And with this we reach the final update of the Eisenhorn trilogy. at least for his, particular story. There is more to come of course. But that means the end of this little update and I move onto something else. I think I'll do Double Eagle/Brothers of the Snake/Angels of Darkness in a single thread, and then whenever I get around to titanicus I can throw that in there too. I need to think up a good title for it though if its going to be a general one.
Anyhow, enjoy your final dose of Abnett's best.
Page 684
They'd tailed the train in a poorly-insulated speeder and deployed through a blizzard. In those conditions, standard las-weapons might have died, their cell-power drained by the cold. But a well-lubricated autogun would fire below freezing. IT had only to rely on its percussive hammer action.
Las-weapons do apparently have limits as far as weather and the enviroment goes. Of course its not the first novel where extreme cold hampered some lasguns (Rebel Winter.) Regiments designed for cold weather combat (Eg Valhallans) dont' seem as hampered by this that I recall though.
Page 684
Vessorines, three of them. Plated in combat armour and firing heavyweight man-stopper ammunition. Frankly, I'd rather have squared off with angry Kasrkin.
-Eisenhorn here implies that Vessorine janissaries are more formidible than Kasrkin. Not sure if I buy that or not, but oh well.
Also note they apparently are wearing some sort of rigid (or partly rigid) combat armor and the autogun ammo is a "man stopper" round (whatever that is supposed to mean.)
Page 685
...smashed the first three shots away, impact sparks sheeting from the energised sword blade.
..
..deflecting squashed rounds into the panelling around me. Wood splintered.
Esienhorn continues to pretty much deflect most gunfire with his force sword.
Page 685
Further shots punched into the hallway carpet and exploded on the inter-wagon
doors.
If we take "explosively" ltierally, which it may or may not be, this may explain their lethality.
Page 685
..Barbarisater plunged through his ceramite chest armour and burst his heart.
Ceramite chest plates - although useless against Barbarisater.
Page 686
They had lowered a directional detonator onto the window of the cabin I had shared with Aemos.
Shaped charges I suppose.
Page 687
..the warriors of Vessor considered sword skill one of the three primary battle arts, devoting as much time to it during their training as to gun lore and open hand.
I'd say alot of cultures consider a sword important in 40K culturally, espeically if it has chainsaw teeth
Page 689
Clearly very old, his eyes, nose and ears had been replaced with augmetic implants:
primitive, functional devices finished in boiler-metal black that probably had been handcrafted for him by the locomotive's devoted engineers. Even his teeth, framed by a spectacular white tile beard, were cast iron. His name was Alivander Suko, and I later discovered that he had been master of the Trans-Atenate Express for three hundred and seventy-eight years.
More funny augmetics.
Page 692
The place wanted to seem tough and underhive and dangerous, but it was all for show. This was a lunchtime and after-work watering hole for mid-hive clerks and Administratum graders, a place for assignations with winsome girls from the logosticator pool, the celebrations that accompanied promotions or retirements, or rowdy birthday drinks. I'd been into real twist bars and heard genuine pound. This place was just sham, theatre.
Heh. I just like this bit because it's so Abnett.
Page 692
She returned with a single shot glass on her suspensor tray. The glass was actually a cup of pressure-moulded ice.
- waitress using a "suspensor tray" and delivering a drink in a glass made from pressure-molded ice. Fun, and this place apaprently isn't all that "upscale" or high end.
Page 693-694
...three kilometres away in a locked lodging house room, sweating and straining as I
channeled my will via the runestaff and animated the body of Clansire Etrik.
...
Maria Tarray drew a plasma pistol and shot Etrik through the chest. The Vessorines all around opened fire with their autoguns and las-carbines.
As my puppet was torn apart, I let go of the warp vortex that had been spinning in my mind ever since I had summoned it.
It surged out of Etrik's collapsing body and expanded, annihilating the janissaries, Entipaul's Lounge and the entire level sixty deck of hive four in a radius of fifty metres. Maria Tarray was atomised. In the last milliseconds of her life...
Plasma pistol, lasguns and autoguns blow apart the "puppet" (although numbers and percentages from each weapon make this impossible to calc) - the main interesting thing is Eisenhorn doing his little impression of a Vortex grenade. It's not the first time such powers have been attirbuted to psykers (even Imperial psykers) but it is interesting.
The scary part of this is how Eisenhorn is using it without care for who he might be catching in the blast radius. It's really a sign of how he's fallen from his Amalathian roots in Xenos.
Page 695
...by the evening, we were leaving the planet. Five and a half days out from Gudrun, in the vicinity of Cyto, we rendezvoused with the Essene.
5 days or so to get outsystem to meet the Essene. I dont remember the ship or the calc though.
Page 695
Fifteen days later, we were a long, long way from New Gevae, a long way from Gudrun itself.
...
..breaking off from his merchant runs in the Helican spinwards and laying course for Gudrun.
~1000c roughly
Page 696
..the creation and remote animation of thralls - human beings psionically controlled as puppets.
...
..the process worked best with a freshly killed cadaver. But on the other hand, it was simply an elaborate extension of my use of will...
...
I had also never used a warp vortex before, but it seemed the only weapon I could equip my thrall with that would trap the trappers.
...
The feedback left me unconscious, and I was ill and weak for two days afterwards.
More on Eisenhorn's tricks at the 40K equivalent of Applebees/TGIFridays, and yet more indication of how "Radical" Eisenhorn has really become by this time.
We should note the strain of both activities had on him, in the context that with his force staff he believed himself to potentially be alpha level. This suggests that a warp vortex needs a very strong psyker to achieve.
Page 697
“Let me use your astropath...”
..
Maxilla's cadaverous, nameless Navigator performed his hyper-mathematical feats of divination, and set the Essene thundering into warp space as fast as its potent drive could carry it.
Maxillas ship either always had a Navigator and and astorpath, or it never had them until around book 2 or so, when he started travelling out sector routinely.
Page698
Some were protected by softly glowing stasis fields, others hung weightlessly in invisible repulsor beams.
Maxila has access to stasis and repulsor tech.
Page 699-700
“At the Battle of Corossa, Terfeuk committed four million Imperial Guardsman to the field. Four million, Gregor. They don't do battles like that any more, thank the Throne. It was of course the age of High Imperialism, the era of the notable warmaster, the cult of personality”.
..
“And of those four million men, only ninety thousand left the field alive”
...
“Terfeuk was no butcher. No glory hound. By all accounts he was humane, and beloved by his men as fair and generous.”
Maxila called it the ‘Pacificus war’. It's rather interesting thta 4 million guardsmen is considered an insanely high number to commit at times like this, given that we're only a few centruies off from the Sabbat Worlds Crusade. This suggests that perhaps, in this region of space/Segmentum at least, large scale warfare of that sort is uncommon or unusual. Or it may suggest that such conflicts go in cycles, like many things do. The pattern of activity for the Imperium as a whole in the 5th ediition core rules timeline would suggest this (periods of aggressive, fervent military expansion and conqeust followed by contraction/lulls as the activity expends itsefl.)
Page 700
“You are bending the rules of the Imperium, of the Inquisition. You are, undoubtedly,
what they call a radical.”
...
“I break the rules for my own gain. To get what I want, to amplify my wealth and status.”
...
“But you're not doing it for yourself. You're doing it for the system you believe in and the God-Emperor you worship...”
Maxila provides his own insight into Eisenhorn’s activities. The interesting thing is that while you like Maxila, he's not quite what we would call.. "principled" and that leads to a rather nefarious twist to his words.
What is also interesting is that Maxila's words imply that he may not believe in or worship the Emperor - he says "you" rather than "we" - or that he even strictly believes in the stuff the Imperium believe.s He seems to view himself as somewhat apart from it, but forced to work within it and with it to sruvive, like an ally rather than a vassal. That he can be this honest with an Imperial Inquisitor is perhaps a testament to how close the two of them have grown (and a further reflection of how truly radical Eisenhorn is.)
Page 701
“Maria Tarray was much older than she looked or claimed.”
...
“Maria was born in 020, corrupted from conception by the tainted torc Pontius wore. Several notorious heretics who have evaded the Inquisition in the last three hundred years were actually her under different guises.”
Chaos corrupton can be passed along like it were genetic. Also Tarray was close to 400 years old (360 or so at least, ifI remember the timeframe approximately) and she only looked to be at most early middle age or so. Whether this is because of rejuv or some influence of chaos however.. hard to say.
Page 702
The Essene put in at Hubris four days later. Hubris was an outlying world in the Helican sub-sector..
15 minus 5.5 days is 9.5, plus 4 is 13-14 days roughly. From around Cyto to Hubris is ~30 LY so about 800c.
Page 708
It took the Essene ten weeks to reach Promody, a jungle world on the trailing hem of the Scarus sector, specifically the Antimar sub-sector...
then weeks.. probably some 100-150 LY from Hubris to Promody straight line.. ~780c.
Page 709
Ravenor's force chair hissed over the ground a few centimetres in the air, surrounded and suspended by a spherical field generated by the slowly revolving and tilting antigravity hoop that encircled it.
Ravenor's force chair has antigrav bits that spin or move. Possibly an indicator that Imperial antigravity - or at least some kinds, are created by fast rotation/spinning (akin to some theroetical antigrav proposed - basically using high-velocity spins to simulate mass. I'd say its more borderline plasuible or plausible seeming than realistic though - I still bet there's some fair magic to it.)
Page 710
The camp had been raised on a duralloy raft twenty metres square, held above the water by locked, cycling repulsor lift-pods. Angular, geometric, the structure the raft supported looked like a large tent, but I realised from its gentle shimmer that it was formed from intersecting fields of opaque force energy.
We went in through the one-way field membrane that formed the door and entered a cool, climatecontrolled chamber lit by glow-globes. Equipment was stacked up in metal containers and there were several items of collapsible furniture. Further screens denoted adjoining rooms, veiled off.
Ravenor's camp shows some interesting technologies in it.
Page 712
His mind had grown stronger in his infirmity, compensating for the
things denied him. I was sure he was now much more than a level delta psionic.
Ravenor himself.
Page 712
"My work in the last few years has required me to develop an understanding of divination and prophesy.."
...
"Things have been... revealed to me."
He mentiones that the destruction of the Distaff was predicted to the hour. He also mentions that his powers seemingly were improved by his 'work', which given what we learn in the later stuff, means he had training with the Eldar. We see how impressive Eldar shit is when they want to be. It's rather interesting as well that Ravneor willingly deals with the Eldar for training and shit - this may be his own brand of radicalism, different from Eisenhorn but still radical. It may be a result of his own hangups at his injuries.
Page 713
Imperial culture has never set much store by divination." Gideon told me. "I have come to suspect that is a great weakness."
...
"Most of it is rubbish, lies, mischief, the delusions of broken minds. Sometimes prophetic insights are genuine, but they are usually made by psykers who have either done it by accident or who are insane."
The Imperium and divination. It shows how unreliable it can be considered, although I guess Scarus is perhaps unusual compared to others we know of in that it doesn't seem to make use of it actively. They use psionics to scan the past, but not the future. odd, considering how prevalant the Imperial Tarot is supposed to be, nevermind other "santcioned" methods of precog.
I also figure it involves long term stuff, rather than short term "combat" precog, which seems to be more reliable and consistent.
Page 713
"They are able to read the invisible geography of space-time and unravel probability with great precision. But they are mercurial. Sometimes they use their insight as a lever to change the outcome of events. Sometimes they stand idle and watch as prophesies play out."
Ravenor on the Eldar. It echoes some of the stuff we learn in Gav Thorpe's "path of.." Eldar novels, especialy Path of the Seer and the Skein.
Page 714
"I wanted to learn something of the way their minds witness reality independent of their bodies. Their farseers, for example, have a kinaesthetic sensibility that operates regardless of the restraintsof time and space-"
Again something echoing the Path of novels.. implies some explanation of how their FTL/psychic "detection" works that we've seen exhibited in other sources.
Page 714
"But in order to learn certain things, I have been forced to make promises."
to the Eldar. Again its interesting how even Ravenor does things that would brand him a radical.
Page 716
"I believe radicalism is inevitable. We all become radicals eventually as we appreciate that we must know our enemy in order to defeat him. The real dangers come from extreme puritans. Puritanism is fuelled by ignorance, and ignorance is the greatest peril of all. That's not to suggest the path of the radical is easy. Eventually even the most careful and responsible radical will be overwhelmed by the warp. The real judge of character is what good a man can do for the Imperium before he is drawn too far."
Ravenor on Radicalism. The way he describes it is almost.. darwinian and symbiotic. Radicalism is neccessary to an extent, but too much can be dangerous. Extreme puritanism can be dangeorus, but it can also be important for curbing the radicals. Almost as if inquisitors have a "life cycle".
Naturally i'm inclined to agree with this, and we see much of that in these novels. Not only with Eisenhorn but other inquisitors. Commodus Voke's attitudes change through his interactions with Eisenhorn (accepting Eisenhorn's 'subtle' methods, not turning him in when meeting to discuss Quixos, etc.). We also know about Heldane, who was an extreme radiacal in "First and Only" who starts out as super-puritan in this series.
Page 717
..a slim, very tall figure in a long, hooded robe stepped through from the privacy of the inner rooms. The robe was made of a gleaming blue material that flashed like shot-silk but seemed heavier and more fluid. There was a strange, unpleasantly sweet scent, like burnt sugar.
Ravenor calls him a "Lord seer." and is identified as Eldar. i suspect they're not Harlequins, but they are eldar. Probably craftworld eldar
Page 719
One, a massive ogryn with a blaster cannon..
Something like a titan's "blaster" i bet.
Then again IIRC bolters were also described as "blasters" in very early fluff too.
Page 724
"The daemon-king fought a war of staggering enmity with a rival. The rival's name is not given, but from the marking here, I would guess it was one of what we tentatively understand to be the four primary powers of Chaos, although it seems there were only three at that time. I wonder why?"
I couldn't answer that.
...
"The rival is described as a foul sorcerer."
..
"..a lieutenant, a warlord, a prince... whatever you want to call it, who tried to usurp the place of this primary power."
Sounds like a high echelon Daemon tried to usurp Tzeentch, and the other Chaos powers put him in his place. I wonder how his 'exile' to realspace happened, and how it could be maintained.
Page 725
"I suppose they mean his ship. The word is closer to "chariot" or "galley" in literal terms. And I think this may be the key point. The barque was his war machine, the craft that he rode into battle. It is described - here, and also here - as being of such power and might that the warped ones who wrote this were themselves staggered by it"
To paraphrase McCoy in ST5: "What does a daemon need with a ship?"
Page 729
In orbit above it is an semi-automated waystation established and maintained by a consortium of trade guilds and Navigator houses as a stop-over and service facility.
..
Medea and I went to the station's central hub to see if the resident astropath had received any messages for us from Gideon
Jeganda system. The station is "semi-automated" in space for attending to the needs of starships, and has its own astropath,. Probably doubles as a relay.
Page 731
"How many travellers with you?"
...
"Four!" said Maxilla. "These four. The rest are my crew, servitors all of them, slaved into my ship."
Either Maxilla is hiding the fact that he has a navigator and astropaths, or they are all servitors, meaning that he has psyker servitors as other sources have alluded to.
Page 732
"Your defences are admirable, but only because your brain isn't entirely organic.
You're so much a machine.."
..
"..shall I burn out another part of your blasphemous body?"
Maxila again. Heldane can psychically 'burn out' parts of his augmetic body.
Page 734
Heldane hurled him across the chamber. The inquisitor was strong by any standards, but he supplemented his physical strength with telekinesis. Maxilla hit the wall with a terrible splintering impact, and Heldane held him there with his powers for an awful moment, squashing him against the duralloy with his mind. There were several loud cracks of bone and metal.
Then he let him go and the limp, broken body of Tobias Maxilla fell to the marble deck and lay still.
- Heldane uses his psychic powers to telekinetically augment his strenght (and lift the mostly-mechanical Maxilla into the air)
Page 734
"Tell us about the daemonhost." said Heldane. " Where is it secured? How can we find it? What are its command words?"
"Command words?" I replied. "Why would you need those? Do you intend to control the daemonhost yourself?"
...
"The daemonhost!" Heldane rasped. "Give it to us!"
Heh. Osma and Heldane want Cherubael. Fucking hypocrites.
Page 735
I could see enough to realise it was wearing the body of one of the Essene s astropaths. Plug sockets still decorated its gleaming flesh, some still trailing wires. All clothing had burned away, but the astropath's extensive bionic augmentation was clear. The body had no legs, just a dangling assembly of cables and machined connectors where the astropath, like most of Maxilla's crew, had plugged directly and permanently into a vault socket.
This is a strong indicator that the astropath, at least, indeed is a servitor, although perhpas a more self-aware one. To be honest I've never been quite clear on where the supposed boundary between augmetic/cyborg and "servitor" was.
Page 736
There was a shriek of energy and the air above me was split by a blinding turquoise beam. It struck Osma full in the facee and vapourised his head in a splash of light, bone shards and adipose tissue. His body hit the floro with a metallic crash and the fused remains of his heavy augmetic jaw bounced away across the deck.
...
Maxilla, still sprawled and wretchedly twisted where Heldane had dropped him, slowly lowered his hand. The digital ring weapon on his elegantly gloved finger was glowing.
maxila's unknown digital weapon. "vaporize" probably means explode, although it did seemingly melt (albeit partially) the jaw.
Page 737
Heldane slashed with his sword in terror. The blade melted. The inquisitor's clothes caught fire.
- Cherubael melts Heldane's power sword effortlessly. I'd say poor Heldane, but fuck him. MJ range eaisly to melt the sword assuming iron.
Page 737
The astropath it inhabited hadn't spoken for many years and the voice organs had partially atrophied.
Yet again an indicator of the astropath being more servitor than cyborg.
Page 738
It was diagrams of the four chief runes of banishment. They wouldn't banish Cherubael, because they hadn't been properly invoked. But I was pretty sure just reading them would hurt.
Runes again can harm merely on sight, regardles of who is using them.
Page 739
The boltgun roared. The shot exploded my left knee.
...
He fired again and now my right leg went out from under me, also mangled at the knee.
Botlgun explodes/mangles Eisnenhorn's knee. Rather amazing it doesn't amputate it, but it could depend on the ammo.
Page 740
There was a release of power and light so powerful that it was beyond sound. The host body disintegrated, showering us with a hail of burned flesh, charred bone and blackened augmetic debris.
Aemos disrupts Cherubael's body. Rather interesting he uses the Runestaff, but has no innate psychic abilities himself. Possibly due to the sorcery gained from the Malus Codicium he had studied. If so thats rather frightening for its implications.
PAge 741
We managed to get about sixteen kilometres from the Essene when the first of the real spasms shook it. The majestic sprint-trader, Isolde-pattern, pride of its master, looked like a black shell to us, lit from within by raging atomic fires, spilling trails of debris behind it as it slowly tumbled into the embrace of the gas giant.
..
Then a white dot appeared where the Essene had been, and grew bigger, and then became a white line that got brighter and longer and closer, until we could see it was the flaming edge of a huge expanding disk of nuclear energy.
"atomic" and "nuclear" applied to the Essene's destruction, possibly hinting at its power source.
Page 744
Barbarisater trembled in my right fist as it sensed a bio-aura..
Eisenhorn's force sword once again displays a measure of sentience as well as the ability to detect living things.
Page 744
...green armoured bodyglove and a thick, quilted flak coat.
"flak coat" - you can make flak armour out of clothing.
Page 745
Gustine wore heavyweight grey ablative armour and carried a old, much-repaired standard IG lasrifle
"heavyweight" Ablative armour.
Page 745
Six of them had arrived on Gideon's ship as a bodyguard for the farseer. Tall, too tall, inhumanly slender, silent, keeping themselves to the part of the ship assigned them. Aspect warriors, Gideon had called them, whatever that meant.
Eldar Aspect Warriors.
Page 745
We'd approached the world in a wide, stealthy orbit. The Hinterlight was equipped with disguise fields that Ravenor was reluctant to explain to me but which I felt were partly created by his own, terrifyingly strong will. High band sensors had located a starship in tight orbit, a rogue trader of some considerable size that didn't appear to realise we were there.
- Ravenor's ship is equipped with what Eisenhorn calls 'disguise fields" that evideently cloak it from detection. Ravenor explains that they are partly created by his own psychic abilities. (This is very similar to the cloaking shields Draco uses in the Inquisition War books, which are partly technolgocial and parttly psychic bolstered by his own abilities.) It could be inferred that the devices may have some elements of Eldar technology to them, given Ravenor's great reluctance in discussing his connection to the Eldar in any great detail, although at this poitn it is purely conjectural. In any cae, Eisenhorn seems familiar enough with the concept that even if Ravenor's are unusual, the technology exists in some other form (we know this of course from other books, like the Last Chancers books, Eye of Terror, the Draco novels, etc.)
Page 746-747
The surface of Ghiil had been engraved, that's what it looked like. A perfect
black sphere, engraved across its entire surface with tight, deep, interlocking lines. In reality, each of those lines was a smooth sided gorge, two hundred metres wide and nine hundred metres deep.
...
Kenzer had knelt down with his auspex at the side of the gorge, studying microscopically the relationship between chasm floor and chasm wall.
I didn't need him to tell me they were perfect. Smooth. Exact. Machined. Engraved.
"The angle between floor and wall is ninety degrees to a margin of accuracy that... well, it is so precise, it goes off my auspex's scale. Who... who could do a thing like this?" Kenzer had gasped.
...
"If they had fusion beams, starships, a spare planet and unlimited power supplies."
Possible implied limits on Imperail starship weaponry, although quantifiying it is a bit difficult (we dont know how long the gouges are or how many.) It does suggest that blowing apart planets via conventional firepower (EG nostramo, nova cannons, etc.) is probably beyond the "modern" Imperium, at least as far as starships go.
Also mention of fusion beam weapons, why they are specifically needed I dont know .
Page 748
He was a short, pale man wearing patched and cut-off flak-canvas...
...
Kraine raised his night-sighted Tronsvasse autorifle...
"Flak canvas" clothing again. And a night-sight on a rifle.
Page 748
The sound of catapults grew louder. There were several of them at work now, buzzing out a duet with heavyweight lasguns.
Shrukien catapults. also mention of "eavier" lasguns.
Page 749
Crezia had been obliged to shave my head in order to implant the cluster of neural and synaptic cables that would drive the augmetic frame around my legs. She had been upset all through the implant procedure. It really was terribly crude, even by basic Imperial standards. But out in the middle of nowhere at all, it had been the best she and Antribus could cobble together.
...
..the back of my skull was raw, sore and clotted with the multiple implant jacks of the
sub-spine feeds my faithful medicaes had installed to make my leg frame work. The steel-jacketed cables sprouted from my scalp and ran down my back into the lumbar servo of the walking brace.
The bunched cables were flesh-stapled to my back, like a neat, augmetic ponytail.
Eisenhorn's latest fashion accessory. Now he's the augmetic, mutilated monster we all know and love.
Page 749
Kenzer screamed. There was a flurry of las-fire.
I wheeled back immediately. Kenzer was sprawled on the floor of the gorge, ripped apart by laser shots. He was only partially articulated, such had been the point blank ferocity of the shots. The wide puddle of blood seeping from his carcass was soaking into the soot.
Two jannissaries at most caused this in a farily short period of time (short barrges of gunfire, maybe a couple dozen or couple hundred shots apiece) - single or double digit KJ could probably cover it. No apparent mention of significant heating would tend to confirm this.
Page 750
..two Vessorine janissaries in full carapacewear.
...
He put a burst of rounds through the face plate of one of the Vessorines..
The guy with the autorifle - Vessorine in carapace with apparently flak clothing beneath. The face plates dont seem to be able to stand up to sustained (burst) fire.
Page 750
Then he walloped over onto his back as Kara's cannon ripped him apart.
Kara Swole's handcannon. How/why it did this we have no idea.
Page 751
A Vessorine janissary in combat carapace pushed out, weapon raised.
Nayl had him cold, felling him with a single shot.
Nayl is using a hellgun. Hellguns can penetrate the carapace the VEssorine use.
Page 751
This daemonhost would not be permitted to have any of the capricious guile of the previous versions. It would not rebel. It would not be a maverick that had to be watched at all times. It was bound and locked with triple wards, totally subservient.
...
This Cherubael could manifest much less power, a direct consequence of its reinforced bindings.
We get comment on the tradeoff in binding vs power level of a DAemonhost.. the more bound the safer it is and the longe rit lasts, but the less power it has.
Page 752
Cherubael obeyed. It atomised the last merc..
The abilities of a "reduced power" Daemonhost.
Page 755
They were massive lamps, high power, of the sort used to light landing fields or military camps.
Mounted on suspensor platforms..
more suspensor gear, simply used as mobile lamps.
Page 756
Cherubael embraced the two mercs from behind and they turned to ash and sifted away.
Again our reduced-power daemonhost at work. Provides a nice bookend for the "blowing apart a titan" feat for a fully unbound daemon.
Page 756
Las-fire and solid rounds raked our vehicle, tearing strips and nuggets out of the deck plating and the rail.
Lasfire and solid shot on metal.
Page 757
I could make out little of the dark gulf below, but there was something there. Something the size of a great Imperial hive city. I discerned a black, geometric shape what was fashioned from neither stone nor metal nor even bone, but, it seemed, all of those things at once. It was repellent. Dead, but alive. Dormant, but filled with the slumbering power of a million stars.
The barque of the daemon-king. Yssarile's chariot of unholy battle, his instrument of apocalypse, with which he had scoured the warped fortresses and habitations of his own reality in wars too dreadful to imagine.
Our hive sized "daemon ship" which supposedly has the powre of a "million stars" (planet shattering scale power if true.) Really I'm not sure how seriously to take all of it.
I wonder if its made out of wriathbone analogue.
Page 763
Under orders from Battlefleet Scarus, under the command
of Lord Admiral Olm Madorthene, annihilated the planet in 392.M41.
The daemon planet Ghtil was annihilated by no more than a whole battlefleet.
Page 763
He [Heldane] was killed, following injury, on Menazoid Epsilon in 765.M41.
Heldane lived some 400-500 years at least I believe, then. Lilith lasted longer of course.
Page 763
.. it is believed that Nayl died circa 450.M41.
Nayl had been a bounty hunter for 3 decades at least as per
Malleus, including at least a year or two in Eisenhorn's employ at that time. He must have lasted at least to an age of 200.
Page 764
Crezia Berschilde returned to Gudrun, where she served as Chief Medicae (anatomica) at the
Universitariate of New Gevae until her retirement due to failing health in 602.M41.
Close on 400 years of age.
Page 764
Medea Betancore returned to Glavia and became the director of her family shipwright business, a post she held for seventy years. She disappeared en route to Sarum in 479.М41
At the time of "Hereticus" she was something like 75 years old. She lived at least another good 90-100 years at least, although her "disappearance" is interesting.
Page 764
Lord Inquisitor Phlebas Alessandro Rorken recovered from his ill-health and became grand master of the Ordos Helican after the disappearance of Leonid Osma. He held the post for three hundred and fifteen years.
That would mean Rorken lasted some 656 years, given he was "at least three hundred" as of Malleus, and there was a ~40 year or so timeframe between that and Hereticus.
Eisenhorn lasts til sometime in 400 (supposedly) so he persisted for a couple decades after this.
