40K anthologies compiliation analysis thread

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Connor MacLeod
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40K anthologies compiliation analysis thread

Post by Connor MacLeod »

Basically this will be the dumping ground (quite literally) for all those anthologies they put out 'recently' which I haven't covered and aren't Horus Heresy (separate thread eventually). Which means that, in the current atmosphre, its all Space Marine fan fiction.

Most of the Anthologies (and the one they're putting out this year) are basically Space MArine of one kind or another. Which means they're pretty dull, except for the variety of chapters they cover, and they don't offer much scope for the most part. Some do, but that's it. The exceptions are 'Planetkill' and 'Fear the Alien' which actually means they only have a bit of Space marine stuff.

This also means that because there are going to be more anthologies, and because I don't consider this particularily interesting (except the two I named) I'll probably blow through them quickly. I've still got to slog through Salamander,s BAstion Wars (more 'stuff to get out of the way for more interesting books)' and Space Marine battles (which is a pure mixed bag.) BAsically expect large updates of one or two updates per book, and covered shortly.

Planetkill will be two updates.

Page 10
By then, the ambush was well and truly sprung. A scattering of lasrifles released their shots into the scout cavalry half-tracks. The AM-10 Hammer Goats indigenous to the Amartine 8th were two-ton bug­gies with rear caterpillar tracks and pintle-mounted heavy stubbers. Also dubbed AM-10 Scapegoats by virtue of soldierly cynicism, they were regarded as death traps for the two-man reconnaissance teams that operated them.
Some sort of recon vehicle. Whether it is STC pattern, local , or what I don't know.

PAge 11
He thrust thirty centimetres of steel just below the ribs, but the Khan simply stepped into the blow with a carnivorous grace and hooked with an open palm.
30 cm - 12" blade?

Page 15
The original briefing from the Ordo had read - mild psychic disturbances emanating from Sirene Primal, priority - minor. It had never seemed like much to begin with.

Initial disturbances had first occurred eight months ago. Sanctioned psykers of the Imperial war fleet had sensed a strong psychic flux from the planet itself. Then reports from the neighbouring Omei Subsector began to surface. Astropaths of a missionary outpost on the tundras of Alipsia Secundus had slashed their throats, writing the name of the planet in blood, and silently mouthing Sirene Primal until death claimed them.

The phenomena had initially been dismissed as the psychic backlash of Sirene Primal's war. It was uncommon but not unheard of, for the anguish of billions in suffering to cause to coalesce into psy­chic disturbance. Scholars had named it a planetary swansong
No wonder Astropaths have such low lifespans in the Imperium. Still it can serve as a sort of warning system, I guess.

Another aspect of this quite probably is that navigators hav trouble travelling through war zones because all teh war and death stirs up the Warp.

PAge 16
Despite the icy chill, Roth had suited up in Spathean fighting plate. The form-fitting chrome was coated with a hoar of frost that bled vaporous curls into the air. Over this he framed a tabard of tessellating obsidian. The tiny panes of psi-reactive glass, although a potent psi-dampener, did little to insulate him against the temperature.
Body armor with extra psi-reactive defenses.

Page 17
A huntsman with augmented bio­scope lenses was seldom wrong about such things. Already the target reticles oscillating on the pupils of his eyes had locked on the Marauder destroyers swooping in the distance.
Dude with special optical targeting augmetics.


Page 18
His man Silverstein however, scoped it clearly, complete with a statistical read-out that scrolled down in the upper left corner of his vision. +++ Obex-Pattern Vulture gunship, VTOL sub-atmospheric combat aircraft. Organic weapon systems: Nose-mounted heavy bolter - Optional wing-mounted autocannons - Pod-racked double missile systems. +++
Vulture gunship stats, also taagged by the Targeitng augmetics.

Page 18
The gunship blurred past their jutting fist of rock, snorting jet exhaust. It sharply arrested its descent forty metres above the exodus, pivoting on the fulcrum of its tail. There it hovered on the monstrous turbines of vector thrust engines.

From his vantage point up the slope, Roth was almost at eye-level with the gunship. He watched with growing trepidation as half a dozen tendrils of rope uncoiled from the belly of its hold, reach­ing out like the tentacles of a waiting beast. Troops, bulky with combat gear, began to rappel down the steel cables.

Roth recognized them immediately as men of the 45th Montaigh Assault Pioneers. Great shaggy men, broad and bearded, descending with shoulder-slung lascarbines. Their insulated winter fatigues lined with mantine fur and coloured in the distinctive grey and green jigsaw pattern were unmistakeable.
Zou kinda messed up here, methinks. Valkyries are the troop carriers, not vultures. I suppoe there might be a troop carrying variant of the vulture but really why bother? Either it was a misidentification in universe or its a variant.. I'm opting for the former. Either way the gunship has vectored thrust engines, so it can hover.

If it is a Vulture with transport capacity, it holds only a squad.


PAge 19
Amongst the death marshes of Cetshwayo in M609.M41, Assault Pioneers had spearheaded their advance through supposedly impenetrable terrain with a system of drainage dams and mobile pontoons. Their ingenuity resulted in a single divi­sion of Assault Pioneers overwhelming an estimated eighty thousand orks. Where all battles are won by manoeuvre, the men of Montaigh paved the way.
Assuming a division is like modern military, we're talking 10-15 thousand troops routing 5-8 times their number.

Also note the mention (and use, apparently) of manoeuvre warfare. Which isn't tos ay that the IG is all manuver, because it isn't. but there is a distinction. Its defensive forces (teh majority of the Guard, since it garrisons mainly) is defensive in nature, and relies on the places itse defending for supply and equipping. The offensive forces (relatively smaller, but still vastly significant) are the offensive and (somewhat) mobile arm.


Page 20-21

- There exist some veteran Guard regiments stupid enough to contemplate gunning down even an Inquisitor, at least if the Inquisitor is isolated on the planet away from normal sources of s upport.


Page 21
"Sergeant. Up there, three hundred paces behind you, is a huntsman with a Vindicare-class Exitus rifle. Don't bother looking, he's well hidden. What I can tell you, is that he was trained by the lodge-masters of Veskepine and I've seen him shoot the eyes off an aero-raptor in mid flight. Give him four seconds, he'll put down half your squad. It's your call Sergeant."
How did a Huntsman get an Exitus rifle? They're custom made for one thing, and I doubt the ASsassins just let that shit out of their control easily. I doubt it was looted fr+om a borrowed Assassin but who knows. Anyhow, 300 paces is either 225 or 450 metres.


Page 22-23
"An off-world landing craft. A four-man patrol picked up signs of a large metallic object in an ice cavern two kilometres west of here. Their last transmission confirmed it was a lander, frozen solid with snow. Must have been right under our noses since before the winter months."
...

The ship was a merchant runner, entombed under a tongue of glacial ice. The burnt sepia of its painted hull appeared incandescent under the striated ice, almost aglow with lambent energy. A cavern formed its cradle, where it slumbered in the throat of a frosty maw, framed by fangs of icicles.

The ship itself was a blunt-nosed cruiser about two hundred paces long, the hammerhead of its prow pockmarked with the scars of asteroid collision. Roth surmised by its squat boxy frame that it was a block­ade runner, similar to the type favoured by illicit smugglers and errant rogue traders.
a 200 paces (150-300 metre) long landing craft. It might be warp capable or it might just be designed for sub-stellar use.



Page 24
The inquisitor led the way, auspex purring in his grip. Behind him, Silverstein and the Montaigh Guardsmen formed a staggered file with weapons covering every angle of approach. They reached no further than the shadow of the cave entrance when the auspex chimed three warning tones. A solitary target flashed on the display, half a kilometre from their position, almost right on top of the beached cruiser.
Auspex with half a km range.

PAge 24
Silverstein lowered his Exitus rifle and scanned the cave, optiscopic eyes whirring and feeding data. He achieved a lock-on almost instantly. +++Solitary target, stationary. Height 1.5 metres. Mass density approx. 40-50kg. Target identifica­tion: Female, human 98% - Female, xenos 57% -Humanoid, other 36%. Target distance: 298.33 metres. Status temperature - ALIVE+++
Hunter augmetics at work again.

Page 25
Despite the relentless cold, Roth was suddenly very glad for the frictionless trauma-plates that hugged his body.
Frictionless trauma plates. I imagine the frictionless bit helps bullets ricochet off. probably doesn't do much against energy weapons though.

Page 30
He holstered his pistol and was in the act of gingerly reaching out to touch the organic membrane when all three auspexes in his team chimed simultaneously. Roth froze.
3 auspexes in the team. At least one must belong to the Squad.

Page 31

- Hormagaunts. With a genestealer brood. Normally I'd call this a WTf, but I'm guessing that they're part of a combined infiltration effort. as I recall 'stealers and gaunts are sometimes deployed via spore pods as infiltrators to bree dand expand on planet preparatory to an invasion.

Page 32
The Blade Artisan pirouet­ted with a twirling downward stroke that severed one of the monstrosity's upper limbs. In reply, the tyranid speared her into the wall with a battering ram of psychic force.
Psychic tyranid using TK attack. Must be a synapse creature.

Page 32
The creature snaked back its torso with serpentine grace, evading the blow and swept in with its three remaining hook-scythes. Roth ducked, feeling an organic blade skip against the frictionless shoulder plate of his armour.
A benefit of frictionelss plates, I suppose.


Page 32
They fought on two separate planes. While their bodies raged, so too were their minds locked in a psychic duel. The tyranid was much stronger, its mind a tidal wave of raw, seething force. Roth was not a potent psyker, but what ability he had, he utilised well, sharpening and tightening his will into a poignard of deliverance. Although the broodlord's mind was like the staggering force of a blind avalanche, Roth's was the clean mind-spikes and mental ripostes of a Progenium-trained psychic duellist. It was like a death struggle between the kraken and the swordfish.
Inquisitor vs Tyranid psykers. Also a difference in fighting styles (sledgehammer versus stilletto)

PAge 34
Beyond the Sephardi ranges, Imperial artillery was pounding the mountains to rubble and the rubble to dust. The steady krang krang krang of the batter­ies sounded like thousand tonne slabs of rockrete in collision. In the tomb-vaults below the moun­tains, deep within the arterial labyrinth, billions of ancestral caskets tremored under the brutal bom­bardment. Finally, down amongst their dead, the Sirene Monarch's hidden legions would make ready for their last battle.

The assault on the Sirene tomb-vaults had started before dawn. To their credit, Imperial high com­mand had been quick to react, with Lord Marshal Cambria personally overseeing the mobilization of a quick reaction force within six hours. Inquisitor Roth's discovery had hammered a shockwave through the campaign's war-planners and they were eager to seize the initiative. The stalemate, it seemed, was about to be broken.
Mobilization time of Guard forces... manoeuvre warfare again, I guess. Also artillery in unknown quantity destroying a mountain.

Page 36
Falling in step behind Roth was Bastiel Silverstein. He toggled the target lock of his hunting crossbow to active and loaded a prey-seeker missile. The light polymer sleekness of a Veskepine arcuballista was ideal for tunnel assault.
Crossbow-fired prey-seeker missile.

Page 39
A psychic bolt exploded from the Monarch, warping the air around it into an oscillat­ing cone. It tore through Inquisitor Roth and threw him thirty feet down the ivory path in a spray of blood and black glass. The psychic aftershock rip­pled through the room like a stone in a pond, coating every surface in a thick rime of frost.

The mind blow would have liquefied any normal man. But Obodiah Roth had a trump card. The glinting hauberk of psi-reactive crystal had absorbed the brunt of the psyker's power. As shards of black glass scattered in a blizzard around him, Roth realised the armour would not survive another psychic attack. And neither would he. Blood and bile oozed from his mouth and nose in thick strings. His head swam and he could barely see.
The psi-armour proves useful.

Page 40
To his flanks, the Guardsmen con­tinued to rake a steady stream of las-rounds at the Monarch's scions. "I'll bet my balls that they're wearing armour under those gowns too," Roth laughed darkly to himself. Some of the scions were slammed off their feet by the kinetic force of the shots, only to get back up and continue charging the inquisitor's team.
Genestealers have armor that can stop las-fire yet can be worn under gowns. Lasfire still has enough force (from explosive vaporization no doubt) to knock Genestealers on their ass. Assuming a vapour velocity of 1000 m/s and a 200 kg 'stealer knocked half a metre back, we're talking 50 kj per shot at least, maybe.

Page 40
The xenos game hunter aimed his crossbow. He had swapped to a rapid-fire cartridge, designed to bring down swift moving game. On automatic, Silverstein could empty all twelve bolts into his assailant in three seconds. He needed only one. A salvo of bolts tore out the eunuch's face, the neural toxins causing the assailant to spasm so hard his spine broke. He dropped to the floor, his one hand locked into a flexing claw.
Automatic-rapid fire mode on the crossbow. 4 shots per second.

Page 44
Nearest to Roth, a Kurassian commando had died sitting up, the fingers of his gauntlet locked around the throat of an enemy. The Guardsman had been shot over a dozen times, but he had not released the chokehold.
Probably heavy infantry, and lived that long due to his armor. Whehter it is some kind of heavy flak (rigid plates) or carapace, or what, we don't know.

Page 46
Sirene was a frontier world and missionaries had been the only true Imperial outposts on the planet. Incidentally, those clerics and ecclesiarches were also the only ones to access warp-capable vessels.
Priests with warp capable vessels, somehow.

Page 49
On Sirene Primal, seventy thousand Guardsmen of Montaigh, Kurass and Amartine dug in on the rugged Sephardi ranges to stall the xenos advance. It is said, that within three months the mountains had been transformed into a sprawling network of artillery pal­isades, tunnelled barbicans and interlocking firing nests. Once the xenos made landfall, the Guardsmen were expected to hold out for eight weeks. They lasted less than five hours.
IG vs Hivefleet. 70,000 is not going to fend off millions or billions no matter what.

Page 52
"they saw this world from space and they named it Bahani, meaning "Blue". For when they came here the deserts were oceans, the winds were soft and the land swelled with fruit and grain. Our people thought this was the great reward from the Emperor, and so they helped the masters, the Imperial men, to build their towers and their factories. We served them willingly, never knowing that they would cloud the skies, boil away the seas and turn the air to smoke."
Ah, the benefits of Imperial membership. Probably in millenai or centuries to do that, but boiling away oceans is not trivial (megatons per second of energy easily over millenia)

Page 53-54
Tensions were high between the hundreds of Administratum officials in the process of decommissioning the Imperium's assets and the millions of indentured workers that they were to leave behind. It meant an end to the tithes; no longer would they have to labour within the mega-processing plants or on the vapour-ships evaporating seawater to extract the minerals it held. They would be free, or at least as free as any man could be in this dark galaxy. But, more than anything else, theirs would also be the freedom to starve, to fight and to die. Every industry on Bahani was devoted to the extraction of raw materials that other worlds craved and the Administratum and their indentured workers had systematically boiled the seas and eviscerated the land over the millennia of their occupation. Now, the Imperium had taken all it could and was moving on..
..

The structures he had seen when they landed, they were ships. Huge factory ships, old and gutted, their hulls pock-marked with rust. There was rank upon rank of these hulks, settled, immovable, upon the salty plain.

"My grandfather," the worker continued, "he said that this used to be the deepest part of the Great Western Sea. That is why all the vapour-ships, they ended up here. To finish off the last of it."
We learn the method and reasons why the Imperium fucked up the planet. Basically they strip mined every ueable resource out of it. Iron alone in the crust is something like e21 kg, and the other elements alone can boost that quantity by a good factor of 5 or 6, so even if the planet were (say) smaller and poorer in important mateirals (1000x off) we're talking quadrillions of tons of metals easily. The oceans probably wouldn't yield nearly as much (less than a fraction of a percent for most) but they stripped tha ttoo - possibly an indicator that the crusts weren't as plentiful.


Page 60
The Relentless, a Lunar-class cruiser, warship of the most-revered Emperor's Navy, hung in silent orbit as the Imperial departure from Bahani con­tinued apace. From the tip of its heavy prow, with armour metres thick, to the mighty engines at its stern it measured more than eight kilometres long and over a mile high. Every crenelation, every tower that festooned its hull was unique, having been repaired or replaced countless times over its centuries of service. Every cannon and launcher that made up the batteries along its flanks had its name and a gun-crew whose sole purpose was its service.
It probably isnt really 8 km long... although its possible Lunar class vessels do get this long. We know it isn't in this case because Relentless describes the same ship as 3 km long.

Length to height ratio is 5:1. Also it has both cannon and launcher for its batteries.


Page 61
Perhaps once, in the glory years of Battlefleet Bethesba, the officer corps of the Relentless had served selflessly, out of pride and loyalty to the Emperor, but now all that seemed to motivate them was personal profit and advancement.
Battlefleet Bethesba. Also this is not a very good fleet, as outlined in the novel Relentless.

Page 63
He had been attached to the Imperia Ordinatus and was only a short distance away from where the imposing master of ordnance sat surrounded by servitors, each one linked into a battery of consoles feeding them data regarding the ready condition of the ship's torpedoes and smaller craft. In battle, this position would resound with a cacophony of noises; for the moment, however, it was quiet.
Servitors linked into data feeds about the conditon of torpedoes and attack craft. It implies some sort of computer-element in their control and operation/


Page 65
"I, Governor Horsl Kaizen, speak for the Adeptus Terra. For this world before us designated 129 Tai D, known as Bahani, I hereby declare all tithe-treaties void and debts extant cancelled and declare this world as orbis cassi - of no further worth."

"I, Commander Tomias Ward, first officer of the Emperor's warship Relentless, speak for Battlefleet Bethesba. For this world before us designated 129 Tai D, I hereby declare this world as orbis поп contegnum. We entrust the defence of this world back to its people. May they stand strong and faithful in their new age of His service."
..

The vox-officer tapped a single key. In an instant the communique flashed from his screen to the command deck data-nexus and from there flew through space to strike its intended target: one of Bahani's orbital beacons. Within the same second, the beacon digested its contents and had taken the necessary action and passed the same message onto its fellows. The message itself was complex, it had taken days to prepare with the necessary encryp­tions, authorisations and passwords, but its essence was simple:

You are no longer a part of the Imperium.

The planet would be excised from the Administratum's great volumes of the Emperor's worlds; if it were attacked, the Imperium would not listen to its cries for help. Trade and transport routes would be redefined, no longer would the merchant fleets that Bahani relied upon for its food venture there.
A bit of hypocrisy considering how often we hear "all human worlds are part of the Imperium". I'd also have to think this doesn't happen very often. They "lose" worlds, but they don't just give them up - we can name tons of worlds that the Imperium has virtually raped of all resources, population, etc. yet hold onto because it's a human world and that's what the Imperium does. Cynicism tells me this world probably was abandoned for selfish, personal or political reasons after being stripped, not because the Imperium at large would approve. Hell, I doubt the Imperium even is aware of the fact or cares.

It's also pretty vindictive that the world basically will be ignored by trade and merchant ships. Considering that the planet was virtually ruined by the Imperium's resource gathering efforts here, that pretty much means that without support the people on the planet (12 million) would die.



Page 66
At its centre travelled the Gloriana Vance, the Barbican-class liner carrying the Administratum officials and those valuable goods and machinery deemed worthy of removal in the evacuation. In formation around it were the Spur, Illys and Onyx, Sword-class frigates assigned as escort. Behind these trailed three dozen cargo scows carrying the last shipment of processed ore that the factories of Bahani would produce. At the fore, dwarfing the smaller ships, the cruiser Relentless majestically swung into the lead position.
Barbican class liner, plus escort. And a last shipment of Ores.


Page 75
The transport had landed, its exit ramp had dropped and Marcher and his men had scrambled for what cover they could find as the transport's multilasers ran red-hot, providing covering fire.
Transport multilasers.


Page 78
One, heavier than the rest, had an ugly cannon slung underneath which spat splinter-shot, stitching a bloody line along the deck, slicing apart the bodies of those trying to flee.
Splinter shot cannon.

Page 79
The can­non spat again, a clean line of explosions bit along the wall at waist-height, catching those crouching in the shoulders and face and cutting the armsmen standing in two. The blood and the dust billowed up and obscured the carnage beneath for a moment before it was blown clear by the sky-boards sweeping past. The scream of their engines faded to be replaced by the screams of the armsmen left with arms and legs hanging from their perforated torsos.


Cannon bisecting armsmen.

Page 80
The sky-boarder tried to jink but he could not dodge such a volley. His body was torn apart, his board spun and the other fliers screeched as they realised their forma­tion was too tight for safety. Two of them managed to wheel away, the other over-steered and fell. He twisted through the air and landed rolling onto the deck. He sprang to his feet, pulling at a pistol and was blown back by a single shot, half his face missing.

...

This time the raider was already turning, flipping his board, thinking to use it as a shield. Useless thought. The heavy shot punctured the board's engine and it spiralled out of control and exploded. The other raiders however had kept well separated and swept down amongst the armsmen.
Naval shotguns vs Dark Eldar.

Page 85
The view-portal flicked to a view of the Sword frigate behind them. Its point-defence turrets flashed for a second, valiantly trying to track the missiles detected too late. One, two and then a third explosion rocked the frigate, blowing away the dor­sal control towers and chunks of the engine. The frigate held firm for a moment and then a series of secondary blasts ripped through its interior.
Depending on the range form the target, this could mean an Eldar torpedo velocity between 100 km/s and 1000 km/s (the noted range of point defense turrets in the BFG novels - depending on which turrets you talk of) by other novels - Thousands of km/s is possible. Imperial torpedoes are slower, but not dramatically more so for the most part. Eldar torpedoes IIRC can penetrate shields, so this argues macro cannon projectiles (and other proejctiels blocked by shields) travel many times faster.


Page 86
"Angle a wide arc across its centre. Maintain a link with the torpedoes; be ready to detonate them at my instruction."

..

The torpedoes entered the shadow thousands of miles apart from each other. Far too distant from each other to be effective as a combat strike, but their purpose was not to damage the enemy, just to find him.
Torpedo spread thousands of km apart from each other.. also note the use of telemetry feeds.


Page 87
Explosions flared in the space before them, tiny against the vast shadow, but the streams of data flowing back into the auspex arrays spiked.

"Well?" Ward demanded.

Lieutenant Aden opened his mouth and it hung there for a second. "Yes... a distortion in one explo­sion."

"Feed those coordinates through," Ward crowed. "Mister Crichell, take us in, bring our broadside
to bear. Mister Roche, ready the port gun batteries. "
Using proximity torpedo detonations to locate and pinpoint the Dark Eldar ship in its shadowfield.

Page 89
They were fascinated by Marcher's exploits; he who had actually met the enemy face-to-face and not merely watched them on scopes a thousand miles distant.
If scopes is meant to mean beyond visual range, they would have to be small ships.

Page 102 - whatever the mineral they salvaged from that planet's oceans was, it blows up really well. Probably gives us an idea of why they were salvaging it.

Page 103
Governor Kaizen, taking command of the station, swore that, explosion or no explosion, he would brook no delay in the full installation of extraction and processing infrastructure onto the surface of the verdant planet 42 Mai T, known as Msuti to the workers who had recently been transported there. Initial surveys had suggested that Msuti could sus­tain full mining operations for at least three thousand years before it would become exhausted and uninhabitable. Not long in galactic terms, but it would do until the Imperium found the next one.
Yet more grimdark. It seems to be typical procedure here. 3000 year lifespan to exhaust minerals. If we assume earthlike for iron (e20-21 kg) we'r talkig some e16-e17 kg per year.
At the end of the time the planet will be uninhabitable too.


Page 108
A headless body lay beside him, the ragged stump of neck still enthusiastically pumping blood onto the dark, almost black, soil. Another corpse lay amid the dripping carcass of an exploded fruit, its chest cavity ripped open as though an explosive charge had det­onated within. Other bodies lay in similar states of terrible ruin - heads crushed, limbs removed or tor­sos ripped apart.
Bolter fire.

Page 129
The Imperial battleship sailed away from the Warbreed, its enormous bulk a slab of bristling, ancient metal as it plied its stately course through the stars, oblivious to the enemy that passed beneath it. Its name was a mystery, but the threat it represented should any of its surveyors, auspex or escorts discover them was very real indeed.

Ever since Cycerin had brought the ship through the gates of the empyrean, they had followed a stut­tering course towards their target, avoiding patrol flotillas, system monitors and listening posts scat­tered throughout the system.


System defence fleet.

Page 132
The three warriors watched the pinpoint of light grow from a speck in the darkness to something more angular and blocky. As the distance lessened, the shape resolved into a gently spinning orbital defence platform, though the majority of its launch bays were angled towards the planet's surface.

The defence platform hung in geostationary orbit above the planet's equator above a loathsome stretch of purple that spread across a wide, ochre landmass.
Geostationary defence platform.

Page 135
Even so, it had been a stroke of luck to have the nearby monitor on station. They hadn't detected it, but as it was engine-on to the sun's corona that wasn't surprising. The Veritas codes were old ones, but were still genuine and permission had been granted for it to dock.
Coming in with the sun at your back, so to speak.


Page 136
Honsou raised his bolter and shot First Officer Alevov in the face.

The headless body slammed against the bronze walls of the airlock and the gun's report echoed deafeningly in the confined chamber. Honsou moved swiftly forward, seeing two open-mouthed soldiers at the chamber's exit with a heavy calibre weapon.
Shock and horror had paralysed them for a moment, but it was all Honsou needed. His bolter roared again and the soldiers were torn in two by a sawing arc of bolter shells.
headshot bolt round, as well as bisecting them.

Page 136
Honsou rolled around the door; his bolter raised to his shoulder and pumping out lethally aimed shots directed by his augmetic eye. Three soldiers flopped back, their chests pulped to ruptured craters by three shots.
Bolt rounds blast out chests.

Page 138
One soldier crumpled, his shoulder blasted away and his face shredded by exploding fragments of bone.
More bolter fire.

Page 139
Grendel shrugged and dropped the wailing soldier, who crawled away holding his shattered wrist close to his chest. Grendel let him get a few metres away before turning his weapon on him and unleashing a superheated blast of energy from the underslung melta gun.

The protective senses of his helmet dimmed momentarily as the white-hot blast engulfed the sol­dier and Grendel laughed as the glow faded and he saw the stumps of feet and charred skull lid that was all that remained.
meltablast vaporizes/cremates soldier. hundreds or thousands of megajoules.


Page 140-141
One soldier carried a stubby tube on his shoulder, into which another man stuffed a finned missile.

Honsou wanted to laugh at the desperation of the weapon, before realising that the detonation of such a missile would explosively decompress the entire outer ring and send everyone within hurtling into space.
..

A bloom of noise, light and smoke erupted from the soldiers and, though it was surely impossible to see such a fast moving object, Honsou saw a needle-nosed missile streaking towards him.
Honsou felt the daemon withdraw into the weapon and end the battle for control, but knew it was far too late to avoid the missile. He threw his arm up before him in an instinctive gesture of defence.

The force of the impact hurled him from his feet and he felt a terrible, leeching power within him, as though a loathsome, dark force tapped into his life-force. His head slammed against the wall and he looked down to see the smoking, hissing fins of the missile embedded in the rippling silver of the arm he had taken from the Ultramarines sergeant.

Light pulsed in the depths of the arm, flitting fire­flies of energy that spoke of technology wrought in an age long forgotten and a race of such malice that his own petty evils were insignificant when measured alongside theirs. Even as he watched, a fiery orange line hissed around the circumference of the portion of the missile that protruded from his arm and it fell to the deck with a clatter of metal.
Rocket launcher... no match for a necron-infected augmetic arm. It ets anything.

Page 147-148
A salvo of sixteen orbital torpedoes surged from the planetside launch bays, followed by another rippling salvo seconds later. Another three salvos launched until all but one of the platform's entire payload of missiles was expended. Each missile dropped away rapidly from the platform, the blue-hot coals of their engines firing for long enough to put them in a bal­listic trajectory towards the planet's surface.

They swooped downwards like hunting raptors, their formation breaking up as the spread pattern implanted into each warhead by Adept Cycerin took hold of each one. The missiles diverged until their contrails were spread around the planet like a glitter­ing spiderweb.

Heat shields burned with conical fire as the mis­siles plunged through the atmosphere, emerging into the crystal skies of the planet. Hurried defences scrambled to lock onto the missiles, but launched from low orbit, they were already travelling too quickly and were too close to be engaged with any hope of success.

As the missiles reached a predetermined altitude over the planet's surface, each one exploded and spread its viral payload into the air. Vast quantities of the experimental Heraclitus strain were released into the atmosphere in doses billions of times greater than had been employed on Golbasto.

All across the planet, a terrible rain fell, the genius of Magos Szalin of the Ordos Biologis wreaking ter­rible damage as it went to work on the indigenous and xenos vegetation.
Low orbit (geostationary?) torpedo bombardment and the Heralictus virus in action. Station must have some AG effect to allow for artificial orbital stability.

Page 148
Though the invasion had been defeated, the dread­ful legacy of the alien invaders remained to taint the planet's ecology forever. From pole to pole, horrific spires of dreadful alien vegetable matter towered over the landscape, slowly choking the life from the nat­ural landscape.

The alien flora had subsumed entire continents, a rapacious instinct to devour encoded in every strand of its genetic structure. Nutrients were leeched from the soil and used to create hyper-fertile spore growths that drifted on the heated currents of the air to seed new regions and pollute yet more land.

Only rigorous burning policies ensured the planet's survival - for a world of the Imperium could not simply be abandoned, not after all the blood that had been shed in its defence. The shining steel cities, islands in a sea of alien growth, still produced masses of munitions and armoured vehicles for Imperial wars throughout the subsector.

Salvoes of anti-plant missiles, slash and burn pogroms and pesticide overflights were a matter of routine since the defeat of the invasion.

Such things were thankless tasks, but necessary for the planet's continued survival.
Aftermath of Warriors of Ultramar. Much as with Orks, once the 'Nids take hold you can never get rid of them.

It's funny that they say a world cannot be abandoned, when we just got done with a short story where the Imperium does precisely that. It's a case of one hand not even being aware of what the other does.

Page 149-150
Developed from a partial fragment of ancient research conducted by Magos Heraclitus, the bio-toxins were intended to increase the growth rate of crops on agri-worlds. Magos Szalin had taken the next step and pioneered techniques designed to increase the productivity of such worlds a thousand fold.

Now that work was put to the ultimate test, mixing its monstrous potential for increased growth with an alien organism that was at the apex of its biological efficiency.

Within seconds of the Heraclitus strain being released into the atmosphere, the alien growths reacted to its touch, surging upwards and over the planet's terrain. Slash and burn teams were instantly overwhelmed by mutant growths, poisonous plant life expanding kilometres in seconds as the virulent growth strain sent its metabolism into overdrive.

Huge amounts of nutrients were sucked from the ground and released as enormous quantities of heat, raising the ambient temperature of the world in a matter of moments. Oxygen was sucked greedily from the atmosphere by horrifyingly massive spore chimneys and the planet's protective layers were gradually stripped in unthinking biological geno­cide.

This was not the rapid death of Exterminatus, but ecological death of worldwide proportions.
Panicked messages were hurled out into the imma­terium and only those with the money, influence or cunning escaped on hastily prepped ships that fled the planet's destruction.
But these were few compared to the billions left behind and, weeks later, as the last of the planet's atmosphere was stripped from it by the hyper-evolved alien biology, stellar radiation swept the surface, killing every living thing and laying waste to all that remained.

Months after the launch of the missiles, nothing remained alive, the deadly alien vegetation killed by lethal levels of radiation and the frigid cold that gripped the planet without its protective atmos­phere.

All that now remained of the planet was a dead, lifeless ball of rock, its surface seared and barren, with only the skeletal remains of its blackened cities left as evidence that human beings had once lived upon it.
Exterminatus-like, but slower operating than normal, which suits Chaos because of the probable psychologicla/terror elements to it. Note that Exterminatus here is defined as "rapid death", which may in fact be a requirement (most forms of Exterminatus take no more than hours or minutes to execute, so it makes sense) - weeks and months is (as a rule) far too long for an Exterminatus to be carried off. (unless its the Blood Ravens codex. This may rule out certain kinds of deep-penetrating or excessive Exterminatus.)

Exterminatus like effects probably remain the same though - removal of atmosphere and oceans (Destruction) among other things.

Page 150
The silver-skinned drop-ship fell through the airless vacuum of the planet. A host of Marauders and Rap­tors followed it down, though nothing lived here now.
Fighters deploying from orbit.

Page 151
Cautiously, for none aboard truly felt safe, a squad of Adeptus Mechanicus Tech-Guard clad in heavy environment suits - similar in function and design to the Terminator armour employed by the Adeptus Astartes - emerged and descended to the planet's sur­face.
Techguard in terminator-armour like enviroment suits. Neat.

Page 152
Locard saw a battered silver tube, perhaps ten metres in length - an orbital torpedo, though his exo-armour's auspex told him there was no ordnance or explosives loaded in the warhead. This was the source of the signal and Locard knew that someone had wanted them to find this.
10 meter long torpedo. note "ordnance or explosives" is treated separately. Ordnance may be some sort of projectile or thermal/energy blast (EG plasma or melta payload)

Page 156
There had been rumours during the long journey from Mars. He had heard in his one remaining organic ear that the planet had no official name, which was long ago expunged from Explorator records, Imperial Navy charts and Terran libraria by deletion orders from the highest offices of the Adep­tus Terra, from the High Lords of Terra themselves. Even the Inquisition had been persuaded to overlook its existence. The only off-world record of the planet was on Mars, deep within the most ancient data-cores, buried beneath the iron-plated flanks of Olympus Mons. The rumours said that the Adeptus Mechanicus were the sole overlords of the genetor facility here - and of the unnamed planet that it called home.
The events of Hydra Cordatus mentioned. This is a honsou story after all. As usual the Imperium takes every effort to cover up the facts.


Page 158
The Life-Eater. One of the hallowed munitions of Exterminatus, the Killer of Worlds, the direst sentence brought to bear by the Holy Ordos of the Emperor's Inquisition against a planetary population whose crimes against the Throne of Terra deserved annihila­tion, absolute and entire. Wholesale planetary destruction.

This planet was where servants of the Adeptus Mechanicus made the Life-Eater virus for the great fleets of the Segmentum Obscurus. In an age when Cyclonic and Incineratus torpedoes were widely used for Exterminatus, and when even some members of the Inquisition frowned upon the Life-Eater for rea­sons the Mechanicus had long forgotten, the magi biologi of the Adeptus Mechanicus still made one of ancient Terra's most prodigious weapons. Flesh was imperfect, as Archmagos Biologis Vaeyvor had said so many times, and the engine of its annihilation was praise indeed to the Omnissiah.

And the Omnissiah was praised with unceasing industry. Tox-flues and convection stacks ran through the towering facility like veins, steering noxious waste into the rotten atmosphere and the curdled sea. In secure laboratoria, some even surrounded by void shields, wizened genetors created what natural biologi­cal processes could never devise. Their chemical creations were processed and refined in vacuum-sealed cauldrons, stretching across vast vat-galleries, which looked out over dead oceans. In filtration and infusion chambers, servitors were hard-wired into endless banks of support and monitoring machinery. Their organics were all but eroded by the corrosive toxins and, despite the durability of steel and plasticide tissue, many disin­tegrated within days of exposure.
Facility for manufacturing the life eater virus.. or at least one kind of it. Made mainly due to tradition and as a symbol of the AdMech philsophy (flesh is weak) and one of the longest-lived weapons. Done in void shielded facilities as well as other security measures. Even then it will destroy servitors within days due to virulence.

Rather interesting in that this implies (at least in Obscurus) that other forms of exterminatus are more common (cyclonic and incineratus torpedoes - both of which sound brute force and highly energetic.)

The other thing about this story that is interesting is that it implies they not only make, but they refine the WMDs to make them better (that's even a part of this plot.)

Page 159
Rottle's cortical splicing had not only robbed him of knowing why he left Mars, but why he was part of this magnificent process. He calculated that his service in Martian genetoria had qualified him or perhaps won him preferment. Upon arrival, he was responsible for overseeing the purity-choirs that kept the Life-Eater's toxins dormant during refinement, for calibrating gene-vats, and igniting the lumosphoids to ensure uncorrupted organics - all in the blessed name of the Omnissiah. He could no longer remember the risks involved. Glory unto the Omnissiah was all.
More safety measures.

Page 161
Rottle struck the gene-vat head-on. Though only the size of a modest man, he weighed far more. Durasteel fittings and plasticide and rubbrete tissue all weighed much more than human organics. Rottle's humanity was but a humble fraction of his mass. His momentum was immense.
The gene-vat shook, swayed, and setded - its legs buckled and the suspensor field growled and fizzed. Rottle staggered, almost losing sentient operable function - consciousness - and his auditory sensors shrilled with the impact.
AdMech weigh far more than normal humans due to augmetics. Note using suspsensors to sustain gene-vats.

Page 162
In that moment, he never saw the long-dormant spire defences growl into action as gyros swivelled onto the incoming target. Several racks of Hurricane bolters - three linked boltguns - opened up and a furious torrent of hot metal strafed the leviathan. The Hurricanes blew great chunks of rancid meat from the creature, disintegrating it in a blizzard of shells. To the targeting scanners, the target simply evapo­rated. When Rottle looked, staggering and reeling, he saw nothing. Neither did he see three drops of dor­mant Life-Eater drop to the floor from the vat's sizzling lip. Outside of the vat's stasis field, the Life-Eater awoke.
Orbital/aerial defenses.

Also note the stasis fields used to protect (keep dormant) the Life Eater.

Page 165
"The Omnissiah works by knowledge alone," the archmagos replied severely. "This is an unprece­dented incident, but a numerically permissible one." It was only unprecedented in so far as the Holy Ordos remained ignorant of Rottle's accident and recovery. Other permissible incidents had occurred in the past - such as the flensing of Reppertrix Straynge on Crux II or the ascension of Enginseer Heliope - but the Ordos would descend upon the Mechanicus and eradicate all records and recollec­tions. Vaeyvor rarely regretted such culling, but it was such a waste of tech-priests and magi. Only Vaeyvor knew of these incidents by the gaps in his labyrinthine memory, the names without things that were like negative impressions of an ancient pict-stealer. What he knew was that the Holy Ordos had worked against the glories of the Omnissiah, and that Umbracogg was now one of the few places in the galaxy that such a miracle might take place undis­covered because it simply didn't exist in the wider records of the Adeptus Terra. Perhaps that was the miracle: it was secret, permissible.
Again the AdMech goes to great lengths to keep its secrets from other Imeprial orgnaizations, including the Inquisition - they despite having information taken from him. (This suggests a rather obvious conflict between the Inquisition and AdMech - the AdMech would favour certian kinds of knowledge - knowledge is therie business, whilst the Inquisition exists to control or deny information to people it deems incapable of handling it. Wht the Admech seeks to dig up, the Inquisition suppresses or even purges.)



Page 165-166
The facility's chirurgeons had remarked upon the strange quality of Rottle's remaining flesh. Contami­nated by the Life-Eater, it should have broken down into the chemical sludge that was capable of devour­ing more resilient proteins, such as keratin and chitin, as well as bone. But Rottle's remaining soft tis­sue was oddly resilient, if rotten and suppurating, and the chirurgeons only dismissed the puzzle because they assumed Rottle to be dead. That any flesh had remained was perhaps the greatest miracle of all.
Or it means he's been turned into a plague zombie. Really, is this the first time the Magos biologis has run across this phenomenon that they wouldn't be aware of it.

Also life eater will destroy hard organics as well as soft tissue.

Page 168-169
"I can improve the Life-Eater, my lord. I can perfect it. I have been blessed by a revelation of pure knowl­edge that only the Omnissiah could bestow. I can create the instant destruction of our enemies by rob­bing the living of life itself, by taking from existence the weakness of being!"

"We do not have the technology to replicate vortex weaponry, magos," responded Vaeyvor.

"Using such a weapon against a planet would create dangers beyond our understanding. The Life-Eater need only sterilize, not obliterate. We seek only to take life, not matter."

"My point exactly, archmagos. The new Life-Eater will take only life, not matter, nor any creation of the materium. It will attack the very spark of life and destroy only those beings whose being marks them as living!"

The archmagos paused, gears grinding quietly until a hiss indicated the release of internal coolants. Vaeyvor was calculating probabilities, possibilities, solutions and scenarios. "The very spark of life?"

"Yes, my lord."

"From the god-like Astartes to the lowest of the underhive?"

Rottle nodded his prehensile optical sensors. The sensation was strange.

More coolants hissed from inside Vaeyvor's volu­minous cloak. "From the highest aquila of the Terran sky to the deepest ocean scumling?"

Rottle nodded again, aware that Vaeyvor was inton­ing the Catechism of Cleansing. He knew what came next.

"From purest sentience to bestial instinct - the eradication of living existence?"

"Oh yes, my lord," responded Rottle with certainty. "I can promise the very eradication of life. The Life-Eater has never been so hungry as I shall make it."
Yet another warning sign that Something Is Wrong. Stupid AdMech. It's also interesting that they say the point of life eater is to "sterilize not obliterate" since many of the firegas producing Virus bombs (life eater as well) can obliterate as well as sterilize. This does confirm that sterilization IS part of exterminatus though.. down to insects and minior life forms even.

Oh yeah and they (supposedly) can't replicate vortex weaponry, despite the fact Titans and the Guard and everyone else still use the warheads. But they'll improve Life Eater.

Page 170
To let Rottle live now would risk unwelcome attention; to let him die might betray the Omnissiah Himself. But he could be buried in shielded laboratoria for years, hidden in the facility's poisonous depths, where few dared tread, or trod without dying. The secrets of the Machine-God could be made manifest secretly, and one day unleashed in the glorious name of the Emperor.
Yes, let's make things even worse. Keep your dangers even more secret so they can fester (pun intended.) No worse than the punny names.

Next week part two: The aftermath.
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Cykeisme
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Re: 40K anthologies compiliation analysis thread

Post by Cykeisme »

Telling a human world that they are "no longer part of the Imperium" is a ridiculous contradiction of one of the most deep-rooted facets of the canon. The only time a human being is not a member of the Imperium is because they have not yet been discovered (or have fallen out of contact), or they are mutants, traitors or heretics. There is no way that a world inhabited by loyal servants of the Emperor on a world that is in contact with the Imperium would be expelled.
That planet can still provide tithes of men for the Guard, crews for the Navy's ships, or workers in manufactorums that can still be built on the planet. Many Hive Worlds require resources to be imported (and the manufactured goods exported back out), it's strange that they didn't simply build factories on that world.

Anyway, for all its failings, a key fact about the Imperium of Man is that it protects mankind, and while often the lesser has to be sacrificed for the greater, it makes no sense to fuck up a perfectly good world.

I'd agree with you that the greater Imperium likely would not approve of this dickish move no doubt decided by corrupt local officials.. it's the only rationalization that remotely makes sense.
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Re: 40K anthologies compiliation analysis thread

Post by Connor MacLeod »

I've actually thought about this some and run across a few similar examples in other sources so my mind has changed a bit. In Helsreach for example, they mention that if Armageddon couldn't continue producing troops and equipment for the Imperium, their tithe would suffer and the Administratum would downgrade them accordingly (EG they produce less, they get less in return, including military aid becuase the place stopped being as important as it was.) We also know that the Imperium's only cares about its tithes and its laws on planets it does not directly administer or control (EG it can go to hell.) That can be good or bad.

We also know that the Administratum/munitorum/ecclesiarchy/etc will not hesitate to use, abuse, or rape a world for its own purposes should it need to (It happens fairly often in the FFG material.) so that much at least makes sense.

So considering those factors, it actually makes some sense that there would be a world the Administratum basically uses it - it strips all the resources out of it it needs, then basically ignores it from that point onwards because it is no longer useful.

What doesn't make sense is the part where they say 'you arne't part of the Imperium' in any literal sense, change the warp/trade routes (like you can actually shift them about physically) or that the Administrtum is going to remove them from their records (they never erase ANYTHING.) In that case, I'd just consider Ward a moron, especially since what happens in RElentless show's he's an egotistical fuck with little or no connection to reality or what the Imperium actually does.
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Re: 40K anthologies compiliation analysis thread

Post by Lost Soal »

Oh yeah and they (supposedly) can't replicate vortex weaponry, despite the fact Titans and the Guard and everyone else still use the warheads. But they'll improve Life Eater.
Its possible he's talking about their specific facility. Its dedicated towards developing and manufacturing Virus weaponry, there is nothing about that goal which would require technology capable of ripping holes in the fabric of reality. We also know that the Admech won't share knowledge between their own forge worlds so I doubt they would have any information stored on planet to help them create the machinery themselves.
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Re: 40K anthologies compiliation analysis thread

Post by Cykeisme »

Connor..
Yeah, that's always an issue with fiction written in shared universes, unfortunately.

Agreed, I can understand a world being downgraded in importance and thus how the world would fit into the formula for how much military assistance it would get in the face of a threat. The Imperium, however, would never completely remove a world filled with loyal non-mutant humans from its rolls.. and changing "warp routes" is downright hilarious.

For example, if merchant fleets find that the people have nothing in demand to trade, the trade routes would stop going there simply by the fact that it's unprofitable.
However, if they DO have something of value, preventing merchant ships from going there is going to prevent the merchants from exploiting business opportunities there, and to what end?

Besides, like I said, they've got 12 million people there with nothing to do but eke out a painfully bleak existence and possible starvation. What I see is potential Guard cannon fodder and manufactorum wageslaves.
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Re: 40K anthologies compiliation analysis thread

Post by Connor MacLeod »

LAst of Planetkill.


Page 171
The planet's vast mines, each of which was driven into the tectonic jigsaw of its cracked surface like a spike, tapped the planet's super-heavy core. Each was populated by a billion souls: miners, their families, enginseers, tech-priests, and Administratum officials. Not a single hive-mine had been operational for months.

For Carnage had been struck by plague and civil war. The suffering had been terrible and the bonds of civil society had collapsed. War followed and the sur­vivors of the plague destroyed each other in a campaign of internecine conflict that pitched conti­nent against continent. But the inhabitants of Carnage would not destroy each other before destroying what remained of their mining wealth and the very mines that gave their world meaning. The Administratum petitioned the Departmento Munitorum, which sent emissaries to the Holy Ordos of Terra. The Ordo Hereticus assumed com­mand of the situation and approved the ultimate sanction: Exterminatus.

It was why The Emperor's Despair hung silently in high orbit. Carnage would be sterilized.
Within days of Ordo Hereticus involvement, astropathic communications with the Adeptus Mechanicus and several Adeptus Astartes Chapters secured a solution. The Emperor's Despair now sat loaded with a test strain of a new Life-Eater virus. The Doom Warriors Chapter was chosen to administer the Emperor's mercy to the lost planet of Carnage.
"hive mines' - an interesting sort of underground hive world. Each one has a billion people. Perhaps scores if not hundreds of such mines?

Oh yeah, and because of HEresy - exterminatus. I guess we're back to "planets aren't important" - they'll keep a Tyranid infested world, but they'll destroy a perfectly good mining world.

Page 172
With a noble history stretching back thousands of years, the Doom Warriors had long specialised in campaigns of cleansing which appealed to their sat­urnine turn of character - the result of a defect in the Catalepsean Node, some said. Not only was it said that Doom Warriors did not sleep, but they required no hope, nor cause, to fight in the name of the Emperor. They were a morose, moody Chapter, bound together by a mutual misanthropy for those members of the Imperium who failed to see the galaxy's hopelessness. The nearest a Doom Warrior came to happiness was revelling in this hopelessness by immersing himself in its bloodshed and destruc­tion. They made as formidable warriors as existed in the galaxy.
The Doom Warriors chapter. As if Space marines needed another emo chapter with the Doom Eagles and the like.


Page 173-174
They stepped inside and vast launch galleries panned out before them. Along each gallery sat a great metal tube, fitted with buffering insulation, powerful coolant flues, and organic dissi-paters. At intervals, there were banks of servitors, wired into each great barrel to monitor breach integrity, targeting solutions and kinetic trajectories. These were the firing cylinders for viral torpedoes.
virus torpedo firing bay.

Page 174
"The population is dead or dying, captain." Qannix's vox played directly into Slayne's implanted ear-piece. "The survivors are killing the diseased before they're dead, or else each other, as well as destroying the mining infrastructure of the planet. Three hive-mines have already collapsed into the planet's core and more will do so within days. Hive-Mine Mogma'crun will fall within hours because every bastion spire has failed. The situation is critical, captain."
at least 3-4 mines. Hours for the virus to work.

Page 176
"The Emperor's Tears, Captain Slayne," Rottle con­tinued. "An evolved Life-Eater that attacks not meat and bone, but the spark of life itself. The old Life-Eater devoured protein, multiplying exponentially as it did so, turning all organic matter into pyroplosive sludge that burned away the very elements capable of sustaining life. The Emperor's Tears takes away life itself. A far more efficient means of killing, I think you'll agree."
Definition of how life eater works - it seems to target protein and use it to multiply into highly flammable/combustible "sludge" which results in the firegas ("pyroplosive") which destroy the elements sustaining life (air at least, possibly oceans - I assume it strips off the reactive components like hydrogen or oxygen.) It must also generate tremendous heat as a byproduct of the speed of biologicla processes (hours or minutes?) which could be used to self-ignite the firegas.

Page 178
A new weapon was always interesting until it jammed, overheated, or was copied by those Throne-damned orks. A thunderous shudder broke his contemplation.
Heh. I love this line. Imagine what kind of shit they learn from the Imperium in this way.

Also mention of production of "new weapons" - eg no stagnation. They'll test and design new weapons though, which makse sense. Galaxy of War and all that.


Page 178-179
The torpedoes struck the upper atmosphere like splashes of quicksilver. Through the viewing bays of the launch arcade, their disintegration was beautiful, their payloads sparkling and glinting in the sun's light. Though dwarfed by the sheer scale of the planet, and soon lost in its thick atmosphere, the Emperor's Tears had an immediate effect. As the lower atmosphere was punctured, great, dark clouds of dead matter billowed into space. It was the dying bacteria that lived in the planet's ammonia-rich atmosphere. As life increased in complexity and fre­quency towards the planet's surface, such dark clouds became stains racing across the planet, like oil upon water, contaminating every iota of life with death, robbing all existence of being. Clouds of dead and decaying matter mushroomed into space, propelled by the violence of their own destruction. The hive-mines became still within moments.

Carnage became a place of peace.

Orbital scans indicated that death had descended upon the planet. Servitors croaked and drooled as they calculated the awesome power of the Emperor's compassion. Slayne raised an eyebrow. What the old Life-Eater virus could accomplish in hours was hap­pening in moments. The universe had just become a little darker.

Within minutes, Carnage was dead. And then it happened. Carnage came back to life.

Servitors reeled off impossible data-readings. Reams of script and punched parchment spooled onto the deck in untidy heaps. Lights blinked and klaxons roared throughout the launch arcade. Else­where on The Emperor's Despair, the ship's great logic engines struggled to compute the surge in planetary life-sign. The ship's very machine-spirit cried out in confusion, causing whole galleries of hard-wired tech-adepts to die instantly. Most of the ship's astropaths, prepared for the planet's psychic death, died in the aftershock of its rebirth.

Slayne was unsure what he was watching, but he didn't like the roiling atmosphere. It swirled across the planet at such speed that much of it escaped the planet's gravity sink and dissipated into space. Bruised swathes of remaining cloud hung over the planet's dark continents. Storm systems reared up in great thunder-heads like vast scabs. Slayne had never seen a planet look so wrong outside of the Eye of Terror.
Hooray! The Imperium has perfected the first Zombie-creating doom torpedo.

Page 181
Bolter fire intensified. Explosions of sound, reverberating Shockwaves, and magnesium flashes shook the air as well as the very structure of the ship.

Despite chunks of flesh being blown apart from the mass of meat surrounding what remained of Hieronym Rottle, a recognisably humanoid form had coalesced and congealed into shape. There stood a grinning figure of pestilential depravity. It was a bloated, swollen creature whose cancerous entrails fell from its own torn stomach. It was truly obese, rolls of rotting blubber wrapped around a vast frame of suppurating tissue and rancid meat. The concentrated bolter fire was slowly eroding its vile mass, blowing it apart, gobbet by gobbet of flesh.
Daemon vs bolter fire.

Page 181
Muzzle fire blackened and crisped some of the creature's extrem­ities. The smell of charred meat hung heavy in the air. When the creature finally collapsed, it was a flaccid bag of torn and broken skin. Lumps of tissue, muscle and organ lay everywhere. Steam, stench and cordite hung thick in the air.
Bolter fire wins.

Page 183
Servitors still gib­bered and drooled impossible calculations.

Parchment swirled onto the deck from overheated logic-engines and corrupted data-feeds. The machine-spirit of The Emperor's Despair still groaned and wailed. Klaxons, chimes, and horns filled the launch arcade with overwhelming dissonance. Some­thing was still very, very wrong.
Slayne bolstered his bolter and made the sign of the Emperor's aquila. With his thumbs locked across his breastplate, he beat his chest. It was the sign of a battle to come.

Slayne imagined the Emperor weeping upon his Golden Throne. He vowed to bring doom to the darkling planet below.

Carnage had come back to life - and billions of undead built altars to the Lord of Decay.
Billions of zombies to purge. Why not just use regular exterminatus munitions?

Page 186
Beside her marched a trio of unusually light-footed combat servitors, their arms swinging in unnatural arcs from the pendulum weight of the razor-sharp blades that stood in place of each hand.
Combat servitors. Rather thatn large bulky and clanking these seem to be fleet and agile.

Page 188
Celare Artem.

Those who knew the forge-worlds of the Adeptus Mechanicus called her ''the Sapphire Mars''. Amongst the very oldest of the Martian forge-worlds, she had been settled even as the rest of the galaxy had reeled from the immense warp storms and disturbances of the Age of Strife, twenty millennia ago. A dead world, her settlers had built their first shelters upon the mys­terious ruins of an ancient race and their first excavations had revealed marvels of alien science: marvels meticulously extracted, painstakingly recorded and piously concealed in the very deepest stand-alone datastacks. Even the index of that fell knowledge was guarded jealously by the Fabricator Lords: the Nine.

But with the power of that alien knowledge at the disposal of the Mechanicus, the dead world had sprung to life. Dry plains became seas. Empty deserts bloomed into forests. Wind-etched mountains grew dignified snow caps and the remains of the alien pre­decessors were carefully, quietly and entirely hidden. Instead, the settlers' extensive genetic database was coaxed into generating a plethora of new life and, Under the watchful gaze of the biologists, Celare Artem - Wherein the Art is Concealed - became the blue-green forge-world.
A lush and green forge world. Rather a rarity.As usual they guard their privacy and knowledge databases.

Page 189-190
He circumnavigated the construction that domi­nated the grand space of the Portico Publicum, peering up at the cluster of miniature warp core man­tles that sat together at the heart of the generator. The whole construction was a labyrinth of cables, cogita-tors, power regulators, booster generators and current alternators that formed an irregular column shape rising from the floor into the vaulted roof, two hundred metres above them. Dotted along its length, vicious-looking dimension probes - a design Ghuul had personally recovered from an ancient hulk that had appeared on the edge of the Eye of Terror, some hundred years ago - thrust out of the mass that rose up like an alien idol into the distant, vaulted roof of the Great Temple. And some twenty-four thousand kilometres immediately above it was a satellite: the first in a network of precisely seventy-two identical satellites, each with their own halo of eight dimen­sion probes, which would harness the output of the field generator, casting a web of protection around the entire planet... if it worked.
The dude is known as a Xenarite, which means he's basically got a fetish for alien technology. But then again alot of Techpriests do in the fluff it seems. What they're basically trying to do is create a tremendous sort of planetary defnese shield network they think will stop the planet killer.

Page 191
"My theories are right! There is no reason why I should not be able to gener­ate a warp shield around the whole planet, powerful enough to defend against even the Planet Killer!"
Its a warp shield. which means its a planet-scale void shield, because all void shields are warp fields.

Page 192
He knocked away the grip on his cowl, but Ghuul had already seized Frenke by the neck. The tension strips under Frenke's skin went rigid and Ghuul felt as if he was gripping plasteel, but Frenke had already retaliated. His right hand smashed into Ghuul's face and the desperate archmagos felt his cheekbone shatter and blood fill his mouth. As he fell to his knees, he stabbed upwards with his right hand, piercing Frenke's robes with the scalpel-sharp points of his fingers and thrusting into soft tissue.
Tension strips (sub dermal armor?) Also finger blades.


Page 192
Frenke raised his hand and Ghuul saw the foot-long blade slide smoothly from its hidden scabbard inside Frenke's synthetic forearm. There was no time left for regrets. The cocktail of painkillers and stimu­lants that his integrated pharmacopoeia had been pumping into his veins for the last minute finally kicked in as the blade began to fall and Ghuul thrust up with both hands at once, shoving at his enemy's torso, driving him back towards the silent tower of his machine.
And forearm blades. Also painkillers and stimulant injections

Page 193
Frenke had been at least seven hundred years old and the deputy head of the Collegium Teledynamicum. How could he be dead, just like that? Was there nothing left of him? No shred of his essence...?
700 years old.

Page 194
"The element I was missing: the link between the warp and our dimensions is all around us! You, me... Frenke. As he died, his life force reinforced the energy transition and released some of the reflection power back into the generator!"
So maybe it isn't a void shield. you have to wonder why they didn't bother with voids to begin with.. they'd be easier to power.

Page 196
It was the only Null Chamber in the Castle of Sighs and, as the door sealed and the wards of shielding energised the psychic wall, he felt the constant link to his brothers and sisters of the Castle suddenly break off.
Null chamber - psi blocking fields and other stuff.

Page 196-197
For most astropaths, to meditate with one's psychic senses closed off was almost impossible. And few could master the practice of reading the Emperor's Tarot in a Null chamber. But the psyker's mind resided more fully in the nightmare realm of the warp than did the mind of the blunt human.

He was open, Xenoch knew, to malign influences with strange agenda. The open mind - even of an astropath, soul-bound with the Emperor Himself -was a door of invitation to the spawn of darkness that clustered, waiting for the moment of weakness that called them...

But even a Null chamber could not entirely dim an astropath's connection to the warp. He was blind, physically and psychically, but the spark of power that had bound him in love and in pain to the mighty soul of Him-on-Earth still burned with an inextinguishable light. Xenoch focused on the light, letting it grow within himself, until his mind fell away. The doubt fell away. The fear fell away. Only the light was left: the unbreakable link through time and space to the enthroned God-Emperor.
Dangers of the astropath's mind. Also null Chamber can't completely damp a warp connection, only reduce it - or rather it can't block the Emperor's connection (it stops psychic power, but not sorcery.) Inteniton to use that link for the Tarot. Not the first time such has been done either (EG the astropath in Execution hour.)


Page 197
Xenoch heard the intercom connection click off and, re-gathering his calm, he stretched out his hands to the cards. Their toad-like psychic corpulence had been quashed with the sealing of the chamber's door and now they were mere cards: immensely precious, psycho-crystalline wafer cards, hand-crafted by a magos of the Collegium Psykana and precisely attuned to Xenoch's own self but, ultimately, just cards. With the chamber's Null shielding switched off, the cards blossomed with psychic life so fresh and bold that it was visible even to the non-psychic. But the ridges and bumps painstakingly crafted along the edges of each card were all that could tell him their identity now.
Tarot cards. In braille s the astropath can read them.

Page 199-200
As night fell, the structures reached their zenith, curving together across the architrave and intertwining their malign branches. With a static crack of ignition, the Annihilator burst into life: a shimmering, green window to oblivion.

..

The Skitaria's eyes sparkled with glee as she watched the Annihilator consume each team of menials. The new device was almost divinely effi­cient. To have continued impaling menials on the dimension probes would have been preposterous -the remains of several early experiments still hung from their places, as a grisly memorial to their sacri­fice to the Machine-God. The Annihilator, though, directly fed life-force to the shield generator whilst reducing the sacrifices to nothing more than insub­stantial atomic dust.
Hmmm.. green oblivion, destroys organic life by reducing it to dust/particles. Sounds like Necron Tech, which means we have yet another horde of AdMech fascinated with employing Necron technology.

The idea of a Necron device that disintegrates life and absorbs/stores/transmits the life energy is ominous.. because it makes you think of it as basically being a juicer or food processor for C'tan. Does this mean gauss weaponry can do similar?

No idea what dimension probes are.. some means of tapping psychic energy form the dying I'd gather - sounds like something that Chaos would like.

Page 200-201
They had set up a plascrete tunnel to conceal the effects of the Annihilator from its waiting victims, but menials who had at first approached cautiously and fearfully were now surging forward in confused enthusiasm. The skitarii scarcely had to even point them in the right direction - although some swung their shock mauls anyway; whether to look busy or merely out of bullying instincts, he could not tell. But he saw noth­ing sinister in the change. They had seen dozens of their fellows go in already. There were no screams and the skitarii were disciplined and orderly. Why should they fear anything malign?

Of course, he could sense the effect that the device was having - as its power grew and spread, a sense of intense calm and security filled him. But the sacrifice was not a gleeful activity - it was merely necessary: the only way to protect his homeworld. The machine brought safety and a future in the truest expression of the Machine-God's benevolence. It was unusual to see an effect drawn from the life-force of humans, but it had always been that way in a sense, had it not? Weak flesh dies. The Machine endures.
The creepy and interesting thing about this bit of necron tech is how it encourages willing death and disintegration.. its able to lure in those who are destroyed in it.

Page 202
Ghuul could hear the fear as well as the hope in their voices. A coolant leak somewhere nearby was spilling a thin layer of nitrogen in an undulating car­pet across the floor but, here and there, it broke to reveal the gleaming, black marble floor and, in it, the reflections of the Nine, encased in their life support systems, orifices plugged and ancient skin gleaming with moisturising lubricant. They were trapped by their own power, Ghuul thought suddenly. They had sacrificed their humanity to knowledge. But did that make them more or less than human?
The rulers of the Forge world are all tied into immobile life support carriages and jacked into the forge world's computer networks I guess.

Page 204
Vermillion Prime clearance made him the single most powerful tech-adept on the whole of Celare Artem. The sense of tangible authority might have been an illusion, but the responses from the systems around him were real and instant.

A swarm of servo-skulls swept down from the ceil­ing, reprioritized from whatever they had been doing, to serve his needs; cogitator banks lit up in obedient, eager readiness to the passing touch of his mechadendrites and, as he reached the central hall of the Temple, the head of every priest, skitarii and menial turned instantly towards him, their own deep conditioning responding as one to the authority codes being invisibly transmitted from his person.

Closest to him stood Moritz. The shock of the sig­nals that even now were coursing through the skitarii's systems stood out clear on her face. But Ghuul just smiled, the auxiliary cables beneath his bionic eye twisting at the motion.
Tech adept gains control of an entire forge world, the planet seems to respond entirely to his will as well. Note the "deep conditioning" in the organics (even the skitarii and priests).

Page 204
It was astonishing, thought Ghuul as he swam free in the soup of data that had now been placed at his disposal. Here, he could sense the whole planet shift­ing and moving in step to his direction. With less than a nod, regiments of skitarii Tech-Guard moved at his whim. The sagitarii veterans drove stragglers from their hiding places within the forests, burning them into the open. The cataphracti rumbled along the wide avenues of the forge-world's many cities, driving the soft mass of menials before them.

But Moritz had been right: there was little of the resentment and resistance he had expected. The riots of just two days ago had calmed under the benign influence of the growing shield. The population had become compliant and docile. It occurred to him that perhaps the fragmentary alien designs from the Tabulum Aethyricum had been designed as much for this purpose as for the shielding. For the first time since he had found them, he wondered what race had preceded them on this world. The earliest stacks were unconnected to the data altar and always had been. What had the first settlers been so afraid of?
Total observation/immersion in teh data of the planet. The ability to deploy or order troops with a thought. Sagitarii and cataphracti and other troop types. I'd love to know what types those are meant ot be.

also the warp shield is exerting a mind control influence on the populace.

Also the tech priest is stupid in not recognizing Necron Tech.

Page 205
"How many have we used?"
"Four hundred and eight thousand and sixty-three and counting, archmagos."
"Barely a tenth of the total menial population, then?" grunted Ghuul. "I shall redirect Phi-Omega Maniple to Artem Peripheral, and tithe the remain­der a further ten per cent."
over 4 million menials (currently) on the planet. Well 3.6 million now.

Page 206
But something had changed in the world, even as he had spoken to Udo. The population data had shifted significantly. He quickly patched into a low-orbit satellite to look down at the nearest example of the shift in Artem Tertius and, yes: a great mass of people was leaving the city! Were they fleeing?

Immediately, though, he could see that they were moving, not away from Artem Prime and the Anni-hilator, but towards it. The tram lines were full and the great transport flyways that arched over Celare Artem's fastidiously-crafted forest regions were increasingly busy with every form of transport. Even the footways bore a steady stream of pilgrims on every major link running towards Artem Prime...
Satellite and transport faiclities of the forge worlds.

Page 207
My calculations show that we need at least seventy-five point one per cent output to pro­vide protection against even the least ambitious estimate of the Planet Killer's power
minimum requirements for the shield.

Page 209-210
Moritz rushed past him without so much as a back­ward glance and he whimpered after her as she stepped into eternity. It was over in a split second, but in that moment he saw, first, her robes disinte­grate, then her peripheral augmentations, her skin -flaying her to the wet muscle - the soft tissue, bones and organs... all stripped apart to their constituent atoms in a fraction of a second. But by then, dozens more had hit the field, their bodies ripped to noth­ing as their life-force was siphoned away by the hunger of the shield generator.
As if we needed further indication this was a necron effect. It seems that this flayer is an area effect force field, or its contained by such, which may vey well give us an indicator of the nature of gauss weapons. It would also suggest that if they gaussify living beings they might incorporate some way of absorbing the released life force.


Page 211-212
Phobos. Fear. Humans of ages past had christened the moon of Mars after their primitive god of fear before they had ever, really, understood what fear was. In the star-heart of his agony Ghuul's ego disin­tegrated before the force of unquenchable terror. No simple human fear was this that had lain in wait in those ancient stacks, but an ancient, alien Beast of Fear. And now Fear walked on Celare Artem; not the Beast itself, but the echo of its true touch, resounding through space and time to reverberate in the minds of Ghuul's people: the descendants of the first settlers who had chained it in the darkness and plundered its secrets.

Let loose by the call of their mundane fear of the Planet Killer, the Beast had reached out to make
Ghuul its unwitting avatar. How gleefully he had spread its infection across his world through the defence shield, sustaining itself through the Annihi­lator. He was the Judas goat that led his people to the slaughter...

From so far away, the Beast reached to him across the stars. From beyond the Gates of Varl...
Defence field integrity 100%.
So the total of (possible) Necrons active and in existence is perhaps Six, or seven by now. Although its probably a Shard of such.. ("echo of its true touch") Alternately I wonder if this is just another one of the existing ones (like the Outsider) but it may not be.

Given recent fluff I'm wondering if the AdMech inhabited a Tomb World unknowingly, and one which had a Shard of this 'Beast' lying about. It manipulated the forge world into creating this 'shield' through fear, using the annihiator to power the rebirth of the tomb world (or perhaps just the fragment of its essence on the planet.)


Page 220
The ambassador's gaze draws out a cascade of mirages in Uhlguth's bow-wave, backward echoes thrown along the curve of time. It sees Uhlguth brought to bay among nests of shining worms whose songs span the stars. It sees fortresses break, shattering starships tattoo Uhlguth's skin with fusion fire, whole worlds sent reeling and cracked open. It sees terror and agony, the shriek of broken chains and the click of mechanical eyes watching Uhlguth's corpse.
Fusion weapons being employed on some sort of giant sentient, mobile daemon planet thingy.

Page 224
He feels exasperation and contempt for this creature who has surrendered to the entropic nature of this place to become an unmaker itself. But he is intrigued, too. How might such a thing as Dholtchei be bound? Perhaps a living chain that will knit itself as fast as that black-burning body can sear it? Shack­les of twisted void on which destruction can find no purchase?
Means of capture, I guess.

Page 236
Caught in the fringes of the great outer storms, Uhlguth keeps thrashing ahead as the current car­ries it along. Its body is numb and its senses clouded and muddy. It does not understand that it is well beyond the realms where the warpflows are thick enough to sustain it. All it knows is that it will comb space for its master for­ever if that's what it takes.
Apparently this giant daemon world cna only exist in a place where the warp runs strong, showing the limits of some of the more insane sorts of warp engineering.

PAge 240
Every so often, as the mix of consumed souls in her ship's systems foams oddly for a moment, Drael hears the tones of one of her old officers mixed into it.
A ship where its systems are run by souls. I'm guessing as some kind of control system or machine spirit analogue. Chaos version of infinity circuit


Page 242
The fallen tech-priests of Xana II double-crossed her in that so-called refit she bought from them. There'll be an account­ing for that.

..

"Ahead of us are my devotees from the Eight-Arrowed Forge!"
Reference to a mercenary Chaos Forge.


Page 244-245
And howl the Blind Betrayer does, not just the machine-spirit but the surviving crew, minds already bent and now bodies broken by the force of the turn against weakened motion dampers. Howls over the vox as the last two ships of the spirit's ally-squadron succumb to the rogue world's velocity and are dashed apart. Howls from Blind Betrayer's very body as it wrenches itself around without a functional crew to modulate the fire through its steering-tubes or adjust the gravitic fields that soothe the stresses on its hull.
Motion dampers, and gravitic fields used to sooth stresses in the hull of a starship. (like tensor fields)

Page 247
In his youth Erechoi was a vanguard scout for the militant orders of his Cult, blade-sharp, rigid in his devotions. Now, on the peaceful downslope of his years, he is grateful for this duty. A realspace astro-cartography sweep, a long quiet voyage to rendezvous with a Mechanicus tender bringing the Navigator to guide him home. A serene hermit's vigil amongst the grandeur of the stars.
The AdMech version of retirement I suppose.

Page 248
The duty Erechoi hates most is cleansing the auspexes that must look in that direction, but it is a duty he knows better than to neglect. His priesthood has scarring experience of the consequences of letting any gaze, human or machine, dwell on the Eye of Ter­ror for too long.
Simply looking at the Eye can have adverse effects, even for machinery.

PAge 249
Erechoi's first reaction is to disbelieve his eyes -blasphemous to doubt his machines, perhaps, but he knows not even machines are immune to the lies of that fever-mad storm. But no, there is no doubt. A planet.

And sacred sands of Mars! How fast is it? Already it's clear of the Eye and into real space. Erechoi fires out orders, fine-tuning the Intellect's senses, bringing powerful analytical disciplines out of dormancy and into his mind. The planet will not be visible long, and his report must be perfect.
It is a rough thing, pitted and scarred in strange ways. It has a lurid shine, but when Erechoi has a cogitator compensate for the light drooling from the Eye, its true colour is a dead grey. Radio and thermal scopes are silent: this world gives off no energy, no transmissions, no radiation, not even the heat from a molten core.

Magnified picts begin to flow to the data-arks, and Erechoi gazes at them in fascination. Spattered across the lead hemisphere (whose seams and contours form a pattern that Erechoi must resist thinking of as a face) are large craters, smooth-bottomed and blur-edged. It takes the data-looms of the lower decks ninety-seven seconds to find that the shapes match records of plasma explosions on the scale of a starship's furnace core. Down one flank runs a monstrous gouge from some glancing impact of planetary scale that must surely have meant the extinction of every living thing on that world and this. Behind it comes a trail of debris from the disintegrating rogue mixed with strangely-shaped space litter caught in its gravity. There is a risk to allowing the refuse of the Eye to lodge too firmly in his ship's senses, but Erechoi prays to his Machine-God that he can safely take it. He does not realise that he is shivering as he does so.
A non insane peek at our daemon planet. plasma explosions - starship furnace core.. plasma reactors perhaps?

Page 251
All too soon, the world passes beneath the Intellect and hurtles on. Erechoi watches it go from a sphere to a crescent to a dwindling shadow against space. His data-looms are already at work and one of the navigational logisters is plotting the vector to the nearest Battlefleet Obscuras listening post, some­where to aim his warning so an astropath can speed it onwards.
plotting astropathic messages.


PAge 254
67 kilometres east-north-east of Banphry, Vestiche Province, 07.12 local
(16 hours 35 minutes to Planetkill)
Simply establishing time/data points in the novel for reference.

Page 254
Seventeen massive asteroids, allegedly guided by the will of the ork warlord Ghazghkull Thraka, were hurtling towards Palmeros on a deadly collision course.
Desperate masses poured from the cities, marching in their millions to the nearest evacuation zones. Those squeezing past Wulfe's tank had come from Zimmamar, the provincial capital in the north-east.
Ork Exterminatus. Somehow it always involves throwing a projectile at huge speeds at the target.

Page 255
The refugees were already doing their best to stand aside. To proceed any faster, Wulfe knew, would mean pulping innocent civilians under sixty tonnes of heavy armour.
The russes mass 60 tonnes, unsurprisingly.


Page 256
The town of Ghotenz, site of their primary objective, was still almost 200km away. Every second wasted here brought he and his men closer to being stranded, to sharing the planet's imminent annihilation.
200 km to the target and back - 400 km round trip - on a single load of fuel. No worries about running out, either. Apparently they would make this in under 20 hours. At least 20 kph, and that doesn't include possibilities of delays and terrain and such.

Page 257
...4 hours earlier
More time. This tends to involve alot of math :P

They've covered ~67 km in no more than four hours. 17 kph. Given prep time and delays (slowdowns getting out of town) we're probably looking at more like 2-3 hours which is between 22-33 kph.

Page 261
98 kilometres east of Banphry, Vestiche Province, 09.12 local
(14 hours 35 minutes to Planetkill)
They've made 31 km at least in ~2 hours Probably more, since earlier they were going north east and now they're going straight east. 16 kph average, at least. Far less than 50 kph though. I'd guess another 10-20 km to origianl estimate (40-50 km in 2 hours)


Page 263
Following Champion of Cerbera, the unmarked black Chimera purred along with an easy grace, capable of twice the speed of the Leman Russ tanks, but hobbled by the need for their protec­tion.
Chimera capable of twice the Russ' speed. On road speed of 35 kph.. yet its off road speed (half) would be about ~28 kph.


Page 263
"Could you check your panel, sir? The auspex is picking up a signal. Looks like a civilian SOS beacon about fifteen kilometres away, just north of our current heading."

Wulfe ducked back down into the turret to check his station and found that Metzger was right. Someone was signalling for help.
15 km range on pickig up signals from the auspex.. at least for civilian beacons.

Page 265
That was before so much of his face had ended up looking like hashed groxmeat. Anti-loyalists back on Modessa Prime had hit the tank's left sponson with a shaped charge. Holtz had been inside.
Shaped charge against tank armour. These may or may not be krak munitions.


PAge 270
82 kilometres west-north-west of Ghotenz, East Vestiche, 13.09 local
(10 hours 38 minutes to Planetkill)
120 km in 6-10 hours. 12-20 kph average speed. If we start from Banphry. It doesn't get much better than that beyond this.


Page 270
They rejoined the highway about sixty kilometres south of the abandoned outpost at Gormann's Point.
Everything else was off road up to this point.


PAge 272
"No, by the Throne! Keep her steady in fifth"
At least 5 gears on the Russ.

PAge 273
"I'll be checking the vox-logs. Then we'll see which of you smart-arses is having a laugh."
They have vox logs.

Page 274
Before Wulfe could protest, Steelhearted broke for­mation, rumbled past the other vehicles and accelerated up the highway.
"Wait!" Wulfe shouted over the vox. "I said wait, Throne damn you!"

But it was too late. Strieber's tank hadn't gone two hundred metres when the road bucked under her with an ear-splitting boom. A pillar of fire erupted from the surface, ripping away her left tread, spin­ning heavy iron links off in all directions.

"Landmine!" shouted Metzger over the vox.
Ork IED. Implies that it traveled some 200 metres in a matter of seconds


Page 275
61 kilometres north-west of Ghotenz, East Vestiche, 13.51 local
(9 hours 56 minutes to Planetkill)
Page 277-278
Through the vision-blocks, Wulfe spotted a knot of large, open-topped half-tracks among the smaller, faster ork vehicles. They were filled to overflowing with monstrous green savages.

"Viess," said Wulfe. "Traverse left. Ork half-tracks. Four hundred metres."

Squinting through his scope, Viess spotted them easily. The ork passengers were howling with insane laughter and excitement. Their blades glinted in the sun. He hit the traverse control pedals, and the turret swung around. Electric motors hummed as he adjusted the angle of elevation.

"Targets marked!" he called out.
Wulfe braced himself in his seat. "Fire main gun!"

Last Rites rocked backwards with the massive pres­sure of exploding propellant. Her hull shuddered with the thunderous signature boom of her awesome main gun. The turret basket filled with the coppery smell of burnt fyceline.

Through the vision-blocks, Wulfe saw the leading ork half-track vanish in a great mushroom of fire and dirt. The vehicles nearby were blasted into the air, spinning end over end. They smashed hard to the ground, spilling some of their foul passengers, crush­ing and mangling the rest. Shrapnel scythed out from the blast, eviscerating scores more.
It was a fine shot.

Bikes and buggies began swerving to avoid the burning wreckage, and the ork circle tightened. The enemy swerved inwards with increasing frequency to pepper the tanks with stubber-fire, but Last Rites boasted front armour 150mm thick, slanted to deflect solid rounds. The greenskins' armament didn't pack enough penetrating power to pose an immediate threat.
400 meter firing range on Orks. Front armor is interesting.. 150mm and slanted. REcoil shakes tank, but no knocking it backwards or anything. That isn't anything special given it happens (sort of) with modern tanks tank firing stationary and firing stationary again


Page 279
In only the first few minutes of the battle, hundreds of greenskins were blasted apart by the legendary firepower of the Leman Russ's main battle-cannon.

Like her sister tanks, Last Rites boasted a powerful hull-mounted weapon, too. Wulfe ordered Metzger to fire the lascannon at will. Seconds later, blazing beams of light lanced out to strafe the ork horde. The scorching las-blasts cut straight through light armour, igniting fuel tanks and sending bikes and buggies spinning into the air on great fountains of orange flame.
Tank weapons.


Page 280
In his periscopic sight, Wulfe watched the ork bike accelerating away. As it passed the black Chimera, it was blasted apart by a searing spray of multilaser fire.

Someone was manning the transport's turret-mounted weapon. The multilaser turned quickly to target an ork truck and fired again, charring wide horizontal slashes in flesh and metal alike. Slaugh­tered orks tumbled from the back of the truck in limp, lifeless pieces.
Multilaser vs Orks. Multilaser barrage slices apart Orks.

Page 280
There were just too damned many of them. Sooner or later, they'd get close enough to tag the tanks with high-explosives, or some monster with a flamethrower would press the nozzle of his weapon to a ventilation slit and cook them all alive.
Ork kills on a vehicle.

Page 281
Wulfe saw another armoured half-track, over­loaded with roaring ork infantry, break from the circle and make straight towards his tank. Metzger fired a blast from the lascannon, but the truck's thick front armour soaked it up. Wulfe called out to Viess and the gunner swung the turret around with no time to spare. "She's lit," shouted Siegler.

Viess didn't hesitate. His left foot stamped on the firing pedal. Last Rites bounced on her suspension as her battle-cannon spat its deadly payload straight into the driver's cab of the enemy machine.

A flash. A boom. An earthshaking explosion at point-blank range. Metallic clattering sounded on the roof of the tank as a shower of burning junk and body parts rained down.
Point blank range shot to destroy a half track.. recoil again noticably rocks the tank - which could mean it either packs alot of forces (recoil) behind the shot, or it has a lousy recoil compensation setup/suspension. Again as per videos above it's nothing fantastic.


Page 282
Grinding its way south-east along the road was a loose formation of ork war-machines -massive, heavily armoured and bristling with fat-barrelled cannon.

Wulfe was filled with rage as he looked at them -at least half of the enemy armour had been built from the looted carcasses of fallen Imperial machines. The foul xenos had mutilated and dese­crated them.

Under thick plates of armour bolted on at all angles, he saw the familiar forms of a Basilisk mobile-artillery platform, three Chimera transports, and a disfigured Leman Russ. Other vehicles in the formation seemed entirely built from scratch to some maniacal alien design.
Looted vehicles...


Planetkill page 283
The ork armour was now in range, and still the bikes and buggies raced forward with insane abandon, uselessly spraying the Imperial tanks with volleys of stubber-fire.
Range.. whatever that means.


PAge 284
Viess shouted "Brace!" and fired the tank's main gun. Three hundred metres away, a bastardized ork Chimera was violently peeled apart. Beside Siegler, the cannon's breech slid back, dumping the empty shell-casing in the brass-catcher on the floor. With servitor-like efficiency, the loader slid a fresh armour-piercing shell into the breech, yanked the lever, and shouted, "Lit!"

Metzger shifted the tank up into third gear, ,accelerating out past the crippled Steelhearted. Viess swung the turret left, zeroing in on a bulky ork battlewagon. He adjusted for elevation, compensated for the tank's forward motion, prayed to the Emperor for a clean kill, and fired. Last Rites skewed to the right with the force of the cannon's recoil, but didn't slow. The round slashed brightly through the air, then buried itself deep in the body of the ork machine. It must have pierced the battlewagon's fuel tanks, beacuse the vehicle was blown so high it flipped onto its roof.
Implies a fairly short loading time-- seconds at most? Also this is probably more telling.. the tank skewed while moving with the force of the round... noticably, but not enough to stop its forward motion. This may suggest it was close to the Ogorkiewicz limit , but not close enough to be lifting the tank up from recoil.

But I'd guess more than a modern tank firing, but its hard to say based on these [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vWLxr6L ... page#t=41s]two videos

this one is a nice vid of a Leopard tank firing for a differing perspective of the Abrams.. but again firing stationary or on the move shows nothing vastly different from what I saw here.. at least the tanks aren't skidding aside (but you can tell they rock noticably) I'd say recoil wise the Russ is comparable to a modern tank, but still less than the limit I mentioned above.

Numbers-wise? A modern 120mm has a firing impulse of [url=http://www.inetres.com/gp/military/cv/weapon/M256.html] 31,200 kg*m/s
4.45 Newtons in a pound-force, so 31,000 newton-seconds.. eg momentum. The Ogorkiewicz limit for the russ is 54,000 kg*m/s. Note that while this sounds impressive, there's alot more to getting a number for this. For one thing, the recoil is projectile plus propellant, and it doesn't say much about the efficiency of the gun mount/firing system (stabilization, recoil handling mechanisms, etc.) - its like the "recoil force" quote from honour guard really.

And even if it was more powerful (or fired a heavier round in this case) that isn't always a good thing - having your tank skid sideways like that isn't something I think a gunner would like to endure. This is why I tend to think that they may favor shaped charge/Krak/melta muntiions for anti tank cannon fire (wide muzzles, short barrels, relatively slower muzzle velocity) than kinetic energy penetrators. Of course we know (from 2nd edition) that the Devastator can risk flipping over from firing its gun, so it may be they do make them that insanely powerful. but making them so would probably kill their ability to fire on the move.

Page 285
The heavy ork machines turned to follow, but they were far slower than the well-oiled Imperial tanks. Only the surviving bikes and buggies had the speed to give chase.
Judging by old IA stats here battlewagons (for example) could pull 45 kph off road and 60 kph on road. Based on IA the speeds are simplified and tend to vary - as low as 20 kph for some heavy tanks but up to 60kph for others. Looted Wagons, Battlewagons, etc tend to pull 30-40 kph. I'd tend to opt for offroad speeds in that range, but its possible to range from 60 khp (more in line with old 2nd edition Russ performance) to 20 kph (more in line with Frogeworld stats.) 30-40 kph is "middle ground" true but also consistent with the other stuff I've alreay guessed at,

Page 285
As Last Rites, Champion of Cerbera and the black Chimera sped away, Wulfe ordered Viess to turn the turret and pick off their lightly-armoured pursuers with the co-axial autocannon.
Coaxial autocannon.

Page 287
33 kilometres north-west of Ghotenz, East Vestiche, 15.09 local
(8 hours 38 minutes to Planetkill)
Time and distance left. They wasted ALOT of time on the way here.

Page 288
Only eight hours left until the first massive impact shook this world. In the global firestorm, every living thing would be blasted to ash. It would be a quick, merciful death for most, but it was no soldier's death. There was no glory in it.
8.63 hours to make 233 km. ~27 kph. Assuming they spend half an hour or an hour at their task we're talking closer to 29-31 kph. This was partly on road, partly off I think.

Page 289
At these words, some of the men in the cart patted old civilian-model laslocks.
Laslocks.

Page 290
Black smoke could be seen now, rising into the afternoon sky from just beyond the next hill. Only a few kilometres separated them from their objec­tive.
30 km in about.. 53 minutes tops. Possibly as low as half an hour given the "eight hours til) mentioned. 34-35 kph at least.. definitely on road though. maybe up to 60-65 kph if it was half an hour. Again within forgeworld to 2nd edition range.

PAge 291
Ghotenz, East Vestiche, 16.02 local (7 hours 45 minutes to Planetkill)
Time left.


Page 299
Captain Kurdheim lay under his sheets as before, only now they were utterly drenched with blood. The whole chamber stank of it. Transparent tubes snaked out from under the sheets to a boxy medical device that sat in an open case on the floor. The young captain was screaming through gritted teeth as some kind of thick, viscous substance was being siphoned from his paral­ysed body and collected inside the machine.
And the heroic rush prior to planetary destruction was... to drain bone marrow from a dying man to save his father. Yeah, I'd be pissed off too.


PAge 300
They'd come to save his father.

The scroll avoided naming General Kurdheim's particular condition - perhaps it was a source of some embarrassment - but it was very specific about the nature of the cure. Fresh marrow had to be extracted from his son's living body. The scroll listed drugs approved for the procedure, but Wulfe couldn't find any anaesthetics among them. A line in bold red script said something about anaesthesium denatur­ing important elements of the extracted marrow, but the medical jargon was far too deep for Wulfe to tackle. It was clear, however, that Exolon High Com­mand had given full authorisation to this horrific operation. Penalties for failure were listed at the bot­tom. Anyone interfering in the retrieval of the young captain's bone marrow would be executed publicly as a traitor.
So not only are they draining his marrow, but they're doing it painfully. and this is a Father doing it to his son. This isn't quite "dead men Walking" grimdark, but we're getting close. Hooray for gratuitous abuses of authority and graft and corruption!

Page 302
Ghotenz, East Vestiche, 17.17 local (6 hours 30 minutes to Planetkill)
200 km in 6.5 hours 31 kph. Probably on road.

Page 307
26 kilometres north of Ghotenz, East Vestiche, 17.53 local
(5 hours 54 minutes to Planetkill)
they made 26 km in about... 36 minutes. ~43-44 kph. Again on road.

Page 307
They followed the frater's suggested route back to the highway without encountering the enemy, but the sky was darkening quickly, and Wulfe felt time slipping away from him like water through his fingers. The road up into the highlands was hard, and lesser vehicles would have struggled - sure­footed boviaths were far better suited to it - but the muscular engines of the Imperial war-machines had enough grunt for the job. There were some hair-raising moments. Twice, while turning hairpin bends, Last Rites almost slid from the steep, narrow trail. She would have plummeted, smashing her crew to death inside her, had Metzger not demonstrated remarkable skills. Even Holtz, still convinced that the new man was a doombringer, felt compelled to pay him a terse compliment.

To Wulfe's great relief, the land soon flattened out. They turned westward just six kilometres south of the old outpost under a night sky dusted with bright, winking stars. Some of those stars were moving -naval transports and escort ships leaving orbit with all haste.
Part of the slowdown was the terrain here, they had to go up and around mountains for example. That is really going to skew the calcs here, so I'm inclined to think the tanks ARE quite a bit faster than forge world equivalents. Not super duper fast (not quite 2nd edition fast) but pretty fast 30-40 kph off road, say.


Page 308
About halfway between Gormann's Point and Banphry, with a little over seventy kilometres still to go, Dessembra voxed him.
About an hour to go or so in a Chimera.

PAge 308
My Chimera is lighter and capable of far higher speeds than your tank. Since I believe we're no longer under direct threat from orks, and no longer require your protection, I'm ordering my driver to break formation and pull ahead of you. It's imperative that our cargo reaches General Kurdheim. I'm sure you understand.
at least she takes the remaining tankers with him.

Page 311
58,000 kilometres from Palmeros, Darros III System, Segmentum Solar, 11.31 ship's time
(0 hours 0 minutes to Planetkill)
In orbit around the planet.

Page 312
When the first of Ghazghkull Thraka's accursed asteroids punched a hole in the planet's surface and ignited the global firestorm....
Effect of the astroid impact. Seems like one alone would have been enough to fuck over the planet. You have to wonder why they didn't try diverting them. Seventeen asteroids at e23-24 joules apiece is alot of energy, but not beyond what the Imperium can do.. at least not in hours. Assuming that whatever ships they had available could not divert or destroy the ships in oh.. 20 hours (the stated time) but less than 6-12 days (battle and such going on that long.. 12 days is the extreme uppe rlimit).. it would take only tens or hundreds of gigatons to shatter each asteroid, but the problem is we dont know the parameters so trying to establish any sort of benchmark from this (aside from "they couldn't get enough firepower for some reason to smash or divert them) is up for debate. We might say the planet didn't have defences capable of doing so, but that doesn't say much either.

On the other hand you also have the fact the Orks accelerated 17 massive asteroids like that in a relatively short period of time (hours or days) which is a fairly non-trivial energy expenditure.. hell its impressive even if Ghazzie took a year to do it.
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Lost Soal
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Re: 40K anthologies compiliation analysis thread

Post by Lost Soal »

Ork Exterminatus. Somehow it always involves throwing a projectile at huge speeds at the target.
Ghazghkull Thraka is a Goff ork and their preferred method of killing something is to hit it with a heavy object very hard. Seems natural that to kill a planet he would simply up the scale.
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Re: 40K anthologies compiliation analysis thread

Post by Connor MacLeod »

Dropping rocks on something (or Roks?) just seems more inherently.. orky.
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Re: 40K anthologies compiliation analysis thread

Post by Connor MacLeod »

Ugh. Next up Space Marine anthology. One update, two parts. It wsa like.. second in the Space Marine novels I think (there's one which has the continuing story of Gav Thorpe and Avenging Sons being retards, but I dont feel much like doing it in order.)

Part 1


Page 9
..the deadly cargo fired by the siege guns was at least thirty metres at the apex of its trajectory..
Earthshaker rounds Trajetroy apex of 30 meters. They have to be firing nearly flat, I'd think, to have such a low height. At that the range would be several km easily.

Page 11
It took a lot of men to break a siege; more still, and with artillery support, to bring down a fully functioning void shield. Men the Phalanx had: some ten thousand souls willing to sacrifice their lives for the glory of the Throne...
Requirements for downing the void shield. They have tens of thousands of tropos in the regiment. Is uspect this means they may be some sort of siege regiment.

Page 11
A Departmento Munitorum clerical error had left the battle group short some fifty thousand anti-tank, arrowhead shells.
"anti tank, arrowhead shells". Peculiarily these are the rounds for the Earthshakers, but I suspect they might also apply for tank rounds as well. This would also show what sort of round they use for artillery to take out tanks. If it is sub calibre in any way, then its velocity is going to be considerably greater (trading off mass) On top of that you could anticipate an arty round hitting the top or sides or rear of a tank, where the armor is weaker.
I'm also wondering what kind of sub-calibre round we are talking about. Are they APCR/HVAP type shells (which have also been called arrowhead - the Germans used a kind like that) or are they referring to an APDS/APFSDS type round? It could go either way, but the "arrowhead" bit makes me think it might be the former.

Page 11
A more aggressive strategy was taken immediately: all lascannons and heavy weapons to advance to five hundred metres and lay void shield-sapping support fire.
Bad luck for Phalanx: wars were easier to fight from behind distant crosshairs.
heavy weapons have a typical range greater than 500 metres. Heavy weapons at close range + artillery will be hoped to breach the shields.
It may or may not also mean small arms typically have a range greater than 500 metres, since the implication is that they fight from much further way.
Page 14
Bostok saw their faces through his gun sight, saw the horror written there. Then they were gone. He scanned the area, using his scope like a magnocular, but couldn’t find them.
Gunsight for a lascannon Ib elieve.

Page 15
Bostok took up his post by the firing shield, slamming a fresh power cell into the heavy weapon’s breech.
Lascannon power pack man portable.

Page 15
He sighted down the barrel and the targeting nub, seeing a flicker, and hauled back the triggers. Red beams, hot and angry ripped up the night. Genk laid suppressing fire in a forward arc that smacked of fear and desperation. He was sweating by the end of his salvo, and not from the heat discharge.
Lascannon seems to have a sustained beam dischrage. This might be a "dual purpose" type wepaon, a compromies between anti-tank capability but still giving it some anti-personnel capability (rather than a single, powerful shot designed to penetrate at once but being overkill against infantry.
Waste heat dischrage from lascannon can make the gunner sweat.

Page 16
“Lit and clear!” he announced, slamming in a second power cell.
One powerpack per salvo/discharge.

Page 20
Angular gun towers, bristling with auto-cannon and heavy stubber, crushed the angelic spires that had once soared into the turbulent Vaporis sky; ablative armour concealed murals and baroque columns...
Imperial fortress.. former monastery. Offensive and defensive capability.

Page 21
The other Salamanders at the open hatch followed his gaze to where a black Valkyrie gunship had touched down in the mud, its landing stanchions slowly sinking.
“Imperial Commissariat,” replied Emek, recognising the official seal on the side of the transport.
The commissariat has its own gunships.

Page 21
His eyes strayed across the horizon to the distant city of Aphium and the void dome surrounding it. Even above the droning gun-ship engines, he could hear the hum of generatoria powering the field. It was like those which protected the Sanctuary Cities of his home world from the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that were a way of life for the hardy folk of Nocturne.
the cities of Nocturne have their own void shields. Rather interesting and puzzling how they can protect against earthquake tremors (volcanic eruptions make sense, though.)


Page 24
Many Space Marine Chapters, the Salamanders among them, believed in order and punishment, but they also practised penitence and the opportunity for atonement. Only when a brother was truly lost, given in to the Ruinous Powers or guilty of such a heinous deed as could not be forgiven or forgotten, was death the only alternative.
Clearly, Salamanders do not approve of the "blam" type Commissars, one of which they run across here.

Page 25
“Constant bombardment—it’s the only way to bring a void shield down.” He paused, thinking. “That, or get close enough to slip through during a momentary break in the field and knock out the generatoria.”
Means of bypassing voids. Saturate them by volume (which they can't do), overwhelm them by duration (keep them acting beyond their endurance), or rely on chance (momentary breaks that might allow some lucky shell to pass through and inflict damage to knock down voids.) Funny enough this tends to be how Titan and Spaceship weapons work against defenses, usually.

Page 27
Like black-clad sentinels, the commissar’s storm troopers eyed the men nearest their master ..
I wonder if these are normal commissariat troopers? They've been noted in the Ghosts novels to be as well equipped as storm troopers, and it would make sense that Munitorum/Commisariat troops might be drawn from the storm trooper ranks.

Page 28
The loud report of the commissar’s bolt pistol stopped the trooper in mid-flow. Blood and brain matter spattered the infantrymen nearest the now headless corpse as silence returned.
Yet another bolt pistol head exploding bit.

Page 33
Heavy weapons teams, two men dragging unlimbered cannon, whilst standard infantry ran alongside, forged towards emplacements dug five hundred metres from the shield wall.
Again moving towards that 500 metre point.

Page 34
Pyriel indicated the bulk of a generatorium structure some thousand metres distant. Only Space Marines, with their occulobe implants, had the enhanced visual faculty to see and identify it. Rebel forces, hunkered down in pillboxes, behind trenches and fortified emplacements, guarded it. In the darkness and the rain, even with the superhuman senses of the Astartes, they were just shadows and muzzle flashes.
..
After Tsu’gan had secured the route, the Salamanders had arrived at the five hundred metre assault line, having stealthed their way to it undetected before the full Imperial bombardment had begun.
Vision to clearly idenfity a target at 1000 metres. troops guarding it seem to be firing on the forces attacking the shield, implying some sort of 1 km weapons range (what kinds of weapons, we dont know though.)

Page 41
Pyriel was only a few metres away when one appeared ahead of him. Loth’s shot struck the Salamander in the pauldron as it went through and through, and a damage rune flared into life on the Librarian’s tactical display inside his battle-helm.
Bolter shot against pauldron I think. damage indicator in HUD display.

Page 41
..a blazing wall of psychic fire spilled from Pyriel’s outstretched palm, smothering the apparition and banishing it from sight.
Librarian banishes warp spirit.

Page 43
" At first, I thought enemy commandoes, but our bio-scanners were blank. The only heat signatures came from our own men.”
...
Dak’ir turned to Emek, who carried the squad’s auspex. The Salamander shook his head. Nothing had come from the rebel positions behind the shield, either.
Bio scanners are thermal in nature. Oddly, the Salamander auspex could get a thermal read through this void shield.

Page 54
“Psychics are anathema to the warp echoes. With my power, I can protect your men by erecting a psy-shield. The spectres, as you call them, will not be able to pass through. If we can get close enough to the void shield, much closer than the original assault line, and apply sufficient pressure to breach it, my brothers will break through and shatter your enemies.."
Pyriel explains his ability to banish warp spirits.

Page 54
"As an Epistolary-level Librarian, my abilities are prodigious, lieutenant"
Pyriel's level of talent.

Page 56
"Before they attack, they corporealise; become flesh..."
...
"Adopt defensive tactics and wait for them to attack, then strike. But know the best we can hope for is to repel them. Only I possess the craft to banish the creatures into the warp and that won’t be possible whilst I’m maintaining the psychic shield."
Anti-spectre tactics. They become "solid" (not neccesarily gaining matter, although that is implied above) so they can attack. In other words they can "phase" in and out of reality.

Page 57
“Fire-born: check helm-displays for updated mission parameters and objectives.”
..
“Switching to tac-sight,” adding Tsu’gan. A data stream of time-codes, distances and troop dispositions filled his left occulobe lens.
Tac sight and mission uploads.

Page 58
Emek and Iagon were interrogating overlapping scan patterns on their auspexes in search of warp activity in the shadows of the killing field.
Scanning for warp activity using auspex.

Page 62-63
Las-bursts erupted from the Phalanx ranks in a storm. Barking solid shot from heavy bolters and autocannon added to the sustained salvo. So close to the void shield the energy impact returns were incandescently bright and despite the darkness made several troopers don photoflash goggles.
Lasfire (lascannons probably), Heavy bolters and autocannon firing solid shot in this case against void shields.
Troopers have photo-flash goggles.

Page 64
“Iagon,” he relayed through his battle-helm, “what are the readings for the shield?”
“Weakening, my lord,” was Iagon’s sibilant reply, “But still insufficient for a break.”
Auspex can get readings on the shields.

PAge 64
At a hundred and fifty metres away, the danger from energy flares cast by void impacts and friendly fire casualties from the Earthshakers was greatly increased, but then the Salamanders had little choice.
casualty radius for earthshakers and dangers of void shield emissions (equivalent to omnidirectional release of GJs of energy)

PAge 72-73
...he let slip the last of the tethers from his psychic hood, the crystal matrix dampener that protected him psychically, and laid himself open to the warp.

...
..a bolt of flame lashed out from Pyriel’s refulgent form. It surged through the void shield, past the unseen breach, reaching out for the minds of the Librarian’s enemies…

...
One by one they screamed, an orange fire unseen by mortal eyes ravaging them with its scorching tendrils. Flesh melted, eyes ran like wax under a hot lamp, and one by one the psyker cadre burned. The heat inside the bunker was intense, though the temperature gauge suggested a cool night, and within seconds the psykers were reduced to ash and the defence of Aphium with it.
Pyriel attacking enemy psykers basically cremating a bunch of them in seconds. Even more of the gigajoules (single or double digits.)


Page 74
Pyriel blazed like an incendiary about to explode. The Librarian’s body was spasming uncontrollably as he fought to marshal the forces he’d unleashed. Raging psychic flame coursed through him. As if taking hold of an accelerant, it burned mercilessly. Several troopers were consumed by it, the mind-fire becoming real. Men collapsed in the heat, their bodies rendered to ash.
Still more gigajoules from cremation, although he's not able to control it at this point.


PAge 78
Kergis heard the voice of Arik, a fellow White Scar, on his helmet-vox as they sped through the gully. “Several vehicles from the size of the contact. The auspex puts them at six kilometres away, moving towards us on a bearing twelve degrees north-north-west.”
Bike mounted auspex.

Page 79
The darkness would have been impenetrable to any normal man, but thanks to their enhanced eyesight and the autosenses of their armour the White Scars could navigate the desolate terrain of the Cradle with equal facility by day or night.
White Scars autosenses and modifications allow them to drive at night.


Page 84
"But the city is protected by void shields. It will not be easy. We may face heavy losses.”
Yet another city shielded by voids.

page 84
The Warrior of the Plains was one of nearly thirty Imperial ships massing at the edge of the system.
30 Imperial ships massing for assault at the edge of the system

Page 85
“It is some kind of power generating facility?” he said, comparing the design to similar buildings he had seen on other worlds, even fought over, in his time as a White Scar.

“Geothermal,” Jurga Khan told him. “You are looking at a power plant situated on the Ignis Mons, the largest active volcano in the Cradle region. Goju will explain the particulars to you, but it is my understanding they generate power by harnessing the heat of underground magma. Tephra VII is deficient in promethium and other fuels, so a number of such facilities were built in ancient times to provide for the planet’s needs. The Ignis Mons complex supplies power to almost the entire western section of the northern hemisphere, including the void shields protecting the capital.”
It used to be that you needed plasma reactors to power voids, but nowaday that is less so. You can run them off fission, fusion, and even geothermal.

PAge 86
" There are supposed to be backup power sources to supply the void shields in the event of an emergency. But the systems are old and it is believed the enemy have been lax in their maintenance. To add to its value as a target, the Mons complex also supplies power to the planet’s sensor array network. "
Void shields are supposed to have backup power.


PAge 86
"The heart of the facility is situated deep underground, so orbital bombardment won’t work. "
We dont know how deep belowground here, but it is resistant to (safe - eg non planet fucking) orbital bombardment

Page 89
"“The attack on Chaldis is scheduled to begin in a little over two days. It will be a dawn assault, meaning you and your men will be expected to infiltrate the complex the night before."
no more than 2 days for the fleet at the edge of the system to arrive at the planet. Edg eof the systme is going to be hundreds of millions if not billions of km away (one AU won' t cut it here) at 2 Days, figure 2 Gee per AU at constnat thrust. and .0057%c per AU. (EG at 3 AU 6 Gs and 1.7%c) 10 AU is 20 gees and 5.7% c.

Page 89
“A Naval Lightning adapted for long-range reconnaissance took a series of picts two days ago during a high-speed sweep over the Ignis Mons,”
Recon lightning doing aerial photography.

Page 91
Having been expecting the signal, Kergis had already removed his helmet. Decades ago, on a world called Quintus, a Raven Guard Space Marine named Melierax had taught him the vox-amplifiers in an Astartes helmet gave an unnatural timbre to attempts to imitate the sound of birds. An unknowing listener hearing the noise would be less likely to assume it was a genuine birdcall and ignore it.
Possibly one of the few good reasons for a Marine removing their helmet.


Page 92
“I made planetfall with my squad forty-eight hours ago,”
Time on planet.

Page 94
“To become a White Scar, I had passed through trials that not one in ten thousand men could have survived."
Implies that 1 person in 10,000 could become a Space Marine. If there are 2 trillion people in the Imperium, there would be 200 million potential recruits. For quadrillions.. 200 billion.
Page 113
“A Chaos warband may raid on dozens, even hundreds of worlds. Sometimes, they capture particularly fearsome examples of the local animals, predators especially. Some they use for sport, but others they breed together, creating hybrid monstrosities that they train as hunting packs. Making use of the powers of Chaos, they can combine even completely different animals, creating chimera creatures like these. "
Scope and results of Chaos predations via rading.

Page 120
Unlike the majority of Astartes Chapters, the White Scars had never made use of Dreadnoughts. To warriors accustomed to the freedom of the plains of their home world Chogoris, the idea of being entombed in a walking sarcophagus seemed like a fate worse than death.
White Scars not using Dreaddies.

Page 122
The plasma weapon fired with a blinding light. Doshin’s head was atomised in an instant, leaving his body still standing, the seared flesh smouldering from the heat of the energy discharge.
Dreadnought plasma cannon more or less vaporizes head. 20 MJ or so for astartes head at least.
Page 128
..one of the Dreadnought’s arms suddenly emerged from inside the pit and lashed through the air beside him.
...
Suspended on the edge of the pit, he glanced down and saw the Dreadnought glaring up at him, its body half-submerged in burning lava. Flames and steam billowed from its body as the lava found a way past its defences through the crevices in its armour. The monster was being burned alive inside its own skin.
Dreadnought survives immersion in lava, but the pilot inside does not as lava seeps inside.

Page 129
Kergis had known Doshin had been killed, his head blasted to atoms by the thing’s plasma cannon..
Again implied vaporization.

Page 137
“Borchu?” Kergis had said two days earlier as he stood with Jurga Khan in the strategium..
...
"His body was lost in a cave-in after he had been felled by enemy fire. That section of the caverns was destroyed three days later when the enemy unleashed a captured Deathstrike armed with a plasma warhead. It was assumed Borchu’s body was annihilated in the blast with everything else.”
The planetary defenders have Deathstrike missiles with plasma warhead.


Page 138
"He was hit in the chest by a lascannon. It was at close range and the beam went straight through him, emerging from his back. There is no way anyone could have survived it—otherwise, I would have tried to rescue him. But it was pointless. The heat of the beam would have cooked his internal organs instantly.”
..
..it was readily apparent to Kergis’ trained eye that the damage which had occasioned the repair work had been caused by something which had drilled a fist-sized hole through the armour’s ceramite surface. Even if he had not seen the wound inflicted himself, his decades spent on the battlefield would have told him precisely which weapon had created the hole.

A lascannon.
Effect of lascannon on White Scar. Punched a fist sized hole through the torso and burned his insides. To put a fist sized hole through armor steel power armour 3 cm thick, nevermind blasting through the toros and out the otherisde (or cooking organs) woudl require at least single and more probably double digit MJ of energ, even with blast effects (making a small armor piercing hole is easy. Making a large one isn'.t) Oddly melting a hole through 3cm of iron only requires "only" 5-6 MJ, not lincluding the MJs needed to burn through the torso and to cook the insides.
Page 139
"We have fought enemies who have been possessed by Chaos daemons in the past. Normally, the daemons can only possess a living body, but all things are possible for the creatures of the warp. Perhaps Borchu’s body was recovered by the enemy after he died and a daemon now uses it. Or perhaps Borchu’s body really was destroyed and a daemon or some xenos creature has shifted its appearance to resemble him. "
Daemon corrupting and possessing a corpse.

Page 143
The salvo of bolts had blown away the patchwork repair to the armoured plate, revealing a dark wound in the chest of the daemon’s host body.
Bolt salvo blowing fist sized hole through repaired bit of power armor.

Page 147-148
“Poor Borchu’s body is so badly damaged I won’t be able to use it for much longer. If only you knew the effort I have to expend just to hold it together and stop his damaged organs from spilling all over the floor like rotten fruit. No, I need something fresher. Not too fresh, naturally. It’s true I can possess a living host, but it is difficult. One has to find the moral flaw, a chink in the victim’s soul, in order to gain entrance. No, what I really need is the body of a recently killed victim.”
Dead bodies require more effort to maintain than live ones, for a daemon, as well as the requirement for possession (which explains the Exorcists Chapter I believe, since they are pure and free of corruption)

PAge 158-159
Bio-linked sensors scanned the rapidly-advancing line of greenskin vehicles, the Dreadnought’s machine-spirit-merged sentience processing the constant stream of information—everything from average velocities to weapon capabilities to wind shear—and waited.
Dreadnought targeting computations.

page 159-160
...the greenskins let fly with rockets, high calibre shells and even smoky flamethrowers in their eagerness to engage with the ancient.
...
Preceded by a torrent of cannon and bolter fire, the Dreadnought stepped from the smoke of its supposed destruction..
Ork weaponry does little against said Dreadnought


Page 160
Three times the height of a man, larger than many of the ork machines and as heavy as a warbuggy, armoured with adamantium plates and carrying an arsenal that rivalled the firepower of a battlewagon, it would take more than that to halt this juggernaut’s advance.
Dreadnought size and firepower.

Page 160
It took the Dreadnought’s symbiotic machine-spirit mere nanoseconds to divine the ancient’s position relative to the speeding ork vehicles and select a succession of suitable targets.
Dreadnought machine spirit takes nanoseconds to calculate the relative positioning of the ork vehicles relative to him and begin target acquisition. That is pretty fast calculation, I believe.

PAge 162
The warbike hit Brother Jarold with the force of an ork rokkit. Even as the bike hit him, Jarold grabbed hold of it with his huge power fist, the vehicle swinging up into the air in his grasp as its momentum spun them both around.
Yes.. this is a Black Templars story and that is Brother Jarrold. And he can lift a warbike (1 tonne vehicle) in the air despite a high speed collision and send it flying.

Page 175
“So where, precisely, is the source of the signal?”
“Six point eight-nine metres downwards. If we are to discover the source of the signal we are going to have to dig.”
...
Larce, flamer in hand, and Nyle, bearing his thrice-blessed meltagun, joined them before the wall of blue ice.
....
Techmarine Isendur directing their fire, Larce and Nyle hit the glacier with everything their weapons could muster.

Initiate Tobrecan brought his bike up to join them and directed a series of searing blasts from the plasma gun mounted on the front of his machine at the glacier. When the steam and mist cleared, Brothers Larce and Nyle stepped up again, while Initiate Isen drove his attack bike forwards, Gunner Leax turning his multi-melta on the metres thick ice.

The Space Marines’ flamers and plasma weapons swiftly melted a shaft through the ice to the source of the signal Isendur had located via his signum. Steaming geysers of cloud rose from the hole in the glacier as the boiling water bubbling at the bottom of the pit re-condensed as it came into contact with the cold air.
The shaft is wide enough for a Techmarine to stand in without being crowded. Assuming a 2 metre or so diameter 19.5 tonnes of ice is melted, boiled, or vaporized. Call it 490 kj per kg to melt, 906 kj per kg to boil, and a further 2.25 MJ per kg to vaporize. anywhere from 9.6 GJ to 62.4 GJ, depending on parameters. This is from bike mounted plasma guns, a melta, a multimelta and a flamer. Assuming 100 shots for all weapons involved we're talking double digit to triple digit MJ per shot.

Page 185
His battle-brothers falling one by one at his side, giving their lives—all of them—that he might complete his final mission, weathering shoota, kannon, gatler and a storm of rokkits, the ancient was able to breach the stompa’s shields and place the thermal charges at its very feet.
...
For one brief moment the ice of millennia became a torrent of liquid water again and the blazing stompa sank beneath the sudden waves. The force of the blast hurled Rhodomanus across the sky like a blazing comet and he thought he heard the Emperor calling him to serve at his side in the next world…
...
It was clear to all—and not just Techmarine Isendur’s practised eye—that the orks had finished carving the remains of the war machine from the body of the glacier..
The stompa was dug out of an ice pit/crater by the Orks, after having evidently sunk into it by the thermal charges.
Assuming the stompa is 10 m tall and 5 m diameter, 80-90 GJ to melt enough ice for it to sink in.

page 189
It was becoming painfully apparent that the Templars were drastically outnumbered, at least twenty to one.
20:1 odds against Orks is unfavorable to Space Marines.

Page 191
Venerable Rhodomanus’ multi-melta pulsed, and a swarm of orks died as their blood boiled and their own bodily fluids broiled their internal organs.
Multimelta boils multiple orks. Assuming 200 kg and 3 orks (600 kg) we're looking at 80 MJ.

Page 195
As Jarold watched, what was left of Neophyte Feran rocketed skyward as an ork skorcha engulfed his body in flame, detonating the krak grenades he carried at his waist.
Krak grenades seem to have a propulsive effect when they go off. Assuming a 200 kg body at 10 m/s we're talking 2000 kg*m/s worth of momentum. Combined KE of the krak grenades might be 8-10 MJ. at least, assuming an 8-10 km/s jet velocity.

PAge 196
Jarold turned his storm bolter on another charging ork and took its head off with one mass-reactive round.
Head removal via single shell.

Page 204
Something was being beamed back to the teleporter.
He felt the tingle of it at his very core, in every fibre of his body that was still flesh and blood. And the machine-spirit of his Dreadnought body felt the exhilarating rush of a trillion calculations as the impossible machine read and recorded the position of every atom within his body, the connection of every synapse, the binary pattern of every recollection-code stored within his memory implants. He was beaming out.
Trillions of caluclations involved in teh teleport, in a matter of seconds probably. The Dreadnought is aware enough to notice this and realize what is happening in a similar timeframe.

Page 205
At the same time he saw something else taking shape within the sphere of light with him, becomingly steadily more opaque as it solidified around his departing form.

For the briefest nano-second he and the object shared the same space—his machine-spirit merging with its primitive programmed consciousness. Fifty metres long and weighing a hundred tonnes—the energy build-up already taking place within its plasma reactor perilously close to the point of critical mass and detonation—the torpedo was capable of blowing a hole in the side of an ork kill kroozer with armour plating several metres thick.
again nano second reaction/reflection times for the dreadnought. Also a 50 metre long and 100 tonne plasma torpedo of some kind. 50 metre length suggests anywhere form 8-12 meter diameter, depending on length to width ratio. It could be the same size as or smaller than a cruiser scale torpedo. I'd almost bank on smaller, since macro cannon shells typically can be this big or bigger, and torpedoes and bombardment cannon shells are even bigger than that.

Page 217
And before the Astartes could ready themselves, from the frozen darkness lumbered a Sentinel walker.
Many of you have seen such a thing, and perhaps even fought alongside them, for they are commonly used by the armies of the Imperial Guard. This, however, was different. Its two legs were reinforced with sturdy armour plates and its cab, in which its traitor driver cowered, was as heavily plated as a tank. It had been made with techniques forgotten to the masters of the forge worlds today, and it bore as its weapon a pair of autocannon. This was no mere spindly scouting machine! This was an engine of destruction.
A lost-tech Sentinel design, I guess.

Page 248
It was only after the destruction of the planet Serek, on a voyage back to the Segmentum Tempestus, that the luck of Brother Tarikus had run dry. The medicae frigate he had been aboard was ambushed by the hated Red Corsairs, and torn apart. Tarikus had not been among the Astartes who made it to the saviour pods before the wrecked ship had plunged into a star.
As we learn in the novel Black Tide, Tarikus had been en-route to his home world when he'd been captured. meaning that Gathis is in Segmentum Tempestus.This accords with him being captured by the Red Corsairs.

Page 250
It was as if his subconscious mind could not willingly accept that he had found his freedom. He had experienced so many strange tortures during his imprisonment in that Light-forsaken hell that even now, weeks after breaking out of the cursed place, some seed of doubt remained lodged in his thoughts, some tiny part of him too afraid to accept the reality presented to it for fear it would be torn away a moment later.
The stone and steel of the prison on Dynikas V was no more, his tormentors consumed by tyranid swarms, the prison itself scoured to the bedrock by Astartes lance fire; but the walls still stood in Tarikus's mind, and he wondered if they would ever fall.
This may imply that the prison (and possibly the planet) was destroyed by lance fire, but the context is a bit unclear and the actual assault implies some other mechanism (Rafen and others mention torpedoes as the preferred bombardment mechanism, probably cyclonics - and it is more likely that did it.) OF course, the two are not mutually exlcusive, multi-tiered exterminatus attacks have occured, and they could have used torpedoes (Cyclonics or other kinds) and lance fire together.
Also it has been "weeks" since he returned home (From Ghoul Stars to Segemntum Tempestus, more than half the galaxy away) - which may imply weeks or at most a few months of travle time. very high tens of thousands of c at absolute low end, and more probably hundreds of thousands of c. If not millions.
Page 251
...a discreet gun-servitor had been stationed nearby. And he knew without needing to search for them that audial and visi-spectrum aura sensors were concealed in the covings above him.
[/quote]
guns ervitor with audio and visual spectrum aura sensors for detection.
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Connor MacLeod
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Re: 40K anthologies compiliation analysis thread

Post by Connor MacLeod »

Part 2 and this is out of the way.
Page 252
... Too weak to fight them all, Tarikus had been captured even as his brothers escaped, thinking him dead. From there, the whoreson Red Corsairs sold him like chained cattle to the master of the Dynikas prison
Again Captured by Red Corsairs, suggesting he was taken somewhere around the Maelstrom region, which is probably where the homeworld would be roughly around (at least)

Page 259
..an Astartes combat blade was visible, the fractal edge still bright and sharp even though the length of the knife was dirty and pitted with use.
More of the 'fractal edge" type mono weapons.

Page 280-281
“We know the insidious ways of Chaos, the Emperor blight them. Tarikus may carry a seed of darkness within him and never know it. It has happened before. He may live out a long life, and then one day, at an appointed time, or at some word of command, be transformed into something horrific. All that, if the smallest sliver of warp-stigma lies buried in his aura.”
Dangers of Chaos. grimdark as it is, small wonder they prefer to purge whole guard regiments (or populations) rather than run the risk of Chaos taint.

Page 296
The cell’s solitary occupant was not chained to the wall or restrained in any way. There would be little point in chaining one whose strength could easily break any such fetters, tear the iron ring from the wall or who secreted an acidic saliva that, given time, would eat away at even the strongest of metals.
Futility of imprisoning an Astartes in chains. Some still try, of course.

Page 300-301
The wounds he had suffered in the conflict had mostly healed, though the mass of plasflesh that sealed the gaping wound in his torso was a constant dull, throbbing ache. Techmarine Harkus and Apothecary Selenus had reconstructed his left shoulder and clavicular pectoralis major with augmetic sinews and muscle grafts following a battle with a tyranid guardian organism, and his blood still underwent regular transfusions to ensure its purity.
Plasflesh to seal wounds. Also need of regular blood infusions to purify blood.

Page 313
“Irrelevant,” responded Sicarius. “A victory is not a victory unless it is won with the principles of the primarch. We have all read of the Mortifactors in Captain Ventris’ after-action reports from Tarsis Ultra. We all see where the path of deviance from the Codex leads. Tell me, sergeant, would you have us become the Mortifactors?”
I get the feeling Graham McNeill does not like Sicarius. He comes off as a colossal ass here. To be fair, Assault on Black REach implies many see him as an asshole too, so this may not be out of character.
Also, this carries that precise flavor of ULTRAMARINES FUCK YEAH attitude so prevalent in the 5th edition codex, you could see Sicarius living and breathing it.

Page 325
“There are many ways one can achieve death, many ways to meet your fate. To waste a life that may yet bring retribution to the enemies of the Emperor is a sin in and of itself. It is therefore my judgement that you be bound by a Death Oath, and take the light of the Emperor into that abominable region of space where many a true warrior has met his end—the Eye of Terror. I bind you to take your fire and steel into the dark places until such time as you meet your destiny.”
The fate that dooms us to endure "Dead Sky, Black Sun" unfortunately.

Page 328
Each warrior looked up to his superiors as embodiments of the Codex and to see a captain flaunt its teachings was to invite disaster.

The rot of dissention had to be cut out before it infected the entire Chapter and brought about the ruin of the Ultramarines. There could be no other way. The strength in Agemman’s voice had cut through the bitterness and frustration consuming Uriel, and he had seen the ramifications should his methods and actions become widespread. The Ultramarines would become little more than roving bands of warriors, visiting such vengeance as they deemed appropriate upon whomever they chose. Before long, there would be little to distinguish them from the renegades who gave praise to the Dark Gods and Uriel was gripped by a horrifying vision of a future where blood-soaked Ultramarines were as feared and reviled as those who trod the path of Chaos.
HAH! Pompous and unimaginative. You'd think they'd be afraid that they might descend and become.. Space wolves, or Black Templars, or Blood Angels or Salamanders or something. I mean, its not as if Space Marine chapters don't have internal politics or quarrels or shit like that. BUT NOT ULTRAMARINES! FUCK THAT. Send the objectors on a Death Quest.

Page 332
“Get the respirators,” he snapped to his son. “Now!”
They tugged on the cumbersome masks, and immediately their already enclosed world became tinier and darker still.
...
He looked round himself at the interior of the bunker with its discarded blankets, the dying battery-fed lights and useless comms unit.
Some kind of attack bunker or shelter. Chaos forces attacked and astartes responded.
Battery lights and comms unit. This is all civiailn issue survival stuff... reminds me of the nuclear fallout shelter craze of the mid 20th century... then agian this is 40K, so the risk fo such here is far more likely, since there are no MAD agreements.

Page 335
They ranged over what was left of the farm during the next few days, setting out containers to catch rainwater, gathering up what remained of their canned goods, and throwing away anything which the man’s rad-counter began creaking at.
Survival measures.


Page 335
“Could be,” his father said. “Perreken is a small place, not much more than a moon. Wouldn’t take much to trash the whole thing.”
Their house is destroyed (but not the bunker under) Its much easier to fuck over than a full planet, I guess.

Page 337
He had found a large firearm, almost as long as himself, and was trying to lift it out of its glutinous glue of mud and blood.
...
“That’s an Astartes weapon.”
Space marine bolter. Naturally its insanely huge for a normal person.

Page 342
They struggled in the muck and gravel around the giant, clicking off one piece after another of the armour which enclosed him. The boy could not lift any of them, strong though he was. His father grunted and sweated, corded muscles standing out along his arms and chest, as he set each piece of the dark blue carapace to one side. The massive breastplate almost defeated them all, and when it came free the giant snarled with pain. As it fell away, slick, mucus-covered cables slid out of his torso along with it, and when they sucked free, the boy saw that his chest was pocked with metal sockets embedded in his very flesh.
The solid plates of Space Marine armor weigh more than a boy can cary, and the man struggles with all of them, although it seems the boy helped. This suggests the pieces like the arm and shoulder and guantlets might mass significant amounts (10-15 kilos at least) and the chest and back plates far more (30-40 kilos or more) all told the power armour ought to weigh a good 200 kilos at least, and probably more.

Page 343
“They used chemical agents in the fighting. Maybe biological too. It would seem my system has been compromised.”
'They' included CSM and Chaos cultists who attacked the planet. As we saw with Vraks, and various other assualts, use of nuclear, chemical and bio weapons does not faze them in the least.

Page 344
“You destroyed my world,” the boy said, high and shrill with anger. “You didn’t save anything—you burnt us to ash!”
The giant regarded him gravely. “Yes, we did. But I promise you that the Punishers would have done worse, had they been allowed. Your people would have been cattle to them, mere sport for the vilest appetites imaginable. Those who died quickly would have been the lucky ones. You will rebuild your world—it may take twenty years, but you can do it. Had it been tainted by Chaos, there would have been nothing for it but to scald it down to the very guts of the planet, and leave it an airless cinder.”
In the first context I doubt the boy truly grasps "destroy", but the Astartes disabuses him (Extemrinatus) "very guts of the planet" may mean to the mantle or core, (Destroying it) and basically removing the atmosphere (which is an easy e26-27 joules for the atmosphere alone, nevermind fucking up the crust/mantle.)

Page 346
They stopped once beside a great burnt-out carcass which squatted as tall as a building. So shot to pieces was it that its original shape could hardly be made out...
..
"..a spirit so bold, so fine, he chose to be encased in this mighty Dreadnought after his own body was destroyed.."
The Dark Hunters left behind a dreadnought? I find that highly unlikely that they would just abandon the hulk, rather than recover it and repair it. They're fanatical about that sort of shit.
The Space Marine, supposedly, was buried under a ton of rock.
Page 348
They moved on, more slowly now, for the Astartes was straining to keep his massive firearm at the ready. An ordinary man would struggle to lift, let alone fire it.
Again Marine bolters are so big and heavy no normal man could easily lift or fire one.

page 353
“My brothers must be brought back to this world to cleanse it—or else they will have to extinguish it from space..."
Again save it, or destroy it.

Page 355
In return the Astartes halted, set the bolter in his shoulder, and began firing.
Short bursts, no more, two or three rounds at a time. But when the heavy ordnance hit the cultists it blew them apart.
..
a second later he had raised it again and blew to pieces the cultist who had shot him.
Bolt rounds blowing apart cultists.. 2-3 shots per burst.

Page 355-356
...the heavy Chaos lasguns were unwieldy and hard to handle—their shots went wild. The boy fumbled with the sling of grenades and popped out one thumb-sized bomb. There was a tiny red button at the top of the little cylinder. He pressed it, and then tossed the thing at the cultists.
..
..the grenade exploded, and splattered him in scarlet fragments across the white painted wall of the control tower, along with three of his comrades.
Chaos lasguns are "heavy" and unwieldy.. poor quality probably.
Grenade explodes 4 cultists into pieces.. more powerufl than modern grenades. THey are also a throw back to the old "coin sized" grenade really.
page 356
“Grenade first,” he rasped.

The boy tossed another of the little explosives inside.
...
Two dead bodies, blown to pieces in the confined chamber at the base of the tower.
Again grenade blows apart several people.

Page 358
“They copy us in everything—these are just like Imperium charges. They have three settings: instant, delay and proximity. The most obvious one is delay, the red button on top...
..
"You twist the top of the cylinder for the other settings.”
the grenades in quesiton taken from Chaos ar ejust like Imperial grenades.
Page 359
...and in his hand he held a cruel monomolecular blade which shone with blood.
monomolecular blades. surprise.

Page 360
The pistol bucked in his hand and the impact of the heavy rounds sent the boy’s father smashing back against the wall behind, ripping open his chest and filling the air with gore
Bolt istol.

Page 361
.. the hilt of his knife buried in his own breastplate. There was a thin, almost inaudible whine as the filament blade continued to vibrate deep in his body cavity.
vibroweapon perhaps?

Page 363-364
"Old-fashioned. But it still needs power.”
...
“I have power—I have power here.” His face quickened. “My torch!"
..
“A fine idea, but you’ll never crank up enough power with that little handheld dynamo.”
...
The comms unit was a relic, a patched up antique for use on a far-flung border world.
...
“Sometimes they hang on to the most obsolete of technologies on worlds like yours,” the Astartes said. He smiled. “Because they still work.”
..
From a tangle of junk in the drawer, he produced a contraption of wires and a small knobbed device
...
He closed his eye, and then began tapping down on the device. A high series of clicks and tones was audible. He adjusted the frequency with an ancient circular dial, and there was a faint crackle.
..
“The signal is going out. The code is ancient; a relic of old Earth, but we still use it in my Chapter, for its simplicity. It is elegant, older even than the Imperium itself. But like many simple, elegant things in this universe, it has endured.”
Morse code and a hand cranked radio.

Page 366
There were craft floating in the blackness, immense structures of steel and ceramite and titanium and a thousand other alloys, constructed with an eye to utility, to endurance. Made for destruction. They looked like vast airborne temples created for the worship of a deranged god, kilometres long, their flanks bristling with turrets and batteries. About them, smaller craft wheeled and dove like flycatchers on the hide of a rhino.
Dark Hunters warships.
Page 367
“It was very faint. It may have been cut off or it may merely have passed out of our range-width. We are too far away to scan the planet. The signal itself took the better part of ten days to reach us.”
Since the message is probably lightspeed, we're talking the ships being ten light-days out from the system. Why the hell they had to travel that far out to enter the warp.. we have no idea. In any caes ten light days is far beyond their ability to scan the planet.

Page 368
“No other communications from planetside?”

“None whatsoever, captain. Their infrastructure was comprehensively destroyed during our assault, and it was a backwater to begin with. One spaceport, and nothing but suborbital craft across the whole planet.”
The planet was a backwater.

Page 368
“What is our estimated journey time to the planet?”
“At best speed, some thirty-six days, captain.”
36 days to cover 10 light days. Average speed .3-.5c, 11-12 gees constant burn minimum.
Page 370
The boy held an Astartes bolt pistol in his hands..
Bolt pistols can be fired in the hand but not the full bolters.

Page 373
The boy went to one knee, picking his targets calmly, firing two or three rounds into each.
2 or 3 round bursts.

Page 373-374
It was dozens of metres tall, painted midnight blue, and on its multi-faceted sides was painted the sigil of the double-headed axe.
...
And down the ramps came an army, a host of armour-clad warriors blazing a bloody path with the automatic fire of bolters, melta guns, plasma rifles and rocket launchers. In their midst hulking Dreadnoughts strode..
super huge drop pods!
Page 374
They belched flame as they came, incinerating the cultists, boiling their flesh within their armour, making of them black desiccated statues.
Dreadnought flamers.

Page 383
..Neotera recognised the potential of his soul to embrace the kind of fanatical focus and devotion of the Mantis Religiosa.
...
..recently discovered a possible source of this tendency in some Mantis Warriors; he hypothesised that it was connected to a uniquely altered neuro-toxic function of the preomnor implant in the Chapter’s gene-seed. However, rather than seeing it as a curse that condemned its victims to the life of fanatical devotion of the Mantis Religiosa, Maetrus argued that it was a reward for faithfulness. The heightened sense of focus and the contracted perception of space and time that accompanied it sharpened a Space Marine’s reflexes to an unprecedented degree, sometimes even giving the impression of mild precognition.
This is Goto's "Praying Mantidae" - god I hate that name. I hate ANY name Goto comes up with. Neat idea though.

Page 393-394
The Tortured Soul had been in almost constant battle for the last eight years..
..
But not even this ancient and venerable vessel could withstand the kind of hammering that it was receiving now. The ship’s great spirit remained unbroken and determined, but its systems were gradually collapsing under the relentless strain.
...
Over the years of battle, most of the ship’s components had been cycled through a system of redundancy to ensure that it was always fully functional and able to withstand even the most formidable assault, but now there was nothing left in reserve. A serious hit on the control systems, life support, or even the engine block would leave the glorious ship all but dead.
8 years of constant battle, and now the thing is just starting to give out. Multiple redundancy of systems tha tallow it to survive eight years, although now the redundancies are gone (control systems, engines and life support are all redundant systems.)

Page 415-416
As the Venomous Blade had cut its way into the outskirts of the Badab system..
..On the edge of the star-system, the Blade had registered a wide spread of signals on its long-range scanners. A fleet of battleships was assembling in the interstellar space between Badab and Rigant. Most of the signatures were too indistinct to be accurately discerned, but those at the vanguard had the solid and menacing echo of Space Marine strike cruisers and frigates. The unusual shape of the Rapturous Flame, the legendary Fire Hawks strike cruiser that had survived the destruction of the Chapter’s home world of Zhoros more than five millennia before, was at the heart, as the formation slowly shifted and manoeuvred. They were less than a warp-jump away, but probably several days under normal power. They were waiting for something, and their presence suggested that their attention was fixed on Badab.
Strike cruiser detecting Loyalist ships "less than a warp jump away" and "several days under normal power" which could mean AUs of distance givne the edge of the system being scanned.. This may even mean FTL detection, as we'd be talking light hours/days/weeks.

Page 416-417
..the suspicions that could be raised about the Chapter if the mental state of the Mantis Religiosa were to be misunderstood as some kind of genetic anomaly. Maetrus was especially concerned that the condition, which sometimes enhanced a Space Marine’s reflexes to such an extent that they seemed to develop mild precognitive abilities, might appear to represent the spontaneous onset of psychic tendencies. Given the proximity of the Mantis Warriors’ realm to the Maelstrom and the conditions of constant internecine war on some of its core systems, such as Mordriana, it was not beyond imagination that the Mechanicus would seek to police their gene-seed even more vigorously than that of other Chapters.
More goofy Goto names and the Mantis warriros prcog abilities.

Page 432-433
Though it moved like a sewer it was no waste product, it was alive. It was billions of microscopic tyranid organisms, released by the bio-ship at the moment of its death and designed solely to consume the flesh of their dead parent, consume and multiply. More creatures, gigantic to the microbes, tiny to us, floated amongst them, eating their fill, then were speared and devoured by larger cousins who hunted them.
The hive ship was dead, and in death it became filled with new life. Each creature, from the sludge-microbe up, was created to feed and to be fed upon in turn, concentrating the bio-matter of the ship into apex predators that would bound gleefully aboard the next bio-ship they encountered to be reabsorbed and recycled. In this way, the tyranid xenoforms transformed the useless carcass of their parent into another legion of monsters to take to the void. The carcass of their parent, and any other bio-matter foolish enough to have stepped onboard.
Microscopic nid organisms consume and recycle organic matterial.

Page 434
Three metres high, even collapsed against the wall, was a tyranid monster the size of a Dreadnought. Its skin was armoured like a carapace, its limbs ended in claws like tusks, its face was all the more dreadful for having been half-eaten away.
Tyranid Dreadnuoght-sized monster. Possibly Carnifex.

Page 435
"For all the vaunted diversity of the tyranid fleet, for all that Imperial adepts struggle to catalogue them into thousands of ship classes..."
Scope of diversity of the Tyranid forces.

Page 436-437
To our left, one side of the cavity was filled with a row of giant ovoids; each one as big as, bigger even, than our mighty Thunderhawks.
..
Bio-titans.
Bio-titans. Massive war-engines that, even hunched like spiders, towered over our heaviest tanks on the battlefield. Screaming, hideous, living machines bristling with limbs, each one a weapon, which had carved apart so many Imperial lines of defence.
...
“Hierophants,” he concluded as he peered at them. “Immature, judging from their size.”
Hierophants, titans described as being as big s or bigger than Thunderhawks (which if its mass wise means 120+ tonnes. And these are immature Much bigger than the Forgeworld chibi-titans.

Page 440
They had fought and died months before. Chapter Master Thorcyra had despatched them to the very edges of the sectors the Scythes protected, responding to reports of rebellion and xenos incursion, while he himself led a force to counter an uprising to the galactic north.
The Scythes of the Emperor protected sectors of space. For all the good it did them.

Page 443
None living, at least. What we did find was salvage. The tyranid xeno-species can plunder every last atom of use, but their booty of choice is biological material. Our flesh. This they choose over any other.
The fruit of our own labours then were those items a hive ship, especially if crippled by an assault party’s attack, might overlook. Weapons, armour; our tools of destruction.
Tyranid recycling use of materials.

Page 451
"Even within a dead ship, certain vestigial reflexes might induce fresh tyranid fiends from their sacs if an interloper triggered them. Yet another defence against grave robbers such as us."
Tyranid internal defences.

Page 459
Part of its thorax came free and I saw it grow an ugly pyramid-like cyst. It was a weapon, and it was pointed straight at me.

Vitellios and the ravener fired at exactly the same instant. The hive-trash pumped the beast full of bolt-shells that burrowed down along the length of its body and exploded. The bio-weapon shot a burst of slugs into me that burrowed up into my body and did nothing more.
...
I did not know then what had hit me, only that my armour had been pierced. There was pain, but it was not incapacitating. I had seen brothers hit by tyranid weapons go mad or be burnt from the inside out, but as my hearts beat all the harder to race my blood around my veins I felt neither come upon me.
Poison likely, given latter events.
PAge 477
The ridge was no muscle contraction: it was a phalanx of huge tyranid creatures of a sort I had never seen before. Each as big as a tank, as big as a Baneblade, packed tightly together so there was not a centimetre between them, and moving as a line slowly towards us. Their armoured eyeless heads were down, so low as to be ploughing over the surface in front of them, dragging their bulbous bodies behind. Their limbs had atrophied so they oozed their way forward like snails.
Unknown type of Tyranid creature.. they're just big, and persistant and numerous.
Page 488
Other theories were darker, that Thrasius had found or purchased arcane or alien tech that allowed progenoids to develop artificially far faster than in a Space Marine, or that most of the neophytes did not receive true gene-seed, they were merely bio-engineered and would never mature into true Astartes.
"bio-engineered" soldiers are considered distinct from Astartes (at least by the Space Marines themselves) although possibly close to comparable in capability. Not surprising, given what augmetics can do.

Page 488
“A kilometre and a half long, millions of tonnes.."
...
..the muscles of the hive ship’s offspring ripple beneath its hull-skin.
..

"they were coming here to feed this offspring on the bio-matter of the corpse of its parent."
Dead hive ship gives 'birth' to a new one from the carcass of the old. A sort of recycling Note the length and mass.

Page 503
Two of them in the carnifex in my hand, in the progenoid glands of Commander Cassios from which new gene-seed and two new Astartes would arise. And two of them my own shell. The glands in my throat and in my chest that would bear two more.
One Marine's gene seed can produce two new marines.

Page 509
Zavien’s targeting reticule locked onto his brother’s battered armour, secondary cursors detailing the rents and wounds in the deactivated war plate.
Targeting reticules, highilghting important details.

Page 509
The biometric displays that flashed up on Zavien’s visor told an ugly story, and one with an end soon to come.
Biometric sdisplay.

Page 510-511
He discarded the sergeant’s helm, and blink-clicked the runic icon that brought up the rest of the squad’s life signs on his own retinal display.

...
Garax was also gone, his suit transmitting a screed of flat-line charts. The rangefinder listed him as no more than twenty metres away..
...
“My rangefinder lists him as a kilometre distant.” Even with its unreliability compared to a tracking auspex, it was a decent enough figure to trust.
More displays and sensory capability built into Astartes armor. Rangefinder range of at least a kilomere.
Page 515
Jarl ignored the metallic rainfall of solid rounds clanging from his war plate.
Ork pistol fire. Not much good at breaching plate.
Page 516
Jarl saw none of this. His vision, filtered through targeting reticules, saw only what his dying mind projected.
Targeting reticuls again, projected by the mind.

Page 516-517
His trigger fingers clenched at once—one unleashing a torrent of bolter shells at his brother’s back..
..
Bolt shells crack against his magnificent armour.
...
Jarl’s armour was pitted and cracked with smoking holes from the impact of bolt shells...
Bolt pistol rounds penetrate the rear of armour.

Page 518
Again, Jarl shouted in his unnerving, ancient diction—words Zavien recognised but did not understand. As with Jarl, he had never learned Baalian, and never studied the form of High Gothic spoken ten thousand years before.

Page 520
His strength is immense. I know why this is. I am aware of the… the genetic truths at play. His mind cannot contain his delusional fury. He is using everything he has, everything, powering his muscles with more force and expending more energy than a functioning mind can allow. I can smell the alkaline reek of his blood through the damage in his armour—combat narcotics are flooding his system in lethal quantities. In his madness, he cannot stem the flood of battle narcotics fusing with his bloodstream.
His strength, this godly power, will kill him.
Self explanatory. Chaos enraged (or maybe just Black Raged) Blood Angel I believe.

Page 521
Zavien ignored them, though it was harder to ignore the pain throughout his body. Even the injected chemical anaesthetic compounds from his armour and the nerve-dulling surgery done to him couldn’t entirely wash it away. That was a bad sign.
More combat drugs.

Page 524
Twin gouts of stinking chemical flame roared from the cannons, bathing Amalay and the Astartes in clinging, corrosive fire. She was already whispering a lament for her fallen sister, even as she blistered the armour and skin from Amalay’s bones.
...
Brialla killed the jets of flame after seven heartbeats, knowing whatever had been washed in the fire would be annihilated, purged in the burning storm.
Amalay. Her armour blackened, its joints melted, her hands reduced to blackened bone. She lay on the ground, incinerated.
Flamethrower.

Page 525
The Astartes was burning. Holy fire licked at the edges of his war plate, and his joints steamed. He eclipsed the sun, casting a flickering shadow over her. His armour was black, charred, but not immolated.
Flamers seem to penetrate gaps in the armor.

Page 526
“My auspex senses something,” I hear one of them say to her sisters.
...
“Something alive,” she says. “And with a power signature.”
Auspex detects life signs and power signatures.

Page 528
...Zavien mag-locked his axe to his back and punched handholds in the metal wall itself, dragging himself to the ramparts fifteen metres above.
Mag locking weapons again.
Page 528
He walked from the platform, falling the fifteen metres to the ground and landing in a balanced crouch.
Dropping fifteen metres from a height.

Page 529
Zavien’s retinal locator display was finally picking up faint returns from Jarl’s war plate.
Locator beacon, probably.

Page 537
Twenty bolters open fire before I can look back. I don’t hear them. I don’t feel the wet, knifing pain of destruction.
[/quote]
Cripples, but doesn't quite kill him outright.
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Re: 40K anthologies compiliation analysis thread

Post by Connor MacLeod »

Decided to do a double update, because the less Space MArines I can deal with in the immediate future the better. At least as far as anthologies.

Part 1 of Victories of the Space Marines. Which means lots of Space marines killing stuff blowing stuff up, etc. Notable for having the 'Warbringers' chapter, which seem to be the only Space Marines who know what camoflage is. naturally they excel at shooting and otherwise blowing stuff up.


Page 11
...Svelok leapt to his feet, mag-locked the bolter and grabbed a krak grenade.
...
Whip-fast, Svelok hurled the grenade through the open mouth. The massive jaws snapped shut in reflex and the Space Wolf crouched down against the oncoming blast. There was a muffled boom and the xenos was blown apart, its iron-hard shell smashed
open and spread out like a splayed ribcage. The behemoth crumbled in a storm of shards, toppled, and was gone.
Krak grenade (omnidirectional???) blasts apart some super big creature resistant to bolter fire.

Page 32-33
A circular access hatch had been carved into the floor of the chamber. Svelok’s helm detected the force field across it—one strong enough to withstand five
thousand years of acid erosion.
Force field augmented door.

Page 54
“Helmabad is more than a dozen light years behind us."
They've traveled a dozen light years, without a Navigator, in a rather short period of time.

Page 54
"We are six thousand light years away from safety; a considerable distance. If we are to complete our journey to sanctuary in the Eye of Terror..."
6000 LY from the Eye of Terror.

Page 55
"...our half-blind flight through the warp has brought us within a hundred light years of the Geddan system. The system is virtually lifeless, but it’s a chartist captains’ convoy meeting point; merchant ships from across the sector converge there to make the run down past the ork territories towards Rhodus. We’ll take what we need from the merchantmen.”

“Those convoys have Imperial Navy escorts,” said Heynke.

“Usually nothing more than a few frigates and destroyers,” said Nicz before Gessart could answer.

“Not too much for a strike cruiser to overcome.”
100 LY from their destination. A chartist captain meeting point for convoy duty, which is often escorted by a few frigates/destoryers (about one squadron's worth.) Strike cruiser can take out that kind of force. That tends to suggest raiders don't often have cruiser-grade ships.. or if they d they are less well armed. On the other hand most Strike cruisers also tend to punch above their weight in firepower (more like a large cruiser or heavy cruiser.)

Page 58
He had promised Gessart that he would get the ship to Geddan, thinking he would use the daemon Messenger to do so.
Librarian can't accurately navigate (at least now this one) but he's using daemon aid.

Page 58
Zacherys engaged the drive and the strike cruiser lurched into the warp; not a physical strain of inertia but a stretching of the mind, filled with momentary flashes of memory and dizziness.
...
It was over in a moment.
Warp jump

Page 59
Zacherys opened his mind up to the power of the warp and felt the shifting energies around him. He could sense the ebb and flow of the immaterium, but he was no Navigator; he lacked true warp-sight. Though he could feel the titanic psychic power surging around the ship, he could see only a little along their route, enough to avoid the swirls and plunging currents that would hurl them off-course, but little
more.
Limits of non-Navigator warp navigation.

Page 63
Zacherys had done an admirable job, dropping the ship out of warp space just outside the orbit of Geddan’s fourth world. Gessart wondered how the psyker had overcome the graviometric problems that normally prevented ships from emerging so close to a celestial body...
Benefits of daemonic assistance.

Page 63
"Seven signatures on response, captain,”
...
“Confirm that,” said Gessart. “Are there any Imperial Navy vessels?”


Merchant ships. no navy vessels, yet. We know the size of the convoy.


Page 63
"The convoy is assembling around the fifth planet. From their comms chatter, they are expecting to receive their escort in the next day or two.”
Time to get in range. They're at the 4th planet, so that maybe means half an AU to an AU distance at least in 1-2 days. At least a few gees an da few thousand km/s travel speed, possibly double digits and correspondingly higher speed. Fast for a Gav Thorpe space ship.

Page 64
Though not considered a large vessel by Imperial standards, the Vengeful dwarfed the merchantman carrying Sebanius Loil; the man who had identified
himself as the merchant commander of the convoy.
...
...crossing the few hundred kilometres between the strike cruiser and the Lady
Bountiful aboard their last surviving Thunderhawk
gunship.
few hundred km between starships... also the chartist vessel is smaller than a strike cruiser.. but presumably larger than an escort.

Page 64
Gessart looked at the merchantman through the cockpit canopy, noticing the three defence turrets clustered around her midsection: short-ranged weapons that might fend off a lone pirate but which would be hard-pressed to overload even one of the Vengeful’s void shields.
3 Merchantman defnese turrets could not penetrate void shield ion Strike cruiser.

Page 65
...the rest of the convoy, visible only as returns on the Thunderhawk’s scanners, separated from each other by several thousand kilometres of vacuum. Four were of similar size, but two of the ships were immense transports, three times the size of the
Vengeful. Fortunately they were empty, destined to pick up their cargo of an Imperial Guard regiment en route to the warzone in Rhodus.
Rest of the ships, guard transports, larger than the strike cruiser, and thousands of km away.

PAge 69
Let me show you.
Zacherys felt the daemon shifting inside him, pulling back it tendrils from his limbs, coalescing its power in his brain. His witchsight flared into life—the psychic sense that allowed Zacherys to feel the thoughts of others, sense their emotions and locate
the spark of their minds in the warp. Zacherys’ golden eyes did not see the cramped bridge...
...
His thoughts expanded through the ship and beyond, touching on the moon below, sensing the minds of the crew aboard the Vengeful alongside. Out and out his mind
stretched, reaching through the veil that separated reality from the warp.
...
Between here and there, in their little tunnels burrowed through dimensions. The children of the Dark Prince; you call them eldar.
Zacherys strained to focus on their location, but could not fix upon them. They were close, within the system.
Daemon vision.. detects the Eldar in the webway.

Page 70
Out of glimmering stars of silver, the eldar ships emerged into real space, a little over twenty thousand kilometres away on the starboard bow
Range of Eldar ships

Page 71
Gessart glared at the main screen, searching for a sign of the attackers but they were still too far away to be seen against the darkness of space.
Eldar ships Beyond visual range still.

Page 71
“Do not question my orders! Continue loading until the enemy are ten thousand kilometres away and then break docking."
Implied range of space weapons.

Page 72-73
“Detect laser weaponry fire,” Kholich reported from the strike cruiser. “They are targeting the engines of the Valdiatius Five. Shall we move to intercept, captain?”
...
As well as the Lady Bountiful, three other ships were already within range of the Vengeful’s batteries. The rest of the convoy were making slow progress and the eldar would fall upon each in turn without having to risk a confrontation with the strike cruiser if it maintained its current position.
...
“Put yourself between the raiders and the rest of
the convoy,”
...
“Engage at long range only,”
...
As the Vengeful cut through the scattered ships of the convoy, the pirates broke away from their attack and retreated, putting several thousand kilometres between themselves and the escort.
More implied range stuff/

Page 76
One of the eldar warships had snared the Lady Bountiful in a gravity net and had pulled her alongside to board. The other two raiders had taken up a position a few thousand kilometres away to block the path of the Vengeful if it tried to intervene.
Gravity net.

Page 77
One was
swathed in the ragged remains of a long red cloak, half his chest missing from a bolt detonation; another was sprawled across the corridor face-down, two holes in the back of his high-collared, dark blue coat.
Bolter fire vs Eldar. Mesh armour doenst stop bolt rounds of the Astartes grade, at least.

PAge 77-78
Long-barrelled lasrifles lay on the floor next to each body, of similar design but each decorated with different coloured gemstones and swirling golden filigrees. Gessart picked up one of the weapons and examined it. It was elegant, powered by some form of
crystal cell in the thin stock of the weapon. It crumpled easily as he tightened his grip, no sturdier than the creature that had wielded it.
Eldar Lasweapon.

Page 79
Slender shapes darted from the shadows and he was engulfed by a hail of razor-sharp projectiles. Pushing himself back, he glanced down at his armour and saw a row of barbed discs embedded across his chest plastron.
...
Enemy fire stormed up to meet him; las-bolts seared the paint from his armour while more shurikens sliced through his left arm and leg.
Shuriken fire penetrates at limb areas, (weak spots?) but not the chest plate.

Page 88
The systems had been at full power since their first arrival so he knew the eldar would not detect a spike in power. The lock-on was another matter. His fingers danced over the controls as gun ports slid open along the starboard side of the strike cruiser.

The eldar ship was only a few hundred kilometres away and the targeting metriculators found their range within seconds.
...
Gessart tapped in the command for a single salvo and pressed the firing rune. The Vengeful shook as the ship unleashed a full broadside at the eldar cruiser. On the main screen explosions blossomed around the alien ship, snapping the main sail mast and rippling along the hull.
Space Marine ship fires full broadside on eldar one before Eldar ship could react or return fire. Implies possibly hundreds (300+ km/s) if not thousands of km/s velocity fo rthe shells (less than a tenth of a second, which is human reaction time. Space Marines, which is close to what Eldar ar at, is at least 1/20th of a second)

Page 90
A slender stick-like length of bronze emerged from the opening, bending in half upon a tiny pivot as it cleared the edges of the hole. From the tip of the instrument, an iris slid open, exposing a multifaceted crystalline optic sensor.
Scout gear.

Page 91
Soon the opposite side of the steel crate began to spit sparks and thin streams of
smoke. Molten lines of superheated metal disfigured the face of the box as the cargo within cut through the heavy steel. Each precise cut converged upon the others, forming a door-like pattern.
...
..powerful hands gripped the cut section at each corner, fingers encased in ceramite
immune to the glowing heat of the burned metal.
Melta axe . I'm guessing it cuts a finger-thick hole in the material and might be ea centimeter or two thick. Assuming Iron and a 1x1 meter door.. 12.5 kg of metal melted.. about 15 MJ. We don't know how long or how many cus, but it can't have taken forever so double-triple digit KJ seems a safe assumption.

Page 92
A soft hiss rose from Carius’ rifle, long wires projecting outwards from the back of the gun’s scope. The Scout-sergeant shifted his head slightly so that the wires could connect with the mechanical optic that had replaced his missing eye. As the wires inserted themselves into his head, Carius found his mind racing with the feed from his rifle’s scope, a constantly updating sequence indicating potential targets,
distance, obstructions and estimated velocity.
Rifle scope linked to augmetic eye.

Page 92
There were ten targets in all. He estimated he could put them down in three seconds. He didn’t want it to come to that. There was just a chance one of them might be able to scream before death silenced him.
3 Kills a second, but we dont know if its with his rifle, or with some other weapon.

Page 92-93
The other six assaulted the ferrocrete wall of the storage facility, employing
the lowest setting of the melta-axes they had used to silently cut through the side of the cargo crate.

Carius watched his men work. The ferrocrete would take longer to cut through than the steel crate, but the knife-like melta-blades would eventually open the wall as easily as the box.
Ferrocrrete vs Melta axes. VAriable settings, and ferrocrete is more energy resistent than steel,

Page 93
The governor of Vulscus and the satellite settlements scattered throughout the
Boras system...
...
...a man entrusted with the stewardship of seven billion souls and the industry of
an entire world.


A system with a population of 7 billion. As far as we know, its not particularily a major world, but not a particularily unimportant world, either. It seems to be an industrialized. average "civilised" world.

Page 93
Zweig, the man called himself, a rogue trader with a charter going back almost to the days of the Heresy itself. The man’s charter put him above all authority short of the Inquisition and the High Lords of Terra themselves. For most of his adult life, Mattias
had been absolute ruler of Vulscus and her outlying satellites. It upset him greatly to know a man whose execution he couldn’t order was at large upon his
world.
The Power and protection of a truly ancient rogue Trader charter.

Page 94
Zweig’s tunic was fashioned from a bolt of cloth so vibrant it seemed to glow with an inner light of its own...
...
He could almost see the psycho-reactive cloth sickening from the crude
footwear grinding into its fibres.
Rogue trader attire.. psycho-reactive cloth.

Page 94
A rogue trader didn’t live long trusting that his charter would shield him from harm on every backwater world he visited. The Imperium was a big place and it might take a long time for news of his demise to reach anyone with the authority to do anything about it.
The practical limits of a charter. Politics, remember.

also the place seems to be considered a "backwater"

Page 95
...continuing the stilted, antiquated form of address that was still practised in only the
most remote and forgotten corners of the segmentum.
...
...unable to decide if Zweig was using the archaic greeting because he thought Vulscus was such an isolated backwater...
Again strong indication tat the place is not quite as important as some other worlds in the Imperium.

Page 96
He had heard stories about jokaero digi-weapons that were small enough to be concealed in a synthetic finger and deadly enough to burn through armaplas in the blink of an eye.
Rumored capabilities of Jokaero digital weapons.

Page 97-98
“House Heraclius is anxious to strengthen its dominance over the other Great Families
sanctioned to transport custom in this sector. The novator has empowered me to treat with the governor of Vulscus to secure exclusive rights to the transportation of pilgrims to view your sacred relic. The agreement would preclude allowing any vessel without a Navigator from House Heraclius to land on your world.”
...
Every man in the conference hall knew the traffic of pilgrims to their world would be tremendous. Other worlds had built entire cathedral cities to house lesser relics from the
Great Crusade and to accommodate the vast numbers of pilgrims who journeyed across the stars to pay homage to such trifles as a cast-off boot worn by the first ecclesiarch and a dented copper flagon once used by the primarch Leman Russ. The multitudes
that would descend upon Vulscus to see a relic of such import as the actual weapon of Roboute Guilliman himself would be staggering. To give a single Navigator House a monopoly on that traffic went beyond a simple concession. The phrase “kingmaker” flashed through the governor’s mind."
...
House Heraclius would be a dangerous enemy to make, but conceding to its request would not sit well with the other Navigators. The governor knew there was no good choice to make...
A bit on politics and economics in the Imperium. First, as far as "inter-galactic" trades go, relics and shrine worlds seem to be something of a large, widespread, and profitable trade - both in transporting pilgrims from one world to another, as well as for having them visit the relics on-planet. Small wonder the Eccelsiarchy encourages this, as both the money and the religious propoganda it entails would translate into power for the Ministorum.

Further, the wealth to be gained for a planet housing the relics seems significant (explaining why they would do it), and it is natural that the transport issues would draw attention of the Navigators (who would influence if not control a good deal of intergalactic shipping anyhow.) That can create alot of competition, backhanded dealing, intimidation, etc. to guarantee the greatest profits, which of course can translate into all sorts of interesting political issues.

The material aspects also tend to cheapen the whole thing - it no doubt also leads to a great trade in false relics and suchlike (like the emperor's toenails from the Inquisition War.. or whatever body part it was.)

Page 99-100
Each of the men who listened to Valac’s words was a giant, even the smallest of their number over two metres in height. Every one of the giants was encased in a heavy suit of ceramite armour. The bulky armour was painted a dull green, dappled with blacks
and browns to form a camouflaged pattern. Only the right pauldron was not covered in the patchwork series of splotches or concealed by fabric strips of
scrim.
The Emperor's Warbringers. Two-plus metres of camouflaged Astartes fun. Astartes in camouflage. CAMO. Yes it boggles the mind.

Page 102
The factory worker crumpled into a lifeless heap as the vibro-knife punctured his neck and slashed the carotid artery.
...
That minor detail had caused fifteen centimetres of gyrating steel to sink into the back of the man’s neck.
Vibro-knife. Rather small for an Astartes blade too (15 cm rather than "length of a man's arm".)

Page 105
By the time they were finished, all of Izo Primaris’ defence turrets would be sabotaged, leaving the city unable to strike any aerial attackers until it could scramble its own aircraft. Carius shook his head as he considered what value the antiquated PDF fighters would have against a Thunderhawk.
PDF airforce.

Page 105
Carius unslung the needle rifle looped over his shoulder. The back of the scope opened, sending wires slithering into his artificial eye.
Needle rifle with the scope interface as noted.

Page 107
Lavishly appointed guilders roared at fat promethium barons, the semi-mechanical tech-priests lashing out against the zealous oratory of the robed ecclesiarches. Even the handful of wiry rogues representing the trade unions felt they had to bare their teeth and demand a few concessions to compensate the unwashed masses of workers they
supposedly championed. As soon as one of the industrialists or guilders tossed a bribe their way, the union men would shut up.
The political factions on this planet. Interesting that the ADmech is so involved in local affairs, nevermind that they even have unions (even if they seem to be unions on the US pattern of things.)

Page 107
Some felt that the pilgrims should be able to reach Vulscus by whatever means they could, others claimed that by having a single family of Navigators controlling the traffic there would be less confusion and more order. Those guilders and industrialists who already had exclusive contracts with House Heraclius to ship goods through the warp sparred with those who had dealings with other Navigators and worried about how the current situation would impact their own shipping agreements.
Again, discussion over the aforementioned trade proposal and its implications. Apparently there are tradeoffs (like increases in pilgrimmages, affecting the speed or quantity of shipping other goods.)

Page 109
They were huge, monstrous figures, twice the height of a man and incredibly broad. Though their outlines were humanoid, they looked more machine than man, great bulky brutes of tempered plasteel and adamantium.
...
The giants were painted in a dull olive drab, mottled with splashes of black and brown to help break up their outlines.
...
It was only when one of the giants shifted its arm, raising a hideous rotary autocannon over the railing of the gallery...
Warbringers terminators. Rotary autocannons and.. camo.

Page 110
In unison, the Warbringers in their heavy Terminator armour opened fire upon the cowering councillors. Five assault cannons tore into the screaming men, bursting their bodies as though they were rotten fruit.

In a matter of seconds, the ornate council chamber became a charnel house.
[/quote]

Now, they're assault cannons, and pretty much obliterate the entire room in seconds.. with the usual explodey assault cannon effects. Note that this also means they baiscally annihilated a bunch of Adeptus Mechanicus representatives.
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Re: 40K anthologies compiliation analysis thread

Post by Connor MacLeod »

And the last part of Victories.


Page 111
It would be hours before tech-priests at the substations would be able to redirect the city’s energy needs through the battery of back-up plants. They wouldn’t even try. To do that, the tech-priests required absolution from their
superiors.
And their superiors were just massacred.

page 112
Izo Primaris maintained three PDF garrisons within its walled confines. Two infantry barracks and a brigade of armour.
Defence forces of the city.

Page 113
The olive-drab giants opened fire upon the tankmen, tearing their bodies to pieces with
concentrated fire from their storm bolters. One of the Space Marines, his bulky armour further broadened by the box-like weapon system fastened to his shoulders, targeted the tanks themselves. Shrieking as they shot upwards from the cyclone missile launcher, a dozen armour-busting krak missiles streamed towards the PDF tanks.
....
Reinforced armour plate crumpled like tinfoil as the missiles slammed home, their shaped warheads punching deep into the tanks’ hulls before detonating. The effect was like igniting a plasma grenade inside a steel can. The tanks burst apart from within as the explosives gutted their innards.
Storm bolter and krak grenade fire. Note the "shaped" warheads penetrating into the hull, then detonating. This might suggest that Krak wareads have a tandem-charge warhead, or altenrately whatever means they use to penetrate does not blow apart the wahead until it is inside (some sort of powerfield, or melta/plasma/las blast, etc.)

Page 121
The huge steel doors that blocked the entrance to the bunker were quickly reduced to slag by a concentrated blast from a plasma cannon. The Warbringers rushed through the opening while molten metal still dripped from the frame.
Assuming a 5 cm thick door, and a 2 m diameter hole.. 1.5 GJ to melt a hole through. Even if it was only a 1 cm thick steel door (which is unlikely to keep anyone out) it would still require several hundred MJ.

Page 121
One of the power-armoured giants vanished in a burst of light, flesh and ceramite liquefied by the searing energy that smashed into him.
...
They had a multi-melta.
The crimson-armoured excubitors swung the heavy weapon around on its tripod.
Multimelta on Astartes.. depending on mass and composition (iron or silicon) assume at least 200-300 MJ, upwards of 750 MJ perhaps for 300 kg of power armor and silicon (for example). Not neccesarily a lower or upper limit.

Page 122
It would take three seconds for the multi-melta to cool down enough to be fired again.
Cooling time on a multimelta.

Page 126
Sweat beaded Korm’s brow as he watched Chaplain Valac throw the relic onto the ground and aim the heavy multi-melta at it. At such range, the bolt pistol would be reduced to vapour, annihilated more completely than if it had been cast into the centre of a sun.
According to deathwatch an Astartes bolt pistol is some 5.5 KG. Assuming iron composition we're talking at least 40-42 MJ.. It could be several times that, given this was Horus' bolt pistol (supposedly) so it would arguably be larger and bulkier. But given a normal human can carry it without great strain it probably can't be more than 15-20 kg at most.

Page 143
The Chapter had inherited the terrible misfortune of a garrison rotation on the industrial world of Phaethon IV when the Celebrant Chapter could not meet their commitments. Word was sent that the Celebrants were required to remain on Nedicta Secundus and protect the priceless holy relics of the cardinal world from the ravages of Hive Fleet Kraken and its splintered tyranid forces.
Astartes chapter devoted to garrison of a key planet, it would seem.

Also we get reference to the priesthood being asses and demanding their precious relics be protected against a fucking Hive Fleet.

Page 149-150
..Enobarbus heard the hammer of disciplined sniper fire. Shredder bodies cascaded
over the edge past the High Chaplain, either blasted apart by the accurate las-fire or leaping wildly out of its path.

They are apparently large enough to appear man (or astartes) sized, heavy ehough to represent a considerable weight/drag on an Astartes' arm, and they will hunt and attack man sized prey, that would suggest they are pretty large, and in turn suggests that being blasted apart by las-fire (singe shots probably these are sniper rifles) suggests at least triple digit KJ.

Page 150
...with synchronous trigger-pulls that would have been worthy of a firing
squad, High Chaplain Enobarbus’ las-slashed corpse tumbled into the whiteness below.
The Oratorium


Las-fire seems to have a raking/cutting effect here.

Page 156
"“There are a billion tonnes of plasteel and rockcrete between us and the spire
monastery."
Approximate mass of the hive city of the home world of the Crimson Consuls. Mass wise it might be a bit small for a hive, but it woudl be roughly in that ballpark (order of magnitude)

Page 163
Repetitions that ran for kilometres through the arterial maze of tunnels. Like a chant or incantation in ancient Carcharian: they blazed with psychic significance to the Chief Librarian...
...
“Psycho-sensitive words, spelt out on the walls, a conditioned instruction of some kind, imprinting itself on the minds of the underhivers."
Brainwashing/conditioning by psychic means can be carried out by mere words. Just shows how dangerous psychic or warp powers can be.

Page 169
Artegall immediately picked out their system star and their icebound home world:
numerous defence monitors and small frigates were stationed in high orbit.
Non-Astartes system defence fleet.

PAge 191
It had saved his life on Ixion, when prescience turned his head, a split second before a las-bolt cut through the air. He still wore the burn scar from that near-hit across his cheek, livid against his face.
Burn scar from a lasbolt.. Suggests at least third degree burns (first and 2nd degree burns usually won't be permanantly scarring.) Assuming a 2-3 cm wide burn 10-15 cm across we're talking 20-45 cm surface area, about 1-2 kj at least for the bolt (more like a side effect, so the bolt probably had at least several times more energy than that.) If the burn was across much of the face, (say 10x10 cm area) it might be up to 5-10 kj. Much of it depends on severity and size of the burn (it could be smaller, or it could be bigger)

Page 194
Within the chapel, one might have thought they stood inside a church upon any one of billions of hive-worlds across the Imperium.
Billions of hive worlds. Not only is this a number suggesting the Imperium HAS billions of worlds, but it is billions of a particular kind of world. And as odd as that seems, I think it's quite possible. recall that Hive Worlds can exist on worlds where the outside enviroment is inimical to human life - no atmosphere, a toxic atmosphere, an irradiated wasteland, a death world, etc. They may build self-contained world-cities (like on Necromunda) or they may just build belowground (like Krieg or Tallarn.) And uninhabitable worlds are more likely to be found than habitable.worlds, and you could colonize moons as well as planets. Given a fairly broad definition for "hive world" (and for this you almost have to be broad, else it conflicts with the 5th edition sources) you'd basically say a hive world is.. a place that has one or more hives on it. They don't even have to be large hives - we know small hives can hold merely millions rather than billions, for example.

Anyhow, for a hive population of millions to billions, we're talking quadrillions to quintillions of people.. which fits with much of the 5th edition and FFG material handily. Either way, there's a lot of people in the Imperium.

Page 194
But this church lay deep in the decks of the frigate Emathia, protected by vast iron ribs of hullmetal, nestled between the accelerator cores of the warship’s primary and secondary lance cannons.
FRigate has multiple lance cannons.. I'm gussing they're fixed axis given the description and context, but I'm not sure whether it means that there are just two (primary and secondary) or if secondary is describing some sort of smaller "backup" or subsidariy lance (for differnet kinds of tagets., or something.)

Page 195
Nord wondered why Xeren had not simply used one of the Mechanicum’s own starships for this operation, or employed his cadre’s tech-guard.
As we well know, the Mechanicum has its own fleet and military. They're generally exmept from the restrictions placed on the rest of the Imperium (or even, it seems, on the Astartes.)

Page 200-201
“Nord is quite correct. The tyranids are a scourge upon the stars, a virus writ large. But like any virus, it must be studied if a cure is to be found.”
...

“This represents an unparalleled opportunity. This hive ship is a treasure trove of biological data. If we take it, learn its secrets…” He gave a clicking rasp. “We might turn the xenos against themselves. Perhaps even tame them…”
We're clearl dealing with a radical techpriest here. Perhaps why he couldnt gain a starship for his duty. Some of his idea has merit, of course and the Imperium (and Ordo Xenos) have made it a point to recover and study xenos cretures (including the 'Nids) to learn how to fight them (Eg Hellfire rounds.) However the idea of "taming" them or learning their secrets (biological data to improve their own knowledge?) is probably guaranteed to draw cries of heresy.

Page 205
Tyranid vessels were not the product of forges and shipyards; they were spawned. Hive ships were spun out of knots of meat and bone, grown on the surface of captured worlds in teeming vats filled with a broth of liquefied biomass. They were living things, animals by some vague definition of the term. Electrochemical processes and nerve ganglions
transmitted commands about its flesh; pheremonic discharges regulated its internal atmosphere; exothermic chemistry created light and heat. Its hull was skeletal matter, protecting the crew that swarmed like parasites inside the gut of the craft. Together, the
hive was a contained, freakish ecosystem, drifting from world to world driven by the need to feed and feed.
Tyranid ship nature discussed. While without a doubt some chemical processes or reactions go on, that cannot be the only thing to Tyranid spaceships - they could not move through space or move the sheer quantity of biomass they strip from planets by merely biological processes, nevermind osme of their more insane feats (up to and including thermonuclear spore mines.) Another source of power (such as the warp) needs to be involved as well.

Page 209-210
...Corae took aim with his flame-thrower, twisting the nozzle to adjust the
dispersal pattern.
...
Corae pulled the trigger and laid a snake of fire over the beast, boiling its soft tissues beneath the hard chitin armour.
Flamer has variable aperture effects, not unlike burna-boys flamethrowers. It also appears energetic enough that it can boil the moisture in soft tissue even through 'Nid carapace (either by slipping through chinks or between segments, or by simply heating up the plates in contact with the flesh.) Probably a useful trait against the 'Nids. If we knew how much flesh was being boiled it might be calcable.

Page 217
...then the commanding intellect was the hive tyrant. None had ever been captured alive, and few had been recovered by the Imperium intact enough for a full
dissection.
...
Some even said that the tyrants were only a subgenus of something even larger and more intelligent; a cadre of tyranid capable of reasoning and independent thought. But no such being had ever been seen by human eyes—or if it had, those who
had gazed upon it did not live to tell.
I have to wonder at this given arger ones like Dominatrixes, and Norn Queens and such.

PAge 236
..it was
the foremost provider of essential ores and precious metals to the forge worlds of the Chthonian Chain.

Platinum, iridium, plutonium and uranium were all found buried within the crust of the
planet, even though it was compressed beneath ten kilometres of crushing ice in some places. Iron ore was found in vast quantities in great seams running practically the
entire circumference of the planet’s equator and it was the only attainable source of a number of rarer elements for twelve parsecs.
Important mateirals for forge worlds.

Page 248
It was a great rift in the glacier, as if a great cube had been cut out of the ice where
the explorators had dug down into the ice, exposing…
...
It was a pyramid. It was caked in ice, half-buried by the drifts of snow. What little of it that was visible appeared to be made from a seamless piece of some unrecognisable compound that looked like dark silver, but it was pyramidal in form and there was no
mistaking its origin.
....
The rest of the Imperial Fists formed up behind him, trooping after him into the hole, which was ten metres deep and more than six times that across, that had been carved into the ice of Ixya.
Digging out a necron pyramid.

page 260
“How are the refined minerals you produce here transported to the forge worlds of this subsector?”

“Why,” the adapted adept croaked rustily, “Mechanicus transport vessels arrive on a regular basis to transport the ores and isotopes we refine here to Croze, Incus and Ferramentum III.”
“And when is the next shipment due to leave?”
“Why, the Glory of Gehenna is coming in-system as we speak,”
Mechanicus shipping of vital supplies through the subsector. Note the existence of multiple forge worlds.

Page 26
Like some leviathan void-spawn birthed in the cold, dark depths of space, the Mechanicus vessel Glory of Gehenna coasted in the exosphere of the frozen
planet a thousand kilometres below...
The Glory of Gehenna.. AdMech transport vessel.

Page 261
..from caterpillar-tracked servitors, as large as a full-grown grox and twenty
times as strong, to huge earthmoving machines—was pressed into service in preparing the mining facility for the siege that was to come...
Mechanicus construction gear.

Page 261-262
Dropping into low orbit, the Mechanicus vessel locked onto the coordinates relayed from the surface by Thunderhawk Fortis’ machine spirit, the signal boosted by Magos Winze’s Mechanicus-maintained communication arrays.

....

A seismic shudder passed along the length of the Glory of Gehenna as with a silent scream the vessel’s port and starboard laser batteries fired on the surface of Ixya. They hit the ground with a deviation of only point zero six degrees, due to atmospheric distortion, and pounded the excavation site and the xenos ruins with everything the servants of the Machine-God on board could coax from the ancient weapons batteries, channelling as much energy as they could from the leviathan’s ancient plasma core.
...
Atmospheric gases were split into their component elements as the beams of focussed
retina-searing light, as hot as the heart of a sun, speared down through the cloud-festooned atmosphere of the planet, setting the sky on fire, mere nanoseconds later reaching their target on the ground.

Ice melted and water boiled as the furious heat of the Glory of Gehenna’s attack burned away the layers of frozen glacier within which the doomed explorator team had found the alien pyramid waiting for them.

Hundreds of the inhuman constructs were wiped out in the initial phase of the bombardment. The skeletal warriors were reduced to their component parts, as units of tomb spyders and swarms of scarabs, too numerous to count, were eradicated alongside them.

In only a matter of seconds half the emerging necron force had been eradicated by one decisive, pre-emptive strike.

But as the clouds of steam drifted clear of the burn site and the whirling snow returned....
...
...despite wiping out a significant portion of the burgeoning necron host, the
blasphemous structure on the ground—the pyramid itself—still stood. The only thing that had altered about its status was that much more of it had been uncovered by the scouring laser lances as their furious barrage cut through ice many metres deep,
exposing not just the primary pyramid, but the peaks of two smaller structures that lay in its deathly shadow.
Orbital laser bombardment to take out the Necrons and the Pyramind. WE don't quite know the exact depth or surface area (beyond "metres" and that the pyramid was at least 10 metres deep and 60 metres across (at least) which was larger than the dig crater.

Assuming at least a 100 meter diameter area, and 10-12 metres deep .. vaprorizing at least 300-400 TJ worth of ice in a matter of seconds. This may or may not be conservative, we know bombardments in Battleflet Koronus and Deathwatch Rites of Battle imply areas square km (for lances) or 10 square km (for laser and generalbombardment)

Assuming a 12 m deep 1 square km area you get 32 petajoules (~8 megatons) and 80 megatons for 10 square km.

Given that there was habitation not much more than 100 km way, its unlikely they went much beyond that even if this was just a purely laser bombardment - releasing gigatons fo energy into an atmosphere is generally not a good thing near habitable facilities. On
the other hand, it's hardly a warship doing the bombardment either - its a mechanicus transport vessel, executing a tactical bombardment. We can expect kilotons to megatons,a nd it works fine either way.

Page 274
...the pack’s power core overloaded, resulting in a detonation as powerful as that of a
cluster of thermal charges.
...
He saw the jump pack rip apart like burnt paper as the blast consumed it. He saw Brother Maestus reduced to his component atoms as the resulting fireball from the sub-atomic explosion consumed him.

He saw the necron’s tattered robes burn away to nothing on the nuclear wind. He watched as the skeletal lord warped, melted and disintegrated
nanoseconds later.
...
Brother Maestus was gone. Of the necron master, there was no sign either. What there was, was the solidifying bowl of a melted crater focussed on the epicentre of the catastrophic blast. For thirty metres in every direction lay the fallen of the necron
host: warriors and wraiths, scarabs and spyders, all obliterated by the blast, their cybernetic components fused into lumps of useless metal...
Jump pack turned into impromptu nuclear bomb. Tells us something about its power source as well was hwat is needed to take out a Necorn Lord.

Page 277
...much larger reaper force that has risen from inside the pyramid.”
“How much larger, Brother Teaz?”
“A thousand times, sir.”
1000x grater than first force.


Page 278-279
“Magos, from where does Aes Metallum get its power?”
“We take our energy from the boiling heart of this world, deep, deep below the ice.”
“As I suspected, geothermally.”
...
“Magos Winze—broadcast a repeating signal via your satellite network that Ixya is Terra Perdita. Then do all that is necessary to ensure that you overload the geothermal grid. We shall use Aes Metallum’s very power source, the beating heart of this Emperorgiven
world, to split it asunder. This base, and everything in it, shall be destroyed in a volcanic
eruption the like of which Ixya has not seen in ten thousand years. We may die this day, but so shall the undying legions of the necrontyr!”
....
"But for the time being we shall tear this planet apart and blow this place sky
high, in His name!”
Yet another case of geothermal planet destruction. One has to wonder what the hell kinds of power sources 40K plaents have that they can blow apart like bombs.

Page 281
Where the Imperial Fists had faced hundreds of the mechanical warriors during the initial
attack on Aes Metallum, here thousands advanced on the right flank, thousands on the left, thousands more forming the central block..
Suggestion of a force of hundreds of thousands of necrons total (first force was hundreds, this one is 1000x greater).

Page 296
He, and other Radicals like him, believed mankind’s salvation, its very future, lay not with the technological stagnation in which the race of men was currently mired, but with the act of understanding and embracing the technology of its alien enemies. And
yet, so many fools scorned this patently obvious truth. Borgovda had known good colleagues, fine inquisitive magi like himself, who had been executed for their beliefs. Why did the Fabricator General not see it? Why did the mighty Lords of Terra not
understand?
Another radical techpriest, a xenoheirographologist.

Page 301
But the skitarii troopers of the Adeptus Mechanicus had been rendered all but fearless, their survival instincts overridden by neural programming, augmentation and
brain surgery. They did not flee as other men would
have.
Skitarii braveness surgery.

Page 307
The dust on those winds cut visibility by twenty per cent, but Solarion had hit
targets the size of an Imperial ducat at three kilometres.
...
Sniping from the top of the crane meant that he was forced to lie belly-down at a forty-five degree angle, his bolt-rifle’s stock braced against his
shoulder..
Bolter sniper rifle. Range 3 km.

Page 322
There was a crack of thunder, a single boltershot.
Magos Borgovda’s head exploded in a red haze.
Bolt round head explosion. They're almost commonplace by now.

PAge 332-333
As Prognosticator, it was important for him to read the auguries, to commune with the will of the Emperor before the squad committed themselves. To a man, the Silver Skulls were deeply superstitious. It had been known for entire companies to refuse to
go into battle if the auguries were poor. Even the Chapter Master, Lord Commander Argentius, had once refused to enter the fray on the advice of the
Vashiro, the Chief Prognosticator.

This was more, so much more than ancient superstition. The Silver Skulls believed without question that the Emperor projected His will and His desire through His psychic children. These readings were no simple divinations of chance and happenstance. They were messages from the God- Emperor of Mankind, sent through the fathomless
depths of space to His distant loyal servants.

The Silver Skulls, loyal to the core, never denied His will.

Prognosticators served a dual purpose in the Chapter. Where other ranks of Adeptus Astartes had Librarians and Chaplains, the Silver Skulls saw the universe in a different way. Those battle-brothers who underwent training at the hands of the Chief
Prognosticator offered both psychic and spiritual
guidance to their brethren.
Sensible or insanity? You decide!

Page 370-371
“That can’t be correct. Kroot don’t have psychic abilities.”
...
It was imbued with psychic powers. Unheard of, at least in the Silver Skulls’ experience. Reports and research had never once suggested that the kroot, the fierce, mercenary warrior troops regularly employed by tau armies, were psychic.

...
“It is said that these things eat the flesh of their enemies, that they have the ability to
assimilate their DNA."
Psychic Kroot.

Page 372
“There are, to the best of our knowledge, no psychic kroot. Not any that we’ve
met before,” he hypothesised. “However, what if it were to assimilate a psychic species? Say… the eldar?”
...
“What would stop it from killing and eating one of the eldar? What would prevent it
from the freedom to filter out the required genetic strands that would give it the most useful result?”

“Surely it must take several generations for a
kroot to assimilate such powers?”
...
“We don’t know what constitutes a kroot
generation."
Speculation on the dangers of psychic Kroot.

Page 378-379
The air boomed out as Alaric emerged in real space again, several hundred kilometres from the teleporter array on the Obsidian Sky where he had started the journey. Even a Space Marine, even a Grey Knight, was not immune to the disorientation of being hurled through the warp to another part of space, and for a second his senses fought to make
definition of reality around him.
...
The technology that made it possible could not be replicated, and was restricted to a handful of the oldest Imperial warships.
...
Teleportation was not an exact science, for even the oldest machines could simply fling the occasional man into the warp to be lost forever. He could be turned inside out, merged with a wall upon re-entry or fused with one of his fellow travellers.
Teleportation range, and the dangers inherent in it. Oh yes, and because its high technology, it is lost tech for the Imperium. FINITE NUMBERS!


Page 383
A silver bowl on the metal floor in front of him was there, he knew, to catch his blood.
...
The hand, gloved in crimson satin, held a single bullet.

The bullet was dropped into the silver bowl.
...
The priest in front of the sacrificial altar drew a knife from beneath his robes. It had a blade of gold, inscribed with High Gothic prayers.
Bullet in a bowl to catch blood, a sancticied Ecclesiarchal knife.. what do you think this means??

Page 384
Some of those criminals would open up a slit in a customer’s abdomen and implant an internal pouch where a small item could be concealed....
...
The sacrifice had also paid what little he had to have one of his fingernails replaced with a miniature blade.
...
..the sacrifice used this tiny blade to open up the old scar in the side of his abdomen. Pinpricks of pain flared where the nerve endings had not been properly
killed in that dingy basement surgery.
Implanted pouch for smuggling.. like a gun. Oh and fingernail blades.

Page 384-386
“By this blood,” intoned the priest, “shed by this blade, shall the weapon be consecrated! Oh Emperor on high, oh Lord of Mankind, oh Father of our futures, look upon this offering!”
...
“Do not presume to know,” said the cardinal, “what a life is worth to me. Not when I serve an Imperium where a billion brave men die every day."
...
"Be grateful, merely, that we have given you the chance to serve Him in death.”
...

“Then cut a hundred men’s throats on this altar to keep him happy!” retorted the sacrifice. “A hundred killers. There are plenty of them out there. A hundred sinners. But not me. I am a good man. I do not deserve to die here!”
...
“That is why it has to be you,” he said. “What worth is the blood of a sinner?”
...
“A thousand times this world blesses a bullet with the blood of a good man. A thousand other worlds pay the same tithe to our brethren in the Inquisition."
...
"You will kneel and die, and your blood will consecrate our offering.”
...
“Talaya,” he said.

“If you do not kneel and bare your throat to the Emperor’s blade,” said the cardinal, “then she will take your place. She is a good person, is she not?”
Yes, that is all pretty much right. There are a thousand worlds out there, who sacrifice a thousand good men, to make a thousand blessed bullets. Or rhater, bolter shells. To be used in Grey Knight storm bolters. Blessed with blood sacrifice.. dedicated to the Emperor. Taken from unwilling donors. And they are also blackmailed into doing so.

You know, this ranks right up ther with the Grey Knights Codex, but in a way it makes sense too. I mean they sacirfice psykers to the Emperor so he can survive. There's lots of little ways sacrifices are done (sacrificing countless Guardsmen, for example,) It kind of make sense, and yet... it still feels so fucked up and un-Imperial. Maybe it would make more sense if it was a willing sacrifice.. or at least someone raised and conditioned to it (they run the schola progenium after all.. and they brianwash psykers into sacrificing themselves,s o why not regular people.) This just feels hamfisted and forced.. Soul Drinkers hamfisted. I'm not left impressed with the noble sacrifices the common man makes so a Grey Knight can do his job, I'm left convinced that the Ecclesiarchy are hypocritical, smug bastards who think they know how to do things. Fucking morons.

Again like with Matt Ward's stuf.. you probably could explain it somehow, but it doesn't excuse how incredibly, poorly executed the scene itself is.

Pge 387
Upwards of thirty thousand men had lived on the Merciless, their lives pledged to crewing and defending the grand cruiser.
Grand Cruiser crew of 30K

PAge 392
She could taste the wards built into the ship, too.
They were complex geometric designs, pentagrams and interlocking spirals etched with psychoactive compounds and inked with sacred blood. They covered every surface of the hold, forming a shield blocking all psychic power.
...
Some imperfection in the wall was allowing condensation from the breathing of the prisoners to collect and pool, and then run down the wall. Over the months it
had eroded the metal in a tiny channel of rust, to the naked eye little more than a reddish stain.
...
The sacred oils, with which the wards had been inked, were washed away. The pattern was broken. The single rivulet had erased a channel far too small for all but the most powerful minds to exploit.
Black Ship wards.. and how they can be broken if poorly maintained.

page 393
The Black Ship stretched out around her. Impenetrable barriers were everywhere and Xanthe realised that there were many hangars, each presumably full of psykers. Thousands of them, perhaps, all alone and afraid.
...
The crew were blank spots, their minds shielded from psychic interference so
thoroughly that they were black holes in Xanthe’s
perceptions.

The Black Ship was far larger than Xanthe had expected. It stretched off into the distance in both directions, as big as a city.
Black Ship interior

page 394
Candles were everywhere, miniature waxcaked shrines built into every alcove and iron
chandeliers hanging from every ceiling. Relics— painted icons, mouldering bones, scraps of armour, inscribed bullet casings—lay in glass-fronted cabinets to flood the ship’s decks with holiness and keep the taint of the thousands of psykers out of the
crew’s minds.
...

They were gathering in a chapel. The holiness of it was tainted with a cynicism and cruelty that clashed with the taste of the altar, which was
consecrated to the Emperor as Protector.
Further anti-psyker measures. Apparently relics can block it.
Page 394
She could make out none of his features,
for the cowl of his uniform contained an inhibitor unit
that kept his thoughts and his face from her.
Inhibitor unit.


Page 396-398
The cavern of the furnace billowed around her, pure darkness harnessed in the holo-unit’s bands of light. Above the furnace, suspended over the place where the flames would rage, was a circular platform on which a single suit of armour was mounted on a
rack. The armour was beautiful, ornate and massive, too large for a normally-proportioned human.

Cables and coils hung everywhere, and servo-skulls hovered ready to manipulate the armour as it was forged.

...
"Without them to fuel the forge, the armour’s wards will not be imbued with their power. The only concern we have is that the armour is forged and the Grey
Knights receive their tithe.”

“The witches are vermin."
...
We are going to a furnace, thought Xanthe. We are going to be incinerated so that our power will be transferred into a suit of armour, that its wearer might
be protected from people like us.

Yep. They blood-sacrifice innocents to sanctify bullets, and they burn innocent psykers to forge power armor. I'm not even sure human bodies could possibly make the right kind of fuel for forging either.

Page 400
Brother Visical dragging another daemon down to the
floor and scorching it to corrupted bones with his
incinerator.
Another probable cremation via flamethrower.. although this one migth actually be magic.

Page 404
Thorne swallowed. “Direct-pattern nerve stimulation.”

“Why?”

“Part of my training as an interrogator. We must resist interrogation techniques ourselves.”
"enhanced interrogation" techniques of the 41st Millenium.

Page 407
“What is your name?” said Gravenholm, the juvenat machine sighing in unison. Thorne took a long time to answer.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Throne alive. Oh… merciful Emperor! I don’t know anymore…”
...
“Then you are ready,” he said. “I have no use for an interrogator with his own personality. With his own name. Only when the vessel is empty can it be refilled with something the Ordo Malleus can use. Your training can begin, explicator-cadet. You shall be an
interrogator.”
Another asshole Inquisitor. Rather than doing something simple like mind-wiping they have to torture them into forgetting.


Page 408
The Eye of Terror had opened and the forces of Chaos had poured through. Billions of Imperial Guardsmen and whole Chapters of Space Marines were fighting there to stem the tide, which threatened to break through into the Imperial heartlands of the Segmentum Solar.
Scale of the conflict at the Eye (13th Black Crusade) - this is just prior ot "Hammer of Daemons" in fact.

Page 409
“Look at this ship,” said Alaric. “At the crew and the resources we have spent. How much did it take to put my squad on the Merciless? What sacrifices are
made so we can do what we must do?”

“Indeed, even I cannot count them all,” said Nyxos. “We must take more from our Imperium than any of us can understand."

...
“But speak not these thoughts too freely, Justicar. To some, they might sound like moral weakness. Like the thoughts of one who harbours doubt. Would that you were an
inquisitor, Alaric, that you could speak freely and unveil the inquisitor’s seal to anyone who dared question you! But you are not.”

“I know,” said Alaric. “But someone must think of them. Otherwise, what are we? It is the Imperium we are supposed to be protecting, and yet it must suffer for our efforts to protect it. How far can we go before all become madness? Someone must watch over
what we do.”
About the only thing I liked in this story was Alaric questioning the sacrifices made fro the Grey Knights, wondering if they were worth it.
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Black Admiral
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Re: 40K anthologies compiliation analysis thread

Post by Black Admiral »

Connor MacLeod wrote:Page 520
His strength is immense. I know why this is. I am aware of the… the genetic truths at play. His mind cannot contain his delusional fury. He is using everything he has, everything, powering his muscles with more force and expending more energy than a functioning mind can allow. I can smell the alkaline reek of his blood through the damage in his armour—combat narcotics are flooding his system in lethal quantities. In his madness, he cannot stem the flood of battle narcotics fusing with his bloodstream.
His strength, this godly power, will kill him.
Self explanatory. Chaos enraged (or maybe just Black Raged) Blood Angel I believe.
A Flesh Tearer fallen to the Black Rage, yes.

Page 524
Twin gouts of stinking chemical flame roared from the cannons, bathing Amalay and the Astartes in clinging, corrosive fire. She was already whispering a lament for her fallen sister, even as she blistered the armour and skin from Amalay’s bones.
...
Brialla killed the jets of flame after seven heartbeats, knowing whatever had been washed in the fire would be annihilated, purged in the burning storm.
Amalay. Her armour blackened, its joints melted, her hands reduced to blackened bone. She lay on the ground, incinerated.
Flamethrower.

Page 525
The Astartes was burning. Holy fire licked at the edges of his war plate, and his joints steamed. He eclipsed the sun, casting a flickering shadow over her. His armour was black, charred, but not immolated.
Flamers seem to penetrate gaps in the armor.
I wish to comment on this that Aaron Dembski-Bowden doesn't seem to be able to decide how effective flamers actually are on Space Marines. Elsewhere (Helsreach & Blood Reaver) he's had them doing over SMs (in fact, a heavy flamer burst - from the one built into Huron Blackheart's augmetic arm - melts a fully armoured demi-squad of Marines Errant in Blood Reaver), and yet here we have a Flesh Tearer in armour that's totally beaten to shit and breached in multiple places walking off heavy flamer fire.
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Lost Soal
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Re: 40K anthologies compiliation analysis thread

Post by Lost Soal »

This is Goto's "Praying Mantidae" - god I hate that name. I hate ANY name Goto comes up with. Neat idea though.
Honestly I don't know if I'm trying to defend him here, condemn him or both but technically I don't know if you can accuse him of coming up with the name. More accurately you could say he butchered it instead since Mantidae is the proper name for the species family, which means the idiot called his great idea the Praying Praying Mantis.
I'm not defending his am I?
Yes, that is all pretty much right. There are a thousand worlds out there, who sacrifice a thousand good men, to make a thousand blessed bullets. Or rhater, bolter shells. To be used in Grey Knight storm bolters. Blessed with blood sacrifice.. dedicated to the Emperor. Taken from unwilling donors. And they are also blackmailed into doing so.

You know, this ranks right up ther with the Grey Knights Codex, but in a way it makes sense too. I mean they sacirfice psykers to the Emperor so he can survive. There's lots of little ways sacrifices are done (sacrificing countless Guardsmen, for example,) It kind of make sense, and yet... it still feels so fucked up and un-Imperial. Maybe it would make more sense if it was a willing sacrifice.. or at least someone raised and conditioned to it (they run the schola progenium after all.. and they brianwash psykers into sacrificing themselves,s o why not regular people.) This just feels hamfisted and forced.. Soul Drinkers hamfisted. I'm not left impressed with the noble sacrifices the common man makes so a Grey Knight can do his job, I'm left convinced that the Ecclesiarchy are hypocritical, smug bastards who think they know how to do things. Fucking morons.
1000 x 1000 bullets. 1 million rounds from the Ecclesiarch to the Inquisition. I wounder what the Ecclesiarch get out of this deal since it seems, to me at least rather out of character for them to willingly assist another organisation and get nothing out of it. Or is the killing innocent people simply part of daily prayer regime?
"May God stand between you and harm in all the empty places where you must walk." - Ancient Egyptian Blessing

Ivanova is always right.
I will listen to Ivanova.
I will not ignore Ivanova's recommendations. Ivanova is God.
AND, if this ever happens again, Ivanova will personally rip your lungs out! - Babylon 5 Mantra

There is no "I" in TEAM. There is a ME however.
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Connor MacLeod
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Re: 40K anthologies compiliation analysis thread

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Lost Soal wrote:Honestly I don't know if I'm trying to defend him here, condemn him or both but technically I don't know if you can accuse him of coming up with the name. More accurately you could say he butchered it instead since Mantidae is the proper name for the species family, which means the idiot called his great idea the Praying Praying Mantis.
I'm not defending his am I?
Probably not. He's often considered a butcher of language in general. Whilst I think it is overstated, its got an element of truth to it.

I think the silliness is that what he did with the Mantis Warriors he did with the Warp Spiders in Eldar Prophecy. I guess the lesson is 'Keep Goto away from Bug references and Eldar'.
1000 x 1000 bullets. 1 million rounds from the Ecclesiarch to the Inquisition. I wounder what the Ecclesiarch get out of this deal since it seems, to me at least rather out of character for them to willingly assist another organisation and get nothing out of it. Or is the killing innocent people simply part of daily prayer regime?
Inquisitorial favor is something of an asset all its own - to be able to call upon their resources in some way, or influence, or whatever could be of benefit to one particular faction within the Ecclesairchy or another (who are just as prone to infighting as any other Imperial organization.)

It could also just be seen as part of their religious duties. We know for some cults blood and killing in the Emperor's name can be seen as a form of worship. Admittedly its borderline, but it is technically sanctioned (Death Cultists I believe mainly.) This isn't quite the same thing, but its probably not impossible to have it as described. Hell, for all we know the Malleus deliberately cultivated this sort of thing simply to get ammo. It's the sort of Grimdarky stuff Ben Counter soometimes sticks in his work.

IIRC the Dark Heresy RPG stuff outlined another Ecclesiarchy/Malleus cooperative project involving the handling of daemonic/warp objects and/or banishing. I might be conflating the banishers with the Oblationists though..
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Re: 40K anthologies compiliation analysis thread

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Black Admiral wrote:I wish to comment on this that Aaron Dembski-Bowden doesn't seem to be able to decide how effective flamers actually are on Space Marines. Elsewhere (Helsreach & Blood Reaver) he's had them doing over SMs (in fact, a heavy flamer burst - from the one built into Huron Blackheart's augmetic arm - melts a fully armoured demi-squad of Marines Errant in Blood Reaver), and yet here we have a Flesh Tearer in armour that's totally beaten to shit and breached in multiple places walking off heavy flamer fire.
It's not really unique to him. Alot of authors seem not to be able to decide what flamethrowers are, what they do, or how they work. By this point they've joined lasguns, plasma weapons, meltaguns, and most other 40K weapons in only being a 'broad category' with a wide range of capabilities and performance (which means 'not much different from a real flamethrower' to 'literally magical or saced flamethrowers that can literally be more effective than real life flamethrowers.' And lets not forget the toxic flamethrowers or other variations.)

Huron's flamer, for example, probably ranks well above into the 'magical flamethrower' category. Ork flamers are also in the 'weird' category (you referencing Helsreach I imagine) both because of their 'variable focus' aspect and because the Orks can make steam power and fossil fuels magically match up to nuclear powered vehicles.
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Re: 40K anthologies compiliation analysis thread

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Connor MacLeod wrote:Ugh. Next up Space Marine anthology. One update, two parts. It wsa like.. second in the Space Marine novels I think (there's one which has the continuing story of Gav Thorpe and Avenging Sons being retards, but I dont feel much like doing it in order.)

Part 1
Crud I just realized.. this should be 'Legends of the Space Marines'. I don't even reclal why I didnt add that.. the Space Marine anthologies all seem the same to me. (and there's another one coming out this year.. UGH.)

No more fucking Space Marines! Go back to more varied anthologies dammit.
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Re: 40K anthologies compiliation analysis thread

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New update.. This is 'Heroes of the Space Marines'. I have to say that I like this one the best mainly because it had Aaron Dembski-Bowden writing them - about the only way I can tolerate Space Marines really. 'One Hate' was really a twist story for me, because prior to this my view on Crimson Fists was modeled largely on 'Crimson Tears' and that asshole Reinez. The story is a bit of a suprrise because it starts out alot like the way REinez was in Crimson tears, which made me expect a grimdarky ending. Sufficed to say, ADB surprised the hell out of me, and the story really ends up making the Fists in 'Crimson Tears' look even more irregular (especially when you pair this with Rynn's World.) So it was refreshing to have non-Asshole Astartes who actually give a damn about the people they're supposed to be defending.

Still its a Space Marine novel, and this was counterbalanced by having to endure more... Honsou. God I hate Honsou. We do get more short stories from the Salamanders and stuff, which is perhaps one of the oddest Space MArine series I've yet found.

anyways single update, two parts. I may also just throw in 'Fear the Alien' just so I can be done with the anthologies and move on.


Page 14-15
Dall's entire body convulsed as the malevolent warp beast bound to Honsou's axe ripped his soul apart for sport.
...
A bright orange line, like that of a welder's acetylene torch hissed around the edge of where Dall's axe was buried in Honsou's arm and the weapon fell free with a crescent-shaped bite taken from it. Even as Honsou watched, the fiery lustre of the blade faded as its power passed into Honsou's weapon.

Where Dall's blade had penetrated Honsou's arm was unblemished and smooth, as though it had come straight from the silversmith's workbench. Honsou neither knew nor cared about the source of the arm's power to heal itself, it was enough that it had saved him once again
Daemon weapon devours target's soul. and honsou has a Necron-tech infused power arm.

Page 16
The streets were sloping thoroughfares of hard-packed earth, and Honsou scanned the crowds around them for an old enemy, a new rival or simply a warrior looking to make a name for himself by killing someone like him.

Hawkers and charlatans lined the streets, filling the air with strange aromas, chants and promises, each offering pleasures and wares that could only be found in a place this deep in the Maelstrom; nightmare-fleets, blades of daemon-forged steel, carnal delights with warp-altered courtesans, opiates concocted from the immaterial substance of void-creatures and promises of eternal youth.
In addition to the swaggering pirate bands, mercenary kin-broods and random outcasts, lone warriors stood at street corners, boasting of their prowess while demonstrating their skills. A grey-skinned loxatl climbed the brickwork of a dark tower, its armature weapons flexing and aiming without apparent need for hands. A robed Scythian distilled venom before a gathered audience, while a band of men and women in heavy armour demonstrated sword and axe skills. Others spun firearms, took shots at hurled targets and displayed yet more impressive feats of exceptional marksmanship.
Even Chaos has its mercantile side.



Page 31
No wonder the piratical fleets that raided the shipping lanes around New Badab were the terror of the Imperium's shipmasters. Blackheart's reavers plagued the worlds of the Corpse-Emperor from the Tyrant's bases scattered around the Maelstrom, bringing him plunder, slaves, weapons and, most importantly, ships.
Probably making him a more effective leader than Abbadon, albeit on a smaller scale.

Page 31
Vaanes chuckled. "That'll be a first, but it doesn't matter. That creature on his shoulder, the Hamadrya, is said to be able to see into the hearts of men and whisper their darkest thoughts in the Tyrant's ear. Imperial assassins have tried to slay Blackheart for decades, but none have ever come close, the Hamadrya senses their thoughts long before they get near."
The reason Blackheart still survives. Abbadon ought to get himself one.

Page 42
Votheer Tark's battle engine was a hulking monster that had once been a Dreadnought, but which had been altered by Tark's Dark Mechanicum adepts into the housing for a shrieking entity brought forth from the warp. It tore through the warbands of three champions before finally being brought low by one of Pashtoq Uluvent's berserk warriors who fought through the loss of an arm to detonate a melta bomb against its sarcophagus.

The daemon was torn screaming back to the warp and the lower half of the berserker was immolated in the blast. Even with his legs vaporised, the berserker crawled towards Huron Blackheart's throne to deposit the defeated engine's skull-mount.
Possessed Dreadnought. Melta bomb detonates its legs (assuming iron.. gigajoules maybe?)


Page 43
The Newborn won two duels on the first day of killing; crushing the skull of Kaarja Salombar's corsair pistolier before he could loose a single shot, and eventually defeating the loxatl kin-champion of Xaneant's brood group. This last battle was fought for nearly an hour, with the loxatl unable to put the Newborn down, despite exhausting its supply of flechettes into its opponent.
A daemonic creation of Khalan-Ghol's birth chambers, the Newborn's powers of regeneration were stronger in the warp-saturated Maelstrom and each wound, though agonising, was healed within moments of its infliction.

Exhausted and without ammunition, the loxatl eventually pounced on the Newborn, using its dewclaws to tear at its armour, but even its speed was no match for the Newborn's resilience.
Warp creatures can be strengthened ability wise by proximity to a heavily warp-impregnated enviroment (like the Eye.) The Newborn literally wears it out (ammo, and endurance.)

Page 50
At the final tally, Honsou left New Badab with close to seventeen thousand warriors sworn in blood to his cause. Pashtoq Uluvent's warriors, and those he had won, were now Honsou's, their banners now bearing the Iron Skull device.
yes.. this is the grand armada Honsou plans to besiege MacRagge with. contrast this iwth the Word Bearers armada in Dark Creed, or Abbadon's invasion force of the Gothic sector and Crythe Cluster.


Page 51
Huron Blackheart had been true to his word, and the victor of the Skull Harvest had indeed benefited greatly from his patronage. As the Warbreed broke orbit, numerous other vessels accompanied it, gifts from the Tyrant of Badab to be used for the express purpose of dealing death to the forces of the Imperium. In addition to these vessels, the ships of the defeated champions formed up around Honsou's flagship to form a ragtag, yet powerful, fleet of corsairs and renegades.

Battered warships, ugly bulk carriers, planetary gunboats, warp-capable system monitors and captured cruisers followed the Warbreed as it plotted a careful route through the Maelstrom, away from the domain of Huron Blackheart.
Honsou's mighty fleet. I guess Huron has plenty of military power and wealth to spread.

Page 54
Zatori concentrated, employing the enhanced vision of the Astartes to peer farther than an unaugmented human would have dreamed possible.
Scouts/Astarts have longer visual range than humans.


Page 57
When the planetary governor of Tunis had sent out his distress call, just as the ork landers first started dropping from the sky on the far side of the planet, the Imperial Fists had been near the system, returning from a previous undertaking to the Phalanx, the Chapter's fortress-monastery, currently at anchor at a few weeks' distance.

Of course, the transport had been a Gladius-class frigate, carrying only a single squad of Veterans of the First Company, accompanied by a Scout squad of the Tenth. But the planetary governor had not been in any position to complain about the size of the force that responded to his desperate calls for aid.
Imperial Fists response to distress call.


Page 62
Teeth bared, Rotgrim hurled abuse at the human, who suddenly let go of his handlebars. It would have been funny, seeing a human riding a little bike hands free, if that hand hadn't come back up another moment later with a big gun in it.

Rotgrim yanked his forks to the right just in time to miss the torrent of heat that poured out of the gun, hot enough to fuse the sand on the ground into glass.

With a grim snarl, Rotgrim couldn't help but chuckle. The human wasn't the only one with a holdout.
I love this part for the Ork POV.

Page 62
The melta gun was a temporary deterrent at best, Zatori knew. It was only useful anyway over the shortest of distances, the promethium it excited into a sub-molecular state impossible to aim more than a few metres; but it was difficult to use any ranged weapons at high speed, anyway, so the trade-off between range and firepower for the Bike Scouts was deemed well worth it. As it was, between the melta guns for ranged firing and their swords for close combat, Veteran Sergeant Hilts had told the Scouts not to expect much opportunity to use their twin-linked bolters.
Yes.. Meltaguns are now even MORE flamethrower like.. just with the promethium exicted into a "sub molecular state."

Page 67
Fortunately, Zatori had spent his time in the Pain Glove, as Initiate, Neophyte, and Scout, and had cleaved to the sacred words of Rhetoricus: ''Pain is the wine of communion with heroes''. If he could learn to endure prolonged periods with that tunic of electrofibres, suspended for what seemed an eternity within the steel gibbet deep within the Phalanx, meditating on the image of Rogal Dorn and learning to focus past the pain, remaining fully conscious throughout - if Zatori could do that, then he could endure the mere discomfort of having his flesh cooked off the bone by burning promethium.
Yes, they retained the quasi-Masochistic aspect of Imperial Fists with the pain glove.

Page 67
He knew that, if the greenskins were in close enough proximity for their flamethrowers to paint him, then they were also close enough for Zatori's own melta gun to return the compliment.
With a silent prayer for forgiveness to the spirit of his blade, Zatori slammed his sword into the sheath on his back in one smooth motion, and then whipped his melta gun out of its holster on the side of his bike. Without wasting a moment, he twisted at the waist as far as he was able, swung the melta gun around and sent a blast of superheated gas back at the pursuing warbuggy.
Flamethrowers and meltaguns seem to have similar ranges.

Page 68
Zatori's melta blast struck the greenskin driver head on, all but vaporising him instantly from the abdomen up, leaving only a pair of dismembered hands dangling lifeless from the steering wheel and an oozing puddle of viscera pooling atop the burnt remains of his hips and legs.
meltagun blast vpaorizes ork from torso up.. hundreds of megajoules.

Page 70
A small-arms round pinged off the gold and jet ceramite of Zatori's armour, the shot thudding into his left shoulder as the pursuing attack bike attempted to pick him off with a firearm. A second shot followed, also on his left but further down, nearer his waist. Each time, he reflexively leaned to the right, pulling away from the shot.
Ork small arms fire useless against power armor.

Page 73
While the ork leader was occupied with du Queste and s'Tonan, Zatori ground to a halt where Hilts had come to rest. The sergeant was pinned between the massive rock that had arrested his forward motion and the heavy bike that had arrived a split second after. The bike itself was a mangled mess, bent out of its true shape, the forward forks snapped off and the tyre still trundling away in the dust. Hilts was in little better shape. At the speeds they'd been travelling, the force of the impact with the massive rock outcropping had been enough to dent his ceramite armour in several places, and he was bleeding generously from wounds that his Larraman cells had not yet been able to staunch. One leg was bent forwards at an obscene angle, and his left arm appeared to be pulled completely from its socket. The impact of the bike had only worsened the damage.
Astartes after a collision with a rock.

Page 77
Zatori didn't waste an instant by dropping into a defensive posture, or by reciting the abbreviated Litany of the Blade, or by raising his sword into the en garde position. Instead, he simply drew his melta gun, squeezed the trigger, and melted the oncoming ork into a puddle of ooze and charred bone with a single prolonged blast.
Meltagun.. melts an ork.

Page 80
There were thirty of them left; thirty Space Marines of the one hundred and three who had first come to Helmabad.
Avenging sons chapter. Continuation of an earlier story.

PAge 81
Just behind the captain stood Librarian Zacherys, a nimbus of energy glowing from the Librarian's psychic hood, the force sword in his right fist blazing with power. Helmetless, Zacherys's face was a mask of strain as he projected an invisible wall of force around the Space Marines. With sparks of warp energy, las-bolts and auto-gun rounds crackled into oblivion around the psyker.
Librairan force shield deflecting gunfire.

Page 83
Gessart jumped up towards the next Sentinel, his free hand grabbing hold of the edge of the cockpit. The pilot pulled out a laspistol and fired it point blank into Gessart's chest as the captain heaved himself up, the shots flickering harmless from the solid plastron of his armour. Gessart swung his storm bolter around and fired two shots; the first round ripped apart the pilot's chest, the second disintegrated his head in a shower of gore; blood and brain matter spattered across Gessart's golden helm
Laspistol does nothing against power armor. Storm bolter blows apart chest and head.

Page 85
For another six hours the battle for the audience hall raged. There had been little let-up in the fighting and even Gessart was beginning to feel the strain of the constant vigilance required; not just on the line here but from more than forty days of continuous war since they had arrived on Helmabad.
40 days of nonstop warfare for astartes.



Page 85
"'Power pack at thirty-five per cent," said Brother Heynke.
Self explanatory.

Page 86
..even as the name left his lips Heynke's las-cannon spat out a blast of energy that slammed into the turret of the tank. The shot ignited the shells stored inside and the whole of the turret erupted into a blossom of fire and smoke, hurling a burning body out onto the blood-soaked marble.
"Power pack at thirty percent," warned Heynke. "No more than half a dozen shots left, brother-captain."
5% of total power pack per shot... 20 shots.

Page 88
"We have less than two hundred bolter rounds left,"' the Space Marine explained with a grim expression. "Less than fifty heavy shells for Willusch. Power packs are still plentiful."
"One engagement," said Heynke.
"A short one, perhaps," said Lehenhart, his mood unusually subdued. "It'll be short for the wrong reasons."
"It's only through good fire discipline we've made our supplies last this long," said Rykhel. "We weren't equipped for an elongated campaign. We're already seventy days over our predicted combat threshold."
200 bolter rounds, 50 heavy bolter rounds is a "short" engagmeent. Astartes have a "predicted threhshold" for combat endurance baesd on supplies.

Page 89
Rykhel strode across the chamber and picked up one of the many Guard-issue lasguns stacked against the walls. Its barrel crumpled in the augmented grip of his hand.

"Useless for our purposes," said Rykhel, tossing the remnants of the lasgun aside. "Simply not durable enough. We would be better using our fists."
Avenging sons hate lasguns, I guess.

Page 91
"We were right to do what we did on Archimedon. It is not in the teachings of the primarch to throw our lives away in needless sacrifice. We could not defend the space port any longer against the enemy. It had to be destroyed."
They're not mindless, at least. Although as I recall from this story, they abandoned a position to preserve thesmelves over normal humans. These turn into renegade assholes by the end.

Page 92
"The enemy number in their billions. Billions, Willusch! In all likelihood it is well that Herdain resigns us to our doom.
"
Billions of enemies.

Page 96
The crack of a bolt-round rang out around the chamber and the Chaplain's head exploded in a blossom of blood and fragments of bone. Gessart stood with Zacherys's smoking pistol in his fist; the captain had not brought his own weapon with him.
Bolt round explodes unhelmeted Chaplain.

Page 99
"How is it that three-quarters of your citizens rose up in revolt against your command? Explain to me why the Astartes should shed their blood to save the rulership of a man who did not defend it himself?"
3/4 of the citizens represents "billions".

Page 103
"However, should you try to double-cross me, my strike cruiser in orbit has locked onto your comms-signal and is even now aiming its cannons at your position. If I fail to report to them once we leave the sepulchre they will reduce your camp to ashes, and you along with it."

"Really?" whispered Willusch with a smile. "I never knew we could do that."

"He's lying, you idiot," snapped Nicz. "Even if we were actually in contact with the Vengeful they can't track a solitary carrier wave signal from orbit. We would have blasted their commanders to oblivion by now if we could."
Limits of Space Marine orbital bombardment.

Page 109
Mechanics hissed as servo arms came down from the ceiling and detached the Space Marine's backpack and plugged it into the Thunderhawk's system to recharge. Even the compensating muscle-like fibre bundles of his power armour felt lighter without the backpack's reactor weighing him down. A quick check of the suit's systems in his visor display confirmed that his armour had internal power for several hours; more than enough for them to reach the strike cruiser in orbit.
Odd that a reactor has to recharge. Maybe it means refuelling. Internal power for the armor (in this situation at least) is several hours.

Page 110
The Space Marine pointed to the monitor displaying the image from the external gun camera. He had the magnification set at thirty times normal Space Marine vision and it showed the steps of the sepulchre eastern gate.
30x magnification on a gun camera.

Page 110
Gessart glanced at the launch chronometer and saw that they were still over a hundred seconds from orbital thrust. Plenty of time to investigate.
100 seconds from "orbitla thrust" which I guess means speed to break orbit. ASsuming 8-11 km/s we're talking 8-11 gees roughly. If we go "merely" hypersonic we're tlaking 2 maybe 3 gees.

Page 111
By now the Thunderhawk was shaking violently as its thrusters accelerated the gunship to hypersonic speeds. The external pick-ups of his helm relayed the creaks and groans of straining metal and ceramite as the Thunderhawk fought against gravity and friction. Looking out of the armoured canopy, Gessart could see the stubby nose of the craft beginning to glow with heat, and beyond that the great wound in reality like a pulsing red sheet of energy.
"Check seals for depressurisation," Nicz said over the link. "Orbital velocity in thirty seconds."
"hypersonic" velocity leaving the atmosphere. Now they are hypersonic, "orbital velocity" in 30 seconds. 1.7-8 km/s = 6.3 km/s in 30 seconds.. 210 m/s^2 or a bit over 21 gees.


Page 113
"Immediate warp jump," snapped Gessart, focusing his attention back on the bridge.
...

"Activate warp shields," shouted Gessart. "Prepare for immediate jump."

...

"Warp jump?" he stuttered."If we open a gate here the gravitational forces will pull us apart."
"There's already a gate open, you imbecile!" said Gessart, thrusting a finger towards the pulsing daemonic rift.
Warp shields.. rather than gellar field. They can't jump to wapr inside a planetary system, but they can use the warp rift.


Page 114
"I need you to navigate, Zacherys," Gessart said, stepping towards the Librarian. "Can you do that?"

The Librarian nodded.
Librarian can act as impromptu navigator, at least over short distances. Much as a sorcerer or farseer can. Or an Ork Weirdboy.

Page 116
"Can you plot a course?" Gessart asked as he hailed Zacherys.

The Librarian's reply was halting and suffused with strain.

"No fix on Astronomican," he said. "Heading for eye of storm. Need to concentrate."
Interesting. This implies the Librarian might have bene able to sense the AStronomican, and thus guide by it.

Page 117
The last to enter was Zacherys. The Librarian still wore his armour, though within the confines of the ship's warp shield he had removed his psychic hood to allow him to better see the currents of the immaterium and guide the ship.
Again Librarian can navigate - sort of.

Page 121
Scaevolla stroked the trigger of his bolter. A dozen rounds barked into the obscuring green fog, and screams wailed from the soupy atmosphere ahead.
12-round burst from a bolter.

Page 122
Lines of men in grey battle uniform emerged wraithlike from the mist, their masked helmets lending them an alien appearance - wide black eyes and metal snouts. The troopers' helmets depicted a silver double-headed eagle, the insignia of the Imperial Guard. The front rank of the platoon knelt and the second rank stood upright, lasguns at the ready while the fallen curled on the floor.
.. A sergeant bellowed and another volley was unleashed, but the shrill hail washed over the attackers' power armour with no effect. Scaevolla calmly loosed a bolt and watched as the sergeant's head exploded into meat and bone. He had not expected to encounter any of the planet's defenders so soon after leaving the Talon.
Impeirla Guard appear.. bolter blows a head apart. lasfire from a platoon useless against eight or so Black Legionnaires.

Page 127
The horde swept towards the horizon where a termites' nest of Cyclopean buildings rose from the mist like an island. The city's ziggurats glittered with a million dots of light, their heights vanishing into red nimbus, and a thousand chimneys belched smoke into the sky. Circling the factory-city was a wall that dwarfed even the clanking war machines. Titanic bastions guarded the circuit, their cannons spitting plasma onto the advancing horde.
...
Larsus, crouched next to Scaevolla, gave a low whistle. "A city of ten billion souls."
Hive factory city of some kind.

Page 127
Scaevolla licked the air. "These mists are rich in protein. Perhaps this planet's manufactorums process the atmosphere into food. The destruction of this world may mean famine for those Imperial outposts it feeds. This is the opening gambit of a major invasion."
Apparently the Imperium's tech is so advance that if the atmosphere is right it can make food out of it. So is this an agri-world then?

Page 130
Sharn was licking the enemy with flesh-melting heat...
Sharn is using a flamer.

PAge 131
A bolt-round rebounded off Scaevolla's chest guard with a bang.
Fists bolt round.

Page 146
The workshop structure in which he'd made his command post was full of disused aeronautical equipment and machinery, more or less a refit and repair yard for dirigibles and other flying craft that were a necessary part of life on Stratos. Air tanks, pressure dials and coils of ribbed hosing were strewn throughout the building. The one in which Tonnhauser conferred with Sergeant Helliman, while Corpsman Aiker monitored the vox-traffic...

...
A demo-charge rigged by insurgents to a ballast tractor had taken out most of the south-facing wall, the bulk of the colonel's command staff with it. With no time to effect repairs, a sheet of plastek had been piston-drilled to cover the hole.
Stratos - a world that strongly resembles Phantine in Guns of Tanith.

Page 147
"There must be at least ninety thousand of the cities' total populations corrupted by cult activity. They hold all of the materiel factorums and are equipping themselves with our stockpiles. Armour too."

Tonnhauser surveyed the city maps on the bench, looking for potential avenues of assault he might have missed. He saw only bottlenecks and kill-zones in which the Aircorps would be snared.
90,000 renegades, equipped with Guard gear and armour (either meaning body armour, or tanks.)

The guard force seems to be an "air corps"

Page 148
Tonnhauser shot him through the forehead. As the cultist fell back there was an almighty thunderclap as the grenade went off, blasting the bodily remains of the insurgent to steaming chunks of meat.

The metal workbench spared Tonnhauser from the explosion, but he had little time to offer up his thanks to the Throne.
Grenade blows apart cultist.

Page 150
A gas-propelled rocket roared close by overhead, forcing Tonnhauser and the others to duck. It struck the side of a mag-tram depot and exploded outwards, engulfing an entrenched Aircorps gunnery position. The three-man team died screaming amidst brick and fire.
gas propelled rocket thingy.

Page 150
"He's enacted official distress protocols on all Imperial astropathic and comm-range frequencies, requesting immediate aid."
"astropathic and comm-range" frequencies.

Page 152
An urgent communication had been picked up weeks ago via astropathic messenger and interpreted by the Company Librarian, Pyriel. The Salamanders were heading to the Imperial world of Stratos.

A prolific mining colony, one of many along the Hadron Belt in the Reductus Sector of Segmentum Tempestus, Stratos had great value to the Imperium for its oceanic minerals as well as its regular tithe of inductees to the Imperial Guard. Rescue of Stratos, liberation for its inhabitants from the internecine enemies that plagued it, was of paramount importance.

Hours from breaking orbit, Captain Ko'tan Kadai had already assigned six squads, including his own Inferno Guard, to be the task force that would make planetfall on Stratos and free the world from anarchy. As Promethean belief dictated, all Salamanders about to embark on battle must first be cleansed by fire and endure a period of extended meditation to focus their minds on self-reliance and inner fortitude.
Stratos world designation and location. Nocturne is in Segmentum Ultima, but close to the edge of Tempestus.. thousands maybe tens of thousands of LY away. If they came directly from the planet, then we migth be talking tens of thousands of c at least.


Page 155
Fugis paused as he waited for the results of the bio-scan, his blade-thin face taut like wire.
"Your arm, Astartes," he added without looking up, but gesturing for Dak'ir's limb.
Dak'ir held his arm out for the Apothecary, who took it by the wrist and syringed off a portion of blood into a vial. A chamber in his gauntlet then performed a biochemical analysis after the vial was inserted into its miniature centrifuge.
Narcethium centrifuge thingy.

Page 157
The Thunderhawk gunships Firewyvern and Spear of Prometheus tore above the storm's fury, turbofans screaming. They were headed for the conglomeration of floating cities in Stratos's upper atmosphere. Named ''loft-cities'' by the Stratosan natives, these great domed metropolises of chrome and plascrete were home to some four point three million souls and linked together by a series of massive sky-bridges. Due to the concentrated chlorine emissions from their oceans the Stratosans had been forced to elevate their cities with massive plasma-fuelled gravitic engines; so high, in fact, that each required its own atmosphere in order for the inhabitants to breathe.
The words of Fugis were still on Dak'ir's mind and he willed the furore inside the Chamber Sanctuarine of the Firewyvern to smother his thoughts. The gunship's troop hold was almost at capacity - twenty-five Astartes secured in standing grav-harness as the Thunderhawk made its final descent.
population in the millions. Float cities powered by "plasma fuelled" gravitic engines.. basically floating hive-like structures.


Page 159
"Cumulon in the east and Nimbaros in the south are still contested, but my troops are taking more ground by the hour and have managed to secure the sky-bridges that link the three cities," explained a sweating Colonel Tonnhauser over the crackling pict-link of Kadai's Land Raider Redeemer, Fire Anvil.
Pict link comms between Land Raider and the guard officer.

Page 160
Once the Salamanders had made planetfall outside Nimbaros, Kadai had ordered Brother Argos, Master of the Forge, to make a structural assessment of the approach road to Cirrion. Using building schematics from the Stratosan cities inloaded to the Vulkan's Wrath's cogitators and then exloaded back to a display screen on the Firewyvern, the Techmarine had determined the sky-bridges were unfeasible locations for the gunships to land and redeploy the Astartes.
Less than twenty minutes later, three Thunderhawk transporters had descended from orbit and deployed the Salamanders' dedicated transport vehicles.
Relay of data from Strike cruiser cogitators ot thunderhawks for analysis. Twenty minutesf rom orbit to ground.

Page 160
"I pray to the Emperor that some yet live," Tonnhauser continued over the pict-link, network-fed to all of the Astartes transports.
Pict link on a network feed.

Page 161
"Until roughly three months ago, they were merely a small group of disaffected Imperial citizens adept at dodging the mauls of the city proctors. Now they are at least fifty thousand strong, and dug in all throughout Cirrion. They're heavily-armed. Most of the Stratosan war-smiths are based in the capital, as are our dirigible fleets, our airships."
Self explanatory.

Page 164
A lone file of Stratosan Aircorps passed the convoy, marching in the opposite direction. They trudged like automatons, nursing wounds, hobbling on sticks, las-guns slung loose over their shoulders. Every man wore a respirator, and a tan storm-coat to ward off the chill of the open atmosphere. Only the cities were domed, the sky-bridges lay open to the elements, though they had high walls and were suspended from rugged-looking towers by thick cables.
The gate of Cirrion loomed at the end of the blasted road. The way into the capital city was huge, all bare black metal, and hermetically sealed to maintain its atmospheric integrity.
Stratosan Aircorps Guard force.

Page 165
Something else was stalking the darkened corridors of Cirrion, and it had fallen upon his battalion with furious wrath. It was totally unexpected. In strategising his battalion's assault Rucka had deliberately taken an oblique route, circumventing the main battle zones, to come through the northern sector of the city.

All Stratosan gathered intelligence had suggested that insurgent resistance would be light. It wasn't insurgents that had wiped out five hundred men.
STratosan battalion is 500 men

Page 166
The cultists scuttled into view. Rucka counted at least fifty men and women, their mouths sewn shut, blue veins threading from their puckered lips. They carried picks and shards of metal and glass.
...

The sergeant had picked out his first opponent and was about to take aim with his lasgun when a piece of rockcrete clattered down onto the street. Rucka traced its trajectory back to the overpass and saw the silhouettes of three armoured giants in the ambient light.

....

Thunder roared and muzzle flares tore away the darkness a second later.

Rucka read what was about to happen and went to ground just before the onslaught. The deadly salvo lasted heartbeats, but it was enough. The cultists were utterly annihilated - their broken, blasted bodies littered the street like visceral trash.
Bolter fire from 3 figures obliterates 50 or so cultists in a matter of seconds.

Page 167
Abandoned Stratosan vehicles lay abutting the walls, dragged aside by clearance crews. Caches of discarded equipment were strewn nearby the forlorn AFVs. Webbing, luminator rigs and other ancillary kit had been left behind, but no weapons - all the guns were needed by the human defenders.
Stratosan Armored fighting vehciles.

Page 168
Akin to a hive, Cirrion was stacked with honeycomb levels in the most densely packed areas. Grav-lifts linked these plateau-conurbations of chrome and blue. Sub-levels plunged in other places, allowing access to inverted maintenance spires or vast subterranean freight yards. Above, a dense pall of smoke layered the ceiling in a roiling mass. Breaks in the grey-black smog revealed thick squalls of cloud and the flash of lightning arcs from the atmospheric storm outside and beyond the dome.
the floating cities agian.

Page 169
Numerous roads and more conventional routes were blocked by pitfalls or rubble. According to Brother Argos, the municipal temple was the most expedient way to penetrate deeper into the east sector. It was also postulated that it was a likely location for survivors to congregate. The Techmarine was back in Nimbaros with Colonel Tonnhauser, guiding the three assault groups via a hololithic schematic, adjusting the image as he was fed reports of blockades, street collapses or structural levelling by Salamanders in the field.
hololith schemating being fed with updated data, used as a guide for strike forces.

Page 172
He also carried the squad's auspex, maintaining a watch for unusual spikes of activity that might prelude an ambush, walking just two paces behind his sergeant as they stalked through the shadows of a hydroponics farm.

Tiny reservoirs of nutrient solution encased in chrome tanks extended across an expansive domed chamber. The chemical repositories were set in serried ranks and replete with various edible plant life and other flora. The foliage inside the vast gazebo of chrome and glass was overgrown, resembling more an artificial jungle than an Imperial facility for the sector-wide provision of nutrition.

..

Iagon low-slung his bolter to consult the auspex. "No life form readings."'
Tsu'gan's face was fixed in a grimace. "Cleanse and burn."
"We would be destroying the food supply for an entire city sector," said Iagon.
Float city food production.



Page 173
Fugis was crouched over the blasted remains of a lieutenant, scowling.
"Massive physical trauma," muttered the Apothecary as Captain Kadai approached him.
"Colonel Tonnhauser said the cultists were heavily armed," offered N'keln alongside him.
Fugis regarded the corpse further. "Rib cage is completely eviscerated, chest organs all but liquefied." Looking up at his fellow Salamanders, his red eyes flared behind his helmet lenses. "This is a bolter wound."
Bolter wounds.

Page 176
One loomed over him. Its mouth was stitched with black wire; blue veins infected its cheeks. Eyes filled with fervour, the cultist drove a pickaxe against the Space Marine's armour. The puny weapon broke apart on impact.
Pickaxe does little against Marine armour.

Page 177
]
More were piling through in a steady stream, seemingly unaffected by the bolt storm. Picks and blades gave way to heavy stubbers and autocannons, and Dak'ir saw the first wave for what it was: a flesh shield.
Heavy stubbers and autocannons.

Page 178
Ak'sor had pulled out a bolt pistol. Bullets pattered against his armour as he let rip, chewing up a bunch of cultists with autoguns. The dull thump-thud of the heavier cannons starting up filled the room and Ak'sor staggered as multiple rounds struck him. From somewhere in the melee, a gas-propelled grenade whined and Ak'sor disappeared behind exploding shrapnel. When the smoke had cleared, the Salamander was down.
aoutoguns dont do much to power armor, but rocket propelled grenades and heavier cannon do.

Page 178
A chainsaw struck his outstretched arm seemingly from nowhere and he grimaced, his weapon falling from nerveless fingers. Red-eyed eviscerator priests were moving through the throng, wielding immense double-handed chainblades.
Eviscerator chainswords.

Page 180
Further up the street, something loud and heavy was rumbling towards them. It broke Tsu'gan's stride for just a moment as a tank, festooned with armour plates and daubed with the gaping maw symbol of the Cult of Truth, came into view. Swinging around its fat metal turret, the tank's battle cannon fired, jetting smoke and rocking the vehicle back on its tracks.

Tsu'gan had his warriors in a defensive battle line, strafing the oncoming cultist hordes with controlled bursts of bolter fire. The tank shell hit with all the force of a thunderbolt, and tore the ragged line apart.

Salamanders were tossed into the air with chunks of rockcrete chewed out of the road, and fell like debris.
Tank shell vs cultists.

Page 182
The bullet storms crossed each other over a shortening distance as the cultist thousands poured intense fire into the Salamanders' defensive positions. Chunks of perimeter wall, and massive sections of the fallen statue, were chipped apart in the maelstrom.
Brother Zo'tan took a round in the left pauldron, then another in the neck, grunted and fell to his knees. Dak'ir moved to cover him, armour shuddering as he let rip with a borrowed bolter. Insurgent bodies were destroyed in the furious barrage, torn apart by explosive rounds, sundered by salvos from heavy bolters, shredded by the withering hail from assault cannons whining red-hot.
Again cultist gunfire from small arms doesnt do much, but the heavier guns do. Salamander gunfire pretty much explodes, shreds, or otherwise blasts apart the enemy.

Page 183
The Salamanders were a small Chapter, their near-annihilation during one of the worst atrocities of the Heresy, when they were betrayed by their erstwhile brothers, still felt some ten thousand years later. They had been Legion then, but now they were merely some eight hundred Astartes. Induction of new recruits was slow and only compounded their low fighting strength.
Salamanders numbers and recruitment speed,


Page 185
He and his warriors had reached a subterranean metal chamber that ended in an immense portal of heavy plasteel.

Another giant wearing the red-scaled plate came forward. Tendrils of smoke emanated from the grille in his horned helmet. The silence of the outer vault was broken by the hissing, crackling intake of breath before the horned one unleashed a furious plume of flame. It surged hungrily through the grille-plate in a roar, smashing against the vault door and devouring it.

Reinforced plasteel bars blackened and corroded in seconds, layers of ablative ceramite melted away, before the adamantium plate of the door itself glowed white-hot and sloughed into molten slag.
Chaos champion flamethrower effect. Adamtnium plate glows white hot before melting.


Page 186
Dak'ir followed the trail of pitiful wretches being led away in huddled throngs by Stratosan Aircorps to the Cirrion gate. From there he knew an armoured battalion idled, ready to escort the survivors across the sky-bridge and into the relative safety of Nimbaros.
Armoured battalion.

Page 186
"Why show themselves now?" asked Ba'ken, with a nod to Emek who took his leave having finally excised all the jutting shrapnel. The wounds were already healing; the Larraman cells in Ba'ken's Astartes blood accelerating clotting and scarring, the ossmodula implanted in his brain encouraging rapid bone growth and regeneration.
Astartes Healing

Page 190
"The hydrogen emissions being controlled by Cirrion's atmospheric processors are a gaseous amalgam used to inflate the Stratosan dirigibles - a less volatile compound, and the reason why bolters are still functioning normally. Though I have managed to access some of the city's internal systems, the processors are beyond my knowledge to affect. It would require a local engineer, someone who maintained the system originally. Unfortunately, there is simply no way to find anyone with the proper skills, either alive amongst the survivors or amongst those still trapped in the city." Argos paused. "I am sorry, brothers, but any use of incendiary weapons in the city at this time would be catastrophic."
Rather interesting that bolters (firing rocket propelled explosive ammo) are safe but incendiary weapons aren't.

PAge 196
"If we cannot break through, then Cirrion is lost. Withdraw and summon the Firewyvern," he said to Kadai. "Use its missile payload to destroy the gravitic engines and send this hellish place to the ocean."

The captain was reticent to agree.

"I would be condemning thousands of innocents to death."

"And saving millions," urged Tsu'gan. "If a world is tainted beyond redemption or lost to invasion we annihilate it, excising its stain from the galaxy like a cancer. It should be no different for a city. Stratos can be saved. Cirrion cannot."
Tsu'gan is the asshole of the Salamanders, but he's a pragmatic asshole.

Page 202
Nearby, one step in the chain from Tsu'gan, Iagon consulted his auspex.
"Bio-readings fifty metres ahead," he hissed through the comm-feed.
Bio-sensor auspex.

Page 204
Tsu'gan bared his teeth in a feral smile.
"Cleanse and burn," he growled, and the flamer attached to his combi-bolter roared.

Liquid promethium ignited on contact with the air as a superheated wave of fire spewed hungrily down the corridor.

Shen'kar intensified the conflagration with his own flamer. The cultists were obliterated in the blaze, their bodies becoming slowly collapsing shadows behind the shimmering heat haze.
It lasted merely seconds. Smoke and charred remains were all that was left when the flames finally died down. Dozens of insurgents had been destroyed; some were little more than ash and bone.
Salamander flamers reduce insurgents to charred remains and ash and bone. To say that this is cremation level energies is an understatement -these flamers are defintely on par with meltaweapons.
Page 210
"In the name of Vulkan!" he bellowed, about to end the threat of the Cult of Truth forever, when a single shot thundered above the carnage and the Speaker fell, his head half-destroyed by an explosive round.
...
Kadai's gaze was fixed upon it as a figure in blood-red power armour emerged from the gathered shadows, a smoking bolt pistol in his grasp.
bolt round blows hlaf a head apart.

Page 212
He fought the invisible pressure stopping him from striking the renegade down, but his arms were leaden.
Psyker preventing Marine from firing.

Page 213
Slowly, agonisingly slowly, he raised his chin to reveal a ruined face destroyed by the bolt pistol's explosive round. Slick red flesh, wrapped partially around a bloody skull, shimmered in the ambient light. What remained of the Speaker's cranium was split open like an egg. Luminous cobalt skin was revealed beneath. Cracking bone gave way to a leering visage called forth from a dark unreality as something… unnatural… pulled itself forth into the material plane.
Daemon using the body as a gateway.. obviously. Even a dead one suffice.s

Page 215
Smashing through a wooden door at the back of the temple, Tsu'gan found a flight of stone steps leading up to the parapet. He took them three at a time with servo-assisted bounds of his power-armoured legs, until he emerged into a darkened anteroom.
Tsu'gan's leaps make 3 stone steps at a time.

PAge 215
But Tsu'gan didn't raise his bolter to fire, didn't vanquish the renegade where he stood. He merely remained transfixed, muscles clenched as if held fast in amber.
Apparently the psyker's paralysis affects muscle control.
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Connor MacLeod
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Re: 40K anthologies compiliation analysis thread

Post by Connor MacLeod »

Part 2.. probably more of the better half IMHO since it has the ADB part and it doesn't have Honsou. Oh well

Page 219
Dak'ir had almost reached Kadai when he saw the renegade hefting the multi-melta. Shouting a warning, he raced to his captain's side. Kadai faced him, hearing the cry of Tsu'gan from above at the same time, and then followed Dak'ir's agonised gaze…

An incandescent beam tore out of the darkness.

Kadai was struck, and his body immolated in an actinic flare.

An intense rush of heat smashed Dak'ir off his feet, backwash from the terrible melta blast. He smelled scorched flesh. A hot spike of agony tortured his senses. His face was burning, just like in the dream…

Dak'ir realised he was blacking out, his body shutting down as his sus-an membrane registered the gross trauma he had suffered. Dimly, as if buried alive and listening through layered earth, he heard the voice of Sergeant N'keln and his battle-brothers. Dak'ir managed to turn his head. The last thing he saw before unconsciousness claimed him was Tsu'gan slumped to his knees in front of the charred remains of their captain.
multimelta pretty much carbonizes Astartes Captain. Non explosively.

Page 220
Dak'ir lowered his arm as Fugis released him. The Apothecary injected a solution of drugs through an intravenous drip-feed to ease the pain.
Dak'ir relaxed as the suppressants went to work, catalysing his body's natural regenerative processes.
Medical drugs to enhacne healing.

Page 220
He limped as he walked, a temporary augmetic frame fitted over his leg to shore up the break he had sustained in his fall. quote]

Augmentic splint.

Page 2221
Part of Dak'ir's facial tissue had been seared away. Almost half of his onyx-black skin had been bleached near-white by the voracious heat of the melta flare. Though raw and angry, it looked almost human.

"A reaction to the intense radiation," Fugis explained. "The damage has resulted in minor cellular regression, reverting to a form prior to the genetic ebonisation of your skin when you became an Astartes. I cannot say for certain yet, but it shows no sign of immediate regeneration."
Effect of flash burns from melta blast on Da'kir's skin.

Page 228
Now, only one deity was offered reverence in this cold empty vessel: the exalted Malice, the Renegade God, the Outcast, Malice the Lost, Hierarch of Anarchy and Terror. And He would soon receive nourishment aplenty when the feeding began.
We dont know who Malice is, or why the Sons worship him. He's never been mentioned as a Chaos god at least.

Page 235
Brother Kado, who single-handedly repelled an ork ambush at the Battle of Uderverengin, was beheaded by hidden las-wire as they traversed a narrow bridge.
Las-wire cutting beam.

Page 242
The tunnel dipped, drawing them ever downward as though into the abyss itself. Invictus knew that to be a ridiculous notion - they were on the foundering carcass of an ancient spaceship, and despite its artificial suspensors giving the illusion of gravity, there was no ''up'' or ''down''.
Suspensors to provide AG.

Page 246
Invictus raised the bolt pistol, waiting for his moment. He had only a split second window in which to fire, but he was a veteran of the Sons of Malice, a warrior unmatched on the field. A split second was more than he would ever need.
Split second to fire a bolter.

Page 246
Genareas had little time to protest before Invictus squeezed the trigger, sending his brother's brains exploding from the back of his head.
Bolt round blows out AStartes brains.

Page 249
"Our crusade can now begin. Now we will be strong enough to take back that which was stolen from us - Scelus, our home world. None will stand in our way - not the forces of the foul Ruinous Powers nor the servants of the Carrion Lord. Not with Him by our side."
Apparently Malice is neither a Chaos god nor (obviously) allied with the Imperium.


Page 250

The Sons had watched as the light consumed the body of their brother Invictus, along with the ten other heroes of the Labyrinth, their limbs immolated, their torsos eviscerated, their heads contorting and twisting, writhing within a pool of black light.

And now what stood before them was no longer their brothers. Invictus and the rest were gone - gone to join the ranks of the legendary Doomed Ones.

What stood before them was the revenant they had worshipped for millennia. The eidolon that would stand at their vanguard as they retook what was rightfully theirs.

He could only be summoned by sacrifice - only by giving unto Him their best and most praiseworthy warriors could He walk among them.

And here He stood, gazing with eyes of fire - the Renegade God, the Outcast, the Lost, Hierarch of Anarchy and Terror…
…Malice.
Malice at last. From what I gathered online, Malice is a revival of the ocncept of "Malal" from early WH fantasy.. the index astartes article, and the titles in this story, at least, back that up.

Page 251
Something vast, dark and brutish moved across the pin-pricked curtain of space, blotting out the diamond lights of the constellations behind it as if swallowing them whole. It was the size of a city block, and its bulbous eyes, like those of a great blind fish, glowed with a green and baleful light.
Ork ship the "size of a city block" Implied a km or more perhaps.

Page 253
These were no mere greenskin foot soldiers. They were orks of a unique genus, the engineers of their race, each born with an inherent understanding of machines. It was hard-coded into their marrow in the same way as violence and torture.
Mekboys.

Page 254
Already, visions of murderous creativity were flashing through his tiny mind in rapid succession, so many at once, in fact, that he forgot to breathe until his lungs sent him a painful reminder. These visions were a gift from Gork and Mork, the bloodthirsty greenskin gods, and he had received their like many times before. All greenskin engineers received them, and nothing, save the rending of an enemy's flesh, felt so utterly right.
Meks work on inspiration from the gods (EG psychically bestwoed ideas, I guess).

Page 255
From the shadows inside the doorway, there was a soft coughing sound.
Zazog's skull disintegrated in a haze of blood and bone chips. His headless corpse crashed backwards onto the carpet of junk.
Bolt round.

Page 257
Brother Rauth of the Exorcists Chapter gunned down the last of the fleeing gretchin as it dashed for the exit. The creature stumbled as a single silenced bolt punched into its back. Half a second later, a flesh-muffled detonation ripped it apart.
Gretchin blasted apart by bolt round.

Page 258
Karras nodded and pointed towards a shattered pict screen and rune-board that protruded from the wall, close to the bay's only exit. "Think you can get anything from that?" he asked.
"Nothing from the screen," said Voss, "but I could try wiring the data-feed directly into my visor."
"Do it," said Karras, "but be quick."
Data feed relay to visor.

Page 259
The inquisitor, known to the members of Talon only by his call-sign, Sigma, had estimated the ork population of the ship at somewhere over twenty thousand. Against odds like these, Karras knew only too well that darkness and stealth were among his best weapons.
Rather interesting given how easily the dark angels in "Angels of Darkness" slaughtered orks.

PAge 260
To the Space Marines, however, everything remained clear as day. Their Mk VII helmets, like everything else in their arsenal, had been heavily modified by the Inquisition's finest artificers. They boasted a composite low-light/thermal vision mode that was superior to anything else Karras had ever used. In the three years he had been leading Talon, it had tipped the balance in his favour more times than he cared to count. He hoped it would do so many more times in the years to come, but that would all depend on their survival here, and he knew all too well that the odds were against them from the start. It wasn't just the numbers they were up against, or the tight deadline. There was something here the likes of which few Deathwatch kill-teams had ever faced before.
Deathwatch helmet augmentations.

Page 261
Karras decided there was only one way to find out. He centred his awareness down in the pit of his stomach, and began reciting the Litany of the Sight Beyond Sight that his former master, Chief Librarian Athio Cordatus, had taught him during his earliest years in the Librarius. Beneath his helmet, hidden from Solarion's view, Karras's eyes, normally deep red in colour, began to glow with an ethereal white flame. On his forehead, a wound appeared. A single drop of blood rolled over his brow and down to the bridge of his narrow, angular nose. Slowly, as he opened his soul fractionally more to the dangerous power within him, the wound widened, revealing the physical manifestation of his psychic inner eye.

Karras felt his awareness lift out of his body now. He willed it deeper into the chamber, rising above the backs of the orks, looking down on them from above.
Psychic sensor/detection.. out of body astral projection. With a dash of what appears to be Navigator third eye.

Nice thundercats reference there too.

Page 262
"Talon Alpha, get ready to receive those schematics. Transmitting now."
Karras willed his consciousness back into his body, and his glowing third eye sealed itself, leaving only the barest trace of a scar. Using conventional sight, he consulted his helmet's heads-up display and watched the last few percent of the schematics file being downloaded. When it was finished, he called it up with a thought, and the helmet projected it as a shimmering green image cast directly onto his left retina.

The others, he knew, were seeing the same thing.
Machine spirit controlled by thought command... and data transmission to other marines.

Page 263
Karras made his way, centimetre by centimetre, along the creaking metal grille, his silenced bolter fixed securely to the magnetic couplings on his right thigh plate, his force sword sheathed on his left hip. Over one massive shoulder was slung the cryo-case that Sigma had insisted he carry. Karras cursed it, but there was no way he could leave it behind. It added twenty kilogrammes to his already significant weight, but the case was absolutely critical to the mission.
20 kg is considered a significant addition to astartes weight.

Page 264
He had never been able to read the mysterious Astartes. Rauth seemed to have no warp signature whatsoever. He simply didn't register at all. Even his armour, even his bolter for Throne's sake, resonated more than he did. And it was an anomaly that Rauth was singularly unwilling to discuss.
Interesting. I dont think he's a pariah, though. Wonder how they pull it off.

PAge 265
By comparing Sigma's schematics of The Pegasus with the features he saw as he moved through it, it soon became clear to Karras that the orks had done very little to alter the interior of the ship beyond covering its walls in badly rendered glyphs, defecating wherever they pleased, leaving dead bodies to rot where they fell, and generally making the place unfit for habitation by anything save their own wretched kind.


Page 266
Instead, he, Rauth and Solarion eliminated the foe, loading powerful hellfire rounds into their silenced bolters to ensure quick, quiet one-shot kills.
Hellfire rounds against Orks.

Page 270
He opened fire.
The first of the orks collapsed with its brainpan blown out.
More Ork head- exploding. Being larger than humans the way Astartes are, this requires a significantly more powerful round too.

Page 272
A number of the orks, however, were equipped with goggles, not to mention weapons and armour far above typical greenskin standards. Karras had fought such fiends before. They were the greenskin equivalent of commando squads, far more cunning and deadly than the usual muscle-minded oafs. Their red night-vision lenses glowed like daemons' eyes as they pressed closer and closer, keeping to cover as much as possible.
Ork Kommandos. They just cut the light.

Page 273
Karras tugged a nova grenade from the webbing around his armoured waist.

..

Three deafening bangs sounded in quick succession, louder even than the bark of the orks' guns. Howls of agony immediately followed, filling the close, damp air of the corridors. Karras looked up to see the orks reeling around in the dark with their great, thick-fingered hands pressed to their faces. They were crashing into the walls, weapons forgotten, thrown to the floor in their agony and confusion.

Nova grenades were typically employed for room clearance, but they worked well in any dark, enclosed space. They were far from standard-issue Astartes hardware, but the Deathwatch were the elite, the best of the best, and they had access to the kind of resources that few others could boast. The intense, phosphor-bright flash that the grenades produced overloaded optical receptors, both mechanical and biological. The blindness was temporary in most cases, but Karras was betting that the orks' goggles would magnify the glare.
Their retinas would be permanently burned out
Nova grenade.. flashbang sort of thing. Wonder how they differ from Photon flare grenades or however they are called.

Page 276
Arquemann was lethally sharp even without the power of the immaterium running through it, and orks fell in a great tide of blood. Silenced bolters coughed on either side of him, Solarion and Rauth giving fire support, and soon the junction was heaped with twitching green meat.
Force weapon, and silenced bolters.

Page 279
Rauth knew well enough that the target couldn't have sensed him. Nothing psychic could. It was a side effect of the unspeakable horrors he had endured during his Chapter's selection and training programmes - programmes that had taught him to hate all psykers and the terrible daemons their powers sometimes loosed into the galaxy.
The frequency with which Lyandro Karras tapped the power of the immaterium disgusted Rauth. Did the Librarian not realise the great peril in which he placed his soul? Or was he simply a fool, spilling over with an arrogance that invited the ultimate calamity. Daemons of the warp rejoiced in the folly of such men.
Of course, that was why Rauth had been sequestered to Deathwatch in the first place. The inquisitor had never said so explicitly, but it simply had to be the case. As enigmatic as Sigma was, he was clearly no fool. Who better than an Exorcist to watch over one such as Karras? Even the mighty Grey Knights, from whose seed Rauth's Chapter had been born, could hardly have been more suited to the task.
Exorcist training.



Page 280
Two, three, four small canisters bounced onto the ship's bridge, spread just enough to avoid redundancy. Within two seconds, the whole deck was covered in a dense grey cloud. The ork crew went into an uproar, barely able to see their hands in front of their faces. But to the Astartes, all was perfectly clear. They entered the room with bolters firing, each shot a vicious bark, and the greenskins fell where they stood.
Smoke grenades.. Deathwatch can see through it.

Page 281
Solarion burst from the mouth of the corridor and sprinted along the metal landing in the direction of the elevator cage. He was breathing hard, and rivulets of red blood ran from grape-sized holes in the armour of his torso and left upper arm. If he could only stop, the wounds would quickly seal themselves, but there was no time for that. His normally dormant second heart was pumping in tandem with the first, flushing lactic acid from his muscles, helping him to keep going. Following barely a second behind him, a great mob of armoured orks with heavy pistols and blades surged out of the same corridor in hot pursuit. The platform trembled under their tremendous weight.
Solarion didn't stop to look behind. Just ahead of him, the upper section of the landing ended. Beyond it was the rusted stairway that had almost claimed Rauth's life. There was no time now to navigate those stairs.
Grape sized holes (probably from Ork weapons). Would heal rapidly if he wasn't moving, but activity is hampering that.

Page 282
He put on an extra burst of speed and leapt straight out over them.

It was an impressive jump. For a moment, he almost seemed to fly. Then he passed the apex of his jump and the ship's artificial gravity started to pull him downwards. He landed on the lower section of the landing with a loud clang. Sharp spears of pain shot up the nerves in his legs, but he ignored them and turned, bolter held ready at his shoulder.

The orks were following his example, leaping from the upper platform, hoping to land right beside him and cut him to pieces. Their lack of agility, however, betrayed them. The first row crashed down onto the rickety stairs about two thirds of the way down. The old iron steps couldn't take that kind of punishment. They crumbled and snapped, dropping the luckless orks into lethal freefall. The air filled with howls, but the others didn't catch on until it was too late. They, too, leapt from the platform's edge in their eagerness to make a kill. Step after step gave way with each heavy body that crashed down on it, and soon the stairway was reduced almost to nothing.

A broad chasm, some thirty metres across, now separated the metal platforms that had been joined by the stairs. The surviving orks saw that they couldn't follow the Space Marine across. Instead, they paced the edge of the upper platform, bellowing at Solarion in outrage and frustration and taking wild potshots at him with their clunky pistols.
Space Marines have more agility than Orks.

Page 283
A shell from an ork pistol ricocheted from the platform and smacked against his breastplate. The shot wasn't powerful enough to penetrate ceramite, not like the heavy-stubber shells he had taken at close range, but it got his attention.
Heavy stubbers at close range penetrate Deathwatch plate, but not the ork pistol slugs.

Page 284
The two Space Marines opened fire at the same time, eager to drop the bodyguards and engage the real target quickly. Their bolters chattered, spitting their deadly hail, but somehow each round detonated harmlessly in the air.

"He's shielding them!" Karras called out.
Ork psychic shielding.

PAge 285
The bodyguard's massive hammer whistled up into the air, then changed direction with a speed that seemed impossible. Karras barely managed to step aside. Sparks flew as the weapon clipped his left pauldron, sending a painful shock along his arm. The thick steel floor fared worse. The hammer left a hole in it the size of a human head.
Warboss-scale Ork guard - clearly a match for Astartes in terms of speed and durability.

Page 286
The ork bodyguard, on the other hand, did not miss its chance. It caught Karras squarely on the right pauldron with the head of its hammer, shattering the Deathwatch insignia there, and knocking him sideways, straight off his feet.

The impact hurled Karras directly into Rauth's opponent, and the two tumbled to the metal floor. Karras's helmet was torn from his head, and rolled away.
Bodyguard again.

Page 287
Darrion Rauth was not dead. The searing impact of the ork warlord's psychic blast would have killed a lesser man on contact, ripping his soul from his body and leaving it a lifeless hunk of meat. But Rauth was no lesser man. The secret rites of his Chapter, and the suffering he had endured to earn his place in it, had proofed him against such a fate. Also, though a number of his bones were broken, his superhuman physiology was already about the business of re-knitting them, making them whole and strong again. The internal bleeding would stop soon, too.
More on Exorcists and their psychic resilience.

Page 291
Out of respect, Rauth took off his helmet so that he might bear witness to the Death Spectre's final moments with his own naked eyes. Grimacing, he raised the barrel of his bolter to Karras's temple and began reciting the words of the Mortis Morgatii Praetovo. It was an ancient rite from long before the Great Crusade, forgotten by all save the Exorcists and the Grey Knights. If it worked, it would send Karras's spiritual essence beyond the reach of the warp's ravenous fiends, but it could not save his life.

It was not a long rite, and Rauth recited it perfectly.
Interesting rite. I wonder why the Exorcists have no spinoffs or aren't Chambers militant.

Page 294
"Keep your speed up," said Solarion. "The stairs are out. You'll have to jump. The gap is about thirty metres."
Again space Marines can make a 30 metre jump.

Page 295
Rauth stepped forward and ripped the lattice-work gate from its hinges. "We should jump the last twenty metres," he said.
Solarion stopped firing. "Agreed."
..

Together, the three Astartes leapt clear of the elevator and landed on the metal floor below. Again, Rauth gave a pained grunt, but he was up just as fast as the others.
20 metre jump.


Page 305-306
"The Land Raider's co-driver adjusted a series of brass dials on the forward console. "At our current speed, auspex readings mark us thirty minutes out."
"Do we have any readings from the keep, any residual power spikes?"
"Negative, Castellan, the storm is jamming the majority of our forward sensors. There is no way to say for certain."
Land Raider Auspex.. Given the time and Land Raider speeds, we're probably talking 20-25 km range, altbeit under less than ideal conditions.

Page 307
"Brother Cerebus, Brother Fernus, prepare the Ark's shield."
On either side of the hold, two Techmarines, their helmets heavy with neural cables, turned towards him and nodded. They bowed over a great armoured casket - what they called the Ark. Its surface was incised with the baroque runes of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and grav-engines kept it suspended just above the floor.
Chanting the rites of activation, the Techmarines coupled their grafted servo-arms with the Ark's forward actuators. Moments later a heavy thrum vibrated through the hold. A pale shimmer began to enshroud the Ark. Reinhart could not help but watch in awe as the machine-spirit was drawn from its slumber by the warrior-priests.

..

With the Techmarines' rite complete Reinhart could barely see the Ark through the coalescing motes of energy that surrounded it. Lexmechanics aboard the Revenant had built the shield to specifically retard the effects of Stygia XII's storms and protect the Ark's internal functions. If it failed, millions would pay the price.

Grav engines supporting a valuable artifact as well as a special sort of shielding

Page 308
"Hot shrapnel flew in all directions, pinging off the ablative plates of his artificer-forged power armour."
Ablative power armor plating.

Page 309
Oily smoke began to fill the hold. Cerebus inserted a diagnostic cable from his chest plate into the Land Raider's secondary codifier. The machine's screenplate flickered as lines of scripture scrolled across its surface. The Techmarine's augmented voice came over Reinhart's vox reflecting nothing of the anarchy that boiled around them. "The Land Raider is crippled, Castellan. Evacuation is the only option before the engine's plasma coils go critical."
Land Raider has redundant computers and plasma coils (for weapons? for engines? We dont know.

Page 311
From their left, a rocket, spitting a fiery contrail, hissed through the air and detonated at Brother Julius's feet.

The blast vaporised his legs, blowing away his helmet and a good portion of his breastplate. The Templar fell, screaming hate around mouthfuls of bloody froth. Still, Julius's bolter roared. Ackolon dashed to him, and began dragging him along, firing from the hip. Brother Gerard moved to help. Before he could reach them, a stray round blew through the knee joint of his armour. Blood sprayed, steaming on the frozen ground.
Effects of a rocket.

Page 312
In the momentary respite, Reinhart removed his helmet, its vox and visor readings going dead from the interference of the storm. The others followed suit. None of them could risk being blind and unable to communicate if the fighting broke out again.
Removing helmets because the storm is futzing with their systems.

Page 313
From the direction of the valley a squad of women - armoured in crimson and sable - advanced. Catechisms of the Ecclesiarchy adorned their tabards, stitched in High Gothic around the blood red petals of a single rose. Each carried a finely worked, Godwyn Deaz-pattern bolter of gold and silver. It was the signature weapon of those female orphans raised in the schola progenium and inducted as Adepta Sororitas battle-sisters of the Ordos Militant.
Sisters of Battle.


Page 313
Her marred beauty was accentuated by an augmetic targeting reticule that replaced her left eye; the jewelled lens glowed a baleful red.
Sororitas sister.

Page 315
Veteran Captain Dremin Vlorn of the 4th Inquisitorial storm-trooper regiment emerged from where he waited in the chamber's entry portal. He limped into the room, his grizzled face streaked with soot and dried blood. A stylized 'I' - the mark of Inquisitorial conditioning - stood out on either ridge of his sunken cheeks.

..

Savaul's disturbingly blue eyes searched the captain's face. He had become adept at detecting a man turned by the warp. It appeared Veteran Captain Vlorn's conditioning remained uncorrupted.
Inquisitiroal Storm trooper regiment. Again note the mention of conditioning.

Page 317 - summarizing a point, the Black Templars having a fortress monastery on this planet was a fact previously unknown to the Inquisition.

Page 318
"This scroll holds the design of a warp gate, a physical portal between our universe and the realm of Chaos. It requires four artefacts, four Necrolectifiers, vile items capable of focusing enough daemonic energy to rip a hole through the fabric of our reality into the maelstrom of the warp. Castellan, they are planning to open this gate"

...

"No, Castellan, this scroll is not the key; it was drawn by a captured heretic during interrogation - a physical representation of the knowledge my excruciators drew from him. It tells us the cultists within Montgisard already hold the Necrolectifiers, the knowledge of their proper arrangement, and the rituals required to activate them. It tells us that on any given year, at the ninth hour of a ninth day of a ninth month, a portal may be opened, a portal through which the legions of the warp may pass."
Conditions for opening a warp portal.. this warp portal anyhow.

Page 322
Reinhart squinted through the gale, double-checking the codifier readout in his vambrace. Lines of interference spiked across the display. With the storm raging he was surprised it worked at all. The glowing schematic of Montgisard - something all of the Templars had been given prior to making planetfall - showed the entrance to an auxiliary passage at this location. The hidden tunnel would give them access to the fortress's lower levels and hopefully allow them to approach their target with minimal contact. It had perturbed Interrogator Savaul, Vlorn and the Sister Superior that this piece of information was lacking from their own maps. To Reinhart, this boded well. If the Inquisition did not know about the passage, it was possible the enemy was equally ignorant.
Vambrace codifier.

Page 323
From the opposite side of the door Apollos side-armed a pair of glowing phosphorus rods into the tunnel beyond. The rods' fizzling light slowly grew steady.
Light sticks.

Page 323
Slinging his bolter, Gerard pulled his auspex from his belt and thumbed its activator switch. The scanner's display sputtered then blinked to life. Gerard looked over at Reinhart, relief evident on his face.
Handheld auspex.

Page 324
Reinhart had told the interrogator the Ark was a high-yield reactor core capable of powering the fortress's system of defence turrets, part of the protocol required to reclaim the stronghold. However, it could be used in another capacity. Placed in the heart of Stormhelm, it could be rigged to detonate - the resultant explosion strong enough to destroy the fortress. For the interrogator it was an answer to his prayers: a weapon capable of foiling the Archenemy's plans in one fell strike. Reinhart only wished he could have told the man the truth.
Reactor that doubles as a bomb.. cna power the defense weapons or destroy the turrets. It could be true that such exist (a volatile reactor) or a lie.)

Page 324

- the monastery has its own grav lifts.

Page 327
Close on Apollos's heels, Reinhart burst into the seemingly infinite space of the plasma coil chamber. Floor after floor of open gantries ringed the room and stretched upwards into the cavernous void above. Rising from a deep pit, the plasma coil dominated the chamber's centre: a monstrous pillar of brass machinery that arced and crackled with pent-up energies. Stabilising beams sprouted from its skin like the disjointed spokes of an endless wheel, each strut hung with scarlet rags, banners scrawled with the blasphemous litanies of Chaos.
Plasma coil chamber.

Page 328
One Sister stumbled as multiple rounds tore through her armour. Her body twisted under the impacts; unable to stop her momentum, she fell screaming over the edge of the coil's pit.
Rounds of unknown type penetrate Sororitas armor. Its from cultists anyhow.

Page 328
Reinhart fell in step behind them, back-pedalling and firing a furious volley into the horde of screaming cultists that burst from the corridor they had just vacated. He grunted in annoyance as a lucky shell punched through his shoulder joint, lodging near his collarbone. Already off-balance, a blast of auto fire stitched across his breastplate and sent him sprawling.
Gunfire fails to penetrat eplate, but breaches joint.

Page 328
Helena slung her bolter and, together with Savaul, dragged the Astartes to his feet. As she did so, she tore a krak grenade from her belt, pulled the pin with her teeth, and pitched it into the oncoming mass. A horrific blast ripped through the horde, pulverising the thronged bodies into a cloud of blood vapour and shredded flesh.
Krak grenade.

Page 333
Their approach from the grav lift had been a quiet one, Gerard's auspex showing no sign of the enemy, but they knew that wouldn't last for long. Following the schematics downloaded to their personal codifiers, the crypt's brass doors emerged from the darkness, glinting beneath the stark beams of their armour's search lamps.
The Sword Brethern all have personal codifiers in their suits.

Page 335
Reinhart ducked the swing of a whining chainaxe and blew the wielder's head away in a shower of gore. He vaulted the fallen heretic, watching as a Sister stumbled beneath the blow of a crackling power maul. Successive rounds tore her arm off and then her left leg below the knee. Her death grip discharged her flamer in a wide arc, the white flame incinerating all those standing before her.
Another sister's armour breached by cultist weapons.

PAge 336
Brother Dorner died in the first moments of the cultists' charge. It was an errant shot, catching him in the throat and blowing out the back of his neck in a shower of blood. He fell to his knees, chainsword still raised in a blow that would never come, then pitched forward on his face.
Cultist weapons fire blows out throat and neck... but not enough to sever head. The weapon oding this we dont know (las or slug weapon maybe?)

Page 337
Ackolon grunted as a las-round scorched across his check and burned away his ear. He dove for the door. Wrenching Mathias's rosarius from the lock, he rolled into the crypt firing on full auto to keep the heretics at bay.
Lasround burns away an Astartes ear.

PAge 339
A sudden, deafening eruption blew apart what remained of the chapel doors. A shattered piece of lintel struck Apollos in the temple, knocking the young Terminator unconscious. Helena's remaining sisters simply ceased to exist, their bodies vaporised.
Reinhart shook himself from his dazed concussion, a heavy ringing in his ears. He felt warmth streaming down his chest. A bloody crater smoked just below his shoulder. Next to him, Helena coughed in the swirling dust, her face covered in blood from a deep gash across her forehead. Her left leg was gone. Savaul lay unconscious next to them. Through the roiling haze they could see a thronging horde of cultists climbing over the rubble of the devastated doorway.
There were up to four remaining Battle Sisters prior to this so that is how many were vaporized by the explosion.

Page 343
Sarastus was just another forgotten world left to rot in the backwaters of the Imperium. The life of a hive-world was measured by its productivity and when the seams of its industry ran dry, the planet had quietly slipped off the Imperial charts. Soon after that the darkness had come.

True Night had touched Sarastus three times, each visitation miring the planet deeper in damnation. Four of the great hive cities now lay silent, their will to live smothered beneath decades of fear.
abandoned hive world "forgotten" by the Imperium.. yet another world that gets stripped of resources rapidly then abaondeond. You have to wonder how many such the Imperium "claims", because it seems to be quite a lot.

Page 347
Stealthily the ship stalked the hive, following it into the planet's night side. As the sun was occluded the vessel's hull rippled with scintillating flashes of energy and its primal spirit stirred into troubled awareness. Neither wholly machine nor yet daemon, the ancient predator recognised this place and shuddered uneasily.
Night Lords warship has daemonic machine spirit core hybrid

Page 357
Floating above the plaza, Yehzod reeled as a spike of blacklight energy ricocheted through him. It was just an echo, but its lingering malice almost shattered his astral projection. Coldly subsuming confusion to curiosity, the sorcerer scanned the plaza. He had glimpsed a mind behind the attack, but the scene below was an impenetrable quagmire of psychic torment. Gauging the screaming, scrabbling animals, Yehzod felt the first stirrings of unease.
Sorcerous astral projection.. psychic scanning?


Page 361
His joy was lanced by a stabbing agony in his thigh and he whirled around, but his attacker was already springing away, its black dagger glistening with Haz'thur's blood. Unbelievably it was just another ghoul, thinner than most and sickly pale. Glancing back, it flashed him a cold grin before ducking into the seething crowd.
..

It was less than twenty paces away, lurking beside the monolith, its eyes cold and calculating. Briefly a fading, rational part of Haz'thur's mind surged up through the rage, cautious and questioning. What was this creature? How could its feeble blade even scratch his armour, let alone pierce it? He was a god beside this worm, so how had it drawn blood?
some sort of dagger pierces Astartes plate.

PAge 364
Occasionally there was something unique, a shower of acid or a rigged laspistol, but all were the clumsy toys of a child playing at war.
"rigged" laspistol - probably designed to blow up like a grenade.

Page 370-371
Syral was an agri-world, with the globe's landmasses given over to expansive and fertile continents of foodstuffs and livestock. Syral's great oceans were similarly plundered by Imperial need. Beneath their dark surface, the tides concealed hydroponics facilities the size of cities, harvesting the edible wealth of the depths. As a planet, Syral had but one colossal purpose: to export a system's worth of food ready for purchase by the worlds nearby that lacked such natural bounty. Syral fed three hive-worlds, from the spires of the rich to the slums of the destitute, as well as several Imperial Navy fleets and regiments of the Imperial Guard warring in nearby crusades.
Imperial agri world, both on land and in sea, feeding 3 hive worlds and multiple fleets/regiments.

Page 375
In private, they discussed Syral. The Chaplain stalked around the large table with its map-covered surface. Here in the lord general's command room, aboard his personal Baneblade, The Indomitable Will, the human and the Astartes shared words away from the ears of others.
General using a command Baneblade, like Xarius in Crimson TEars.

Page 376
Ulviran smiled to hear the warrior's true voice. It was deep and resonant, but with a gentility shaping the words. The Chaplain was, by the lord general's best guess, close to thirty years of age, but with the Astartes it was almost impossible to tell. He didn't even know for certain if they did age; he'd always taken the trope for granted that one determined a Space Marine's age by the scars on their flesh and the inscriptions etched into their armour.
Joke pertaining to Astartes age.

Page 377
"And, according to the sensor sweeps made by my Thunderhawk as we broke orbit, the city - and the site of the Cantorial Palace at the city's heart - is once more in the hands of the enemy."
aerial/orbitla thudnerhawk sensor sweeps.

Page 380
"And you will do penance for your disrespect of the Enemy, Brother Imrich."
It was a matter of small shame among some of the Crimson Fists that they referred to the greenskins as kine. On Rynn's World, another agri-world, it was slang for ''cattle''.

..

"Hate the inhuman, slaughter the impure, and praise the Emperor above all. But always respect the foe."
Crimson Fist term for Orks. Oddly while they hate them, they preach respect for the foe.

PAge 381
"Acid burns," Argo said, gesturing with a gloved hand, his black one. "The Deathwatch kept you busy."
"I can't say," Toma replied. His face was as expressive as stone.
"Can't or won't?" Argo asked, already knowing the answer.
"Both."
"The Ordo Xenos keeps its secrets close."
"It does." Toma's expression was edged with thought as he replayed hazy recollections, little more than echoes, through his mind. Oaths had been sworn. Promises were made. Memories were torn from the mind by psyk-enhanced meditation and the ungentle scouring of arcane machinery.
Means by which Deathwatch and Ordo Xeno keep secrets.

Page 384
Vayne had suffered as the servitors and his potential replacement rebuilt his body. He was almost certain to die, given the massive burns sustained and their initial refusal to heal. The Chapter would lose a gifted healer in a time when the Fists most desperately needed to reclaim and preserve their fighting strength. Had Vayne died, it would have been a true loss.
From shoulder to fingertips, his left arm was augmetic. It connected internally to the bionic sections of his spine and collarbone, purring in a smooth hiss of expensive augmentation that Argo's keen hearing could detect even underneath the background hum of their power armour. As with his left arm, so too was his left leg bionic - from hip to toes. The augmentations were still new, still untested in battle, and although Argo doubted a normal human could discern the minute inconsistencies in Vayne's gait and posture, to Astartes senses it registered as a subtle but noticeable hitch in his stride. A limp.
It was temporary, until the augmetics aligned with Vayne's body patterns and wholly fused with his bio-rhythms. The leg ended in a splayed claw of a foot for enhanced stability: a cross of blackened metal that connected to the well-armoured ankle joint and the heavy musculature of the bionic shin and calf above.
Extensive Astartes augmetic.

Page 385
"No. I am a simulacrum." He clenched his augmetic hand into a numb fist. "I am the best imitation we are capable of creating. I am no longer perfect."
"Our brothers in the Iron Hands would dispute that diagnosis."
Vayne scoffed. "Those uninspired slaves of the Mechanicum? They make war at the pace of toothless old men."
"If you resort to insults against our brother Chapters, I will lose my temper as well as my patience."
"My point is that I am no Iron Hand. And I have no wish to be some half-flesh imitation Astartes."
Comment on Iron Hands.. and Crimson fist disregard for augmetics. Almost anti-Hands.

Page 387
A moment later, his senses were submerged in the audiovisual chaos of his battle helm. On the eye lens displays, he saw the flickering readouts of the squad's vital signs, communication runes, lists of vox-channels, sight-altering lens options, thermo-conditional and local atmospheric readouts, and a cluster of information pertaining to the myriad functions of his armour.
data readouts on auto senses.

Page 388
Argo crouched in the ruins of what had once been an Administratum building, where hundreds of barely-educated wage slaves typed their lives away into cogitators that amassed Syral's exportation data.
Self explanatory. at least they get paid.

Page 389
Argo rounded the corner to meet the others head-on and his bolter barked, spitting detonating shells into green flesh. Eleven of them. Each hulking figure was momentarily outlined by a flicker of light in his helm's vision, cycling through target locks. But eleven was too many, even for an Astartes.
...

The brutish creatures ran at him even as they took fire, massive fists gripping jagged axes that were pieced together from vehicle parts and industrial machinery. Argo's bolter cut down three orks as his targeting reticule flitted between weak points in the greenskins' piecemeal armour.
Targeting reitucles which highlight weak points in the armor (an ADB special).. also 11 Greenskins can overpower an AStartes.


Page 390-391
The midday sun flashed from Toma's iron shoulder guard as he hammered the greenskins from behind. His bolter disgorged a stream of shells that exploded on impact in bursts of clear, hissing liquid. As he fired one-handed, he plunged his gladius into the throat of the closest greenskin, giving it a savage twist to half-sever the creature's head. Four of the orks fell back, the horrendously potent acid from Toma's prized bolt rounds overriding even the orkish resilience to pain as it ate through their flesh like holy fire.

All of this happened before Argo's two hearts had time to beat twice.
The last two orks leapt at the Fists to die in futility. Toma impaled the first through the chest, shattered its face with a brutal headbutt, and fired a single bolt at point-blank range into the alien's temple. The skull gave way in a shower of gore as the explosive shell performed its sacred function. Gobbets of flesh and bone hissed as they span away, eaten by the mutagenic acid in Toma's Inquisition-sanctioned ammunition.
Interesting acid rounds used on the Orks. Deathwatch toys. Also bolt round blows apart skull.

Page 393
Ulviran was content to endure this halting advance, frequently cutting forward progress to establish another artillery barrage that took an age to set up. He pored over maps and holo-displays in his Baneblade's command room as Imperial guns pounded their own city into dust.
The big push consisted of the surviving elements of the Radimir Third Rifles, Seventh Irregulars and Ninth Armoured. These were the so-called ''Revenants'', named for the many times Radimir had replaced entire regiments due to losses against the greenskins in Segmentum Tempestus. Rebirth at the precipice of extinction was a blessing familiar to the Crimson Fists, and the Chapter had fought well with the soldiers of Radimir countless times across the centuries.

Hundreds of Guardsmen clad in the gunmetal grey of the Radimir Revenants marched alongside rattling Sentinels in the vanguard of the assault, flanked by Leman Russ battle tanks in half a dozen variants. Radimir was close to being a forge world in terms of its armoured exports. No Revenant regiment ever went to war short of armour support.

The bulk of Ulviran's forces followed the vanguard: six thousand men including a detachment of storm-troopers serving as his ceremonial guard, riding alongside his Baneblade in eight black-painted Chimeras.

At the rear of this main force came the artillery: Griffons and Basilisks, their punishing guns stowed and locked until the next time Ulviran brought the column to a halt and ordered them to set up a shelling storm kilometres ahead.

Last of all came the rearguard, made of the lord general's veteran Guard squads interspersed with auxiliary units, medical transports and supply trucks.
Guard regimental forces.. They seem to be an armour/vehicle heavy regiment, as well as having alot of infantry.

Page 394
The ritual processes that had moulded his body like clay, forming him into an Astartes, had given him a memory close to eidetic. It was known by most imperial commanders who worked with Astartes that Space Marines possessed preternatural capacities for instant recollection.
Another ADB speical.. Marines typically have near-perfect memories.

Page 395
The communication rune that flashed on his reddish lens display was, thankfully, not Dace. Imrich's vital signs registered as almost a kilometre ahead.
..

This was Vayne, a kilometre to the west.

..

His readouts pinned him in the south.
range of life sign/locator beacons.

Page 397-398
Imperial records came to know this battle as the Night of the Axe, when the Radimir regiments on Syral were decimated by the hordes of xenos creatures they faced. Losses stood at forty-six per cent, utterly damning Lord General Ulviran's planned big push to face the new warlord that still lay in wait on the other side of the city. The Guard was bloody and beaten, and although thousands survived the assault, it was nowhere near enough to storm the warlord's position with any hope of success.
Results of the IG attack on the Orks. Clearly, not good.

Page 401
He knelt by the body, pressing his slit palm to the slain boy's forehead and leaving a smear of blood that mixed with the dirt on the child's dusty face.
"Novice Frael," Vayne consulted his narthecium, tapping at the keypad as he examined the readout. "Age thirteen, initial stages of implantation."
"There's very little decay," Argo observed in a soft voice.
"No. Blood and tissue samples indicate he died three or four days ago. My guess would be the day before we arrived."
13 year old scout. He lasted months buried alive.

Page 402
"If he'd been fully human," Vayne said, "he'd have died in the first two weeks. Thirst. Starvation. Trauma. It was a miracle his initial implantations even allowed him to survive this long. Almost sixteen weeks, Argo. That's worthy of the rolls of honour itself."

..

"Even without the sus-an membrane," Vayne was tapping keys on his narthecium bracer, "our physiology will allow the slowing of the metabolism and the near-cessation of many bio-functions. It is still within the edge of prospective boundaries that an Astartes from the gene-seed of Rogal Dorn could survive the duration."

Argo nodded. Full Astartes could survive, could potentially survive. That, however, wasn't the true issue. The Chaplain looked over his shoulder, where the corpse of the young novice lay.
Again, long term survival in adverse conditions.

Page 403
His targeting reticule outlined the figure in a flash, indicating a failed lock-on. A runic symbol flashed onto his retinas. Geneseed failsafe. Target denied.

The figure was bone-thin, on shaking legs. Argo's lens display conceded to a passive lock on the emaciated wraith, and at first all he saw was the digital displays of low-pulsing life signs under the figure's name. He couldn't believe anyone, even an Astartes, could be that weak and still live.
The name registered at last, a moment before Vayne and Demetrian brought the figure close enough to recognise. Hollow-cheeked, sunken-eyed and looking more dead than alive, the older Astartes grinned when he saw Argo. The Chaplain didn't miss the resemblance between the survivor's wasted face and his own skull helm.
Geneseed failsafe in targeting gear - it can detect its presence and prevent lock-on (friend or foe). As well as the life sign, and general identification stuff.

Page 405
"Almost killed him, you know. Day and night, screaming into the warp and hoping one of the Librarium would hear. We were trapped close to one another. He would whisper and mutter, speaking of how he was riding a hundred minds to reach one we could trust so many systems away."
Argo didn't know what to say. It was a psychic feat of incredible strength. When one of the Chapter's Epistolaries had reported the weak yet crazed contact, it had been all the incentive the Chapter's highest echelons had needed. A recovery operation was mounted immediately.
Untrained psyker making astrotelepathic communication light years away.

Page 406-407
The Thunderhawk screamed across the night sky, its downward thrusters kicking in as it hovered four hundred metres high. Its wing-mounted bolters aimed at the ground, barking in an unremitting stream. The servitors slaved to the weapons didn't even need to aim. They couldn't miss the horde below: a sea of green skin and chattering weapons, ringing a diminished cluster of grey.
The Revenants' last stand.

The guns cut out after a minute, autoloaders cycling but not opening fire again. On the ground, the armoured divisions of the Radimir kept up their onslaught against the ork host in the city's ruins, and Ulviran watched the Crimson Fist gunship as it stayed aloft, out of enemy fire range.
Thunderhawk out of range (400 metres up) from Ork weapons, but the gunship can fire back.

Page 407
Argo's lens displays registered the altitude as he fell. The ground soared up fast in his red-tinted vision, and he clutched his sword and bolter tightly, blink-clicking the propulsion icon at the edge of his sight. The weighty jump pack on his back fired in a roaring kick, slowing his descent, but he still landed with jarring force ahead of the others.
400 metre drop into Ork forces.

Page 407
Twenty metres ahead of them through the ocean of writhing orkish flesh, unmistakeable in salvaged armour that swelled his form to the size of an Astartes Dreadnought, was the greenskin warlord.
Greenskin Warlord, size of a dreadnought in armour.
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Connor MacLeod
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Re: 40K anthologies compiliation analysis thread

Post by Connor MacLeod »

FEar the alien. It had some pretty good (different) stories this time around. The Eldar one was weird, but the people who like weird things would probably enjoy that for its bizarre or even grotesque aspects.. it was like.. 'eldar myth from a human POV, with horror thrown in'. Can't say I quite grasped it all, but I am quite consistently lowbrow in my tastes :P

The other good bit wsa one of those rare Ork stories from the Ork POV and it had a bit of hilarity to it (red boots lol). And the Magos Drusher story, I always like those. Abnett should write more of that.

Also a tau-centric one about why the Kroot eat meat.

Anyhow last anthology up and then I'm done for awhile. Enjoy!

Page 12-13
The man looked at his data-slate again. “According to Central Records, you are employed by the Administratum to teach Natural History at the local scholam.”
“That’s correct. My papers are in order.”
“But you’re a magos biologis, not a teacher.”
...
“The Administratum pays me a stipend for my services, along with certain ration benefits as per the Martial Order. This is of course contingent on me not… on me not supplementing my earnings.”
Ah another Magos Drusher story. He's still on the same planet. He also thinks he's in trouble with the local enforcers. It makes you really wonder how he can be a Magos, since a.) he's not decked out in augmetics and b.) he's never mentioned alongside the AdMech and if he was a biologis he would be immune from most local prosecution.
I have to say despite some of the silliness in this I like these stories.

Page 20-22
The front of his face, and most of his throat, had been bitten away. Parts of the skull structure had gone along with the soft tissue. Cleanly severed, like industrial shears had…
...
“It’s too clean. I’d say you were looking for a man with a chainsword.”
This implies chainswords sever things rather neatly. Not sure I would have expected this from a chainsaw weapon - maybe it's due to the sharp edges they use.

Page 28
“Carnodon. From Gudrun. Throne, there shouldn’t have been one in captivity here. They’re virtually extinct, and listed on the Administratum’s prohibition order. It’s a felid too, but big, and from temperate habitats.”
“How big?”

“Five or six metres, maybe eight hundred kilos. Quite capable of biting off a man’s face.”
Ah, the good old Carnodon. WE last saw those in Eisenhorn.

Page 34
Drusher wouldn’t have been able to tell that the building before him was the Commission of Works. Penetrator shells had caved in the facade and chewed curiously geometric shapes out of the roof. The rear of the building was a dark cave-system of intact rooms.
Penetrator shells. Not sure if the "curiously geometric shapes" means anything.

Page 40
An apex predator. Drusher smiled sadly as he thought of the phrase. A big specimen too, maybe five and a half metres body length, nine hundred kilos healthy body weight. But at the time of its miserable, hunted death, it had been less than six hundred kilos, emaciated, its ribs poking out like tent braces.
Carnodon again.
Page 45
“The Commission of Works.”
...
“It was the main building of the Administratum here in Tycho. Before the tank shells levelled it.”
The penetrator shells were tank shells.
Page 48
Drusher pulled the trigger and kept it pulled. Eight, nine, ten rounds, the full clip boomed out of Macks’ borrowed sidearm and hit the killer head-on.

It fell, burst open, broken, puffed pink intestines spilling from its punctured torso. A man, but not a man. A product of the civil war. Augmetically strengthened, augmetically wired, its eyes a black visor, wires stapled into its flesh, its palsied hands curled over to expose the whirring chainblades sewn into its wrists.

The chainblades whined as they came together. Despite the rounds he had put into it, it got back up. And leapt at Drusher’s face.

His gun clicked, dry.

“Down, Valentin!”

From behind him, Macks fired her riot-gun and the killer’s head burst like a tomato. The impact knocked it sideways. When it landed, its chainblades were still whirring involuntarily.
10 shot handgun + riot gun puts down what amounts to an Arco-flagellant.

Page 52
Catmos felt the weight of the modified long-barrelled bolter in his hands, the cold ring of its magnification scope just touching his eyelid.
long barreled bolter serving as a sniper rifle. In an IG regiment basically.

Page 53
Turning, he saw a Guardsman in the room opposite, shoving lasgun powerpacks into the recharging rack. The man’s hands were shaking. He dropped a pack and swore as he bent to retrieve it.

“Not that one.” Catmos stepped forwards to take it. “The casing’s cracked.”

The last thing they needed was men injured by their own weapons exploding.
Power pack recharging rack. Cracked casings on a powerpack will explode it. Rather odd that in such a durable weapon droppping the power pack would crack it like that.

Page 55
Until they had been overrun, their ammunition exhausted. Because the tyranids could spare a hundred spawn to kill a single Guardsman.
Implies the Nids can sacrifice a hundred lesser nids for a Guardsmen. Considering they can throw billions typically in opening wayves against millions of troops.. unsurprising.

Page 56
..slicing open suppurating channels drilled by the beetles, trying to pierce them with his electroscalpel before they shredded some vital organ. He had been too slow. There had been too many.

“Borer beetles!” Commissar Thirzat rounded on the wide-eyed cadets. “Flesh worms that burrow through your nerve-fibres to consume your brain. Deathspitter maggots melting your armour. Strangler seeds, growing thorns to rip a man to pieces before he takes two steps. "
This is both a description of Tyranid ammo and the Inspirational quality of your typical Commissar
Page 57
“Tyranids will slaughter every man, woman, child and animal, down to skippermice hiding in ditches. They are fearless, merciless, unrelenting. Their sucking weeds will wither every tree, every shrub, every blade of grass. They won’t stop till every last scrap of bio-mass is rendered down in pools of living acid. "
Yet more Commissrial inspiration. Ciaphas Cain, he is not.
Page 59
Kicking aside an acid-etched flak-armour breastplate, he strode towards the stairs.
Flak armour "breastplate"
Page 60
Catmos checked the coloured telltales on the sensor-blanket’s corner. The wounded man’s heart rate, blood-oxygen and pressure were satisfactory.
Rather useful bit of IG gear - Sensor blanket.
Page 62
A Guardsman sprayed promethium over the corpses and ignited it with a flamer burst. Catmos’ throat tightened, but it was the only way to stay free of insidious tyranid organisms.
..
“Would letting the lads watch their dead pals twitching, splitting open to spill poison-maggots into the soil?”
Importance of cremating the corpses. Same as dealing with Orks really.

Page 63
Catmos saw Lieutenant Jepthad raise a hand to his ear, intent on his micro-bead.
These Guardsmen have micro beads it seems.

Page 65
The lascannons ringing the tower’s upper levels burst into life. The alien exploded in a reeking shower of bony fragments and cauterised gobbets of flesh. The same laser blast blew apart the handful following the trailblazer. The air rang with deafening shrieks as beam after beam of brilliant death cut a swathe through the chittering hordes.
Lascannons firing on Hormagaunts. A single "blast" takes out a number of them (at least 3 or so) blowing them apart and reducing them to cauterized chunks. Several MW per Gaunt (say 4-6 at least I'd bet.) Single or double digit MW total (minimum) for the lascannon shot, although double-triple is quite possible by volume (For example, assume boiling every kg of gaunt flesh.. IA4 gives a hormagaunt 200 kg - which would be 160 MJ to boil 3)

Page 65
The close-packed Guardsmen on the battlements were firing their lasguns. Pinpoint beams severed limbs and gouged deep into those swollen heads. They blinded noxious eyes and slashed flickering tongues clean through.
Lasgun shots punching narrow holes and amputating limbs (presumably cutting beams, although it isn't clear how they severer. One possibility is they're firing a stream of lower power, highly focused shots at such a high rate of fire that as the automatic fire is raked it cuts trhough the target (Effectivley)
Page 67
Lascannons burned through the warm air. The flying tyranids caught in their crosshairs disintegrated. Any of the vermin too close to those initial casualties fell too, wings shredded by razor shards of shattered chitin.
Lascannon shots exploding Gargoyles.. again abit on the same benchmark of taking out hormagautns - at least a good half dozen MJ or so (to burn, to explode, and to account for several times mass difference between people)

Page 67
Those monstrosities still aloft vomited lurid gobs of bio-plasma. Catmos saw one spatter a grey-haired Guardsman. Clinging green fire ignited his flak-armour, his hair.
...
The merciful ignition of his lasgun’s powerpack freed him from his torment..
Plasma behaving like flames. bio plasma also manages to somehow set off lasgun powepacks. First dropping them on the floor then extreme heat. Considering you're supposed to be able to throw them in fires, this means bio plasma is hotter than that.
Page 70
The massive tyranid warrior rounded on Thirzat with a roar, as soldiers, mortar crews and medicae were all turning their lasguns on the tyranids in the compound. The alien vermin shrieked and died as their armoured exoskeletons fractured under ceaseless las-fire.
Lasgun fire "fracturing" skeletons, although ohw many shots and how much fracturing vs how many Nids.. who the fuck knows.
Page 71
A cut to the thigh, bright with arterial blood. He pressed a suction-dressing down hard. A hand half-cut, half-tom from its wrist. A styptic-bandage and some tranquillium and that could wait.
More IG issue healing gear.
Page 71
On the mattresses, sensor blankets gleamed with fresh counterseptic, telltales blinking in readiness. Thermosealed trays of servoclamps and electroscalpels were stacked high. Etrick and Tind were ready at their operating tables and the blood recycler hummed. The resuscitrex diodes indicated it was fully charged.
More on the sensor blankets and other high end IG medical gear.

Page 75
He held out a power claw. A bear’s mask snarled above the three shimmering blades.
..
All the wounded shouted agreement. Several brandished the brass bear claws favoured by the rank and file: knuckledusters adorned with talons.
A rather interesting sort of powerclaw.

Page 92
He had a tube-charge in his other hand. Letting his lasgun hang loose on its sling for an instant, he twisted the tube’s cap and threw the explosive hard into one of the pits. Corpses and tyranids alike were blown to pieces
Tube charge blows multiple human and Tynranid bodies to pieces... at least a kilo of TNT analogue, probably several kilos. I suspect the tube charge is a fraction of that (like maybe a pound or so?)

Page 93
He rested his rifle on the rail, focussed through the scope and carefully judged the breeze. This time his first shot sent a deuterium bolt through the warrior’s eye.
"deuterium bolt"
Page 101
Recently revived air-scrubbers re-oxygenating the deck allowed Praetor to remove his battle-helm. Suspensor readings in retinal displays showed maximum lift capacity.
Terminator armour has suspensor readings. Note they don't reduce mass per se but provide lift. (remember the Suspensor sword from Soul Drinkers.)
Page 101
Tsu’gan sent a burst into the creatures, rupturing the ribcage of the leader and ripping off a limb.
...
The flare from the storm bolters lit up the corridor like a tongue of fire. Tsu’gan felt their heat. Three xenos exploded against the fusillade.
Storm bolter fire vs 'nids. We dont know how any shots worth to do this though.

Page 111
Tsu’gan’s retinal display was still reporting zero threats. No heat-traces, no kinetics, no gas or power surges.
Terminator sensors. "kinetics" may mean motion sensors.
Page 130
Cold air, charged with liquid nitrogen mist from inside the chamber, beckoned them closer. The room was not especially large or remarkable. It was square and held twenty banks of clear cylindrical, coffin-like receptacles capable of housing a Space Marine in full armour. This was where crewmembers could go during a long space journey. It was also a place to keep the badly wounded until a space station or dock could be reached which had superior medical facilities to those of the cruiser.
Strike cruisers seem to carry their own cryogenic facilities.. for whatever purpose.
Page 138
“Contacts on my scanners. Closing quickly.” Nu’mean went to his own bio-scanner, one of the concomitant systems of his Terminator armour.
Several heat traces, distant but very real, were approaching.
More on Terminator sensors - biosensors, which seem to rely on heat traces.

Page 146
It took Praetor three blows from his thunder hammer to batter the bulkhead door down and send it screeching from its moorings into the corridor at speed. Like most sons of Vulkan, his strength was prodigious, but even amongst the Fire-born Praetor had a reputation for incredible feats. Brought on by fury and determination, this one ranked amongst the toughest.

The closest Raptor didn’t see it coming. Six thousand kilograms of half-metre-thick metal took the renegade down, slamming into its torso and nearly cutting it in two. A death rattle escaped from its skulled faceplate before it died.
Assuming a 3-4 meter tall 1 meter wide door half a metre thick is a density of 3000-4000 kg *m^3
Terminator with thunder hammer rips a door off its hinges and sends it flying at considerable speed. Assuming 2-3 m/s implies a momentum implied of 12-18 thousand kg*m/s. Probably only the last blow imparted the speed, since the mountings would have weakened under the blows but kept the door in place. It's also something of a lower limit.

Page 149
The respite would not last. The cleansing fire of Brother Kohlogh’s heavy flamer had done its work well. Ashen genestealer bodies littered the corridor ahead, but more were coming, many more.
Heavy flamer reduce many genestealers to ash. 300 kg per Genestealer is half a ton to a ton at least cremated.. (equal to 7-15 normal people disregarding the carapace) although timeframe is unspecified.

Page 163
His haemonculus surgeons had really outdone themselves, he thought. You could see the staples in the back of his skull that pulled his flaccid face tight. A half a dozen of his warriors had been scalped, and now his limp, greasy hair was replaced by a magnificent raven mane. A mixture of drugs and concoctions ran through his injection harness, toning his muscles and giving his eyes a healthy green glow. He curled his lips back, admiring his new stainless-steel teeth.
Dark Eldar cosmetic surgery.

Page 166
One of Malwrack’s sybarite lieutenants ran up gleefully and shot him square in the face, detonating the man’s head like an overripe melon.
Dark Eldar have hand weapons that can explode heads too,w ith the comparable firepower.

Page 167
Instincts taking over, he pulled his limbs in tight to his body and rode the shock wave. His personal force field flared to life, wrapping him tightly in a cocoon of black energy and utterly protecting him. Even when he hit the ground, the shadowy field absorbed the impact that would otherwise have shattered every bone in his willowy frame. Malwrack rolled up onto his feet, and sensing somehow that he was safe for the moment, the field became transparent.
Interesting little defense. Malwrack has.

Page 167
Rumbling towards him out of the smoky haze was an Imperial tank...
...He glanced behind him, but where his warriors had been a moment before, there was now only a smoking crater. Body parts were scattered everywhere, humans and dark eldar now indistinguishable from one another in death.
Imperial tank's shell blows apart a great many Dark Eldar bodies.

Page 169
Suddenly, the telltales on Malwrack’s forearm bracer lit up. His shadow field was a formidable piece of technology, but it was not infallible. There was only so much punishment it could take before it either overloaded or shut down to recharge itself.
Gunfire, shellfire, close combat impacts.. they all drain the shield.

Page 174
She relayed that she had no interest in the planet he had ransacked for her, for she had worlds and captives of her own.
The Dark Eldar seem toh old planetary territory, although whether it is in normal space or in the webway we dont know.
Page 179
More soldiers leapt from Raiders while behind them several slower-moving gunboats began to blow the scarabs apart with volleys from their energy cannons. The horde of machines began to thin. One of the large spiders crashed to the floor in a pool of slag. As if in response to the shifting tide of battle, twisting streams of green fire stabbed forth from out of the darkness. Humanoid shapes were slouching towards them, skeletal and hunched; cumbersome weapons hung heavy in their hands. Every soldier they hit flew apart into piles of burnt flesh and charred bones.
Necrons seem to have some brute force weapons. The only other place we've seen this is Hellforged. Single/double digit MJ maybe.

Page 179
The ones on the ground immediately began firing their rifles. Two of the incubi were killed outright, but the armour of the others withstood the barrage. The archon’s protective field turned opaque in several places, protecting his eyes from the blinding beams as it saved his body from vaporisation.
Implies the Necron beams can vapourize Dark Elar (explode or evaporate, your pick) The ARchons defense shiled and incubi Armour provide protection though.
Page 180
The bodies of his soldiers were piling up everywhere, blackened and smoking. Amidst them, dead necrons were staggering back to their feet, reassembling themselves somehow until they again looked like gunmetal skeletons.
Necrons revive from Abuse the Dark Eldar dish out. Necron weapons continue to burn the fuck out of Dark Eldar.
Page 190-191
It had started without warning, a chunk of space rock vomited from the warp, hurtling directly towards Izanagi. Terror had gripped the world, every calculation of the observators of the Divisio Astrologicus came to the same result: Izanagi was doomed. The impact of such an immense meteor would kill the world and everything on it. There was no time to evacuate, only to kneel before the God-Emperor and make peace with Him before the end.
The impact of the immense meteor was felt across the planet, sending earth tremors that resonated across each continent. A great plume of dust billowed into the atmosphere, wrapping Izanagi in a mantle of darkness.
...
Impossibly, the immense space rock had reduced its velocity as it entered the gravity pull of Izanagi. True, it had struck with enough force to gouge a hundred-metre-deep crater in the lush forests of Kazi Basin, but even such a devastating impact was far from the planet-killing blow predicted by the arcane science of the tech-priests.
An asteroid big enough to inflict a mass extinction event on this planet drops from the warp, and they consider it miraculous that it decelerates prior to impact to save the planet. The fact it comes out of the wapr, that it seems to have control of its velocity, and that some aliens (lik Orks) use Rocks for transportation never seems to cross these people's minds. Hell you'd think they'd suspect something as a rule!

Page 191
The thick layers of dust swirling in the atmosphere blinded the satellite surveillance systems of the prefecture and the agri-combines. Aircraft found it impossible to operate in the choking, gritty clouds, dust quickly clogging intakes and exhausts and reducing visibility to a few metres.
Satelilte surveillance and aircraft for recon. Those sneaky Orks!
Page 192
With orbital and aerial observation impossible, the human defenders of Izanagi could only monitor the advance of the orks by the expansion of the Silent Zone.
The Orks manage, with asteorid impact, to deny the humans access to vital intel.

Page 193
A paved service road cut through the hills, used by the serfs to gather the crops. It formed a direct route to Ko, one of Izanagi’s hive-cities and the nearest processing plant for boden-fruit.
An agri-world, with hive cities, it would seem. Not the first one we;'ve seen, but it always strikes me as being odd whenever I see it mentioned.

Page 196
Kaptain Grimruk Badtoof pressed the magnoculars against his face, the human-built instrument looking like a tiny toy in the ork’s immense hand.
...
A thick finger pawed awkwardly at the modulator controls set into the side of the instrument.
...
Finally, the ork kaptain found the setting he wanted. The black world around him leapt into vibrant hues of green as the night-vision mechanisms became active. Grimruk always thought it was an appropriate thing, the way the human device made things green. It was almost as if the humans who made them had understood that the night belonged to the orks.
human scale, human buitl magnoculars used by an ork having night vision capabilities. Probably not space marine since Space Marines are pretty damn big compared to normal humans (as is their equipment)

Page 198
Straightening himself to his full height of two and a half metres, the ork kaptain scrunched the battered hat onto his misshapen head.
..
He’d torn it from the body of a boss human in the ruins of Vervunhive, one of the black-clad officers who kept their soldiers in line by shooting the ones that tried to weasel out of a fight. Grimruk smiled as he saw that his own troops understood that same message.
Again the Ork isnt' dramatically huge.. he's space marine size. Note the mention of Vervunhive - a possible nod to the Ghosts novels.
I also can't help but find this amusing in the story - an Ork in a Commissar's hat.

Page 199
His hand closed about the heft of the immense chainaxe he carried. He thumbed the activation stud, grinning as the steel teeth of the weapon shuddered into life, whirring like lightning as they screeched along the edge of the axe.
Ork Chainaxe.
Page 199
They made good time even when they did reach the wire. Grimruk placed the credit for that on his foresight. He’d kitted his troops with red boots before setting out on their scouting mission.
Even the lowest grot knew red ones were faster than others.
The power of Red and WAAAGH. Even works on foot troops.

Page 201
The orks behind Grimruk lifted their weapons in the air, a chatter of boltguns, stubbers and combi-weapons barking into the night.
Amusing how well equipped these Orks are.

Page 202
A human soldier rushed at him, firing his rifle at the towering ork. Grimruk felt the las-bolt sizzle through his arm, the wound cauterising instantly behind the searing beam of light.
Lasgun bolt punches through Ork arm, cauterizing a hole through it. Not terribly effective by itself. Assuming Ork arms are twice the size of mine (15-20 cm diameteR) and maybe a 1 cm diameter hole we're talking at least single or double digit kj for the hole alone, nevermind cauterization (easily single digit if not toudlbe digit itself, depending on the severity of the burns and the size of the wound.
Of course vaporizing a hole straight through would probably be 20-30 kilojoules at least, nevermind cauterization (5-10 kj maybe extra at least)

Page 206-207
Grimruk ripped a wood-handle stikkbomb from his belt, nodding for the kommando with him to do the same. The two orks smacked the heads of the grenades against the wall of the bunker, then cast the activated explosives through the firing slits for the bolters.
The walls of the bunker failed to restrain the fury of the blast. In a shower of flame and debris, the bunker virtually collapsed in upon itself. The two orks who had attacked the fortification were thrown like rag dolls, smashing into the ground a dozen metres away.
..
He’d need to talk to the mekboyz about how much punch they packed into their stikkbombz.

..
The bunker was a shambles, twisted supports protruding at crazy angles from shattered blocks of processed stone. Here and there the mangled wreck of a soldier jutted out from the jumbled mess. Grimruk snorted contemptuously as he looked at the walls. The stikkbombz had blasted them to bits, like they were nothing but paper. Maybe he’d suggest the mekboyz keep making the grenades the way they were. Provided of course that they let him know first.
Two Ork Stikkbomz blow apart a bunker. and the troopers inside.

Page 209
Elements from a dozen different regiments had been detached for duty in the custodian force.
at least a dozen PDf regiments on this planet.
Page 211
..there was nothing to stand between them and the billion inhabitants of Ko.
Hive city on the agri world has at least a billion inhabitants.

Page 214
While the temporary energy shields maintained the atmosphere and gravity within the exposed sections, Captain Rilk was eager to rejoin the front as soon as possible..
Imperial starship uses "temperoary energy shields" to maintain atmospher and (oddly) gravity onboard while repairs are made to seal breaches. What kinds of shields would maintain gravity? Either way its interesting in implying forcefields used as some sort of reinforceing mechanism for hulls or a damage control mechanism.

Page 217
He ran a gloved hand over the implants on the back of its neck, the mechanisms that turned a vat-grown humanoid into a robotic creature capable of basic tasks.
..
The alteration was a simple one, but specific, reversing the neural dampener that prevented servitors from being distracted by physical pain.
...
...removed a couple of further connections, cutting off all power to the brain. The servitor shuddered briefly, and died.
...
The servitor had never been alive.
varied commentary on a servitor (vat grown), needing implants to distract from plain, and then needing to cut power to the brain.

Page 218
That flicker of disruption meant one thing: scrap-code, chaotic data introduced into the ship’s cogitation systems to cause disruption, in this instance invisibly blocking onboard communications.
Kaspel’s breath quickened behind his mask: the creation and use of scrapcode was considered by the Adeptus Mechanicus to be heresy, a grave attack on the machine-spirit.
Ah the "scrap code" terms from The heresy novels and such. basically just 40K version of hacking., usually with chaos elements.
Page 235
Battlecruisers were assembled in the space docks that orbited some of the Adeptus Mechanicus’ forge worlds. Ships were built reverently, over many years, enginseers and other adepts working tirelessly in the vacuum to build them. By necessity, the work was modular—components were forged on the world below, brought up in shuttles, and then installed into the frame of the growing ship. Beneath the hull, a ship was not just a single machine, but also many machines, brought into harmony as a single entity. Many parts, one whole.
Kaspel knew that what had once been brought together could be torn apart. The hull damage had taken out many of the supporting points which fixed the engine unit in place within the main structure of the battlecruiser. By Kaspel’s reckoning there were five supports left that needed to be manually unbolted. The struts themselves were vast, but the levers for releasing them were easy enough to shift.
Imperial starship construction is suggested to be modular, and that "battlecruisers" (which is defined as cruisers usually) take "many years" to build in Forge worlds. Contrast this with decades or even centuries in other worlds (or the 11 year Lord Daros example) Other battlecruisers (like the Long serpent class) implied to be built in a matter of years also.

Page 267
He had yanked off his metal collar of rank, and the electoo that ringed his bull-like neck, the badge of a Mechanicus-ordained lay artisan, stood out in the brightness.
Man, one quote out of an entire short story. It wasn't a bad story, just a bit confusing ot follow and not very technical. Basically a bunch of technicians and I think an enginseer run across some Harlequin masks, end up getting mind controlled by the masks, and slaughtered (I think) by the Eldar for daring to use the masks. Or something.
Anyhow, the one quote is mainly interesting to note the "lay artisans", which have been mentioned elsewhere, but another one can never hurt.

Page 296
Tam had even considered dropping his sniper rifle after the first hour of running, but he’d held on to it. It was a thing of beauty. Prayers to the Golden Throne and dirty poems inscribed in the stock, a telescopic sight he prayed over every night that he’d been chosen to carry in his role as a sniper, with a lovely bayonet for close-quarters work that his father had forged himself back on Tantulas.
IG sniper rifles. note the emphasis on bayonets, because it wouldn't be IG if it wasnt bayonets.
I should note the writer of "Unity", one James Gilmer, I believe is one close friend of Karen TRaviss. Take this as you will. :mrgreen:

Page 296
"The tau do not exterminate but turn those they can. If not willingly then they may use other methods to turn the population."
Someone didn't read up very much on the Tau did they? Although subversion and brainwashing isn't much better.
Also considering what they let the Kroot do to humans, it is pretty hilraious to say they don't EVER exterminate. Again FFG and a few other sources would beg to differ, but in truth the objectionable thing is the way its treated as absolutes. The tau should not be treated as any more 'one dimensional' as other races. They can have nice guys and vindictive assholes, and people on both sides of the fence (lovers and haters of the tau) should accept that.

Page 297
The pulse rifles the fire warriors carried had better range than most of the Guardsman weapons.
Nothing really surprising here, except that they somehow don't totally outrange all IG weapons.

Page 298
He’d earned a few kills, but often after a Guardsman had gone down from a rifle butt cracking open his helmet or a curved knife punching through a flak jacket.
Guard vs Kroot.

Page 300
With the frost on, there wasn’t a lot of crop cover, and that meant a hike across open terrain with an enemy that had much better auspex devices than a helmetless Space Marine and an Imperial Guard sniper.
“My scope is kitted out for NV, if it comes to that.”
The IG sniper gear has NV scopes, much like Larkin did. It is also implies that Space Marine helmets have something similar in their helmets. Of course the Tau have better shit still.

Page 302
“We can’t cross open fields during dusk. We’ll wait an hour or two and you can employ the night scope to see if we’re clear.”
“My lord, despite the strength of spirit that blesses this rifle, I’m afraid it’s not as powerful as the auspex devices of your lost helmet or of the tau forces. If they have thermal viewers or anything fancy they’ll pick us out immediately.”
More on the NV scope and the other auspex

Page 303
"The blue-skinned xenos always vox-cast. They swear that they mean no harm, and they preach a kind of tolerance. They poison minds with xenos lies and try to turn those who are weak in their faith to the alien cause."
Yes, the tau love propoganda. but they don't exterminate or sterilize! :P

Page 304
"These things speak our tongue, they field humans from dozens of worlds, and they hire xenos mercenaries to do their fighting.”
Implies the Tau have dozens of human worlds in their Empire. This fits with what we know from other sources. Hell in Jericho reach (a single part) they have dozens of worlds IIRC.

Page 304
"Even with hardly any light, I can see almost as good as that scope. Had I my helm I could see better than that scope."
Space Marines without helmet are as good as IG sniper NV scope.

Page 308
"I can make my way to the clearing and take a look around, but maybe you should hang back. Any auspex devices might pick you up before it would spot me.”
Space MArines in power armor are bigger, and generate a bigger thermal signature.

Page 308
Tam panned back and forth a few times with the scope. The only thing that was showing was a light source down-range about half a kilometre."
NV scope detects light source half a km away.

Page 309
Tantulas was a higher-gravity world than Coruna, and Tam could feel it with every step he took. He also knew that his shorter stature compared to the Coruna Imperial Guard
IG trooper from a higher G world than another. Resulting in a more compact (or evne Squat-er) trooper.

Page 309
"..should we encounter enemies you will have to use your NV to spot targets for me. My helm had thermal viewing, but the ruins of it lie back at the uplink station."
How do they inend to do this exactly?

Page 314
“The Tantulas Regiment… their bodies are adjusted to higher-gravity worlds, and they all have excellent eyesight. It’s why so many of them serve as snipers.”
The benefits/capabilities of the Tantalus' regiment.

Page 314
The rest of the lights suddenly went out and Tam swung his rifle up with practiced ease, his thumb flicking the NV switch.

“Watch your eyes! Chem-glows out!” Gesar was moving as he spoke and Tam saw half a dozen green sticks fly from the man’s hand to land in a semi-circle in front of him. The light was dim enough to not foul Tam’s NV, but he also suspected that it gave Gesar enough light to see by.
Chem glow stick thingies.

Page 315
“Very, very well done, Space Marine. You’re going to be quite the prize yourself. So many of those lovely organs stuffed in you. So many genetic marvels handed down from your Emperor. Your blood holds many prizes. I want you to know that only the best warriors will take your flesh. Your body will be a singular honour for all who fight.”
Kroot just love ingesting Space Marines. It makes me wonder if they could actually ingest and absorb their genetics, since at least some of their augmentation is purely artificial, and possibly some form of organic nanotech, and quite possibly psychic. Then again the 'Nids supposedly did so maybe they can. Or maybe they can only absorb parts of it. Who knows.

Also there's a bit of the 'heavy-g - stronger' theme to this story. That's been discussed in other threads, and it may not be as realistic as mentioned (it may be downright silly.) Since this is 40K though I'll invoke 'magic' as an explanation to avoid having ot be too complex about it :P

Page 320
"The kroot seek only unity, and your meat tells the kroot how to be. They give the gift of unity, and they become stronger. They will take your flesh in unity and become better fighters in low gravity. They will see better. They need fresh meat. Their only constant is change.”
I guess this is one reason why the Kroot don't mind serving under the Tau for the Greater Good. Even if they still merc themselves out against Tau rules.

Page 321
"“Your Emperor and priests fill their giant warriors with machines and organs to make them strong. Their meat is powerful, but the kroot need all kinds. Otherwise they would break down. You’re saving their race. You should be proud. "
Oh great. Pro-Kroot humans. I like how it implies the Kroot are so genetically volatile that they need extreme variety to kepe from fallign apart or something. By the way, its perfectly okay by the Tau for non Tau humans to be butchered and prepared/stroed like cattle, but don't do it to the pro Tau humans. But they don't exterminate! Again if we don't treat the tau as one dimensional ideals, this isn't really so much of a problem - ideology like religion can rationalize a great deal, and it can be true in a relative sense. But absolutes... :lol:

Page 326
In its dark fists was a heavy bolter of bulky, archaic design, much too large for a human to carry, adorned with bleached skulls hanging from chains of polished bronze.
Because it's not properly imperial if it doesn't have skulls. Oh and its too big for a human to carry.

Page 327
He carried a heavy ammunition canister over his shoulder, in addition to the oxygen tanks on his back. The canister was densely packed with folded belts of ammunition for the massive bolter cannon clutched in Mercutian’s gauntlets. The warrior carried two similar containers himself, locked to his belt.
This heavy bolter is fed on ammo cannisters housing the belts of bolter ammo. This implies a shit ton of ammo though - hundreds of rounds maybe.

Page 329
In that foulest of ages, this ship had hung in the skies above Holy Terra as the world’s atmosphere burned. A million ships painted the void with flame as they raged at each other, while the planet below, the cradle of humanity, caught fire.
This ship had been there, and it had slain vessels loyal to the Golden Throne, casting them from orbit to tear through Terra’s cloud cover and hammer into the Emperor’s cities.
Implied that the Battle of Terra during the end of the Heresy involved a million ships of some kind or another - but all designed to fight. This would imply the Heresy Era Imperium had some millions of combat ships. :)

Page 333
“Plasma bleed is significant,” the acolyte intoned. “The Shriek can be maintained for another two point one-five hours before aura-scrye inhibitors must be powered down.”
..
..he was content to let the Echo of Damnation fill nearspace with a thousand frequencies of howling noise and wordless machine-screams. Any other vessels in range to trace the Echo on their scanners would find their auspex readers unable to detect definitive targets in the jamming field, and their vox channels conquered by the endless static-laden screams.

The Shriek had been Tech-priest Deltrian’s most recent invention. Invisibility to Imperial scanning had its uses, but it also fed with greedy abandon on power that other areas of the ship needed to function. When the Shriek was live, the void shields were thin, and the prow lances were completely powered down.
Night Lords version of Electronic warfare and cloaking. Power intensive though, however it does what it does.

Page 342
Nor did they rely on lobotomised servitors to breach obstructions. Instead, several of Lucoryphus’ Raptors were armed with melta guns, breathing out searing surges of gaseous heat intense enough to liquidate the metal it blasted.
Servitors for breaching obstructions in place of melta guns. meltas described as being able to melt metal with "gasoues heat" -not even bas bad as flamethrowers. some sort of poorly worded plasma weapon I guess. Or maybe it is a steam gun !

Page 343
“Vaporiser weapons,” Lucoryphus’ hissing voice carried over the vox, “Melta-class weapons. No cutting. No cutting servitors. Much faster.”
Vaporisor weapons? Is that an actual catagory? I also guess the servitors to breach obstructions use some sort of cutting device - lascutters maybe?

Page 352
A dead genestealer shivered no more than seven metres away from where Cyrion was standing. Cyrion blew its head apart with a single shot from his bolt pistol.
Bolt pistol round blows paart Genestealer head. GEnestealrs mass 300 kg, so its height might weigh around 15-20 kg or so (about as much as blowing apart a human torso roughly, not including the carapace stuff.)

Page 363
“I see it,” Talos voxed.
He stared into the darkness, looking away into the six hundred metres of shadowed chamber to the north. “It emerged from the wall a moment ago.”

“I see it, too.” This, from Variel. He approached Talos and hefted his bolter, his thermal sight easily piercing the gloom.
...
"Fire when it reaches optimal range. "
..Talos raised his bolter, sighting through the targeter and drawing breath to summon the others.
...
On Talos’ red-tinted visor, a proximity rune turned white. In the very same moment, Talos and Variel opened fire.
Optimal range for a bolter is less than 600 metres, at least in the dark using thermal sight. Talos' bolter has a targeter.

Page 376
Brielle saw Quin test the mechanism on his boltgun, before lowering his sensor goggles to scan the depths of the storm.
Sensor goggles on the members of a rogue Trader's retinue. and yes that is Brielle from Andy Hoare's Rogue tRader novels. Prepare to roll one's eyes and wince, because there are no White Scars to balance things out here.

Page 379
She turned back, leaning in yet closer to the damaged surface. She fancied she could see signs of repair, if only at a minuscule scale. Perhaps this place could heal itself, she mused. Perhaps that explained how it could have withstood the ravages of this storm-wracked world for so many long, lonely aeons.
Well its necron so yeah it can heal itself. And no they won't figure out its necron, despite being members of the Great Arcadius line.

PAge 379
.. Brielle reached her hand to the mechanism at the side of her helmet, lowering a set of goggles over her visor. The headset buzzed as lenses whirred to focus on what Brielle’s own eyes could not register. The goggles were capable of registering many different wavelengths, overlaying what they perceived over Brielle’s own vision.
More detail on teh sensor goggles. Surprised they're not great old artifacts of the ARcadius line. They seem to favor considering increidbly commonplace shit as being relics.

Page 405
As the figure rose upwards, she saw that it was floating, as if held aloft by the light itself. It was huge, easily three metres tall, its body a metal skeleton swathed in rags that appeared to writhe as if stirred by some unseen current.
And the Necron Lords appear. Yes, Brielle decided to plunder a Necron tomb. Brilliant eh?

Page 406
Breathing a silent prayer to the Emperor to guide her hand, she squeezed the trigger. Her shot struck the figure square across its metal brow, but the bolt exploded, leaving little more than a black smear to mark where it had landed.
Yep. Shoot the almighty Necron Lord in the face with a bolter. That ought to anger it.

Page 406
The warrior raised his boltgun and in scant seconds emptied an entire magazine at his foe. Several dozen bolt-rounds, each sufficient to reduce a normal body to a bloody ruin, glanced harmlessly from the metal form above.
“Quin!” Brielle bellowed over the deafening roar of the armsmen’s shotguns joining in the fusillade.
Bolter empties its magazine i "seconds" implying assualt rifle rates of fire. The Necron Lord tanks all several dozen, each being reputed to basically pulverize a human body.

Page 408
A metallic warrior barred her path. Instinctively, she brought her bolt pistol to bear, opening fire from a distance of scant metres. At the same moment, her companions did likewise, and the foe was rocked backwards as its skeletal body was hammered by round after round of precision fire.
For a moment, Brielle feared that this enemy’s metal form would prove as impervious to attack as that of the larger figure that floated above in the shaft of green light. She gave heartfelt thanks as she saw angry sparks erupt from within its chest, followed an instant later by a small explosion.

“Again!” She ordered, firing three more bolt-rounds into the enemy’s chest. The armsmen pumped shell after shell at the foe, forcing it backwards still further.

And then, the metal skeleton blew apart, ripped asunder by an explosion deep within its armoured ribcage lagged metal shrapnel lanced outwards, one piece shattering the armoured visor of Brielle’s helmet, and slashing a deep cut across her forehead.
Well I guess enough weapons fire from her entourage managed to fuck up a Necron eventually. Good job Brielle - you used up a fair chunk of youre firepower to kill one, which will probably just come back later.
Page 408
Quin had stopped firing once more, evidently having emptied another two-dozen bolt rounds into the floating figure. Even as he ejected the spent, sickle-shaped magazine..
Meanwhile the Necron Lord is still eminently un-fucked.
PAge 409
As Quin raised his boltgun once more, his tattooed face a mask of savagery, the figure’s palm blazed with pulsating green light.

The feral-worlder convulsed, his boltgun slamming to the ground at his feet. Brielle screamed his name, but it was too late. Before her eyes, Quin’s survival suit appeared to melt away. First the armoured plates dissolved, as if the metal were being peeled away, one layer of atoms at a time. Then the fabric too disappeared, to reveal the warrior’s tattooed flesh beneath. For a moment, Quin stood naked before the metal daemon above him, and then the tattoos that covered his body faded, followed an instant later by his skin.

Quin’s bloodcurdling death-scream split the dusty air of the tomb chamber as his skin dissolved and the raw musculature beneath was revealed. Layer by layer, the flesh was peeled away, atomised to nothing by the awful power of the green radiation. At the last, only Quin’s skeleton stood, silhouetted against the blazing shaft of green light, and in an instant, that too was gone, the last of his marrow reduced to dust evaporating on the unnatural wind.
Necron weapons do much more as we know they can. Couldn't happen to a more deserving idiot. Pity it couldn't be Brielle.

Page 410
With titanic effort, Brielle hurled the stave at her foe. The blade flared green as it crossed the space between them, almost blinding her. With unerring accuracy, the tip struck the skeletal figure in the centre of its ribcage, piercing armour that had proven impenetrable to dozens of boltgun rounds. A shaft of green light shot outwards, accompanied by a piercing machine howl, and the stave continued its course, burying itself up to the haft in the figure’s chest.
The skeletal horror stood transfixed by its own weapon, blinding green light now splaying in all directions from its wound. It stood, unable to move, its hellish death-mask face staring at Brielle as it writhed as if in agony.
Brielle lucked out, and Necrons are vulnerable to its own weapon.

Page 412
“Just think what the Mechanicus would give to get their hands on that tech. They’d give anything to study just one of those machine warriors… what if we could broker contracts with each of the forges, one sample to each, exclusive rights…”
Ah yes, the Arcadius, masters of the goofy plan! Nice to know Brielle learned her lesson from this encouter didn't she? I wonder what Ciaphas Cain would think of this twat.
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Connor MacLeod
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Re: 40K anthologies compiliation analysis thread

Post by Connor MacLeod »

oops I dont know how I forgot this one, other than I'm trying to block out the memory of the anthologies. This one was a rather important one esp as its a connecting story between WoU and DS,BS (which I am currently reading, funny that.) Anyhow, it comes from Legends of the Space Marines.
The journey through the warp from Tarsis Ultra had taken the better part of six months, though upon re-entering real space and calibrating the ship's chronometers against local celestial bodies, it was noted that a time dilation of a year and a half had passed. Such anomalies in the apparent flow of time while travelling through the fluid medium of warpspace were not uncommon; rather, they were an accepted price to be paid for a method of travel that allowed a ship to cross the galaxy without spending generations in the journey.

Indeed, such a relatively minor time dilation was remarkable given the vast distance travelled by the Vae Victus. Tarsis Ultra lay to the north of Segmentum Tempestus, while Macragge orbited her star in the eastern reaches of Ultima Segmentum, half the galaxy away.
Supposedly Tarsis Ultra is 'half the galaxy away' from Macragge, but the maps for 5th edition (Tyranid codex AND Core rules), which suggests it is more 5K LY or so from Ultramar. If we go with the 5th edition stuff we're going with a warp speed of 10-20K c, whilst in 3,000-6700c. IF we go with 'half a galaxy away' it is 100-120,000c in warp, and 30,000-40,000c. Sigh.
Also a time dilation of 1:3 (warp/realspace time) is considered 'remarkably low'. Of course, post Warriors of Utlramar we have tyranids starting to invade, so its possible warp storm fuckery is starting to kick in.
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Connor MacLeod
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Re: 40K anthologies compiliation analysis thread

Post by Connor MacLeod »

Another Space Marine anthology to churn out. I've been sitting on this one for awhile. Two (small) updates at least.


Page 16
..he warp was thick with the babble of Imperial astropaths, and when my own seers plucked the connections between their minds we found the hailing codes of the Ultramarines...
Iron Warriors seer able to eavesdrop on astorpathic transmissions.


Page 17
" Our lance and battery strikes tore the atmosphere until it boiled, scrubbing whole flights of their attack craft out of the skies, forcing their defence silos to try to track us through superheated clouds and radiation static while we bombarded them with precision. Twenty days we jousted with their cannons from orbit, the sum of the numbers of Guilliman’s and Dorn’s Legions, and on the twenty-first we took to our landers to bring the little mortals their doom with our own hands."
..
" I rode with my assault pioneers in the first flight of storm-torpedoes, spearing through the skin of Roeghym Hive, whose voids had crumbled to us. "
Orbital attacks and hive defences.



Page 17
The upper hive had been sloped to deflect just such an entry, layered and honeycombed to rob a storm-torp of its momentum and trap it in a maze of half-collapsed cells. But those we left behind in the Imperium are stupid, my brothers, and they forget. The defences had been quarried hollow, leached of their strength by complacent generations.
Hive defenses designed to stop drop pod assaults.. assuming that the hive inhabtants do not do what hive inhabitants always do and mine their existing city to provide themselves with resources.


PAge 18
Cold-armoured, cold-eyed siege teams, adept in crippling a hive’s vital systems or weakening its adamantium and carbon-foam bones.
Hive city construction.


Page 26
"There is a warp-vortex northward of the Tembine Drifts in the galactic north-west that pierces down through the galactic plane. It boiled there when the Crusade first mapped the borders of what they now call Obscuras..."
...
" The violence of the funnel-current is fed by the storms radiating out from the Eye below and north-east of it. Shipmasters driven by haste or hubris sometimes catch the edge of the tide and let it fling them towards Cypra Mundi, but it is a turbulent, dangerous passage. Its lower reaches, I am told, have never been charted, and who is to say if there is any end to it? Perhaps it plummets out of our galaxy and continues forever down into the gulfs.
...
"There is a place where the vortex bends through an angle from the push of a counter-tide, and there the storm’s cohesion breaks. That is the Jaw, where a storm-whirl juts out like a greenskin’s chin. It throws out blast-fronts that are felt sectors away, vortices that spin for a hundred light years before they exhaust themselves. It makes storm-stitched patterns that wriggle and swim and fight to come to life. And it disgorges ships. The Molianis Reach in real space out beyond the Jaw is a hulks’ graveyard like few others. The storm drags ships from their courses and plunges them through who knows what depths, and the gravity well of Molianis’s great blue star is where so many of them are dragged back again. "
Warp storm passage that apparently fan facilitate rapid travel (but risky.) Its located in Obscurus, close to the eye (which is bleow and northeast of it, suggesting its more specifically on the western side, far away from Cypra Mundi.) The passag eto Cypra Mundi is basically ‘across the segmentum’ and a good 10-20 thousand LY distance, although the timefrmae isnt known.


PAge 27
"They have built a fortress at the far end of the stream of wreckage. A magnificent thing, truth be told, tier on tier of gun decks, lance mounts, deep-gauge auspex arrays. It trails free-floating fortifications behind it, communications boosters, munitions depots, shipyards and repair docks. Squadrons of warships fuss around it. The scale of the place has grown. They are colonising other moonlets nearby so the fortress crews can expand. Who knows? Perhaps Molianis might one day house a world’s worth of colonists."
Imperial fortres and its defenses. Not yet a minor system or even a heavily colonized, yet it has battlestations and other fortifications, orbital facilities, and whole squadrons of warships (sublight or warp capable, we don’t know.)


Page 28
"We went raiding, my Night Lords and I, in the Greater Tembine Drift, which stretches out across the north-eastern quadrant like a shoulder blade. Ships striking out from the rich worlds of the Lesser Tembine Drift and pushing up through the unsettled layer between them can expect a long and tranquil voyage, coasting on the gentle outward pressure of the drift-tide towards the far northern marches of the Ultima Segmentum. Such was the voyage our prey had in mind when they ignited their drives at Isith."
..
"It was a supply convoy, heavy and slow like fattened cett-cows, plodding towards the reaches with materiel from the Mechanicus forges. Fusion-formed alloys, tailored reactant blocks for plasma furnaces, biological stock, weapons, machines. We heard tell that the cargo was on its way to a string of new colonial hives. We had other intentions for it."
Again the Temberine region seems to be in the north eastern part of Obscurus, so we’re high up there. And again we see that passage/transit can permit travel cross-segmentum (rather peaceful as warp routes go) into segmentum obscurus.

Also the equipment of a supply convoy bound for colonists. ‘Fusion formed’ alloys - not sure what the process means though. Is the ‘fusion’ a process of combining it, or does it refer to the temperatures involved? We know of ‘plasma forged’ metals like adamantium, so it might be something like that.
Also mentioned are ‘reactant blocks’ for plasma reactors, which suggests some colonies use plasma reactors (unless they’re fusion, in which case they must make some pre-formed, very dense fusion fuels.) - which isn’t suprrising, given we know some very odd elements (some mined materials) can go into making plasma fuel in Goliath factory ships. Then again, maybe its promethium :P
Oh and the colonies? COLONIAl Hives. So hive worlds can encompass some colonies as well, which helps greatly to explain the ‘heart of rage’ billions of hive worlds statement.


Page 35
"How long all this lasted I do not know. I can tell you that four months passed by the sidereal calendars between us breaching warp at Isith and overhearing our first Imperial transmissions at Molianis, but to most of us that plummet down the vortex seemed to take only days. But we all know the fickleness of the warp and time."
Time of the tranist. we dont know the distances involved exactly - its at lest several sectors worth, whch represents many hundreds or thousand sof light years aloone (encompassing the length of the multiple sectors plus the distances betwen them) and may even span a segmentum or more. We could be looking at high thousands/low tens of thousands at least, and possibly more. Given its an unplanned/unpredictable warp route that is pretty impressive no matter what the exact speed.


Page 36
"The seals and provitae systems of the Navigator’s roost are intended to allow it to function while sealed off unto itself, so that any warp intrusion there might be checked before it can spread to the rest of the ship. Here they had worked in reverse, protecting him from the efforts of the warp to render the Hymn down to nothing."
It may not be unintentional. we know from other sourcs that the Navigator may be protected specially because they are the only ones woh can drop a starship from the warp (Even in emergencies.) so a defense that keeps out such dangers would be of benefit. The fact it can keep threats confined inside is also of gret value really.


PAge 37
"The sensors of our own armour had registered whipcracks of noise and flickers in our visors, which we dismissed as the after-effects of the tumult from the voyage. But coupled into the Navigator bubble we were able to decipher what they were. We were listening to a cascade of military-strength auspex pings: a stream of them, all tumbled over one another, some from mere light minutes away, others far older and fainter, sounded by ships prowling the other side of the system. The Molianis system."
"With a brilliance born of terror and reflexes strung with the raw instinct to survive, Vivyre Drunnai found a skein of warp-flow down through the vortex from the Tembine Drift into the warp storm of the Jaw."
active auspex sounds with a range of at least light minutes to light hours. IT’s also ship sensor range.


Page 41-42
"...before long Aechol Tertia was in open secession to seek shelter in the fold of yet more xenos – the ambitious and striving tau, who seek not to expunge other races but to subjugate and regiment them under the “Greater Good” in whose name they claim to rule."
...
“Their viceroys promised a just and firm rule of Aechol rather than the capricious and neglectful Imperium..”
...
“The tau do not understand the warp-touch in the way that humans can. They cannot feel the currents of the god-sea and respond to it, can never share our relationship to the primal. And thus blind, they knew not how to govern once a new generation began to grow on the world they had “freed” for themselves to rule. The children grew. Their children grew. The numbers of psykers grew. And the tau would not understand what was happening. They scoffed at the Imperial traditions as witch-myths peddled by Imperial confessors, to foment anger and weaken the flock for more effective control. And so the warp-touch spilled out upon Aechol Tertia.”
Comment on the tau and their ‘acquisition’ of Imperial worlds. Given they have at least a number of human worlds under their control, and that we know that they know of a number of psychic races (like the Nicassar) why the hell would they disregard the threat of the warp? Do they somehow believe humanity is NOT a psychic race, or what?
Either way I guess this is something we can chalk up to ‘The tau are too naive to represent a threat’. Chaos, genestealers, and now mutant psykers.


Page 42
”...we found the frost-dusted shingle plains crisscrossed with railtracks and pocked with mass-driver silos. When Aechol had been in its prime, the tau had loaded shells full of Aechol’s silica sands and rich biocultures, and blasted them into orbit for their freighters to snare and drag back to their own heart worlds. After the tau quit the system...”
Mass driver transportation of materials. Implies a velocity of at least 10-20 km/s probably (Escape velocity) although that assumes an Earthlike gravity.


PAge 43
”Here was where the tau had laid down their quarantine camps for what they thought was madness and rebellion, exiling here the first psykers to arise among their subjects as they strove to stay ascendant.”
Yep. They quarantined psykers out in the open.


Page 47
”A flotilla of warships, two great transports of the Imperial Guard, a clarion-craft bonded to the Ecclesiarchal sisterhood, and they could not sway Aechol Tertia from our teaching! Their soldiers disgorged onto the surface in their millions, sure of easy conquest..”
Millions of troops and two transports, suggests a troop transport capacity (for each transport) of at least a million men, if not millions, apiece.


Page 74-77
”Where is your pride? Have the shallow glamours of your patron blinded you to the fact that if we all turn on one another so, there will be none left to strike at the Golden Throne? How may we weld ourselves together again into a force to raze Terra with such as you in our ranks?”
...
“Do you understand why I will allow none of you this prize, until your Legions can send me champions who prove that the fires that Horus kindled in us all still burn hot? “
...
“You set yourself up over us, sneer at our histories. You brag that you had fought in Horus’s lunge for power, as if that were some badge of greatness. You who marched in the rank and file ten thousand years ago!”
...
“The Long War is not done while the Emperor sits on that throne on Terra! And all we have left is fops and cowards who will not do what it takes to settle the account!”
...
“Are you so stunted, Chengrel? So trapped? Leave your so-called Long War to the elders, all eaten up with spite, who cannot drag themselves out of a rut of ten thousand years! Think of all that Chaos offers you. Think of the power and grandeur. Think of what you have built already, and what you could achieve if you let the Great Ocean pour through you and push wide your understanding. Think of what awaits you if you would just shrug off your dreary little feud and strike out to explore! You are the traitor, Chengrel! Traitor to the potential our forefathers saw in us when they turned their backs on the Emperor and led us out into the void!”
An abberviated passage of four pages, but it captures the essence of the story, I think. Basically we have a conflict between ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Chaos Space Marines. Chengrel is an artifact of the Horus Heresy, whilst the other four Traitor MArines are chaos-tainted champions brought into the Legion centuries or millenia after the fact. What makes it so interesting is how it represents a diverse set of attitudes and agendas amongst each person. Chengrel’s agenda is much the same as Abbadon - he wants to continue the long war and unite the traitors to topple the Imperium, but he doesn’t care much about Chaos. Whereas each of the others has their own personal agendas, many of which involve worship of a particular Chaos God and don’t give a damn about the Long War. What we often think of collectively as the ‘Traitor Legions’ are really all just a loosely-bound collection of renegades. Some are Chaos-tainted worshippers and champions, whilst others are ‘merely’ traitors. And they will fight each other as readily as the ywill fight the Imperium.


Page 76
”A Defiler scrambled past him on its cluster of metal legs and sent a belch of yellow flame towards where Khrove hung, and without looking down the Thousand Son caught the blast and stilled it in mid-air as though he had imprisoned it in a picture of itself. A moment later the flame, now a glowing cobalt blue shot through with scarlet and emerald, reversed its motion, reversing back into the Defiler’s flame-tank, which exploded in a ruinous fireball.”
Thousand Son sorcerer captures and redircts the fire (literally) from a Deflier.


Page 80
.. gun still nosing the night, the Iron Warrior watched tracking overlays and hit readouts. They showed plumes of rock dust, splintered vegetation, a little cloud of atomised sap where a bolt had punched through the bole of a twisted tree. But both he and his armour systems knew, from bitter lessons begun on Isstvan, the look and sound of a bolt-shell hitting Space Marine war plate, and there had been no evidence of that.
Termaintor armour suits and internal systems, some of which pertain to utilizing their gunds (tracking overlays and hit readouts.)


Page 80
Then a melta-blast slagged the plasteel-bound frame of the combi-bolter, and an eye-blink later the white-hot wreck of the weapon was blown apart by the shells still in the magazine.
Terminator armour takes relatively minor damage from a melta-blast. Which would imply that the things really ARE more durable than a tank....
Deathwatch specifies that storm bolters mass some 26 kg. If we assume plasteel has the same properties as iron, it might be double digit MJ to melt (20-30 MJ at least.) If we just go by ‘white hot’ then it might be ‘only’ 18 MJ.


PAge 80-81
The meltagunner shot a blast into the leader’s faceplate that destroyed several sensory inputs and overwhelmed the others for whole seconds.
..
The Iron Warrior holding the stones felt another blast of heat that failed to injure him, but damaged enough of the fine componentry in his arm that the limb locked stiff..
Meltagunner again hitting the termiantor, and again not doing major damage.


Page 81
..when the muzzle of the reaper cannon clanked into the pit of his left arm. Even in the split second between contact and firing he was twisting away, presenting the Iron Warrior with a curved armour surface for the shells to carom off. But that could not save him completely and the triple shot spun him four metres away with an ugly crater in his armour.
...
Hodir gave a liquid, agonised cough as his fractured rib-carapace ground and his lungs worked to expel the blood already half-clotted in them.
Autocannon fire does significant damage to Night Lords power armour, but doesnt penetrate or kill the guy involved. Power armour cna also deflect the shots if it hits at an angle, apparently.


Page 84
They threw open carefully concealed foxholes and enfilades, and used scatter munitions to lay down instant fields of krak mines and webs of memory-wire strong enough to entangle even power-armoured legs.
memory wire.


Page 90
Deep in the Segmentum Pacificus, far from the front lines of any contest, Ligeta was untouched by war beyond the usual tithe of citizens bequeathed to the Imperial Guard.
...
Officers who were posted back to their home worlds developed reputations, especially when those home worlds were pampered, decadent backwaters.
Depending on what 'deep' means (EG is it closer to Terra, or further away from it although 'backwater' suggests the latter, unless we assume its in the backwaters of a sector.) this could be an indicator yet again that not every world is plagued CONSTANTLY by War. In actuality a recurring theme amongst the authors is more that 'there are lots of places in the Imperium under threat of war' because the idea of a place which has lived and thrived for centuries or millenia at peace being invaded and devastated by Chaos/Tyranids/Orks is actually.. worse... because that planet has something taken away from it it can never regain.

Also some IG officers get returned home, like we learn in 'Imperial Glory'


page 91
. The Ligetan regiments were called upon to maintain supply lines, garrison captured territory, and mop up the token resistance of those who were defeated but hadn’t quite come to terms with the fact. They were not summoned when the need was urgent.
Another example where we find out that regiments often are raised to specific purposes or specializations, despite the 'standardization' and lack of unity and centralized control - which probably means this is more of a 'local control' - eg sector or subsector sort of thing. BAsically you have 'frontline' regiments, you have other regiments devoted to supporting those forces, etc. We saw it in the Jericho Reach crusade, Sabbat Worlds, and it also echoes the idea that some regiments are more notable (EG Cadians, Valhallans, Tallarn, cAtachans) and thus more important. This regiment is not an important one, its designed to do rear echelon stuff - garrison, mop up (or hold territory) and guard supplies. Not glamorous work, but its still important too.
It also reflects the prime disadvantage of the IG -you're creating a sort of disunity by promoting some forces (EG CAdians, storm troopers, etc.) as being better or more elite than others. Indeed the protagonist of this story, a Ligetan officer, is resentful and angry over this perceived 'secondary' status. And that creates problems, as we see (the desire for fame and glory and recognition really annoys him, and that is dangerous.)
It also brings up something I've repeatedly mentioned - there is no really 'standard' IG regiment. It all depends on what they're raised for, who raises them, why, and what they're raised with. All those little variables are important in defining the capability of a Guard regiment, and any one factor can seriously impact their performance.


Page 97
He opened the flap of his shoulder holster and pulled out his laspistol. He leaned over the railing of the box, and sighted on his brother’s head. He felt no hesitation. He felt only necessity. He pulled the trigger.
Gurges fell, the top of his skull seared away.
Laspistol blows away (burns away?) top of a guy's head. How much of the top we don't know. at least single digit kj. If we assume 2nd or 3rd degree burns (30-50 J per sq cm) and a 10-15 cm diameter head (78-176 sq cm) you get at least 2.3 to 9 kj for thermal damage alone to the top of the skull. Twice that if we factor in the part that is sheared/blasted away (if it were intact, at least..)

As an aside I'll note that Chaos forces are taking a planet.. by song. The plan is - play the tainted chaos song all across the planet, and everyone falls victim to it. Easy conquest!



Page 100-101
The ground rose again as he reached the base. He approached the main gate, and he heard no singing. Before him, the wall was an adamantium shield fifty metres high – a sloping, pleated curtain of strength. A giant aquila was engraved every ten metres along the wall’s two-kilometre length. Beyond the wall, he heard the growl of promethium engines, the report of firing ranges, the march of boots.
Planetary defence 'regiment' base. Yes they call it a single regiment, and the guy in this story is their leader. WHether this is meant to be the PDF or a garrison (which is odd, garrisoning your own home planet is supposed to be a no no in the Guard because of risks of rebellion and such) is another question.
Also one has to wonder where the ARbites are in all this?


Page 102
So the Ligetan flagship had fallen.
There's a flagship, but we dont know what kind of space vessel Apparently its part of either a naval detachment on indefinite duty, or its the sublight defence force.

Page 103
By the time the message was received and aid arrived, weeks or months could have elapsed. By that time, the battle for the soul of Ligeta would have been won or lost.
..
There were five thousand men here. The position was elevated, easily defensible.
Implied response time to the invasion. Whethr this is typical or because of other factors (more important conflicts going on) we don't know.
Also size of the troop force on the base. probably the 'defence regiment', which presumably is not the PDF. Otherwise this planet is RIDICULOUSLY under-defended.

Page 103
"A capital ship has just transitioned into our system."
"Really?" That was fast. Improbably fast.
"It’s hailing us."
Terminus Est appears we discover, which means that Typhon's flagship must be very blessed to be able to drop out of the warp, untouched so damn close to the planet (seconds of delay at most.)

Page 104-105
"Multiple contacts, lord."
...
The Imperium would hardly leave Ligeta without a defending fleet. Typhus moved his bulk towards the main oculus. They were already close enough to see the swarm of Imperial cruisers and defence satellites.
...
As the Terminus Est closed in on the glowing green-and-brown globe of Ligeta, the enemy ships gathered size and definition. Their distress became clear, too. Some were drifting, nothing more now than adamantium tombs. Others had their engines running, but there was no order to their movements. The ships, Typhus knew, were performing the last commands their crews had given them, and there would be no others to come.
Implies perhaps at least four or even six 'warships' in the defense fleet, at least some of which are cruiser grade. Prboably more. This also means that either the planet's sublight fleet is quite impressive (Having cruiser as well as escort scale vessels and fixed defenses) or its a Imperial Navy detachment (which is also pretty impressive.) It's also better than their damn ground defenses.

Page 105
a unified chaos of millions upon millions of throats singing in a single choir.
Implied population of the planet. If it were a small planet, then the small PDF might make sense.


Page 108
They made landfall on the level ground a couple of kilometres from the base.
...
Corvus ran to the nearest guard tower, grabbed a marksman’s sniper rifle and peered through its telescopic sight. He could see the movement in the writhing clouds more clearly.
Distance of enemy forces from the base, and the implied sighting distance of the scope. whether the rifle can match up to that or not is unknown.

Page 110-111
Dirge Casters.
If the Rhinos broadcast their song...
..
" Launch the Chimeras and take out those vehicles!"
...
He would have given his soul for a battery of battle cannons, so he could take out the Rhinos from within the safety of the noise shield he had just erected.
...
The gates opened, and the Chimeras surged forwards. The Rhinos had stopped halfway between their own forces and the wall.
Odd that the base has no defence cannon mounted on its walls (unusual in fact) and that the defence regiment has no tanks. although it has some Chimera at least. In any event it implies a Battle cannon range of a 'couple kilometers' - 2-3 km, which is fairly consistnet wirth ranges implied elsewhere (Only War, Assault on Black Reach, Gunheads, etc.)

Page 111-112
Then something spoke with the voice of ending. The sound was enormous, a deep, compound thunder. It was the Chaos artillery, all guns opening up simultaneously, firing a single, monumental barrage. The lower slope of Fort Goreck’s rise exploded, earth geysering skywards. A giant made of noise and air picked Corvus up and threw him.
Chaos guns open fire, and apparently with only a second or two warning tops. at a 'couple km' thats roughly consistent with Earthshaker velocities. give or take a 100-200 meters either way.

Page 114
The process took all night. At least, for the most part, the men didn’t resist being rendered deaf.
...
They had become creatures of stoic despair, held together and animated by the habits of discipline. Corvus watched yet another patient, blood pouring from his ears, contort on a gurney. At least, he thought, he was giving the soldiers back their pride for the endgame.
I actually like this scene despite the grimdark, because it conveys pretty well the extremeity of the situation and the horror. Their entire planet has fallen without a fight to Chaos. They've had days and nights without sleep or respite from the droning music, their sanity and discipline is on edge. They're unsettled, probably terrified. They may die at any moment if Chaos attacks. And yet this is the only refuge (at least from the song) they have. Which is wonderful, yet horrible in its own way, because if they survived they're probably either deaf for good (or need disfiguring augmetics to regain their hearing.) Which just goes to show you how terrible and extreme chaos can make things.
On the other hand it may be yet another sign that Corvus, their leader, is a grandiose, glory seeking idiot, which is another aspect of this story.

Page 115-116
There are songs that have been written about the final charge of Colonel Corvus Parthamen. But they are not sung in the mess halls of the Imperial Guard, and they are not stirring battle hymns. They are mocking, obscene doggerel, and they are snarled, rather than sung, with venomous humour...
...
The charge was a rout.
..
A coherent force actually hit the Chaos front lines and did some damage before being annihilated. Their actions might have seemed like glorious heroism born of nothing-to-lose desperation. But the fact that not a single man took cover – that not one did anything but run straight ahead, weapon firing indiscriminately – revealed the truth. They were running to their deaths, and were glad of the relief.
Again we get the idea that the Glorious Leader is a glory-seeking idiot. Although to be fair, there's not much else he could do, since he's trapped behind walls by the Chaos forces, his men are on the edge, and so on... but this is the sort of thing a glory seeking, resentful idiot from a 'rear echelon' regiment would do, and that highlights that aforementioned problem with the guard. So hungry for recognition and glory, they might do something stupid to win fame for themselves, and in the wrong situation (as happens in the novels sometimes) that can be disastrous.
The fact that there are no heroic songs to this guy, and he's even reviled as a bit of a fool and a joke in the Guard, probably serves to underscore this. The idea of a 'valiant last charge' is not neccesarily IG tradition or considered the best way to do things by the troops. (although the commanders, some of whom can be idiots, may still force them to do it anyhow.)


Page 117
" But you have already. You believe you serve order and light, but, like your carrion Emperor, everything you do blasts hope and rushes towards entropy. Look what you did to your men. You have served me well, my son. You and your brother, both."
This is.. kind of true and it kinda isn't. ITs the sort of half truth Chaos just loves. In one hand its true - the least actions of many mortals often serves the ends of Chaos. Fighting wars always serves Khorne. Deaths always serve Nurgle. deception and betrayal Tzeentch. Etc. The part where this is misleading, however, is in the degree. The action on some level always feeds the Chaos God it is tied to to some degree, but its not nearly as effective as dedicated action - worship for lack of a better term. That's why they have champions and specialists (like Khorne Berserkers). Likewise, waging war in the name of a specific deity can outweigh (or even steal) the power or worship provided by an action. War in general may benefit Khorne, but war in the name of the Emperor (or War by the Ork Gods) benefits those factions mor ethan it does Khorne. Its tricky how it happens, but because most people don't intellectualize it (in 40K) its easy to mislead or make that mistake.


Page 121
The Iconoclast studies the incoming craft, the esoteric systems of his helmet visor locking on to the falling, swooping landing craft. Targeting reticules focus on the Chapter markings cast upon the vehicles’ atmospheric entry-heated hull plates, magnifying the badges and Adeptus Astartes insignia.
Former astartes helmet sensors.


Page 125
..Ruin stuck in the brute’s chest, the sword’s energy field cooking the mutant’s enlarged heart with its sun-hot coruscating discharge.
Ogryn hearts are probably many times heavier than humans, and although we dont know how thoroughly cooked (flash burn to boiling) I'd say its easily at least double or more likely triple digit kj for the discharge, and quite possibly megajoules (given size and probable degree of thermal damage.)


Page 154
The Iron Knight raises his bolt pistol and explodes the lunatic’s skull with a single round.
headsplosion.


PAge 159-160
... the lackeys of the Emperor who cowered behind the towering walls barely a kilometre ahead.
...
There was a brief pause during which stray autocannon rounds whipped in across the battlefield to burst ineffectually against the Iron Warriors’ fieldworks. Muzzle flares blinked along the length of the curtain wall, individual las-rounds whip-cracking overhead, their energy all but dissipated by the dense particulates obscuring much of the killing ground.
Implied range for both autocannon and lasweapons (probably lasguns, since a lascannon shouldn't have any trouble hitting or killing at this range), and implied velocity for autocannons (roughly a second propogation ove rthat distance.)
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Connor MacLeod
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Re: 40K anthologies compiliation analysis thread

Post by Connor MacLeod »

Part 2

Page 160-161
A barrage of super-heavy munitions thundered through the tortured skies of Bellum Colonia...
...
Seconds later, the barrage struck.
..
Nucleonic fires burst into being as the warheads obliterated themselves upon striking the invisible void shields thrown up to protect the bastion. But Ferrous Ironclaw knew the science of siegecraft as others knew the wielding of the blade or the application of ballistics. The barrage was staggered, the first warheads overloading the voids. The shield projectors would be forced to shut down to isolate the void generators from the awesome feedback of such an overpowering strike, but Ironclaw knew they would never be fired again.
When the void shields collapsed, the entire battlefield was pounded by a wave of overpressure that sucked the oxygen from the lungs of scores of defenders, blinded others and exploded the eardrums of those foolish enough to stand unprotected...
Superheavy muntions of unknown type fire on shielded bastion. They take 'seconds' to at least cross a kilometre or so



Page 161-164
A dozen super-heavy siege shells smashed into the black walls of the Bastion Primus, the white fusion fires igniting a new sun that rivalled that shining wanly down through the smoke-wreathed skies. Though they blazed for but a fraction of a second, these miniature stellar cores unleashed such fearsome energies that a vast stretch of the curtain wall was reduced to atoms, as the raw stuff of ceramite, plasteel and flesh fuelled the nucleonic fires.
...
Five hundred metres from the breach the ground was littered with rubble thrown up by the detonation of the super-heavy ordnance. The air was hot with the residue of the fusion reactions that had brought the void shields and walls down, and the warsmith felt the actinic sting of radiation on the skin of his bare face. Such a thing was of no consequence to a mighty champion such as he, though he judged that the mortal defenders of the bastion would, should they survive the day, fall victim to its curse within weeks.
....
The walls of the Bastion Primus soared a hundred metres and more overhead, and curved around many times further to left and right.
...
An entire section of the wall had been consumed by the short-lived nucleonic fires of the super-heavy siege ordnance, a raw scar resembling an axe wound in the chest of a fallen enemy marking the route the warsmith’s forces would take to storm the bastion. Like shattered, exposed ribs, twisted stanchions jutted from the sides of that wound, the super-dense metals melted into organic-seeming forms and solidified with the dying of the fusion infernos.
Effects of the superheavy barrage (12 shells) on a 100 metre tall wall. we dont know how thick it was, or other parameters, but I'd guess it implies at least hundreds of kilograms, or even tons of explosive power at a minimum (8-10 m diamter hole at least) Also the shells are 'nucleonic', apparently some weird matter to energy conversion like a conversion beamer, and generate lots of persistent, lethal radiation.


Page 169
The ruler’s vat-grown champion, a berserker-dervish of fearsome repute.
Post-Heresy Tallarn's ruler had a vat grown bodyguard.


PAge 170
The melta-discharger mounted at the mechatendril’s tip blazed searing orange and the bold Imperial Guard leader was atomised in an instant. One moment the man had stood defiant at the summit of the breach, the next his body had been seared to angry cinders drifting upon the irradiated wind.
Melta tendril of Iron Warrior either explodes (single digit MJ) or cremates (hundreds to thousands of MJ) IG trooper. take your pick :P

Page 175
The Titan was, as the name suggested, a vast war machine. Vaguely humanoid in form it towered dozens of metres into the tortured skies. One of its arms was a colossal power fist, with which the god-machine grasped the ragged edge of the breached wall to steady itself as it began its ascent of the rubble slope. The other was a laser weapon able to unleash such fearsome power that it could, in theory, pluck a warship from low orbit, should the Ruinous Powers confer their blessings upon the weapons-moderati. Beneath a metres-thick carapace, on which was mounted a pair of multiple-missile launcher pods, glowered the head that served as the machine’s cockpit, its eyes aglow with warp-spawned furnace fire.
The description probably suggetss its a battle Titan, warlord would be my guess. I wonder if they're conflating defence lasers and volcano cannon? either way I'm sure many will notice the 'in theory can take out a warship' bit, although its not terribly clear and certainly not definitive. ('with the luck of the dark gods, in theory, a turbolaser COULD take out an unknown kind of warship in low orbit.') Which doesn't exactly speak to routine capability. Moreover if it were actually capable of that, why do titans rarely have beyond a few tens of km range, rather than the hundreds/thousands implied by this quote? It woudl make it a fearsome anti-aircraft weapon for one thing.


Page 175-176
The multiple-missile launchers on the Titan’s carapace erupted into fire, dozens of guided munitions closing on their target within the blink of an eye.
...
The overpressure propelled jagged shrapnel outwards in a tidal wave of death that shredded those defenders not consumed by the fires,
...
Nothing but scattered fragments of charred flesh and the stink of flash-cooked meat remained of the hundred and more men.
Dozens of 'guided munitions' missiles obliterate/incinerate/pulverize over a hundred men. At least multiple MJ per missile, and quite probably more.


Page 178
..t least one in three of the figures carried no weapon and few wore a complete set of body armour.
..
Each wore about his neck a thick collar containing an explosive charge. At the first sign of cowardice the overseers would detonate a select few of these and make a grisly example the remainder could not fail to appreciate. In addition to the collars, the warsmith knew that it was likely that the convict-troopers were pumped up on frenzon or some other combat stimm, administered by implanted dispensers and controlled by those same overseers. In all probability, the penal legionnaires were in the grip of a chem-fuelled rage that would render them immune to pain and devoid of all sense of self-preservation.
Penal legionnaries with their usual accoutrements. Note the mention of 'complete set of body armour, implying significant coverage (assuming it doesnt mean 'vest and helmet' of course.)


Page 179
..the god-machine engaged its full array of sensors, from conventional augurs to sorcerous etheric inductors.
..
The princeps did not answer straight away, the god-machine’s systems, an unclean hybrid of silicon and cranial matter, working to refine the signal stream flooding in from its sensors.
Corrupt titans sensors including 'magic' ones (warp based at least, possibly FTL) and the titans systems are 'silicon and cranial matter' suggesting the hybrid artificial/organic nature of such things.

Page 186-187
Instead, it braced its massive limbs and opened wide its plasma couplings. The power of a captive sun cascaded through its conduits to feed the turbo laser mounted at its left shoulder.
..
The penal legionnaires were not so fortunate, however, and as the air turned white, hundreds of them suffered their optic nerves burned to ash. Hair and clothing flash-ignited as the laser blast lanced overhead in a continuous stream, accompanied by a sound as of a star screaming in rage.
...
The object of the Titan’s wrath was the building the warsmith had indicated, but its true target lay beyond the shattered mass of statue-decked masonry. The lead super-heavy, its commander hoping to approach the Iron Warriors under cover and to catch them mired in the open killing ground, was about to crash through the ruin. The turbo laser blast obliterated what remained of the building, passing through its atomised fabric with no appreciable loss of power, and lanced into the frontal armour of the oversized tank behind it.
Incredibly, the tank’s glacis withstood the searing beam for several seconds before the armour turned to molten lava and the beam punched through the turret and into the engine deck beyond. The tank’s plasma reactor was obliterated and the roiling energies contained within set free in an instant.
The resulting explosion left nothing whatsoever of the target, the ground torn into a ragged black crater several metres deep. The blast crippled the second super-heavy, its frontal armour torn to shreds and its crew flash-boiled alive at their stations. The third was raked by a pressure wave that rocked its titanic mass back on its suspension and buckled its main cannon. Of the other, lighter armoured vehicles that followed in the wake of the super-heavies, nothing but smoking wrecks remained.
...
The penal legion, herded forwards to mire the Iron Warriors in the open so that the armoured battlegroup might gun them down, was all but dead, the turbo laser blast fired scant metres overhead having seared the meat from the bones of hundreds of combat-stimmed troopers.
Effect of the 'turbo laser' firing. Igniting the clothing and hair of hundreds of legionnaries simply with its power up implies hundreds of MJ, whilst incinerating the 'meat from the bones' implies many times that number, up to hundreds of gigajoules for outright cremation, and this is just from the backblast. The actual beam is bound to be many times more powerful either way, and the ability to not only punch through a shattered building unaided, as well as devastate an entire armoured group (3 superheavies, a dozen battle tanks and various other vehicles) speaks to power comparable to what is mentioned done to the Legionnaires quite easily.

Also note that the super heavy had a plasma reactor, and was able to (briefly) stand up to Titan-grade firepower. I wonder if it was a Shadowsword, or just a regular baneblade?

Page 191
That veteran of the Long War had been struck down and consumed by the explosion, his Terminator armour, a suit as old as he, unable to protect him from the impact and resulting explosion. In what amounted to a powerful portent, the warrior’s armour had survived almost unscarred, while the body within had been burned to ash.
Terminator suit is so durable it is able to survive intact against an explosion that literally cremates the dude inside his armour.

Page 196
So effective had the primarch’s virus-bombing of Tallarn been that his own warriors had been forced to wage war from the confines of their armoured machines for long weeks, only able to dismount for limited periods lest even their Legiones Astartes bodies be overwhelmed by the contagion still ravaging the planet.
effectiveness of Tallarn's virus bombing. Considerably worse than (for example) Isstvan.


Page 217
When a shell finally struck home, it took her in the meat of the thigh. Despite years of pain resistance training and narcotic compounds introduced into her bloodstream to deaden her nerves, the agony was unrivalled.

The huntress howled as she went down, her thigh reduced to nothing more than a ruin of hanging flesh and muscle stripped from the bloodstained, broken bone.
Bolter shell 'splodes Assassin's leg.



Page 221
Jezharra, the huntress, resisted for seventeen days. It was by far the longest any human had lasted under the Legion’s interrogation. When she broke at last, little remained of the woman she’d been, let alone the consummate killer.

Callidus lasts against 17 days of Night Lords torture.



Page 223
Some worlds, by ill-fortune or intent, fall far from the countless billions of trade routes and pilgrimages that shape the Imperium of Man, linking untold numbers of stars in an astral cobweb. These worlds may be forgotten or ignored, but are never truly unknown. Every secret is laid bare somewhere, even if only a single reference in an abandoned archive in distant Terra’s librariums.
an implied 'billions' of trade route/pilgrimmage in the Imperium. The interesting thing is that even if you assume dozens of such routes for every world (unlikely) you're still looking at millions, even tens of millions of worlds in the Imperium.. and quite probably more in the 'billions' of worlds. either way thats a metric fuckton of territory.



Page 225
Stunted torpedoes crashed against Excoriator’s void shields, as effective as broken glass raining against plasteel. In reply, precise lance strikes cut into the adamantium meat of the three Imperial escorts, bursting their thin shields in a heartbeat and scoring the metal skin beneath. A second volley, mere moments after the first, carved them apart in dispassionate surgery.
Torpedoes blocked by Night Lords Strike Cruiser void shields.



Page 227
"This, here, is the Serpent of the Black Sea, one of the Legion’s flagships from centuries ago. It was supposed to be lost in the Hades Veil. The Legion battleships alone could carry… ten, maybe twelve thousand Space Marines."
..
"No records show how many there are. I doubt even the Exalted knows. These are just the ships close enough to answer the call, but even so, outside of the Warmaster’s crusades, this is a gathering of rare significance."
Implied that Legion flagships as a total can carry 10-12 thousand MArines. Assuming 300-3000 marines we're talking anywhere from 3-4 to 30-40.



Page 228
"It’s fifty degrees below zero on the surface of Uriah Three. Even colder at night. Only legionaries can survive outside of shelter in those conditions"
Power armored marine's enviromental tolerance




Page 231-232
The fortress rising from the side of the mountains was shielded against orbital bombardment, with multi-layered void fields offering dense resistance to any assault from the skies. As with many such defensive grids, the overlapping shields were considerably more vulnerable to attack from the ground. Behind the marching warriors came entire battalions of Legion war machines: massive Land Raiders leading the way for the more compact Vindicator siege tanks, along with their Predator counterparts.

...
With a single word of order, the tanks opened fire as one, lighting the night with the brilliant flare of lascannon beams, and the incendiary bursts from Demolisher turrets.
...
The fortress itself was blurred behind a mirage of wavering air – a haze that gave off no heat. The void shield distorted the view of what lay behind it, reducing the battlements to uneven silhouettes.

"With over five hundred tanks at the walls? This firepower would cripple an Imperator in a heartbeat."
...
The sky was not yet lightening when, four hours later, the void shield shimmered, fluttering like an ailing heartbeat, before disintegrating with a thunderclap of displaced air pressure.
...
...the tanks turned their cannons upon the fortress’s lower walls.

The first breach was torn exactly thirteen seconds later, a section of rock wall blasted inwards under a Demolisher shell.
Void shields protecting a Callidus temple. We learn a number of interesting details:

- the nature of 'layered' voids is such that they are stronger from above (or at least angled to block orbital attacks and such) than they are closer to the ground. Whether its the nature of organization or shap or what, we don't know. It could be viod shields are stronger towards the middle but weaken out towards the edges (which could explain the layering)

- Void shields from the ground can withstand hours from 500 Land Raiders, Vindicators, and Predator (annihilator presumably.) A single shot is enough to down a Imperator titan, which gives you an idea of the kind of ground armour you need to threaten one (of course Land Raiders aren't typical battle tanks, either..)

- also the vision-distorting properties of Voids as wlel as the adverse effects when they fail (similar to what happened in Eisenhorn)



Page 233-234
In the combat arenas, where the Callidus agents were put through their rigorous training, banks of esoteric machinery lined the walls. Bolters made short work of the priceless bio-manipulation technology, explosive shells ripping apart the machines responsible for shaping generations of assassins.
...
"These are the apothecarions where they implant muscle enhancers and the polymorphic compound that allow the Callidus to shapeshift."
..
..taking aim at an automated surgery table.
...
Their bolters opened up with harsh chatters, detonating priceless, irreplaceable Imperial machines..
The Night Lords believe the tech in this Assassin's base is irreplacable, which is debatable given what we learn of the state of the base. Given that Talos also apparently thinks that the polymorphine is injected inherently into the assassin like some sort of implant or gland... then again maybe some versionf of Callidus do use a polymorphine implant, despite what is hinted at in other novels like Inquisition War.

Up to reader interpretation I suppose.



Page 236-237
After centuries, the Lord of the Night’s loyal sons were seeing him once again. Their father’s ghost, here in this tomb of a temple.

If the Callidus had left the hololithic record to mock the Legion that would one day find it, they had severely misjudged the closure it offered, and the resurgence of purpose felt by every warrior present. Gauntlets clutched at bolters with inspired strength. Several warriors wept behind their skulled faceplates.

"Ave Dominus Nox." They chanted the words in worshipful, thankful monotone. "Ave Dominus Nox. Hail the Lord of the Night."
Honestly, its surprising to see the intensity with which they revere and remember their Primarch, particularily in light of Curze and Sevatar's conversation in 'Prince of Crows'. The Night Lords clearly idolize the Night Haunter, who for all intents and purposes despised his Legion the same way he despised the homeworld he destroyed, viewing it as a cancer polluting everything around him.

It's still a pretty strong scene, because it gives even the horrific Night Lords a semblance of humanity, and very little can do that (although Talos is close)



Page 237
He had stood with his brothers of First Claw on the command deck, as the Legion fleet bombarded the temple site from orbit. The lances cut down into the planet below, a tectonic barrage that levelled the entire mountain range.
Effect of unknown duration and intensty of lance bombardment.




Page 240-241
It had been an agri-world once, before an exterminatus had rendered it an uninhabitable wasteland.
...
Nothing grew here any more, and the only things that lived upon its surface were the most tenacious of bacteria. Its seas had boiled away, leaving vast expanses of arid ground that was cracked and blistered. The ferocity of the bombardment had broken open the crust and disturbed something deep in the planet’s core. Now, volcanic lava bubbled up through the wounds in the earth and spilled across its ruined surface like blood. There was a constant smouldering heat haze that loaned everything a slightly distorted, unreal appearance.
We dont know what kind of bombardment (or duration and extent of forces involved), but it presumably wasn't virus, so we'd be talking either conventional weapons (or nukes) or cylonics or an analogue.

Either way we get another case of 'breaking up crust/boiling away oceans/etc.' which definitely sets the magnitude of the bombardment in the 27 Joule range.



Page 245
Nobody knew who – or what – he had consorted with in those days. But if the thought was never expressed aloud, all of the Red Corsairs knew that their lord and master had made some pact. He could not have survived otherwise...
...
The hamadrya had begun its life as a thought. A potentiality. A tendril of insubstantial warp-stuff that draped itself invisibly across Huron’s mantle. Over weeks, months and years it had become something more tangible. In its earliest stages, it was nothing more than a wisp. A curl of smoky air that lingered around the warrior’s shoulder like a mist snake wrapping itself protectively around him. Huron himself seemed either oblivious or indifferent to its presence, but over time he began to notice that he was developing a sensitivity, and then a resistance, to psychic intrusions.

The more he realised this, the stronger the warding became, until eventually the ethereal presence at his shoulder took on a more corporeal form. Sometimes it was reptilian, sometimes avian, other times simian – but always animalistic and never larger than the breadth of the warrior’s shoulder span. Others could see it, but never for long. Most of the time it could only be glimpsed briefly out of the corner of the eye, leaving the viewer wondering if they had seen it at all.

It granted Huron Blackheart an extra layer of power, one that boosted his already overinflated sense of ego.
Comment on the nature and origins of Huron's little warp familiar. Apparently it began out of a pact of some unknown type, and his own thoguhts/feelings, which is pretty consistent with the nature of the warp and such.



Page 252
Three Guardsmen were incinerated with a blast from Dengesha’s fingers, their bodies catching fire as though they were nothing more than dead wood. They died in terrible agony, screaming and begging for mercy. Huron watched as their ravaged faces slowly melted, like candles burning down to the taper.
Effect of a sorcerer's fire magic on Guardsmen, single digit to double digit MJ at least, hundreds or thousands of megajoules for full cremation.



Page 254
Aliens, cultists, even a preceptory of Sisters of Battle who had lost their way, and they had always triumphed.
Note that this does not neccesarily mean 'Chaos' or heretic Sororitas per se. Such is the nature of the Imperial Cult and its diverse, contradictory, and often combative nature, that its quite possible that the Ssters themselves might suffer from religious schisms of some kind or another as well (at least among the minor orders) Or perhaps one set of priests orders them to fight another set of priests. It's not like the Imperium's official religion isn't full of politics and conflict.

Indeed, if we take the notion that only one sister is known to have fallen to Chaos this can be the only answer.



Page 262
A number of the traitor Red Corsairs had been felled, but their armour, stronger and more finely wrought than that of the Sisters of Battle, deflected more and protected them for longer.
Unsurprisingly, Space Marines get better armour than Sisters of Battle.



Page 269
The Tyrant of Badab crossed the distance between them with uncanny speed and fired the meltagun at the sorcerer. His head was vaporised, and seconds later what remained of his body crashed to the ground.
Meltagun vaping head. Double digit MJ,



Page 273
Millions of troops stood on the dust plains in the shadow of soot-covered hives, rank upon rank of men and women in uniforms from dozens of worlds. Battle tanks and ground transporters coughed exhaust fumes into the cold air.
Millions of troops from dozens of worlds amassed for Crusade.



Page 276-277
I raised my inferno pistol and burned his reaching hand to a charred and blistered stump.
..
..he was still screaming as I vaporised his head.
effect of infernal pistol. Again double digit MJ perhaps.



PAge 278-279
Dozens of minds screamed the name and the storm broke in an inferno that washed across the mustering fields. It turned flesh to ash and scattered it on a superheated wind. Hundreds of thousands died in a single instant, an army to conquer worlds reduced to twisted metal and dust.
...
The energy needed to shield me still lingered on my skin as a cold shroud. I know now that she had saved us both, but at a price. The power she had channelled to shield us had almost burned her psychic talent out. She lived, but she was a shadow of what she had been and never became an inquisitor.
Strength of some sort of pskyer doom weapon.. cremating hundreds of thousands is impressive, to say the least.




Page 282
This was the Onyx Palace, seat of governorship on this world and the heart of its betrayal. Phocron was there; it was his bastion. The layered shields sheltered him from the bombardment, but they would not deny us.

The Valkyrie hit the void shield envelope, sparks arcing across its fuselage and an electric tang filling the air. The tiered balconies of the palace rose before us, studded with dark weapon turrets that spat glowing lines of fire. We banked and tipped, rounds hammering into the armoured airframe.
Valkyrie passes harmlessly through void shields.



PAg 283-284
Bolts of energy converged on the two figures, but splashed against a shimmering dome of energy.
..
As the first shots hit Phocron’s energy field, Draeg drew his sword. Lightning sheathed it with a crackle. "Close assault, get inside the shield dome."
...
Draeg was the first through the shield dome...

I'm not sure if its a personal shield or some sort of small theare powerfield device (backpack mount) Either way its got a huge radius - Most of the squad (at least 4-5 guys?) could get inside the shield as well as two more within it.





PAge 288-289
It was a small vessel, barely large enough to be warp-capable, and typical of the cutters used by traders and smugglers who existed on the fringes of the Imperium. The ship I stood on was massive by comparison, layered with armour and weapons bastions. It was a predator leviathan closing on a minnow. The Unbreakable Might was an Armageddon-class battle cruiser and mounted enough firepower to break other warships into glowing debris. Against the nameless clipper, it had barely needed to use a fraction of its might. A single, precise lance strike had burned the smaller ship’s plasma engines to ruin and left it to coast on unpowered.

We dont know how big it is per se, but its infinitely smaller than a battlecruiser (5 km or so) so we might figure its less than a kilometre or so - hundreds of metres perhaps.



Page 292
Throughout his coiling dance of destruction, he had stayed out of my grasp, a shadow opponent locked in a dual with me across dozens of worlds.
...
He took worlds from within, moving from one to another unseen. That implied that he moved using pirate and smuggler craft; small ships that could pass unnoticed and unremarked through the wild borderland of the subsector.
number of inhabited worlds in a subsector.



page 299-300
A hundred warships came to bear witness to our victory. They ringed the jagged space fortress, their guns flaring as they hammered it with fire.
...
The Hydra’s Eye was truly vast, an irregular star of fused void debris over fifteen kilometres across at its widest point. Its hull was a patchwork skin of metal that wept glowing fluid as macro shells and lance strikes reduced its defences to molten slag.
...
Most [enemy escorts] had been pirate vessels, wolf packs of small lightly armed craft. All died within minutes....
100 Imperial warships (presumably fromthe ongoing crusade) amassed to demolish a space hulk.



Page 305
...as the blood-slick Terminator armour covers my skin..
Inquisitor with Terminator armour.



Page 309
Behind them, the guns of the Cadian Eighth continued to fire in a desperate attempt to hold the line against the Brotherhood’s advance.

The snap of a hundred thousand lasguns crackled in the air like lightning, as a thousand heavy bolters continued their thunderous chatter.
Its the CAdian eighth... except it has 100,000 instead of 8,000. Either this is an earlier founding and varied in size throughout history, or this isn' the Cadian eight we've known.

1 heavy bolter pre 100 troops. Also they have artillery.

Page 313-314
An autocannon shell glanced his pauldron, spinning him down into the mud.
Autocannon round deflects off power armour.


Page 328
...he caught the body on his shoulder before it fell, and charged towards the second. The man spun round, startled, sweeping up his lasgun and opening fire. Appollus felt his corpse-shield shudder as a half dozen rounds cut into it, and snarled as a round sliced the flesh from his bicep. A second later he barrelled into the guard, tackling him to the ground.
implied rate of fire of a lasweapon of at least 7 or more rounds in no more than a second or so. Also note the lasfire doesn't penetrate through the body, implying in this case its got less than 20 cm penetration (but at least 10 cm, given the ability later to punch through a limb.)



Page 331
To his left, an arm reached up to throw a grenade. He shot it off at the elbow. Its owner cried out an instant before the explosive detonated.
Lasrifle bolt shoots off an arm at the elbow. At least single, maybe double digit kj.



Page 341
From nothingness the Infidus Diabolus burst into reality, trailing etheric afterbirth. Kilometres in length, its powerful form was protected by thick adamantium plating and shimmering void shields.
Our pals from the Word Bearers novels return, size of the strike cruiser.




Page 341
A second ship flashed into existence alongside the Infidus Diabolus. Thousands of kilometres separated them, but in the emptiness such distances were as nothing. Indeed, most naval battles fought in the void were conducted at a range well beyond human sight, slow moving ballets that ended in the silent deaths of tens of thousands at a time.
thousands of kilometres could be safely called short, or even point blank rnage in Space combat, which is consistent with what is implied in ' The chapter's Due'. Implied BVR ranges for a multi km starship (2-4.5 km long) is easily tens of thousands of km probably.




Page 354
The Invisus was an ugly brute of a gunship, considerably smaller than a Stormbird. The Host had salvaged it a century earlier during a firefight with Red Corsair renegades on the fringe of the Maelstrom.

Once, perhaps, it had been nothing more than a cargo-transport, most probably designed to transport mining goods from worlds located precariously close to the borders of reality. In the years since, however, it had undergone considerable modification. The Corsairs had outfitted it with heavy armour plates and shield banks, though it was unarmed but for a pair of forward-mounted lascannons jutting from beneath its nose. It was more a shuttle than a warship
This is interesting mainly because we have an assault-shuttle sized vessel that is able to sit inside a Strike Cruiser's hangar. And it is able to mount shields of some kind, which is another case of attack craft sized targets being shielded.




Page 364
Some of those veterans, Marduk had told him, were possessed by more than a single entity – even unarmed they would be dangerous foes.
Possessed word bearers, some have multiple daemons.



Page 366
Behind them, his squad made ready for battle, checking weapons and ammunition as they filed onto the small shuttle, once a smuggler’s vessel, small and discreet.
Another small craft. This one's importance is uncovered later,



Page 367
A flood of information was presented before his eyes. He blink-clicked through external diagnostics displaying temperature, humidity and the chemical breakdown of the air, and on through logistical data including heat-sink readouts, ammunition updates and energy-strain. Tactical readouts presented themselves to him, analysing the heart-rate and life-functions of his warrior-brothers. A crosshair matrix followed where his eyes focused, eagerly seeking a target.
Sensor and targeting data in a Word Bearer helmet, specifically a fromer Havok/Devastator and the linkages to the weapon (temperature and ammo capacity.) Autocannon have heat sinks to keep them working.




Page 367-368
The barrel of his beloved high-calibre weapon was almost two metres in length, most of which was encased in a perforated barrel ventilation shroud. An underslung chainblade bayonet protruded a further half-metre beyond the snarling daemon that formed the weapon’s wide-bore muzzle.

His right hand clasped the weapon’s grip, thumb resting lightly on its firing mechanism. He guided the autocannon’s direction with his left hand, grasping the handle atop the weapon’s casing. Suspensors lightened the load, and the servo-bundles built into his armour made him able to heft the immense weapon as easily as an unaugmented mortal would a rifle.

The autocannon was belt-fed from Enusat’s oversized backpack, which acted as an ammunition reservoir as well as the power source for his armour. The ammunition feed was protected by a flexible casing. While not capable of such a high rate of fire as a heavy bolter, his weapon was far more powerful, able to rip through rockcrete and vehicle plating like paper.
The HAvoc/Devastators weapon. Barrel as long as the Marine is tall, with an even huger bayonet (talk about unwieldy.) Suspensors to lighten the load, in conjunection with load bearing straps.

Also comparison between heavy bolter and autocannon.



Page 383
The artificial gravity had been suspended along with all other systems..
The small shuttle/smuggler vessel had antigravity.



Page 392
None of their ambushers now were whole. Most were lacking one limb or more, and many sported gaping holes and rents punched through their bodies – large craters formed by Enusat’s autocannon, smaller detonations from bolters, and liquefied, gaping rents from melta and plasma weaponry.
autocannons are more devastating than bolters (unsurprisingly)



Page 395
” She is a child in body only, this one. The souls of other augurs and skalds dwell within her. So many! Seers, witches, mystics, crones. The line is strong and pure”

“‘I can see them. She is showing me her deaths. Before Chattox was Demedike, and before her was
Arabis of Davin. Do I understand that right?”
A powerful psychic composed of an agregate of multiple spirits/souls. Sound familiar? t’s also noted that she’s exceptionally powerful. so we have some interesting parallels hinting at the old Realms of Chaos stuff pertaining to the New Man/Emperor and his nature. In this case she's a DAvinite. I have the feeling Anthony Reynolds wsa building up to the next phase of his series.



Page 399
Nahren squeezed the trigger of his bolt pistol, firing up into the Death Guard’s rotten brainpan.

The bolt should have blown the Death Guard captain’s skull to fragment...
Bolter headsplosion of CSM head. Several times more impressive than normal person headsplosion due to difference in mass and durability.



Page 400
Three shots pummeled one warrior-brother backwards, cratering his chestplate, before a fourth took him in the throat.
Effect of bolter fire on word bearer armor.


Page 401
His bolts embedded themselves no more than a centimetre into the hulking abhuman’s flesh before they detonated, spraying plenty of blood but doing only circumstantial damage. Armour plates had been inserted into its body…
[/quote]

Dermal plates
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