle-helm’s infrared
spectra.

“We must have entered Scoria’s upper atmosphere by now. The ship will be at terminal velocity. Any escape would be suicide. We get them to the upper deck.”
...
“The chances of these men surviving a crash are slim at best.”
...
“We are going to crash in a vessel that is not meant to land, deliberately or otherwise, on solid ground. We shield them,” he said. Wrenching metal resonated loudly in Tsu’gan’s ears, as forbidding as a death knell. “And hang on to something.”

The Vulkan’s Wrath had struck the surface of Scoria like a meteorite, its hull still burning from its rapid re-entry into the planet’s atmosphere. Impelled by its momentum, the strike cruiser had dug a massive furrow into the earth, hull antennas, towers and engines ripped apart as they met against unyielding bedrock. Hundreds died in the crash, smashed to paste and broken as they were bounced against barrack rooms and hangars in the massive ship. Fires broke out instantly, burning those unlucky enough to be in their path to ash. Some were crushed as the fragile sinews holding up vast sections of damaged upper decks and ceilings capitulated, sending tons of metal debris crashing down onto their heads. Long swathes of armoured shielding had punched inwards, pulping hapless crewmen when the corridor they were clinging to became a single sheet of beaten metal.

Behind him, the crash-landed strike cruiser loomed like a canted cityscape, bizarrely off-kilter. Even partially sunk into the ashen ground as it was, the Vulkan’s Wrath was huge. Its span was the width of several hive blocks and it took several Astartes to guard it at kilometre intervals.

The solar flares had scorched fresh battle-scars down the old strike cruiser’s flanks, and punctured its armoured skin with fire-fringed, meteor-sized apertures. Aboard grav-sleds, the worker crews made detailed reports of structural damage. Sparks cascaded from the ranks of heavyduty welding rigs, fusing plates from ancillary sections of the ship over the most heinous of its wounds. A few areas were so bad that the wreckage had to be sheared away with cutting tools and patched over like an amputated limb.

The command post itself was a prefabricated structure, little more than four walls, a canted roof and a hololith-projector slab displaying in grainy blue resolution what the sensorium and deep-augur probes had ascertained about the lay of the land.

“Can we achieve loft, Master Argos?” asked N’keln, his brow furrowed as the hololith switched to a rolling schematic of the Vulkan’s Wrath. Red areas made up around sixty per cent of the total image and indicated damaged sections.
“To be brief: no,”
...
A side view cutaway showed a large area of the Vulkan’s Wrath below the
earth-line, sunk deep into the planet’s outer crust. “As you can see, the ship is partially submerged within the ash plain. Basic geological analysis reveals that Scoria’s surface is a mixture of ash and sand. The intense heat of our re-entry reacted with it, resulting in an endothermic metamorphosis. Essentially the ash-sand crystallised and hardened,”

“Surely our engines are strong enough to pull us free,”
...
“Ordinarily, yes,”
...
“But we are down to three banks of ventral engines. An operational minimum
of four are needed to achieve loft.”
...
“What of our thrusters? Can we shake ourselves loose?”
...
“Not unless we want to burrow to the planet’s core,”
...
“Our prow
is angled downwards. Any thruster burst will simply push us further in that direction. The Adeptus Mechanicus did not build vessels such as this to take off from a grounded position.”

“I’ll warrant our near-destruction to a solar storm wasn’t part of Vulkan’s vision,”

...a pair of Thunderfire cannons the Techmarine had liberated from the hold of the Vulkan’s Wrath. The tracked war machines, not unlike the mobile weapon platform that the Marines Malevolent had employed on the Archimedes Rex, were ideally suited to dissuading further assaults from the indigenous chitincreatures.

Through the rebreather mounted in his helmet, he detected trace amounts of carbon, hydrogen and the acrid stench of sulphur dioxide dioxide, carried towards them on the breeze — in other words, oil.
...
..the technological ability to both mine and refine oil; not only that, but use it in a manufacturing process.

Chugging thunder erupted from above Tsu’gan as heavy bolter and autocannon emplacements started to eat through
their ammunition belts.
...
Power armour was tough; tough enough to withstand such weapons as these, but the sheer rate of shells increased their potency threefold.[
...
“Use the transports as armoured cover,”

“Vulkan’s fire burns in my breast,” a powerful voice intoned, eclipsing the beat of hammered metal. “With it I shall smite the foes of the Emperor!”

Sensation, vague and indistinct at first, returned to Tsu’gan. He was faintly aware of a reassuring presence nearby, a lodestone to which he could anchor himself.
...
Tsu’gan caught hold of the voice, stentorian and commanding, grasping it like a rope of salvation. A refulgent figure stood beside him, a crackling stave held in his outstretched hand.

“From the fires of battle are we born.”

No, not a stave — the warrior, sable-armoured with a face of death, held a hammer.

“Upon the anvil of war are we tempered.”
A blazing aura roiled from it like a fiery wave, chasing down the darkness and burning back the apparitions that tried to clench to them like parasites.

Swollen with grotesque musculature, the monstrous ghoul-drones were the size of ogryn.
...
Another ghoul-drone was destroyed, engulfed by Honorious’ flamer. Its biologically unstable frame collapsed hideously in the intense heat. It muscles cooked and burst in blood-red torrents.
...
Maintaining momentum, Iagon had punctured the ghoul-drone’s cranium with a bolt round that exploded it from within and obliterated the eight-pointed star branded onto its face.

...Elysius severed the clutch of cables linking the weapon to the Iron Warrior’s fusion generator. Undeterred, the Warsmith spun about, revealing a reaper cannon morphing from the constituent parts of his right arm.
...
Elysius swung again, but the Warsmith swatted the blow away with his left arm, a bionic limb like one of its legs — this thing was more machine than man.

...
All the while, the reaper cannon was slowly resolving. Coagulated flesh and
iron blended into solid, dull metal. Inner mechanisms were forming, the hellish strain of the obliterator virus rapid and pervasive. If fully forged and allowed to fire, that weapon could shred the Salamanders into flesh and chips of battle-plate.

...it was a ship nonetheless.

“One that crashed long ago,” said Illiad. “Its reactor still functions and we use its power to generate heat, purify the air and water. The sodium light rigs are kept burning through the conversion of fusion energy.”

“There are no shells, no ammunition of any kind for this cannon,” he said, almost to himself. “It is powered by a small fusion reactor.”
“Nuclear?” asked Tiberon, who was closest.

Draedius shook his head. “No. More like energy conversion. I’ve found several receptaclescontaining trace elements of a fine powder I have no records of.”

“Scoria has deep veins of ore. Fyron, it is called.” He wiped the sweat of his labours from his brow. “We are miners, generations old. Our ancestors, in their wisdom, realised the ore was combustible. It could be used to keep the reactor running, to charge our weapons and maintain our way of life, such as it is.”

“If his ship is indeed from Isstvan, he must be thousands of
years old.”
...
“Obviously, he has been here for some time. Whether that period extends to millennia we cannot know. The armour is old, but still worn by some in the Chapter today. The ship itself could simply be a reclaimed Expeditionary vessel, re-fitted and re-appropriated by the Adeptus Mechanicus.”
...
“The warp storms could have affected the passage of time. But it’s also entirely possible that this Salamander is simply many years old, longevity being a benefit of our slow metabolic rate. Such a thing has never been tested, given that
most of our number invariably meet their end in war or, if death is not forthcoming and age arrives first, by wandering out into the Scorian Plain or setting sail on the Acerbian Sea to find peace. It is the way of the Promethean Creed.”
...
The light reflected off the warrior’s eyes, turning them a cerulean blue.
The old Salamander blinked.

Dak’ir knew that many ships kept visual logs as the basis for battle simulations or to chart the progress of a campaign for future reference.

“Can you arise, brother? Are you able to walk?” he asked.

“I cannot,” Gravius answered with regret.

Pyriel touched a hand to the venerable brother’s greave and shut his eyes. He opened them a moment later, the cerulean glow still fading.

“His armour is completely seized,” said the Librarian. “Fused to the throne. His muscles have likely atrophied by now, too.”

“Can we move him?”

“Not unless you want his limbs to break off as we attempt it,” Pyriel replied grimly.

“This is my post,” Gravius rasped. His breath reeked of slow decay and stale air. “My duty. I should have died long ago, brothers."

The aliens’ predisposition towards battle was obvious in their musculature and build, however. Trunk-necked, their skin as tough as a flak jacket, they were hard beasts to kill. Broad shouldered with thick bones and still thicker craniums, they stood as tall as an Astartes in power armour and were also his match in strength and raw aggression.

Tsu’gan gunned down a chieftain’s armoured bodyguard, turning its skull into bone fragments and red vapour as the bolter round entered its eye and exploded outwards.

..before jamming his bolt pistol into
the maw of a second and reducing its head to shredded meat.

“A thousand metres,” Apion reported, keeping sentry on the orks’ approach with a pair of magnoculars.

“Weapons ready,” snapped Dak’ir. His tone was clipped and precise as he brought up his bolter.

Each Salamander occupied a section of the outcrop, snug in makeshift firing lips rendered by the natural permutations in the rocks. A staccato of arming sounds disturbed the heavy silence before the air was still again.

“Eight hundred…”

Dak’ir sighted down the bolter’s targeter.

“Seven hundred…”

Dull percussions from the Thunderfire cannon salvo were rippling across the dunes. Clustered explosions plumed in fiery grey, slowly pushing the greenskin vanguard together. “Six hundred…”

“In Vulkan’s name!” Dak’ir roared and the bolters roared with him.

Errant bullets from the greenskins’ chainguns and solid-shot cannons chipped at the rock wall. A shard spanged against Dak’ir’s pauldron but he barely felt it. The spatial display on his right helmet lens told him the orks were just three hundred and sixty-five point three metres away.

In less than a minute they’d be hitting the grenade line. Then there would be two hundred metres between them and the horde.

..expel the partially spent magazine and ram home another one. The process took less than three seconds.

Two hundred metres became a hundred and fifty in Dak’ir’s helmet lens. With so many orks in the vanguard, it was inevitable that some would make it through.
...
Raking a slide of his bolter, he switched the gun to rapid fire. They’d burn through ammunition much faster this way, but the punishing effects of such a salvo would be irresistible.

The orks, more tenacious than a plague, rolled on into the firing line, scarcely fifty left in the vanguard from the five hundred who had broken off from the slower element of the splinter horde.

Solid shot struck his elbow, finding a spot between the plates, and bit. Dak’ir grimaced, another deflecting off his left pauldron as the orks got close enough to be partially accurate with their return fire.

Ignoring the bullets skimming off his power armour, some punching small holes but stopping at the layered ceramite...
...
Caught between the twin storms of bolters and flamers, barely a score of orks remained.

The massive capacitors in the Vulkan’s Wrath’s guns were charging. Huge upper-deck turrets swivelled into position with the churning retort of metal. The air crackled with slow actinic discharge, magnetising the metallic elements in the ash and grit particles, statically adhering them to the Salamanders’ boots and leg greaves. The throb built to a high-pitched whine and Dak’ir saw a nimbus of electrical energy spark and fork around the mouth of the guns.

An instant later and they were unleashed.

A blast wave, so heavy and powerful it put the Salamanders on their knees, rippled across the ash plain. Concave slashes of grey scudded in the wake of the turret guns’ lethal discharge, swirling mini-vortices of displaced ash and dirt.

The barrage lasted a few seconds but the greenskin horde was left devastated by it. Strike cruiser guns were intended to be fired at extreme ranges in the depths of space against massive, heavilyarmoured and void-shielded targets. The firepower they could bring to bear was insanely destructive. Argos, in his genius, had only activated a small portion of the guns. The laser battery was enough to atomise vast chunks of the greenskin army, slaying hundreds in a deadly las-cluster.

Several thousand super-powerful blasts had emitted from the guns, but at such frequency and velocity that they appeared as one continuous beam. Those not caught directly in the beam were burned by it. Several hundred greenskins were already ablaze; some wandered about aimlessly amongst the scorched earth, others were just charred husks. The rest were crippled by shock and disorientation, blinded and deafened by the terrible assault.

“If they return, we’ll have Master Argos engage the Vulkan’s Wrath’s guns again.”

Agatone shook his head.

“No we won’t. Argos has told me he can only fire them once. The recoil might collapse the bedrock holding up the ship and bury it for good. He won’t risk it.”

..allowing M’lek to loose his multi-melta. A brutish greenskin, two heads taller than Tsu’gan, its body an armoured shell of plates and whining servos, had its torso liquidised to visceral slag by the multi-melta’s beam. It fell back into a steaming heap, crushing two of its smaller brethren.

Tsu’gan rammed his bolter’s muzzle into the beast’s mouth and pulled the trigger. Blood and brain matter burst out the back of the ork’s head, mixing with skull fragments.

The Ignean came out fighting, gutting an ork on his chainsword whilst vaporising the snarling head of another with a shot from his plasma pistol.

Sonnar Illiad merely nodded. His rugged face was pale, his muscles bunched tight as he gripped his lasgun harder than he needed to. The other settlers were the same.
...
When a lasgun salvo shredded a mob of onrushing orks, he changed his mind.

Of the fifty that had joined Dak’ir’s squad, only twenty-three remained.

...L’sen fired his bolter one-handed and shot the legs
out from under a charging greenskin, whilst Fugis, bolt pistol bucking violently in his grasp, destroyed the face of another.

..N’keln then reversed the cut and brought it up into the beast’s exposed flank. The mono-molecular edge of the power-charged blades melted metal and overloaded the narrow-field force generator rippling energy across the greenskins armour. It howled as the sword bit into hide then flesh and finally bone.

The stink of cooking meat assailed Tsu’gan’s nostrils...

...Dak’ir had described to N’keln the nature of the black rock as told to him by the human settler, Illiad. It was akin to a planetoid, rotating on a horseshoe orbit around Scoria; a planetoid inhabited solely by orks. Every few years it would come close enough to Scoria for the orks to launch their crude atmospheric craft to make war on those that inhabited the planet...

“Though it offends me to my core to dirty my hands with the weapons of traitors, I see no other choice. We cannot use the Vulkan’s Wrath to destroy the black rock, nor is any weapon we possess here capable of such a feat — the Iron Warriors’ seismic cannon is our choice."

He had felt it most strongly in the ruined bridge of the old Expeditionary
ship, where Gravius had sat like a recumbent corpse. By the laws of nature, the ancient Salamander should not still be alive. As Fugis had approached him, a sense of awe and reverence slowing his steps, Gravius was nearing the end of his endurance. It seemed he had held on for millennia, waiting for the return of his brothers.

A glance back showed him the battle-brother was on the ground a few metres from his previous position, part of his torso melted away.

“Get him out!” Dak’ir cried, recognising the brutal effects of the multi-melta.

In his mind, the Librarian heard the slow pull, the long metal report of the depressed trigger as the traitor unleashed his bolter at him.

A bolter’s velocity is ferociously quick, its rate of fire faster than an eye-blink. Pyriel’s mind was faster.

Bolter shells exploded ineffectually against an invisible shield, dense blooms of light rippling in midair with each percussive impact.

Plates of ceramite parted easily before the force sword, undone by its shimmering power field, before the Librarian lowered the invisible shield and channelled his psychic might through the edge of the weapon.

At once the Iron Warrior sagged as his soul was sundered, cast into the oblivion of the warp to be fed upon by daemons. Smoke exuded from the traitor’s eye-slits and a deep light glowed from within.

Tentatively, he went to touch the fiery barrier but withdrew his hand as the heat sensors in his armour spiked. His gauntlet came back badly scorched and partially melted.

Fyron-fuelled capacitors charged the air, their throb and pulse emitted as a wave of force as the cannon was empowered and a second later, unleashed.

Ghor’gan didn’t see the combat blade in Dak’ir’s hand until it was too late. The blade was only
half a metre long but the Salamander sank it to the hilt in the renegade’s chest.

The black rock exploded with all the finality and grandeur of a shattered star. At once the blood-red sky flooded with brilliance, a pure white flare that bathed all in its eldritch glow. The flare died but the sun returned with it, weak and yellow but brighter than the forbidding gloom of the eclipse.

Abruptly and violently sundered, the black rock was spread across the firmament. The fragments of its passing became new stars burning in the light of day. Drawn by the gravitational pull of the planet, the stars became larger and larger until they resolved into vast meteorites, swathed in fire and billowing smoke.

Tiny meteorites arced past it on fiery contrails as it hovered a thousand metres above the surface. The backwash of massive ventral engines pressed down upon Tsu’gan despite its altitude. It was an Astartes strike cruiser.

Upon N’keln’s reluctant concession, a squadron of Stormbirds had roared from the Purgatory’s fighter bays headed straight for the crash site and the Vulkan’s Wrath.

Salamanders is an.. interesting series. Interesting because its a Space MArine novel about the most... humane and generally heroic Space Marines. So you think it should be good right? Well.. I dunno. I can't really make up my mind about it. I actually like Nick Kyme's depictions of Space Marines - Assault on Black Reach and Fall of Damnos made me like the Smurfs (as has Nightbringer, but that's another thread.) but there is just something.. odd about him. Maybe its because he doesn't write Space Marines the way I've come to expect Space Marines to be written, which is alot like Abnett (and I have a mixed view in that regard.) It's really hard for me to pin down.

So its really hard for me to say whether this is a good or bad series. As a whole I liked the books individually, but I feel the arc as a whole fell flat with Nocturne. Flat in that 'Storm of Iron/Chapter's Due' buildup we saw with Honsou (as opposed to Marduk in the Word Bearers, which is another update..) So I live it up to individual readers to decide. Certainly the idea was interesting, if nothing else.

Internal teleportation facilities inside the Salamanders fortress monastary. A rather rare (and limited) but interesting way of getting about. Also, it seems to be considreed more stable than the ship based teleportation of the Marines Malevolant. Whether this is because of superior technology, because they are a first founding chapter (better gear in general), because it is on a (relatively) stable planet rather than a mobile starship, or some combination of that we don't know.

Even so they rely on alot of security meausres to protect against warp dangers.

Another case of a non-navigator being used to guide a craft through the warp (alognside such examples as a Farseer in Dawn of War Tempest, a Librarian in the Gav Thorpe Avenging Sons short stories, although daemon assisted later, the Thousand Sons using sorcery, or sorcerers in ADB's Night Lords novels.. or the Orks inconsistently using weirdboyz to do it.) This probably stands out as one of the more reliable and probably long-range examples, however. It could be because of custom-designed gear and psychic augmentation, or it could be because they have such reliable intel (galactic coordinates, the deep space augur stuff) on the locale. One has to wonder why they aren't using a navigator however - do they not have any? Are they currently re-negotiating contracts? Is there some reason they wanted to keep outsiders free of involvement? Or did they have no Navigators to spare for this? Hard to say.

Page 109-110Dangers of teleportation. To be honest I'm not sure how Terminator armor is supposed to protect against this - insulation against the mutational powers of the warp? Or is this just a human version of "Red ones go faster?"

Page 117
A rather interesting, if short-ranged (eg in system, and within range of a starship) alternative to teleporters, some sort of pseudo-warp gate thingy. It's not the first time Librarians or similar high powered psykers have done such a feat, either. Either wya it seems more reliable than teleporters despite performing a similar function.

Page 158
Internal teleportation facilities inside the Salamanders fortress monastary. A rather rare (and limited) but interesting way of getting about. Also, it seems to be considreed more stable than the ship based teleportation of the Marines Malevolant. Whether this is because of superior technology, because they are a first founding chapter (better gear in general), because it is on a (relatively) stable planet rather than a mobile starship, or some combination of that we don't know.

Even so they rely on alot of security meausres to protect against warp dangers.

Page 13


Lava-resistant ceramite.

Page 14


Yet more heat-resistant ceramite.

Page 20


An indicator of the conditions of the lava, as well as the fact the chain links, like the slab, are also pretty durable. Whether RL material could do this or not, I dont know.

The anti-oxidation is better than 0Cr23Nil3 and it can be heated to 1235℃.Used for furnace material, automobile purification devices material.

And of course, the Marines Malevolent seem to have an idea of maintenance that boils down to chewing gum and bailing wire, so their teleporter may be in bad shape because they kept trying to jury-rig it along rather than admit to the Adeptus Mechanicus that they needed a new one.

Or, more likely, they demanded the Ad Mech fix/replace it gratis and stomped off in a huff when they got told "no". The Marines Malevolent are relentless arseholes who seem to enjoy pissing off everybody they meet; it wouldn't surprise me, considering the grave-robbing (that's why the Malevolent were on the forge-ship for the Salamanders to meet them - steal Astartes arms and armour from it), to learn they've pissed off the Ad Mech enough that they actually can't get resupplied from most forge worlds.

It suprised in the book that the Salamanders did not immediatly recognize the Malevolents, ssince I had believed their respective chapters enmity well established in the fluff. Didn't their chapter masters exchange harsh words on Armageddon after the Malevolents ended a hostage situation with a massive artillery strike?

Tu'Shan's reaction was a bit more severe than mere harsh words; the short story Emperor's Deliverance expands on just what his little "dispute" with Captain Vinyar of the Marines Malevolent over that incident was.

Basically, Captain Vinyar's chilling in his barracks/command room when Tu'Shan kicks the door open and tells him he's spoken to the Guard commander, witnessed the brutality, and been told of the civilian casualties. While Vinyar's responding with (essentially) "lols collateral damage dude", Tu'Shan's dropping his weapons, and tells Vinyar this isn't a discussion - oh, and to put his gauntlets back on, because Tu'Shan wants this to be even (while limbering up). This finishes with;
"What are you talking about, Tu'Shan?"
"Penance and retribution. cracks knuckles I'll give you one piece of advice - don't go for a weapon. shuts the door"

I'm thinking that Vinyar needed to see an Apothecary after that little "command consultation".

Emperor's Deliverance, by Nick Kyme
Vinyar was poring over the maps on his strategium table, planning the next assault, when he heard the barrack house door opening again.
'Changed your mind, Nemiok?' he asked, looking up but finding someone else in his chambers. Vinyar sneered. 'You.'
An onyx-skinned warrior was standing before him, armoured in forest green. A scaled cloak hung from his broad shoulders, attached beneath gilded pauldrons. Iconography of drakes and fire, hammers and anvils emblazoned his battle-plate. His voice was abyssal deep.
'I have spoken with Colonel Destrier,' he said. 'I have also witnessed the excessive force used at Emperor's Deliverance and been told of the civilian casualties.'
'There is collateral damage in any war,' protested Vinyar. 'If I had not acted as punitively as I did, there would still be orks roaming that camp. Besides, cowards are unworthy of being spared.'
The green-armoured warrior had unhitched a thunder hammer from his back and slammed it on the strategium table, cracking data-slates and tearing maps. He was unbuckling a holstered pistol when he said, 'You misunderstand the purpose of my visit, Vinyar.' He looked up and his eyes flashed fire-red. 'This isn't a discussion.' He glanced at the gauntlets the Marines Malevolent captain had discarded. 'Put those back on. I want this to be even.'
Vinyar was belligerent, but reached for his gauntlets anyway. 'What are you talking about, Tu'Shan?'
'Penance and restitution,' said the Chapter Master of the Salamanders. Bones cracked in his neck as he loosened them.
'I'll give you one piece of advice,' he added, clenching and unclenching his fists to work the knuckles. 'Don't go for a weapon.'
Then he closed the barrack room door.

I've had much the same issues with the Salamanders series myself; personally, I like Kyme's characterization of Space Marines. For me, he's one the few authors that I think does well with them. Abnett and AD-B being the others. I just wish he would end his love affair with the phrase pragmatic/pragmatism". He uses it a a lot, especially in the Salamanders books and not always in ways that it should be used.

Another issue I had was that things happen between books - before Salamander, there was his short story Fires of War in Heroes of the Space Marines and between Salamander and Firedrake, there was Prometheus Requiem in Fear the Alien and while he touches on the events these stories, unless you've read them, you have no real idea what happened. You know for example, that Kadai died (Fires of War) and Emek was mutilated (Prometheus Requiem) but he refers to these events so often that it really does feel like part of the story is missing without having read them.

There was the same issue between Firedrake and Nocturne. The problems with the renegade Marines Malevolent and the Voices, the internecine bickering and power-brokering of the Dark Eldar. It really feels like there was supposed to be something else in there, but we only get brief allusions to it and I think it hurts the story, because Kyme drops these characters and situations in there and you only have the barest inkling of their motivations or histories. It's all the more glaring because of the role the raiders and renegades have in the story.

I do agree with you on the arc falling flat; in Firedrake, we learn that Nihilan has this terrible, planet-cracking weapon that he plans to use to destroy Prometheus... only he fires it once, just using to breach an ancient vault. There's never any indication that he was planning to follow up by using the seismic cannon again, and it kinds of robs the climax of any impetus. Like in Goldeneye where Sean Bean has a super-duper-kill-all-technology EMP satellite... and he's going to rob a bank with it. It kind of stole the tension from the Firedrakes' and Dak'ir's assault on Nihilan's... strike cruiser? battle barge? (Kyme uses both terms); the Salamanders don't know that Nihilan won't use it again, but we do.

All that said, each book itself is a good read, especially if you like non-asshole Space Marines - if you can get past all the fire metaphors and over-use of "pragmatism". Heh.

...the rest of the war council could make out a star map of the subsector in the gloom: Gevion Cluster Worlds, Uhulis Sector, Segmentum Solar.

“Your men have fought bravely during the campaign, general, but are spread thin. The bulk of your regiments are occupying and stabilising the lesser Gevion worlds. Your strength is depleted here.”

“So you consign us to corralling citizens and protecting aid stations?”
...
Since the dark eldar had appeared on Geviox, a steady stream of refugees, those who had managed to escape the slavers’ nets, had made for the outlands and the temporary Imperial aid stations there.

...Elysius drew forth the Sigil of Vulkan from his belt. It was a holy artefact, once a piece of their primarch’s armour and thus named for
him. It resembled a hammer, an icon of the Chapter and symbolic echo of Nocturne’s atavistic heritage. Its purpose, besides being a venerated Chapter relic, was unknown. In solitude, Elysius had studied it often but despite many years of examination, even after consulting the Tome of Fire which contained all of their primarch’s wisdom and prophecy, was no closer to unlocking its secrets.

It was a small world, barely five million souls, but rich in ferrous ore.
...
Cities were two-thirds factorums, inhabited by a predominant labour force population. But Geviox was no forge world; it had no allegiance to the Adeptus Mechanicus. It was a processor-planet, where raw materials would be ground from its earth, its very lifeblood yoked until it was dry. Then the populace would move on, little more than labouring transients, to the next world in need of harvest.

He too noticed the landing field, where the Night Devils Valkyries and Chimera tanks had once idled...

He stowed the magnoculars so he could replace his battle-helm. At once, the battlefield was drenched in a tactical-yellow film. Distances, dispositions, formations and geographical data swarmed across his retinal display, swallowed up by Ba’ken’s eidetic memory.

vTwo squads including Ba’ken’s were poised to advance down the centre but not before the heavy cannon were neutralised

The Space Marines ate up the metres between them and their enemy in a few short minutes. It was a brutal sight. The earth shook as several thousand kilograms of ceramite pounded over it.

On this day, with the inhabitants of the city either dead or incarcerated, the yield was low. Still, the industrial complexes ground
on, obeying automated doctrina protocols that kept the great machine going.

Time slowed, and the battle din became a dull, half-heard clamouring at the base of his skull. Around him, he knew his brothers had slipped into a similar state. Ba’ken’s secondary heart surged into life, filling him with vigour, providing his limbs and organs with the relentless energy they needed.

Turn thirty degrees—kill stroke to jugular administered by piston-hammer.

Eliminated.

A split-second later, another lashed out from the opposite side…

Back a half-step, two shots point-blank into midriff. Torso destroyed. Eliminated.

A third, then fourth charged him from the front…

Lead with right shoulder. Disable foremost threat by shattering ribs and collarbone. Headshot with bolt pistol to second target. Cranium destroyed.
Eliminated. Return to disabled primary threat. Downward hammer strike to shatter spine. Fully incapacitated.

Through his retinal display, Ba’ken judged the Capitol gate to be under a hundred metres away. A rapid structural analysis suggested they’d need breaching charges or a multi-melta to penetrate it

A dark beam struck Ek’bar and put him on one knee. The brother-sergeant grunted but got to his feet again immediately, roaring at his warriors to advance with Elysius. Rippling shield returns blossomed around the Chaplain as his rosarius field protected him from the heavy weapons.

Something fast swept in low and without warning. Too fast for his retinal display to track, especially with the energy interference from the heavy guns ahead, Ba’ken could only watch as Brother L’sen gurgled and was lifted off his feet.

Fifteen separate assassination attempts had been made against Archon An’scur. All barring three had been thwarted and yet here he was, alive and imperious, if a little gaunter than before.
...
Some within the cabal said his soul was promised to Kravex—that the haemonculus kept An’scur’s missing digit under lock and key, and through the application of his torturer’s science had resurrected the archon each time he was killed. Only a sample of biological matter was needed.

Gaining a haemonculus’ favour was the difficult part.

That had been three years ago, ever since the 3rd had returned from Scoria.

In the crackling field there was a progenoid gland, held within an armourcrys vial and suspended in some kind of amniotic solution.
“The fluid within the vial keeps it from necrotising?”
...
Tu’Shan stepped closer to regard it, as if drawing his answer from proximity to the vial. “An ancient warrior of the Legio—Gravius was his name.”
He’stan turned sharply to regard his Chapter Master.
“He lived? After ten thousand years?”
“It would seem so, but his mind was shattered, crammed with the thoughts and memories of all of his brothers.”

Even through the retinal display of his battle-helm an impenetrable fog of smoke and drifting ash smothered the view. Flashes of fire tinged the grey pall a deep orange, and temperature spikes on the systems of his power armour that were still functioning relayed intolerable levels of heat and radiation

Pain-killing drugs flooded his body, damping the agony down his left side into a dull ache that only debilitated and no longer incapacitated.

It was over twice the Salamander’s height and half again as broad. It was a man, or at least a simulacrum of one. Its skin was onyx-black from the volcanic
basalt used like clay to fashion it. Carved psychically by Pyriel’s mind, it was a creation of utter perfection and terrifying beauty. The enhanced musculature was exhaustingly defined. Its noble countenance was hard but eerily humanoid. Its bald pate shone like jet, the reflected fire light swathing it in an orange sheen. And the eyes… they burned like captured pools of flame.

Except the monster was not divine, it was a construct forged psychically from volcanic clay and fortified by Pyriel’s warpcraft.

A tiny drygnirr regarded him from atop a small rock. It had coal-black scales with a blue streak down its back and spines. The lizard’s eyes flashed blood red as it took in the hulking nomad in its midst. He had seen the totem-creature before. Pyriel used it, his familiar and psychic embodiment in saurian form so he could observe all that Dak’ir did.

I will turn you into ash…

Dak’ir would immolate his would-be murderer. There would be nothing left but a charred mark on the plain.

“Stormbird…” he murmured, knowing the inside of the Astartes assault craft from the old versions he’d seen in the Promethean Hall of Remembrance. Few Chapters used them anymore, preferring the faster and more manoeuvrable Thunderhawks to act as their gunships.

Between them they carried Tsu’gan’s power armour. It was his old suit, the one he had worn whilst part of the 3rd. Now its surface was rendered with the swirling iconography of drakes, serpents and flames. It had been meticulously artificed, re-forged and remade into a thing of pure beauty. Far superior to its former incarnation, it was armour worthy of 1st Company, of a Firedrake of Vulkan.

First came the black bodyglove, almost invisible against Tsu’gan’s onyx skin. It was overlaid with an exoskeleton that interfaced with the systems of his power amour. Festooned with linking ports and conduit points, it would join him to his suit, enhancing his strength, speed and combat abilities exponentially.

Imaan’s power armour had been smelted down but he had bequeathed his Terminator armour to Tsu’gan after death. The marks upon the
Firedrake’s wrists were a reminder of that bond, and that when he wore the suit Imaan’s spirit warred with him.

The Master of the Fleet had generously provided a frigate, Firelord, to ferry the 1st Company warriors to their theatre of war.

“On Gevion, a cluster of worlds in the Uhulis Sector, Segmentum Solar, contact has been lost with elements of 3rd Company,”

There was, inevitably, a divide between brothers of the Technicarium and the Librarius. One dealt with the tangible, the tactile, what could be grasped and seized with one’s own hands; the other dealt with the ethereal, the abstract and the amorphous. It was science versus superstition and the two did not always make easy bedfellows.

The Chief of Librarians was often famously quoted regarding his thoughts on the limitations of science.
I can pulp your flesh and snap your bones in less than a second, and without so much as lifting a finger. What is the power of technology compared to that?

“We follow the portents and tread the lines of fate where we can, brother. It is a journey that will take us off-world. Warpcraft is unpredictable, though,”
..
“To call it craft is a misnomer, brother. To call it craft suggests creation, permanence. Whereas, anything arising from your art is ephemeral at best.”
Pyriel turned to object but the flare in the Forgemaster’s human eye warned him against it. “I have performed the machine rites on your gunship myself,” said Argos.

“The Caldera will get you to your destination, tempest or no.”
...
The Chamber Sanctuarine of the Caldera had room enough for thirty warriors so armed—with just two it felt positively desolate

“Tell him he has field command. Colonel Hadrian is dead.”

“And with him, the bulk of the 83rd battalion,”

General Slayte scowled, showing his teeth before turning to his command staff. A clutch of aides, officers and tactical savants were huddled over a hololithic display plotting the movements of the Night Devils regiment and those of reported enemy sightings in relation to them.

The scene rendered in grainy amber, flickering with every percussive shell detonation felt through the bunker’s ferrocrete walls, was an erratic mess. The xenos had pushed and pulled their forces in myriad directions, first dividing and then massacring. Small groups, isolated platoons or straggling squads, were despatched first. Weak before the strong, that was the way of it. Then the larger battle groups were hit with ambuscade or slowly withered away by lightning attacks when at camp or after dark. Fear like a contagion was running through the regiment with virulence and every man, even Krakvarr, bore symptoms.

A slow but determined march to the edge of Ironlandings followed a rapid muster, the men eager to fight and die for the Emperor.
And die they did, all too readily.
Slayte believed that with the troops and armour at his disposal, making inroads to the Capitol would have been relatively straightforward.

...Slayte was secretly overjoyed at Commander Agatone’s order for him to return to the front. Joy turned to dismay when he learned
of Chaplain Elysius’ disappearance.
...
He remembered the quiet before the screaming. It was a dark lullaby that sent him to nightmarish places when he’d managed snatches of sleep in the intervening weeks.

What passed for troops of the line, their segmented armour edged and bloody, shot whickering bursts of flechette fire into the Imperial ranks. A side glance at his carapace armour, and Slayte saw the remnants of splinter fire still embedded in the torso section and shoulder guard. His first adjutant, Nokk, had been shredded in the general’s place.

...picking up his battered armour. He thought again about trying to remove the splinters but they were hideously sharp. Colmm had tried with a pair of
pliers but ended up just wrecking his tools.
...
Slayte shrugged on the carapace body armour, fastening the straps while Colmm fixed the shoulder guards.

In the assembly yard beyond, Slayte’s storm-trooper platoon awaited him. Three armoured Chimera tanks, pintle gunners sat idly at their posts, would convey the general and his staff.
...
“Contact the other commanders. Converge on our position, full assault.”
..
The ramp slammed shut and the last of the Night Devils platoons headed towards certain death.

He seized the heavy stubber, ripping it from its pintle mount as a cadre of jetbikers hove into view...
...
The recoil was so fierce it reminded him of his first Valkyrie air-drop. He’d been a member of the elite storm-troopers back then.

A burst of splinter fire from the biker’s front-mounted cannons ripped up half of his face and tore his shoulder to hot, red ribbons of meat.
Donnsk dropped without a whimper.

Seventeen metres from the ground, he turned to the others.

“In Vulkan’s name,” he roared.

Beside him, He’stan leapt from the hold and into the blood-red light.
A few seconds later, Praetor followed.
...
The air thundered past him in a blur, collision warnings flashing amber across Praetor’s tactical display. A few metres below, He’stan had angled his body like an arrow.
..
He hit the ground less than five seconds before Praetor but the veteran sergeant marvelled at the carnage he wrought in that short space of time. A blow from the Spear of Vulkan severed a skiff in half, its bifurcated ends pulling away from each other like a sinking ship with its back broken. Fire and shrapnel from the engine explosion tossed ragged eldar corpses into the air. He’stan was engulfed but merely moved through the storm, plumes of fire rolling off his armour in waves.

Isolated pockets of Guardsmen still held out, retreating into circle formations, hellguns held out and spitting las.

“It was a webway mirror the fiend used against us, ancient science, not sorcery of any kind. It was your soul it was draining, Tsu’gan.”

Tsu’gan knew the dark eldar, like all of the xenos races, had infernal technologies they used to prosecute their wars and bring man beneath their yoke, but this? To strip another’s soul?

“My commissar is dead. I have lost a major and two corporals. I survive by dint of the Emperor’s intervention and I’d posit just over two hundred and fifty of my five-hundred-strong battle group still live. And of those, close to another hundred are wounded. In short, my lord, we are in ragged shape.”

He braced his hand against the hard metal of the deck where he kneeled.
The other one, his power fist, had been removed and a tangle of ragged wires sagged from the socket like intestines. There were furrows in his battle-plate where the barbs and lashes had stung him.

He’d snapped on a luminator attached to his bolter and used an ultraviolet spectrum to illuminate a ragged line on the sewer floor.

..slipping the tracker bolt into his weapon’s breech. The explosive tip had been removed by the Chapter’s Techmarines and replaced with a tiny beacon that would transmit to the rest of the Salamander battle group. It would hurt, but it wouldn’t kill.

A thunderous report echoed around the warehouse as the bolt shell destroyed the creature’s skull. Congealed blood splattered the Salamanders around him, before the body crumpled and dried away to ash in moments.

“The finger,” Tsu’gan realised, “and the box it was put in, they were not with the body.”

“Science is merely sorcery to those without the wit or knowledge to see it. What we don’t understand we regard as mythical, impossible. The box was a portal. The finger resides in some gene-lab now, awaiting the resurrection of its owner.”

Dak’ir opened his eyes. As he unleashed the flame, he viewed the world through a fiery veil. It was a roiling wave, snapping serpents at its crest, and it rolled over the walking corpses with such intensity that skin and flesh flaked to ash in seconds.

Echoes, soot-silhouettes, were all that remained of the foremost undead. The ones that followed crumpled against the heat, their desiccated bodies quickly collapsing.
Others, those who had only just surfaced, carried on, their bodies ablaze.

He thrust his sword into the chest of one creature and ignited its entire body with psychic fire. The ashen remains were still flaking off the blade when Dak’ir took the head from another.

The Librarian drew his plasma pistol and put a bolt through its torso, ending it. The next shot vaporised the skull of a second.

“Burn them, Dak’ir,” said Pyriel, a surge of fire channelled through his force staff interrupting him. “Unleash the deathfire.”
..
The undead were kept at bay whilst Dak’ir’s focus travelled inwards, seeking the fiery core within and the catalyst with which he could release it. The name passed his lips without him realising it had been spoken.
“Kessarghoth…”
Dak’ir’s eyes went from cold, cerulean blue to ardent flame red. He roared with the ancient voice of a long-dead drake, and the terrifying din drowned out all others in the chamber. Molten death spewed from his mouth, through the grille in his battlehelm, and bathed the deathless horde.

“Pyriel, down!” The voice did not sound like Dak’ir’s, but the other Librarian crouched as the lava flow scorched overhead, engulfing the other side of the
chamber. The walking corpses, hundreds strong, were swept up in a terrible maelstrom and melted away in moments. The coffins and sarcophagi proved more resilient but lasted only seconds more before they too had sloughed to insignificant wisps of smoke on a hot and undulating magma sea.

It was over in moments. The lava cooled rapidly into rock, the two Librarians standing on a circular plateau surrounded by a ringed crater. Of the dead, of their vessels, there was no sign. Dak’ir had obliterated them utterly. Hundreds of them.

The psychic hood was, in part, a nullifying device. It aided with the concentration of psychic force, whilst at the same time reducing the risk of its
wielder succumbing to the predations of the warp. Here, Pyriel intended for it to staunch the roiling fire within his apprentice from a roar to a whisper. Gauged to maximum, the hood would prevent almost all psychic conductivity and leave Dak’ir effectively nulled.

...Tonnhauser thought of his father. He was back on Stratos and fought as part of the Air Corps. He’d wanted the same for his son, but Varhane had left as part of a planetary tithe of men and materiel to the Imperial Guard. He’d wanted to see the galaxy. If he was to die then he’d do it under a foreign sky and in the Emperor’s name.

Argos racked the slide of his bolt pistol. The auto-readout snapped to “MAX”.

A wall of fire, so high it reached the heavens, surged from the earth. Nocturne’s surface had become a web of fissures, the planet’s lifeblood seeping out of them in rivulets of lava. The sky was ablaze. In the blood red firmament a star was falling. Prometheus burned, the metallic orb wreathed in reentry flare as it cascaded like a doomed comet towards the planet below. Its gravity had failed. Death was certain.

From the hellish night above an incandescent beam speared down to strike Nocturne’s heart, impaling it. From the lowest depths of the world, a death cry
sounded. It came from the ancient drakes who had lived in the bowels of the earth for millennia. Their spirits were dying. Nocturne was dying. Their mournful sound was a lamentation for a doomed world.
...
The Acerbian Sea boiled into a great pall of steam, burning away the skiffs, eradicating the gnorl-whales and scalding Epimethus from existence.

On the Arridian Plain, Themis—City of Warrior-Kings—was dragged under the sands, lost to the wailing dunes.

Mount Deathfire belched fire and fury, the haemorrhaging of a vital artery bared open by a mortal wound. She spluttered, like a body with its lungs ruptured, her breaths the last from a life almost ended. The Dragonspire ridge collapsed, the craggy rises falling one by one into smoke and ruin. It was followed by the chain of the Serpent’s Fang. Forests of granite shattered, broken by the atomic blast wave coursing through them. Then came the Cindara Plateau, that most holy of monuments, swallowed beneath the fracturing earth.

Chapter Bastions, tribal settlements that had stood upon inviolable bedrock since the dawn of ages cracked and crumbled against the cataclysmic forces unleashed in the planet’s death throes.
...
Ignea, an entire region of subterranean caves, was sundered in a single, devastating instant. The only legacy of its existence, a deathly cloud of displaced ash. Hot winds came from the east, transforming the Gey’sarr Ocean into a blanket of fire and scorching the white walls of Heliosa, the Beacon City, black.
Aethonian, the Fire Spike, ruptured and split, lava oozing down its once proud flanks like blood.

Hesiod, Clymene, as far as the Themian Ash Ridges, as deep as the T’harken Delta where the leo’nid preyed and the sauroch herds gathered—all of Nocturne
became as dust. Its cities were shadows; its peoples not even a memory. Burned from the galactic sky, it was a warning, a cautionary tale. An entire civilisation was gone, rendered into atmospheric dust.

“It’s called dysjunction,” said He’stan, who’d halted the Firedrakes at the threshold to the temple, where the bridge began. There they waited together, in two lines of five. They’d heard and felt the capricious motions of the twisting city as they closed in their borrowed raider.
...
“It is the dusk-wraiths’ way,” counselled He’stan. “Their borders are ephemeral, their pacts and allegiances likewise. It bodes well.”

“How so, my lord?” Halknarr asked. “Bad enough we must navigate this labyrinth without it changing on us constantly.”
“The city’s denizens will require time to adjust, redraw their tiny empires and claw fresh lines of dominion in the sand. We can exploit this distraction, use it to get closer to the Sigil undetected.”

“The seismic cannon,” he breathed.
...
“A relic of the Dark Age of Technology,” said Dak’ir. “Kelock discovered its existence, found a way to construct it.”
“A weapon capable of annihilating a small moon…” The implication in Pyriel’s words trailed off.

“The one on Scoria was just a test. They wanted to see if it would work.”
...
...The beam I saw in the vision was much greater, mounted on a starship. Nihilan means to destroy us, master.”

“I know little of your biology, my lord,” ventured Tonnhauser, “but I understand it is capable of regeneration. Why isn’t he… healing?”

“The trauma is too great.” He looked at Ionnes. “Even we have our limits.”

Elysius was not just talking about the physical as he regarded Ba’ken. The sergeant’s jaw was clenched. “In fact, his sus-an membrane should’ve activated by now and put him into a regenerative coma. The stubborn sauroch is blocking it.”

How Elysius had known to thumb the activation rune then, he would never learn.

How it had burned into life at all when it was supposed to be broken and spent was another mystery. Did a lingering kernel of energy in the weapon’s power cell impel it to life at the crucial moment? Or was another power at work, one governed by faith? The Chaplain was wise enough to know that some miracles should simply be, and not be subject to questioning.

Praetor’s strident tones followed. ++Engage homing beacons++

A series of dull icons from the small wrist-mounted devices locked to each and every Firedrake lit up the gloom in pearlescent white.

++Even through the veil…++ Praetor’s voice was already fading as transition took hold, ++…they will find us…++

From the rearline, Techmarines manning a battery of Thunderfire cannons ordered cluster fire into the panicked dark eldar ranks. They were little more than
chaff now—most of the alien elite was either dead or had already fled into the webway. In the distance, hugging the horizon line, portals of dark liquid shimmered. One by one they vaporised out of existence, leaving a grimy fog that lingered on the breeze for a time like smoke before disappearing completely.

The vanguard of the Salamanders brought more battle tanks. The armoured spear was to be led by Agatone in his Land Raider, Fire Anvil.
...

On the left flank, their vantage point a set of iron hills, Lok commanded the Devastators. Their salvos of missiles and plasma bursts took apart a rearguard of grotesques ferried out of the webway to stymie the Salamanders assault. Lascannons lanced the air, scything down raiders and other, more heavily armoured skimmermachines, before their cult troops could ascend and flee.
...
Rhino transports followed in the wake of Fire Anvil. They carried what remained of the 3rd’s Tactical squads, armed and armoured for close engagement.
..
Predators rolled between the armoured transports, the battle tanks sending punishing salvos from their autocannon and lascannon turret mounts.
Overhead, Assault squads burned the air with contrails of fire from their jump packs. They kept pace with the tanks, protecting their flanks and seeking out isolated enemy targets.
...
Supporting the Astartes were the Night Devils. General Slayte had survived the war and meant to end his part in it on the frontline with the rest of his men.
...
A final few raiders surged through the inky darkness of the portals, the last to be conveyed to Volgorrah before the sons of Vulkan brought the fire and the horizon burned.

Teleportation was a highly dangerous mode of travel. It meant slipping into the empyrean and riding the tides of warp space. Fell creatures lurked in those depths, attracted by the tiny soul fires of the living. Their hunger was insatiable. Even with a homing beacon slaved to the Firelord’s teleportarium, despite the prayers and acts of supplication made to the machine-spirits by the Techmarines, it was not an exact science.

“The sus-an membrane has put him in a regenerative coma,” he muttered, interpreting the data relayed on the scanner screen.
...
“Fortunate given the condition of his body. It will take months to repair this damage. I cannot vouch for the psychological injury, of course.”

“I am sorry we lost Tsu’gan,” Emek said, bowing slightly before his Chaplain. In the intervening months since the Protean incident the two had discussed much.

They waited in silence for the arrival of the Caldera. The Thunderhawk gunship had docked at Prometheus less than an hour ago.
...
They’d made their return from Moribar with all speed, and though the planet was not far from Nocturne, a twist of warp fate had ensured they’d arrived after He’stan and the Firedrakes.

Upon inspection later, the Tech-marines had told him it should not have worked. The Master of the Forge had confirmed it.

The crozius’ power cell had been breached. It was beyond function.

It was no mere thing, Elysius had decided. To ignite when he had needed it the most, it spoke of something deeper than faith.

Elysius was glad Tsu’gan hadn’t seen it and feared it would now hit Ba’ken hardest of all when he was revived from his sus-an membrane coma.

Dark Eldar "immortality" - easy if you can make the right friends anyhow. The interesting thing about all this is how

Haemonculus resurrection. Also a bit of that oddity in this book they sound far more... 'Imperial Truthy' than 'Imperial culty' Its another one of those disjointed aspects of the book, but one I actually like.

Assault marines seem to be keeping up with the Astartes and Guard force. Depending on whose speed they are limited to this may suggest anywhere from 20 kph (guard) to 50 kph or so (Land Raider) If it's limited by the LAnd Raider this might suggest the IG forces are pretty fast (of course since we know they have chimeeras, this isn't really a shock. We've never seen them with Leman Russes. Either way its fairly impressive movement speed for Assault Marines.

How what?

Centuries earlier, the Black Rock’s erratic course had been set. The Architect’s own clawed hand had put
it into motion. Those with the sight, who could perceive the grand conjurations of the galaxy, would behold
the strands of fate pulling it towards the red world, presaging apocalypse. They had but to look upon it.

His burns hadn’t healed well. Some supposed it was on account of them being caused by psychic lightning. Overlapping scar tissues knotted and scalloped in places,...

"Greetings from Mars, Adept Argos."

"That I also know. I saw to its return to the Martian priesthood, not so long ago in fact."
..
"It was one year and three point six months according to standard Imperial units of
time, to be precise. I was the one responsible for its restoration."

Hard bands enclosed his wrists. The metal from which they were forged was black and dense. It was a ‘null’ collar, the bracelets a part of the ward, an unassuming but arcane device that inhibited the use of psychics. The one fastened tightly around Dak’ir’s neck and wrists was dialled up to its most potent setting.

As revealed in the armour of his ancient forebears, the survivors of Isstvan, these fated words had haunted him for the last four years.
...
...he was briefly transported back to the Aura Hieron temple on Stratos where Ko’tan Kadai had lost his life and he himself had been grievously injured.

It all began with Kadai.

Though old, even for a Space Marine,
he needed no magnoculars to find what he sought in the haze.
...
For over four centuries, Prebian had served the Chapter as Master of Arms. As de facto captain of the Seventh Company, a rank he had held for just over four decades, he had a small but august legacy.

By the time they had descended the rock and met with their masters on the desolate plain, there were
nine left from the original twenty-three that had been chosen. The rate of attrition was not unusual.

Having undergone several stages of biological implantation associated with ascending to the lowly rank of Scout...
...
A mutation in the Salamanders genome meant their pigmentation reacted more aggressively and irreversibly to the implantation of the melanochromic organ than other Space Marines. Meant as a safeguard against ultraviolet and radioactive exposure, it actually reacted with the unique radiation of Nocturne’s atmosphere to create onyx-skinned warriors. It also affected retinal cells, and the glow about Val’in’s eyes was almost fire-red. His bulked-out musculature showed a strong response to the introduction
of the ossmodula that enhanced bone mass and durability, as well as ossifying an aspirant’s ribcage into a solid plate.

"Geviox… Scoria and Stratos." he said, naming the worlds where
N’keln and Kadai had met their respective ends, "have been hard on all of you. To lose two captains in just a few years is tough on any battle company."

"Even Horus Lupercal could not resist the lure of Chaos. Is Zek Tsu’gan mightier than the
primarch of the Luna Wolves, the Warmaster of the Great Crusade."

Tsu’gan responded with flippancy. "Just like a servant of Ruin to refer to ten thousand year-old myth. Get over it, the Long War is done."

Seen through the lattice floor was a pair of immense capacitors.
Menials, servitors and other debased creatures busied themselves in the darkness far below with the radiation and the heat. A low hum was coming off a bank of power coils that bled into the capacitors and flanked a large fusion reactor with refined fyron powder at its core. The machinery fed into an immense segmented barrel etched with graven runes that was only partially visible. The rest protruded into the void from the Hell-stalker’s prow like the ram on an ancient sea-faring vessel.
Ironically, the weapon actually was archaic. At least, its standard template construct was. It had originated from an age before Old Night when all the many secrets of the universe had been lost.

Through his patron and the obsession of the dead technocrat Caleb Kelock, Nihilan had wrested one of those secrets back
from obscurity.

Old hate flared in its eyes as it regarded the four renegades, but like a flame
about to snuff out. Much of its form was mechanised and it whirred and ground robotically
as it moved.

Necrotic breath to match the condition of its pallid flesh washed from the Iron Warrior’s ugly, slack-jawed mouth. It struggled to speak.
...
Several devices, esoteric and alien in origin, were implanted into the Iron Warrior’s skull. An ankh-like rune glowed dully upon the surface of one. It helped to conceal the fact that much of the back of the creature’s head was missing, so too the bulk of its brain-matter.
...
"Reconstitution was not ease."’ Ekrine hissed, "but Ramlek managed to fashion something to animate it at least."

"Is it fully revivified?"
...
"This is a husk with some remembered behaviours for our purposes. It is not unlike a servitor, except its protocols were slaved solely to the construction of the weapon."
...
"That’s because it’s dead, you moron."

The thunderous report of a bolt pistol ended Ekrine’s reply.
Nihilan holstered his sidearm, looking down on the headless Iron Warrior.
"I have need of the mind shackles your dead-man is wearing. Sieve them from whatever brain chunks are left and throw the bodily remains into the furnaces."

As he primed the syringe, Tsu’gan was put in mind of the chrono-gladiators that fought in the underhives of numerous frontier worlds. For a while they would be unstoppable, their physiologies enhanced exponentially, but when the chrono finally ran out…

He’d been led from the penitarium by Pyriel and flanked by a squad of six Firedrakes wearing unmarked, saurian power armour. Each one carried a ceremonial chainblade and melta-pistol.

The collar around his neck had never felt so heavy. Surrounded by a refractor field with the energy wall turned inwards, every precaution had been taken with Dak’ir’s imprisonment.

Flesh-pink, dewy-eyed and sweating, the behemoth was a wretched and muscular thing. Its eyes were tiny, as if it lived much of its life underground or in abject darkness and had devolved accordingly. A flared snout with broad undulating nostrils dominated a brutish face. Bulbous growths mutated its already overdeveloped limbs and back. Its neck was thick and brawny. Though it carried no weapons, its fists were like piston-hammers and its malformed skull like a battering ram capable of denting tank armour.

Auto-carbines were no use; their human-sized grips were too small for his fingers. He needed something bigger, maybe a belt-feed or sentry cannon. He could tear it off its mountings, use it low-slung, hard into the shoulder to absorb the inevitable kick.

There were dozens of boarding weapons, large tracked cannons and belt-feeds. Booted feet rattled on the deckplate outside.
...
Tsu’gan seized an auto-fed cannon. Someone had left a drum in the breech. He estimated over four hundred rounds.
..
Four serfs carrying studded body shields made cover for four more toting heavy carbines.
...
Triggering the cannon, Tsu’gan filled the doorway with noise and fire. The serfs were rendered into ruddy chunks in a matter of moments. Others on the periphery, not in the direct line of fire, took shrapnel hits or were felled by the sheer explosive force of the attack.

Heedless of the auto-feeder, the behemoth charged.
...
"Far as you go." he growled, and unleashed what was left in the cannon.
It got another few metres before it slumped and died. The behemoth’s grotesque body was riddled with bullet holes and drooling blood from countless wounds. Tsu’gan was gasping at the end of it, the autofeeder whining empty long before he’d released the trigger.

On Scoria. It was the exact imitation of the seismic cannon, only several times bigger. A phrase sprung to mind,unbidden, as he beheld it.

Planet-killer.

The two-handed chainsword was immense. Its mono-molecular teeth could even cut adamantium apart.

Attached to the hangar’s exterior docking spine was the impressive forge-ship the Archimedes Rex. It loomed through a vast portal of clear armaglas that was durable enough to withstand meteor strikes and starship barrage.

Much of the Martian red in its paintwork was scored to the bare, grey metal beneath. The machine-cathedra, the mech-temples, data-shrines and factorum of the immense forge-ship appeared rusted, almost fossilised against its craggy hull. Jutting laser batteries and macro-cannon turrets slumped lazily at their stations

A warning rune flashed up on his bionic eye. A message scrolled across the retinal display in binaric. It took a fraction of a millisecond to translate.

Whatever had afflicted the Archimedes Rex wasn’t gone. It
was merely dormant, waiting for a synaptic trigger to release it.
Xhanthix had primed it, inloaded some crucial data-packet out on the dunes.
The corrupt data was within him, running rampant within his cybernetic implants, virulent as a contagion. A binary compound, he was the reactant to its catalyser. Alone, each component was harmless; together, they were lethal.

Terrible knowledge unfolded in Argos’s brain slowly, too slowly.

I am the trigger.

Like a sluggish data-file that had finally inloaded, Argos realised he had been compromised. Something had happened to him when he’d first interfaced with the forge-ship; something so powerful and invasive that it could overrun an entire Martian complement. It had done so before, turning its denizens homicidal. The signal was strong; he’d felt its resonance even on the surface of Nocturne when the Archimedes Rex was at dock on Prometheus. It had been dormant for several years. Logically, it was the only way it could have escaped detection. Otherwise, it would have been isolated, quarantined and neutralised during one of his sanctification rituals.

The deck fell away beneath him – or rather, he was lofted above it by the intensity of the blast wave. His retinal senses were immediately overloaded by the angry flare of light. Temperature gauges red-zoned as the tolerance levels of his armour reached their limit. He was spun in slow motion, rotating through a hundred and eighty degrees, limbs flailing. Hot frag launched from ground-zero with the velocity of bolter rounds, shredding hapless crewmen and tearing servitors apart in a welter of oily blood.
...
Argos’s roar merged with the cacophonous explosion until it became one agonised sound. Seconds seemed to stretch into minutes as furious incendiary waves rolled out across the hangar.

He hit the ground with a jolt, ripping off a shoulder pad and scraping across the deck for another ten metres before finally coming to a stop.
...
There were fires, bodies strewn between them. Some were badly burnt; others writhed in agony, speared by shrapnel.
...
Argos was bleeding. The servos in his right leg were damaged and it didn’t move as easily. Every third step he had to drag his foot. The static in his head was fading, becoming more like a dull ache. He risked reactivating his bionic eye. A heat spectrum overlaid his vision. Bio-scanning matrices identified Orgento’s signature to Argos’s left. Only a few metres separated them. The Techmarine had flat-lined.

Orgento was dead.

His power generator was torn up along with most of the cuirass protecting his back. One of his arms was missing, the blood clotting but not enough to save him. Massive internal haemorrhaging registered on the scan. Several organs had been liquefied as poor Orgento bore the brunt of the explosion.

Argos slipped a vibro-knife from a sheath fastened to his chestplate and severed the
thing’s thorax cabling.

The automated defence systems alone could repel a sizeable
invasion party without the need for additional reinforcement

He looked old but had recently received juvenat treatments. Some of the aging in his body had been regressed, restored to beyond its prime. As the impromptu bio-scan concluded, Argos realised that he knew him.
"Sonnar Illiad." the serf said at last.

Even the rear thrusters that provided propulsion were baffled,
so they could run silent.

The view was grainy and green-tinged, tracking data spooling across his view, but the aspirant stood out
clearly enough.

It was a Storm-variant, with capacity for carriage at the expense of deadlier weapon systems. Any aspirant that survived induction would at least have a ride back to the nearest Sanctuary City. The Storm only had room for two crewman and five riders, which said a lot about Salamander pragmatism and the harshness of the trials.

Ba’ken hauled on the heavy bolter, unlocking it and sliding the gun around on its mounting rail. He checked the load – a full mag of heavy mass-reactive. Any sa’hrk hit by one would be crimson mist.

Flicking up the iron sights, Ba’ken adjusted his aim by tracking along a distant ridge.
...
"Approximately five hundred metres."

Whirring plaintively, his bionic eye zeroed in on the armoured figure slaved to the seat of the cannon. Not all of the weapon was visible; much of the defence laser protruded outside of a plated dome, its massive barrel
pointed heavenwards.
...
It carried sigils upon its flanks and bore the mark of master artisan-smiths of an elder age. Vulkan’s hand was evident in it, for it was he who had forged it in millennia past.

The figure joined to it via mental interface uplink did not stir as Argos approached. He was intent on his duty, his eternal duty. Servitors and lesser adepts roamed the area too, consulting cogitators and examining streams of data, or observing monitors and augur arrays.
...
One screen remained. It was the largest and hung above the cannon like a vast piece of obsidian. An image had appeared in the glass-like plane of a huge asteroid, several thousand kilometres away but closing. The zoom adjusted, as if fast-forwarding the rock’s trajectory.
...
Targeting data streamed across the visual in a series of runes and rapidly changing geometric diagrams.

Some of the symbols flashed crimson as the weapon’s crosshairs aligned over the sprawling rock’s core. Adjustments were fed into the machine, subtly altering the prescribed position of impact.

Three more servitors, in an attempt to intervene, died quickly before Argos mounted the command chair to Vulkan’s Eye and jacked in.

It rebelled at first, whatever machine-spirit possessed the artefact realising the caustic element in its new symbiotic partner. Whatever was driving Argos, the impulse he continued to fight so hard to locate and neutralise, overwhelmed it.

Data streamed into his compromised cortex. Targeting matrices and alternative firing solutions presented themselves in an unfettered blur of rapid information exchange. He and the cannon were now one. The mental interface was complete.

Subconsciously he adjusted the aim of the cannon, a vast and complex procedure that took seconds as it aligned over an immense distance.

A warning flashed up on the screen. The core of the asteroid was highly combustible. A direct hit would result in a chain reaction that would release an explosion of such force and magnitude as would be felt across several planetary regions. Prognosis for its effect on Prometheus verged on catastrophic.

Power coils embedded in the weapon’s superstructure reached optimum levels as the artificial scream of capacitors at full tolerance drowned the chamber in ear-shredding noise. No human could bear it; even unaugmented Space Marines would experience massive auditory discomfort. This was a god-weapon, a slayer of monsters.

...
In a shriek of venting energy the defence laser fired. The whickering beam coursed from the barrel at incredible velocity, impelled by semi-nucleonic fusion. Its retort was felt in the resulting shockwave that rattled instrument panels and caused tracts of cabling to quiver.
...
Reaction was instantaneous as a second sun was born briefly in the void-night, its life expectancy cut cruelly short as it went from red dwarf to supernova in a matter of micro-seconds.

Argos perceived none of this – no one did. Only his mind’s eye bore witness.

As the speeder bounced across the Pyre, Val’in struggled to sight down his carbine.
...
Val’in saw them in grainy green luminescence, through the crosshairs of his lasrifle: three arrow-shaped skimmers that mirrored the one they’d broken earlier.

The skimmers were protected by some kind of flickering field that masked their true movements and provided unnatural camouflage. Doubtless it was how they’d managed to infiltrate so far into the desert without detection.

The augur slate displayed a wire-mapped version of the upcoming terrain,
the contours described in hexagonal delineation so he could predict when to turn or how close they were to a ravine or ridge. The construct was a basic one but highly accurate.

Instantly, the already acrid air became sulphurous. The speeder’s green paintwork started to crack and peel away as it was eroded.
..
The aspirant looked on in grim satisfaction at the sudden screaming, the dark eldar without helmets feeling the acid burn more acutely than the rest. It was unfortunate for them that the skimmer driver was vain enough to eschew any face protection.
...
...Prebian rose from a crouching position, one hand against the roll bar to steady himself. His face was untouched.
...
Even the aspirants, not yet having reached their full apotheosis, only carried minor burn scars.

Prebian urged them to retreat but was careful not to let them give in to their instincts and flee. They were not yet Scouts, let alone Space Marines; their human predilections might still hold some sway.

"The Unbound Flame in a vessel of flesh and blood? Are you certain of this?" he asked He’stan.
"Nothing is certain, but it is my belief."
...
"How can this be? Vulkan hid his gifts almost ten thousand years ago,
yet Dak’ir has not even earned a single platinum stud."

"Could the primarch have begun a confluence of events that would reach their terminus at this point?"
...
"Could he have foreseen this, somehow known a vessel for the Unbound Flame would
emerge in this time, at this hour of crisis?"
...
"How can we possibly know? At best it is myth, at worst it is maliciously false."

"I knew you were an optimist, Pyriel, but I did not think you credulous. There are countless prophecies that speak of our father’s return but we cannot trust in any of them to come to pass. We must look to ourselves, not fate ten thousand years old, for our survival."

His Terminator armour was of an ancient design, a previous incarnation that was just as inviolable but bulkier that operated an extended chainfist and a triple mag storm bolter that was anything but standard.

Engaging his shadow field, the archon flew through the carnage, flickering out of existence briefly before resolving again on the other side. To his mild chagrin, the sybarite made it too, albeit trailing smoke, his Ghostplate armour hazed with heat.

Prebian pulled down the magnoculars and pointed at the ribbed joints between sections of his battleplate.
"Here is where it’s weakest, or if they fight without helm then aim for the head. Remember your rituals of accuracy. Use them." He addressed both aspirants. "Once they’re beyond the void shields, no manportable weapon can breach these walls. They’ll need to climb. You’ll have an advantage then. Keep your sights angled low, closer to vertical the better. A shell that penetrates something not fatal like a shoulder or kneecap will travel further. Hopefully it’ll detonate around something important."

He gestured to his hearts, throat and finally head.

"Killing shots." he explained. "No mercy, no quarter. This is the Great Enemy we fight. A Space Marine, even one corrupted by Ruin, can sustain a lot of punishment."

So far, the nova cannon still functioned but it was taking longer to
re-power after firing and a section of starboard broadsides was destroyed. Shields in that section were also displaying weakened energy returns. Overall, the voids and displacers were currently at around forty-seven per cent effective.

Like all void battles, the conflict above Nocturne was slow and ponderous. A captain was not only required to think in terms of multi-dimensional space but he also had to predict and prepare. There was a sense of almost orchestral choreography in its complexity, where each instrument supports every other. In isolation each ship in a battle line was less effective than when combined and deployed in the right order at precisely the correct moment. Foresight was essential. If a hulking cruiser or battle-barge was in the wrong place, it would take a long time to move. Rapid manoeuvres in response to enemy tactics were simply impossible.

The lances powered and a salvo of deadly beams raked across kilometres of void-space to the aggressor ship.

"Torpedo spread, wide dispersal," he followed, and the forward tubes were vented. Dac’tyr watched the tacticarium screen and the red icon representing the ship that had ambushed them.

Forward lances registered several strong hits which downed the cruiser’s shields momentarily. It was a calculated shot as the torpedo markers bypassed the overloaded defences and bloomed against the vessel’s armour.

The overhead screen displayed a view of the cruiser, its prow wreathed in flames. Secondary explosions rolled up the hull as incendiaries and ammunition stores cooked off spectacularly.
...
Without shields, the renegade cruiser was a floating powder keg primed for violent ignition.

Still a few degrees to go before the nova cannon could be unleashed. Momentum from the aft engines was picking up. Dac’tyr estimated as long as a minute until they achieved the optimum firing solution.

"Nine per cent, six per cent…"
...
"A few more degrees…"
"‘Starboard shields down." we’re taking damage.
...
Sixty seconds that had felt eternal in their passing finally reached a terminus.

A coruscating beam thrust from the prow of the Flamewrought and coursed across the void. Hit with the destructive fury of a dying sun, the middle cruiser broke apart and shattered.

According to the worshippers of the Omnissiah, the great Martian Machine God, every weapon has a spirit. It is this anima that must be soothed and placated in order for it to function. The seismic cannon possessed an ages-old sentience. It had the perspective of a terrible era when such apocalypse weapons existed that could erase entire races from being. Its spirit was malicious and terrible. It could not be placated, and was only capable of wrath.

The fully charged capacitors released a mournful whine as the fyron powder reacted in devastating molecular fusion. Energy coursed up the vast barrel, only barely contained. Upon reaching the mouth there was a flaring corona of power like a dawning sun that bleached the sky magnesium white.

Then it roared with a voice like crackling thunder and drove a wound deep into the heart of a world.

Through the forward occuliport he watched the Hell-stalker approach with disgusted awe.
It was immense, dwarfing even the Flamewrought. No weapon he possessed could stop it. Perhaps the nova cannon, if fired at close range and able to hit some vital system, might slow the behemoth down but this was a fleet-killer.
...
Dac’tyr had seen its like before but not for many years. It was a vessel built for crusading, so vast and powerful that it could take on opposing flotillas single-handed and run for centuries before needing to make dock.
..
The vessel was bloated by additional cannons, torpedo tubes and fighter bays. Armour, thickened and re-bolted several times over, fattened its grossly cluttered flanks and underbelly. The Hell-stalker was an ugly thing, wrought for carnage at the sacrifice of speed and manoeuvrability.

A pulse of light ignited from the energy flux. It held there, burning for a few seconds, before being unleashed in a single focused beam.

An escort in its path, attempting to come at the Hell-stalker from beneath, was clipped.

The ship disintegrated on contact with the energy lance uncoiling from the seismic cannon. A flash of light filled the Flamewrought’s occuliport and when it faded the ship was gone. A squadron of smaller gunships, coming in the escort’s wake but peeling away at the sight of the larger vessel’s destruction, were swept aside by the blast wave. Their hulls were stripped back in seconds, the metal flayed off layer by layer until only atoms remained.

It hit the Flamewrought too and sent warning icons scrolling across the tacticarium display.

They were approaching the edge of the void shielded area in a dispersed formation when the instrumentation across the entire spread overloaded. The torpedo shook violently and Praetor grimaced as a chain of sparks erupted from the console before it cut to black.

A secondary void-tremor slammed into the diminutive boarding vessel, spinning it. The shriek of protesting metal threatened an integrity breach. If that happened they’d survive but be cast adrift like all the other flotsam of space. The seals held but were under huge strain. Tiny fissures, venting minute pressure leaks, webbed the interior hull. Monstrous turbulence seized them and the torpedo trembled like a bunker exposed to a constant ordnance barrage.
...
The void-tremors were subsiding, signalling the return of comms.

"Don’t you believe in miracles any more, or the possibility of
divine providence?"

He did. Elysius had borne witness to it on the Volgorrah Reef in the Coliseum of Blades when the broken crozius had ignited and killed the wych queen, despite the fact it shouldn’t have been able to. Because of that, he’d lived; because of that, his belief and purpose had been restored.

The Techmarine was already preparing the tracked Rapier-mount he’d brought with them. It was archaic, the gun platform hailing from several previous generations of Space Marine warfare. The track bed it rolled across the dunes on was built for heavy terrain and coped well with the rigours of the desert. It had even surmounted the mound of the dead. As Harkane manipulated the hand-held control console a pair of cannon-bearing weapon arms unfolded from the Rapier’s central stock and cycled into position. Drum mags dropped either side of the twin autocannons, belt feeds unfurling like brass-shelled tongues from their breaches.

...
Hard staccato gunfire chug-chanked from the twin autocannons, raking the battlements and turning the air in front of the Scouts into a gritty storm. After a few seconds and several hundred rounds, the Rapier’s muzzle flare died off and the dust cleared.

He could see it, feel it, his senses were as alive as they always were but it moved in a way that was alien to him. It did things, performed acts he had not told it to. It was as if his neural synapses had been re-routed and Tsu’gan was no longer in full command of them. His limbs moved now as if of their own volition. He had become like a puppet, dangling helplessly on Nihilan’s strings.
...
Tsu’gan had heard of some psykers that could inhabit the bodies of others,
using their will to impel their actions, effectively wearing them like a suit of battle-plate. Nihilan’s mind shackle was not like that. Tsu’gan could only liken it to the command protocols given to a servitor via their doctrina wafers. It was as if he’d been given a series of pre-set routines and was now bound to follow them.

Turning his full attention on the other one, Tsu’gan pushed the muzzle of his bolter into the Scout’s chest and pulled the trigger. The close-range burst scorched his armour, turning it black from the discharge flare, but ripped open the neophyte’s torso.

Tsu’gan let him crumple in a bloody heap...

A third took a bracing stance and swung around a heavy bolter to rake the gap between them.

Tsu’gan reached back and seized Rennard. The Marine Malevolent wasn’t expecting the move and by the time he fought it he was being used as a meat shield and struck by mass-reactive shells.

The dense impacts rocked the warrior’s body and Tsu’gan pushed forwards behind it all the way to his opponent, causing horrendous damage to Rennard in the process. At almost point blank the sheer force of the heavy salvo knocked them both off their feet.

Tsu’gan landed hard on his back but was quick to roll the groaning Marine Malevolent off him as he led with his chainsword.
...
Leaving Rennard to bleed out...

Tsu'gan manages to get angry (focuseD?) enough to break the mindshackle's control, but when the damage is destroyed it self repairs and reasserts control so long as it is attached. It even repair sagainst the thrust, whjch just goes to show how durable the buggers are and how hard they are to remove... but they can be beaten.


PAge 267-268


Seismic cannon on Nocturne. It's honestly hard to calc this, and we dont know if its brute force or technobabble or what and to what degre.. the quakes and the planet shaking suggest significant energies, but its hard to estimate really. It's most definitely not instantaneously fatal (no global firestorms, no massive amounts of ejecta, etc.) but given the name of the weapon that may not be the intended effect despite the highly visible beam. It could go either way, and its not really easy to measure the effects of the weapon on any target or what it should be desgned tos top.

The only thing we can really note is how the void shields briefly resist a quake/fissure opening... indicating that voids perhaps provide some measure of structural reinforcement as well as a physical barrier.

the interetsing thing is that its implied this isn't just a temporary thing.. the quaking is the primary and consistent effect.. whether it is just the geological nature or setup of the planet or what... we dont know.

The 'crack" is more than 30 m wide, given a Thunderhawk's wingspan (or length, not much difference iether way).

Page 278


Yeah, it seems like is Necron tech.

Page 286-287


Daemon seems to be harmed by shoulder-fired lascannons (Bazookas) at least to some small degree.. but in turn paritally incinerates another group in their armor (MJ to GJ range at least, depending on how deep/severe and the number.)


PAge 293


Armor battle. Of note are:

- autocannon spenetrating along with lascannon fire. Also seem to have simialr range (at least 2 km or so, perhaps.)

Vindicators and Devastators used as artillery fro extended range.. greater than 2 km? Demolisher rounds (rocket assisted I believe) can tip vehicles over (tanks and artillery).. considering we're tlaking tanks that must mass tens of tons.. this is rather impressive, especially since the tanks are still more or less intact enough for crews to get out. To get an idea of the impact involved consider this link which says the following:



At least 2 m/s x vehicel mass would lift the tank up 20 cm,which might risk flipping it. There is also the Ogorkiwicz limit of 900 n*s/to mentioend elsewhere to consider. No matter how you consider it, it suggests the tanks are pretty damn durable.

The fact they pass over the force within "a fe wminutes" suggests an engagement range between 1.7 and 2.5 km (assuming ~50 kph travel speed for the tanks, and they were moving at top speed, which isn't unreasonable) which meshes with what we know from such vehicles.

Page 294


Effect of Seismic cannon. It seems that Nihilan wanted to punch a hole into the surface of the planet to infiltrate the Salamanders homeworld for his own purposes, rather than purely to demolish the world (at least not right off and used his proposed conflict as a diversion.

We don't know how big a hole is put through, but Nihilan is able to use a jump pack to make his passage.. assuming between 20-200 meter diameter for the hole, melted through the crust of the planet (it says it went to the "heart" but I'm assuming it means down to magma - later evidence confirms this and a dpeth of around 40-100 km. For a 20 diameter hole melted.. 13 megatons to 3.2 gigatons for a 200 m diameter hole given the above assumtpions. This does not neccesarily mean much, given that a.) I'm assuming arbitrary hole widths and b.) we dont know if it was all melted or some was vaporized or simply ejected molten, and c.) at least some if not most of the energy was lost in subsidary effects (creating the quakes, disrupting the entire planet, etc.) For all we know this is how the weapon is mean tot work.. it punches a hole straight in while unleashing its effects as seismic tremors throughout the thickness of the crust., or something. Or maybe it is meant to disrupt or agitate the mantle/core to cause the shaking/shock effects. Or it could be purely technobabble.

Page 303-304


Salmaanders automated boarding weapons.. boarding torpedo version of deathwind drop pods. Also more static Rapier weapons. Also note the boarding crews are using man portable (tracked/wheeled) multilasers and heavy stubbers, as well as having some sort of boarding shields (full body perhaps) by shield carriers.

Page 304-305


Terminator armor durability.

Page 305


Multi-spectral optical systems, as well as some sort of datalink allowing them to share data and targeting information for coordinating fire.

Page 306


Heavy flamers (unknown number) cremate unknown number of corpses.. enough that it can block the path for terminator armor, at least, and cremation is VERY energetic.

PAge 308


Many battalions of armsmen on board the flagship (Battleship/cruiser grade.)

Page 313


Apothecary gear.

Page 314


Xenos research and Xeno-taxonomy. That seems to suggest ignorance is not quite as widespread as it is thought. Information is controlled and restricted, without a doubt, but that doesn't mean people are completely stupid and ignorant. I mean fuck, Even guardsmen can be taught to read and write.

Page 314


Apothecary defense systems. Emek is confident they could cope with a Mandrake's stealth.

Page 316


More surgical gear. It really shows you what is needed to get through a Space Marines' body to his organs.

Page 318-319


Interesting means of neutralising a Mandrake's abilities.. if you can catch him off guard close in.

Page 319


A bolter.

Page 323


The Rosarius seems to provide a slowing effect to stop the rounds completely, rather than simply deflecting, destroying or displacing them.

Page 324


Salamander defences.

Page 324


500 meters thick, wide.. what?

Page 324


The Chalice of Fire artifact seems to be the explanation why there is so much high end gear for the Salamanders and why they can afford to destroy (rather than recycle) power armor with their dead, as well as outfit their officers/heroes and their Veterans with such high end gear (artificer armor, melta pistols, etc.)

One would think that this would provide a useful industrial resource. The Salamanders could make quite a profit they can use to support their world if they supplied other Chapters.

PAge 324


Reference to the oldest rhino in the Imperium. Crusade/HEresy era.


Page 327


Unsurprisingly, limits to Marine endurance.

Page 331-332


To be fair, Ba'ken is still recovering from the massive amount of injury he suffered in the last book, so he's not quite up to full strength, and exerting himself now is leaving him vulnerable.

Page 332-333


Bolter and bolt pistol vs DE grotesques.

Page 333


Given a 20-30 shot magazine for a boltgun and assuming it is full (it isn't but we don't know how full/empty it is) it takes 2-3 seconds to empty it. Meaning 10-15 rounds per second ROF is the upper limit for this bolter, and it could be lower.

Also Marine bolters are designed to be wielded in power armor, due to the built in compensators and such (which would seem to be in full armour, as earlier it is noted Ba'ken is only wearing his arm and leg stuff.

Page 340


Rosarius stops a heavy bolter salvo.

Page 342


DE Archon can deflect bolt fire with his sword like a JEdi.

Page 354


Terminator storm shield takes plasma gun blast, Terminator armour shrugs off sustained bolter fire.

I'll note that through much of the series, the Salamanders use their storm shields as a weapon -apparently either the edges are sharpened or the powerfield/force field enhancements give them a cutting edge.

Page 354


Lascannon hit manages to fell Terminator.

Page 356


The reactor cooling systems for the seismic cannon.


Page 356


Interesting that Terminators can walk up the side of a battleship for 100 metres, against the pull of gravity. Later they mention suspensors which no doubt can help, but this is still a damn impressive feat.


Page 358-359


Soul Grinder. SEems to be alot like a Defiler. Claw and arm mounted gun, skin enhanced/resistant to bolter fire (akin to some sort of shielding), but more vulnerable to blades.

Also He'Stan Vulkan has a special Vulkan-descended storm bolter - perhaps one of the Primarch's old weapons, but not one of the Nine itself. It has a tangilbe (sanctified) effect on the enemy. I'd guess either the rounds are specially blessed by a Chaplain or something, or the collective Nocturne/Salamander faith in the wepaon being from Vulkan is so great that it conveys automatic sanctity (Another human version of the "Red ones go faster" effect)

Page 360


Terminator armour has suspensors, helping to offset the mass/weight of armor.

Page 360


Height of the Termiantor forces over He'stan and the soul grinder. Important shortly.
Earlier it was mentioned they were 100 metres below their target, but we know for sure they are 50 metres.

PAge 362


50 (maybe 100) meter fall seems to injure Terminator, but he survives. Possibly due to suspensors (mentioned later)

Page 363


Soul Grinder warpflame attack.

Page 365


DE versoin of vortex weaponry. Assumign they can still make them, they're unsurprisingly more sophisticated than Imperial equivalents.

Page 366


Praetor survives a fall from a similar height. Again suspensors may play a role.

Page 369


Da'kir as the Ferro Ignis arrives. I'm not really sure how to take the "kilometres thick" metal thing. On one hand that seriously seems to imply the ship is so massive it has several km of armor plating and yet... no ship in 40K except maybe fortress monasteries could have that. I'm guessing it references to how far to the external hull there is, with all the systems, walls, armor plating/structural reinforcement, bulkheads, etc. between that point and this. I'd guess maybe 10% of that is armor, which is still alot (hundreds of metres) but also recall it was noted that the armor plating on this ship was "several times" greater so its not dramatically different from other ships (and we know extenral hull plating from the Rogue trader RPG and Black cRusde that hull armor is tens of metres thick easily.) Hell ven assuming 1% armor that's still 20 metres thick, which suggests something like 8-10 meter thick armor is normal. However you look at it, 40K hull armor is more than just a couple metres thick despite what some people say (unsurprising when Titans, which are nothing compared to starships, also have metres thick armor)

The other interesting detial is that this puts some lower limits on ship size. We know the ship is at least 2-3 km across or tall, and given usual Navy ship length/width ratios (assume length is 4-5x width) you might get anywhere from 4 to 15 km in length. It seems to suggest from "top to bottom." Given the seismic cannon is implied to be placed in a way similar to other prow weapons (EG nova cannon) the ship is probably about 2-3 km "tall", plus or minus the few hundred metres below they may have had to cross (anothe reason I'm loathe to assume we're talking solid kilometres thick hull..)
This means the ship could be 2-3 km "tall" at the prow, but easily several times that in width given strike cruiser/battle barge design typically (It is mentioned interchangably that the ship could be a strike cruiser or battle barge, I am guessing more towards the latter since it is noted to be bigger/more powerful than even the Salamanders battle barges.) Given the "height/length" ratios of a Barge here, my earlier estimate is off by quite a bit.. I'd guess Length is ~8x the height, so we're talking more like 16-25 km length. Width of the ship is maybe 2-3 times the height.

Page 372


Starship made of 'Adamantium steel' - so I guess you can alloy with adamintium or other materials.

Page 373


Super-psyker Da'Kir just sliced through the ship's prow (from the ceiling to bottom I'd guess)

Page 377


Seems like Da'kir melted his way through the hull. Shows what a high end super-psyker can do (although one that is, IMHO probably even more than alpha-class.. meaning it is even more uncommon. This is far and above beyond what a mere Librarian can do.)

We also learn (and confirmed later) Da'kir's action prett ymuch decimated a good chunk of the enemy escort fleet, either directly or indirectly (from the Hell-stalker blowing up for example).

Page 379


As I said, Da'Kir pretty much decimated the entire fleet singlehanded.

Page 379


More multi-spectral autosenses.

Page 379-380


Nihilan is using a jump pack to traverse the way to his destination. The Seismic cannon (true intention) cut a hole to the "molten heart" of Nocturne - again which suggests to the mantle rather than the core, to my thinking.

Page 380


Nihilan ponders on the fate of the world.

Page 382


Pyriel disables Ramlek. Assuming a 500-1000 kg Astartes in armour (Ramlek seemed kind of large and hulking really) we're talking thousands of kg*m/s worth of momentum exerted, at least. Probably several times that if not more given Ramlek must have been sent flying and struck hard enough to get knocked out (a'la spear throwing scene for ST armor.)

Page 383


Interesting telepathic/illusion based attack.

Page 383


Possible limits on the Gate of Infinity. Seems to suggest hundreds if not thousands of km range limit.

Page 385


The psychic/TK attack mentioned above.

PAge 390


2 Predators melted down to slag, crews ash (a couple GJ per crew, maybe 4-6 crew total for both?) and to 30-40 ton predators melted (assuming iron is ) 60-80 GJ.. so call it maybe 60-100 GJ at least from an incrnated Daemon's (in dragon form) warp attack.

Page 390


Sending an armoured 30 ton rhino flying with a tail sweep form the daemon.

Page 391


Daemon lifts up on its nose and crushes LAnd Raider. A comment on its size and strength.

Page 393


Chief Librarian Vel'Cona's powers. The shield is interesting, and the storm suggests severe burns but.. its hard to calc because we don't know the daemon's exact height. It's much taller than a Space Marine (2-3 metres), and probably taller than either a Predator or a Land Raider, but its not massive (EG not titan scale) maybe 5-10 meters.

Assuming 5 meters and 4th or so degree flash burns (lets say 100-400 j sq cm given the effect on its skin. Given a 5x2 m daemon we migth e talking 10-40 MJ at least.. not impossible given some of the cremations in other sources.

Also its abilitiy to raise "metres" thick" barriers to encase daemon. Assuming 5 m tall, 2 m thick walls 2 m wide.. Vel-cona amassed some 180 tonnes of earth around the daemon in a matter of seconds. to imprison it. Not neccesarily a direct sort of TK, but it is still impressive in the ability to exert force.

Page 394


A already damaged frigate survives several minutes of broadside fire from a Battle barge.

Page 394-395


Confirmation of what happened earlier. we also learn that some of the enemy ships actually fled.

Page 397-398


Preparations for the orbital lance strike. Apparently its quite visible, and involves a visible targeting beam (for precision) but takes a minute or more to prepare. Tu'Shan intends to use a Land Raider for protection.

Page 398-399


Effects of the lance strike. It probably didn't lsat (fireball wise) for more than a few seconds or less, and its implied the blast radius (nonlethal) was not much greater than 500 m or so. That would point to low megaton at best, and probably not much more than single kiloton range. Especially since Tu'Shan wasn't that far from the point of impact yet didn't get engulfed in a fireball. This did not do much to the daemon, sadly.

Page 403


Vibro-weapon again.


PAge 404


Mutation and corruption being an obvious, tangible thing any blunt Space Marine can recognize. Unless you're a Soul Drinker, then its a holy blessing.

Page 405


Vibro-blade seems to have chainsword-like qualities here, depending on what oyu take "churning" to mean.

Page 405


Tu'Shan's hammer seems to be a powerweapon. In adition to the blast effect it seems to inflict severe electrical burns... high kj to low MJ maybe? That'd be roughly consistent with similar weapons like the Gauntlet sof Macragge (1-8 MW there)

Page 410


Lightning and earthquake attacks from Vel'Cona.

Page 411


Psychic duel. It takes on interesting connotations with the "Avatars" forming, reminsiicent of the psychic duel ravenor engaged in in his series.

Page 413


Nihilan's soul lance attack that defeated Pyriel. Cauterisation, but it totally defeated a (weakened) PYriel's attacks. Destroying most fo the organs and cauterisation suggests severe large scale burning, thorugh the torso.. easily tens if not hundreds of kj for those effects alone. I'm really not sure it has to be super powerful either beyond a few tens or a few hundreds of kj... it's not just raw power that always helps a psychic duel, it can also be skill (The speed. precision or focus with which attacks are delivered.. the difference between a thrown dagger or a fired arrow and a hammer or a wrecking ball.)

Page 419


Honestly, I'm not surprised if he really wasn't one of the Nine, but I find it hard to figure out exactly what he is, and if this was intentional, or what part the eating of Gravius' gene-seed had to do with it. Is it some pecularity of Salamander physiology? Some sort of secret link to Vulkan? Tapping some sort of psychic gestalt to enhance his own abilities? Hard to say. It's also hard to say whether this was intentional, or if it ties into the prophecies. Perhaps Vulkan, for example, was aware of the dangers of this sort of thing and the prophecies were meant as some sort of (lousy) warning.

The "conduit" comment, I suspect, is important, but what he is a conduit for I don't know. Since he's a psyker, this makes me think that perhaps he is subject to some sort of possession, but not one where he is actually "taken control" of... more a kind of soul-binding or "sorcerous" tap. Given the fears of Vel'cona (and Tsu'gans reactions) this seems quite possible.

One idea is that Vulkan is dead and Da'kir is a conduit/avatar for his soul, although Vulkan was never a psyker. Alternately (and more liekly) this is a variation of the tapping of the 'human god" powers.. a miracle of sorts, akin to what the Sororitas do perhaps brought on by the manifest belief in prohpecies among the inhabitants of Noctrune.

Another interesting thing lies in Gravius consuming the geneseed of his fellow astartes.. it all seemed to congregate in his own gene-seed, which included "soul" and memories - eg the mental/psychic aspects - of Gravius' battle brothers. IOt tends to lend an interesting psychic angle to Space Marine's capabilities, and an interesting spin on the "genetic legacy" beliefs towards gene-seed (eg a Space Marine lives on in his gene-seed.) It may even suggest some sort of evolutionary aspect - the abilities/traits of prior Astartes passes itself on (in some measure) to a successor. That would be a sort of mutation, and we know gene seed invariably mutates, but this may not be wholly bad.

PAge 421-422


Da'kir's powers are growing manifest again, and this time (it seems) he cannot control it. This puts some interesting connoations on his destruction of the Hell-stalker and some of the fleet, since it is reasonable to assume what he pulled off before was a maximum power feat - EG the same power that has the potential to devastate nocturne is of the same magnitude as the power that destroyed the flagship and escorts. evne if it was only a fraction of that (1/10 or 1/100th) it is still damn impressive (it didnt totally vaporize the ship after all, it only punched a hole through the hull.)

On the other hand, it is a psychic attack, and despite the brute force references to it earlier it's hard to totally dismiss the technobabble nature. Or to pin down exact yield (Nocturne is a Death world, after all) - I suspect if I tried some would object anyhow, but I still think its potentially teraton level events at least to demolish the prow of a battle barge and take out some portion of the fleet. That's not unreasonable given what we know form other sources, either (EG millions of tons worth of ordnance exchanged in opening salvos in Daemon hunter.)

That aside, we get more comment on the "conduit" nature.. it seems that the gestalt-thing of Gravius' gene-seed (genetic legacy?) - which may suggest Da'Kir has consumed something of the souls of other Salamanders - a vaguely daemonic angle to things, but it would explain his greatly expanded abilities and his acting as a "conduit" in a way, especially if he's drawing on the knowlege/souls of all those past Salamanders - perhaps through them the psychic gestalt/essence of all the salamanders before him, or something like that.

Either way it's quite clear that Da'Kir is merely the portal (albeit a powreful one) for something much greater. Not unlike the Thorian belief in finding a suitable host for the Emperor, or the super-psyker from Ian Watson's short story "warped Stars".

PAge 438

I'm still trying to decide whether Da'kir and Tsu'gan killing each other after saving Nocturne was brilliance or a cop-out.

"It’s a massive dose of adrenaline. Enough to kill a lesser being, but just the right amount to keep you
conscious long enough so you can help me kill these bastards."
...
"in a few minutes it will overload your nervous system and send you into anaphylactic shock. Your body will then compensate for this trauma by putting you into suspended animation coma."