Night Lords novels/series analysis thread [ADB ahoy!]

[Connor MacLeod]

So I promised last time instead of forging ahead with the space wolf stuff, I was going to dive into the ADB Night Lords novels. Makes sense considering in a few months we have a new one coming out. Don't worry, despite being Space Marines ADB has so far promised to be damn good. HE started out writing Cadians (CAdian Blood) but he's written tons of Space marine stuff (He's written Crimson Fists, Black Templars, etc. and done damn well at it. He Even makes the Word Bearers nearly likable, and I absolutely loathe Word Bearers.) He's even better IMHO at Space Marines than Abnett is. He's also writing Grey Knights, which will be an interesting parallel with Counter.

The Night Lords series, thus far, seems to be his signature however. THe basic premise is much along the lines of Storm of Iron, except that Honsou doesn't become annoying - there's a struggle between just surviving and in maintaining their own ways and the 'old war' thing. Talos is our 'central' character, but it doesn't always just focus on him (or totally favor tim.) A fair bit of time is devoted to their non-Astartes Characters (Septimus, the Navigator, etc.) which is also what helps to keep the novel interesting (borrowing from various other novels which are 'a glimpse into 40k' type things like the Inqisition War or the Path of the Eldar novels - a 'day in the life' sort of thing.)

I think the best thing, aside from ADB's ability at writing interesting characters, is the way he has them interact and represent different viewpoints. Each of the 'signature' marines in the book represents different points of view - one is from the more 'classic' Heresy-era POV, another is a Night Lord more given to Chaos.. you get Raptors, etc.

Anyhow, befoer we actually start the Night Lords stuff I'm going to do Simon Spurrier's "Lord of the Night" because it ties in (and ADB doesnt seem to like the novel.. not that I blame him.) Think of it as sort ofa prequel and a contrast to how ADB's Night Lords are presented. Two parts, but the entire novel. so next time you get the full series.

Page 14-15

He launched himself one final time, overexerted muscles triggering cunning devices within his armour, pump­ing a slick of combat-stimms into his blood. He shivered with the rush of adrenaline that followed, watching the ground streak past below: a forest of crip­pled decks giving way to deep, endless grey. Snow by night.
...

The quickening effects of the stimm lasted half an hour, and when his rages and screams were all spent, when the bodies of the men he'd killed could be diced no further, when his claws steamed with bloody red vapour, when finally his mind cleared of the drughaze and began - at last - to awaken fully, only then did he think of the thieves' leader.

Night Lord (or at least the Raptor) armour seems to involve some sort of combat-stimm enhancements to boost capabilities even further, and lasting half an hour, but blocking out all conscious thought. Good for psychological terror I suspect, but not good for tactics or discipline.


Page 18

Crooked ribs slumped from fractured expanses. Crevices gaped like whip-wounds where conflicting pressures had buckled and pierced her hull. Her great spine was broken, crum­pled across half a kilometre of steaming waste. Her beak had been thrust with such violence into the earth that her flanks had snapped, reactors sagging then pitching up and outwards, shearing vicious rents before detonating; their colossal energies vaporising what little substance had survived the atmosphere's passage.

Sahaal could barely imagine the calamitous impact. Were it not for the evidence of his own eyes - this piti­ful thing smeared like metal paste across the ice - he would have doubted that such a vessel as the Umbrea Insidior could be brought so low.

Chaos strike cruiser. Implied to be at least half a kilometre long.


Page 21

Always it was like this, after the trance. Always she allowed the subtle skeins of perception and concept to break free from her focus, shifting her mind state from some inner vantage to the mundane outer realities, the province of conventional sense and thought.
She returned to her corporeal self like an eagle resuming its eyrie...
..
In the Scholastia Psykana she'd learnt to call this the pater donum: the brief flush of warmth and contentment that followed a scrying trance, like a reward from the Emperor's own hand.
...
She opened her eyes, focused on the single guttering candle at the centre of the scrying-ring, and allowed the sludge of recollection to break through.

- Psyker scrying trances seem to be like "out of body" experiences.. sending the soul outwards questing from the corporeal body. The person in question, by the way, is an interrogator


Page 23

On Safaur, her trance-awakenings had been tended by gentle servants: smooth-skinned subordinates with tongues neatly removed and ownership studs across each eye, hurrying to mop her sweat and massage her shoulders, lovingly recording on scented parchment whatever insights the meditation bestowed. On Safaur her trance-suite flocked with locust-like automata: emeralds for eyes and rubies for jaws, coloured stream­ers of psychoactive pheromones falling like musk from their tails. On Safaur a dozen cogitators existed solely to interpret her signs.

Scrying rituals and their attendants on other worlds,

Page 30

"'Cold-weather gear, night-sight, fully armed."

Orders to an inqisitorial retinue.

Page 31

Through night-vision binox - baroque coils of cabling and lenses enveloping her eyes like a hungry kiss - the hive was a flaming steeple.

Peering over her shoulder, shivering despite thick furs, Mita regarded the city-world as the convoy left it behind, swallowed by the horizon like a melting sta­lagmite. That there were larger hives on worlds less remote couldn't detract from its magnificence: the city's vastness snagged at her eyes, sucking on her attention. Two hundred million souls, crushed together like termites, eking out their blind lives in the belly of a spine-tipped beast.

Mita's night vision gear. Also a hive city of 200 million souls, explicitly mentioend as there being "larger hives" on other wordsl.. although this is a "remote" hive world.


Page 32

More pronounced still was the brightness in the chambers of her mind: in those unseen tendrils of psy­chic thought that swarmed about her like the arms of an anemone, she could taste the life of the city. Two hundred million souls, each one a guttering candle of psychic light. Each one as fragile as it was bright.

Mita can register the soul of every person on that place. This might suggest it is a fairly accurate assessment (and a possible way the Imperium assesses a census of its planets.)

Page 32

Officially the Preafectus was an independent body, administrated by the galaxy-spanning Adeptus Arbites, but a certain amount of diplomatic compromise to Imperial offi­cials was customary.

The name for the local enforcers. This suggests that Enforcers are usually an independent body controlled by the Arbites (sort of an equivlaent of PDF for arbites, like I suspected) but practical matters can put them in the influence of local politics and other Imperial officials.


Page 47

The man was dressed strangely, even to Sahaal's eye, sporting a robe of white and red grids. Not some flimsy ragsheet, this, but expensively tailored and elaborately decorated, hung with gold and crystal pendants. Small cables looped delicately through the stitches at the sleeves and collar, and where his flesh showed - pallid and puffy - the wires burrowed into the man's skin, unbroken lines like capillaries. More startling still was his face - what little remained of it - with its near-total coverage by augmetic devices, steel-sheet plating and bristling, spiny sensors.

Both eyes were gone, replaced in messy cavities by mis­matching bionics, a thick layer of pus and infection marking their boundaries. A duct coiled over his shoulder like unruly hair, and the soft lines of his lips were broken by ragged scars, as if his mouth had once been sealed shut then broken open. Rebreather tubes writhed, hooked into sockets on his chin and neck, like train tracks bisecting his face. Dermis-circuitry patterned his throat, vanishing into the folds of his robes which, on closer inspection, concealed also the hard edges and uncertain outlines of more mechani­cal devices.

His movements were jerky but precise - like a grounded canary - and Sahaal judged him more machine than man.

An intresting shopping list of augmetics. Including the dermis circuitry.


PAge 49 - Night Lord Raptor's claws are described as "half metre" long. DAmned unwieldy, that is.

PAge 56

"Indeed they do. To the ork, symbols of status are vital. I've seen the vermin retreat rather than face a human with tusks greater than their own. I've seen them turn on their own lords when their enemy's fangs are taller or sharper than his. A simple thing, but so very effective,"

I have to say I am hard pressed to believe that Orks would actually fall for that idea simply on the existence of Fangs (as opposed to "Beat in the ass of someone") Especially a non-ork. However, Orks can be unpredictable and it is possible some tribes do in fact fall for this. Imagine the dude's surprise when he meets some that don't.

Page 59-60

Cuspseal was as low within the hive as one could travel within the broadly defined 'civilised' sectors. It dominated six full tiers, extended in five kilometres in each direction and had a population - depending upon where one chose to imagine its borders - of somewhere between six and ten million citizens. As with all such industrial loci it wasn't so much a city as a borough of the hive itself, segueing horizontally and upwards with such other townships, settlements and factories as had germinated nearby.

rough idea of populatino density in the hive, although I'm not entirely sure how to calculate it, especially since its identified as an industrial loci. It coudl also lead to some pretty insane dimensions for the hive.


Page 62

"Not really. It stopped when he pulled off its arms. I demand that you release him,"

- a rather unintelligent (probably abhuman) member of an Inquisitorial retinue is described as being smaller than an ogryn, but substnatially stronger


Page 62-63

His name was Cog, and he was human - broadly speak­ing. Whatever feral world had sired him had been isolated for millennia, denied the purifying light of the Emperor's influence, and its sparse population had stagnated in a downward spiral of inbreeding and cor­ruption.
Still human, if only just.

Cog and his kin had grown massive. Shunning the need for higher thought, rapid evolution had seen their skins grow thick, their brows brachiate, their chests barrel. Over long centuries of clambering through forests their arms had elongated and formed secondary elbows, their legs had shortened and their hands had grown massive.

Kaustus had found Cog in the slaughterpits of Tourelli Planis, where he was goaded by his captives with energised spears and electroflails, forced to grap­ple a succession of beasts and automata for the crowd's amusement. His hands had been taken from him, replaced with crude bionics. Watching the giant enter the ring with a tribal prayersong to the Emperor, Kaus­tus had been impressed with his piety as well as his physique, and had purchased him from the slavers for a princely sum.

The aforementioned probable abhuman.


Page 63-64

The door, set firmly in a ferrocrete bracket, crumpled like a dead leaf. Cog followed it through with his head dipped and his shoulders hunched, roaring like a hive-tram. The vindictor sergeants reacted as if electrified, staggering away, fumbling for power mauls. A third
voice added to their panicky exclamations, and it took Mita a moment to spot Orodai's unlucky aide, clutched in the giant's mechanical hand like a fleshy club.

Cog rather neatly smashes a door apart in his enthusiasm.


Page 67 - the hive has "hundreds" of unexplained deaths each day. Also the Vindictors (Arbites) use autoguns as well as shotguns.


Page 76

"Preysight," Sahaal whispered, and the bitter machine-spirit of his armour nictitated new lenses across his eyeslits, magnifying his view. Brought into sudden and sharp relief, the smoky pall broke apart where the dead and dying staggered, stumbling with faces blackened and limbs gone. There were far fewer than had entered.

"Preysight" which is a version of terrorsight. A form of infrared and night vision. Mentioned alot in the FFG material.

Page 77

The centre had been a colereum, at one time.

A vast hydroponics dome, bristling with sludge-farmed crops, its inwardly-mirrored surface recalled an insect's eye; iridescent and multifaceted. At one time it had disgorged a thousand tonnes of starchpaste every year, diverted among rust-thick pipes to a million habs. At one time.
It had borne its relocation into the abyss with poor grace.

The crops had died when the collapse occurred, their irrigation channels cut forever. What little water filtered into the underhive was tainted by its descent, and those few hardy weeds that had escaped had grown shaggy and truculent, skins thick with mutant bristles. Only the lamps had survived; globular drones of archaic design with thrumming gravmotors and simple logic-minds.

They roved the dome with ultraviolet torches blazing, unconcerned with the absence of veg­etation, faltering only when their aeons-old fuel reserves perished.

A glimpse at one of the potential feeding mechanisms in a hive. "A thousand tons of starchpaste" annually to a million habs. That's like 1 kg of paste per hab per year. or 3 grams per day.

Page 78

At its maximum volume, the voxcaster of his ancient helm could burst the veins of a man's skull and turn his teeth to powder. He'd seen men fall paralysed to
the floor at the Raptor's shriek, and birds fall stunned from the sky.
In Herniatown, the colereum's mirrored dome exploded.

Voxcaster doubling as sonic weapons.


Page 83

And then the Umbrea Insidior's promethium reactor-cell, the bulky package he had removed so carefully from its crippled generarium, reached critical mass in the heart of the Glacier Rats' territory and detonated with the force of a thousand grenades.
The underhive shook, the floor quaked like a living tiling, and as his new congregation cowered around him, Sahaal basked in the phosphorlight of Hernia-town's rain.

Yes you read that right. a space marine Strike cruiser running on a "Promethium reactor cell" that reaches critical mass, and detonates with the force of a thousand grenades. I don't even know how to begin to discuss it - promethium as hydrogen maybe, used in some sort of weird fusion reaction (or whatever the fuck a plasma reactor does I'm sure some will say "THIS MEANS ITS FUSION" but what the fuck ever. Be selective. Maybe its proof its diesel fusion.)

assuming a modern hand grendae, we're talking an equivalent to 250 kg of TNT, at least.


Page 99

The Emperor had created the Space Marines: that much they knew. He had fash­ioned their primarchs, modelled their Legions, dispatched them to crusade in his name. They knew lit­tle of the intricacies of Imperial history, but they could not question the benevolence of such angelic warriors. A Space Marine was beyond imperfection.

They had never heard of the Horus Heresy. Sahaal wasn't surprised. The churning propaganda machines of the Imperium could hardly countenance the popu­lar exposure of its own flawed past.

In the haze of his trance, Sahaal mused upon reveal­ing the truth to his new acolytes, then discounted the possibility... To learn that half the Emperor's angels had turned to the dark fires of Chaos: to these under-hive scum such realities would seem ludicrous. Impossible. Cruel.

Again the truth of the Heresy and the existence of the Traitor legions is considred something of a secret. At least to some parts of the Imperium.



Page 107

The intruders' vehicles were familiar, at least. Coiling their way through the Steel Forest, they made light work of the debris flows around the ducts' bases: Chimera-class chasses, albeit lacking the artillery mounts and dozer-scoops of their forebears. He had once orchestrated the advances of legions of their kind, savaging the enemy with his Raptor packs whilst the guns of the Chimerae battered their flanks. It seemed somehow ludicrous that he should now find himself opposing such familiar machines, accompanied only by a mob of zealots devoted to his enemy's worship.

The Imperium used Chimeras during the Heresy, it would seem.



Page 108

That first carefully gauged blast from the Shadowkin's solitary lascannon, positioned at the edge of a high balcony, punched through the trailing vehicle's tracks like a fiery blade, gobbets of molten metal sput­tering from the wound. The pilot's attempt to brake was as doomed as the vehicle itself: its track peeled, thrashing at the hull as it sluiced away, whipping back on itself at the last instant to slice the vindictor riding shotgun into two ragged halves.

Lascannon


Page 109

A frag grenade, dropped almost casually from the gantries above, split apart an exposed Preafect, shower­ing his comrades with whirligig shrapnel and gore. His shriek lasted a fraction of a second, aborted on a froth of viscera and clutching limbs.

Grenade blows apart the Enforcer.type.

Page 110

A dagger of light punctured the ablative guts of the overturned Salamander, a wound that lanced thick armour and stabbed deep into its fuel reserves. The vehicle seemed to judder and draw a breath, swelling, before detonating in a storm of shattered light.

The metal carcass lifted high on a spout of flame, breaking apart and littering the air, razor fragments blizzarding outwards. At its apex it slouched onto its back like a dying whale, flames running off its scars like water, then crashed - ruined - to the earth.

Salamander using ablative armor.

Page 112-113

Sahaal found himself swooping to join the frenzy when the lascannon crew fired their third - and final - blast.

This time, perhaps recognising that the remaining Salamander had found its range and was already tilting its autocannon towards them, they eschewed the obvi­ous target presented by the vehicle and tilted their scripture-pocked weapon towards the vindictor ranks; resolving to inflict as much damage as possible before the end.

...

At the centre of the killing ground, where the lascannon's discharge slid like an arrow into the earth, the vindictors fell apart at their joints: swallowed in a torus of iridescence that incised bone and sinew like a blade through water. They found themselves blasted up and out on the cusp of a Shockwave; meaty slabs parting along torn seams, shredded alive. This was no great pyrotechnic spectacle, no flaming tumult, no smoke­less fireball: merely a sooty chrysanthemum of uncontainable energy, blindingly bright, that disman­tled its targets like dried leaves before a storm.

As if in reply, the autocannon found its target. The lascannon crew died in fire and lead; tumbling to the earth like rag-dolls, dead of their wounds long before they struck the ground.

Implies the lascannon firing along the Vindicators pretty much slices them apart/explodes the bodies without much in the way of charring or such. Single digit MJ's perhaps, although how many killed per shot or second or whatever isnt known.

Page 121

"Your organisation's reputation precedes it." he snapped, fingers questing for blemishes at his throat. "I've heard the stories. Worlds virus-bombed on the strength of a single rumour. Whole populations wiped out for fear of one heretic." His jaw tightened. "I won't trust the fate of my city to the word of... of..." he glanced across at Mita, searching for some suffi­ciently derogatory term, settling finally for a derisive: "that!"

The Inquisition's reputation. Interesting that a City leader thinks he can fight it. Politics are funny in the Imperium like that.

PAge 126-127

To her great relief the retinue was absent when she reached Kaustus's chambers. He stood amongst a gag­gle of macabre servitor-attendants and skull-drones, meticulously fastening his power armour and layering his magnificent robes. Up until the moment that a hovering arcocherub - a baby's corpse riddled with preservative machinery and cogitation engines - set­tled his mask over his tusked features, he appeared utterly bored by the whole procedure.

Ignored in the doorway, Mita found herself reflecting upon how differently he wore his armour to the fiend that stalked her nightmares, that blue,’black monstros­ity from the underhive. As an alumnus of the Inquisitorial scholastia she knew more than most about the elaborate biological changes that the war­riors of the Adeptus Astartes - the Emperor's Space Marines - underwent.

Such things were shrouded in mysticism, and the mere knowledge that each Marine started life as a lowly human marked her as the recipi­ent of privileged secrets. Nonetheless, the specifics of such alterations were beyond her, and she had imag­ined that, like Kaustus, such warriors wore their armour as she wore a cloak: the fastenings more com­plex, perhaps, the fabric more arcane, but 'clothing' nonetheless.

And yet the Night Lord had moved like his armour was his skin; unencumbered, his movement recalling liquid in its smooth, roiling reactions.

Compared to that shadowed figure Kaustus's motions abruptly seemed cumbersome, and Mita mar­velled to find herself so unimpressed by him where previously she had thought him awesome.

Mita dwells on the differences between her Inquisitorial overseer and the Night Lord - insofar as wearing power armor goes at least.

Page 134

The witch, the witch... She had struck him to the floor with a single flex of her powers, like a bomb between his eyes, and he shivered that such a slight being should hold such power over him. The witch. The bitch. He had not expected to face psykers.

Steeling himself - disgruntled by the need to sink so low - he breathed a reluctant prayer to the Dark Gods. The ruinous powers had always been allies to his cause - enemies of his enemies, but never his friends - and even now, when he needed their patronage, he shiv­ered at the prospect of openly courting their involvement. If the deities of the warp resented his reluctance they gave no sign of it; within instants a dark stirring played at the edge of his senses.
He would not be unprepared for the witch a second time.

The Night Lords, at least the way Sahaal thinks, considered the Chaos Gods to largely be tools ot be used when needed. Oh, the irony.

Page 140

- The main character's (Night Lord's) recollections of Konrad Kurze seem to indicate that he is, indeed, dead. Or at least he expected to die

Page 149-150

Of the four major disciplines practised in the scholastia psykana, she had always considered herself primarily a precognitor - observing the whimsy of the warp to determine future events - and had occasion­ally employed her talents as an empathitor - skimming emotion and thought from the minds of those around her. Even in the field of animus motus - telekinesis, the most physically draining of all - she had some small natural talent... but in mastering the role of proculitor, the remote viewer, she had failed dismally.

It was a discipline that carried its own risks, and was best suited to those without the distraction of other tal­ents: allowing one's astral form to roam free was to expose it to any malevolent force within the warp that paid an interest. Mita had tried it only once, during her first year at the scholastia, and had been informed by the grim-faced adept-tutors that her mind was too ordered, too anxious, too uptight, to engender success. The discipline required the ability to un-focus, to relax - but to maintain a careful veneer of security nonethe­less.

Brief discussion of the various disciplines of the Psychic arm of the Imperium - especially precog and TK. The other two seem to be telepathy/empathy, and "remote viewing" -eg scrying, seance or clairvoyance.

Page 153

The Raptor dragged behind him a jaegar squad of humans, coated warriors who wasted little effort in attempting to speed his climb, content to allow their lord to take their weight. One by one they joined him at the edge of the platform, casting off ropes and buckles, unlimbering from cases upon their backs long tubes, hollow and undecorated, like the blowpipes of some jungle race.

The Raptor can lift and fly with a squad of humans in his arms - some 700-800 kilos?

Page 161

In the wake of the assault upon the starport, unwill­ing to endure one more attack upon his Preafectus Vindictaire, and eschewing the assistance of the Inqui­sition whose presence he was quickly growing to resent, Commander Orodai had mustered as many of his lawmen as he could, had mobilised the precinct's entire complement of armoured vehicles, and had per­sonally led a battle-group a thousand strong into the darkness below Cuspseal.

He seems to have lost a good many enforcers, but has at least a thousand left.

PAge 168

'Slake! It's... not a person. Not one of us,’ His eyes rolled, mouth quivering. 'It's a collective. A group, you see? The gestalim surgery... we took the implant! Sepa­rate us, we're just people. But together, all three joined...' He pawed his bound hands at the cables hanging from his skull, broken nails clattering against their sockets. Together we are Slake. Th-three people, one machina. We share memories. We share intellect! Alone we are nothing!

Sahaal ground his teeth.

"You are servitors?"

"No! No, the servitor is a slave to the machina. Together, we control it."

There had been servitors, even in Sahaal's time. Empty minded things: human bodies with machines for brains, controlled and governed by the chattering logic engines inside. Such contrivances left no room for personality or self awareness; rendering a servitor little more than a mobile tech-console. Their lives -such as they were - were a sequence of parameter and stimulus.

Could it be that these three nothings, these human fools with more avarice than sense, had found a way to retain their minds - their ambitions - yet to foster the cold intellect of a servitor nonetheless?

Sahaal reflects on srvitors and non-servitors. He considers it impossible (at least by his time and knowledge) for servitors to be unemotional yet still aware/sentinet.

Page 170

Sahaal wondered vaguely how they might react if they knew the truth: that without such astropathic wretches as this their mighty Imperium was a doomed giant, without eyes or ears or mouth.

Implies that Astropaths serve as both a deteciton and communication function.


Page 171

"What have you done to me?" the voice grew loud, indignation at the theft of its greatest sense puncturing its fear. Sahaal allowed himself an indulgent smile.

"It is lead." he said, bending to run fingers across the thick strip of bent metal, powder-white, coiled across his furrowed forehead like a circlet. Sahaal flicked it playfully. "It is anathema to your... gifts, yes? You may no more penetrate it than a hawk may escape its hood."
"Who are you?" The astopath's voice became a whis­per, an awestruck quail that wrestled between curiosity and horror. "How do you know so much about the gift? I... I am not afraid of you!"

Astropathic abilities (detection and maybe communication) blocked by lead.

Page 181

Their human counterparts - acolytes and scribes in the employ of the Vindictare, whose taskmasters had deserted them in their march to war - clustered at the chamber's apex, where a rusting civilian worship viewspex glimmered with a broken image; a breathless voice barking terse reports from horn-like speakers. Periodically the crowd cheered, fists punching at the air, and Mita drew close to their swarm with a sinking heart. She could well imagine what they were watching.
".. .and onwards into the gulley known as Spit Run, where resistance was overcome with mighty deeds and..."
Propaganda. Damn Orodai for his wounded pride -he'd led the Preafects on a crusade and he'd taken the Hivecasters with him.

Public TV viewer for propgoanda and other purposes I imagine.

Page 182

The presenter, who stood at a safe distance from the growing maelstrom of tracer fire and sooty explosions behind him, was clean and elaborately dressed; his unassuming features betraying not a single hint of mechanised augmentation. Mita was hardly surprised: she'd seen broadcasts on other Civilian Worship sys­tems on other populous worlds - joyous reports of the Emperor's victories, lectures in religious dogma, uplift­ing sermons, vilification of captured criminals and heretics - and in every case the chosen representative of the state embodied pure, unthreatening humanity. Mita had little doubt that beyond the gaze of the servoskull trained upon him, the small man sported a plethora of control articulators, autofocus diaphragms and self-viewing vambrances to broadcast his own image into his retina; but such paraphernalia could hardly be considered photogenic.

"...seem to have routed insurrectionists with - praise his glory - no reported casualties! Truly an example to us all..." The little man waved an arm grandly at the scene behind him - some unnamed underhive township being bombed to dust by a circle of Preafect tanks. Through the unclear flickers of pixelated flames, if she concentrated hard, Mita could make out the small sil­houettes of staggering figures; writhing and dying. Children and women, burned alive.
She wondered, distantly, how many millions of eyes were fixed upon communal hivecasters throughout Equixus. Most worlds practised compulsory viewing: at least an hour of every day spent by each citizen in pas­sive absorption of CW doctrine, and from what Mita had seen of this hive its customs were no less rigorous than elsewhere. She prayed to the Emperor with what
small part of her mind remained untarnished by doubt and exhaustion that Inquisitor Kaustus was not amongst this broadcast's audience.

Not that it would stop him from hearing about it, one way or another.

More on the communal, hivewide TV network,, or what passes for it.

Page 201 - Eldar sorcerers are able to create some sortt of stasis "bubble" in the warp, sealing a Night Lord strike cruiser (And its occupants) off from the warp and real space in some kind of pocket. Why they did so, we dont know. Maybe they found SAhaal annoying too.

Page 211

To skim a mind for the vaguest impressions of its inner workings was one thing; to hunt for specific detail was another, far more damaging thing entirely.
She shattered his mind and left his brain haemorrhaging - blood pouring from eyes and nose.

Her own objectives outweighed everything now.

Difference between rpassively reading surface thoughts and active, deep scanning of a human mind. At least, not without caution.


Page 213-214

He had used combat servitors, of course. Clever.

Devoid of emotion, lacking even a basic self aware­ness which might have betrayed them to her senses, they were as invisible to her astral gaze as any other machine. They dropped from recesses above the door and sprung from concealed pits in the rockcrete of the lobby with only the whine of smooth hydraulics to betray their movement. Four of them: sleek models with gangly parts and chequerboards of surgical scars, ramshackle homunculi with a dangerous, graceful aes­thetic. Two racked ungainly weapons from plastic holsters, deformed remnants of human flesh held together by circuit wiring. Autoguns - multibarreled and undecorated - loomed in each cybermetallic paw.

The two others started forwards, bird-jointed legs endowing them with a predatory, hopping gait, like reptiles hybridised with zombie corpses. Each sported a shimmering forceblade in the place of a left wrist -flesh and absorption coils interknitted like brambles -and a three-digit powerfist to the right.

Interesting, rather agile combat servitors compared to the large bulky clunky ones we've seen. Also, servitors are hard for Mita's psychic awareness to pick up on due to their lack of emotion/awareness.

Page 214

The autoguns opened fire with a roar and Mita ducked on impulse, acknowledging even as she did so that it was a futile gesture: not a single part of the lead firestorm could find its way to her. Bullets impacted on Cog's broad chest like stones striking the flanks of a tank - punching ragged holes in his robe and plucking messy eruptions of blood and flesh into the air - but appearing only to enrage him further. He stretched wide his tri-jointed arms and roared like a beast, great fists clenching in rage, bullets whining as they rico­cheted from steel knuckles.

Autogun fire.

Page 237

"Tauists," he blurted, red smog spilling from his nos­trils like some ghastly dragon. "Got hold of a tau propaganda vidslug - we're looking into how. Hereti­cal hogwash. 'Greater good' this, 'mutual benefit', that. And the idiots believe it - can you image? No place in the Emperor's light for fools like that,"
...
"Oh, spare me." she snapped, patience expiring. "We're on the Eastern Fringes, you fool. The chances are there are Tauist cells on every warpdamned tier. You didn't come all the way from Steepletown to boast about shooting up a bunch of bored idealists." She crossed her arms and slumped, inwardly annoyed at the ease with which her temper had broken.

hint of the extent of Tau infiltration of the Eastenr fringe, as well as the location of this particular hive.

[Connor MacLeod]

Part 2. Next time we move to Soul Hunter.

Page 244

As power swords flickered in the dust and guidance optics shimmered from hooded binox headsets, Mita realised it was probably the last oversight she would ever make.

More of the binox headsets.

PAge 245

Bolter fire exploded across her senses, true to the pre­monition: throbbing at the air and dazzling her with its phosphor bright muzzleflash. The corpse shuddered beneath her grip, clotted lumps of fat and bloodpaste tumbling forwards like a waterfall, shedding its weight - and its shielding - with every moment. The force of each percussive blow forced her backwards, legs strain­ing, crumpling into a ball. „ She was being caged. Overborne. Destroyed.

And whilst the gunservitor pinned her down, kept her sprawled against her grisly cover, she could guar­antee that the rest of the Inquistor's loyal warriors had split, sneaking along adjacent corridors, surrounding her like wolves around a lamb.

Bolter fire against a large, inert mass of human flesh.

Page 246

The servitor paused to reload - whispering columns of metal sliding a fresh clip into place, smooth actua­tors ejecting its predecessor on a tide of gunsmoke. Mita seized the opportunity to assess her surroundings, gaze flashing left and right as her head crept above the mangled body's charred shoulder.

This servitor has to reload manually. also note that the bolter fire left the corpse charred, suggesting a thermal as well as explosive component to the ammo.

PAge 246

The servitor stood foresquare in the doorway; hunched back rising from heavy unjointed legs, head a sunken battery of optics and twitching sensoria that dangled, like a vulture's beak, between and below the line of its shoulders. Beyond it the veiled shapes of the retinue capered in the adjacent room, every action underwrit­ten by the dull tone of a cognis logi, assessing tactics and possibilities aloud.

More of the Servitor's appearance.


Page 246-247

The bolterfire resumed, and now with every impact and subsequent detonation the corpse that covered her unravelled more, hammering at her legs, driving the breath from her body, hurting her.

It's taking alot of bolter fire to tear apart this corpse. Must be either a large corpse or a very low powered bolter

Page 247-248

He leapt upright with a startled shriek, hookah clat­tering free of its straps and shattering at his feet. His charge propelled him out from his corner, robes flut­tering, and into the path of the servitor. He crashed into its hulking frame even as he crossed the stream of its firestorm; bolter shells shredded him, picking clean his bones. His frail form was gone within
instants, reduced to jelly and bonepowder, but it was enough.
...

Even as the servitor's field of fire cleared, the unex­pected obstacle blasted to wet fragments as quickly as it had arisen, a cautionary algorithm chattered against its engine-brain

Tht's a bit more like it as far as bolter fire goes.

Page 258

Two dervishi, heavy carapace armour marked with red stripes, hefted actuator-stabilised lascannons at either edge, with a quartet of shotguns - no less dan­gerous for their lighter armament - prowling between. In the wake of the attack upon the starport, clearly, the Preafects were taking no chances.

Actuator stabilization or no, the fact they can heft a pair of lascannons is damn impressive.

Page 259

The hiss of a charging lascannon pricked at his senses and he bounded across the shotgunners with a precise burst of his jump pack - snatching at their heads with his talons and dragging them behind him, flinging them with a final shriek - diced by the blades that released them - at the remaining dervishi. The lascan­non discharged into their tumbling bodies and vaporised itself - and much of its wielder - in an orb of incandescence, scattering ash and fluid.

Lascannon discharge vaporized/cremated at least part of a human body and vaporized itself. double triple digit MJ range maybe.

Page 261

From elsewhere in the building Sahaal's Shadowkin traded opportunistic
shots with the attackers, bright laserbolts flicking from windows into the smokepall; hellguns rattling without any great effect, spattering the facade with lead.

Projectile hellguns!

Page 261

"Preysight." he murmured, more interested than con­cerned. His enhanced gaze stripped away layers of ruby smog, confirming what he'd suspected. The rattle of gunfire was a distraction - and a crude one - for the phalanx of heavily armoured dervishi assembling in the cover of the shattered gates: an assault squad, prepar­ing to enter. Clearly the ministorum had little patience for protracted gunbattles. They wanted their station back. Quickly.

More Preysight.

Page 270

It was a gather-hall. Such low-rise huts - frequently domed, often decorated with holy tableaux (inevitably of such poor quality that saint X was indistinguishable from Ecclesiarch Y) and devotional graffiti - were a common sight throughout the hive: bulging chambers squeezed into opportunistic gaps like rubber igloos. In their gloomy little bellies, packed with row upon row of uncomfortable plasteen pews and staffed - in the more uptown districts - by a quivering maintenance servitor, the local populace flocked to digest their daily dose of Citizen Worship broadcasting. Such places were never empty and rarely quiet, disparate factory shifts staggered to allow a fraction of the locality to visit, each in turn. From these communal indoctria arose the sounds of wavering hymns, chanted chatechistic responses, cheers and exclamations at the fiery words of whatever dogmatist was picked out in the crackling haze of the viewspex screen.

More of the publicly sponsored indoctirnation TV.

Page 276

She'd found him enmeshed at the heart of a great room,’machine, cursing the destruction of his cyber­netic warriors. Like a fat spider in its web, the cords of his data-empire snaked from every corner; a morass of sensoria consoles, augaria readouts, clattering logic engines, auspex monitors, fluttering dials and bank upon bank of viewspex screens: meeting in a knot, a tangle, a halo of rubber and metal, at his head. From here he controlled photo-optics, cameras, servitors and communicators hive-wide. From here he intercepted transmissions, he eavesdropped like some digital god, he watched a thousand transactions in a thousand places, and he stored it all away like a bee, hoarding its honey.

Hive-wide surveillanc enetwork.,

Page 277

The tutoria of the Scholastia Psykana called the pro­cedure inculcati. It involved depositing a fragment - a parsus - of one's own astral self, like a souvenir, within the subconscious of another human. Once detached, the psyker could form a brief link with their target - location and distance notwithstanding - and ride, like some insidious piggyback signal, upon their very senses. It was a poor alternative to remote viewing at the best of times, but - given her difficulty with that discipline, and the Night Lord's guardian warpthings - that was no longer an option.
The inculcati was difficult. It was painful. And it allowed only one chance.

Psyker version of a tracking device, alternative to remote viewing. The Night Lord was using Daemons as protection against scrying as well.

Page 278
[quoite]—and his external temperature at 30.4°C: the result, no doubt, of coolants within his armour. His throne is built of rusted iron and bone, decorated in feathers, and stands at 3.1 metres from base to tip.
[/quote]

Night Lords RAptor Talonmaster.

Page 290

The nobles descended here to hunt, primarily. To snort and guffaw amongst themselves, to engender upon their privileged, empty little lives a measure of excitement. They slipped out through the massive snowgates to the vehicle bay beyond, crooning their inflated machismo.

They wore heated mouldsuits to shield them from the weather, drove vast juggerkraft loaded with fine wines and sweetmeats, carried deco­rous weapons of such high calibre that the rare yokkrothi bears they tracked (or, rather, their servitors tracked) would literally vaporise in the unlikely event of a direct hit; and still they somehow managed to slap one another across the back and pronounce them­selves brave, manly citizens.

This hive's version of spyrer hunters. Carrying rifles that can vaporize some sort of bears. Litreally.


Page 298

Panicking, the fool's fin­ger tightened on the trigger of his pistol, and at the heart of the thunder-peal that followed Pahvulti's head burst like a bubble, metallic waste and brain-flesh det­onating outwards.

No idea what kind of pistol it is, sadly.


Page 298-299

The first shotgun salvo decimated Sahaal's warriors lurking to the left of the elevator. Flesh left bone like jelly, pulverised beyond recognition. Thick slabs of paste scrawled themselves across rusted walls: pow­dered bone and strangled cries lost to the air. Hands clutched at nothing and were shredded, faces dissolved beneath an expanding cloud of lead shot, screams died in lacerated throats and warding arms, held across faces in primal protection, detonated like ripe fruit.
...
In the course of a single second the Night Lord had lost half of his troops.

Single second worth of enforcer shotgun fire.

Page 300

Sahaal and his warriors were outnumbered twenty times over: bot­tled in a dead end, engulfed by a wall of black gloss carapace that seeped forwards like tar.

Thousands of Enforcers, if not tens of thousands I think.

Page 300-301

[
BOOM.
The second salvo. Right on time.

The blast swept the world from beneath him like a tidal wave of lead. His launch skewed, his legs flared with pain and jinked out to one side, spinning him backwards even as his feet left the ground. The ancient armour held its cohesion - its spirit moaning in the static of his vox - but where his greaves met his thighguards the metal storm peppered his joints and found his flesh. He shut out the pain, clearing his mind, and put his faith in the larriman coagulators haunting his blood. Unconcerned by the wounds he concentrated on restoring his trajectory - twisting with a furious roar - before his disastrous launch could deliver him into a wall or, worse, the floor: a greasy smear of flesh and armour. The jump pack protested at his ungentle contortions, the spirit that fused it to his true armour hissing deep in his psyche like a part of his own body. Its spiralling ascent smoothed, lifting him now at a shallow angle, fizzling and spitting as it went.

Night Lords armour vs multiple shotgun volleys.


Page 302

He turned and crouched, igniting the jump pack with a spoken command, chuckling at the screams of agony from behind him as its blue-fire backwash incinerated a knot of scrambling vindictors, pushing him high into the air.

Exhaust from the Raptor jetpack burns mulitple Enforcers.

Page 303

Somewhere in the shadows the hellgun stuttered and fell silent, the last of his colourful warriors torn from their concealment by a vengeful plume of lascannon fire.

Enforcers using lascannon and hellguns.


Page 303

But there was little respite here: even now he could imag­ine the dervishi tilting lascannons towards him, bracing themselves against ferocious recoil

Lascannons with recoil, although why they reciol we don't know.

Page 309

Binox!' he growled. 'Night vision! All men! Put on your Throne-damned binox, Vandire's piss!'
It was like a beacon. Like a tiny shaft of light in an endless wasteland. That one sliver of order punctured the panic-spell the Night Lord had cast, and all around it the shouting Preafects paused in their directionless flight and took stock, drew breath, fumbled for their goggles.

..

She scrabbled at its belt until her questing fingers found a binox strap, and pulled the blocky device over her eyes.
The world opened up in lurid shades of green and grey.
...
..but already she could see a circle of calm­ness spreading around him; vindictors pulling on night vision goggles, gazing around to see what dam­age they had done.

More night vision goggles, this time carried by the Enforcers.


Page 313

The animus motus. Telekinesis.
Very definitely not her forte.
Like all sanctioned psykers trained by the Scholas-tia Psykana, her psychic gifts could be shaped and hardened, manifesting themselves as physical forces - albeit clumsily - like opportunistic swings of club and fist. It was a gift borne in the heat of the moment; an impetuous force with which to strike­out like a hammer when danger threatened; or to turn aside a blow before it could fall. Using it as a precision instrument, calculatingly reaching out to change the world, was something at which she had never excelled.

It drained her energy like a bleeding wound.

Using TK powers as physical attacks is easy, using it for fine control is hard.

Page 317

No, of course not. She fought not in the name of these people, but in the name of the Emperor! He did not hate her. Was it not through him that her powers were granted? Was it not through him that the future could be navigated; imparted through his tarot and the furor arcanum like seeds of prophecy?

Precog and tarot treated seperately, although both believed to be done through the Emperor.

Page 322

The hands had been wrenched from their wrists: silos of surface-to-air lance arrays that his strongest Shadowkin captains had led ragtag bands to cripple. Pocking the hive like kroothair quills, it would have taken an eternity to destroy them all, but the Shad­owkin had done well. Those batteries that remained. would exist in fear: their crews awaiting the arrival of whatever unseen attackers had razed the others. Deser­tions would be rife.
The heart... the heart had been easy. Unprotected and unwatched, the mighty vents that drew heat from the blazing heart of Equixus, feeding the city with warmth and power, were easy targets. Over the past few days, at Pahvulti's direction, they had been breached deep in the underhive - makeshift bombs strapped to metal diaphragms, thick plumes of magma and shim­mering air scorching from every fractured edge. Whole tiers had fallen to darkness and cold. And now crops would wither and die as hydroponics coleria froze. The militias would find themselves quelling riots, distrib­uting blankets, sharing out meagre rations, pacifying crowds.

Surface to air(space) lance arrays. Many enough existing that Sahaal's army couldn't stop them all, and taking out the city's geothermal pwoer.


Page 348-349

For all its smallness, for all its obvious frailty, the craft was built along the same predictable lines as so many other Imperial vessels: a tapered barge with a hammerhead rear and a beak-like prow. Its aquiline hull tore a crevice in the fabric of the hive peak, spew­ing flame and superheated fuel, burying itself like a dart into flesh.

..

As anticipated, the hardened prow had punched through the hive's armour like a bullet, com­pacting its forward segments and sparing its aft from damage.

Shuttle crashing into the hive.

Page 356

Six gun servitors. Bolters. Meltas. Flamers.
At their centre, a man. From his slack lips arose tall tusks, and his eyes glimmered with secret humour. Power-armoured and massive, but moving with the stultified discomfort of one without augmentation.

Our Power-Armoured Inquisitor is back.

Page 357

The servitors moved with frightening speed.
Four sprinted clear of the pack, racing along the room's perimeter - bronze blurs with pistoning legs and eerily static arms, optic-pucked faces twisting to regard Sahaal even as they left him behind. Their very movements spoke volumes of their efficiency and cost: smooth and regulated, flexing with a con­trolled gait so unlike the staggering lurches of lesser models. Not mere cadaver-machines, these, but prime human bodies, sealed within metal sleeves, blessed with empty vapidity and unimaginable strength. Sahaal assumed they were working to sur­round him, rushing along the outer edges of the cavern in a flanking manoeuvre. It wasn't a prospect he could afford to dwell upon: the two remaining attackers dropped into firing stances, stabilising limbs hinging from the rear of their knees, weapons auto-racking at mechanical command.

mor fluid, fast moving Servitors, as wlel as the reason why they are so much better. I guess whether the body is dead or alive matters as to how the Servitor functions.

PAge 358

A melta stream glittered across his shoulder, too slow to follow the graceful plunge he initiated. At his back the governor's exhibition chamber became a warzone, exhibits blown apart, melta streams turning ablative walls to mercurial slag. Ice and snow flurried in, con­fusing the senses of the motion-detecting security drones, and within seconds the entire chamber was alive with lasfire and muzzleflash, weapons throbbing at the air like percussion.

Effects of Servitor weapon fire on the enviroment.


Page 359

Bolterfire raked across Sahaal's airborne body, chipping lumps of ceramite from his shouldguards and destabilising his bounding strides. Sparks scrawled vicious patterns across his chest and legs, toppling him out of control and sending him crashing to the ground, unique masterpieces and specimen jars shattering around him.

SAhaal's armour resists bolter fire, to an extent.

PAge 360

A melta-burn dissolved the ele­phantine skull he'd ducked beneath - a steaming lance of superheated air that ripped a hole in his shoulder-guard and ate at the flesh beneath, vaporising muscle and blood. He cried out and dragged himself clear, shutting the pain from his focus and drawing his arm
back to its furthest stretch, preventing tightness when his superhuman blood sealed the wound.

Meltaguns still punch through, although this is a rater narrow would compared to some.


Page 363

"Thank you, dissimulus,' the inquisitor said, lifting the Corona Nox from her unresisting grasp. That will be all,’

..

'Polymorphine,’ he explained, smirking. You just can't trust an addict, eh, Night Lord?'

How the hell can one get Polymorphine outside the Assassins?

Page 375

He smiled, genuine warmth appearing on frozen fea­tures. 'And can there be an Emperor, without an Empire?'
'No, but-'
'No. They are intertwined. One billion billion souls despise you. A single soul - so you say - loves you. You don't think this a bitter ratio?'
'Without the Emperor's love there is nothing. Vacuus Imperator diligo illic est nusquam,’

Implies the Imperium has around a quintillion souls in it (a billion billion).


Page 391

The force of her own attack astonished her. The inquisitor was blasted from his feet as if struck by a grenade, shredded chaff from his robes scattered upon the air. The Corona slipped from his grasp and skit­tered across the floor, skidding in eldar blood. Beneath the torn gauze of Kaustus's cloak Mita could see that the very plates of his armour had been splintered; great cracks scuttling across chest and thighs as if struck by an invisible hammer.
"Is this what I've been repressing?" she wondered, daz­zled. "Is this what my faith has been denying me?
Unfettered by ritual and prayer, unblinkered by needless devotions, the truth was as radiant as the warp itself.
The Emperor does not give me my power. My tutors lied!
It is my own!

I guess one of the conditioning things they instill in psykers, even in quistiors, is that all psychic power is bestowed solely through the Emperor. Sort of true, and sort of not. (EG sorcerers vs psykers, and of course the soul bound)


Page 392

He recovered faster than she'd anticipated. Stunned or not, bleeding from a dozen rents, he was still an inquisitor. He still wore armour designed for the angels of the Adeptus Astartes. She should have known he wouldn't stay down so easily.

Our Inquisitor with the Ork Fangs has Astartes grade power armour, just that he wears it clunkier.

Page 392-392

And the security servitor that hung from the vaulted ceiling above the singed plinth blinked its metal eyes, ratcheted its slave-linked weapons towards the intruder it sensed below, and opened fire.

Kaustus fell apart like rotten meat.

Smoke lifted. Mita stared at the shredded morsel that remained of her master with confused feelings; tri­umph struggling against shame. Somewhere, out in the smoke and fire, the Night Lord shrieked and another servitor collapsed to the ground, torn apart. Mita barely heard it. Kaustus was still alive. Just.

Earlier its noted the Servitor uses lasguns. The gunfire tears apart the power armoured inquisitor lord. Although how many shots over that seconds I dont know.

Page 393

She nodded, frowning. Something strange had hap­pened to the inquisitor's mind, like a cloud passing from before the sun, and abruptly she found herself able to feel it, able to skim its surface emotions - pain, mostly - just as she could anyone else. Abruptly she understood.
"The eldar." she whispered, thunderstruck. "They've been controlling you from the beginning..."
"Y-yes. C-came to me before I recruited you. Did things... hkk... things to my brain. Th-the voices... oh God-Emperor..."
"Why? Warpdammit, Kaustus - why?"
"H...hah... Who knows? S-sometimes... sometimes the control faltered. Sometimes I could think clearly... nnk... hear their whispers... It meant nothing...."

She remembered the moments of uncertainty, the troubling instants in which his mind had seemed to convulse; briefly visible to her psychic senses.

Oh, those wacky Eldar! It is quite an impressive feat though.


Page 404

In her spare hand she held a melta gun - prised, no doubt, from the dead fingers of a broken servitor.

She smiled.

The melta-stream hit Acerbus full in the chest, and he barrelled away from it as if struck by a rogue meteor. The indistinct tentacles that held Sahaal down whipped away, tangled amongst the devastation of the tumbling beast. It roared so hard that the hive seemed to shake, flexing and mewling at a wound on its front; as if a great scoop had been plucked from its flesh. Raw warpstuff - liquid gore that glimmered and dissolved even as it touched the air - geysered from the crater, becoming smoke and ether before even hitting the ground.

Meltagun vs Chaos marine.


Page 410

Telemetry from the aforemention Pervigilium Oculus indicates that a sizeable flotilla of renegade vessels -notably including the Vastitas Victris (long suspected of harbouring the Night Lords' highest commanders) - was gathering near to the Iyanden craftworld at the time of Kaustus's visit. Cogitator matrices had indicated a 93.2% probability that the Chaos fleet planned to attack the craft-world itself.
The assault never occurred: for whatever reason the Night Lords diverted their attentions towards Equixus, sparing the eldar from harm.

I guess we learn why the Eldar did what they did.

Page 411

Two days' travel from the Equixus system is the colony world Baih'Rus. As we passed by, preparing to enter the warp, my crew exchanged routine recognition codes with the long-obsolete clipper that comprises the entirety of'. that worlds' orbital security. Upon receipt of Inquisitorial codes the clipper's captain indicated surprise, questioning aloud why there should be such a strong Inquisitorial presence in the region. Perplexed, I demanded to know what he meant. It transpires that a week ago another vessel passed near Baih'Rus: a small shuttlecraft formerly registered to the mer­chant starport on Equixus. When hailed the pilot - a woman - produced Inquisitorial recognition codes only slightly inferior to my own. As is his habit, the captain of the clipper ordered his sanctioned astropath to conduct a 'head-count', a psychic sweep to indicate crew numbers. This command was duly obeyed.
Shortly before dying ('screaming and bleeding like some­one took a piss in his brain,' as the captain so delicately put it), the astropath indicated the presence of two souls aboard - one male, one female.

Whether relevant to the disappearance of Kaustus or not, or whether merely a part of a greater picture than I am presently unable to determine, I felt it wise to bring this
curious incident to your attention. It seems that whatever truly occurred upon Equixus, solutions to its mysteries shall continue to elude us a while longer.

Interesting here is a.) the astropathic 'head count' of a vessel's crew (anda possible means of detecting ships) and the fact a small shuttlecraft of some kind could achieve wapr travel.

[Ahriman238]

Yay, one I've actually read.

I was really struck by a couple of things reading this one. Mostly that Mira believed her powers came direct from the Emperor, and that she was one of His favored children. This is really the only way she can deal with the distrust and discrimination, which is why Sahal has such an impact on her he pulls that belief out from under her.

Also, the message sent by Sahal to the Night Lords, murdering an astropath so that the last thing he heard would be scattered far and wide across the Warp. Pretty neat, I have to wonder if this happens everytime an Astropath dies though.

There's the small glimpse into life in an Inquisitor's retinue. Specifically, when Mira is asked what she would do in her boss' shoes and after putting forward a well thought-out plan of action is informed that the correct answer is "I don't know. Krasus is my master and privy to all sorts of information I am not." and that she will now die for giving the wrong answer.

Heh, those wacky Eldar, stealing an artifact, casting Sahal into the Warp and generally fucking with the fate of both the Night Lords Legion and this world so that one day, ten thousand years into the future they could divert an attack. Then again, this Farseer clearly didn't see his own death. Also, I guess not many people know what a Webway Gate is or looks like, since they were able to hide one among the Govenor's trinkets and objects d'art.

[Connor MacLeod]

And now.. Soul Hunter. I'll probably be trying to stretch this and Blood Reaver out, mainly because I want to wait for the third novel to be there, for me to read it and then cover that too.. so we're probably going to stretch this one out over 2-3 months (and that means I may be skipping over it to favor another novel series, like Gray Knights or Soul Drinkers, which finishes up next month) I'd also like to start Gray Knights becuase ADB has a Gray Knights novel coming out during the summer and it will offer another nice contrast. I'd also like to get to the Shira Calpurnia stuff because its a break away from the 'CONSTANT WARFARE' angle of 40K and gets into other areas (like Rogue Traders and AStropaths) as well as the Arbites.

So, Soul Hunter. This was actually (I think) ADB's second novel, the first being Cadian Blood, but I think this is what really cemented his reputation as a 40K writer, and especially as a writer of Space Marines. It also seems to be his 'niche' the way Space Wolves are/were for Bill King and Ultramarines are Graham Mcneills, or the Soul Drinkers or Ben Counter, or Blood Angels for James Swallow. And in my mind ADB has become one of a handful of writers (the only other one that pops into my mind immediately BEING Bill King and perhaps Ian Watson) who writes interesting or even compelling Space Marines novels. Not just the characters, or one character.. the entire novel. He did well with Crimson Fists (One Hate in one of the anthologies.) he did well with Helsreach (and the Black Templars.) and he's even done fairly well with the Word Bearers (who are in my opinion irredeemable trash.) And the same is true with Soul Hunter. HE seems to have taken a page from 'Storm of Iron' as well as a bit of 'Lord of the Night' and then mixed his own ideas in with it. Talos the 'main' Marine character is a bit like Honsou - he has grand plans and wants to try to recapture the 'old days' of the Traitors taking the fight to the Emperor. But he isn't a total ass like Honsou. He's also a bit of a 'chosen one' type lik the protagonist of Night Lords, but unlike that novel it seems to be more of a curse than a blessing (quite literally.) Indeed, it seems that ADB takes a few jabs at the ideas and themes of 'Lord of the Night' in his books and tries to do almost the opposite. Which may be one reason why it works, since it adds a bit of 'disillusionment' to the whole thing from the get go.

Another good point, in my mind, is that we get alot of differeing perspectives from the Space MArines. They all aren't quite alike. In the first book, they're survivors trying to get along and make it day to day. Some are totally fallen to Chaos (and don't evne care.) Others just don't care and are bitter or disillusioned. Only Talos seems to have any motivations, and others put up with him because he's 'special' (although he seems to hate it.) Much of the novel is really just laying 'groundwork' for the series - showing the characters and setting them up, as well as creating a sort of 'turning point' - where they stop being survivors and attempt to regain some of the past glories (which ties into the second novel.)

Another good thing about the series is the way it doesn't focus on JUST the Space Marines. Like Helsreach, ADB plays off the interpersonal relations between the Astartes and their mortal servants (or even slaves) in this case, and this includes devleoping them as characters (in this case the new navigator and Talos personal slave/artificer.) We get glimpses into their lives and how they deal with being alongside the Night Lords, and it works because it isnt complete, utter grimdark crap. They have their own little hopes, and fears, and society and they are even valued and tolerated (By Talos if noone else.) And there is a bit of an evolving romance between Septimus (talos's slave) and the female Navigator.

Ther'es also a bit of foreshadwoing in the series. We learn that like in Soul Hunter, the Eldar will play a role, although they seem to be slated only to show up in book 3...

Anyhow, on to the book. I'd be happy to hear people explain what THEY liked about ABD's writing, his strong points or even his weaknesses. His quality of wriiting is definitely worth commenting on alongside the technical bits.


Page 12

...nor did he detect the data streaming across his retinas as his helm’s combat display tracked and targeted the contours of the wall, the hinges of the barred door, and every other insignificant detail in the unfurnished chamber. At the top left of his visor display, his vital signs were charted in a scrolling readout that flashed with intermittent warnings when his twin hearts pounded too hard for even his inhuman physiology, or his breathing ceased for minutes at a time with his body locked in a seizure.

Inside view of Night Lord Power armor helmet.

Page 13

In the days before the great betrayal, thousands of souls had called the Covenant home, including almost three hundred of the immortal Astartes.
...
They would still carry their torches and optical enhancers, for they were human and had no ability to pierce the artificial night as their masters did.

Night Lords Strike cruiser carried "thousands" of crew, plus 300 Marines. The modern crews use torches (flashlights) and optical enhancers to see in the dark. Note the Night Lords are not a wealthy or well-equipped chapter, as we discover.

Page 24

...set his servitor teams on the surface to start digging.
..
..but already his automated crews were hard at work.

Automated, monotask mining servitors.

Page 28

The battle did not last long.
Combat in the depths of deep space is a slow-moving ballet of technology...
...
Its captain, Kartan Syne, had invested years of solid profit into the ship. Its void shields were well-maintained and crackling with multi-layered thickness. Its weapons batteries were formidable, comparable to an Imperial Navy cruiser of similar size.

Strike cruiser vs refitted Rogue Trader merchant ship with multilayered voids and cruiser-grade firepower (ship seems to be similar in size to a cruiser too, but designed for hauling large amounts of cargo. I wonder what internal tradeoffs were made?)

Page 28-29

It lasted exactly fifty-one seconds, and several of those were gifts; the Covenant of Blood toyed with its prey before the killing strike.
...
The Astartes strike cruiser drew closer, opening up with a barrage of lance fire. These cutting beams of precision energy slashed across space between the two vessels, and for several heartbeats, the void shields around the Maiden lit up in flaring brilliance. Where the lances stabbed against the shields, a riot of colours rippled around the trader ship, like oil spreading across the surface of water.
The Maiden’s shields endured this beautiful punishment for a handful of seconds, before buckling under the warship’s assault.
...
The barrage from the trader’s conventional weapons batteries was monumentally weaker than the lance strikes of the Astartes ship. The Covenant of Blood drifted ever closer, its own shields now displaying the rippling colours of attack pressure, except—much to the unsurprised dismay of Syne—the warship’s shields showed no strain at all. The approaching vessel ignored the minor assault. It was already firing its lances a second time.
This time, with the shield bubble popped, the lances ate directly into the Maiden’s hull. Predatory incisions were made in the steel flesh of the prey vessel, and the lances tracked and turned, beams of cutting laser fire neatly slicing through the lesser vessel’s armour.
...
..shaking apart from half a dozen detonations across its length. The Covenant had picked the paths of its lances with due care, targeting explosive sections of the ship: the engine core, the plasma batteries, the fuel chambers.

The battle played out. 51 seconds is a "short" battle between cruisers, although the Rogue Trader ship is clearly overmatched. Voids last a matter of seconds against the Strike cruiser, which has vastly more firepower in its lances than the Rogue Trader's weapons batteries.
Second salvo is precision fire, slicing and piercing striking precise parts rather than just blowing parts off the ship. The targeted bits are the most volatile - engines, the plasma batteries (either weapons or some sort of power storage unit) and the fuel, which contribute to crippling it.
Also note the reference to "attack pressure" for the shields.. that seems to suggest localized burnthroughs are sought or attempts to overload/breach the shield by applying more firepower in one area than the shields can cope with.
Page 31

A bulk lander sat in the heart of the base, surrounded by teams of servitors still unloading the mining vehicles and drill columns.
...
They shambled around in their modified protective suits, machine parts spinning, tensing, locking and unlocking as they wheeled equipment into position and constructed what should have been a fully-functional mining operation.

They mention a hundred servitors used for both setting up and operating the machinery in the mining camp. They also need modified space suits.

Page 32

Eurydice knew her father was lucky to have survived the destruction of his speeder six months before. The juvenat surgeries to repair his body had been both extensive and costly, but he was far from the man she remembered from her youth. House Mervallion, even as part of the Navis Nobilite, could hardly afford to flush a fortune into the regeneration treatments the Celestarch would need to restore himself to wholeness.

Mention of using rejuv and "regeneration" treatments (unsue if they are meant to be the same thing or different) to repair severe injuries resulting from a sabotaged speeder. The current "treatment" includes augmetics. They also mention that the crash was the cause of sabotage by another noble house for her father putting an assassination contract out on one of its members.

Page 39

Septimus drew his own weapons as he followed the reassuring bulk of his master. Two laspistols, Imperial Guard standard issue, were gripped in his fists.

Septimus is Talos' servant, and carries a trademark pair of guard issue laspistols.
Page 42

All her life she’d heard tales that allowing any living being to stare into a Navigator’s third eye would result in some arcane, mystic, agonising death. Her tutors had insisted this was so—a by-product of the Navigator gene that granted her this obscene and priceless mutation. No one understood the reason behind it. At least, no one in the ranks of House Mervallion, but then Eurydice knew she’d only ever had access to tutors of relatively poor quality.
...
Had the demigod looked into her sightless eye the colour of infected milk, he would have died instantly. But behind the crimson lenses, his own eyes were closed.

Navigator eye vs Astartes. Not much use when your enemy closes his eyes. Also note that the reasons for this lethality aren't known - or at least may not be known to All Navigators (not all Navigator educations are equal, it would seem.)

Page 44-45

Talos had been there at the end, of course. They all had. Thousands of the Legion standing on the decks of their strike cruisers and battle-barges, watching the shrouded world below as the end rained down upon it, piercing the caul of cloud cover, tearing holes in the dense blanket of darkness in the atmosphere and revealing a venomous illumination: the orange glow of flame and tectonic ruination blazing across the surface. The skin of the world split, as if the gods themselves were breaking it apart out of spite.
...
Ten thousand years before, Talos had watched his world burn, shatter, and crumble. He’d watched Nostramo die.
...
“Do you think we’ll ever see another shard that size?” Cyrion asked as the Thunderhawk shuddered into the air. “That must have been at least half a continent, all the way down to the outer core.”

Talos said nothing, lost for a moment in the memory of raging fire flickering throug breaks in dense cloud cover, before an entire world came to pieces before his eyes.

Talos recollecting on the Death of Nostramo. Not enough to really calc on, but the implied timeframe was short enough that people could stand and witness it (including apparently the serf crews, but that isn't evident.) It doesn't rule out the possibility of "volatile core" as speculated in Index Astartes, but how/why the core was volatile (and what sort of volatile) we have no clue. Fissionable core of some kind perhaps (although 'fission' in 40K tends to be as magical as fusion, as we witness with asteroids in Shadow point.)

Page 45

Ten thousand years. To Talos, his life measured from battle to battle, crusade to crusade, it had been no more than a handful of decades since his home world burned. Time was enslaved to unnatural laws in the regions of hell-space where the Traitor Legions hid from Imperial retribution. It was maddening, sometimes, to keep track.

An indication of the time dilation effects inside the Eye of Terror relative to outside. 10K years pass outside, a couple of decades pass within. Easily several centuries per year.
Page 49

The machine-spirit of his war-plate must be appeased soon, and Septimus would need to be set to work preparing the unguents and oils that Talos used to tend to his inflamed junction sockets. The invasive neural connections from his armour into his body were growing aggravated from the amount of time he spent in battle. Even his inhuman healing and physical regeneration could only cope with so much.
In better days, several Legion serfs and tech-adepts would have tended to his bionic augmentations and monitored his gene-enhancements between battles. Now he was reduced to a single slave, and as talented as Septimus was as an artificer, Talos trusted no one to come near his unarmoured form—not even his own vassal, and especially not his brothers.

Power armour maintenance, as well as maintenance for the man in it. The neural connectors can put some strain or damage on an Astartes body, and with prolonged use can even overcome their self-repair capacity. This would, I gather, stem from the lack of monitoring of the Night Lord's gene-seed enhancements (they don't stay perfectly balanced, so they can lead to adverse effects.) A rather interesting, but apparently not fatal, limitation to the independent operations of Astartes.

Page 50

Talos nodded up at the warrior. He was head and shoulders above most mortal men himself, well over two metres tall. Malek, in the suit of ancient Terminator plate, was closer to three.

Talos out of armour seems to be quite a bit over 2 metres tall and is "head and shoulders" (40 cm or so?) taller than a normal person (1.6-1.7m at least?) while a Terminator equipped Night Lord tops out at almost 3 metres.

Page 54

A sudden strength invades his system. His armour’s senses track the waxing and waning of power and life within his body, flooding him with stimulants to keep him in the battle even when his inhuman physiology would require succour. They rush through his blood now, electrifying muscles and deadening nerves.

Night Lord power armour uses stimulants and combat drugs to enhance fightinb abilites

Page 54

Targeting sensors flicker and beep as they lock onto other figures moving through the insane dust-smoke...
...
His targeting crosshairs zero in on the fallen warrior’s blade, outlining it in a threat display reticule and streaming data about the sword’s construction. He blink-clicks the details of metal composites and power capacity away, and grips the blade with both hands.

More of the internal helmet systems, with the blink clicking and auto-targeting crosshairs and the machine spirit providing relevant data. Pretty nifty.

Page 55

The gauntlet was stiff, and Septimus had said several times it would soon need to be replaced. It was old, that was all. The years had worn it down, and although much of his armour had been replaced over time, his gauntlets were both pieces of his original mark IV war-plate.
It did not trouble him to think of looting his fallen brethren the way it might trouble a mortal to plunder the dead. The Night Lords Legion had lost much since their failure to take the Throne of Terra, and their capacity to forge new Astartes armour was severely limited.
Looting the dead was a forgivable necessity in the endless war.

Logistical limits and problems faced by the Night Lords. Given the state of things in th Eye, this is likely true for most Legions, and may in fact be why so much infighting goes on.

Page 57

Targeting reticules lock on the behemoth that swallowed the sun. Information Talos doesn’t see slides in jerky lines across his retinas, beamed into his eyes from his helmet’s sensor interface.
Alarms chime in time to the warning runes’ flickering, and as he looks up, he recalls why the explosion had levelled this part of the city. He looks up at the explosion’s cause.
Warlord-class. His sensors flicker the words over and over, the alarm chimes becoming screams in his ears, as if he doesn’t know what he is seeing. As if he needs to be warned that it’s death itself. Over forty metres of Mechanicus vengeance has come to destroy them all. It’s taller than any buildings that remain standing.

More targeting data stuff from teh helmets. Also implied that a Warlord class Titan just leveled an unknown part of the city in an explosion. It's also over 40 metres tall.

Page 70

“Crythe. The Warmaster, blessings upon his name, has summoned us to Crythe.”
...
“Crythe was days away…” she said. “Weeks, even.”
“My masters know many secrets. They know the warp and the pathways through, in the shadows away from the False Emperor’s light. These will be the paths you will also learn to walk.”

supposedly Nostramo was on the edge of the galaxy according to Index Astartes 2. Which edge, we don't know.
The Night Lords and their Navigator (mentioned later) have knowledge of the warp and secret pathways through it untouched by the astronomican. Whether they rely on alternate means of navigation, or this is part of some daemonic bargain, or whatever... we don't know, but it seems to give them a fair turn of speed. At least thousands, and more probably tens of thousands of c minimum, and if the "thousands of c" or higher is accurat,e we're talking tens to hundrds of thousands of c.

Page 71

Ringing a world called Solace, the vessels of Battlefleet Crythe were stalwart in their defence, punishing the invaders for daring to assault an Imperial planet. It would be recorded as the largest void engagement ever to occur in the sector, with casualties in the millions.
The Covenant of Blood had torn back into realspace in the middle of an orbital war.

Casualties from a void war in the "millions" and involving dozens of ships on both sides. Also the Covenant seems to have emerged fairly deep in system, since it is close to the battle in orbit around a planet (although therea re limits.. it has to be far beyond a few hundred thousand km, and may be at least several million km out.

Page 71-73

Five worlds, spread across five solar systems, allied in profit and a shared defence. Brought into the Imperium of Man during the Great Crusade ten thousand years before, it was an empire within the Imperium—a lesser reflection of fair Ultramar in the galactic east.
Hercas and Nashramar: two hive-worlds with productive, stable, sprawling populations forming the core of the star cluster. These were supplied in turn by Palas, an agri-world with a climate so ideal and harvest potential so rich it exported enough resources to feed the entire cluster.
The fourth world was Crythe Prime itself, named for the Imperial commander responsible for bringing the region into compliance with the Emperor’s will after the decadent years of Old Night. Once, it had been a populous hive-world—the third of the trinity: Crythe Prime, Hercas and Nashramar. Several thousand years ago, its mineral deposits were exhausted by the ceaseless efforts of the Mechanicus and the planetary economy collapsed. Refugee transports left the world in increasing numbers over a number of decades, and rather than leave the barren world alone, a recolonisation was undertaken by the Adeptus Mechanicus itself.
The Crythe Prime of late M41 was an industrious forge world, equipping the sizeable and well-trained Crythe Highborn regiments of the Imperial Guard, and serving as the manufactorum home world of the Titan Legion, the Legio Maledictis.
The fifth and final world was Solace. Here, based around an orbital shipyard fortress, was the heart of Imperial strength.
The planet below the starfort was a third populated world, though unlike Crythe Prime, Solace had always been devoid of mineral worth and natural resources. The world was a barren rock, empty but for the hivelike prison complexes rising from its surface, home to hundreds of thousands of criminals drawn from across neighbouring sectors and the hives of the Crythe Cluster. A penal world, guarded by the might of the Imperium, used as a base for Imperial Navy and Astartes counter-piracy efforts in the star cluster. Only Crythe Prime, in the augmetic grip of the Mechanicus, was a stronger target.
Lord Admiral Valiance Arventaur commanded the unbreakable might of Battlefleet Crythe. Countless escorts, dozens of cruisers, all led by the jewel in the battlefleet’s crown: the colossal Avenger-class grand cruiser, Sword of the God-Emperor, a city of cathedrals running down the ship’s spine, home to thousands of souls.
Had this been the entirely of the Throne’s might in the sector, still it would have stood as a defiant and implacable foe, but the lord admiral could also count on the support of a garrison of the noble Astartes Chapter, the Marines Errant, who were permanently on deployment to crush the piracy rife within the sector. Their vessel, the Gladius-class frigate Severance, was a lethal blade used against the heretics that dared prey upon the trade routes of the Emperor’s loyal subjects.

The Crythe Cluster in quite a bit of detail. Relevant points: 2 hives, 1 forge world, one agri world, and a fleet dock/prison planet, connected for mutual trade and self defense.
Forge world turned from dead hive into prosperous forge by the Admech in span of 2000 years after they spent about 7-8 thousand years tapping out the planet's entire resource supply. Assuming it means it tapped out all the major metals from the crust (assuming an earthlike planet and iron, aluminum, and titanium and ignoring other minor resources, which make up about 13% of the crust's total mass) we're talking some 400 trillion tons of material each year. On the other hand if we figure 2 billion tons a year (Earth's production of iron) the total would be 16 trillion tons. expect the true value to fall somehwere in between the two annual
They also call the cluster a "sector", but I wonder if it is maybe more akin to something like the Koronus expanse and Battlefleet Koronus - eg not an "official" Sector, but called that for administrative purposes. The fact it has no battleships would tend to confirm that, as well as mention later of "major" and " not major" battlefleets later on. Still it is pretty siazble - a Grand cruiser, lots of escorts and "dozens" of cruisers (and presumably light cruisers.)
It is also possible it has alot of minor planets and systems and these are just the major ones - charts in BFG often did something similar like this, after all. And the five systems may be densely inhabited (multiple inhabited worlds per system.) We shall see.

PAge 75

Talos’ visor display powered up, filtering his crimson vision with scrolling white status text, ammunition counters and dozens of stylised icon runes scattered at the edges of his sight. He blink-clicked three specifically, frowning as one of them kept flickering in and out of focus.

Once more, visor display details.

Page 76

Just holding the boltgun in his gauntlets was enough to give him a thrill of pleasure, as real and tactile as a flooding rush of combat stimulants from his armour’s drug infusion ports in his spine and wrists.
...
Talos held the weapon lengthways against his right thigh, as if holstering a pistol. He blinked at a small icon on the edge of his display, and the thick electromagnetic strip along the firearm’s edge went live. With a clank of metal on metal, the bolter clamped to his leg, waiting to be drawn in battle once the release icon was confirmed with another blink.

Mention again of combat drugs from spinal/wrist infusion ports.. also blink commands on display, which activates the magnetic "holster" for the boltgun, meaning the boltgun is at least partly ferrous.

Page 80

His vessel was his body, even without the primitive tech-links engineered by the Mechanicum to merge man and machine. The Exalted bonded with the Covenant by familiarity and his modified perceptions

Commander of the strike cruiser could be wired into the ship by "tech links", but I think its implied he isn't here.. he's connecetd more by his warp/daemonic nature. maybe this explains why they got so close?

Page 83

The Warmaster’s Crythe invasion fleet had translated into the system several days before—that much was obvious to the Exalted as soon as the Night Lords strike cruiser tore from the warp. Dozens of broken hulks of vessels, their shattered metal skins declaring allegiances to either side in the conflict, hung powerless in the void, destroyed in the opening phases of the war.
The Exalted ordered its helmsmen to guide the ship through this silent graveyard, engines burning to reach the main battle, where the Warmaster’s fleet had at last forced the Throne’s forces into an orbital defence.

Several days for the fleet to get in-system and attack the planet. 2-20 gees depending on number of AU involved, and assuming constant acceleration. Maximum speed would be 1700-17000 km/s, again depending on distances.
Implied that battle may have occured over those several days, given the dozens of destroyed ships as well, so the acceleration figures are probably conserative.


Page 84

There, the Ironmonger, which served the Legion of Primarch Perturabo. There, the Heart of Terra, still with the scars it earned when it laid siege to the world it was named for. And ringed by dozens of smaller vessels, in the heart of the storm, the Vengeful Spirit.

Scope of Abbadon's fleet. Note the Vengeful Spirit, which is still in existence under command of Abbadon "I'm still trying to destroy the Imperium" the Despoiler.

Page 85

An Astartes strike cruiser was a powerful ship, excelling in actions of surface bombardment and blockade-running. In void warfare it was a dread enemy, for while it lacked the offensive capability of a battle-barge or heavy cruiser of the Imperial Navy, because of its armaments and dense shielding, it would make short work of most vessels of a similar size.
...
While the Covenant had weapons capable of levelling cities and shields that could take punishment for hours on end without flickering...

Strike cruiser can "level cities" with its weapons - whether it means weapons as a whole or weapons in some part (broadside, individual, etc.) its pretty stnadard luff. Also take "punishment for hours on end".. although again without knowing from the sort of enemy it faces we can't estimate this.
The Strike cruiser was smaller than a cruiser, but was tougher and packed more firepower than a cruiser (but less than a heavy cruiser.) - this also implies the Imperiums till has and uses Heavy cruisers.

[Block]

I actually think Soul Hunter and Blood Reaver are the best two novels in the BL with the possible exception of a couple of the Cain ones. Talos comes across as more human, however tragically flawed and evil, than almost any character in the collection. Abnett writes stories well, but is a horrid character writer for the most part, and in a lot of his stuff he spends chapters wanking to his bad guy just to build them up as a threat, there's none of that here.

[Connor MacLeod]

Another Night Lords update - the invasion continues


PAge 85

The Night Lords cruiser was a huge and weighty ship, yet graceful despite its bulk. It rolled, shark-like, slow and smooth, as it dived towards the much larger Gothic-class ship, the Resolute.

Strike cruiser is smaller than a Gothic class cruiser (3-5 km ship, depending on which cruiser scaling you use.) Strike cruiser is also considerably more agile.


Page 86

“Shields holding,” a mortal officer called to the command throne. “Weapons fire from three light cruisers and incidental fire from a fighter wing.”
Fighters, it chuckled. How quaint.

Fighters a minor threat against Strike cruiser. Oddly they can't breach its shields. Also the Cruiser can take bombardment from 3 light cruisers at once without problem.

Page 87

Shields still holding, rippling as they reflected incoming fire..
...
Aboard the Covenant of Blood, all of the human strategium crew were still crying out or throwing up in the aftermath of the insane gravitational forces from the manoeuvre.

Shields "reflect" fire from the ship, and the Covenant either has no inertial dampers/AG analogue, or it simply isn't efficient enough to kick in immediately/only partly effective and the crews are subjected to at least some gravitational effects.

Page 88-90

“Fire all forward lances and torpedoes at hull section 63 as we move across her bow. Time the firing of the bombardment cannon to coincide with the exact moment our lances and torpedoes strike.”
That was no easy feat. A dozen servitors and mortal officers hunched over their consoles, working their controls and calculations.
...
"This attack vector will bring us within the Sword’s firing solution for fifteen seconds.”
“Thirteen,” the Exalted corrected with a death’s head grin. “And that is why as soon as we fire our prow weapons, the ship will execute a Coronus Dive, full burn on the engines with port thrusters overloaded by seventy per cent. We will roll while holding maximum sustainable negative yaw and pitch for ten seconds.”
...
"You will coordinate this attack run with main armament weapons fire from the vessels Ironmonger, Vengeful Spirit, and the Blade of Flame. Align with their strategiums and inform them of our intent.”
...
“A Coronus Dive, lord. The g-forces alone are likely to kill us, and the attitude thrusters will be offline for weeks with the burnout."
...
The Ironmonger, Vengeful Spirit and the Blade of Flame pulled into position, supporting the Night Lords’ manoeuvre by firing their weapons in a coordinated burst, though from a significant distance.

Intresting bombrdment feat, coordinating fire between a striek cruiser and 3 other ships. The other three ships of Abbadon's fire from much further way (thousands, or tens of thousands of km, perhaps.) It takes maybe 13-15 seconds for the weapons fire to cross that distance (for projectiles, torpedoes, etc.) Assuming torpedoes, we get between 130-150 km/s at least. I'd assume weapons fire is much faster. At tens of thousands of km, we start to get to thousands of km/s easily. Since we know torpedoes can still pierce shields at "hundreds" of km/s (BFG and Iron Hands) they likely were much further away, and traveling faster. Besides, tens of thousands of km isnot only standard space engagement ranges, but it would be more appropriately "siginificant" range (6000 km is considered "point blank" range for space combat, as per Chapter's Due as well. 400-450 km/s vleocity based on that). Regardless, weapons batteries should be at least several times faster than the torpedoes and missiles.
Also "g-forces" of the dive (From overcharged manuvering thrusters + main engines) would kill the crew within 10-15 seconds. - I'd think we're talking at least 15-20 gees, possibly less than 50. Astartes are known (WD article on Land Speeder) to be able to endure 17 gees. Whether that is alone or together (acceleration rates do different things on different axis, so this isn't likely to be collective) but the effects overload the thrusters and suggest they can normally take (at most) single digit gees.
Of course it IS possible that the shields just happened to be good enough that they could stop "hundreds of km/s " torpedoes - as noted before nothing says that the relationship between weapon velocity and penetration ability is strictly defined.

Page 91

...the Covenant suffered the rage of the Sword’s forward lances and weapons batteries which were already spitting torrents of fury against the enemy ahead. The Night Lords vessel endured the assault of supreme weapons fire that had been destined to hit other Chaos ships, and its shields first cracked, then shattered, within a matter of moments.
To all observers, it seemed the Covenant of Blood was sacrificing itself in a ramming run. And it would succeed, too. That much weight, inertia and explosive capability would burn out the Sword’s shields and gut the ship to its core.

Ramming action would have virtually decimated the Grand Cruiser. In return, grand cruiser firepower pretty much wipes out the Strike cruiser's shields in seconds, but does not pulverize the ship itself. This "matter of moments" almost certainly corresponds to the 13-15 second timeframe from above (hence the naval officer's worry).

Page 91-92

It returned fire just as its shields died, unleashing a blistering barrage of lances, solid shells and plasma fire from its prow weapons batteries, as well as a precisely timed single magma bomb warhead, principally designed for surface attack, from its bombardment cannon.
This payload struck the Sword just as massed fire from the three other Traitor Astartes vessels coordinated their prow weapons on the same target.
...
All of this unleashed punishment was enough, barely, to achieve the Exalted’s desires. The colossal Sword of the God-Emperor, pride of Battlefleet Crythe, flagship of Lord Admiral Valiance Arventaur, no longer shimmered behind an invincible screen of rippling energy.
Its shields were down, overloaded by the sudden savage assault of the Astartes strike cruiser.
...
He knew the Sword of the God-Emperor was bristling with failsafes and auxiliary generatoriums, and his attack had inflicted no real damage to the enemy flagship beyond temporarily overloading its shields by giving them too much to absorb at once. They would be back online within moments—a minute at the very most—multi-layered and strong once more.

4 Chaos ships, including at least one battle barge, combine firepower for a near-simultaenous bombardment to (briefly) bring down the Grand Cruiser's void shielding, which will be restored in "seconds to a minute". Like the rogue Trader cruiser, they are "multi-layered" which seems to be standard, and the speed of restoration seems to be due to the auxilairy power generators and failsafes.
Also, the Exalted takes down the shields to insert the drop pods which are launchd as he passes by.

Page 92

“Impact in five seconds,” the pod’s automated voice chimed from everywhere and nowhere at once.
...The pod smashed into its target with hull-breaching force, echoing within the pod itself like a dragon’s roar.

A high velocity (hundreds if not thousands of km/s ) would be implied by pod velocity, if for no other reason they delbierately dropped shields before launching. Otherwise we'd have to conjecture that the shields were magically designed to block close in attack-craft assaults somehow (not impossible, just highly speculative.)
Page 95-96

The Sword of the God-Emperor, his home for the past twenty years, was as grand a ship as any in His Majesty’s Holy Fleet. Over 25,000 crew called the warship home, even though a sizeable chunk of those were slave labourers and servitor wretches working their lives away in the sweathouse enginarium decks.

Grand cruiser has a "mere" 25,000 crew members - nearly 1/6th the number listed in "Battlefleet koronus" - the ship must be highly automated (and not with servitors either, since they're mentioned to be part of the crew.) I kinda doubt they're running it on a skeleton crew (they seem to think the crew numbers are pretty impressive.

Page 96

It was true enough that the Sword wasn’t in front-line service, anymore. Equally true, the glorious ship had been sidelined from the major battlefleets, but she still stood as the invincible jewel in the crown of Battlefleet Crythe.
...
The Avenger-class was a brawler, a close-range battler, designed to rage into a maelstrom of enemy ships and give out a beating twice as bad as any it took. It had the firepower to do it, but fell out of favour with admirals over time, when such blunt tactics were frowned upon by an increasingly defensive Imperium.

Avenger class no longer in use due to change of doctrine. Note the implied distinction between "Major" or main battlefleets and perhaps more second line units (like Battlefleet Crythe) Whether thees are all true sector fleets or battlefleets or some "adminstrative" designation given to a fleet detachment (again Battlefleet Koronus) we can' say.
PAge 96

Above all, Lieutenant Cerlin Vith ached for front-line service once more. He burned to gaze out of a porthole and see the blackish bruise of distorted warp space that made up the Great Eye—the nexus of the Archenemy’s influence.

A fact which would imply they are close to the Eye of Terror. The fact Abbadon is raiding this sector of Space is another good indicator - Abbadon rarely wanders far from the Eye and even then only with good reason (EG Gothic War) Mind you, "close" is fairly relative, since the EYe is a large phenomenon.
Page 96

When the shields had fallen a short while ago, they’d been raised again within a single minute.

Implies shield returning might be closer to a minute than to seconds.

PAge 97-98

Vith led the decorated platoon known as Helios Nine, with a record of distinction and superior marksmanship that wouldn’t have shamed an Imperial Guard sniper.
...
Commanding a dozen armsman squads would mean he had a lot of mediocrity in with his finest soldiers.
...
..their sleek, dark carapace armour with its flaring sun symbol on the chestplate..
...
Helios Nine numbered fifty men and women, spread across the command decks, squad by squad.
...
Every member of Helios Nine packed a shotcannon for maximum short-range damage without risking the ship’s hull.

Estimate of the minimum number of Armsmen on board. I'm guessing there are way more though ( Thousands at least) Also their armament (Carapace and shotcannon.)

Page 98-99

He’d swallowed, then. Bolters. That wasn’t good.
...
..Cerlin tapped the micro-bead vox pearl in his ear, adjusting the needle mic to the edge of his lips.

The Armsmen have their own micro beads, and bolters in use make them fearful (implying they could pierce his armour.) Probably indicates a bolter is also far more devastating than a shotcannon (which is an upscaled shotgun really.)

Page 100

Admiral Valiance Arventaur reclined in his bone throne, his temples thick with cables and wiring that bound him to the chair, and in turn, to the ship’s systems.
...
...allowing his consciousness to swim within the ship’s machine-spirit. He knew the admiral felt the hull like his own skin, and the racing efforts of the crew within the steel halls like the blood that beat through his own body.

Like some Navy Admirals, this one is wired physically into his ship, linked to it much as a Princeps is ot his titan.
Page 103

Talos’ slanted eye lenses flickered with dull threat warnings, and his helmet’s sensor muted the sound of their ammunition striking his war-plate to the sound of hailstones clattering to the ground.
...
..while shotcannons offered little threat to his armour’s integrity, this kind of massed fire might strike a vulnerable joint or socket, and slow him further.

Shotcannon does verye little to the rigid parts of Power armour, but joints or sockets can offer some hinderance.

Page 105

In many of the records that would come to be written on the Crythe War, the Avenger-class grand cruiser remained a powerful force in the Imperium’s defence until its eventual destruction. Admittedly, the storming of its bridge was the blow that crippled the ship, leaving it robbed of some of its former effectiveness, but it continued to fight with all honour.

History can be a humorous thing indeed, when written by the losers.

Curiously absent from Imperial records documenting the battle was that the Sword spent its final half hour of life in relative indignity, robbed of its glorious fury and its expected honourable last stand. Instead it unleashed its reduced rage, directionless and limping, while it was systematically torn apart by the Warmaster’s cruisers...

The Imperium, unsurprisingly, performs its own sort of spin doctoring of events when it suits their purposes.

Page 105-106

The blind grenades thrown by First Claw rattled as they skidded across the mosaic-inlaid floor of the bridge chamber, detonating within a half-second of each other. A thick burst of black smoke spread from each grenade...
...
As the naval ratings staggered back from the blinding cloud of smoke, the servitors remained where they were—slaved to their stations and emitting monotone warning complaints at the low level electromagnetic radiation in the cloud that stole their sight.

Blind grenades.

Page 106

...in one hand was a blade of gold, as long as Vith was tall, sparking with lethal power and still dripping molten metal from the door it had sliced through.

Talos power sword has thermal effects, and melted a nice hole through the blast door. We can't really estimate it though since we don't quite know dimensions or thickness or how he cut.. but if we assume it made a 5 mm wide, 10 cm tall, and .5 m thick hole through iron we'd be looking at around 2.4 MJ over an unspecified (But short) timeframe - say stabbing through. High KJ/low MJ energy output for the weapon does not seem unreasonable.
Page 108

Talos’ retinas were bombarded with chiming runes flickering across his visor. Target upon target upon target, detailing white flashes where weapons were visible[

Multiple target designation with weapon identification.

[Lost Soal]

Page 98-99

He’d swallowed, then. Bolters. That wasn’t good.
...
..Cerlin tapped the micro-bead vox pearl in his ear, adjusting the needle mic to the edge of his lips.

The Armsmen have their own micro beads, and bolters in use make them fearful (implying they could pierce his armour.) Probably indicates a bolter is also far more devastating than a shotcannon (which is an upscaled shotgun really.)

While this is true its also likely he has enough brains and/or education to know that the force most commonly linked to bolters are Astartes, which would be what hes really scared of.

[Connor MacLeod]

I decided it was worthwhile just to throw out a final update of Soul Hunter. I can move onto the next one then. So enjoy you get Vraks and ADB in one day

I'll break it up into two parts though for easier reading.

PAge 108

It was a roar no unaugmented human could ever make: as resonant and primal as a feral world reptilian carnosaur. The roar, already inhumanly loud, was amplified by the vox speakers in Talos’ helm to deafening levels. Powered as it was by his three lungs, the cry stretched out for almost fifteen seconds at full strength...
...
On the bridge, Lord Admiral Valiance Arventaur, at one with the Sword’s machine-spirit in a way infinitely more intimate than any other, began to cry blood.
...
They, like every other human in the sweeping circular chamber, were on their knees, hands clutching at their bleeding ears. Several would have killed themselves to escape the sense-shattering sound, had they been able to reach for their guns, which lay discarded where they fell.

Talos' super sonic scream attack. I believe we also saw this used in Lord of the Night, so it may be Night Lord common tactics.

Page 109

Time was short. The Claws deployed on the Sword of the God-Emperor had a handful of minutes to achieve their mission objectives and get back to their pods before they were killed in the coming destruction.

"handful of minutes" to accomplish objective when boarding.

Page 109

“Preysight.”
At the soft command, his suit’s machine-spirit complied, masking the red-tinged view of his eye lenses in a deep, contoured series of blues. Through the smoke, even through the cover of consoles and work stations, the bridge crew were revealed to him in a maelstrom of blurry orange, red and yellow smears of heat sources against the cold blueness around.

Preysight - the infrared viewer. Also suit machine spirits.

Page 110

The mortal did not exist—in the flesh—below the waist. His uniformed torso was directly bound to his command throne by snaking cables sutured against his pelvis, linking him bodily to the ship as surely as the tendril-wires in the back of his head tied his consciousness to the Sword’s machine-spirit.

Again the Navy Admiral is deeply wired into and part of the ship much in the same Princeps/Titan manner.

Page 111

The sword slid into the admiral’s chest with sickening gentleness, inch by slow inch, charring the dusty white Battlefleet Crythe uniform as the powered blade burned the material where it touched.
...
The effects were immediate. The bridge lighting flickered, and the ship itself groaned and rolled, tormented, like an injured whale in the black seas of Nostramo. The admiral’s death flooded the ship’s machine-spirit, and Talos withdrew the blade in a harsh pull. Blood hissed on the golden blade, dissolving against the heat.

Again, sword shows thermal effects. Assuming that it is igniting the uniform (125 J per square cm) we might figure the entire blade being able to do so. Earlier the blade was as tall as one of the armsmen.. we'll assume 1.6 m Assuming 8 cm wide (about hand width) thats 1280 sq cm for one side and 2560 sq cm for two. At 125 J per sq cm for ignition of cloth we get around 320 kj energy emitted by the blades. This would be in a matter of seconds, so we would treat it as an order of magnitude calc, but it woudl be roughly consistent with melting through the doors above.

Page 112

, the teams of crew and armsmen that reached the bridge...
...
Using low-light visors to see in the darkness, these would-be saviours..

Crews have their own low light gear for use.

Page 112

The second impediment to regaining any semblance of control over the ship was that the secondary enginarium sector was in the hands of the enemy. While this section of the ship was nowhere near as vital to overall function as the main engine decks, it was a significant disruption to power flow and drive efficiency. The Night Lords hadn’t hit the primary sections ....
...
...the defiant Imperials retook the subsidiary enginarium chambers,..

Grand cruiser not only has auxiliary reactors, but secondary/auxiliary engine decks, which also seem to double as some sort of backup bridge/control system (for escaping battle, rather than staying and fighting. Although I suspect all the weaponry has its own local control/manual firing modes for if the bridge/main fire control is taken out.

pAGE 113

the Sword of the God-Emperor rolled in space, naked without its shields, taking a million scars from the weapons of the Warmaster’s fleet.

In the space of half an hour, a handful of Astartes had killed several hundred Imperial souls, kept the two key areas of the vessel disrupted and only loosely in loyal control, and made their escape after ensuring no significant repairs could be made in time.

"space of half an hour" for the Night Lords to achieve their objectives now, when before it was "handful of minutes" to achieve objective and escape. In that time without shields it took "a million scars" from the warmaster's fleet (dozens of ships)

We know later on that Abbadon has 13 or so warships, and assuming 10-15 minutes (a compromise between half an hour and a few minutes) we're talking 80-120 weapons shots per second per ship on the average. Factoring in reload times, and assuming an order of magnitude value for the calc (leaning towards a few minutes, for example) we might infer hundreds if not thousands of shots per broadside/volley per ship, especially the bigger cruisers (scores to hundreds of shots per volley for escorts, perhaps.)

If we assumed only 3-4 ships (maybe the Covenant and the 3 Abbadon directed at the vessel) and a handful of minutes (say 3-5) we'd be talking high hundreds to low thousands (800-1500 shots per ship, maybe.) A bit high, but some of them are battle barge/battlship grade, and none is smaller than an escort - its not impossible for battleships to fire off that many shots.

Page 116

.. drew a pistol in shaking hands and fired it point-blank into Xarl’s face. The small slug pinged against the ceramite, knocking Xarl’s head back a little before ricocheting with a wet crack back into the man’s own forehead.

Naval pistol does fuck all against Astartes helmet, except rebound the bullet and kill the wielder.

Page 117

It nodded its horned head as it relayed the orders to a servitor manning one of the lance gunnery stations. “You. Servitor.”
“Yes, lord.”
“Lock a single lance on the three decks beneath the main bridge of the enemy flagship. Cut at the angles I am transmitting now.” It tapped a blackened claw on a number pad mounted on the arm rest of its throne. “Break off fire after exactly one-point-five seconds.”
Yes, that should be enough. Penetrate the hull. Cut deep, excise the metal meat, without doing too much damage. Tear a chunk of hull away, and expose the command decks to the void.

More precision lance fire, of 1.5 seconds.

Page 124

Xarl was limping and favoured his right leg—he’d almost lost it in the same instant that Talos had narrowly escaped decapitation—and even his enhanced Astartes physiology was straggling to re-knit bones that had almost been reduced to gravel.
...
...Cyrion’s internal organs were still tense and working in frantic heat from the brief time in the void. His war-plate had been compromised by an unlucky shotcannon spread that had damaged his chestplate, and he’d needed to hold his breath for several minutes once his armour had vented all air pressure in space.

Scope of astartes healing abilities. Note that shotcannon spread was "lucky" enough to pierce and damage chestplate, compromising suit integrity for zero gee operations.

Page 130

Eurydice couldn’t take her eyes from the corpse. Its skin was withered and drawn tight against its bones, almost mummified, though actual decomposition was probably delayed because of the machine parts fighting off decay in the organic sections that remained.

Launch bay servitor. Apparently they have technology that helps repair/fight against decay, to a certain extent. IF we follow Talos' earlier parallel the servitor may have been here for years, decades even, giving an idea of liespan for such things.

Page 130-131

“Lok III is far distant, close to the region of space known to Imperial records as Scarus Sector.”
“Half the galaxy away.”
“Yes. I was born there. It wasn’t a forge world, but it was close. Manufactories covered the planet, and I worked as a hauler pilot, ferrying cargo to and from the orbital docks down to the manufactorum that employed me.”

Septimus' homeworld. Some industrial worlds are quasi-forge worlds in their own right (at least in terms of industry.. probably not in terms of technical sophistiication or research.).
Also they are in the Crythe cluster, which is "half a galaxy away" from Scarus. Given that, being somewhere in the vicinity of the Eye, and the fact they are in Marines Errant Territory (who seem to be operating somewhere in Ultima segmentum given they've worked with the Ultramarines and run up against Huron) suggests they are somewhere close to Segmentum solar currently, probably in either the upper part of Solar over towards Obsucrus, or deep in Obscurus itself close to the Cadian Gate and that region. Either way we're probably looking at a trip from Nostramo (edge of the galaxy, somewhere) to the relatiie interior of the Imperium in days, if not weeks, and crossing thousands if not tens of thousands of light years in that time. Easily tens of thuosands if not hundrds of thousands of c.

Page 132

"They teach through mental conditioning and hypnotic implantation programs that burn information directly into the mind. That is why I can fly a Thunderhawk—though even after a decade, not with the skill of a true Astartes pilot.”

Teaching methods onboard the stirke cruiser.

Page 133

Battlefleet Crythe was annihilated, and the few surviving vessels that managed to flee into the warp are of no further relevance to this record, though most distinguished themselves in their own ways when they merged with other sector battlefleets.

I guess it implies it was a legitimate battlefleet, but not a major one.

Page 133-134

The slitted Eye of Horus marked a full seven Black Legion vessels—a massive portion of their mighty fleet—while the fanged skull of the Night Lords was evident on both the Covenant of Blood and its much larger sister ship already among the fleet, the battle-barge Hunter’s Premonition. The majority of the fleet was made up of bulk transports carrying legions of the lost and the damned: Imperial Guard and planetary defence forces that had turned traitor and sworn allegiance to the Warmaster’s cause across recent campaigns. All in all, the Warmaster came to Crythe with the capacity to unleash over two thousand Traitor Astartes and more than a million human soldiers. Pride of place within the fleet was given to the vast hulks belonging to Legio Frostreaver, once of the Mechanicum of Mars. A full Titan Legion at the Warmaster’s beck and call, numbering almost a dozen god-machines of varying classes.
...
Such a Chaos fleet was rarely seen outside of the Warmaster’s holy wars against the Emperor’s worlds,,,

Abbadon's forces. Most of the fleet is transports, and the majoritty of the warships are represented by Abbadon's ships. Either way it gives a good indicator of the typical scale of Chaos assaults (EG hundreds of warships would be uncommon, and more likely restricted to Abbadon himself)

Page 134

With Solace fallen and the Navy crashed, the war for the Crythe Cluster was only just beginning. Long-range scanners told a grim tale, unnerving even for the captains of this lethal battlefleet. The forge world, Crythe Prime, remained ringed by a vast fleet answering to the Adeptus Mechanicus, which had steadfastly refused to answer Battlefleet Crythe’s hails for help. Curiously, the Marines Errant vessel Severance had withdrawn to Crythe Prime to side with the Mechanicum instead of fighting and dying with the Imperial Navy.
Time was of the essence, and every officer in the Warmaster’s fleet knew it. The Imperium of Man would answer this aggression with fury of its own, and alongside Naval reinforcements, Imperial Guard and Astartes armies would be en route from the moment the first astropathic cries for aid had been sent by the beleaguered Battlefleet Crythe.

Two interesting points: One apparently the Chaos fleet has "long range sensors" that can scan other systems (remember that the Cluster was "five worlds across five systems") which is multi-LY ranges. HOW they do this we don't know, but they can detect and distinguish enemy starships quite clearly. Also of note apparently is that the battle (hours if not days) implies very rapid astropathic transmission over whatever the range is.

Also the implied speed of response, Abbadon apparently doesn't have much time (although whether this means days, weeks, etc.) and has to haul ass. This may be because it is Abbadon - the Imperium tends to react badly to him, but it would be indicative of how quick they can respond if they deem the situation important.

Page 137

Xarl’s chainsword was a standard-issue Astartes weapon, incredibly tough and resistant to damage, with vicious serrated teeth honed to monomolecular points...
...
A standard power sword would sunder even an honourable blade like Xarl’s Executioner...

Power weapon and chainsword.

Page 139

... former days combat servitors had required night vision visors and aural enhancer sensors to aid with detecting movement.

serivtors need night vision and auditory enhancement in the strike cruiser.

Page 144

Malek held up a massive power fist, his Terminator armour clanking and the servo-driven joints snarling as he moved. Four blades slashed from his knuckles, each one as long as a mortal man’s arm.

Terminator Lightning Claws.

Page 147

She’d only relented to Septimus’ insistence when he pointed out how bad she smelled still wearing the same clothes they’d captured her in weeks before.

Weeks passed since the Navigators capture.. at least part of that time being the warp travel to meet Abbadon from Nostramo.

Page 158

His right hand ended in a vicious power claw of archaic, unique design. The bladed talons, as long as an Astartes’ arm, curved and glinted in the half-light of the flickering wall lamps.

Talon of Horus I bleieve.

Page 162

, “…this time, the fortress worlds around the Cadian Gate will burn until their surface is nothing but an ashen memory. This time, Cadia itself will die.”

Novel takes place sometime before or close to 13th Black Crusade

Page 163

“Many claim to be the Night Haunter’s heir. The Talonmaster has vanished, but his claim was no stronger than any other, even with his possession of one of our symbolic relics. Too many other leaders have similar items once carried by our father. "

I believe Talonmaster is the reference to Sahaal, the protagonist of Lord of the Night - this novel apparently is before his emergence has become knonw, or something.

Page 166

The thought was a humbling one, and the weak claws of melancholy reached for his conscious mind again. These encroaching thoughts he dismissed with a scowl, refocusing his attention by acquiring target locks on the weakest points of Abaddon’s armour plating. Precious few existed, but he felt his armour’s machine-spirit responding, awakening again, teased back into anger.

Power armour autotargeting focuses on weak points of Abbadon's suit (suggesting active radar detection/location, guided by the machine spirit. Or quite possibly based on stored data.)

Page 169

The storm bolter barked once. Two shells roared from the muzzles, two bolts thrown by screaming daemon mouths shaped from dirty brass. Talos’ chestplate—the defiled aquila of polished ivory resplendent upon it—cracked under the impact, but it wasn’t the bolts themselves that brought him low. In a burst of inky mist, black gas streamed around him.

He ends up poisoned, but while the storm bolter rounds crack the plate, they don't penetrate or inflict damage.

Page 169-170

...his retinal display registered alarms and flashing runic warnings of life signs plummeting. His armour’s machine-spirit was enraged, and he felt the rising desire through his connection junctures to slaughter anything living before him. The Astartes instinct. Defending oneself by killing all threats.
The machine-spirit of Talos’ armour was a bastardised, hybrid sentience of anger, pride and caution, born from a meshing of the many suits of armour he had cannibalised for use over his years of war. It growled in his blood now, howling through the socket ports in his skull, his spine, his limbs, firing his own rage. He recognised its frustration instantly from the runic display on his visor. It was unable to reconcile depleted life warnings with the insane fact that, somehow, all of the ammunition counters still read at maximum.
He was wounded without returning fire. This was unnatural. It was not how wars were fought. It had never happened before.
“Preysight,” he demanded from his armour’s soul. His vision blanketed in thermal vision, a facade of cold blues, but still somehow failed to pierce the choking gas
...
Life runes flashed in alarm—runes he’d never seen before.

Poison. He was actually being poisoned.
...
The draining charts and numbers filtered across his vision told him all he needed to know about his condition.

More of the life-monitoring and warning functions of Talos' power armor. The main interesting thing is that it seems to have a aware machine spirit, akin to titan or starship ones (EG its thoughts and influences affect the person connected to it - in this case Talos.) Also we learn his armour (and thus much of its capability) is probably bastardized from other Space Marine armors, so what he can do its likely a modern marine could do. We also learn that simply mixing and matching power armor pieces without doing whatever is neccessary as is done in cases where the loyalists do this can mess with the machine spirit pretty nastily. Also the entire suit must have a degree of sentience in each of its component parts (or those component parts hold parts of its overall cogitator/machine spirit)

Page 176

"The prisoners kept here are awaiting execution, though they are kept alive to serve a span of years in deep tunnel mining operations as slave labour. These aren’t recidivists or minor criminals. They’re murderers, rapists and heretics.”

Nice knowing these are major crimes in the Imperium.

PAge 180

It was Indriga, a solid two metres of tattooed muscle and knife scars. He’d been stuck on R Sector for killing and eating some poor hab-wife.

2 metre tall prison inmate. in prison for execution for cannibalism.

Page 187

..he could make out the hard shell of the black carapace implanted beneath his skin, forming the sub-dermal armour that sheathed his form in additional protection and allowed him to
interface with his battle plate’s senses.

Black carapace is neural links as well as sub dermal armor.

Page 187

“I turn my eyes to a trillion souls with each passing moment. It is the nature of a god to exist in such a way.”

A fragment of Slaanesh. Is it true or not? I don't know.

Page 199

“He refused the Dark Ones, my Warmaster. To their faces. This was not some minor conjuration—I summoned reflections of the Four Powers. A trickle of power from the winds of the warp, each to offer their gifts.”
...
". But his vision was true. I felt the presence of the Four. A momentary glance of their attention, if you will.”

I dont know whther this means it was a daemon, or a fragment of their consciousness, if such distinctions matter, but that's what Talos faced and turned down (and claimed to turn its eye to a trillion souls each moment.)

Page 201

He glanced at the black-toothed, bleeding ruin of a man, and destroyed its head with a single bolt shell.

Single bolt head explosion.

Page 203-204

Talos withdrew a syringe and a roll of self-adhesive synskin bandage weave from his thigh-mounted narthecium. The supplies he bore now were a hollow shadow of the old Apothecary tools he’d once carried...
...
The first thing he did was inject a cocktail of blood coagulant, painkillers and Astartes plasma into Septimus’ thigh. The second was to bandage what remained of his slave’s face.

Talos' medical resources.. the Synskin bandage is interesting, but the syringe is evne more considering it carries astartes plasma - apparently that shit does have useful immunizing/protecting and medicinal qualities, since the same thing happened in Brothers of the Snake.

Page 207-208

Great windows took up one wall, facing out into a vast domed cavern, housing the grinding, clanking generators powering the sprawling prison complex above. Each of the twenty generators stood five storeys tall—edifices of hammering pistons, whirring cogs and thrumming power cell units wedged into their sides like the scales of some caged reptilian beast. Between this miniature city, walkways and gangways were illuminated by the flashing red of emergency lighting.
His vision wavered, rippling lines of distortion dancing across his lens displays. Runes warped and cancelled. Electrical distortion. A great deal of it. It was killing his helm’s input receptors.
Too much power. Talos scanned the control room, large enough for a staff of thirty or more, though devoid now of all life. Void shields? This much power couldn’t be purely for lighting the multi-towered spire above. These generators must also power the prison’s void shields, preventing orbital bombardment or meteor strike.
Defending a fortress full of criminals from death, though they were slated for execution anyway? Ah, the wasteful ignorance of the Imperium of Man.

Power generatiors for the prison complex, including its void shields which "prevent orbital bombardment or meteor strike". Also Talos is wrong, since there is not only the fortress full of criminals, but the people who watch over the criminals and administer the facility to guard. (in any event the prisoners are still a resource - either for mining, or penal legions, or the like.. so no need to kill them unless absolutely neccessary.)

Page 208

Talos crashed through the control room windows, falling twenty metres, landing smoothly on the ground floor’s decking with a tremendous bang of ceramite on iron.

Talos can survive a 20 metre fall in power armour.

Page 209

Indriga sure looked spooked, and that meant bad things. Indri was a hive ganger like most of them, but his skin was black with tats listing his kill counts and blasphemous beliefs. You didn’t get that big without being vat-grown or significantly cut up and put back together by some augmetic-hungry doc, that’s for sure.

Two metre tall, heavily muscled hive gangers aren't exactly common, but they aren't exactly rare either

Page 218

He barely had time to squeal a muffled protest before the bolter bucked and sheared the chubby former politician’s head clean off.

Bolter headshot. again.

Page 219

Indriga’s shotgun barked once, twice, a third time and a fourth, each impact blasting a hail of shot that cracked and clattered against the ceramite war-plate.

Yeah since shotcannon don't guaratnee penetration against power armour, I doubt a mere shotgun will.

[Connor MacLeod]

Part 2

Page 220

The massive bolter fired once, aimed low, and the bolt pounded into Indriga’s stomach. It detonated a moment later, leaving the convict in pieces across the walkway. The largest piece, consisting of Indriga’s chest, arms and howling face, remained alive for twelve agonising seconds.

Single bolt round blows most of the 7 foot tall Ganger's stomach apart.

Page 221

The Night Lord had foreseen the Navigator’s importance, and almost lost her only days later. This foolish venture had also almost cost him Septimus.

"days" rather than weeks passing since they nabbed Eurydice/Octavia.

Page 228

The surgeries were still fresh, his skin still adapting, and where his augmetics met flesh, the telltale redness of fading inflammation was still in evidence. His left eye, the one he’d lost to the convicts that stormed the Thunderhawk, was now a violet lens set in a bronze mounting that reached out to cover his temple and cheekbone.
Octavia, in her life as the daughter of a Navigator House, had seen a great many augmetic enhancements in the courts of Terra, not least of all her own father’s. By general standards, Septimus’ bionic reconstruction was relatively subtle. It was certainly above the poorest-grade cybernetic “slice and graft” surgeries available to even many wealthy Imperial citizens.

Septimus' augmetic, relative to Octavia's knowledge of Augmetics in the Imperium (at least in the circles she runs in.)

Page 229

“You need power cells?” the sore-ridden old man at the stall asked. “Cells for lamp packs. Fresh-charged in a fire. Good for another month, at least.”

Like lasgun powerpacks, it seems that some power cell packs for flashlights can be recharged in fire as well. They also last at least a month.

Searching online, I note that most flashlights range from half a watt (low power to up to 5 watts of power It may be more variable but that seems to be right within an approximate order of magnitude. Assuming 1 month the powerpack has to possess at least 1.3 MJ (half a watt) to 13 MJ (5 watt) of energy for a month. This is comparable to the 600 hour lamp pack timeframe Guard issue flashlights have in First and Only.

I also assume other powerpacks (EG for lasguns, etc.) would be of similar magnitude.

Page 232

"The Great Heresy was thousands of years ago. But to the Covenant, it has been less than a century. Less than a century since this strike cruiser hung in the heavens of Terra, as part of the greatest fleet ever amassed—the horde of the First Warmaster,..."
...
To hear of this very vessel that harboured her being part of the Horus Heresy’s final moments, the assault on Terra, and only scant decades ago by the ship’s internal chronometers...

A more accurate estimation of the time dilation of the events in the Eye relative to the galaxy at large.. again closer to 1 cnetury for every year in the Warp.

Page 233

Even as a Navigator, even as one of the rare few with the genetic deviance allowing them to see into the Sea of Souls and know the warp more intimately than any other mortal, it was a struggle for Octavia to cling to this shift in her perceptions. Stories forever abounded of vessels lost in the warp for years or decades, and arriving weeks ahead or behind the intended translation date was an unbreakable, unchangeable part of flight through the immaterium. When ships sailed through the second reality, they surrendered themselves to the realm’s unnatural laws.

Even so. This was a span of time she could barely comprehend. The differential made her mind ache.

Octavia contemplates the "usual" time dilation associated with the warp. Weeks (either shorter, or longer) seem more common, and years and decades rarer. 100+ realspace years for 1 warp year ratio seems even less imporbable, at least to her.

Page 238

...even over a hundred years later for Talos, while the galaxy had turned ten thousand years since that old man had last drawn breath

Again 10,000 years to 100 years.

PAge 238-239

“I’ve found a Black Legion Rhino. It’s a wreck."
...“Not even any bodies.” They all heard the regret in his voice. Bodies meant armour, and armour meant salvage.

“Mass laser fire damage.”

“Skitarii,” put in Cyrion. The Mechanicus footsoldier elite. It stood to reason—no one else would have laser fire capable of totalling an Astartes transport.

Indication of Skitarii lasweapon firepower - at least these skitarii, which are more formidable/augmented than your typical "Imperial guard analogues just with better weapons and augmetics" types.. more like combat servitors really. I'd guess they're at least multilaser level.

page 243

Seventeen metres tall, almost as many wide, it hunched in the road, taking up so much of the street that its brutish shoulders made squealing tears in the buildings as it raked them with its bulk.

Warhound titan.

Page 244

One of its weapons, like a gnarled right fist, was a multi-barrelled monstrosity that hurled hundreds of bolt shells a second at its targets below. Every impacting shell chewed a metre-wide hole in the Warhound’s steel and stone surroundings. With thousands of shells fired every minute, Adhemar wasn’t surprised at the level of destruction.

Hundreds of rounds a second at least, thousands a minute (300-400 a second minimum), each shell putting a "metre wide" hole in metal and stone. To make a 1 metre crater via explosive would require at least .2 to .5 kg of TNT (for stone) and upt o 4.5-5 kg of TNT for iron.

This means the warhound puts out at least 60 to 150 kg of TNT analogue a second, at LEAST, and more probably on the order of 1500-2000 kg of TNT a second. Either a way we're probably looking at hundres to thousands of kilos of HE damage a second from the weapon - probably a Vulcan Mega Bolter.

Given that a Macharius and Baneblade variant can also mount this, I'd expect similar magnitudes of damage from them.

Page 244

It was the echolocation pulse of the Titan’s auspex. If he moved, it would know where he was. Hell, if it even sensed the minimal heat of his power armour, it would know… but he was counting on the Titan’s systems being aligned to hunt larger prey.

Titan sensors might be able to detect an Astartes if configured right, but might miss it if configured to detect larger targets.

Page 245

Inferno gun.
...
. The massive gun fired with the challenging roar of a feral world predator, blasting searing air in all directions from its heat exchange vanes.
...
He knew without looking that the chemical wash of vicious liquid fire had flooded the building, dissolving everything within. The expected crash came moments later, as the building’s structure withered under the superheated force of the assault.

Inferno gun melts away building in moments (or mostly melts it, given effects described later) Assuming a 1 storey cubical building with brick walls 5 cm thick.. about 6.1 tonnes of stone would be melted.. yielding abuot 12-15 GJ in "moments. Supposedly a flame weapon, but it seems to cross over into melta territory what with all the exhcange vanes and stuff.

Page 250

.., all forward thrust lost as it coasted lower to the ground, between the stunted remains of Titan-killed hab blocks.
...
Six hundred metres or more down the avenue, the Titan saw them.
...
“Imperial machine is acquiring target lock,” Septimus voxed

Warhound can target a drop ship/transport form at least 600 metres away. Also able to kill whole hab blocks easily.

Page 252

There was no sense trying to hide the Land Raider. The Titan’s auspex would scent its heat and power source from a kilometre away.

Warhound can detect a Land Raider's power source from a kilometre away.

PAge 253

The Titan fired up at him.
...
...commanding their god-machine to send its anger skyward in a relentless hail of bolt shells, thousands at once.

Thousands instead of hundreds of rounds now "at once"

Page 253

The Thunderhawk transport was lightly armed compared to its troop-carrying gunship counterpart, but not entirely lacking in offensive capability. Wing-mounted heavy bolters made up the anti-troop complement of its weapons array, backed up by the capacity for six under-wing hellstrike missiles.

Thunderhawk armament. the transport is more heavily armed

Page 254

Both warriors gripped plate-sized melta bombs in their hands

extra large meltabombs.

Page 255

At this range, near-suicidal as it was for the Thunderhawk, the Titan had no chance to intercept the missiles.
...
The missiles struck with savage force, hammering into the Titan’s void shields with the force of a falling building. They exploded as one....
...
Its shields seemed fluid and malleable, swirling like oil on water, dissipating and sparking back to life as the internal generators strained to maintain the power feed to the void shield projector. Talos could almost see the tech-adepts working around the central column of the Titan’s juddering fusion reactor, like a spine running through its torso and beneath its dense shoulder armour.

The Titan’s shield crackled and flared with a sudden burst of dissipating energy. Deep within its armoured body, a low and rising thrum built up, muted but still audible to the Astartes in hiding. The Warhound’s internal systems were bracing, feeding additional power to prevent a complete shield shutdown. Its voids were on the very edge of failure.

Effects of the missiles (more powerful than hellstrikes) on the Titan shields. Lascannon fire from a Land Raider bring them all the way down.

Page 258

Aurum crackled with energy in his fist before a single slash carved a malicious streak through the armour and engineering of the Titan’s ankle. Even one-handed, the blow would have felled a tree or carved a mortal in half. Talos’ own gene-enhanced strength, amplified tenfold by the artificial muscle fibre of his war-plate, was the pinnacle of mankind’s genetic manipulation coupled with some of the Machine Cult’s closest-guarded secrets rediscovered from the Dark Age of Technology.

The golden blade sliced and sank into the armour plating, biting deep into the mechanics beneath. This alone was nothing, a pinprick of a wound caused in a heartbeat’s span. Talos snarled with effort, his muscles unused to being so tested as he wrenched the blade deeper, impaling and sawing through the cables and rods and pistons that served the Titan as tendons.

Talos power sword is able to cut a hole big enough to attach plate-sized melta charges to in a "heartbeat" According ot IA3 a Warhound has 95mm of armour (9.5 cm) although here it seems that Talos needs to penetrete more than a metre to get in and cut anything inside the armor. Assuming a 3 cm wide, 30 cm long, and 10 cm deep hole made of iron you'd need 8.4 MJ to melt through in total. Again this fits within the magnitude of power weapons as established earlier.

Also Talos power armour (again bastardized and salvaged from multiple Loyalist Astates chapters) multiples his strength tenfold. coupled with the strength idea from "angels of Darkness" this can imply upwards of a 100x strength modifier for an armoured Space Marine.

PAge 260

The arm itself was longer than a battle tank, sucking in light and heat through side-vanes as it amassed the power to fire.
An inferno gun. It would liquidate him, Uzas, the stone of the building, the concrete of the street, in a wash of sun-fire.

Inferno gun again - again it seems alot more exotic than a mere flamethrower. Again it can melt a building, two marines in armour, and a 17 m wide street. Assuming it melts a 17x17 m swath 5 cm deep, we're looking at some 60-90 GJ over unknown timeframe. Melting two Astartes in plate (1 ton of mass... about 400 kilos of flesh and 600 of metal/ceramic) would easily be a couple gigajoules.

page 264

Entire worlds would surrender their arms as their scanners revealed that the Astartes vessels that had translated into orbit bore the runic symbols of the VIII Legion.

Implies the Night Lords can "translate into orbit" directly, although I'd conside they can't get too close to the planet.. it would have to be quite a distant orbit (again Orks in Rynn's World)

Page 306

It was the sound of a Reaper-pattern double-barrelled autocannon powering up.
...
Six mass-reactive explosive shells—each one capable of killing a Rhino transport on its own—smashed into the Atramentar in the space of three seconds. The first destroyed his chestplate and would have seen him dead in moments through the horrendous blood loss from his mangled insides. He was spared this death as the second shell killed him instantly, exploding against his tusked helm and annihilating his head and right shoulder.
The other four shells impacted and tore the remains to pieces. In three seconds, nothing remained of Vraal of the Atramentar beyond shards of broken armour and the wounds carried by First Claw.

Dreadnought grade reaper autocannon in action. Implies each shell is light anti-tank given ability to take out a Rhino (equal to a 30-40mm round at least, hundreds of kj to serveal MJ) rate
of fire of 2 shots a second (or 1 shot per barrel per seocnd)

Page 309

And void-shielded so densely that orbital bombardment was utterly beyond hope. Ironically, such a defence was pointless, Abaddon had made it clear to his captains and commanders that Seventeen-Seventeen was to be captured, not destroyed. Such a base would be able to repair, outfit and construct Titans to serve in his coming crusade. At the very least, huge quantities of materiel and resources could be plundered from the fortress-factories here.

Abbadon's target, heavily protected Titan foundries.

Page 309-310

Astropaths across the fleet told of whispers within the warp. The Imperium’s response to the invasion would arrive within weeks.

The Blood Angels. The Marines Errant. Countless regiments of the Imperial Guard. Abaddon had ventured far from his haven within the warp anomaly known as the Eye of Tenor, where the Imperium could never follow. While he had chosen a fine target in Crythe and hit the world with the decisive power of this hastily-assembled fleet, victory must now come quickly or be abandoned altogether. Already the month of war had been drawn out too long and ground taken at too high a cost. [
...
If astropathic premonitions were accurate, the Imperium’s battlefleets en route would present unbreakable might. Here, the forces of the Throne sensed their chance to bring the Despoiler to justice. Navigators and other psychically-sensitive souls among the Chaos fleet told of a great wave of pressure rolling from the warp, like the thunderheads of a coming storm.
..
A convergence of warp routes, the way a fleet of ships would drive waves of water before their prows.

The War has been going on for a month, and the Imperial response is expected to arrive in less than another month (3 weeks as we learn later.) They get plenty of warning of this impending advance by the size of the fleet and the scale of the disturbance it creates (again more ocean analogies)

Rather interesting is that if you have such a large fleet creating such huge disturbances from months off (hundreds if not thousands if not tens of thousands of light years) doesnt this mean warp travel itself tends to contribute to the problems of accurate and safe warp travel/ I mean the Imperium has millions of starships routinely plying the warp, all across the galaxy, and that has to add up, nevermind the countless Xenos, Renegade, and other factions that must do so as well.

Also the respose seems to involve both the Marines Errant and Blood Angels, suggesting both chapters are within close proximity to each other, and we know were Baal is, suggesting Crythe is again close to Segmentum Ultima and The maelstrom.

Page 311

Cyrion held his arm out as a servitor attached his vambrace and gauntlet. Everyone in the room caught a glimpse of the new augmetic limb, its metal surface a dull, oceanic grey, still uncovered by synth-flesh. Soon enough, the naked steel and titanium arm was armoured in the midnight blue of his battle plate.

Cyrion's augmetic. Like some augmetics, they can mask it in aritifical flesh to look like a real arm. Not all marines do this of course.

Page 316

Etrigius gestured to the screens, displaying the Chaos fleet orbiting Crythe. “Without us, these traitors are crippled. Their endless crusade could never be fought.”

Rather interesting, but it shows the limits of Etrigus' knoweldge. It would be harder, but it coudl be fought, since you can make short ranged warp jumps, and there are always use of other psykers (or daemons, or sorcerers) to navigate the warp. Chao sand aliens always manage alternatives.

Page 325

“Breaching atmosphere,” Adhemar said to the others within the confines of the drop-pod. “One minute.”
“Why the rough deployment?” Cyrion asked.
“Anti-air fire,” Mercutian grumbled.
“This high? Not a chance.”

Limits on anti-aircraft range, although it is known that some anti-aircraft guns can reach that high (cain short stories RE: Tyranids, the Armageddon novels, etc.) The Orks in Gunheads had weapons that could also.

Page 327

Cyrion laid waste to three heavily-augmented tech-guard, bolts detonating in the flesh-parts of their bodies and blowing them apart.

Boltfire blowing apart tech guard. The Tech guard here remind me more of the Skitarii forces in the HEresy novels, or those in Titanicus, or those mentioned in Dark Apostle.

PAge 328

Through a sea of stabbing drills, slashing blades, punching fists and cutting las-fire, Talos carved and gunned his way forward.

"cutting" las fire

Pag 332

Uzas and Mercutian both bore horrendous damage to their battle armour: las-burns had carved blackened furrows through the ceramite or burned it black on deflected impact

Las fire on power armour ceramite.

Page 341

M’Shen’s pict-link back to her ship’s data recorders, while scarcely reliable over such a distance, was gone now.

Remote video/audio transfer of data to remote ship from the Callidus.

Page 349

Not to squeeze. Her armour of precious synskin would resist such trauma.

Synskin is resistant to crushing/squeezing pressure.

Page 355

A million humans, one million souls in varying states of augmentation, worked in these hallowed underground tunnels. The air was fever-hot with smoke, shimmering with heat blur, and rancid with the metallic reek of incense and industry.

Entire cave systems were given over to railroaded conveyor carriages, huge trains transporting resources, ammunition, servitors and machine parts from one colossal chamber to the other. The myriad chambers themselves reached hundreds of metres in height, each capable of housing a battle-ready Warlord-class Titan. The stone skin of this great lair was masked in machinework attached to the walls: consoles, sensor relays, gantries, elevators, storage loaders, promethium fuel tanks, and grand icons of the Mechanicus of Mars.

Titan manufactory.

Page 356

The fallen Titans crawled with ants—the Warmaster’s own tech-adepts recovering the slain god-machines for use on other worlds.

Abbadon salvaging titans

Page 357

Under siege, threatened with destruction, the hidden city called upon its chosen sons. The few that remained answered this call. They marched through their home caverns, immense shoulders bristling with city-crushing weaponry, beneath banners of a hundred past glories. At their heels, a million adepts, servitors and skitarii warriors braced to repel the invaders.

The last sons of the Legio Maledictis had awoken...

remaining defense forces on planet, it would seem.

PAge 362

Ghost-pain travelled through him in an acidic rush. Malcharion—his true form—screamed within the coffin of sustaining fluids. He felt the silken play of ooze across his ravaged face. Psychostigmata bruised his corpse’s pale flesh.

The pilot's real body suffers stigmata from the Dreadnougth body suffering injury.

Page 363

...the Exalted watched blurry pict feeds of the surface battle. The creature cycled through views—the helm picters of each squad leader and image-finders mounted on the hulls of 10th Company’s tanks. Orbital imagery was worthless with the battle now taking place in the opening chambers of the Omnissiah’s Claw.

Info abilities of the Night Lords.

PAge 366

“Cy, the Throne’s forces are coming. The Marines Errant, the Flesh Tearers. The Blood Angels, first of all. They are almost here.”
“You’ve been out three hours, Talos.”

The Imperial response is early. We sadly don't know where they are coming from, so speeds are impossible to guess.

Page 367

The battle-barge was built to carry three entire companies, whereas the strike cruiser housed only one.

Astartes carrying capacity. I suspect this is typical, as the novel earlier mentiosn strike cruisers have carried more.

PAge 367

“Two battle-barges, three strike cruisers. This represents overwhelming force. Perhaps two-thirds of the entire Chapter.”

Scope of the Blood Angels forces deployed. This is interesting as it would suggest they are either deploying prior ot events in the Blood Angels novels (when they supposedly suffer massive losses.) or long after they have taken the tithe and built up their losses.

Page 368

“The wake of that many ships casts great waves through the sea of souls. Your astropaths confirmed the judgements of the Warmaster’s own. The tide should not have broken upon us for another month.”
...
“A larger fleet is still incoming. We are dealing with nuances in the immaterium—a dimension none of us understand. Can you, Captain Halasker, look into the warp and see which waves are natural tides in an unnatural realm? Can you, Captain Vandred, see whether the war-wake of one fleet is masked by the tidal wave caused by another? Everything we do is guesswork compounded by inexperienced estimation.”

Comment on the difficulties of predicting fleet arrivals. With the level of warp activity, its own innate turbulence, and its use in myraid purposes (as a means of travel, a power source, or a defensive shield) things probably get pretty damn muddled up (eg the natural and unnatural tides)

In this case, fleet arrivals (and the sizeS) seem to be based on an estimate of the "waves" or ripples that the passage of a fleet makes in the Immaterium. These ripples travel substnatially faster than the fleet itself, hence why they can be detected. I would guess that they estimate size and direction from the parameters of the wave (how big it is, how fast its moving, what direction it is moving form, etc.)

Page 370

“Abaddon is hardly short on ships. Even without us, he outnumbers the Blood Angels eleven to five.”

Abbadon, minus the two Night Lords ships, has eleven ships to the blood Angels five.

PAge 373

. More signifier runes appeared on the hololithic display as the minutes became hours. Vessels belonging to the Marines Errant, and the cousin Chapters of the Blood Angels—the Flesh Tearers and the Angels Vermillion—pulled alongside their fellows.
...
Distances within void conflict are matters of thousands and thousands of kilometres. As the runes depicting the enemy fleet began to blink and move, the Exalted rose to its full height and addressed Malcharion—the only other Astartes still in the room.
“Alert the Premonition. We have forty minutes before they reach us.”

Scope of the current Imperial response.

Page 375

"Two battle-barges and six strike cruisers, with frigate support"

Current astartes forces on hand. No mention of the Navy or guard yet, but by implication they arne't far behind as the Night Lords are in a hurry to haul ass out.

PAge 377

A blue-black and bronze blade of a ship, it reached barely half the size of the Vengeful Spirit.

The Covenant, a strike cruiser, is "barely hlaf the size" of the Vengeful spirit. This means more than 2 but less than 3x, and the strike cruiser is larger than a frigate but smaller than a cruiser. So its at least 5 km long, but less than 15 km long.

Page 381-382

It remained in this state for several moments. Finally, it spoke, without opening its jet eyes. “The first lances will be firing… now.”
The Atramentar, all seven of them in their Terminator plate, watched as the hololithic display began to add weapons fire to its projection.
“The lead battle-barges, bearing the Blood Angels’ insignia, will be hit by lance fire from the first of our perimeter ships… now.”
The Exalted opened its eyes, seeing its predictions confirmed.

Implication of multi-second propogation rate for lance fire.. hundreds of thousands of km probably. Weapons battery fire is shorter ranged.

Page 386

The darkness was nothing to him. This, he pierced with the vision modes of his helm. The winding corridors offered no mystery to his senses. These, he navigated by memory, for one Astartes strike cruiser was the same as almost any other. Such was the wisdom contained with the Standard Template Construct patterns of all noble machines birthed by the Adeptus Mechanicus.

STC means at least most if not all Strike cruiser interiors since the Heresy era are alike, although the exterior and other details (defenses, armament, etc) obviously vary from novel (and author) to novel (and author)

Also multi vision modes on Blood Angels helmet.

Page 388

As the Blood Angel staggered back, the Night Lord pounded a bolt into his neck, just a single shot. Melchiah had a single moment to claw at the wound before it exploded, removing his head in a shower of organic mess.

Headshot.

Page 390

The Blood Angel’s helm distorted with a tremendous clang, then exploded in a shower of red-painted shards.
...
Talos lowered his bolter and shook his head at his brother.

Another bolter head shot explosion.

Page 397

It was over in a moment.
A blur of motion as the former sergeant rushed the Dreadnought with his blade held high. The war machine had turned with unbelievable speed, whirring around on its waist axis, breathing invisible but searing heat from its multi-melta. Adhemar’s armour baked and split within a heartbeat, the joints melted, the empty war-plate clattering to melt into sludge on the decking. Nothing biological remained.
Over in a moment.

Dreadnought multimelta.. call it at least 500 MJ or so to vaporize an astartes (several GJ at least to cremate) and assuming silicon (ceramite) or iron (adamantium) 360 (iron) to 750 MJ (silicon) to melt Astartes power armor.

PAge 406

“I have no idea what I’m doing. I can find the Astronomican, guide by the Emperor’s light. But I have a feeling that would invite pursuit.”

“It would. Just… do your best.”
...
“Do you know the region of space, close to the galactic core, that houses a warp wound known as the Great Eye?”

Eurydice Mervallion, now called Octavia of the Covenant, took a deep breath.
“Link me to the helm,” she said, strength returning to her voice. “I will commune with your pilots.”

Starships can be tracked by using the AStronomican as a guidance point. This suggests (at least in some cases) it may not be entirely a "passive" means of navigation (a reference point or a lighthouse, so to speak.. something for the Navigator to fix on and use to find his location) but may actually provide some sort of more active (sort of psychic telemetry perhaps?) means of guidance (which can make the vessle more easily tracked or located, it would seem) We know from HH collected visions that the Emperor could somehow use the Astronomican to "speed up" warp travle significantly for selected fleets or ships if need be, this may be what is referred to. Since being put into the Throne, the Emperor has grown more powerufl and "aware" and generally godlike so he probably could handle multiple ships/fleets in that manner at once.

[Connor MacLeod]

I also decided to touch on Blood Reaver.. single update. I'll have Void Stalker ready at some point soon I think.

Blood Reaver is another 'self contained' story about the Night Lords, this time dealing with Huron and the Red Corsairs and the attack on the MArines Errant Fortress Monastery. It also marks a sort of (brief) transition from survivors to warriors for Talos' band as well further expansion of their characters, growth of relationships (esp Septimus and Octavia) and generally setting the scene for the major events of Void Stalker. Overall its a solid book, carried more by the character interactions than anything.

Part 1

Page 19

Sixteen-hour shifts weren’t the worst of his compulsory labour duties, but they were damn close.

work shifts in a MEchanicus orbital factory. That's a fucking long time, but we don't really know how much time they get off either - its not like there is a day/night cycle in space per se.
Page 20

With an exaggerated groan, he rolled to reach for the remote control palette where it lay in pieces on the floor. A few clicks later and he’d reattached the battery pack. He repeatedly speared the loose ON button with his fingertip, knowing it’d pick up on his intent at some point. For a wonder, it only took a few seconds this time. The screen mounted on the opposite wall flickered to life.
...
No picture, no sound, no nothing. Not that Ganges’ endless cycle of Ecclesiarchal sermons, obituaries and technical safety broadcasts were exciting, but they beat seeing nothing but static.
...
Like he had the credits spare to call out the technical servitors again?

Even in a shithole you have a wall mounted tv with remote, and you can still have nothing on. This isn't unusual. I've been in hotels where the TV had nothing but 3-4 channels and all the rest static. And it was a nice relaxing lake-front hotel. I guess the bastards were too cheap to pick up the syndication of Attack Run.
Also, your repairment are servitors.

Page 20

But “just” seven more years of this, and he’d have enough saved to drag himself off Ganges for good, catching a shuttle to somewhere else—somewhere with prospects slightly less grim. He’d have signed up for the Imperial Guard long ago if his eyes could see worth a damn. But they couldn’t, so he hadn’t.

It's possible apparently to save enough money to move to a new planet, station, etc. for (slightly) better employment opportunities.
Also, it's possible (in some areas of space at least) to sign up for the Guard voluntarily rather than be tithed/conscripted into it, although they seem to have certain standards (like good eyesight.) I gather this might be in one of those "relatively peaceful" Sectors where you don't need huge quantities of cannon fodder to throw into a meat grinder somewhere .

Page 21

Last time the lights died, they’d been out for three day cycles before the tech crews had the illumination generators breathing again. Work hadn’t ceased, of course. Not with the production schedules each sector had to meet. The entire western district of the station spent seventy hours working by torchlight. Dozens of menials had lost limbs or fingers in the machinery, and that week’s obituaries ran as long as a saints’ day prayer scroll.

Working for the mechanicus may be steady work, but its shitty conditions. And while nothing is quite so bad as risking your life I have known factories where risk of injury was secondary (Despite protestations otherwise) to productivity. It's something of an American tradition, as long as a compnay can get away with it.

Page 22

Fumbling in the dark brought him to the wall, and he opened the emergency supply cabinet containing his lamp pack, with a batch of standard-issue battery packs that would serve in every one of the hab-room’s scarce and simple appliances.
...
He stuffed all eight of the palm-sized discs into his overall pockets..

Palm sized circular batteries (maybe 6-8 cm across?) for flashlights and various other home appliances, suggesting that alot of personal and even civilian technology in 40K runs on batteries and electrical power.

Page 23

he weapons array was active, defensive turrets staring out into the void. The shields were live, layered spheres of invisible force protecting the station’s hideous hull.

Like most things in 40K, the orbital station has weapons and defensive shields.

Page 24

“A sourceless transmission, ten minutes ago. It’s here, logged in the archive. When the signal was processed by our cogitators to be recorded and filed, it… spread. Like a disease, almost. It flooded specific station systems: the communications array, and the more primitive parts of the power grid.”
...
"It’s a simple, brutal, randomised blurt of scrap-code. It can’t shut down anything complex. It’s just communications, auspex and… it looks like the illumination network is offline. Only the most basic systems, but they’re all filled with invasive code, impeding function.”

The Night Lords "Shriek" - what the station crews call "interference" (or damned screaming.) It seems to be more than just jamming though, given the scrap code bit, its invasive EW warfare attacks designed to interfere and fuck with ship's systems. That would take EW up a whole nother notch in 40K if it had any regularity.

Page 24-25

" And you know we’ll get kicked in the teeth for this. The clankers will have demerits splashed all over our records. Just watch.”
...
"Nothing to worry about, except who the Mechanicus will hold accountable. And that’ll be us. Pissing clankers and their profit margins.”
...
Only a few years ago, she’d have worried about all the people forced to work in the dark. Now her first fear was for herself: the Adeptus Mechanicus wouldn’t take kindly to significant production delays....

The short of it is - working for the mechanicus is not only brutal and exhausting, but it is dehumanising. No wonder they call them "clankers" (another pejorative as amusing as 'coggies'.) Also the blatant reference to "profit margins" for production delays makes the AdMech sound more like a corporation than a regliion, and I find that all kinds of more interesting

Page 25

he bionics replacing his left cheek, temple and eye were ludicrously expensive—clearly he was a rich man playing at being a grunt. Maybe his wealthy father sent him here as some kind of punishment, or he was an Adeptus Mechanicus mole snooping for screw-ups.

Sometimes the Wealthy of the Imperium slum as common workers.

Page 28

Sylus reached for his holstered side-arm, and without any hesitation at all, drew it and fired in a single smooth movement. The gunshot cracked in the small chamber, startlingly loud. Arella slumped from her chair into a boneless heap, with a hole drilled neatly through her forehead. Mushy wetness decorated the wall behind her.
...
That one died first, sighing back in his chair as Sylus pumped three rounds into his chest. The other two both sought to run. Headshots ended their plans, spraying more skull fragments and dark paste around the control chamber.

Sylus is Septimus, Talos' slave. In this case I don't know if he's got his laspistols (mentioned in the prior book) and he still seems to be using them onboard the ship. Does he have them here? I don't know. The context makes it sound like he'd have a slug pistol, but sometimes its hard to tell between las- and slug- weapons. It may not matter much either way, since we know slugthrowers and laspistols are roughly equal, and in any case the calcs aren't likely to be over single digit kj for the effects above (blowing nasty holes out of the back of a person's head.)

PAge 28

The gun ports stayed sealed—a hundred turrets all denied the power they needed in order to activate. The launch bays and escape pod hives were locked, power completely siphoned away, trapping everyone on board the station. At last, the station’s void shields collapsed, starved of nourishing energy and severed from their fallback generators.

100 main weapons turrets on the orbital station. Void shields have primary and bakcup generators.. interestingly they don't immediately collapse once the power is cut. either.

Page 40

Promethium fuel was taken in barrels and vats. Raw, roiling plasma was leeched out of the station’s generators. Ore of all kinds was taken in great loads to be turned into materiel in the Covenant’s artificer workshops. Useful members of the station’s crew—of the few hundred that escaped the initial massacres—were dragged aboard the ship in chains.

Covenant has its own manufacturing facilities onboard. Probably one of the few reasons the ship is still going.
By the way did I mention they're raiding an AdMech orbital manufacturing facilitiy? Specifically stuff that Astartes can use (ammo and such).

Page 50

The blades were almost worthless against Legion war plate, and both warriors fell into the practised, traitorous brutality of chopping at each other’s armour joints.

Astarts Chainsword warfare.. always aim for the weak points.

PAge 50-51

Instead, he’d drawn his plasma pistol, which was met with disquieted mutterings. The magnetic coils ribbing the back of the weapon glowed with angry blue phosphorescence...
...
The timing had to be perfect: the weapon needed to be at full charge...
...
Afterwards, when sight had returned to each of them, they stood motionless in their communal chamber. Each warrior’s armour was dusted with a fine layer of ash: all that remained of Garisath after the blinding flash of plasma release.
...
“Nothing left to salvage now.”

Plasma pistol basically cremates an Astartes in power armor.. probably vaporizes the armor as well... single digit if not double digit GJ.

Page 55

“Smoke grenades as soon as the door opens. That buys us a couple of seconds before their preysight re-tunes."

Smoke (or maybe blind?) grenades can interefere temporariyl with preysight, but Astartes armor will adapt. Probably explains why they still muck around with it.
Page 57

The scruffy fall of his hair almost covered the bionics on the left side of his face, where his temple and cheek had been rebuilt with subtle augmetics of composite metals, contoured to match his facial structure. It was a degree of surgical sophistication she’d rarely seen outside of the wealthiest theocratic covens and noble families of Terra’s tallest spires.

Septimus' augmetics yet again are more sophisticated than most anyone would get even on TErra, it would seem. I'm inclined to disagree.
He's also able to take picts with it.

PAge 60

Strange, that on any given Imperial world, he would probably be a wealthy man with his skills in great demand. He could fly atmospheric and suborbital craft, he spoke several languages, he knew how to use and maintain weapons, and worked with an artisan’s care and a mechanic’s efficiency on reconstructive artificer duties.

Septimus' skill value in any place in the Imperium.

Page 61

“How is it that all these years, only one child was born on board?”
...
“The ship,” he said. “The Covenant itself. It makes us sterile. Wombs wither and seed grows thin.” The little creature gave a childish shrug. “The ship, the warp, this life. My eyes.” He touched a bandaged hand to his threaded eyes. “This life changes everything. Poisons everything.”

The joys of shipboard living and warp travel with the Night Lords. Sterility, blindness, and fear. Oh and randomly being murdered by Khorne-touched Astartes if you don't have someone like Talos to watch out for you.

Page 61

trictly speaking, she wasn’t human in the most pedantic sense—the genetic coding in a Navigator’s bloodline left her in an awkward evolutionary niche, close to being a sub-species of Homo sapiens. Her earliest years were filled with lessons and tutors hammering that very fact into her with stern lectures and complicated biological charts. Few Navigators ever bred easily, and children were an incredibly treasured commodity to a Navigator House—the coin with which to purchase a future. Had her life run its pre-planned course, she knew that after a century or two of service she’d be recalled to the family holdings on Terra and linked to another low-level scion from an equally minor house, expected to breed for the good of her father’s financial empire.

Navigator Genetics, politics, and lifespan.

Page 63

“What was the Shriek like? Inside the station, I mean.”
...
He grinned at the memory. “It jammed the aura-scryers. Every auspex drowned in interference. Then it slaughtered all in-station and off-station vox, but there was more: it actually killed the lights all across Ganges. I have no idea if Deltrian and the Exalted planned it, or how it worked, but it was a surprise to me.”
...
“ The Shriek drinks power like you wouldn’t believe. The engines dimmed to almost nothing, and the void shields were down the entire time. I had nothing to do but wait while we drifted for days.

The Shriek from both onboard ship and on the target.

Page 64

He’d attended the girl’s funeral only five months before, when her parents had let the shrouded corpse be released through the airlock with so many other slain human crew.

Five months since the last battle and escape from the Crythe Cluster in Soul Hunter.
Page 65

Bolter shells cracked and crashed against the walls around them, detonating with the crumpling pops of bursting grenades, showering the Legionaries with fragments of iron and burning chunks of explosive shell.

Bolter shells apparnetly have some shrapnel of fragmentation effect, here.

Page 65

Talos emerged first from the mist, bolter rounds shredding the armour from his war plate, ripping chunks of ceramite overlay from the cabled musculature. He closed the distance in the span of a heartbeat, swinging his sword in a carving arc. Retinal imagery displayed the grievous damage to his armour in aggressively bright runes, and was immediately joined by the flatline sound of a slain warrior’s armour no longer transmitting life signs
...
..Xarl’s war plate as chewed up and broken as his own

No more than a few seconds of bolt fire from maybe 6-7 bolters grievously damages Talos and Xarl's plate.. and the rest of them aren't much better. In fact, Talos is mortally wounded in the process.

Page 65

Talos spoke through the stinging bite of nerve nullifiers. His armour injected the fast-acting narcotics right into his heart, spine and bloodstream, but their effects were limited in the face of this horrendous fire. Bolters suffered against Legion armour—they were weapons far better at breaking flesh than ceramite—but despite his mockery, the massed assault was taking its toll.

combat drugs/stimulants used in fighting... and that its taking a toll on him.
Also, amusingly, this hints at bolters being antipersonnel rather than anti-armour (despite being listed as having armour-piercing tips, and quite often over-penetrating unarmoured troops.

Page 68

The deck smelled of blood’s spicy scent, thinned by the chemical reek of bolter shell detonations.

bolter shells use chemical explosives.
Page 69

Both barrels bellowed. Tiny gobbets of meat with wet fragments of skull clattered across the walls and against their armour. Headless, the body toppled

Talos double-barreld bolter-thingy blows off the head of an Astartes.

PAge 69-70

“Two months.”
...
Dents needed to be beaten out, mangled ceramite had to be cut free and completely replaced, torn layers of composite metals needed to be resealed, repainted, reformed…
And the subdermal damage was even worse. False musculature made of fibre-bundle cables needed to be reworked, rethreaded and rebuilt. Joint servos and gears had to be replaced or repaired. Stimulant injectors needed sterilising and reconstructing. Interface ports had to be completely retuned, and all of that was before the most complicated repairs were undertaken: the sensory systems in each helm’s retinal display.
“I’m not joking, master. Even using these parts as salvage, it will take more than a week for each suit of armour. Recoding their systems, rebuilding them to your bodies, retuning their interfaces to each of you… I cannot do it faster than that. I’m not sure anyone could.”
...
“And if you worked on only mine and your master’s?”
....
“Two weeks, Lord Cyrion. Perhaps three.”

seven to eleven days maybe to fully repair a suit of AStartes armor, as well as the things that need to be done. Two months for five suits.
Page 71

The wounds he’d taken weren’t healing with the alacrity he’d expected, and he had the grating sense that the damage beneath his armour was worse than he’d first thought.

Talos is more severely wounded than he thought.. its slowing the healing process.

PAge 75

The Exalted breathed in unison with the distant rhythmic thrum of the fusion reactors, rumbling as the engines idled in dock.

Again implied to be fusion engines, although they use both interchangably.

Page 82-83

He and Xarl had borne the brunt of Third Claw’s bolter fire—their armour was devastated, and Talos was well aware how savage his wounds were if his blood wouldn’t clot to seal the great rupture in his side.
...
Blinking his eyes wasn’t enough to clear them, and the telltale sting in pulse points was a stark indication that his armour had already flooded his system with synthetic adrenaline and chemical pain inhibitors to incautious levels.
...
The constriction beneath his ribcage told of at least one lung collapsing. The fever had the sweaty, unclean edge of sepsis, a gift from the myriad bolter shell fragments punched into his body. Add the blood loss and severe biological trauma, coupled with his weakened state suffering an overdose on the automatically administered combat narcotics… The list went on. As for his left arm… that no longer moved at all.

A listing of Talos' injuries following the battle.. note the combat drugs running through his system as well.. and his wounds are corrupted from the bolter shell fragments (fragmentation rounds again.)
Page 86

I honour the primarch. I walk in his shadow. I kill as he killed—I kill because I can, the way he could. I hear the cries of distant divinities, and I take power from them without offering worship. They were weapons in the Great Betrayal, and they remain weapons in the Long War.

Yet another fool who bleieves he can use or control Chaos and remain untainted. Did a great job for Horus didn't it?

Page 101-102

But the throne was all the interface she needed. Octavia refused the crude implantation of psy-feed cables, let alone needing restraints. Those were the crutches for the laziest Navigators, and while her bloodline might not be worth much in terms of breeding, she felt this ship well enough to reject the interface aids.
...
It was strange to hear the ship address her with such tolerance
...
...It sensed her surprise through the resonant throne.
...
The machine-spirit at the ship’s heart was a vicious, tormented thing, and at best—at its absolute least unpleasant—it still loathed her. Much more often, it was a siege just to unify her thoughts with the vessel at all.
...
...she kept her thoughts back, holding them inside her skull, boxed away from the machine-spirit’s reach.

Octavia interacts iwth the ship's machine spirit. Again note the thing is a live and sentient, not just another one of those AdMech supersitions, and many of the (skilled) crews (Navigator, the captain, magos, etc.) link with it to facilitate ship operations like in a Titan. The Ship can feel and interpret and respond to emotions and communicate intelligently.
Also, while some ships need physical plug-links to interact, OCtavia's throne can do the job sufficiently for her.

Page 103

“Make for the Maelstrom,” came the Exalted’s reply, guttural over the vox. “We cannot linger in Imperial space any longer.”
...
Oh, but she did. Couldn’t she feel it—a bloated, overripe migraine that hurt her head with each beat of her heart? Couldn’t she sense it with the same ease as a blind woman feeling the sunrise on her face?
...
But she could sense it, and she knew that was enough to reach it.
...
The vessel’s dull recollection became her own: a memory of the void boiling with cancerous ghosts, of tainted tides crashing against its hull. Whole worlds, entire suns, drowning in the Sea of Souls.

We get perhaps a vague indicator of how non-Astronomican warp travel is achieved - detection of large, powerful distrubances like the Maelstrom or the EYe of terror. If one knows about the locations of such warp storms, and if they can know which is which, they quite probably can serve as reference points for Non-AStropathic navigation. This may, in fact, be one of the ways Navigators do it beyond the range of the AStronomican (the same way they may use astropaths to home in on a locale.)
Funny neough the ship actually mocks Octavia for the Navigator fears and legends surrounding the Maelstrom.

Page 105

Above, the Emperor’s Light receded, while below, the faint outlines of great shapeless things thrashed in the infinite, turgid black. She sailed by instinct, blinder than she’d ever been before, guiding them all towards a distant eye in the storm.

Navigating without the AStronomican, again.

Page 121

"This ship has spent an age within the warp. The corruption is not within you, but the Covenant itself. Taint rides in its bones, and we all breathe it in with the air supply. "
...
"But the Covenant is crewed by as many memories as living, breathing mortals. More have died on these decks than still work them. And the ship remembers every one of them. Think of all the blood soaked into the steel that surrounds us, and the hundreds of last breaths filtering through the ventilation cyclers. Forever recycled, breathed in and out of living lungs, over and over again. We walk within the Covenant’s memory, so we all see things at the edges of our vision from time to time.”

Talos' commentary on the Covenant itself. It sounds like he's saying that while there is some warp corruption in the ship itself, the idea of ghosts or spirits is more a phyiscal manifestation of the ship's memory in some fashion. I'm not sure if he's talking about the machine spirit, or not though.
Page 128

The blade was as long as the human’s arm, its silver length turned amber in the dim lighting of the communal chamber.
...
"So take the sword, mortal. My patience is finite.”
With trembling fingers, the man did as he was ordered.
...
"I severed his head from his shoulders with the very blade you now struggle to lift in your hands."

Talos gladius.. Combat knife I guess. It's heavy enough that a middle aged (and probably underfed and possibly weak) slave can lift it, but with evident trouble.

Page 136

“The immaterium propulsion engines have been subjected to an inadvisable degree of damage in the last eight months—”

eight months have passed since the end of soul hunter til when they get to the MAelstrom. as I recall they headed towards the Eye at the end. At the very least we're talking 20-30 thousand LY between those two, and in eight months we're talking 30,000-45,000c. That is, without a doubt, a drastic lower limit, as it assumes they traveled straight from the eye to the maelstrom, and neglects all the stops in between, the distance traveled to get to the Eye (which is probably at least a goo dmany thousands of light years itself) and so on. I'd bank on it easily being an order of magnitude or so greater than I estimated simply from accounting for the stops and the extra distance.

Page 136

"If we do not dock soon for an overhaul of the actuality generators, the immaterium engines will be throttled by failsafes, preventing their activation.”
...
“Meaning the Geller field is damaged,” Talos answered. “The warp engines won’t work for much longer unless the shield generators are repaired.”

Actuality generators (gellar field) must be functioning. The warp engines will not allow a ship to jump to warp without them.

Page 138-139

“These are projected statistics equating to damage we will sustain in the remaining days of our journey, based on the turbulence of the immaterium so far.”
...
“Our Navigator is untested and weak. She steers the ship through savage tides. She ploughs through warp-waves because she can sense no way around them. Visualise the damage her route is inflicting upon the Covenant.”
...
"Octavia—will destroy this ship through incompetence if she fails to make peace with the machine-spirit and alter her techniques of navigation.”

The manner of navigation and the skill can influence the amount of damage a ship sustains in warp passage. In turn, a ship's durability can affect its ability to make warp passages (and the routes it may or may not take).

PAge 139

"Liquid waste recycling. The recharge generator pods supplying the port broadsides. "
...
" As my servitor crews move deeper through the ship’s organs in reconstruction operations.."

Recharge generators for port broadsides, liquid waste recycling (EG urine to water?) and servitor repair crews (automated repair capability) directed by the Magos.

PAge 139

“Did this warband not once have a warrior who could pilot vessels through the warp?”
...
"No sorcerer is a match for a Navigator, brother. One possesses the lore to guide a vessel through the warp. The other was born to do nothing else.”

Sorcerers can navigate through a warp (CF Thousand sons) but they aren't as good as a true Navigator. This also (probably) means a psyker can navigate through the warp, but it is not as good as a Navigator either (and we know the Orks and Edlar use their own psykers as warp navigation. Daemons also serve as a form of navigation.
Page 144

“What’s this?” He held up a metal object the size of his thumb.
...
“A suspensor. It’s for Lord Mercutian’s heavy bolter.”

Thumb sized suspensor

Page 145-146

Octavia felt her lingering connection to the ship, and the distress of the crew bleeding through the vessel’s steel bones. People were injured this time. She’d dropped out of the warp much too sharply..

Octavia's awareness of the ship and occupants while linked into it. Also STEEL.

[Connor MacLeod]

Part 2
PAge 146

“You are struggling to fly. I worry for you. You sweat and moan more than Etrigius ever did when he guided the ship into the secret tides.”
...
“He was probably a lot better at this than I am. And he’d had more practice. I’m used to sailing within the light, not through the darkness.”

Octavia comments more on Non-Astronomican warp travel.
PAge 155

the metallic bulk of the station itself, reaching for kilometres in every direction. Variel watched the comings and goings of dozens of cruisers for several minutes, as well as the swimming dances of the parasitic lesser ships clinging close to each of them. The warships drifted in orbit around the station, or remained docked at its edges. The lights of the shuttle traffic painted the poisoned nebula with flickering stars racing hither and thither.

The scope of the spaceship activity around the Hells' Iris.

Page 156

“To think we once ruled one world. Now, we cradle a horde of systems in our tender grip. Billions of lives. Trillions. "

The Red Corsairs in the Maelstrom control billions/trillions of people. That would imply hundrds if not thousands of worlds.

Page 156

He gestured at the fleet of cruisers drifting around the station. Many bore the black and red armour of the Tyrant’s Own, while others displayed the hues of allegiance to other disgraced Adeptus Astartes Chapters. By far the greatest number were Imperial Navy vessels, their hulls desecrated and branded with the Pantheon Star. “Lord Huron’s forces could break the back of any armada in the Holy Fleet,” Variel added, “but this is not enough to lay siege to a fortress-monastery. We would be obliterated the moment we entered orbit.."

The dispositions of all those "dozens" of cruisers and such, as well as the idea of an "armada" and the defenses of a Fortress-Monastery.
Page 157

Variel had seen the expansive hall play host to hundreds of warriors at any given time, despite the fact that this deep-void station was far from the Tyrant’s largest or most opulent bastion.

Huron has more powerful stations (possibly hosting more warships) elsewhere.
Page 158

The Tyrant had long ago endured injury to the very edge of destruction, and the mechanical repairs that kept him alive were crude, hideous, loud… but ultimately functional.
They were, however, temperamental.
Variel’s memory, like most of the humans elevated into the ranks of the Adeptus Astartes, was as close to eidetic as mortality would allow. By his reckoning, this was the seventy-eighth instance he had been summoned to tend to his liege lord’s augmetics, not including the initial surgeries performed with Garreon and two Techmarines in order to save the Tyrant’s life.
Those first instances had been closer to engineering than surgery. A third of Huron’s body was reduced to molten meat and burned bone, and in cutting away the ravaged flesh, a great deal more of his mortal frame had to be sacrificed to prepare attachment ports for extensive bionics. The right side of his body no longer existed beyond the clanking grind of Machine Cult ingenuity—all fibre-bundle muscles, piston joints and metal bones fused to the warrior’s armour.
Variel had seen the bio-auspex readings at the time, just as he’d seen them each time since. The degree of pain registered within Huron’s mind was far beyond the realms of human tolerance. Each time Lord Garreon or the Flayer burned out the synaptic relays, dulling their master’s perception of his own agony, it would only be a matter of months before his enhanced physiology compensated for the damage, repairing the nerves enough to transmit pain again. Short of invasive lobotomising surgery that would risk what little brain tissue remained, there was nothing his healers could do to offer a permanent solution.

The state of Huron's body post-augmetic. One third of his body was virtually incinerated (lots of megajoules there) but mostly survived with having tons of his body replaced. The really interesting things is how his nerve endings regenerate pepertually in months depite being burnt away.

Page 160

...the Astral Claws only survived to become the Red Corsairs because Huron sold their souls to hidden masters within the warp. At the Chapter’s darkest hour, he pledged them to the Unknown Pantheon, swearing them to an eternal crusade against the Imperium they’d once served.
After the Chapter’s remnants fled here to the Maelstrom, mutation and instability began to settle into their gene-seed with corrosive rapidity. Variel had studied the changes, as had Lord Garreon and the other remaining Apothecaries. In mere centuries, many of the Red Corsairs were as victimised by genetic disorder as the Traitor Legions dwelling within the Eye of Terror for millennia.

The Red Corsairs are just a modern iteration of the Traitor Legions in all but name, including the state of their gene-seed mutation.
Page 163

Rifts in space were rare, but each was an ugly, dangerous scab—a tormenting hazard to stellar navigation, avoided by every Navigator with a desire to keep their sanity intact and their ship in one piece. It was the warp and natural space amalgamated in defiance of physical laws: a thinner breed of the former; a haunted, twisted reflection of the latter.

Warp rifts.
Page 171

..the Tyrant’s resources were second only to the Despoiler’s in scope and might. Hell’s Iris triggered a very specific jealousy within the daemon’s heart, for its past as much as what it represented now. The port was a nexus of secessionist activity, and it was far from the largest waypoint in the Tyrant’s empire. The station itself had once been the Ramillies-class void fortress Canaan’s Eye, positioned in deep space controlled by the Astral Claws Chapter. When indignity and betrayal swept through the region centuries before, during the Badab War, the fortress became one of many assets claimed by the rebels in their drive to secede from the Imperium. Imperial archives listed Canaan’s Eye as destroyed by a battlefleet led by the Overlord-class cruiser Aquiline. What Terran records failed to state was the subsequent recapture and towing of the Ramillies hulk into the Maelstrom warp rift by the piratical renegades that rose in the wake of the Astral Claws’ subjugation.

Scope of the Tyrant's resource, including snatching some Ramilies.
Page 176

Greetings, void hunter, the Exalted whispered to the craft. You are no weapon of the thin-blooded Corsairs. You are older, greater, and were once something so
Something within the ship, some cold-fire core of intelligence, responded with a predatory snarl. Its presence was goliath, its emotions too alien to contain within a human, or even daemonic, mind. Yet for all its immensity, it spared no more than a second’s attention for the psychic intrusion.
Begone, its immense heart demanded, little fleshthing.
The second of connection was enough.

More on Night Lord Starship machine spirits.. note that the Exalted is able to psychically commune with the machine spirit, and that same spirit will notice (And is not afirad of) such intrusion. It, like the covenant's machine spirit, is sentient and quite intelligent.
Page 177

He checked his pistols, thumbing the ammunition runes to check their power cells.
...
“I’m not sure I’ll be able to get used to that.”
“It’s not that difficult, I assure you.” Septimus handed him one of the pistols.
...
Septimus raised his pistol, mimed the activation, and dry-fired three times. “It’s not difficult. These were designed for use in the Imperial Guard, so they are far from complicated.”

Septimus' guard issue laspistol (ammunition runes to show the status of power cells - digital display) - like many guard issue equipment, shares the virtue of simplicity. Considering the sheer variability in troop types (and quality) you can get, you want to keep it simple as well as durable.
Page 188

"it is said you command as many warriors as any Legion lord except for the Warmaster himself.”

An implied scope to Huron's Astartes contingent.
Page 200

He placed the sawn-off barrel in the older attendant’s gaping, gushing mouth, and pulled the trigger. The chamber resonated with the gunshot’s echo for several seconds. What remained of the old man—which was very little above the neck—fell still.
...
She turned away from the headless body, and the ruination smearing the metal wall.

Shotgun blows apart human head.
Page 203

“A bolter shell?”
Talos nodded. “Crashed into my helm. Sheared away a chunk of my head.”

Effect of bolter shell on Talos, and he survives.

Page 215-216

“It is affecting his slumber, and generating anomalous readings. Blood of the Pantheon, his catalepsean node may never function again after this—his body is trying to reject the implant.”
...
"His physiology is in rebellion, rejecting any implantations linked to his brain. This must happen with every vision—his wounds are magnifying it. Whatever these dreams are, they are not a natural byproduct of the gene-seed.”
...
“You mean he’s tainted? Warp-touched?”

“No. This is not mutation, but a matter of genetic development. In many initiates, the gene-seed doesn’t take."
...
But his held. It did take.”

“It did, with tenacity, not grace. Look. Look at the bloodwork, and the signifiers here, and here. Look what his implants are doing to his human organs. His own gene-seed hates him. The chemicals and compounds that they released in adolescence to make him one of us still do not sit quietly in his blood. They try to change him even now, to develop him further. Like us, there is nothing he can develop into beyond the genhanced state. Yet his body still tries. The result is this… visionary state. Talos’ body is too aggressive in processing your primarch’s blood. His genetics are in constant flux.”

Explanations about why Talos is having his visions.. it seems to be a result of the extreme "reaction" of his gene seed to his biology. It offers some interesting insight into gene-seed itself and how it incorporates itself into the human body... Its always active (probably explaining why Astartes need to be monitored) and it apparently is tied to psychic activity somehow (either it is innately psychic, or it can genetically produce psychic talents in normal people.)
Page 218

The ground itself was a carpet of faces flesh-crafted together, kept alive by grotesque, baroque blood filters and organ simulator engines beneath the floor.

Interesting technology
Page 219

“Where is Jakr? And Fal Kata? Acerbus? Nadigrath?”
Malcharion cleared his throat. “En route to the Anseladon Sector, lord.”
...
“Anseladon. The Ultramarine vanguard fleet.”

Night Lords deploying to assault Ultramarines.

Page 220

“I have thirty-one fleets of varying force at work within my father’s empire."

The size of the Night Lord fleet forces.. implies hundreds, maybe thousands, of ships.
Page 221

“How fares the armada we sent to Anseladon?”
“They will arrive within the week, lord,” said Yash Kur.

We dont know if they spent alot of time prior to this, although Curze's comments suggest their departure was fairly recent.
Page 228

His thrashing would’ve been ludicrous had it not been performed by a warrior approaching three metres in height ...

Uzas is three metres tall in armour.
Page 236

The updated feed from Hell’s Iris swelled the ship’s onboard repository of knowledge with a great deal of recent lore about the local subsectors.

Octavia is hunting for data on Vilamus, which suggests that the place is very close to the Maelstrom. This owuld be consistent with the Marines Errant serving frequently out in Ultima Segmentum, at least.
Page 250

"You will be deploying with us in a boarding assault pod. Once we secure the ship, you will guide it into the warp with the Covenant of Blood, and we will make for the Great Eye in Segmentum Obscurus.”

Plan to steal a Night Lords Strike Cruiser from Huron. This suggsts Vilamus is defenitely not in Segmentum obscurus.
Page 251

“As requested, my servitors are re-tooled and poly-tasked for the planned eventualities.”

Servitors converted from mono-task to multi-task. So it is at least possible, and odesnt require especially high-purpose servitors, although it may have other tradeoffs (reduced capacity to perform individual tasks, reduced knowledge/memory.
Page 256

"Abaddon is the Bane of the Imperium, brother. His is the name whispered by a trillion frightened souls. Have you heard the legends? The Imperium even believes him to be Horus’ cloned son. And he bears that legend for a reason. The Imperium will fall. Perhaps not this century, and perhaps not the next. But it will fall, and Abaddon will be there, boot on the throat of the Emperor’s bloodless corpse. Abaddon will be there the night the Astronomican dies, and the Imperium—at last—falls dark.”
...
"How much larger are the forces in the Eye now, than those that first fled after the failed Siege of Terra? How many billions of men, how many countless thousands of ships, have rallied to the Warmaster’s banner in ten millennia? Abaddon’s might eclipses anything Horus ever commanded. You know that as well as I. If we could refrain from butchering one another for long enough, we’d already be pissing on the Imperium’s bones."

An interesting commentary on Abbadon's strength and the possibility of toppling the Imperium. Arguably, he is still weaker than the Imperium, both in numbers and logistics, but on the other hand he doesn't really need to conquer the whole thing - he just needs to reach and destroy Terra, and the Imperium will fall apart of its own accord. That is within his capability. Insert your own arm jokes here.
Page 264-265

Previous incidents of solar instability ended after a handful of days. This one was already into its third week, with no sign of abating.
...
Several images, among the last recorded by the fortress-monastery’s observation satellites before they lost connection to the surface, showed the sun spurting great arcs of misty plasma from its surface—far above typical solar flare activity.
...
Coronal mass ejection. Natural, and not entirely uncommon among stars as aggressive as Vila. Still, it played sweet hell with the monastery’s more sensitive electronics, and she’d rather not be caught on the surface of the planet without a reinforced radiation suit.
Not that there was anything out there, anyway. Vilamus itself, the fortress-monastery of the Marines Errant, was the only node of life upon the entire world.

Marines Errant homeworld is located amidst an unstable star that flares off fairly often. Note that the facility is not weakened, does not lose shields, or otherwise harmed (as some suggest is indicated in Battlfleet Gothic...)

Page 266

Tareena focussed another scan at the location, tightening the auspex pulse to its smallest scope. The returning image was no clearer than anything else she’d performed in weeks, with no sign of the ghost image at all. As the senior scrye-mistress present, she initiated a purge of previous data from her scanner cache, and set up each element of her comprehensive scrying to run separately. Motion; thermal; bio-signs; everything. One by one, they came back negative, negative, negative.
All except the very last.
“I… have a reading,” she announced. “Traces of iron detected, two hundred and sixty kilometres east of the fortress walls.”

Fortress sensors.
Page 268

Adeptus Astartes Scouts, despite their extensive modification, would still suffer out on the wastelands with the sunstorm raging through the system. That left the task to experienced Space Marines...
..
They spoke over the vox, suit to suit, not afflicted by the stellar unrest taking place in the heavens. Their suits of armour were certainly miracles of machinery to the wider Imperium, but the relatively crude simplicity and limited sensor suites left war plate immune to the kind of interference that slaughtered more sensitive and intricate systems.

Power armoured marines can go out and investigate during a solar flare/CME activity on planet, without getting cooked. Also their systems are relatively simpler compard to larger and more complicated systems (vehcile or starship perhaps) and thus more resistant to the activity.
Page 268

“Why would one of our ships—”
“I am not speaking of one of our ships."

They anticipate starships arriving in system during the "sun-storm". Which, of course, they have.
Page 276

No fortress-monastery was the twin of any other, and Vilamus rose like an Ecclesiarchy cathedral, reinforced into a gothic bastion with staggered battlements, tiered ramparts, landing platforms and, on the highest levels, docks for warships drifting below low-orbit to be repaired at the Chapter’s sanctuary.
“We could crash the Covenant into it,” Xarl mused, “and it still wouldn’t make a dent.”
...
"A fortress-monastery is a defensive bastion like no other. Each of you knows this, but even such strongholds have degrees of capability. Vilamus is no provincial castle on the Imperium’s border. The hololithic simulations of even the entire Corsair armada attacking from orbit make for grim viewing."

Fortress monasteries, in other words are well defended locales. It apparently is invulnerable tothe collision of a starship moving at considerable speed (tens if not hundreds of km/s at least, I'd wager. For a multi-megaton starship that is going to be tens if not hundreds of megatons of KE at least, not to mention a shitload of momentum.)
Page 277-278

"Raider fleets have coordinated across the subsector for years, forcing the Marines Errant into increasingly wide patrol routes. For almost a decade, the Chapter has reached farther and farther from their fortress, its crusading fleets devoted to watching over vulnerable Imperial shipping routes. I have sacrificed more than my fair share of ships to engineer this opportunity, and committed more warriors to early graves than I care to admit. "
...
"Their fleet is gone, scattered across the subsector."

Marines Errant seem to operate across a whole subsector. I wonder if that is their "territory"
Page 280

With almost two hundred kilometres of lifeless, waterless barren landscape to cover, Talos had reached the walls of the fortress-monastery three nights after leaving the canyon.

2-3 km/hr through inhospitable terrain.

Page 280

The battle armour of a Legiones Astartes warrior hardly allowed for one to become a consummate, untraceable assassin, not while it growled as loud as an idling engine, rendered him close to three metres in height, and bled a power signature detectable to even the crudest auspex readers. When the Eighth Legion went to war, it wasn’t under a veil of secrecy and the flawed hope of going unseen. Leave such cowardly hunts to the soulless bitch-creatures spawned by the Callidus Temple in their gestation vats.

Commentary on the stealth flaws of power armor, and that Callidus are supposedly vat grown.
Page 282

To be one of the Bleeding Eyes was a sacred bond; they were a populous brotherhood, spread across several sectors and allied to countless warbands.

Raptors seem to form their own hierarchy amongst Chaos forces.

Page 283

Las-fire scorched his armour with meaningless kisses, but the Raptor twisted as he fell, keeping his vulnerable armour joints protected.
...
In the span of two seconds, he’d taken another three las-round kicks against his pauldrons and tracked all four of the robed defenders, retinal targeting locks signalling the types of weapons in their grips, and giving dull-sensed representations of the humans’ heart rates.

Lasfire can pierce the joints of power armour, but useless against the solid bits. Targeting system identifes weapon and provides heart rate monitoring for the enemy.
Page 295

"Have you seen the size of it on the hololithic? I’ve seen smaller hive cities."

Vilamus is bigger than some hives

Page 298

“Have you ever seen a soul ripped from its housing of flesh? There is a moment, just a single, beautiful moment, when the body remains standing, every nerve transmitting a tide of electrical fire from the misfiring brain. The soul itself thrashes, still bound closely enough to its corpse that it shares the agony of a detonating nervous system, but unable to do anything beyond writhe in the aetheric currents.”

Self explanatory

Page 300

Now Septimus drew his pistols, aiming both of them at the Night Lord’s faceplate.
...
Twin red dots wavered over his left eye lens, as Septimus thumbed the safeties off.

Septimus' laspistols have red dot laser sights. Recall that they are also Guard issue.
PAge 307

“We’ve seen no Marines Errant because this monastery is the size of a hive city, fool."

Yet again the monastery is hive-sized.
Page 309

“And ready the warp beacon. Summon Huron’s fleet as soon as our Thunderhawks are on approach to dock.”

Whatever a warp beacon is it can pull a fleet from the warp.
Page 312

“That one you hit in the face,” Xarl chuckled. “Both bolts. His head turned into red mist. I can hear his men choking on it.”

Talos weapon again.

Page 316

The few squads of uniformed Chapter serfs that didn’t immediately flee died to the chattering crash of Terminator storm bolters. Several times, the horde stalked over ground thickly pasted with organic mush from shell-burst bodies. The Corsairs appeared no different, but First Claw was stained red to their shins.

Storm bolters vs Chapter Serfs
Page 317

..taking positions in total silence but for the growl of armour and the crack of bolter stocks against shoulder guards as each of them took aim.

Marines Errant using bolters with stocks here.
Page 320

Huron threw himself back into the relentless advance, raising his mechanical right arm as if to warn the Marines Errant away before they committed some grievous error. In the claw’s palm, the spokes of an eight-bladed star led to a gaping, charred flamer nozzle, dripping colourless promethium fuel in its crudest, stinking raw form.
...
They roared as they died, fighting as they dissolved, lashing out with weapons fused to melting fists. With their armour joints liquefying, running under their ceramite plating as molten sludge, the last Marines Errant crashed to the ground.
...
Bolters were reduced to pools of grey slag, halfpuddled on the stone.

Huron's flamer.

Page 329

Variel calmly drew his bolt pistol and shot all three of his guides from behind. Their robes actually reduced the mess, keeping the exploded gore wrapped up, like wet gruel in a silk sack. He left what remained of the three slaves to twitch and bleed, their ruptured insides slowly soaking through their clothing.
...
She lifted her gaze from the burst bodies...
...
Variel’s bolt smacked into the woman’s face, blasting the inside of her skull back into the room behind. Her headless body folded with curious tidiness,..

Bolter bursting bodies and blowing apart heads. Typical damage in other words.
Page 331

Once they were gone, the Night Lord circled her throne, taking note of the blanket covering the psychically-sensitive metal frame
..
Ruven had never suffered in guiding vessels through the warp. Sorcery could achieve through strength of will that which a Navigator achieved by a twist of genetic fortune. He had no need to see into the warp, when he could simply carve a path through it.

Difference between Navigators and Sorcerers for guiding a ship. Also navigators use a psychically sensitive metal throne.
Page 333

In the gene-vaults, a millennium’s reserves of gene-seed was stored in cryogenically sealed vaults.

Huron's target. Even he's jealous to have Ultramarine-descended gene-seed. Seriously though, evne if this were a major portion of the seed, why would this doom the Chapter? It's not like they don't have marines elsewhere, and if they've tithed regularly (and they probably have) Mars has a tithe of their gene-seed as well. And if they're like other chapters, they probably don' t keep all their eggs in one basket.
And if not? well they're just one less Ultramarines-descended chapter. Boo hoo.

Page 333

Any living being in the enemy’s colours that crossed the flagstones ended its existence as a meaty stain on sacred floor, pulled apart by firepower capable of cracking tanks apart.

Terminators pack "tank cracking" firepower.
Page 344

Variel drew and fired in a single movement, the shell pounding into the Corsair’s throat armour and bursting inside his neck. There wasn’t even a strangled cry.
...
..one collapsed without a head.

yet another asteres getting his neck blown apart by a bolt.
Page 347

The fleet’s sheer scale was a disguise in itself. No armada this size could allow its ships to drift near each other while they rode at orbital anchor, and flotilla formation was a matter of calculating hundreds of kilometres between the biggest cruisers. The fleet’s outrider vessels plied the distances between the bulkier warships, ready to react to threats breaking from the warp farther out in the system.

Corsair fleet formation around Vilamus.
Page 353

She moaned as she reached to her wrist, screwing the connection valve implanted there and locking the interface cable tighter.

Without the throne, Octavia has to use interfaces to connect to the machine spirit and communicate.
Page 354-355

The Covenant of Blood tore back out of the warp soon after, manifesting several star systems away as its commander had intended.
Their warp-wake would take an age to track, mixing with the undercurrents already swirling around Vilamus from such a huge fleet arriving only hours before. T

Tens of thousands of c, probably to cross across multiple systems in "hours". They must be still in the same subsector though.
Possbible to be tracked through the warp, although the wakes can be muddled.

Page 357-358

"They sought to attempt an escape by loading and firing the main armament of a Vindicator siege tank.”
...“If you are referring to the twin hull-breaches, then yes, their mission was a resounding success. If you’re referring to the fact the explosions and resulting blast-waves killed almost a quarter of them, then the results are somewhat less spectacular.”

vindicator tank put holes in the hull of the Echoes of Damnation at some point.

Page 358

It was an illuminating scene. To see armour, then flesh, then bone itself dissolve into the Sea of Souls. The speed with which they were flensed by the jagged tides of the warp was most humbling to witness. Most lost their holds on the hull the very same moment they were struck by the first waves. But I did get to study a few of them, watching them being utterly taken to pieces by tides of molten psychic energy.”

Effect of unprotected warpspace on living beings outside on the hull during warp translation.
Page 359

“Lord, the auspex is clean of ally and enemy alike. We’re in the deep void.”
“Scan again. We were supposed to break from the warp in the Reghas system.”
The Master of Auspex consulted a data-slate. A moment later, he transmitted his findings directly to the hololithic projector table. The Echo’s signifier rune winked, gold and lonely, far from anything else of any import. Even the closest star was millions of kilometres away.
“We are approximately two hours’ full sail from Reghas, lord.”

"hundreds" if not thousands of km/s velocity depending on how you define "millions"

PAge 367

"When they launch torpedoes, take everything on the forward shields, only rolling and yawing to starboard if they buckle below one-third strength. Precision shield-breaking lance strikes as we dive towards the lead ship, then a one-quarter volley from the broadsides as we cut through their formation.”

Shields stopping torpedoes, and "precision shield breaking lance strikes"

page 384

A broken skull, and the nausea it brought with it, denied him even that. A blow that could render a Legiones Astartes warrior out cold would be enough to kill a human, or put a hole in an armoured transport’s hide.

Astartes durability.
Page 385

The Covenant dissuaded them all from such a course of action, protecting its sister ship by jettisoning its warp core. The destroyer veered away, as nimble as any vessel of that size could be, arcing away from the tumbling machinery.
...
The Covenant fired the last of its defensive stern turrets, clipping the volatile engine core and setting it alight. The explosion lit up the void with purple-white flames, riding a spherical shockwave, catching two vessels in its anger. The first was the Cobra-class Magnate, which found itself bathed in nuclear fire, hurled off-course, and depleted of a third of its crew who died over the course of the next several minutes, fighting the flames threatening to take the whole ship to the grave.

Warp core breach. Probably ont triggering a detonation/rift, but the power plant is volatile and can be set off.

Page 398

"“I want to return to the Eye, and make contact with some of the other Eighth Legion warbands. But for now, I do not care where we go. "

Talos ultimat destination.

[Connor MacLeod]

So we round out the current NL novels with Void Stalker. I read this thing in a single day (a habit with ADB novels) and it was an enjoyable conclusion. The conclusion was satisfying and the series arc flows from book to book reasonably well. There is horror, madness and a very twisted sort of redemption. The story centers around Talos and his fate, Talos and his struggles to come to terms with his nature, his past, and his desires to rise above simple survival. It's a resolution to all those characters we've met in the previous books and short stories, it's about revelations as well even with the fuckery.

Despite the fact it firmly falls in 'chaos Marine' writing territory (like storm of Iron or the Word Bearers novels) it manages to be better than either series, by virtue of giving with one hand and taking away with another. It spends two novels building up a grudging liking (or at least respect) for the Night Lords.. only to take it away in bouts of savagery that remind you just who and what the Night Lords are. It gives hope with one hand, then replaces it with despair. In the end you don't quite know what to make of the Night Lords - you both like and hate them: they're both protagonists and villains.

Page 9

In Soul Hunter, it was claimed that the Warband of the Broken Aquila had experienced a century of time passing since the Horus Heresy, due to the vicissitudes of the warp.
In keeping with the new revelations and detail regarding the Traitor Legions during the Scouring, I’ve changed that slightly to maintain consistency. Void Stalker contains references to how much time has passed for Talos and First Claw, settling the issue much more firmly in the newly established lore of those ancient, war-torn eras.
It’s a minor change, and one I suspect most readers wouldn’t even notice, but consistency matters to me – hence this note.

A note of retconning. Yes, it does seem to happen.

Page 24-25

BUT YOU SHOULD NEVER HAVE RETURNED TO THE EASTERN FRINGE.
...
The Eastern Fringe. He couldn’t think of anything that would ever drive him back there.
...
:WHERE BETTER TO FLEE THAN THE OTHER EDGE OF THE GALAXY.

Talos and his merry band apparently have travelled from the Maelstrom (about where we left off in Blood Reaver.) to the Eastern Fringe. Depending on the exact part of the fringe they're on or how deep they went in, we're looking at a good 30-40-50 thousand light years travelled.
Page 28

:THE LEGION WAS TAINTED BY SIN THE MOMENT THE FIRST NOSTRAMAN-BORN WARRIOR SWORE HIS OATH OF SERVICE.
:AND WE DESERVED THE HATE OF OUR PRIMARCH
:FOR WE WERE NOT THE WARRIORS HE WISHED US TO BE.

This highlights a.. conversation between the dead sorcerer Ruven (a former Night Lord) and Talos in his dreaming. It basically does a good deal of foreshadowing - Talos destined to die, a discussion on the nature of the Legion - the reality vs Talos' questionable view of it, and his reasons for wanting to reach for something greater than mere survival. It's really interesting in how it throws doubt on Talos' goals and intentions and even his own feelings, and sets the stage for much of the conflict (internal and external) throughout the book.
It also casts an interesting mirror on the sort of love/hate relationship the Legion has with its Primarch, and vice versa.
Page 29

:REALITY IS SLIPPING THROUGH NOW
:THE ECHO OF DAMNATION ARRIVES AT ITS DESTINATION:
:BUT YOU SHOULD NEVER HAVE BOME BACK TO THE EASTERN FRINGE.
..
:IN THE WAKING WORLD YOU HAVE BEEN UNCONSCIOUS FOR FIFTY FIVE NIGHTS.

Close to two months have passed, much of which seems to be warp transit to the Eastern Fringe.
Page 32

"We have arrived, Talos,"
...
"Fifty-five nights."

Again they just arrived, and nearly 2 months unconscious for Talos.
Page 35

The Imperium of Man would never re-seed a cursed world, especially one beyond the holy rim of the Emperor’s beacon of light. Reaching this world under standard propulsion would take months from even the closest border planet

Apparently travel can slwo down massively out on the edge. Months between planets would be tens of c, maybe a few hundred c tops.

Page 36

"And Hound was months dead, slain in the ship’s capture...

Months passing since Blood Reaver, again.
Page 38

In the months since they’d taken the Echo of Damnation, even after half the ship had been scoured and purged clean with flame weapons..

Again 'months' since Blood Reaver. Assuming 40-50 thousand LY in under a year, we're talking at least 40-50 thousand c, and probably hundreds of thousands of c.

Page 38

Octavia had vowed to only use the amniotic pool for warp flight, when she required her deepest connection to the ship’s machine-spirit.

Magic water enhancing ship connection, not unlike with Titans.
Page 42-43

"Decades had passed since the primarch last walked upon the world’s surface, and his lessons of law had long since died. The population slid back into lawless anarchy, with no fear of punishment from a distant Imperium. Do you understand how we were poisoning ourselves? We were repopulating the Legion with rapists and murderers, with children who were the blackest sinners before they’d even tasted adulthood. The primarch’s lessons meant nothing to them, meant nothing to most of the Eighth Legion at the end. They were slayers, raised to become demigods, with the galaxy as their prize to plunder. In wrathful desperation, the primarch burned our home world. He destroyed it, breaking it apart from orbit with the firepower of the entire Legion fleet."
...
"It took hours, Octavia. All the while, we remained aboard our ships, listening to vox-calls from the surface, sending their screams and pleas up to us in the heavens. We never answered. Not even once. We stayed in space and watched our own cities burn. At the very end, we watched the planet heaving, breaking apart beneath the fleet’s rage. Only then did we turn away. Nostramo disintegrated into the void. "

Talos outlines the reasons why they destroyed Nostramo, which again underlies the fundamental conflict of the Night Lords Legion with itself and with the galaxy as a whole. And in particular, Talos own conflict as he struggles with himself, his legion, and his own mind and beliefs.
On a more technical note, we get the entire Legion fleet blowing apart Nostramo with its firepower (as noted in the Index Astartes article) over a period of 'hours' Assuming a fleet of 10,000-100,000 ships (which would be about 1/10th to 1/100th the stated size of the Imperial fleet at this point according other ADB stories like First HEretic.) and a full day (call it 100,000 seconds. Hell call it a million seconds. ) and that the planet is mass scattered (which is suggested by other sources.) and take blowing it up to between e31-e32 joules... we're talking anywhere from e20 to e22 watts average per ship. Hell even if we assume that cyclonics were involved and did the vast majority of the damage (say 1000x greater damage) we're still looking at e17-e19 watts at least.
I'll just settle for arguing 'megatons to gigatons' to hopefully minimize outrage and let the other possibilities deal with itself.

Page 46

"The Legion broke down into companies and warbands, following individual lords. The primarch’s presence was what inspired unity within us. Without him, the raiding parties sailed farther from Tsagualsa, staying away for longer periods. As the years passed, many stopped returning at all. Many captains and lords claimed they were the Night Haunter’s heir, but each claim was refuted by the others. No one soul can bind a Traitor Legion together now. It is simply the way of things. As much as I loathe him, Abaddon’s success is what sets him apart – and above – the rest of us. His is the name whispered across the Imperium. Abaddon. The Despoiler. The Chosen. Abaddon. Not Horus."

It's an interesting look at Abbadon in a non failure sort of way, because he really is one of the few who seems to manage to hold together his Legion (much less unify other Chapters, Legions and other forces of Chaos) into any semblence of Coherency or on any serious scale. The Death Guard and Alpha Legion might be comparable, depending on the sources or POV you adopt, but Abbadon is certainly one of the best in that regard. Possibly the Word Bearers too, although if you go by that series they're as rivalry-ridden as others.
Page 48

"Only mortal star-sailors, frightened of their own shadows, call it that. We simply call it the Eye, or the Wound, or… home. Are you so keen to drift into those polluted tides? Many Navigators lose their sanity, you know. It is one of the reasons so many of our vessels rely on sorcerers as guides in the Sea of Souls."

Major reason for Sorcerer navigation.
Page 54-55

The Echo of Damnation, much like the Covenant of Blood before it, was essentially a city in space, carrying a crew of over fifty thousand souls. She was, in all ways, a grander beast and a greater beauty than the Standard Template Construct cruisers and barges of the Adeptus Astartes that patrolled the heavens of the modern Imperium. The Echo had first tasted the void in the Great Crusade ten thousand years before, when the warriors of the Legiones Astartes claimed the finest vessels for themselves, and sailed their warships at the vanguard of expansionist fleets. A strike cruiser of yesteryear wasn’t always equal to its Imperial counterpart, and the Echo showed how they often eclipsed their newer cousins in size and firepower.

Crusade vs Modern era ships and the complenent of the Night Lords Strike cruisers.

Page 58

"Three Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes are known to hold protectorates in approximate regions. Each of these claims descent from Thirteenth Legion gene stock. "

Astartes 'protectorates', implying it is fairly common (at least for the Guilliman, descended Chapters, which is to say many Chapters) to watch over multiple worlds/systems. One such in this book is the Genesis Chapter, mentioned later.
PAge 59

"Without the Emperor’s warp beacon to guide their Navigators, destruction within the Sea of Souls is a significant threat. "

apparently out on the ege, the astronomican is vital for reliable navigation. Or some sort of beacon.
PAge 60

"Twenty-five million souls could sustain an Imperial Guard Founding, but frontier worlds seem to be marked for other tithes. The remote location of Tsagualsa makes it increasingly unfavourable and unlikely for Guard recruitment. "

There are apparently minimum population requirements (usually) for Guard tithing (presumably to raise a single regiment) as well as mention that fronteir (and other small?) worlds might be utilized for other purposes than just military conscription (except in emergencies.)
Also, location plays a role in conscription.
Page 60

" Why did we travel across a quarter of the galaxy to reach this location? I suspect I need not process the number of worlds in the Imperium and calculate the percentage that offer potential raid targets. So I would phrase my query thusly: Why did we come to Tsagualsa?"

1/4 the galaxy 30,000, maybe 40,000 LY crossed to reach this location, in 2 months. ~200,000-300,000c at least, assuming a striaght line course.
Page 70

Crude hydroponic plantations in the sunless bowels of beached void cruisers sustained the surviving descendants of the first colonists, but hardly enriched them.

Starship hydroponics facilities I gather.
Page 94

" More likely that they tracked us from warp beacons left by their Librarius division. "
...
"You can blame your Navigator..."
...
"She should have sensed the beacons these tenacious dogs left in the warp."

I wonder what 'warp beacons' are? They seem to be an early warning/distress system, sort of a psychic tripwire.
PAge 96

The bruise of flawed code, mixed in with the generator’s scrambled cogitations, lost and found within a thousand thoughts per second.

Techpriest cogitation speed.
Page 101

His armour was an ablative suit of composite metals, layered and reinforced through hundreds of hours of consummate craftsmanship.

Implied fabrication time of (I think) Artificer armour.

Page 108

Deltrian didn’t need to breathe – that is, to respire in the conventional sense – but his remaining internal organics required an oxygenated system to function, and could only be slowed by necessity for so long. The augmetic equivalent of holding one’s breath was to manipulate his inner chronometry, forcing it to operate at a fraction of optimal speed. It left him slower, near sluggish, but it meant he could operate in the void for up to three hours, by his closest prediction.

Mechanicum implant contorl over breathing. Probably for respiratory augmetics

Page 108

. Beneath his clawed feet, the ridged hull of the Echo of Damnation stretched out for kilometres both ahead and behind. To look in any other direction was to stare out into the far reaches of space, and the stars winking an infinity’s distance away.

Implies its at least 4 km long, which is RT era cruiser scale.
Page 109

The pack traversed brutalised sections of the ship’s armoured skin, moving through craterous holes and across wrenched-steel terrain. A warship would endure an eternity of external damage with no concern, but a handful of unfortunate shots against certain sections, and havoc was the result.

STEEL, and a commentary on hull damage.
Page 110

Deltrian’s eye lenses whirred as he sought to perceive through the outermost layers of the hull. He pressed his hand to the twisted metal, pulsing ultrasound into the damaged floor. "The damage does not extend to any significant depth. Internal team, move ahead."
"Compliance," came the dead-voiced reply, from over a dozen metres beneath his feet.

'thickness' of hull. Note that despite the thickness it may not be 100% solid, as we learn later, but its still interesting.
Page 119

Linking the spire’s foundations to the flash-fried electronics being replaced in the hull itself was a much more difficult task. To that end, Deltrian multisected his visual receptors, seeing with a fly’s segmented vision through the eyes of the four servitors outside on the hull with him; through his own perspective as overseer at the crater’s edge; and through the eyes of two of the servitors on board the ship, several metres below his feet. They were cramped into the crawlspace tunnels, their corpse-like flesh leaking its oily sweat as they laboured with fingertip micro-tools, re-bonding and rewiring the damage done.

Repairs. It shows at least some sections of the hull (at least) are not totally solid, or they vary in thickness from region to region (possibly to facilitate repairs or the functioning of certain pieces of equipment.
Page 126

"They’re half a system away, hanging back out of weapons range. They pulled away as soon as they released boarding pods."
...
"Then chase them."

Distance of strike cruisers betwene each other. 'half a system probably means hundreds of millions or billions of km. Also this is far outside weapons range.
Page 128

"We’re catching up, but too slowly. The engines are taking too long to burn hotter. I can almost picture the enemy captain, watching us as we watch him, hoping his boarding teams will take our bridge before we reach his ship. And they might, for this chase will take hours. Maybe several days"

hours or days to cross system distances to catch them, probably. assuminh a few hundreds million km in 2 days were talking 4 gees and a top velocity of 1.1%c. If a few hours and billions of km, we're talking thousands of gees. quite a range that

Page 128-130

"I need you to ready the ship for immediate warp entry."
...
"But we’re in orbit."
...
"But we’re so close to the planet. And the enemy isn’t even running to the system’s warp beacons. They’re not going into the Sea of Souls"
...
"Jump closer to the enemy. I want to… to shunt the ship through the empyrean, and ambush the enemy strike cruiser. I am not wasting days chasing these fools across the stars."
...
"You’re talking about ripping a hole in space to leap through the narrowest slice of the empyrean. The engines will barely be live before we’ll need to kill power to them. It will be a jump of less than a second, and even then, we may overshoot by a long way."
...
"Talos, I’m not sure this can be done."

Interesting that.. they could do this. Technically it should be impossible, but given the right conditions (or assistance, or luck) it probably can be. Afte rall we know ships can emerge/exit from the warp within millions or even hundreds of thousands of km from a planet.. its just very risky to do so. So its interesting the capability exists.
Page 134-135

The warship burst back into reality, streaming the migraine-coloured unsmoke of the deep ether from its spinal battlements, after what was assuredly the shortest warp jump in Legion history.
The engines had flickered live for less than a single second, ripping a rift in the void at the vessel’s prow. Even as the Echo’s entrance rip was sealing, another opened tens of thousands of kilometres away, disgorging the warship back into space.
No warp transit came without cost, but neither did the laws of logic apply when rushing through the hell behind the veil. A short flight was no guarantee of safety, and the ship’s emergence mere heartbeats after entry still left it juddering, its Geller field made visible by the clinging pollutant mists.

The warp jump. I'm not sure 'tens of thousands of km' is accurate, since they were supposed to be well out of weapons range and not long ago were 'half a system away'. We'd be talking hundreds of millions or billions of km crossed in less than a second, and frankly the idea that they're going to make a warp jump in a fraction of a second far beyond human reaction times is pretty silly, and this scene is pretty hard to reconcile as it is already.
Impiled speed is on the orde rof hundreds or even thousands of c at least. If we went with 40 AU distances (EG sol) we might be talking low tens of thousands of c. It alos depends on fraction of a second. The fact they might overshoot suggests its at least generous by a factor of 3-5 (normal human reaction times, although 1/10th or 1/20th is superhuman reaciton time typically.) We're talking tens of thousands of c easily at least.
Page 135

. The gravitic generators whined at the strain as the ship banked hard..

grav generators doulbe as inertial damping.
PAge 135

"All power to the engines."
"All power, aye." The Master of Propulsion reached for his vox-caster, dialling the code for his subordinates on the enginarium control deck. "All power to the engines," the veteran officer said into the speech horn. "We need every one of the reactors burning like a sun’s core."

Another 'star' based calc! All power to engines has the reactors 'burning like the sun's core' - that could be temperature, but that COULD also refer to output.. depending on the kind of star Given that plasma reactors tpyically do not behave like actual plasma and more like a liquid, temp seems unlikely, unless they have the ability to remain liquid at millions of K or more, which is.. interesting to consider. It could be luminosity though, but that's not neccesarily going to be equiavelent to a star in that context.
Of course it could also mean fusion
That's the way it goes though. some 'star' references are more ambiguous than others (despite what some think, its not absolutes either way.)
Page 135

"systems realigning," one of the bridge officers called back. "Auspex live. I… It worked, lord. We’re thirteen hundred kil–"
...
They were too far ahead for any of their weapons to reach yet – still, it was an improvement over lagging so far behind.

They have to be far more than hundreds of thousands of km (millions) of km away.. hell they had to be before that.
Page 136

"hey seek to purchase time, pulling further away from us to hide on the other side of that rock. They need only wait long enough for their boarding parties to take control of the ship, or for confirmation that the assault has failed. Then they can return or flee, whichever they deem necessary."
...
"You may be correct, lord. Before the warp jump, such a manoeuvre would have bought them approximately seven hours."
...
"We will catch them in perhaps two hours"

trying to 'reverse engineer' the calc is hard because we dont know initial/ending velocity, and even then it probably wouldnt be more than a few million km in a matter of hours. Crossing half a system 7 hours though is ~90-100 gees and 3-4% of c. At billions of km we're looking at over 1000 gees and .38c.

Page 138

"Ready cyclonic torpedoes," he repeated in exactly the same tone.
"Lord, we only have five warheads."

They carry 5 cycloincs, and this is a low number

Page 138

No one had even seen him move, such was the prophet’s speed, clearing ten metres and vaulting a console table in the time it took a human heart to beat once.

This is.. a bit contradictory depending on interpretation. for one thing 'heart beat' can be 60-100 bpm in a human heart, which works out to ~ half a second to a second duration on averag.e which would be 10-20 m/s from a standing start (~36-72 kph). If we go by 'no one had seen him move' and allow for surprise (Say half a second to a quarter second reaction time) we're talking 20-40 m/s. Unless it was a leap I'm guessing more towards 20 m/s or so, esp given running rates later in the novel.

Page 146

he Shriek made hunting so much easier, when enemy vessels were rendered auspex-blind, feeling their way through the cold void without scanners. The power drain was significant, though. The Shriek cloaked them in their prey’s blindness, but suckled strength from every generator on the ship. They couldn’t fire their energy weapons. They couldn’t move at anything less than a half-speed crawl. They certainly couldn’t raise void shields – the deflector screens operated on similar tuning to the Shriek itself, and siphoned power from the same sources.

This implies the shriek might have some relationship to void shields, and thus to reflex shields (what the Raven guard use) except more enhanced (its noted that the shriek blocks out aura scrye sensors - eg warp sensors.)
Page 146-147

. Some cyclonic-grade weaponry ignited a planet’s atmosphere when used in conjunction with other orbital bombardment. This moon had no atmosphere to speak of, and no population to burn, making such weapons useless even if the Echo of Damnation had possessed them.
Other cyclonics buried melta or plasma charges into a world’s core, triggering fusion effects to either force cataclysmic tectonic activity, or birth a lesser sun at the heart of the world. Either way, no world would survive. Most died within minutes, taking their populations with them.
Rubicon-grade torpedoes were lesser examples of this latter breed. They were all Talos required. One would almost certainly be enough, but two would ensure the deed was done.

Cyclonic weapon 'varieties.' we knwo from Tactica Imperialis and the FFG mateirals there are differnet kinds, and this further expands on this in several ways. They scale in yields (which conforms to there being tactical and strategic cyclonics, which range from destroying starships and cities to blowing up planets.) as well as different kinds - atmosphere burning, and 'deep penetrating' devastator types, although the latter implies some weird technobabble once it reaches the core (although it also has brute force aspects too.)
Page 147-148

He’d seen no need to destroy the entire moon in a pinpointed spherical detonation at its core. To that end, the cyclonics had struck high in the northern hemisphere, drilling into the salt flats of the barren polar caps. Rather than detonate in the planetoid’s core, they’d tunnelled through the moon’s scalp, inspiring tectonic instability as they exploded in a series of timed chain reactions close to the world’s far side, facing the enemy ship.
The moon came apart. Not neatly, by any means. A quarter of its surface shattered, bursting out into the void with such speed that the Echo’s own hololithic display lagged in displaying the changes taking place. No more than three minutes after the torpedoes struck the moon’s surface, huge chunks of debris began to break free. Ravine-cracks cobwebbed across the satellite’s surface, disgorging an atmosphere of dust into the moon’s nearspace.
...
On the occulus, the scalped moon was a sorry looking ruin, already half-surrounded by its new asteroid field.
...
At first, Talos couldn’t make out the vessel from the debris. The hololithic flickered with its usual unreliability, offering a scene with hundreds of targets. The moon’s ruptured edge was a ragged curve at the image’s side. Rocks of all shapes and sizes decorated the space above, along with a hazy mist representing particulate debris too small for focus on individual locks.

We dont know how big the asteroid is, other than it has a hemisphere, ice caps, and some sort of atmosphere and tectonics (liek an inhabitable world.) It suggests probably at least several thousand km diameter at least, if not several hundreds.. even at hundreds of km we're talking thousands of gigatons to shatter the entire asteroid (although as we learn later only a fraction was destroyed.. like 1/5 to 1/2) At several thousand km we're talking millions of gigatons. It's nohwere near an accurate assessment but as a very rough OoM calc it probably works.,
Page 153-154

In moments of Torpor, which lasted for oceans of time between Scourges, he drifted in a milky haze of numbing sensation, doing nothing, seeing nothing, knowing nothing but an eternity of weightlessness and the taste of salty chemicals in his lungs and throat. The only thing that could be generously interpreted as thought was the faint, distant echo of anger. He didn’t feel fury itself, but rather the memory of it: a recollection of once knowing rage, without knowing why.
When the Scourging came, it came in a storm of pain. The anger rose again, sparking through the veins of his head like misfiring power cables. He’d feel his jaws opening, his tongueless mouth silently screaming into the cold nothingness that cocooned him.
..
It was happening now. The man once known as Princeps Arjuran of the Titan Hunter in the Grey breathed the cold liquid of his chemical womb, inhaling fluid and excreting filth as his ravaged body was at last allowed to rest.
...
"This is how you make the Shriek?"
"It is."
...
To render an enemy vessel’s scanners inert and useless, to drown them in a voxed screed of tormented scrapcode… such technology was rare enough, but still possible in any one of a hundred ways with the right genius and the right materials. But to breed electronic interference from the pain of a single human soul, to filter organic agony through the ship’s systems and use it to harm the enemy – that was poetry the Bleeding Eyes leader could sincerely appreciate.

Origins of the Shriek.
Page 171-172

"Your body is rejecting the modifications wrought by the gene-seed. As you age, as you take wound after wound, your regenerative processes are breaking down. You can no longer heal the damage Curze’s blood is doing to your body. Some humans are simply unsuitable for gene-seed implantation. You are one of them."
...
"I have had little experience in dealing with the physiology of first-generation Legiones Astartes. But I was able to sustain my Lord Blackheart’s life for centuries, through a mix of ingenuity, ancient science, and working with fools who practised powerful blood magic."

This tends to suggest that the main reason they go for perfect genetic matches is that it minimizes the risks and long term problems with this sort of rejection/degeneration and to maximize regenerative efficiency/healing ability.
It also has strong implications about the whole Space Marine lifespan question. In modern times if the gene seed is less pure or mutated, and if 'match' quality varies, it stands to reason the time a Marine can go before its gene-seed invariably rejects it (or can no longer heal the Marine) is also variable, and defines effective 'lifespan.' What happens after that is up for debate, but I suspect that as a Marine ages, and takes other injuries, the degeneration grows, and they become more vulnerable.
Crusade era Marines by contrast could be effecitvely immortal because they have a 'source' of the gene seed that is pure, they generally have greater knowlege/more facilities pertaining to gene seed manufacture and maintenance, so such problems can be mitigated or eliminated entirely.
Page 173

"Starboard tertiary munitions deck. I’m a loader"
...
"Primaris qualified. Not… not just a hauler. Cart driver, too. Cannon loader."

Hey look they use carts for loading the cannons. Rather than just hauling on chains!
Page 175-176

"My progenoid glands are… I do not know how to describe it. They are too active. It seems they are still absorbing and processing genetic markers."
...
"Mature progenoids will always react with a subsistent level of activity – a base level of processing genetic matter, collating a biological record of the experiences and traumas of the warrior they serve."
...
"Yours have always been overactive, as we already knew. Much too efficient. They rendered your physiology unstable and were, perhaps, the cause of your prophetic vision. Now, however, they are in rebellion. Previously, they were still trying to improve you, from human to one of the Legiones Astartes. But that development was a dead end. You could improve no more. You were already one of us. Their overefficiency has now passed a critical juncture. In many cases, the implanted organs would wither and die within the body. Yours are too strong. They are affecting the host, rather than withering themselves."
...
" Either way, removal of the progenoids is no longer an option. It would make no difference, for your organs are alread"
...
"Were you to die, and a suitable host be found for your gene-seed organs, there is a chance the new host would carry the same curse as you – but with the ability to control it. Your gene-seed is uncorrupted, but unsuited to you. In a better host, with true symbiosis, they would be…"

Discussion of progenoids, and how they impact Talos. It's interesting that the prophecy bit is linked to 'over active' progenoids, since this is probably a measure of psychic/warp power, does that point to a warp connection with Astartes implants and gene seed? Especially given the 'legacy' aspect and the control (and lack of flaws) in a proper host.
Further more, the discussion points to a certain.. 'evolutionary' aspect of Geneseed - it 'grows' and 'learns' and 'adapts' from its host, improving itself and possibly becoming better. This may explain one rason why some Chapters keep it implanted until death (to continue 'evolving' it.) even though this risks loss due to damage or injury. Of course it's also possible this contributes to gene-seed mutation the longer it is implanted, so it could be a double edged sword for that reason as well.
Lastyl we get mention again of removing geneseed while the Astartes is alive.
Page 187-188

The lascannon drew in one final exhalation of energy before roaring down the corridor with a discordant freem of unrestrained blue-white power. The blade-beam of crisp, sun-bright force burned through one of the stone walls, disintegrating a hole clean through the torso of the warrior taking refuge behind it.
...
Sar Zell leaned around the corner long enough to unleash a single shot, blasting a tank-killing stream of laser through the groin and thighs of the squad’s grey-helmed sergeant, annihilating him below the waist.
...
Pressurised air, scalding enough to melt skin, vented in a hissing cloud from the weapon’s bulky generator.
...
He braced again, lifting the cannon and leaning around the corner while First Claw gave covering fire. The lascannon bucked in his fists, thumping back with violent recoil as it screamed out a beam of savage light. The torrent cleaved through one of the last Imperial warriors, disintegrating his head, shoulders and chest.
...
..lowering the overheating cannon. Stress vanes along the weapon’s side were protesting now. The barrel would need replacing soon.

Lascannon maintenace/cooling issues (venting air to cool, which suggests some sort of open cycle cooling. Hot air that melts flesh might point to double or triple digit kj 'waste' heat'
The effects (basically exploding lower torso or upper torso, at leats in parts, suggests grenade level damage (single digit MJ) at least hundreds of kj low end to punch holes like that. Assuming tnes of kj waste heat we're tlaking maybe 90%+ efficiency for a lascannon.
One assumes lasguns might adopt similar cooling and efficiencies.
Page 202

Every thirty seconds, the gunship’s spinal turbolaser discharged a beam of force, annihilating another of the weapons platforms in a bolt of blue light.

ROF of thunderhawk turbolaser.
Page 206

Talos focused on shifting his thrust, forcing the jump pack’s antigravitic suspensors to prime along with the adjusted turbines. It made little difference. The two of them tumbled through the sky together, slowed by Talos’s jump engines. The thruster pack – despite the archaic design better designed for sustained flight – was already straining from its journeys through the ash storm and clouds of smoke.

jump packs with antigrav suspensors and sustained flight capability.
Page 208

The void above Tsagualsa was wretched with enemy vessels, cruisers and barges of standardised classes, deadlocked in the sky with the Legion’s remaining fleet. The Imperial Space Marine fleet dwarfed the Night Lords’ in numbers and scope, but the Legion’s primary warships eclipsed the loyalists’ vessels in size by vast degrees. Smaller cruisers ringed the Legion battleships, trading fire against rippling, iridescent void shields.
...
"Surrendering their largest and finest warships to the newborn Imperial Navy. I pray that today the Thirteenth learn a lesson in whoring away their most potent firepower to lesser men."

again Crusade vs modern era warship philosohpy.
PAge 246

"You, however, have the potential to become a nuisance. How long have you fed on human fear?"
...
"A long time. Decades. I have never kept track."
"A very weak breed of psychic vampirism." The Raptor exhaled a thin breath of steam from his vocabulator grille. "I am not one to question the gifts of the warp."

A 'gift of the waarp.
Page 250

The Echo of Damnation rode the tides, powered by plasma fusion, driven by the sentient heart at the ship’s core, and guided by the third eye of a woman born of humanity’s ancestral home world.

Plasm afusion!
Page 254

"Beacons in the night. The blade of light. The Emperor’s Will given shape. A trillion screaming souls. Every man and woman and child ever given to the Golden Throne’s soul engines, since the dawn of the One Empire. I see them. I hear them. I see the sound. I hear the light."

Astronomican. does that mean the spirits of sacrifices live on in the beacon?
page 257

He found it amusing – in his own dullish, slow-witted sort of way – that in an empire of a million worlds, the most reliable way to carry a message to another world was to take it there yourself.

Courers are more reliable than astrotelpathy.

Page 260

What few humans remained maintained an astropathic relay station in high orbit. Their sworn duty was as simple as it was vital: to interpret the dreams, images, nightmares and voices of the warp reaching them from other worlds, and relay them onward down the 001.2.57718 Astra Telepathica Duct.
...
All five hundred and forty souls aboard were entered into the Adeptus Astra Telepathica’s Chronicles of the Lost, at their headquarter bastion on the world Heras, Corosia Subsector, in Ultima Segmentum.
The final astropathic transmissions from Orvalas reached thirty-four other worlds, strengthening the bleak song past its already potent voice.

35 worlds in a subsector, including a important relay station. Smaller than the one in FAteweaver tho.

Page 261

One by one, she killed them with her secret sight. Each of them looked into her hidden eye, and though she never knew what they saw, she knew what would happen. The first howled and reached for her with handless arms, banging its amputated wrists against her face as it died. A single glance at her third eye was all it took. No more lethal weapon existed in all of humanity’s long and bloody history. Any sailor of the stars knew that to look into a Navigator’s warp eye was to know death. No tales existed of what the doomed ones ever saw in those depths. No one had ever lived to tell of it.
Octavia had her own guesses, though. Her tutors had hinted of their own research, and of archival evidence noted by previous scholars. Her bloodline’s priceless mutation allowed her immunity to the warp’s taint, but for one without Navigator blood, the third eye was a death sentence. Each of these poor, excruciated remnants looked through the window into Chaos Incarnate. Their minds opened to the horror beyond the veil, and their mortal forms ruptured, unable to contain it.
Some of them simply expired, their spirits at last drifting from the tortured husks that contained them. Others twitched against their restraints, possessing a vitality they’d lacked at any other time, writhing as they died from agonising organ failure. Several of them burst in front of her, drenching her with stinking viscera. Jagged shards of bone cut and bruised her with each disgusting detonation, and the air soon turned thick with the reek. She had blood on her tongue and shit on her face by the time she’d killed the seventh.
By the twelfth, she was drooling herself, trembling, bleeding from her third eye. By the fifteenth, she could barely stand. By the eighteenth, she could no longer recall who she was.
She passed out as she murdered the nineteenth.
...
By the end, she was barely breathing. Her attendants rushed to her, but the Night Lord warned them back with a glare.

Navigator third eye. It seems that there can be 'backlash' effects on the person from the deaths it can cause, at least on large scales.
Page 262-265

The hololithic table’s anaemic blue light flickered against their armour as they watched a growing cross-section of the galaxy, increasingly expansive in scope. First, it showed a single system; then several nearby; soon, it was displaying a wide swathe of Ultima Segmentum, with auspex corrosion leaving the picture hazy and indistinct in many places.
...
The Blade of Angels gently carved through the misty hololithic, in a loose arc that covered hundreds upon hundreds of stars and the worlds enslaved to them.
...
"More specifically, you are looking at the Zero-Zero-One point Two point Five-Seven-Seven-One-Eight Astra Telepathica Duct."[
...
"Each Astra Telepathica Duct is as unique as a fingerprint. One might be created by artifice and intent: several worlds being colonised in alignment near stable warp transit routes, allowing the psychic dreamers on each planet to speak across the untold distance. Others are born of chance and happenstance, boosted by the warp itself, or by a simple twist of fate that allows a number of disparate worlds the chance to call to each other across the solar winds."
"The Imperium has hundreds of these ducts," Talos was smiling now. "They grow, they fade, they rise and degrade, always in flux. With few other ways to make astropathy even an iota more reliable, there is little other choice. And still, it is an art of casting runestones and heeding whispers from nowhere. Utilising a duct is no stroke of genius. But this one… What we did here, brothers…"
...
"At the very least, this will isolate several worlds for decades. At worst, it will devastate them."
...
"Humans die every night. They die in their millions, in their billions, feeding the warp with emotion at the moment of death. Astropaths are no different, except by virtue of degrees. An astropath dies, and a psychic soul cries out that much louder upon final death. The warp boils around those souls, when they are unleashed from their mortal shells."
...
"Purely by excruciating the astropaths, we could have created a song of screams, loud enough to be heard and felt by psychic souls on several nearby worlds. But it wouldn’t be enough. The butchery of astropaths is hardly a rarity. How many Legion warbands have done the same over the millennia? I couldn’t even begin to guess. Raiders have used the ploy since time out of mind, as a means to cover their tracks. What better way to mask your escape than to stir the cauldron of the warp, thickening the primordial ooze to slow any pursuers? Even with the risk of daemonic contagion, it often works well enough to be worth the risk."

Talos uses astorpathic duct to funnel 'death cries' int he wapr through astropaths. But not just regular astropaths, astropaths steeped in the psychic turmoil of weeks and weeks of death and torment of countless thousands (millions?) and their own prolonged torture. Then they use a navigator['s eye to murder them (suppsoedly the worst way to die possible) and this basically creates some sort of nasty emotional feedback loop that fucks up the wapr and burns out/kills huge numbers of astropaths on a large number of worlds (hundreds upon hundreds it would seem.) All told its rather clever
It also highlights the chief vulnerability of the network, fo course.
Also killing astropaths as some means of delaying pursuit or avoiding detection seems common. We saw something similar in BAttle for the AByss actually.
Similar rituals conducted by word Bearers (EG Erebus in 13th Black Crusade guidebook) have had similar effects as well.
Page 265

"All this power and pain at our fingertips. Weapons that can level cities. A warship capable of breaking entire fleet blockades. But that means nothing in the Long War. We can leave scars on steel, but so can any ragged pirate vessel with a battery of macro-cannons."
...
"The song means something: a truer weapon than any laser battery or bombardment cannon."

Implies that a laser or macro cannon battery, or a single bombardment cannon, can 'level' a city. Not surprising, since we know a single lance can as well (Legion of the damned) and that FFG bombardments can pull off similar scale of destruction with tacticla orbital bombardments.
at the very least, single if not double digit MT per 'battery'. Considering a ship can multiple batteries (and depending on the context/size one defines a 'battery' as) , this points to quite a bit of firepower. Moreover pirates have that level of fire power easily, nevermind full on warships.

Page 271

The Echo of Damnation remained in its sedate drift, waiting for its Navigator to recover before they risked the flight back to the Great Eye. Even a short flight was likely to kill Octavia in her current condition, let alone a journey lasting months or years, sailing across most of the galaxy.

Months or years to cross 'most' of the galaxy.. 60,000 to maybe 100,000 LY.. tens of thosuands of c at least, to hundreds of thousands of c.
Page 272-273

The other legionaries wanted to run right away, heedless of killing the Navigator in the process.
...
Even if the warp carried them elsewhere, the risk was better than remaining here for the certainty of Imperial vengeance.
He’d calmed them down, forcing himself not to show disgust. They sounded craven, either without realising or simply without caring. Imperial revenge would take a great many months to arrive, at best. Warp flight close to the afflicted worlds would be ruined for a long while yet. Then subsector command nodes would have to realise a pattern in the planets affected, which would take months – even years – leaving them here, untouched, with impunity. Even after the pattern was recognised, the Imperium’s own disparate worlds would take an unknowable age to seek the song’s origin in the telepathic duct.

It says something about response times..Talos lil trick has fucked things up on the subesctor level or better and it fukcs iwth response times. AS it is it suggests response times (indeed esp given night Lord reactions) would be considerably faster in normal circumstances (days or weeks?)
Page 278

"Difficult to say, lord. A projection based on conventional thrust would be almost thirty minutes. If they keep dancing through the void like this, it could be five, it could be twenty"

Variability of Eldar mobility and speed. Striaght line thrust of 30 minutes works out to anyhere from 5-20 minutesf ro eldar, suggesting they are 1.5 to 6x faster (accel or velocity wise, or perhaps both?)
also it points to charging and making a warp jump in between 5-20 minutes
PAge 284

On its fourteenth exit from the warp, the Echo of Damnation broke the peace of a silent sky. It tore its way back into the material realm, riding a storm of violet lightning and carnelian smoke.

They've made 14 consecutive warp jumps to evade the Eldar.

Page 286

Three weeks, the prophet thought. He’d not slept since the endless chase began, when the eldar ghosted out of the void mere hours after he’d murdered the astropaths. How many times had they ripped their way in and out of the warp since then? How many times had they emerged back into real space, only to find yet another eldar squadron waiting for them?
Three weeks.

3 weeks of running.
PAge 287

"‘They’ll be on us in twenty minutes at the most. Get us out of here."
...
It took several seconds, but the ship itself gave the answer. Shaking gripped the deck as the warp drive began to amass the energy required to break through one reality into another.

Again 20 minutes or less to chage up warp drives and leave.
Page 288

"‘We don’t have the fuel to keep dancing to their song, and we can’t break their blockade."

Points to a minimum of 15 or so wapr jumps pushing them to dangerous fuel reserves.
Page 300

"How many worlds will have fallen dark from your psychic scream?"
...
"Dozens. Perhaps a hundred. There is no way to know without accessing Imperial archives once the dust has settled on every afflicted world. Even then, we may never know."
...
"The Imperium knows something happened out here. You’ve sown the seeds of a subsector legend. The night a hundred worlds fell dark. Some will be silent for months. Some will be lost to warp storms for years. Some will never be heard from again – the Imperium will no doubt arrive to find them reaved clean of life by the daemons loosed upon them. "

More of the aftermath. Again subsector level thread for dozens - 100 worlds.

page 302

"Why is the asteroid field so dense in this region? Even allowing for drift patterns, this is different to what I remember."
Lucoryphus gestured to the hololithic. "Talos shattered half of the moon."
"Well." Cyrion cleared his throat. "Perhaps a fifth of it."

1/5 to 1/2 the moon shattered, and it contributes materially to asteorid density (making it dangerous)
Page 305

"Sixty-one between the ages of eight and fifteen, adapting well to the various stages of implantation. A further one hundred and nine of harvestable age, yet not ripe for implantation. Over two hundred have died so far."
Talos knew those kinds of figures well enough. "Those are very good survival rates."

Astartes implantation process of recruits. It goes without saying that this is far better than what Honsou pulls off. hell it might be better than what Imperial Loyalist Chapters manage (1 per 100 for White Scars, again.)

Page 306

"Deltrian’s ship is capable of warp flight. "
...
"There is no room on Deltrian’s vessel for more than ten additional warriors, and even that is better devoted to relics that must be returned to the Legion. You and your work must be preserved above all."

Small warp-capable craft carried aboard starship.,
Page 311

She strapped herself into the uncomfortable throne in the belly of Deltrian’s squat insectoid ship. Her ‘chamber’, such as it was, offered a single picter-screen and barely enough room to stretch her legs
...
She heard it bumping into something in the corridor outside, while the ship shook on the deck with final armament loading. Octavia’s box of a room had no porthole windows, so she cycled through the external picter feeds. Image after image of the Echo’s main hangar deck flickered across the screen. Thunderhawks were being loaded with full payloads, and drop-pods were winched into position.

Techpriest's warp capable ship aboard the Echo of Damnation, obviously. Yet another indicator of compact starships.

PAge 312

"Blackened has been loaded into this ship’s conveyance claws already. "

Deltrian's ship was loaded up onto the thunderhawk, suggesting its bigger (quite a bit so) thana Thunderhawk.
PAge 318
[quote
"All targets marked and locked," called out the weapons overseer. "We’ll need a full minute of uninterrupted bearing to unleash the entire first volley."
..
How many targets will that hit?’
"If the aliens behave as eldar fleets usually do, rather than running alongside us for a broadside exchange… Fifteen targets, my lord."[/quote]
Assuming half hit and at least 2-3 'proximity' hits per ship we're talking... 30-45 at least, and more like 60-90 guns. That is not neccesarily a hard limit, either. Also a minute to get off a full broadside.
Page 321

"Lord," called out one of the auspex officers. "Alien torpedoes are resistant to our interference."
"Even to the Shriek?" He knew it was calibrated to Imperial technology, but even so, he’d been hoping it would make a difference.
"Several have lost their bearings, others are ploughing into the debris field. But more than three-quarters are still on target"

Eldar torpedoes ignore cruiser ECM. Also shriek needs to be calibrated to be effective.
Page 321

"Xenos vanguard ships entering maximum weapons range."
...
...servitors slaved to their stations chattered at the threat of incoming warheads.
....
"Time to impact?"
"The first will be upon us in less than twenty seconds."
...
"Shields holding," a servitor chattered nearby. "Two-thirds strength."

Torpedoes take 20 seconds at least, probably no more than minutes to reach the target.. we're talking hundreds or thousands of km/s at least. given that shields block it, it leans towards higher torpedo velocities. And if torpedoes are that fast, imagine how fast cannon are...
PAge 321

Proximity alarms wailed at each and every asteroid that went spinning aside from the inexorable advance..

Voids block asteorids.
Page 322

Individually, each pulsar beam was as thin as string against the background of infinite black, but they streaked across the void in a cobweb of shining force, raining and lashing against the Echo’s suffering void shields.
The Echo of Damnation rolled as it ran, offering its broadsides and spinal batteries to the enemy. Return fire burst from the Eighth Legion cruiser – corruption bursting from suppurated wounds – as the warship lashed back with its own guns. Such was their grace, several of the eldar vessels seemed to shimmer out of existence, vanishing from the path of incoming fire. Others took the onslaught, letting it starburst across their shields, secure in the knowledge that the Echo’s flight forced it to devote the majority of its armament to clearing a way through the rocks.
The first alien ship to fall was a minor escort ship bearing a name no human could accurately pronounce. Certainly, none of those present on the Echo of Damnation cared to try, yet they cheered and laughed when it broke apart before their eyes, ruined by a barrage of plasma and hard-shell fire from the spinal batteries

Exchanging gunfire. Eldar ships seem to have shields, and their pulsar lances are very.. fine, narrow beamed. Also the Echoes has plasma and macro cannon.
Page 324-325

"Your augmetic aspects, while impressive, are far too limited for you to interface with the machine-spirit of my vessel."
..
"You trust servitors and a machine-spirit to fly out of this?"
...
The slave and the adept, along with the two-dozen servitors and robed crew, were watching the hololithic projection that served as tactical map and occulus alike.
...
The entire vessel was cramped to the point of madness. To make room for the vessel’s armour, weapons systems and propulsion, every tunnel was a narrow walkway, and every chamber was a squat box featuring the essential systems and enough room for a single operator. The command deck was the most spacious area of the whole ship, and even that offered no room to move if eight people were present at once.

Deltrian's warp capable ship, design and size. Its' increidlby compact and space intensive for the warp engines, and probably has to make sacrifices in other regards. It has a crew of a few dozen and has a pilot servitor and machien spirit. Probably to do the jumps as well normally, although it can accpeit navigator aid.

Page 326

"Tech-priest. A question, to alleviate my boredom. I want to listen to the eldar’s communications. Can you leech their signal?"
"Of course." Deltrian deployed two of his secondary limbs, letting them arch over his shoulders to work on a separate console.

Deltrian can hack into eldar comms. I'm surprised they use comms.. I figured they'd use more psychic communications, esp via wraithbone. Raiders or pirates perhaps?
PAge 345-346

Septimus checked the bay doors ahead. Beyond the gunship and several stacks of what Deltrian insisted was essential equipment, there was precious little room in Epsilon K-41 Sigma Sigma A:2’s only landing bay.

Deltrian's warp ship has its own hangar, big enough for the thunderhawk. Again that suggests the ship is many times bigger and more massive (thousands of tones, and perhaps over a 100+ meters long?)
PAge 361

In reply, he squeezed his trigger, filling the tunnel with the distinctive flashing roar of an Imperial assault cannon. Suspensors in his elbow, wrist and the gun’s grip counterbalanced any recoil, letting him aim without distraction, but his retinal feed had to dim to compensate for the brightness of the muzzle flash.

Terminator assault cannon recoil compensation. I imagine this might be used for bigger tanks too.
Page 369

As with humans, all eldar were not created equal. Yuris had learned that at great cost. The ones with weak projectile rifles and thin armour of black plate and mesh weave – they died like weak children and shot with all the skill expected of any hive-born member drawn from humanity’s urban dregs. But the others… The shrieking witches and the sword-killers…

Eldar troop quality. It seems. - at least as far as Ulthwe goes - troop quality stems more (on average) from the equipment quality rather than innate skill over humans. At least for Guardians. Aspect warriors are of course another story entirely.
Page 379

The two maidens before him both screamed at once, raising their blades. He felt the same ice crawl through his muscles, dragging him back, slowing him down.
...
The Night Lord released a scream of his own – a roar from three lungs and an enhanced respiratory system, heightened tenfold by the vox-speakers in his snarling helm. The surviving Night Lords heard the cry and took it up a heartbeat later.
He’d used his cry to shatter windows and deafen crowds of humans to soften them up for the kill; now he used it in opposition to those who sought to turn his own weapon against him.
Three of the maidens’ swords shattered outright. Several of the alien warriors lost eye lenses to splitting cracks as the harmonious, savage scream reached its apex. In the same moment the Night Lords’ cry hit its crescendo, the eldar’s howl died a sudden death.

Howling banshee vs Night Lords in screaming contest.
Page 396

Their boots pounded onto the stone as they sprinted, never once looking back. Genetically enhanced muscles bunched and moved within the fibre-bundle cabling that augmented their strength, while three lungs and two hearts worked to capacity inside their heaving chests.
Talos vaulted a pile of rocks, his boots crashing down on the other side and never missing a stride. His eye lenses flickered runic sigils between eighty-four and eighty-seven kilometres per hour. Those figures sank lower each time he was forced to slide and skid around a corner, or leap up and kick off from an adjacent wall at a junction in order to maintain a semblance of speed.

Night Lord running speed. FAstest known speeds yet
Page 403

Cyrion winced at the pain in his thigh, feeling fairly certain his leg was broken by the twenty-metre fall. His helm’s display was a haze of static, stealing any chance of checking his bio-readings..

Damage and injury from 20m fall.
PAge 422

The grenade in his fist activated the moment his fingers slipped from the thumb-plate. It exploded, triggering the three grenades he’d taken from Cyrion, the two he’d taken from Variel, and the power generator on his back.
With the exception of the fire that incinerated half of an alien immortal’s physical form,...

Implied power storage/generation capability of Power armour battery/reactor core.. high MJ/low GJ range probably. Whether that is sutained or total we dont know.

PAge 426

. As a Navigator – precious as she was – they’d be likely to send her to a stronghold of the Navis Nobilite in a nearby sector, but pilgrims and refugees were one of the Imperium’s many lifebloods. Losing themselves among the teeming billions would be no trouble.

billions of refugees and pilgrims in a sector (subsector?). That gives an indication of needed shipping traffic, esp in a given (relatively short) timeframe.