Horus Heresy series analysis thread

Connor MacLeod · Post by **Connor MacLeod** » 2012-07-24 09:55pm

Next installment: Flight of the Eisenstein by James Swallow. It's a twofold story: a Retelling of the events of the Istvaan Massacre (virus bombing and the destruction of the loyalists) from the POV of one Nathaniel Garro of the Death Guard Legion and his flight to reveal Horus' treachery, as well as the 'signature' story (effectively) of the Death Guard - our introduction to Mortarion and the way the Death Guard is (and what it is destined to become.)

We also get our first novel glimpse of the Sisters of silence, which are the Great Crusade era version of the Sistes of Battle without power armour (or voices.) Also cameo by Rogal Dorn.

It's not a bad novel, not a great novel, but it provides the bridge between the events of the first three books and what is to come, basically setting up the 'sandbox' of the Horus Heresy through which the series has expanded.

As always, one update in two post.

Page 11

Shifting gently in the silent darkness, the crenellated hulls and great ornate shapes appeared as a congregation of Gothic edifices, cathedral-wrought in their complexity, drifting as if torn from the surface of worlds and carved into warships. Great sculpted bows filigreed into arrow points turned, stately and lethal, to face into the dark on a uniform heading. Torches burned on some, in apparent defiance of the airless vacuum. Plasma fires trailed white-orange streams of turbulent gas from chimneys along the kilometres of gunmetal hulls. These beacons were lit only when conflict was in the moment. The flares of wasteful, daring heat they generated were signs to the enemy.

Kilometres long starships. note that apparently some actually have torches burning on the exterior of ships. in an airless vaccuum. GOTHIC.

Page 15

Kaleb felt a ripple of satisfaction, and unconsciously ran a hand over his robes and the skull-shaped clasp at his collar. The device was as big as his palm and made from some kind of pewter. The mechanisms within it were as good as a certified passage paper to the machine-eyes and remote scrying systems on the ship.

Jewelry with some security mechanisms inside.

Page 15

Kaleb had seen things alter, thanks to the juvenat treatments that had extended his life and given him a fragment of the longevity of his masters.

Juvenat again giving a "fraction of the longevity" of Astartes. Considering that they're functionally immortal, this doesn't really help much.

Page 16

Nathaniel Garro raised Libertas to his eye line and sighted along the length of the blade. The heavy, dense metal of the sword shimmered in the chamber's blue light, a wave of rainbow reflections racing away from him along the edge as he tilted it down. There were no imperfections visible in the crystalline matrix of the monosteel.
..

"It's my understanding that the servitor who attended your weapon was a machine-smith or a blade maker in its previous life. Some elements of its original artistry must remain."

"monosteel" power weapon. Also apparently servitors skills can be affected by prior trades or tasks - this suggests that suiting a servitor's current task to his prior skillset may be beneficial. It also explains (for example) why they make combat servitors from the insane or criminal troops, as well as giving a good reason for using living bodies to make servitors rather than just vat-grown types.

Page 24

Tradition had it that the XIV would never number more than seven great companies, although those divisions held far more men than those of other Astartes cohorts like the Space Wolves or the Blood Angels; and while many Legions had the tradition of giving the honorific of 'first captain' to the commander of the prime company, the Death Guard also held two more privileged titles, to be bestowed upon the leaders of the Second and Seventh Companies respectively.
..

...just as Garro was known as 'battle-captain'. It was Garro's understanding that his particular honorific dated back to the Wars of Unification, to a moment when the mark of distinction had been handed to a XIV officer by the Emperor himself.

Death Guard organization.

Page 28

"Deathshroud." he whispered. These two Astartes were the personal honour guards of the primarch, fated never to reveal their faces to anyone but Mortarion, even to the end of their lives. So it was said, the warriors of the Deathshroud were chosen by the primarch from the rank and file men of the Legion in secret, and then listed as killed in action. They were his nameless guardians, never allowed to venture more than forty-nine paces from their lord's side. Garro felt a chill when he realised that he hadn't even been aware that the Deathshroud had entered the chamber.

Mortarion's elite guard.

Page 30

The ornamental skull and star device of the Death Guard grimaced out from his breastplate and at his waist, level with the chest of a file Astartes, Garro saw the drum-shaped holster that carried the Lantern, a handcrafted energy pistol of unique Shenlongi design.

An indicator of Mortarion's height. And of course, since this is a James Swallow novel, Mortarion will carry a Shenlong-forge world crafted weapon.

Page 31

"I'll say red, like the orks."

Rahl sniffed. "White as milk, like the megarachnid."

"You are both wrong." Prom behind Rahl, his face buried in a data-slate festooned with tactical maps, Tollen Sendek's flat monotone issued out. "The blood of the jorgall is a dark crimson."

Ork blood is red? I'm pretty sure its green.

Page 33

In the hololith cube, the shape of the jorgalli construct became visible. It was a fat cylinder several kilometres long, bulbous at one end with drive clusters, thinning at the other to a stubby prow. Huge petal-shaped vanes coated with shimmering panels emerged from the stern of the thing, catching sunlight and bouncing it through massive windows as big as inland seas.

Mortarion gestured with a finger. "A cylinder world. This one has twice the mass of the similar constructs found and eliminated in orbits around the planets Tasak Beta and Fallon, but unlike those, our target is the first jorgall craft to be found under power in deep space."

Jorgall cylinder ships.

Page 37

Through the pict-circuits laced into the lenses of his armour, Garro rapidly blink-clicked through the data available to him via his command level vox-net. There were feeds from the eye cameras of the squad leaders, quick scripts of telemetry from Voyen's med-icae auspex and there, for a moment, a grainy, low resolution image from outside across the boat's serrated prow.

Pict-circuits laced into helmet lenses - apparently those provide the blink-clicked retinal displays providing useful data. Squad leaders have cameras, and telementry from other sources can be recieved (including outside sources.) At least, at command level, and this is probably a useful feature.

Page 38

The captain felt no fear at the jorgall guns. The assault was moving at punishing speed beneath a cloak of electronic countermeasures, heat-baffle flare bursts and glittering clouds of metal chaff that would render sensors unintelligible.

Use of electronic countermeasures to cover a boarding assault.

Page 44

The Death Lord himself had clearly deemed these inferior strains of xenos to be unworthy of his scythe, and instead was at work putting them to the light of his Lantern.
Hard-edged white rays keened from the stub barrel of the huge brass pistol, leaving purple after-images on Garro's retina despite the enhancements of his modified eyesight. Wherever the Lantern's punishing beam struck, jorgall defenders became charcoal sketches, twisting, then turning to smoke.

The Lantern in operation. Basically its a glorified plasma pistol/Inferno gun, just not plasma or melta like.

Page 45

"Human spacefarers once lived in cylinders such as this." noted Sendek as he reloaded, "In the deep past, before we mastered the force of gravity. They called them ohnyl colonies."
..
He gestured upward, to where the landscape curved away to meet itself kilometres over their heads. A thin bar of illuminators extended away down the axis of the cylinder, disappearing to the fore and aft in yellow clouds. Garro's eyes narrowed as he spied motes of dark green moving up there, shifting through the corridor of zero gravity at the world-ship's centre.

Hah. O'Neill colonies. May imply that the Colony is kilometers in diameter, but it may simply be referirng to circumference as well. Considering the "motes" are beyond Garro's vision (and Astartes sight can extend for kilometres), I'm betting on the former.

Page 46

Feet had become balls of curved talons, and there were more of the lethal arc-throwers and needle-guns embedded in joints where they had keen fields of fire.

..

Garro saw one of Hakur's men wreathed in humming glints of artificial lightning and smelled the stench of crisping human meat as a flight of the xenos flyers shocked the life from him.

Xenos using needle weapons and lightning guns.

Page 47

It was difficult for him to tell the women apart. Their armour was polished to a glittering sheen, unadorned by any brash sigils or fluttering oath papers like the pale wargear of the Death Guard. Their faces were hidden behind hawkish gold helmets that reminded him of the barred gates to some ancient citadel, no doubt equipped with breather gear that let the unmodified Sisterhood manage the toxic air of the bottle-world.
..
The Sisterhood carried swords and flamers, blades and plumes of fire licked at the jorgall flyers as they dipped into range. Some also carried bolters.

Sisters of Silence.

Page 47-48

As was their vow in the Emperor's service, the women never spoke, even those speared by needle rounds or struck by arc-fire. They communicated in line of sight using a gestural language similar to Astartes battle-sign, or through a code of clicks over the vox. From the way they crossed the engagement zone, he had no doubt in his mind that they knew exactly where they were going.

Sisters of Silence never speak, so they communicate through other means.

Page 48

Garro had heard that unlike other living beings, these unspeaking women were silent not just in the material world, but also in the ephemeral realm of the mind. There were names for them: untouchables, pariahs, blanks.

Names for what the Sisters are. Depends on your author, they all basically describe the same category of beings.

Page 49

The captain heard the slamming crack of Mortarion's Lantern once again, and looked up to see the primarch sweep it through the air like a searchlight, catching aliens afire, turning them into a rain of ashen fallout.

The Lantern cremating flying enemies. Note that it must have an insanely huge power supply and impressive cooling compard to plasma weapons, and increidble focus and range compared to meltaweapons. Maybe its a pistol version of a lascannon?

Page 50

Sendek ministered to his auspex. "Tactical plot shows heat sources comparable to jorgall hatchery constructs in this direction." He pointed. "That way The virtual compass is having difficulty assimilating the internal structure of the bottle-world."

"How current is that data?" asked Hakur. "The sense-servitors neglected to tell us we were landing in a chem-lake. I find myself wondering what else they may have missed."
Sendek frowned. "The readings are... contradictory."

Auspex heat sources. And sense serivtors. Seems to be a combination of telemetry from various s ources.

Page 55

He heard the splintering of flexsteel in the joints of his armour, smelled the acidic tang of spilled coolant as leaks jetted from his backpack.

Astartes armour has flexsteel joints.

Page 56

What surprised him was not that the xenos hatchling was completely free of any mechanical augmentation, but the freakish mutation of the tripedal being. It was conjoined, a malformation of two aliens that had somehow become merged during growth. Its skull was enormous, a bloated thing with four distinct chambers, quite unlike the ovoid heads typical of its species. Legs and arms twitched towards him, milky eyes swivelled and narrowed in Garro's direction.

A psychic mutant.

Page 57

The mutant's torso burst in a welter of blood and bone fragments as a single bolter round tore a hole through it as big as a fist.

Mutant has fist sized hole blown through it by single bolter round.

Page 61

The wreckage of the jorgalli picket fleet was a cloud of crystallised breathing gasses, hull fragments and the dead. Some of the teardrop-shaped xenos vessels were still relatively intact. One by one, these were being scuttled with atomic charges, reduced to sun-hot balls of radioactive plasma.

Atomic charges.

Page 64

"Forgive me, but it was my understanding that the Sisters of Silence are never to speak."
The girl nodded, her manner changing slightly as she answered. "That is indeed so, lord. No Sister may utter a word, unto death, once she gives the Oath of Tranquillity. I am a novice, captain. I have yet to take the vow and so I may speak to you. Sisters-in-waiting such as I serve our order when communication is needed with outsiders"

Exception to the "no speaking" rule and the pragmatism driving it. Everyone needs a translator.

Page 66

A piece of the void moved slowly across the prow of Endurance, passing between the bow of the warship and the distant glow of the Iotan sun. Whereas conventional vessels of the Imperial fleets ran with pennants and signal lamps to illuminate the lengths of their hulls, this new arrival, this Aeria Gloris, came in darkness, arriving out of the interstellar deeps as an ocean predator might slip to the surface of a night time sea.

Garro had never laid eyes on a Black Ship before. These were the mothercraft of the Silent Sisterhood, carrying them back and forth across the galactic disc on the Emperor's witch hunting missions. It was hard to make out anything more than the most basic details of the ship's design. Framed against the solar glow of Iota Horologii, the battle cruiser was at least a match in size for the Death Guard capital ship Indomitable Will. It lacked the traditional plough blade prow of most Imperial vessels, ending instead in a blunt bow. A single, knife-edge sail hung below the stern and on it was an aquila cut from shimmering volcanic glass. Where Endurance and the ships of the Astartes flotilla were swords against the enemies of Terra, Aeria Gloris was a hammer of witches.

Inquisitorial Black Ship. Seems to be battlecruiser scale.

Page 76

Like him, the primarch was no longer clad in his brass and steel power armour, but instead in common duty robes over a set of more utilitarian gear. Still, even in such simple garb, there was no mistaking his presence. High and gaunt, a man spun from whipcord steel muscle, he was as tall in his deck boots as Typhon was in the First Company's Terminator armour.

More on Mortarion's height.

Page 77-78

It was said that there was no toxin too strong, no poison so powerful and no contagion of such lethality that a Death Guard could not resist it. From their inception, the XIV Legion had always been the Emperor's warriors in the most hostile of environments, fighting through chem-clouds or acidic atmospheres that no normal human could survive in. Barbarus, the Legion's base, the adoptive home planet of Mortarion himself, moulded this characteristic. As with their primarch, so with his Astartes: the Death Guard were a resilient, invincible breed.

They hardened themselves through stringent training regimens as neophyte Astartes, willingly exposing themselves to,chemical agents, contaminants, mortal viral strains and venoms of a thousand different shades. They could resist them all. It was how they had found victory amid the blight-fungus of Urssa, how they had weathered the hornet swarms on Ogre IV, the reason why they had been sent to fight the chlorine-breathing jorgall.

The durability of the Death Guard.

Page 78

The servitor deftly mixed and poured dark liquids into the cups, and Garro's nostrils sensed the odour of chemicals: a distillate of the agent magenta nerve bane, some variety of sword beetle venom, and other, less identifiable compounds.

A fun drink. Agent magenta is some sort of bio/chem weapon Swallow made up from his blood angels novels. Yes, the Death guard willingly drink biowarfare beverages.

Page 85

The pict screen was a flexible thing, like cloth, and it hung from the eaves of the armoury chamber alcove in the manner of a tapestry. Cables trailed away to shining brass sockets in the walls, streams of data feeding images from the ship-to-ship vox network. The view was a live signal, attenuated by interference from the Horologii star, and although it appeared to be instantaneous, it was actually a few minutes behind the real events, the transmission slowed by relativistic physics, not that such a fact seemed to concern the Astartes gathered to watch.

The display came from remote scrying picters on the bow plane of Barbarus's Sting, a light frigate that had been tasked to follow the jorgall world-ship on its last journey. The images were being recorded for posterity. The better views would doubtless be worked into stirring newsreels for distribution across Imperial space.

An interesting pict screen. We see something like it in the Shira Calpurnia novel Blind, even more interesting is that its a telementry feed from a scout craft.. albeit one limited by light speed lag from light minutes away.

also the newsreels/propoganda angle. OUR GLORIOUS SPACE MARINES crushing xenos and all that - I'm picturing something out of the Starship Troopers movie.

Page 91

But what caught his attention and held it firmly was the single great battleship that orbited ahead of them all, isolated in its own halo of open space and screened by a wall of sleek Raven-class interceptors. A heavy ingot of fashioned iron, the Warmaster's Vengeful Spirit radiated quiet power. Even from this distance, Garro could see hundreds of gun turrets and the slender rods of massive accelerator cannons that were twice the length of the Endurance.

Horus' flagship. "hundreds" of gun turrets and fixed axis accelerator cannon twice the length of the Death Guard starship

Page 101

The Warmaster. He was indeed every iota of that, a perfect sculpture of the Astartes ideal on the stone chair, handsome and potent, radiating chained power. Robes laced with cords of white gold and copper pooled around him, cascading over the basalt frame of the throne. He wore armour of a kind Garro had only seen before in artworks, intricately worked plates of emerald-tinted flexsteel with vambraces made of black carbon.

Pieces of Horas's battle gear resembled elements of the older Mark HI Iron Armour and the current Mark IV Maximus type, while some parts were more advanced than anything used by the Death Guard. An exotic pistol that appeared to be fashioned from glass nestled at the Warmaster's hip in the folds of an animal-skin holster. If anything, Horus seemed barely restrained by the bonds of ceramite and metal he wore, as if one mighty flex of his shoulders might split and throw them off.

Horus' outfit.

Page 103

The other presence in the room was almost as imposing as Horus, and the battle-captain found himself measuring the primarch of the World Eaters against his own liege lord as the two leaders exchanged a neutral look. Where Mortarion was tall and wolf-lean, the primarch Angron was thickset and heavy. The Death Lord's pale aspect was at the far end of the spectrum from the Red Angel's clenched fist of a face, eyes deep-set among an orchard of scars. Angron's mere presence leaked the coiled potential for feral violence into the chamber.
As Mortarion embodied the dogged, silent promise of death, so his brother primarch was the personification of raw and murderous aggression. The Lord of the World Eaters stood broad and deadly in bronze armour and a heaped cloak of tarnished chainmail that trailed the smell of old blood in the air.

Angron.

Page 106

There would be one objective to complete before the assault on the Choral City began, and that was a raid to silence the monitors on Isstvan Extremis, the outermost world of the system and home to the nexus of its sensor web network. Once blinded, the defenders of Isstvan III would only know that retribution was on its way. They would not know where or when it would strike.

Isstvan's only system network of sensors (or it seems defneses) is this one planet. SEems a bit silly if you ask me.

Page 117

High up atop the Endurance's dorsal hull lay the oval dome of the ship's observatorium, a space put aside so that naval crew might be able to take emergency star fix sightings should the vessel's cogitators become inoperative. It also served a purely ornamental function, although there were few among the Death Guard who ever used it for so trivial a purpose.

Ship's post that serves backup and ornamental functions.

Page 118

Isstvan's blue-white sun was a bright glow off in the lower quadrant, attenuated by a localised polarisation in the augmented armourglass.

Armourglass, with polarsiation features.

PAge 119

It did not seem so long ago, and yet there were countless years of time measured by Terran clocks that he had lost in the confusion of the warp, in cryogenic stasis and through the strange physics of near-light speed travel. Garro had been there as the Emperor crossed the galaxy in search of his star-lost children - Sanguinius, Ferrus, Guilliman, Magnus and the rest.

Warp space time dilation and relativity of near-c travel (HAH!) have skewed Garro's perception of time. It also suggests near-c travel (but not neccesarily combat) is fairly common at this point in time.

page 122

It was the match of his right hand, but nowhere near as large as the monstrous power fist lined with green enamel and patient little ticks of lightning. He flexed the heavy fingers experimentally. Decius's control over the glove was so deft that he could pick a flower or crush a skull with equal ease.

Power fist has vairable control.

Page 123

Decius watched the battlements of the west wall through the magnifiers of his optics, studying the motion of the black figures patrolling up there.

Opticla magnifiers.

PAge 124

The battle-brother with the missile launcher was still with him, sporting the ugly singe mark from a glancing shot on his torso, but otherwise untouched. He saw the Astartes drop to one knee, and then with the ammunition carousel chattering, the missileer released a four-shot salvo at the bunker.

Multi-shot rotary magazine missile launcher.

Page 125

He saw Tollen Sendek at his heels, a sapper-command signum unit in his grip.

Signum unit of specialised purpose.

PAge 126

Decius ran at the battle-captain's flank and plunged into the roiling clouds of rock dust, his helmet optics automatically rendering the terrain before him in grainy wire-frames over the standard visual spectrum display. Sendek had, in defiance of conventional battlefield doctrine, used powerful hull-cutter charges designed for starship boarding actions instead of standard krak munitions. The resultant overpressure from detonation in an atmosphere - even one as thin as that of Isstvan Extremis - had blown down a large part of the west wall and gone on to cut a bite from the central dome beyond it.

Krak muntiions and hull-cutting charges for breaching operations. Also Sendek's helmet has some sort of rendred overlay (sensor-based) to compensate for loss of vision. (terrorsight?)

Page 126

His boots crunched on the bodies of dead men pulped by the breaching charges. Lines of twisted metal rebar crowded in around the Astartes, with bits of dangling ferrocrete strung along them like dusty pearls.

Results of the breaching charge. Also, ferrocrete with rebar stuck in it.

Page 127

The briefing had told the Astartes to expect a standard Imperial sensor platform, perhaps with some recent modifications, but nothing more. Decius imagined they would penetrate the dome and find banks of cogi-tators, wave-monitors and the like. He could not have been more wrong.

Imperial sensor platform.

Page 132

Indolently, as if it were something done out of boredom rather than directed cruelty, the woman flicked her wrist and sent coils of shimmering aural force humming away down the lines of the pyramid. The waveforms caught around Pyr Rahl and hoisted him off the stone, flipping him over in mid-air. Ash came off him in wreaths, his armour puckering and bending in the wrong places. He released a strangled cry that ended in a crackle of bone as he imploded. The Death Guard's crushed remnants bounced away into the melee below.

Warsingers doing their sonic/TK death trickery.

Page 133

At his flank, he was aware of Decius giving him covering fire, grimacing as the bolt rounds whined away in ricochets from the sheer energy of the wall of music.

And the warsingers again deflect bolter fire.

Page 133

Holding on to the fury from the cold murder of his subordinate, his sword swept across and connected with her song-shield, the noise of the impact like a knife point drawn down a sheet of glass. Effortlessly, the enemy champion drew the sound in and threaded it into her cacophony, weaving it into the mad chorus.

In a flash of understanding, the nature of his foe was revealed to him. The Warsinger could not be brought down by the energy of light and heat. Only raw sound would be enough to kill her.

Hell, why not?

Page 133

From the terrible mantra filling the dome space, the Warsinger teased out a single line of screaming clamour and spun it into a fist of glowing resonance. Garro saw the blow coming and shoved Decius aside, dodging away from her. She moved at the speed of sound, and with a sonic boom shocking the air into white rings of vapour, the Warsinger hit Garro with a hammer made of hymnals.

Warsinger moving at trans-sonic speeds. The sonic based attacks grow tiresome though.

Page 135

There were patterns of crushing damage to Garro's torso and his arm, and somewhere up there he had lost his bolter.
..

Decius's face soured behind his breath mask and he was grateful that his commander could not see his expression. Less than a hand's span down Garro's thigh his right leg simply ended in a wet red scrap of fleshy rags, burnt bone and charred meat. It could only be the potent flood of coagulants, neuro-chemical agents and counter-shock drugs from his gland implants that were keeping the captain conscious.
Contemplating the sheer agony of the wound took Decius's breath away. The Warsinger hadn't simply torn Garro's leg from its socket. She had sheared it off with a serrated blade of pure sound.

Aftermath of the Warsinger fight.

Page 137

The Death Guard Apothecary's head snapped up from the body of a brother who had been cut apart by laser fire.

Lasfire cutting apart a Death Guardsmen. Note in the previous novel that Isstvan weapons were less impressive than Imperial lasguns...

Page 140

The trance. Part of his brain eventually provided him with this small fragment of data. Yes, of course.

His body had closed its borders and sealed him inside it, all other concerns and outside interests forgotten as his implants worked in concert to stop an encroaching death. The Astartes was in stasis, of a kind: Not the artificially generated fashion, where flesh was chilled down and chemical anti-crystallisation agents were pumped into the bloodstream for long-duration, low-consumable starflight. This was the semi-death of the wounded man and the near killed.

Sus-an membrane, I think.

Page 146

Instead of a form of strong, firm muscle and sinew, there was a skeletal construct of dense steel and plates made of polished brass that mimicked the planes of a thigh and calf. The augmetic leg was of excellent quality, but it was no less shocking to see it there. Conflicting thoughts warred over Garro's expression. "It will suffice. The chirurgeons tell me that the nerve bonding went without incident. According to Brother Voyen, in time I will not even be aware of it."

Garro's augmetic leg.

Page 149

Garro's face was hard with chained anger, and he felt it surge each time the new leg made him limp. The minute gyroscopic mechanisms in the limb would take time to learn the motions and kinetics of his body movement, and until they did, he would be forced to walk as if lame.

Coping/learning curve on the new augmetic.

Page 159

The Astartes moved across the dull mud in a thick line of marble-grey and green armour, a heavy wave of ceramite and flexsteel fording snarls of razor wire and barriers made of rough-cut tree trunks. They strode through kill points and shrugged off hails of stubber bullets.

Ceramite and flexsteel power armor resisting stubber rounds.

Page 160

The Eisenstein was an unremarkable vessel, an older pattern of ship in the frigate tonnage grade, just over two kilometres in length from bow to stern. It bore some resemblance to the newer Sword-class craft, but only inasmuch as most Imperial ships shared a similar design philosophy. Almost every line vessel in service to the Lord of Terra was constructed of congruent elements: the dagger prow, the massive block of sub-light and warp drives, and forged between them amidships of crenellations and complex sheaves of steel.

Eisenstein is a 2 km frigate, similar to the 'newer' Sword-class. Similarities in design elements may or may not suggest modular construction

Page 165

One of the Isstvanian soldiers ran at him, shrieking and aflame, and pulled Temeter into an embrace. The captain let the flamer drop from his grip and ripped the man in two, tearing him apart.

Power armor strength.

Page 166

The captain peered out and saw a massive cylinder standing upright in a shroud of steam, some distance beyond the zone where the drop-pods had put down. It was easily the size of a hive-city habitat block, guidance fins still glowing cherry-red with the heat of re-entry.
...

From inside the monstrous drop-capsule came the hooting call of a battle-horn, and then planes of steel and iron emerged from the smoke to become a colossus bristling with armour and guns. The ground resonated with each thunderous footfall as the Imperator-class Titan strode out towards the Choral City.

Titan drop pods.

Page 170-171

Like all Astartes of senior rank, Garro had training and experience in starship operations and he fell back into the learning drilled into his mind by hypno-conditioning as he read, figuring the status of the frigate once the new co-ordinates were reached.

He frowned. Typhon had told him that Eisenstein was to act as an interceptor for Isstvanian absconders, but once settled at this new posting, the ship would be too close to the edge of the third planet's atmosphere to react quickly enough. To function correctly in their assigned role, the frigate had to stay high, giving the gunnery crews time to spot, target and destroy enemy ships. The drop in altitude only narrowed their field of fire. Then he studied the corresponding planetary co-ordinates and his concern deepened. The orbital shift would put the Eisenstein directly over the Choral City, and Garro was certain that no void-capable craft had been left intact down there.
...
Had they been carrying drop-pods and Astartes for a second assault wave, then the reasoning behind the orders would have been clear, but the frigate was not configured for those sorts of operations. It was, in the most basic sense, only a gun carriage. Decked with weapons batteries that emerged from her flanks in spiky profusion, Eisenstein's only function when ranged so close to a world was one of stand-off planetary bombardment, but such an action seemed unthinkable. After all, Horns had already eschewed Angron's demands to blast the Choral City into ashes at the war council.

Astartes training includes hypo conditioning allowing them to be ship to ship combatants, and Garro comments on orbital interception (higher orbits for targeting pererred over lower orbits.) - drop pod and orbital bombardment roles seem to have similar parameters as well.

Page 173

The crates were halted in the service gantries that ran down the spine of the frigate. On either side of the open steel tunnel were loading gears and hopper mechanisms for the ship's primary weapons batteries. Large open gun breeches lined the walkway, ready to accept war shots from the ammunition magazines that towered above them.
..
Kaleb's face showed confusion and he let his gaze follow the length of one huge cannon out beyond the hull through the armoured slits of the sighting port.

The Eisenstein's gun deck - laoding gears and hopper mechanisms. Whether they are automated, servitor or human operated we don't know. also a sighting port.

Page 174

Inside there were hexagonal frames, and racked upon them were a dozen glass spheres. Each one was at least a metre in diameter, and all of them were filled with a thick chemical slurry of vomitous green fluids.

A black symbol made up of interlocking broken rings decorated each capsule, and some basic animal reaction made Kaleb's hands clench around the railing he hid behind. A quick mental calculation told him that if all the crates were identical, then there were over a hundred of the spheres in Grulgor's cargo.

Life eater virus. 100 spheres in the cargo.

Page 176

"Those orbs, what are they?" The work gangs were busy detaching the warhead cowlings from thruster-guided glide bombs, exchanging the explosive charges inside for the globes of liquid.
Voyen tried to speak, and it was as if the words caught in his throat, too distasteful for him to even bring to bear. "Those are Life-Eater capsules," he managed. "It is an engineered viral strain of such complete lethality that it can only be deployed in the most extreme circumstances, usually against the most foul xenos."
...
"It is a bane-weapon of the highest order, a world-killer. Only the largest capital ships are permitted to carry it in their armouries."

Life eater described, and its restricted usage to large warships.

Also interesting they are attaching them to "thruser guiged glide bombs".. which I gather will be fired from the guns. Indicating that starship cannon can fire guided, rocket assisted ammo.

Page 184

Sendek flashed a look at the Eisenstein's hololith. The answer to Garro's question was self-evident, as the frigate's sensors showed flickers of beam fire dashing from the flight of Ravens, snapping at the Thunderhawk's stern. As he watched, the raptor-like interceptors adopted an attack posture. They were lin ing up to make a final strike.

As we recall from the earlier novel, this is Saul Tarvitz being hunted by the Emperor's Children fighters.

Page 185

Captain Garro shoved himself away from the vox alcove and stormed across the bridge. "Weapons!" he shouted. "I want lascannon command, this very second!"

Vought's fingers danced over her console. "Close-quarters batteries are active, sir." she reported, "cogitators are computing a firing solution." The woman blinked. "Sir, are... are you going to shoot him down?"

"Give me manual control." Garro waved her away from the panel. "If anyone is to pull this trigger, it will be me." The battle-captain gripped the side of the pulpit and then stabbed at an activation rune.
"Firing." reported one of the toneless servitors.

close quarters lascannon batteries for point defense... cogitator or manually controlled (or at least the command to fire is computer or manual control.. servitors seem to fire them.)

Page 185

On the Eisenstein's dorsal hull, a cluster of high-energy laser cannons swivelled and shifted in unison, tracking to face the Thunderhawk and the Ravens. The guns discharged silently through the void, for a single instant filling the dark with a storm of flickering energy. Spears of collimated, coherent light reached out and found their target, tearing through armoured hull metal, ceramite and plastic. Fusion cores detonated in a flashing cascade, a thick cloud of radioactive debris riding out in a perfect sphere behind a wall of electromagnetic radiation.

Fighters seem to have fusion powerplants.

Page 186

The Astartes leaned down, almost with his face in the edges of the hololith cube. Flickering storms of energy and colour made it impossible to read. The power of the explosion out there reflecting off the planet's upper atmosphere would fog the ship's sensors for several minutes.

Fusion core "detonation" screws up sensors for minutes.. long enough for Tarvitz to make landing.

Page 187

He toyed with the controls and then let the hololith run the brief engagement again in slow motion. Indicators showed the Eisenstein turn and fire, the bolts sweep towards the other craft, and then the stormy aftermath. The Astartes nodded slowly. "He didn't target the Thunderhawk at all. The shots must have struck the lead Raven. The other interceptors were in close formation. The detonation would have caught them all in the shockwave."

I'm assuming he means the detonation of the lead Raven.. not the lasers themselves.

Page 191-192

With each new sphere that emerged on the back of the loader crews, he felt his horror plunge deeper. As a trained Apothecary, it was his duty to be knowledgeable in the patterns and pathologies of many types of biological warfare agents, and the Life-Eater was known to him. He wished it was not. He flashed on a moment of memory, a day during his advanced training with the Magos Biologis when the mentors had given live demonstrations on condemned criminals of the effects of various toxins upon unprotected flesh. He had seen the damage a single droplet of the voracious virus could do, watching it eat into a screaming heretic from behind impenetrable armourglass. Out there, in those globes, there were gallons of the thick green transmitter medium, every cupful swarming with countless trillions of the killer microbes. He estimated that the war shots aboard the Eisenstein alone would be enough to wipe out a large city.

Life eater virus. Eisenstein packing enough to "wipe out a large city."

Page 195

Garro sensed another aggressor coming to his rear and shifted just as a fractal-edged steel knife blade scraped at his shoulder.

Fractal edge knife.

Page 199

The banging on the metal doors grew softer and softer, until finally it ceased altogether. Garro got to his feet and crossed to the shield, placing his palm against it. It felt blood-warm, probably from the virulent chemical reactions of the rot taking place inside. He tried to block out thoughts of the carnage contained in there, the bodies bursting with liquefied organs and organic decay.

Life eater inside the bay apparently consuming all organic life, and self igniting/heating to some degree.. who knows.

Page 202

"I would recommend the compartment not be opened for the next six hours," added Voyen, "to be certain. The war load will have dissipated harmlessly into space after the atmosphere vents were opened, but dormant clades might linger in the bodies of the dead."

Life span of Life Eater.

Page 215

Of their own accord, Garro's hands found the shape of the aquila, palms open across his chest.

"Emperor," he choked, "give me faith."

Behind his eyes, Garro felt something break loose inside him and leap, a sudden release, a flood of energy. It was beyond his ability to describe it, and there in the gloom of the half-lit alcove, he felt the ghost of a voice brush over the edges of his psyche. A crying woman, pale and elfin, strong and delicate all at once, was calling him: the voice from his dream.

Save us, Nathaniel.

Garro cried out and stumbled backwards, fighting to recover his balance. The words had been so clear and close, it was as if she had been in the chamber with him, standing at his ear. The Death Guard recovered his composure, panting hard, and got back to his feet. He sensed a peculiar, greasy tang in the air, fading even as he noticed it. The stroke upon his thoughts had been like the jorgalli's intrusion into his mind, but different. It shocked him in its intimacy, and yet it did not feel wrong like the telepathic touch of the alien. Garro took a shuddering breath. As quickly as it had happened, the moment vanished like vapour.

Garro has a vision. This is, again, interesting in the implications it carries - who is calling for Garro? Is Keeler herself? Is it someone on her behalf, like Ing Mae Sing (the way she did to Sindermann?) Or is it whatever power Keeler is acting as the conduit for? Garro clearly recognizes it as some warp or psychic based contact, but beyond that we can't really speculate.

Page 218-219

The captain of the Fourth Company scanned the hull of the machine with his optics. There was no visible damage of such scale that would cause a Titan to shut down, no possible reason that Temeter could see for it to just stop. His line of sight passed over the access hatches in the hull and he saw all of them were shut fast. Temeter searched for and found power shaft vents in the thigh armour of the mechanism. Normally they would be puffing with the release of spent coolant gasses, but instead they were sealed. Chill knives of apprehension stabbed into him.

It is possible to visually identify when a Titan is closing up for NBC protection.

Page 220

Garro and Decius made it up the ramp to the windowed gallery overlooking the barracks chamber in time to witness the ships of the Warmaster's fleet open fire on Isstvan III. A myriad of silver streaks, almost too fast to see with the naked eye, streamed over and around the Eisenstein and the other smaller ships at low anchor above the Choral City. Although they were just blurs, Garro didn't need to see them clearly to know what they were: Atlas-class heavy warheads converted for space-to-surface functions, servitor-guided missile bombs and multiple impact penetrator munitions. It seemed as if only Eisenstein's guns remained silent, as if every capital ship in the 63rd Fleet were taking some part in the brutality. The bombs came in a solid rain of murder, falling fast, turning and converging towards pre-designated target points all across the planet.

Atlas-class warheads, servitor guided missiles, and "impact penetrator" munitions.. seems that not all the stuff striking the planet beside sthe life eater. We don't know which warheads are carrying it, either. We know the Atlas class carries a megaton warhead usually.

Page 221-222

At high altitudes overhead, the first wave of the virus warheads detonated in series, a wall of airbursts instantly unleashing a black rain of destruction. The viral clades, capable of hyper-fast mutational change and near-exponential growth rates, feasted on native airborne bacteria. The thin, dark bloom of the death cloud rolled out over the Choral City, just as the second wave fell. The shells did not explode until they hit the ground, bursting to smother city districts, open fields and trench lines with tides of destructive haze.

The Life-Eater did as it had been engineered to do. Where a molecule of it touched an organic form, it spread instant, putrefying death. The Choral City, every living thing, every human, animal, plant, every organism down to the level of microbes was torn apart by the virus. It leapt boundaries of species in a second, burning out the life of the planet. Flesh rotted and blood became ooze. Bones shredded and turned brittle. Isstvanians and Astartes alike died screaming, united in death by the unstoppable germs.

Temeter saw the warriors running towards him, dying on their feet. Figures fell to the mud as their corpses turned to a red broth of fleshy slurry, viscous fluids seeping from the chinks in their power armour.

Life Eater fired. We know at least 100 shells (per ship) fired, and in two salvos. That suggests the Eisenstein had at least 50 or so guns.

Page 223

With a single burning nerve impulse, the mind of the warrior at the heart of the dreadnought uncoupled the governor controls on his compact fusion generator and let it overload. For a moment there was a tiny star on the battered plains outside the Choral City, marking two more lives lost within a maelstrom of murder.

Dreadnought with a compact fusion generator.. which can turn volatile.

Page 223

"With so many dead, so fast, the Life-Easter bums out quickly, but the mass of corpses it leaves behind moulder and rot' His face soured. The... remains turn to gaseous putrefaction and decay. Imagine it, Solun, a whole world turned into a gigantic charnel house, the very atmosphere stinking and choked with the stench of new death."

Firegas mode.

Page 224

The Vengeful Spirit drifted to a halt and turned with stately menace to point her bow down at Isstvan III. In the silence, there was a flicker of light from the maws of the warship's twin lance cannons along the flanks of the hull. The bolts of blinding fire touched the atmospheric envelope of the planet and a new colour bloomed among the blackened clouds: the searing orange of a firestorm.
"A match to tinder." breathed Decius. "The fumes from the decayed dead are lit. The flames will burn across the world."

..

They stood there for what seemed like hours, watching the fires cross continents and raze cities as the Warmaster's flagship orbited above it all, the lone arbiter of Isstvan Ill's destruction. Time fell away as the two Astartes stood witness to the distant slaughter.

Twin lance cannons one on either side of the Vengeful Spirit.. and it ignites the firegas. Earlier suggested only a matter of "minutes" though here it is suggested to seem like "hours". It also seems to be implying something other than a global firestorm, but that's open to debate. I still stand by my earlier assessment.

Connor MacLeod · Post by **Connor MacLeod** » 2012-07-24 10:01pm

Part 2

PAge 231

Nathaniel saw the last figure and his throat tightened. It was a woman in simple robes. He blinked, unsure if what he saw before him was real or some kind of strange vision. "You." he managed. Garro knew her even though they had never met. He had felt the salt tang of her tears on his face, the ghost of her voice in the depth of his healing Uance, and again in the barracks.

"My name is Euphrati Keeler."

Saint Keeler meets Garro. Apparently she's not restricted or being buried away by the Imperium despite being (for all intents and purposes) a figure of religious awe. This is also (I think) the last time we actually see her crop up in the novels for quite awhile, so where they intend to go with her is a big mystery.

Page 233

As Isstvan III revolved beneath them, the ships of the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet moved with it, following the planet as it turned from the watery sunlight of day and into the leaden darkness of twilight. The ships remained in geostationary orbits, the swarm curled around the world in a loose, iron-fingered grip. As night fell, the burning cities still smouldering from the passage of the firestorm were visible, the glow of the massive pyres sullen and shimmering through the murky cloud. So much ash and fumes had been thrown into the planet's atmosphere that the skies were turning into a shroud of chemical haze. In time, the climate would start to shift, becoming colder as the warmth from the Isstvan star was blotted out. If there had been any native flora or fauna remaining, this would have been the death sentence for them, but everything that had evolved to life on Isstvan III was already dust and cinders.

Its implied that some of the lingering heat or fires may have persisted on the planet for a day or longer (not that that would make global firestorms possible, but still..) Fleet seemed to be in geostationary orbits when bombardment undertaken.

Page 234

The fingers of Carya's left hand were mechanical augments, replacements from an accident years earlier when a plasma holdout gun had overloaded in his grip. Inside them were delicate slivers of circuitry that, among other things, allowed him to manipulate the virtual shapes in the tank as if they were real objects.

More touch-activated holo-manipulation.

Page 234-235

Carya pointed to a stylised cross drifting high up over the star system's ecliptic plane. "Vought has computed a minimum distance vector for us, using the ship's cogitator chorus. If we can reach this point, we will be beyond the c-limit and free to make a warp translation."
..
"We can't go to the warp while we're still inside the gravity shadow of the sun," said Sendek briskly, indicating the Isstvan star. "That is the threshold the shipmaster speaks of."
..

Carya nodded, a little surprised to find a line Astartes with a basic grasp of astrogation. "Indeed, the footprint of the solar energy interferes with the warp transition. We must go beyond it and reach the jump point in order to enter the immaterium with any degree of safety."

"It's a long distance," mused Garro. "We'll have to travel several light-seconds at maximum burn to get there, and with the drives at full, it will light a torch to show Horus where we're heading."

"gravity shadow" and "solar energy footprint" mess with warp translations it seems.

"several light seconds?" to get to the jump off point? This star must throw a really tiny shadow, or "several" is used alot more imprecisely. Then again maybe the fact they seem to be going "up" from the star may help this somewhat. In either case its implying that they might be in lance range until they reach that point (and possibly still even then.)

Also there does seem to be an inverse relationship between translation safety and distance from the star. It's not impossible to translate closer, and survive, it just becomes riskier the closer you get.

Page 235

"There are capital ships all around. It would only take a couple of them to lay their lances on us and we'd be finished. Somehow I don't think the Warmaster will be willing to let us leave unchallenged, eh?"

"Our void shields are at full capacity," continued Carya. "We can weather a few indirect hits and we have agility on our side."

The Eisenstein can weather a few "indirect hits" from capital ship lance fire with full capacity shields (by which I mean their capacitors are fully charged.)

Page 235

"At this time, Eisenstein is close to the rear edge of the fleet pattern. I took the liberty of informing the fleet master's office that we were suffering a malfunction in one of our tertiary fusion generators. It is standard naval procedure for a ship under those circumstances to drop back from the main formation, to prevent other vessels being damaged in case of a cascade failure and core implosion."

Frigates have "tertiary fusion generators." "cascade failure and core implosion" technobabble from those fusion reactors.

Page 237

He frowned and rubbed the black stubble of his beard. In the hours since he had sent Ignatius the command to remove Garro and join the attack on Isstvan III, the braggart commander had been uncommonly quiet. Now the bombardment was over and Horus's plan was in a moment of ellipsis, he had pause to reflect.

Hours since the bombardment ended.

Page 241

"Sense-servitors are registering a distinct thermal bloom emanating from the drive blocks of Terminus Est, sir. In addition, there are readings of possible bow configuration changes in line with lance battery deployment."

The Frigate has a bow lance armament.

Page 243

"Terminus Est is a unique craft, not of a standard template construct pattern, well armoured but ponderous with it and very burdensome on the turns."
..

"Indeed, her forward armament is formidable, however. Typhon has an array of bow-mounted lances, and more in turrets that prey abeam and ahead. If he pulls alongside us, we're finished"

The Terminus Est.

Page 245

At the periphery of its range, the lance fire from the Terminus Est was at its weakest, and yet the collimated beams of energy were still enough to inflict serious damage on a ship with the tonnage of Eisenstein. The bolts cut through the void shields and sent them flickering. They raked over the dorsal hull at an oblique angle that tore decks open to space and ripped several portside gun turrets from their mountings.

Puffs of gas and flame popped and faded. Cascade discharges vaulted down the corridors of the frigate, blowing out relays and setting combustion. In a single secondary explosion, an entire compartment on one of the tertiary tiers became a brief, murderous firestorm as stored breathing gas canisters ignited.

A handful of Garro's men left there to stand guard died first as the air in their lungs turned to flames. The backdraft flooded over their bodies, torching the living quarters and sanctum of Eisenstein's small astropathic choir. Safety hatches slammed shut, but the damage was done, and with no more air to burn, the chambers became dead voids of blackened metal and ruined flesh.
Some of the impact transferred into kinetic energy that staggered the ship and made it list, but Carya's officers were battle-hardened and they did not let it turn them from their course. Terminus Est was moving upon them, the massive battleship filling the rearward pict screens with its deadly bulk.

The Terminus Est bombards the Eisenstein. Shields do nothing, even though the strike is aat the edge of its range (and weakest - Lance fire degrades with range for some reason - why we aren't told.) and manages to lurch a multi-megaton frigate moving at speed.

Page 248

The frigate's deck yawed and Garro felt the motion in the pit of his stomach. With all the available energy channelling into the drives, the ship's gravitational compensators were lagging behind and he felt the turn more distinctly than usual. He gripped a support stanchion with one hand and put his weight on his organic leg.

inertial damping systems seem t have some difficulty coping with full powered drives - at least when it comes to turning. That the delay is noticable to Garro suggests the turning thrust may not be more than double or triple digit gees (delay doesn't kill crews, but the duration is less than hundredths of a second)

Page 248-249

"Thermal bloom from their bow" warned Sendek, having taken it upon himself to assist the bridge crew at the sensor pulpit. "Discharge! Incoming fire, multiple lance bolts!"

"Push the turn!" shouted Carya. He said something else, but the words were drowned out as heavy rods of tuned energy struck the aft of the Eisenstein and pitched her forward like a ship cresting a wave. The compensators were slow again, and Garro's arm shot out and grabbed the shipmaster, halting his fall towards a console. The battle-captain felt something in Carya's wrist dislocate.

"Engine three power levels dropping!" shouted Vought. "Coolant leaks on decks nine and seven!"
Carya recovered and nodded to Garro. "Increase thrust from the other nozzles to compensate! We can't let them gain any ground!"

The ship was trembling, the throbbing vibration of a machine pushed to the edge of its operating limit. Sendek called out from his station. "We're entering the White Moon's gravity well, captain, accelerating."

Terminus Est fires, and there is enough time of rthe sensor crewer to announce the fact its firing and how many shots, as welll as the officer to demand a harder turn - several seconds delay between firing and impact at least. For a laser, we're talking several LS range.

Compensating for loss of engine by increasing thrust with other engines.. on the other hand the moon's gravity well contributes acceleration, so they can't be moving TOO Fast...

Page 249

"Lord, we have been captured by the lunar gravitational pull." reported Typhon's shipmaster. "Our velocity is increasing. I would humbly suggest we attempt to evade, and-"
..

"'This vessel has power enough to pull free, yes? You'll use it when I order you to and not before."

Again gravity contributes to the turn, so they cna't be accelerating or moving too fast here.. but its not their full power they can still break free reasonably fast.

Page 250-251

The theory was sound, she could be sure of that. The gravity of the dense, iron-heavy White Moon was already enveloping the Eisenstein, dragging it down towards the satellite's craggy surface. If she did not intervene, it would do exactly that, and like the dour Death Guard had said, the frigate would become a grave marker.

..

Vought's plan was built on the mathematics of orbits and the physics of gravitation, a school of learning that extended back to the very first steps of mankind into space, when thrust and fuel were precious commodities. In the Thirty-first Millennium, with brute force engines capable of throwing star-ships wherever they needed to go, it wasn't often such knowledge was required, but today it might save their lives.

In other words, 40K starships have magical fusion torch drives (eg a non-hard scifi drive.) Still, this suggests the velocity they're pulling around the moon isn't super-fast still.

Page 251

Klaxons warned of new salvos of incoming fire. She tuned them out of her thoughts, concentrating instead on the complex plots of trajectory and flight path before her. There was no margin for error.

As Eisenstein fell towards the planetoid, the drives would shift and ease her through the White Moon's gravitational envelope, using the energy of the satellite to throw the frigate about in a slingshot arc, boosting the vessel's sub-light speed, projecting her away towards the jump point. The Terminus Est would never be able to catch them.

Says quite a bit about Terminus Est's acceleration, methinks. AT least, it does when the ship is focused on trying to blow away a starship (It may ont have much power diverted to engines, and transferring power and such is not an instantanoues process.)

Page 251-252

Streaks of fire jetted from the Eisenstein's port flank as the autonomic trim controls slewed the ship away from the moon. The bow veered as if wrenched by an invisible hand, shifting the axis with brutal force. The extremes of tension between the lunar gravity and the artificial g-forces generated inside the vessel knotted and turned. Hull plates popped and warped as rivets as big as a man sheared off and broke. Conduits stressed beyond their tolerances ruptured and spewed toxic fumes. Forced past her limits, Eisenstein howled like a wounded animal under the punishment, but it turned, metre by agonising metre, falling into the small corridor of orbital space that would propel the frigate away from Isstvan III.

Yes Eisenstein is rivetted. Swallow likes rivetted starships. Doesn't fall apart though.

Page 258

The Navigators and the astropaths knew the immaterium as well as any human could, but even they understood that their knowledge stood only in the shallows of this mad ocean. Description of the warp was not something they could easily relay to the limited minds of lesser beings. Some saw the realm as if it were made of taste and smell, some as a fractal back-cloth woven from mathematical theorems and lines of dense equations. Others conceived it as song, with turning symphonies to represent worlds, bold strings for thought patterns, great brass reveilles for suns, and woodwinds and timpani for the ships that crossed the aurascape. But its very existence defied comprehension. The warp was change. It was the absence of reason unleashed and teeming, sometimes mill-pond calm, sometimes towering in titanic, stormy rages.

Nature of the Warp as Heresy Era Astropaths and Navigators know it.

Page 259

"How long will it take us to reach safety?" Garro asked.
Carya sighed heavily, the fatigue he had been holding at bay brimming over to flood him. "It's the warp, sir," he said, as if that would explain everything. "We could be in Terra's shade in a day or we might find ourselves clear across the galaxy a hundred years hence. There are no maps for these territories. We simply hold on and let our Navigator guide us as best he can."

a rather wide range of speed values for the warp. Across the galaxy (120,000c in 100 years is 12,000c. From Istvaan, which is halfway across the galaxy from terra, to Terra in a day is 22 million c.)

Page 266

The Life-Eater virus was long gone. Powerful and deadly, the microbes were nevertheless short-lived, and Captain Garro's quick actions in purging the bay's atmosphere to the void had stopped the bane from running its full course. The virus could not live without air to carry it, and so it had perished, but the destruction it had wreaked in the meantime remained.

Limitations of Life Eater.

Page 267

It was in this state that the touch found them. Riven with rotten flesh, life flensed from them, for something born within the ever-changing rebirth of the warp, it was easy to distort and remould them. With a careful placing of marks, the injection of new, more virulent clades than the human-borne virus. Death became fresh life, although not in a form pleasing to the eye of man.

Chaos spawned Space Marine zombies. Implied to be some sort of chaos viral vector.

Page 270

Garro had seen the virus savage these men. He had heard their dying screams from the other side of the blast doors only hours earlier, and they stood before him, transformed into some living embodiment of disease, their freakish parody of life sustained by no manner that he could fathom.

Again less than a day since the bombardment of Istvaaan.

Page 273

The freakish warrior's battle knife carved a dull arc through the air; like its owner, what had previously been a fine Astartes weapon was now a decayed version of its former self, the fractal-edged knife of bright lunar steel transformed into a blunted dagger of rusty metal.

More fractal knives.

Page 273

His eyes widened as he saw rust and corrosion worming out across the damaged metals, a time-lapse pict of decay made real. Decius felt agony chewing at his veins and marrow, and sweat burst out all over him as his implanted organs went into overdrive to stem the tide of secondary infections.

Nurgles power is easily corrupted both the starship and an Astartes.

Page 275

Garro could not draw the sword out. Instead, he ran it through. With all his might, the battle-captain rode the blade down and carved it out across the mutant's abdomen, forcing a full charge through the crystalline matrix steel.

Garro's sword again.

Page 277

"We can't revert!" It was Vought, her words laced with panic. "We have no idea where we are, we could emerge inside a star or-"

Danger of emerging from the warp in an unknown locale. Now to be fair, considering space is.. mostly empty space.. it doesn't seem very likely they'd hit solid matter.

Page 280

"As closely as they can determine the ship reverted to normal space somewhere beyond the edge of the Perseus Null, but even that is nothing more than an educated guess. No traders or scouts have ever ventured into the zone." He took a deep breath. How long had they been becalmed out here? Days, or was it weeks? Inside the vessel all was a permanent, smoky
twilight that made it difficult to gauge the passage of time.

Their emergence point.

Page 282

" He fights hard, but his strength will eventually wane and this disease that has him is like none I have seen or heard of. It changes from moment to moment to mimic different phages, little by little wearing down his resistance."

Nurgle plague vs Astartes biology.

PAge 285

"Time moves at different rates on Terra and Cthonia. In the warp it becomes malleable and unpredictable. When I think of the years I have spent in passage through that infernal domain or in the little-death of coldsleep on voyages below the speed of light... I may not match you in days, but in chronology the story would be quite different."

Garro comments on his age relative to Qruze.

Page 290

They lived, thanks to Euphrati. With his own eyes, Sindermann saw her turn the might of a warp-spawned monstrosity with nothing more than a silver aquila and her faith in the Emperor of Mankind. His need for denial perished with the hateful creature that day, and the iterator saw truth, real truth. Keeler was an instrument of the Emperor's will. There was no other explanation for it. In His greatness - no, in His divinity - the Emperor had granted the imagist some splinter of His might.

Sindermann contemplates Euphrati Keeler's new role. He seems to believe the Emperor knowingly did this. How he reconciles this with the fact the emperor vehemently denies such...

Page 296

"Machine-call signals continue to cycle on the short-range vox, although at a generous estimate they will not reach any human ears for at least a millennium."

They're thousands of light years away from any nearby planet, it would seem.

Page 297

"I have completed a survey of the ship's stores and consumable supplies. If we instigate rationing at subsistence levels, it is my projection that Eisenstein's crew have just over five and one-third months of available resources."

Carya came forward and ventured a suggestion. "Could we not put some of the non-essential crew into suspension?"

Voyen nodded. "That is a possibility, but with the facilities aboard this ship that would only lengthen the duration by another month, perhaps two."
..
"Seven months at sublight in the middle of the void."

Yeah thousands of light years from human habitation, no. On the other hand, this does put something of a limit on trips between Terra and the edge of the galaxy.. 98,000c to136,000c at least.

PAge 298

"Shipmaster, signal the enginarium crews to charge the warp motors to full power."
..
"Carya, how long until the drive blocks are at maximum potency?"
..
The officer studied his console. "A few moments, lord." He hesitated. "Sir, your Apothecary is correct. I fail to see the reason for bringing the drives back on line."

A few moments to charge the warp engines to full power.

Page 298

"'I want sublight thrusters ready for a burn at full military power on my command. Call the ship to general quarters and prepare void shields for activation."

Full power and void shields to protect against warp core detonation.

Page 299

"Warp drives registering full energy capacity. Battery arrays are brimming, lord. What do you want me to do with them?"

"Clear the drive block compartments, and arm the release mechanisms on the warp motors. When I give the order, you will deactivate the engine governance controls and jettison the drive block, then raise shields and fire the sublight thrusters."

..

"Eject the warp engines?" Sendek gaped. "With all that energy in them, they'll detonate like a supernova!"

Garro nodded solemnly. "A warp flare. The blast will echo in the immaterium as well as real space. It will act as a beacon for any ships within a hundred par-secs."

Full power warp drive will act as a beacon for a ship within 100 parsects (300 LY). Warp engines are also designed to be ejected in case of an emergencie.

Page 300

The veteran was right. It could mean the destruction of the ship if the Eisenstein's thrusters couldn't push the frigate far enough from the blast radius of the warp flare.

Warp flares can destroy the ship.

Page 303-304

Hundreds of explosive charges around the rear ventral hull of the frigate went off in the silence of space, throwing sheets of hull plating away into the void. On rails, the thick cylinders of the starship's interstellar drive motors rolled out and fell into the darkness, conduits snapping and trailing jets of coolant liquid, cables arcing with glints of electricity. Crackling orbs of gathered energy spun and cried inside the discarded warp engines. Power that normally would have been channelled into ripping a doorway to the immaterium had no point of release, and now it churned about itself, faster and faster, spiralling towards critical mass.

The Eisemtein leapt away on rods of glittering fusion fire, leaving behind the parts of itself that she had cut loose. As the flexing gravitational output of the warp drives drew the drifting modules together, they sent out whips of brilliant blue-white lightning that lashed blindly, snapping at the frigate's heels. Her void shields glowed but held firm. The true test of them would come in a few seconds.

The engine cores began to melt and deform, the power inside them grown to such capacity that it was a self-fulfilling reaction, drawing potency from the differential states between the dimensions of the warp and the common vacuum of real space. Circular sheets of exotic radiation, visible though the entire spectrum, radiated out of the lumpen cluster of matter and energy. Too soon the warp motors had ripped into the madness of the immaterium, and the rush of force that flooded out was too much, too fast.

The reaction collapsed inward, the jettisoned hull panels, the slagged metals, dust and specks of free-floating hydrogen molecules, the very space around it folding in a final desperate trawl to fuel itself.

If there was an eye that could have seen something so abnormal or glimpsed into a range so far from that of normal sight, an observer might have glimpsed a screaming, clawing beast peering out of the core of the implosion, but then came the detonation.

Across barriers of dimension, the catastrophic destruction of the warp motors produced a sphere of radiation that lit space like a dying sun. In the empyrean, it became a towering shriek, a flash of dead blue, a surge of raw panic and a million other things. In real space it was a wave of crackling discharge that slammed into the fleeing Eisenstein and threw her bow over stern with murderous, lethal force.

warp core release and detonatiion. They had seconds to get far enough away. The interesting things about this are a.) there's a gravitational output of the warp drives distorting space and drawing stuff closer and b.) the self-sustained "warp" chain reaction that is drawing off power from the warp (or rather the 'differential' between warp and realspace, somehow.) - this echoes neoplasma reactors and warp fission we know the squats had, but it needs some sort of fuel (or catalyst) to sustain itself.

Page 304-305

In the deep shades of the empyrean, the ragged edge of a shockwave broke upon the preternatural senses of an enhanced mind. The wash of raw input blotted out all other thought-sights in an instant of punishing, agonising overload. It struck the storms of insanity that clung to the mind and tore them away, blasting them apart. The mind was tossed and thrown in the impact, flailing for unending seconds in the turbulent undertow of its passing. Then the flare was gone, fading, leaving only the echo of its creation. Where there had been storms and fog, now there was clarity and lucidity.

The mind turned and peered across the wilderness of the immaterium and found the point of origin. As a flash of night-borne lightning might illuminate a darkened landscape, the shockwave made the molten terrain of the warp visible, gave it solidity when all other means of understanding had failed. Suddenly, paths that had been concealed were clear and discernible. The way was abruptly opened, and across the incredible distance, the epicentre of the effect's creation still burned.

The warp core detonation seems to clear a path through the warp.

Page 306

Carya had closed the flying bridge and moved the command crew to a secondary control pulpit, leaving the upper deck to go dead and dark.

Auxiliary bridge, I think, or at least secondary control systems for the same bridge.

Page 312

"What if... if the time we were lost in the empyrean was not hours... but millennia? "

A rather extreme sort of warp distortion, but it implies they were only "hours" in the Warp. If we knew how far they had travelled this might be useful.

Page 312

"The protective field baffles in there are electromagnetically charged. Vox signals won't penetrate inside."

The medical facility has "field baffles" for some reason.. that block vox signals.

Page 313

"Sir, the Eisenstein's sensor grids were badly damaged in the shock from the warp flare and the engagement with Typhon, and we have only partial function-"

"Spit it out." snapped Garro.

Sendek took a breath. "There are ships, captain. We have detected multiple warp gate reactions less than four light-minutes distant. They appear to be moving to an interception heading."

detecting warp emergences 4 light minutes from the Eisenstein.

Page 313

"At their rate of closure, there is little time to prepare," Sendek noted.

"Agreed." Garro said with a nod. "These are my orders. Issue weapons to all the crew who know how to use them and get everyone else into the core tiers. Find somewhere they can be protected. I want Astartes at every entry point, ready to repel boarders, but no one is to engage in hostilities unless it is by my word of command."

Little time to prepare I'm guessing means less than days, probably only hours.. probably single or double digit gees at that rate.

Page 314

Vessels that dwarfed the Imperial frigate placed hordes of armed lance cannons upon the ship's target silhouette, computing firing solutions and warming their guns in preparation for her destruction. Only one volley, and even then not one at full capacity, would be enough to obliterate the Eisenstein forever. It would only be a matter of a single word of command, a button pushed, a trigger pulled.

Variable output lances.

Page 314

Even a ship the size of a mere frigate, when correctly armed and altered, could become a flying bomb big enough to destroy a battle cruiser.

Also known as fire ships.

Page 315

There were moons that massed less than the giant. It was the clenched hand of a god carved from dark asteroid stone, a nickel-iron behemoth pocked with craters and spiked with broad towers that jutted from its surface.

At a great distance, the vessel would have resembled the head of a mace, filigreed with gold and black iron. At close range, a city's worth of spires and gantries reached out, many of them glowing with the light of thousands of windows, others concealing nests of weapons capable of killing a continent. Ships like the Eisenstein were carried in fanged docks around the circumference of the colossus, and as it drifted closer the sheer mass of its gravity gently tugged at the frigate, altering her course. Autonomous weapons drones deployed in hornet swarms, staging around the drifting craft. As one, they turned powerful searchlights on the ruined hull and pinned the frigate to the black of the void, drenching her in blinding white beams.

Phalanx. A moon sized fortress monastery, with continent killing batteries. Automated weapons drones.

Page 316

"The fleet orbits a large construct, easily the size of a star fort, or larger. The brother who laid eyes upon it told me he had never seen such a thing before. He compared it to an ork monstrosity, but not so crude."

Phalanx compared to Star Forts and space hulks.

Page 318

"Energy build-up." said Hakur. "For a second I thought it might have been a deep scan of the hull, but then it changed."
A complex wave-form writhed across the auspex screen.
"A scan?" He glanced at Sendek. "Could we be detected in here, through this much iron and steel?"
"It is possible." replied the Astartes. "A vessel with enough power behind her sensors could burn through any amount of shielding."
A ship, or something like a star fort.

"shielding" against sensors.

Page 320

Abruptly, all the strain and anger that he had kept locked away inside him over the past few days roared back to the fore, and he poured every last drop of it into his retort.

Implies the distance covered by the Phalanx and fist fleet, if not the Eisenstein from Isstvaan, has been no more than "a few days" We know the Phalanx maybe covered within a few hundred LY - tens of thousands of c.

Page 320-321

Garro's throat tightened as a towering shape in yellow-gold armour came into the light. Even in the feeble glow of the lanterns, the raw presence of the new arrival lit the room. A severe and uncompromising gaze surveyed the chamber from a grim face framed by a snow-white shock of hair, a face that seemed as hard and unyielding as the mammoth plates of golden-hued brass that made the man a walking statue; but no, not a man.
...

Like Garro's, the warrior wore a cuirass detailed with eagles spread over his shoulders and across his chest. Upon his shoulder pauldron was a disc of white gold and layered to that, cut together from sections of blue-black sapphire, was the symbol of a mailed gauntlet clenched in defiant threat. Finally the diamond-hard eyes found Garro and held him.

Rogal Dorn. He has an apperance in a good many of these novels, doesn't he?

Page 325

Four high-yield ship-to-ship torpedoes flashed from their firing tubes, thruster rockets igniting to carry them the short distance from the fortress to the frigate. Each one was tipped with a compact but very powerful atomic warhead. One would have been enough to do the job, but after the catalogue of horrors that had walked the decks of the Eisenstein, the overkill was deemed necessary.

Eisenstein destoryed by 4 atomic tipped torpedoes. One owuld have done the job.

Page 326

The torpedoes impacted at the bow, the stern and at equidistant points along the frigate's beaten and ravaged hull. The detonations had been programmed flawlessly, all four rippling into one seamless, silent flare of radiation and light. The glow illuminated the surrounding vessels of the Astartes fleet, and cast bright columns of white through the windows of Rogal Dorn's sanctorum atop the highest of the Phalanx's towers.

Destruction of the Eisenstein.

Page 338

"I am gifted with many methods in which I may remember. I will write and I will compose image streams, and this is aided by a series of mnemonic implant coils"

Mersadie Oliton describes her remembrancer capability.

Page 342

Once, the Phalanx might have been a planetoid or a minor moon of some distant world, but now it was a cathedral dedicated to the business of war and the glories of the VII Legiones Astartes.

the Phalanx is a "planetoid or minor moon."

Page 343

"I thought you Astartes never slept."

"A misconception. Our implants allow us to maintain a semi-dormant state while still being aware of our surroundings." Garro sipped the infusion and found it to his taste. "I have tried this past day, but what awaits me there is disquieting."

Astartes Catalepsean node.

Page 348

"Sigismund, my strong right arm, you will take direct command of the rest of our Legion and its war fleet. You will execute a return voyage to the Isstvan system under the auspice of a combat deployment and consider yourself to be entering hostile territory. The journey back will be difficult. Warp storms still rage in that sector and you will find the passage challenging. Go there, first captain, support our kinsmen loyal to the Emperor and learn what is occurring on those worlds."

Sigismund deployed to Isstvan.

Page 351

Coded astropathic signals had gone before the Phalanx, high-level protocols that called to alert the most secure levels of the Imperium's forces in the Sol system. Dorn's authority was enough to set ships in motion and for troops to be put to a higher state of readiness; and there were other forces at work as well, agencies that had sensed the arrival of the star fortress and the precious cargo it carried.

Several light-minutes inside the orbit of Eris, the Phalanx exploded from a warp gate with violent concussion, sending sheets of exotic lightning radiating out and away into the void. Delicate sensory devices dotting the surface of the tenth planet registered the new arrival and immediately communicated reports to relay stations on Pluto and Uranus, where in turn they would be sent onward by astropath to Terra and her dominions. The return of the Imperial Fists to humanity's cradle was long overdue. By rights there should have been celebrations and great ceremony on many of the outer colonies of the solar system to mark it. Instead, the Phalanx came in with speed and ruthless purpose, not in a stately cruise about the solar system's outlying worlds.

Eris has an orbit that takes it anywhere from between 38 AU from the sun to 97 AU. Oddly its implied that there are colonies this far out from the systme. also there re sensors and such to detect arrivals.

Page 352

Drives flaring like captured stars, the fortress-vessel passed in through the ragged edges of the Oort Cloud at three-quarters the speed of light, down into the plane of the ecliptic, crossing the orbit of Neptune in a flicker of dazzling radiation.

NecronLords Calcs

Phalanx is pulling .75c past the Oort cloud towards Terra. The Ooort Cloud is not what they're passing through (as NecronLord notes) so it probably is the Kuiper belt - 30 to 50 AU, and the accelerations should be similar to what he said.

Page 352

At the rear of the great hall, massive iron panels folded away into the ornate walls, revealing a glass bowl that looked down to the command nexus of the fortress below. It was like the bridge of any starship, but magnified a hundredfold in size and scope. Garro was reminded of a stadium, with concentric rings of operator consoles raised in staggered tiers over an arena in the middle.

The central portion of the command deck was a gallery of hololithic displays, some of them four storeys tall, forever glittering and shifting. Statues of armour-clad Astartes in the wargear of the Imperial Fists were ranged along the sides of the nexus, arms out as if they held Dorn's observation bowl at their fingertips.

On this level, repeater consoles were arranged so that the primarch and his officers could draw information from any post in the nexus with a single word of instruction. Garro realised that from this high vantage point, a single general would be able to direct an entire war of millions of men and thousands of starships.

Command center of Phalanx. note it can direct a war of "thousands of starships."

Page 353

"Show the battle-captain our new escort."

Halbrecht touched a control and a pict screen emerged from the broad console. Garro saw an image of void outside the Phalanx's hull and of a large, dark silhouette that moved in echelon with it. The structure of the other vessel was only defined by the places where it blotted out the stars: a Black Ship.
..

"This phantom joined us as we cleared the shadow of Neptune and fell in to match us in course and speed. They brought with them orders from the Council of Terra itself and directions to harbour. Specific reference was made to you, captain, and the woman Keeler."

The Black ship pulled .75, and accelerated to that speed (and then decelerated) in a fairly short period of time. That means it has to be pulling considerably greater acceleration (thousands of gees, probably.)

Page 357

The primarch turned away. "We will arrive in a few hours. Assemble your men and be ready to disembark."

Hours to arrive at terra, maybe.

Page 358

Bisecting the grey stone sphere across its equator lay a man-made valley many kilometres wide. This was the Circuit, an artificial canyon that laid open me rock and stone beneath the dusty lunar surface. All along the length of the chasm lay gateways into the moon's interior, vast doors to the honeycomb of spaces carved by mankind in the heart of Luna. The ancient, dead boulder of the moon became the largest military complex ever built by humans. A vast shipyard for the armada of the Imperium, thousands of starships from the smallest shuttle to the largest battle barge were built and maintained there, and across the face of the far side there were complex stations for observation of the great void beyond. Port Luna was the cold, stone heart of humankind's great fleets.

The satellite was as much a weapon as it was a safe harbour. Much of the metals mined from the moon's heart and the rock from the Circuit's excavation had been employed by the Emperor's most skilled engineers, fashioned into a synthetic ring that girdled the planetoid. The vast grey hoop held batteries of lance cannons and docking bays for more warships.

Fleet dockyard around Luna it seems. "thousands of starships" of varying kinds kept there. I assume it doesn't include Mars, Jupiter or the others. It also gives a hint as to the scope of the fleets defending Terra.

Page 359

The light of the sun glimmered around the curvature of the planet, a brilliant arc of golden colour. Terra's night side showed its face towards Luna, the features of her continents and towering hive city constructs largely hidden beneath thick storm fronts and haze. In the places where the cloud formations were thin enough, the pulsing spark of lights from the great metropolis
arcologies made necklaces of stark white and bright blue, some clustered in haloes, others extending out along coastlines for hundreds of kilometres. Dark patches where the oceans lay shimmered like spilled ink.

The surface of Terra. Note that its quite habitable, despite the fact it was implied centuries in the past during the Unity Wars the seas/oceans had been boiled away. They either recondensed them, or they brought in water from elsewhere to rehydrate the planet.. nevermind terraforming.

Oceans which, as far as we know, will be boiled away in the battle for Terra.

Page 360

Time indeed was passing more swiftly than he had anticipated. While the Eisenstein's escape, becalming and rescue had seemed like little more than a matter of weeks for those on board, Garro soon discovered that their subjective period did not marry with the passing of days elsewhere. According to the central chronometer broadcast from the Imperial capital, more than twice as much time had passed since the attack on Isstvan III.

4 maybe 6 weeks (less than 2 months) have passed since Isstvan. 60,000 LY travelled in that time (not allowing for weeks becalmed perhaps) Minimum (2 months) is 360,000c, 520,000c (6 weeks), 780,000c (4 weeks) or 1.5 million c (2 weeks, assuming 2 weeks becalmed.)

Page 368

By placing them here, under the roof of the Sisterhood - and the very same women who had fought alongside them only months ago - Dorn forced Garro to give pause to any thoughts of unfettered combat.

mere months since fighting alongside the Sisterhood. That tends to reinforce the earlir calcs, since they had to travel to Terra before the weeks(months) Garro took to get there.

Page 369

Any atmosphere-capable ship would be ripped from the sky before it came within sight of the Imperial Palace, and if they fled for deep space there were hundreds of battleships between Luna and a navigable jump locus.

hundreds of battleships defend Terra.. at least along a particular avenue. That probably means thousands of cruisers and escorts.

Page 369

Time passed and no word came for them. Sendek wondered aloud if they might be left here to live out their lives while the matter of Horus was settled on the other side of the galaxy, the seventy an inconvenient footnote forgotten amid the fighting. Andus Hakur made a joke to him about it, but Garro saw the real concern beneath the forced humour. Barring death in battle or fatal accident, an Astartes was functionally immortal and he had heard it said that one of his kind might live a thousand years or more.

Outcast dead says that Istvaan is half a galaxy away, so we're at least consistent there. Astartes said to be "functionally immortal", and be able to live a thousand years or more (as standard). Contrast with the Blood Angels supposed exceptional longevity.

Page 371

Where Grulgor's plague knife had sunk through his armour and into his flesh, Decius was invaded by a virus that was all viruses, a malady that was every disease that man had encountered and more that it had yet to face. There was no cure, how could there be? The germs were made from the living distillate of corruption in its rawest form, a writhing pattern of tri-fold and eight-pointed microbes that disintegrated everything they came into contact with. These invisible weapons were the foot soldiers of the Great Destroyer, each of them stamped with the indelible mark of the Lord of Decay.

Nurgle super-zombie virus.

Page 390

The strike was a feint, never intended to hit his opponent. Instead, the sparking blade sliced though the guard rail and hex-grid of the catwalk, severing cables and leaving red glowing edges where the sword cut molecules in two.

Garro's power sword has thermal effects.

Page 391

Garro spun the blade and slashed at pallid, fly-blown skin. The cut opened the corpse flesh and spilt powdery blood. The insects reacted, howling and smothering Garro from head to foot in a thick, shifting mass.

He brought Libertas up to his chest and ran the blade at full discharge, the crackling aura dancing about his armour in coils of lightning. The winged mites puffed into dots of flame and perished, black ash smearing his wargear.

Again thermal effect of Garro's power sword.

Page 393

Warning runes danced on his visor. There was a puncture somewhere in his wargear, a slow leak issuing air out into the dark. The regulators inside the armour's fusion power pack were flashing alerts.
...

The joint was dislocated. He tabbed a restorative pill from the auto-narthecia dispenser in his neck ring and gripped his wrist.

Auto-narthecia and fusion power pack.

Page 401

There were two men, but they were much more than that. Even barefoot, the taller of the two would easily have been a match for Iacton Qruze in his full armour. The watchful, hard lines of his face emerged from a suit of golden armour that was cut like that of a Terminator, but worn like that of a normal Astartes. Even at a distance, Garro could see an infinity of worked tooling in the etching that covered the glinting metal, the repeated shapes of eagles and lightning bolts. A cloak of rich red material hung around his shoulders and a towering gold helmet with a plume of crimson atop it was held in the crook of one arm. In the ouier, at an angle that betrayed the ease with which the warrior held it, rested a weapon that was half lance, half cannon: a guardian spear, the signature wargear of the Emperor's personal guard, the Legiones Custodes. Garro had often heard it said that the Custodians were to the Emperor as an Astartes was to his primarch, and looking upon this man, he believed it. The warrior studied Garro and Qruze with a level, emotionless gaze.

Custodes.

Page 401-402

The guardian's presence alone was enough to indicate the lofty status of the man he accompanied, and they bowed to the hooded figure in his simple administrator's robes. The man in the voluminous mantle would blend seamlessly into the masses of any Imperial hive city were it not for the staff he carried, atop it, the golden eagle in its basket of flames, with steel chains looping down the length, each inscribed with axioms. This was the Rod, and it could only be held by one man: the Regent of Terra himself, First of Council, Overseer of the Tithe and confidant of the Emperor.
..

The Sigillite's hooded glance came to rest upon him and although Nathaniel could not see his eyes, he was immediately aware that he was under intense scrutiny, in ways that he could only guess at. Malcador, so the stories said, was second only in psychic might to the Emperor. So unassuming in aspect, but here in the chamber with them the man exuded a serene kind of power, quite at odds with the brash energy of a warlord primarch, but no less potent.

Malcador makes his appearance.

Ahriman238 · Post by **Ahriman238** » 2012-07-25 03:07pm

I loved Flight of the Eissenstein, not only is Garro a badass in an age of badasses, it shows how worship of the Emperor spreads and grows not matter what He has to say about it.

I also dimly recall the remembrancer's surgically installed head-camera. I suppose in this age implants were more common.

Did you not want to comment more on the probable founding of the Inquisition?

Connor MacLeod · Post by **Connor MacLeod** » 2012-07-26 01:32pm

There was very little at the time I remember being given to that, it reminded me of what was in HHCV but I wasnt sure it was referencing the Inquisition or they decided to go a different route (remember HHCV was a basic guide to the HH series as a whole, but the HH authors clearly don't feel constrained by it in all ways when it comes to specific details.)

I also think I read this novel before a bunch of the Garro audiobooks and all the other detaisl like that showed up (EG the Fate of Loken and such) and except for a few of the audio books (like Raven's flight) I've mostly ignored them thus far (certainly haven't gotten around to analyzing any audio books.)

If someone wants to cover the audio books separately from my stuff they're free to do so incidentally

Lord Revan · Post by **Lord Revan** » 2012-07-26 02:03pm

I have to say one thing I like about the Horus Heresy books I've read is that the specializations of the future traitor legions (like the Death Guard) reflect their post-heresy specialization (for example the Death Guard are hostile environment specialist and as such they're more NBC resistant, post-heresy they're the chosen of Nurgle, the World Eaters are Assault specialist, post heresy they're chosen of Khorne, the Luna Wolves/Sons of Horus are generalist more or less, as are the Black Legion).

Connor MacLeod · Post by **Connor MacLeod** » 2012-08-08 06:40pm

This time on Horus HEresy Theatre: Fulgrim, by Graham McNeill. I know there are some people who just think this is a great book, and I can kinda see why.

But I really, really dislike this novel. And alot of it stems from this belief I've developed: I simply dislike the way McNeill writes CSM characters. Much like with Honsou and his Iron Warriors stuff, I just find it terribly.. grating to read, and its hard to say. I actually do like A Thousand Sons fairly well, but I think its because while Chaos plays a role in it, and we have sort of Traitor Marines.. he's not writing CSM directly. That seems to make a difference. Whereas in Fulgrim (and the spinoff stories like the short story in 'The Primarchs' which builds on events here) it's.. just annoying. Tedious even. So much of the E-C derived stuff as far as their fall to Chaos goes (particularily with Fulgrim himself) just feels so.. soap-operaish. The subplot with the sculptor and the painter going mad also feels soap-operaish. I just found it tedious slogging through all of that. Another difference could be this and 'A Thousand Sons' is that the latter is written as a true tragedy of sorts, whereas Fulgrim and Co. just come off as complete, spoiled assholes. And the one bit that would potentially redeem the story as a tragedy... gets ruined in The Primarchs, which pretty much killed off what lingering sympathy I may have had for Fulgrim.

It's not all bad. I loved the bits with Ferrus Manus, and one of the high points of the book is definitely the relationship between these two Primarchs, even when they end up on opposing sides of the battle. And the stuff with the loyalists was suitably grim and bleak the way it should be, and for some odd reason I rather liked McNeill's Fabius Bile. And the meeting between the Eldar and Fulgrim was.. interesting if a bit confusing. Reminded me a bit of the whole 'Interex' thing from Horus Rising (and Chaos making efforts to isolate any potentially useful allies who might throw a monkey wrench into their plans.)

Feel free to discuss your own viewson Fulgrim, or share what you think about it that makes it good, bad, or whatever.

Anyhow, onto the discussion. Unlike prior novels I probably will do this one in two separate updates. I'm going to try and start slowing down, but I also want to keep a pace so I eventually catch up with the more recent novels (I may or may not pick up later, or I may just go with more frequent updates of the HH threads than other threads, or whatever. HAven't decided yet.

Sooo.. Part 1

Page 15

Her wild blue hair was the colour of the sky on a clear day, and her features were sculpted by good breeding and discreet surgery...
...
..he could make out aural enhancers and a number of fine wires trailing from her scalp.

Cosmetic surgery and augmetic aural enhancers.

PAge 20

The Primarch of the Emperor's Children was the most magnificent being Ostian Delafour had ever laid eyes upon. His amethyst-coloured armour shone as though fresh from the armourer's hand, its golden trims gleaming like the sun, and exquisite carvings twisted in spiral patterns on every plate of his armour. A long, scaled cloak of emerald green hung from his shoulders, a high collar of purple and the great eagle's wing sweeping over his left shoulder perfectly framing his pale features.

Ostian longed to render Fulgrim's face in marble, knowing that the coolness of the stone was perfect for capturing the luminosity of the primarch's skin, the wide, friendly eyes, the hint of a smile playing
around his lips and the shimmering white of his shoulder length hair.

Fulgrim, pre-whine.

Page 22

He ducked back behind a sinuous column of pink veined coral and slammed another magazine into his customised bolter, its every surface and internal working hand-finished by his own artifice. Its rate of fire was only marginally faster than a regular issue bolter, but it had never once jammed, and Solomon Demeter wasn't the kind of man to trust his life to anything he hadn't worked towards perfection.

Emperor's Children apparently do their own artificing- perfection and all that.

Page 22

He disdained the wearing of a helmet to prevent the Laer from deciphering his orders over the vox-network, and because he knew that if he were hit in the head by one of the Laer weapons, he was as good as dead, helmet or not.

I guess that's as good a reason as any.

Page 26

Now that the Emperor had returned to Terra, entire fleets, billions of warriors and the power to destroy worlds were his to command.

Horus controls the Imperial military. billions of warriors and world killing power. It's not clear here whether individual fleets have billions of warriors and planet killing firepower, or in totality. We know fleets can destroy worlds (63rd expedition and Isstvan III), and IIRC outcast dead suggests the former. If we assume billions per fleet, we might figure 9 trillion or so troopers for the primary fleets.

Page 26-27

A terrible accident at the inception of the Emperor's Children had almost destroyed them, but Fulgrim and his Legion had risen, phoenix-like, from the disaster with greater resolve and strength. In the process Fulgrim had earned the affectionate sobriquet of 'the Phoenician'. During this time, while Fulgrim rebuilt his shattered Legion, he and his few warriors had fought alongside the Luna Wolves for almost a century.

With a stream of fresh recruits drawn from Terra and Fulgrim's home of Chemos, the Legion had grown rapidly and, under the aegis of the Warmaster, become one of the deadliest fighting forces in the galaxy.

Horus himself had praised Fulgrim's Legion as one of the best he had fought alongside.

Now, with decades of war behind them, the Emperor's Children had the numbers to embark on crusades of their own, to make their own way in the galaxy, battling alone for the first time in over a century.

Past of the Emperor's Children. Note that the Legion was still drawing troops from Terra as well as Chemos. They've also spent "decades" at war.

Page 28

Administrators from the Council of Terra had postulated that perhaps the Laer could be made a protectorate of the Imperium, since conquering such an advanced race could prove a long and costly endeavour.

Isn't it interesting how the Heresy-era Imperium tends to shift its attitude towards aliens depending on the circumstance. There's Horus' attitudes towards the Interex and Kinebrach in Horus Rising, and now there is the Laer. and later on the Eldar. It would seem they try for a more tolerant attitude than latter era 40K.

Page 29

Of all the ships in the 28th Expedition, the Pride of the Emperor was the most magnificent, its armoured length inlaid with gold and armoured plates the colour of rich wine. It orbited the sapphire blue world of Laeran like the regal flagship of some ancient king, surrounded by an entourage of escorts, battleships, transports, supply vessels and army mass conveyers.

The shipwrights of Jupiter had laid its keel a hundred and sixty years ago, the design and creation overseen by the Fabricator General of Mars himself, and its every component crafted by hand to unimaginably exacting specifications. The construction process had taken twice as long as any other vessel of comparable displacement, but such was only to be expected for the flagship of the Primarch of the III Legion, the Emperor's Children.

Fulgrim's flagship took no more than 160 years to construct, and a normal "flagship" battleship would take only 80 years at most to build. They spent "decades" at war, and remember that the Emperor's Children have been fighting alongside the Luna Wolves for about a century. That means 60 years or so to construct the ship, and a normal "flagship" would take half that. This actually (probably) meshes better with what we know of the Furious Abyss and First Heretic. We also don't really know how big the ship is, either.

It also shows how vairable construction of starships can be, especially important ones like battleships. It only gets worse in latter eras, where cruisers can vary from years to centuries to build - of course they can also vary from 3 to 30 km too.

Page 33

Solomon spun his bolter to face the creature that slashed through the air towards him, its claws outstretched to tear him in two. His finger squeezed the trigger and a hail of bolts spat from the barrel of his gun. Sparks and yellow blood spattered his purple and gold armour as the creature burst apart and collapsed in a torn heap beside him.

Burst of bolter fire blows a Laer apart.

Page 34

In appearance, each Laer could be wildly diverse, their bio-forms differing between war zones, and apparently engineered for each particular theatre of war. In his short time on the oceanic world of Laeran, Solomon had seen winged, aquatic and all manner of variations on the basic Laer form. Whether they were divergent strands of genetic mutation or deliberately engineered warrior creatures, Solomon didn't know, nor did he care.

These particular beasts were tall, sinuous monsters, with the snake-like lower body common to all Laer, and muscular thoraxes sheathed in silver armour, from which sprouted two pairs of limbs. The upper arms each bore long, lightning wreathed blades, their elegant forms curved like scimitars, while the lower arms each wielded crackling gauntlets that fired the lethal green energy bolts.

Their heads were insect-like and bulbous, with glossy, multi-faceted eyes and jutting mandibles that produced a grating screech when the Laer attacked. Solomon spun on the spot, firing his bolter at every slithering body that emerged from the alien structures carved from the hard coral of the atoll. The veterans who accompanied him formed a curving line with him at its centre, each warrior moving smoothly into his allotted place to push the Laer back towards the crackling plume of energy in the middle of the plaza with every marching step they took.

The Laer.

Page 39

"Russ has the truth of it." said Lycaon. "We are warriors, not subjects for poetry or portraits."
"The pursuit of perfection extends beyond the martial disciplines, Lycaon. It encompasses fine arts, literary works and music. Only recently, I was privileged to hear Bequa Kynska's recital and my heart soared to hear such sweet music."

This is an attitude strangely familiar - we see the Blood Angels believing that too, it seems.

Page 50

It would be just like Solomon Demeter to have removed his helmet in the heat of battle to better experience the sensations of combat. Marius shook his head. What manner of fool would go into a firefight without all the protection he could muster?

It's nice to know not all the EC feel the same about helmets.

Page 62

As a native of Terra, a world whose oceans had long since boiled away in ancient wars or environmental catastrophes, Ostian found the idea of a world without land hard to picture.

Interesting comment, since in just the last novel they appear on Terra and not only is the place not a parched desert (not to mention short stories from Tales of Heresy and collected visions), but it does have oceans and seas and such. This isn't the first time McNeill has proclaimed this, either. My interpretation is that over a long period the oceans vaporized, but they didn't actually "leave" the planet. Gradually the oceans were refilled, or maybe they just terraformed the hell out of it. It owuldn't surprise me if the Emperor had the AdMech haul in ice asteroids or ocena water from elsewhere.

Page 70-71

"Indeed, my lord, indeed," said Fabius, "but I believe you may be interested in how these specimens lived. From the researches I have undertaken, it appears that the Laer are not so dissimilar to us in their approaches to perfection."

Fabius indicated the opened chest cavities of the Laer warriors and said, "Take these two specimens. They are genetically identical in the sense that they are from the same gene-strand, but their internal workings have been modified."

"Modified?" asked Fulgrim. "For what purpose?"

"To better adapt them for the role they were to fulfil in Laer society, I should imagine." replied Fabius. "They are quite marvellous specimens, genetically and chemically altered from birth to perfectly fulfil a predetermined role. This one, for example, is clearly a warrior, its central nervous system designed to operate at a much higher level of functionality than the envoys we captured at the outset of the war, and do you see these glands here?"

Fulgrim leaned close to the corpse, his nose wrinkling in disgust at the alien stench of it. "What do they do?"

"These are designed to release a compound onto the Laer's carapace, which forms a toughened "scab" over areas damaged in combat. In effect, these organs are a biological self-repairing function that can patch up damage within moments of it occurring. We are lucky that Captain Demeter was able to kill it so cleanly with a head shot."

"Do all the Laer have these organs?" asked Fulgrim.

Fabius shook his head, indicating the scrolling data on the hololithic plates. Images of dissected Laer flashed up, and flickering projections of various alien organs rotated in the air above the corpses.

"No, they do not." explained Fabius,"'and that is what makes them so fascinating. Each Laer is altered from birth to perfectly achieve the purpose for which it is designed, be it a warrior, a scout, a diplomat or even an artist. Some of the earliest envoys we apprehended had enlarged ocular cavities to better capture light, others had enhanced speech centres of the brain, while yet others had been designed for strength and endurance, perhaps to better function as labourers."

Laer physiology. We also discern the roots of Fabius' biles insane drive to learn and perfect and beocme the mad scientist fuck he is.

Page 85

The force of Stormbirds and Thunderhawks that took to the air against the final Laer atoll was amongst the greatest aerial armadas yet launched in the Great Crusade. Nine hundred craft took off from a score of captured atolls as the last of the daylight faded, the timing of their launches and approach vectors calculated by the pri march to ensure that each wave arrived precisely when he intended it to.

Howling interceptors and gunships took off in clouds of jet wash and gritty coral, followed by scores of Stormbirds and Thunderhawks. Within minutes the skies above each atoll were filled with dark, predatory shapes that circled like flocks of screeching crows set to embark on a mission of murder. At a signal from orbit, the flocks of craft angled their courses, streaking through the cloudless skies on plumes of blue fire towards their prey.

Greatest air deployment of the Great crusade is 900 craft, it seems. Whether this means just Thunderhawk/Stormbirds, or includes all the other interceptors/fighters/gunships too isn't clear and could be argued either way. I'd argue just Thunderhawks/stormbirds, since there probably are going to be bigger air wars. (hell in modern 40K they can get way more massive than this.)

Page 86

Fulgrim launched from the Pride of the Emperor in the Firebird, a gunship he had personally designed and constructed in the armourium decks of his flagship. Its wings had a greater span than a Stormbird...

Fulgrim's personal gunship, made in the facilities aboard his flagship.

Page 91

Alien gunfire reached out to them, but what had carved through Mark IV plate barely scratched Terminator armour.

If only we had more of these, this war would have been won long ago, thought Julius, but the general issue of Tactical Dreadnought armour had only just begun and only a very few units had the correct training to make use of them.

Terminator armor.

Page 98

Terminator armour gave each warrior the strength and power of a tank, and though Fulgrim had loathed these inelegant suits of armour at first sight, his heart leapt to see them now.

Terminator armor compared to tank.

Page 112

..Remote probe ships had revealed the existence of other systems deeper in the cluster with the potential to support life...

Remote probe ships.. probably servitor controlled.

Page 112

...it was quickly deduced that an unknown fleet of some magnitude was at large in Imperial space. No other expeditions were authorised to be operating close by, and none of the newly compliant worlds had fleets of any significance, thus Ferrus Manus had declared that these interlopers must be found and eliminated before any advance could begin.

Interesting that compliant worlds are implied to have their own fleets of some kind, which echoes the stuff regarding Davin.

PAge 115

A multitude of flickering lines looped across the display: flight trajectories, torpedo tracks, ranges and intercept vectors, each one designed to bring an end to the two vessels that lay a few thousand kilometres off his prow.
..
"Inform the ordnance decks." said Balhaan, "but close to optimum range before unmasking the guns."

A "few thousand kilometres" is not optimum range for the starship guns.

Page 116

Balhaan watched the range to the two cruisers close with a practiced eye. They were following a curving trajectory around the star's corona, hoping to lose themselves in the electromagnetic clutter that spurted and foamed around its edges, but the Ferrum was too close to be thrown off by such a clumsy subterfuge.

Ships (Imperial and enemy) travelling around the Star's corona.

PAge 117

"Torpedoes launched!" warned the defence officer. "Impact in thirty seconds!"

Balhaan shouted, "Countermeasures!" though he knew that any torpedo launched from such close range was practically guaranteed to hit. The Ferrum continued to turn, and Balhaan could feel the juddering fire of the defence turrets as they opened fire on the incoming ordnance. Some of the enemy torpedoes would be shot down, exploding soundlessly in the void, but not all of them.

Thirty seconds at "close range" is considered a guaranteed hit. Assuming the range has remained roughly consistent above (2000-3000 km) and a perfectly straight-line course we're talking torpedo velocities of 65-100 km/s or so. Call it "tens of km/s" in line with the BFG novels.

Page 120

Ferrus Manus towered above his servants, his knotted flesh pale as though carved from the heart of a glacier. Scars crossed his skin from the wounds he had taken in battle, for the Primarch of the Iron Hands was never one to shirk from leading his warriors by example. His close cropped hair was jet black, his eyes like glittering silver coins, and his features were battered by centuries of war. Other primarchs might be considered beautiful creations, handsome men made godlike by their ascension to the ranks of the Astartes, but Ferrus Manus did not count himself amongst them.

Santar's eyes were drawn, as they always were, to the gleaming silver forearms of his primarch. The flesh of his arms and hands shimmered and rippled as though formed from liquid mercury that had flowed into the shape of mighty hands and somehow been trapped in that form forever. Santar had seen wondrous things fashioned by these hands, machines and weapons that never dulled or failed, all beaten into shape or crafted by the primarch's hands without need of forge or hammer.

Ferrus Manus. Note the liquid metal hands.. and yes the theories seem to involve necrons.

Page 127

The Primarch of the Iron Hands had been demonstrating his phenomenal skill and the miraculous powers of his liquid metal hands when Fulgrim and his Phoenix Guard had descended upon the sprawling forge complex.

More on Ferrus' liquid metal hands.

Page 128

Fulgrim had accepted the challenge with regal grace, and both primarchs had stripped to the waist, working without pause for weeks on end, the forge ringing with the deafening pounding of hammers, the hiss of cooling metal, and the good natured insults of the two young gods as they sought to outdo one another. At the end of three months unceasing toil, both warriors had finished their weapons, Fulgrim having forged an exquisite warhammer that could level a mountain with a single blow, and Ferrus Manus a golden bladed sword that forever burned with the fire of the forge. Both weapons were unmatched by any yet crafted by man, and upon seeing what the other had created, each primarch declared that his opponent's was the greater.

Primarch weapon forging.

Page 129

"We cannot do this alone. We have struggled for months to accomplish this task on our own when it should have been clear that we could not. In all things we strive to eradicate weakness, but it is not weakness to ask for help, my brothers. It is weakness to deny that help is needed. To fight on without hope when there are those who would gladly lend a hand is foolish, and I have been as blind as any to this, but no more."

I have to say I like this version of the Iron Hands better than Jonathan Green's. Gdolkin would have an aneurysm to see Manus now. It's also better than Wrath of Iron.

Page 133

But the stories that had come back regarding the ferocity of the fighting on Laeran had the ring of truth to them. Three hundred dead Astartes was what some people were saying, but others put the figure even higher at seven hundred, with perhaps six times that injured.

Such figures were nigh impossible to believe, but Ostian could only wonder at the force of will that would be required to destroy an entire civilisation in a month. It was certainly true that the Astartes he had seen around the ship were more sombre of late, but could the casualties really have been that high?

Aftermath of the Laer War. It gives you a benchmark as to what is considered usual Astartes casualties.

Page 145

The sheer magnetism of the primarchs was something that took a great deal of getting used to, the force of their personalities and sheer physical charisma leaving men who had fought the darkest horrors of the galaxy trembling with paralysing fear. Julius well remembered his first meeting with Fulgrim, an embarrassing encounter where he found he couldn't even remember his own name when it was asked of him.

All Primarchs seem to share some sort of charisma, which is a fundamental aspect of their powers. Moreso than their physical capabilities, perhaps.

Page 153

"Because they can't. They're trapped in this system."
,..
"Perhaps they have no Navigator."

"No," said Fulgrim, "That's not it. If they were without a Navigator then the 52nd Expedition would have caught them long ago."

Apparently they find it hard to believe people can travel the warp without a Navigator. So that means they must logically have a Navigator analogue.

Page 153

"Fuel. A fleet the size of the Diasporex must consume a phenomenal amount of energy every day, and to make a jump of any distance they will need a great deal of it. The fleet masters of this sector's compliant worlds do not report any significant losses of tankers or convoys, so we must assume the Diasporex are getting their fuel from another source"

Fuel issues in interstellar travel.

Page 154

"The Carollis Star." said Julius. "They must have solar collectors hidden somewhere in the sun's corona. They're waiting to gather enough fuel before moving on."

Months of collecting fuel then, perhaps longer.

Page 161

The cold lights of the apothecarion bleached the corpse's skin and reflected from the incubation tanks he had set up to mature the altered gene-seed through chemical stimulation, genetic manipulation and controlled irradiation.

Gene-seed alteration. In other lights it might be called mutation.

Page 162-163

Even now the apothecarion's incubation tanks held the nascent fruits of his experiments, tiny, budding organs floating in a nutrient rich suspension. The tissue samples were from Astartes who had fallen on Laeran, and Fabius predicted that his enhancements should double their efficiency. Already he was growing a superior Ossmodula that would increase the strength of the epiphiseal fusion and ossification of a warrior's skeleton, resulting in bones that were virtually unbreakable. Next to the enhanced Ossmodula was a test organ that combined elements of Laer hormones, which if successful, would alter the fundamental nature of the Betcher's gland, allowing an Astartes to replicate the sonic shriek of the Laer with devastating results.

Work on refining other organs was only just beginning, but Fabius had high hopes for his work on enhancing the Biscopea to stimulate muscle growth beyond the norms and produce warriors as strong as Dreadnoughts who could punch through the side of a tank with their bare fists. The multi-spectral eyes of the Laer had provided a great deal of information he hoped to incorporate into the experiments he had begun on the Occulobe. Scores of eyeballs were pinned like butterflies in the sterile cabinets beside him, chemical stimulants working to enhance the capabilities of the optic nerves.

With some modification, Fabius believed he could create visual organs that would function at peak efficiency in total darkness, bright light or stroboscopic conditions, rendering an Astartes effectively immune to being blinded or disorientated.

His first success sat behind him on steel shelves in thousands of vials of blue liquid, a drug he had syn-hesised from a genetic splice between a gland taken from the Laer that replicated the functions of the thyroid gland and the Biscopea.

In the test subjects - those warriors wounded too badly to survive - Fabius had found that their metabolism and strength had increased markedly before their deaths. Refinement of the drug had kept the increases from overloading the recipient's heart, and now it was ready for distribution to the Legion en masse.

Fulgrim had authorised the use of the drug and within days it would be coursing through the blood of every warrior who chose to take it.

Fabius has kept himself busy improving gene seed and creating new and fancy combat drugs. This is positively banal compared to stuff that will come along later from his hands...

Page 173

The Ferrum slipped through the bright corona of the Carollis Star, her shields keeping the worst of the electromagnetic hash from scrambling her systems as the crew hunted for the solar collectors of the Diasporex. Her hull had been patched and the ruptured elements of her superstructure repaired, though she would still need some time in docks to undo all the damage that had been inflicted upon her.

Starships virtually unharmed in Coronoa of Star. Again.

Page 174

"Is your surveyor sweep finished yet?" asked Balhaan.
"Just about, sir." replied Axarden.
"How is it looking?"

"Not hopeful, sir. There is so much interference that we could be right on top of them and not know it."

Corona is making a mess of sensors, however.

Page 174

After all, where was the glory in scores of ships scouring the outer edges of a sun for solar collectors?

Scores of ships in the 52nd fleet. Assuming 40-100 ships for a single 'Exploration Fleet' and plug this into the 'Horus Rising' fleet sizes that's 186,400 to 465,000 vessels. They're all probably warships too, given that transports wouldn't be of much use hunting up enemy fleet vessels.

Page 175

Immediately, he saw what Axarden had seen, the shimmering gleam of reflected starlight winking on the giant, rippling sails of a solar collector.

Collector spotted.

Page 175

"How many collectors are there?"
..

"At least ten, but there are probably more I can't yet pinpoint." said Axarden. "The star's radioactive output appears to be highly concentrated here."

at least ten solar collectors.

Page 180

Thanks to the surgeries and enhancements that had been wrought upon Julius's chassis of meat and bone to elevate him to the ranks of the Astartes, his physiology was functionally immortal, though it gave him great comfort to think of Evander as the fatherly figure he had never known on Chemos.

Yet again Astartes are "functionally immortal". That makes five books running now.

Page 183-184

"By following the logic of Irenaeus, you must surely perceive that heresy has no purely objective meaning. The category exists only from the point of view of a position within any society that has previously defined itself as orthodox. Anyone who espouses views or actions that do not conform to that point of view can be perceived as heretics by others within those societies who are convinced that their view is orthodox. In other words, heresy is a value judgment, the expression of a view from within an established belief system. For instance, during the Wars of Unification, the Pan-Europan Adventists held the secular belief of the Emperor as a heresy, while the ancestor worshippers of the Yndonesic Bloc considered the rise to power of the despot Kalagann as a great apostasy."

"So you see, Julius, for a heresy to exist there must be an authoritative system of dogma or belief designated as orthodox."

"So you're saying there can never be heresy now, since the Emperor has shown the lie in the belief in false gods and corpse worshipers?"

"Not at all; dogma and belief are not reliant on the predisposed belief in a godhead or the cloak of religion. They might simply be a regime or set of social values, such as we are bringing to the galaxy even now. To resist or rebel against that could easily be considered heresy, I suppose."

Discussion of Heresy.

Page 186

Then he had wondered if he was receiving some astrotelepathic message from afar, though he knew of no psychic potential he possessed. Magnus of Prospero had inherited their father's gift of foresight and psychic potential, though it was a gift that had distanced him from his brothers, for none truly trusted that such a power was without price or consequence.

Fulgrim contemplating the voices in his head. Never once does he consider Daemonic influence, which may or may not be damning depending on your POV. On one hand, noone in the GC era is supposed to believe in or think of Daemons, which means greater vulnerability. On the other hand, the Primarchs are supposed to have special knowledge (at least some do) about the dangers of the Warp, and arguably this would mean Fulgrim.

Page 191

Filled with the collected energy of a sun, the explosion of the solar collector bloomed like the birth of a new star. Fiery clouds of debris and released potential spread over hundreds of kilometres, shattering warships that had risked passing close to the collector in an attempt to gain some advantage in the battle raging in the star's corona.

Nearly a thousand starships jockeyed and manoeuvred above the Carollis Star, each moving in its own intricate ballet as blinding streaks of lance fire and the looping contrails of torpedoes crisscrossed the space between them.

Battle around the star for the collector ships.. 1000 ships involved. Again we dont know ratios but even if its 10:1 in favor of the bad guys, we're still talking 100 Imperial ships in the Expedition fleet. If we figure close to 500 ships we'd be talking.. 2.3 million ships.

Page 192

The Fist of Iron led the charge of the Iron Hands, bludgeoning a path through the centre of the Diasporex fleet, and battering the enemy ships with devastating broadsides. Mass drivers and battery after battery hammered the Diasporex ships, and plumes of venting oxygen bled into space from the wounded vessels.

Spurts of nuclear fire speared up from the surface of the star, clouds of radioactive material following in their wake and wreathing the battle in streaks of light. Smaller fighters and bombers were ripped apart by these random acts of the star's violence, their ordnance erupting in flames and sending them spinning through space like tumbling meteors.

An alien warship duelled with the Iron Hands, unknown weapons hurling bolts of energy that melted through the hulls of the Imperial ships, scrambled their weapon systems, or slaved them to the enemy fleet. Confusion reigned as vessels of the Imperial fleet turned their weapons on allied ships, until Ferras Manus understood what was happening and led the Fist of Iron once more into the thick of the fighting to destroy the enemy ship with a devastating close range torpedo volley.

The alien vessel broke apart in a rippling flurry of explosions, torn asunder from within as each torpedo smashed through bulkhead after bulkhead before detonating in the heart of its target.

Iron Hands fleet using mass drivers, "nuclear fire" eruptions from the surface destroying fighters (but not damaging starships, apparently), and torpedoes penetrating into hulls before detonating inside the target. Fighters can also duel in proximity ot the star's corona and not be destroyed

Page 194

Even as Ferrus Manus recognised the moment the hybrid vessel took command, the Diasporex fleet again displayed its teeth. Co-ordinated waves of bombers crippled Medusa's Glory and improbably destroyed the Heart of Gold.

Part of me wants to say this is a in-joke for HHGttG

Page 194

The greatest loss to the Imperial fleet came when the battle-barge Metallus was destroyed by an enemy lance that tore through its reactor core and vaporised it in an explosion that rivalled that of the first solar collector.

Dozens of nearby ships were caught in the terrifying violence of its destruction, tumbling to their deaths in the star's fiery embrace.

Battle-barge blows up with energy release rivalling first collector. Depending on size of the collector and length of time involved (weeks or months... square km or tens of square km of solar collector at least...) we're probably talking gigatons at least released, but that's highly conjectural and the parameters being unknown leaves it open to discussion. It can't be used to prove calcs either way.

Page 195

Normal Astartes practice for starship assaults called for specialist troops to make lightning hit and run attacks on critical systems, such as the gun decks or engines, before making a rapid withdrawal, but this mission was to capture the command deck and end the battle in one fell swoop.

Such actions were dangerous at the best of times, but to cross the gulf of space between fighting vessels in the midst of such a furious conflict seemed foolhardy to Solomon.

Boarding assault doctrine.

Page 196

Solomon closed his eyes and hunched down into the brace position as the torpedo slammed into the side of the enemy vessel, the inertial compensators reducing the impact from lethal to merely bone-jarring. He heard the booming thuds as the shaped charges on the torpedo's nose detonated in sequence, blasting a path through the thick superstructure of the ship.

Boarding torpedoes have inertial compensators.

Page 200

Solomon knelt beside the dead man and lifted his limp head from the deck. His skin was bloody and his midsection had been burst open from the inside. His armour was an elaborate weave of kinetotropic mesh and energy reflective plates that had singularly failed to stop the brutality of a bolter round.

Enemy defenses. Not much use against kinetic impactors.

Page 201

Through the heart of the firestorm, the Firebird soared like the most graceful of birds, its fiery wings leaving vortices of flaring gasses in its wake. Like a twisting comet trailing streamers of flame behind it, the assault craft seemed to glide easily through the explosions and streaking lines of deadly gunfire that painted the raging inferno of the star's corona.

Stormbirds and Firebird seem to be able to endure proximity to a corona as well as the fighters.

Page 202

Even as the cruisers closed in to unleash the coup de grace, a monstrous shadow enveloped them, and the Fist of Iron sailed between them, a series of ruinous broadsides rippling from its dozens of gun decks. At such close range the results were devastating. The first cruiser was torn apart as a chain reaction of explosions bloated its superstructure from within, and it broke up in a shower of burning plasma and foaming oxygen. The second ship survived long enough to return fire at the Fist of Iron, killing hundreds of its crew and inflicting terrible damage on Ferrus Manus's flagship, before it was crippled by a second broadside that obliterated it in a huge explosion.

Fist of Iron has dozens of gun decks.. dozens if not hundreds of guns (at least 2 guns per deck, possibly as may has six or even a dozen).

If we use the 5-6 guns per 'deck' from 'The Lion' short story in The Primarchs, we easily get hundreds of guns.

Page 203

Fulgrim raised his pistol, a weapon with the power of a caged sun, which had been crafted in the forges of the Urals, to unleash a hail of molten bolts. Blazing light filled the hallway, the gleaming silver of its structure reflecting the brilliance of his shots as they tore through meat, bone and armour.

Men and aliens screamed as the primarch's shots tore through them.

Another primarch superweapon. It seems only Horus bothers with a simple storm bolter.

Page 206

Defensive corridors that led to the bridge of a starship were designed to be too long to hurl grenades the length of, but this vessel had been designed in an age before the advent of Space Marines, and all three were hurled with a strength easily able to reach the barricades.

Defensive design doctrine of starships. Spac eMarines can throw grenades farther than a normal human.

Page 217

The mighty ship was a craftworld, and it possessed a grace that human shipwrights could only dream of. Its colossal length was fashioned from a substance that resembled yellowed bone, and its form was more akin to something that had grown rather than been built. Gemlike domes reflected the weak starlight, and an inner radiance glistened like phosphorus through their semi-transparent surfaces.

Graceful minarets rose in scattered ivory clusters, their tapered tops shining gold and silver, and wide spires of bone swept from the vessel's flanks where a fleet of elegant ships like ancient sea galleons was docked. Vast conglomerations of wondrously designed habitations clung to the surface of the mighty craftworld, and a host of twinkling lights described beautiful traceries through the cities.

A great sail of gold and black soared above the mighty vessel's body, rippling in the stellar wind as it plied its lonely course. The craftworld travelled alone, its stately progress through the stars like the last peregrination of an elderly thespian before his final curtain.

Eldar Craftworld.

Page 224

All that was known had come from a single surviving probe that had been launched at the outset of the Great Crusade, and which had returned a faint signal that indicated that the local systems of the Perdus region contained many habitable worlds ripe for compliance.

More probes.

Page 227

Scores of Astartes warriors trained in the halls, either in feats of arms or simple physical exercise to maintain the perfection of their physiques. A strict regime of chemical enhancers and genetic superiority kept an Astartes body in peak physical condition, but many of the new drugs being introduced to the dispensers in Mark IV plate required physical stimulation to begin the reaction in the recipient's metabolism.

Space Marine bodies require monitoring and medicating to keep in perfect state.

Page 242

The surface of Twenty-Eight Four was the most beautiful sight Solomon had ever seen. From orbit, the planet's surface appeared peaceful; the land plentiful, the oceans a clear blue and the atmosphere flecked with spiral patterns of clouds. Atmospheric readings showed the planet had a breathable atmosphere, untouched by the pollution that choked so many Imperial worlds, turning them into nightmarish visions of an industrial hell, and electromagnetic surveyors reported no signs of intelligent life.

Probably an Eldar maiden world.

Page 243

As soon as his auto-senses confirmed that the atmosphere was breathable, he removed his helmet and took a deep breath, closing his eyes at the simple pleasure of breathing air that hadn't been through a multitude of filters and air scrubbers.
...
"According to my armour's sensors it's fine."

Sensors check atmospheric safety.

Page 245

It was a shame that the coming of the Imperium would forever change this world, but such change was inevitable, for it was a matter of record that it had been claimed by the 28th Expedition in the name of the Emperor. Within days, Mechanicum pioneer teams and prospecting rigs would descend to the surface to begin the colonisation process, and exploitation of its natural resources.
Solomon knew he was just a simple warrior, but as he looked into the eye of the world, he dearly wished there was some way for mankind to avoid such wanton destruction of the landscape.

With the light of science and reason they brought with them, could the Mechanicum not find some way to harness the resources of a planet without bringing the inevitable fallout of such industry: pollution, overcrowding and the rape of a world's beauty?

Claiming a new world for the Imperium. Destroying the galaxy a little at a time.

Page 247

At least the bar area was still intact, the crazed interior designers not yet having the courage to try and shift several hundred surly remembrancers from their perches for fear of inciting a full scale riot.

Several hundred remembrancers at least in the 28th fleet.

Page 248

His silver hands roamed the marble, the metriculators within his fingertips reading the stone to unlock the secret fault lines and stress points hidden within its mass.

Silver sculptor augmetics have metriculators.

Page 250

"You may look upon me." said Fulgrim. Ostian suddenly felt as though his muscles were under the control of the primarch, and his head came up without any apparent command from his brain. Fulgrim's voice was like music, each syllable pronounced with perfect pitch and tone as though no other sound could have filled the air so appropriately.

Effect of Primarch on a normal human.

Page 252

Ostian struggled to think of words that would not offend the primarch, for to do so seemed like the basest behaviour imaginable. Who could conceive of giving insult to someone of such beauty?

Seeing Ostian's dilemma, Fulgrim placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder and said, "A good friend who points out mistakes and imperfections, and rebukes evil is to be respected as if he reveals a secret of hidden treasure. I give you leave to speak freely"

The primarch's words were spoken softly but they acted like a key to a locked room within Ostian, opening the door to thoughts that he would not have dared give voice to before.

More effects of Primarchs on normals.

Page 255

Dressed only in his surgical robes, Apothecary Fabius loomed over the operating slab where his subject lay and nodded to the apothecarion servitors. They lifted the chirurgeon device so that it slotted neatly into the interface unit mounted at his waist, and plugged in the connectors that meshed his own senses with the workings of the chirurgeon.

In effect, the device would give him multiple, independent arms that would all work in concert with his own thoughts, responding to his needs far quicker and more skilfully than any orderly or nurse could ever hope to. In any case, the surgery he was about to perform was best kept from the eyes of those who might baulk at what he must do for it to succeed.

Fabius's chirurgeon device. Before it becomes possessed/warped/whatever.

Simon_Jester · Post by **Simon_Jester** » 2012-08-08 11:34pm

Minor note: A stellar corona is a much less nasty environment to operate in than the photosphere; the words "white-hot vacuum" describe it pretty well. The sunlight is intense (take 1500 watts per square meter as the flux at 1 AU, and apply the inverse square law, you get a nasty result), but it's not as bad as being 'inside the sun' the way we normally think of it.

At 40k levels of firepower, that might be a survivable environment.

Connor MacLeod · Post by **Connor MacLeod** » 2012-08-24 06:37pm

Part 2 of Fulgrim.

Page 257

"It is a modified tracheal implant that will bond with your vocal chords and should allow you to produce a nerve paralysing shriek similar to that employed by certain warrior breeds of the Laer."

"You are implanting me with xenos organs?" asked Eidolon, horrified.

"Not as such." said Fabius with a toothy grin, "though there are strands taken from the alien genome I chose to mesh with Astartes gene-seed mutated under controlled conditions. Essentially, I will be adding a new organ to your makeup, one that you will be able to trigger at will in battle."

This is the implant Eidolon used on the Warsingers on Isstvan.

Page 260

"I stood with the Emperor and Horus on the surface of Altaneum as its inhabitants destroyed the planet's ice caps and flooded their world beneath the oceans to destroy natural beauty that had taken billions of years to form, rather than allow us to take it from them. The Emperor told me that we must not make such mistakes again, for the galaxy will be worthless if we win it as a wasteland"

The Emperor should tell that to the Mechanicum. also note that the Imperium fought an enemy that could rapidly destroy (melt) their polar ice caps to flood the planet. I've done ice cap melting calcs before... call it teratons if not petatons no matter how you argue it.

Page 261

Over the course of the next two weeks, the 28th Expedition came upon another five worlds of a similar nature to Twenty-Eight Four, but each time, the fleet moved on without claiming it in the name of the Emperor.
..
Indeed, the longer the expedition spent in the Per-dus Region, the greater Solomon's conviction became that these worlds had not been abandoned but were, in fact awaiting their inhabitants. He had no facts upon which to base this supposition, save a feeling that the worlds they had seen thus far were too perfect, as though they had been deliberately fashioned rather than allowed to develop on a natural path.

Definitely Eldar maiden worlds. assuming 10 LY per world we're talking 50 LY in two weeks.. 1300c.

Page 271

At last the flagship of the Emperor's Children detected the presence of the enemy vessel, though its surveyor officers fought to keep the signal constant, for it kept fading in and out of the display.
Repeated hails were met with walls of static, though the fleet's astropaths reported a curious deadening of their warp vision, similar to that which had long shielded the region from the sight of Navigators and telepaths.

At last the forward elements of the fleet came into visual range of the lone vessel and it appeared on screen as a faint, slightly blurred outline.

Its true size was impossible to determine with any accuracy, but ship logisters estimated its length at between nine and fourteen kilometres. A vast triangular slice curved above the hull like a billowing sail, and even as the image resolved in the centre of the viewing bay, a voice sounded over the ship's vox system, crystal clear and speaking in perfect Imperial Gothic

Eldar craftworld estimated to be 9-14 km, but that is by no means an exact estimate because of the blurring and probably holofields.

Also note how Astorpaths and naivagotrs "warp vision" was blocked by the Eldar.

Page 273

Solomon remembered the walking monstrosities, taller than a Dreadnought, which had stalked the dark forest, like giants of legend, crushing Astartes in their mighty fists and destroying armoured vehicles with shoulder mounted cannons of unimaginable power.

Probably Wraithguard/Wraithlords.

Page 277

"I do not know for sure, but I believe that whatever dark forces his Emperor employed in the creation of these primarchs renders many of them as little more than spectres in the warp. I cannot read this one, nor sense anything of his future"

Eldrad has trouble reading Fulgrim. We find out why shortly.

Page 286

"Since you ask, Captain Demeter, yes, we have been shadowing you, for it is a curious thing to see your ships abroad in this region of space." said Eldrad. "We had thought that it was shrouded from your kind. How is it that you managed to reach it?"

Eldar can shroud maiden worlds from detection

Page 287

"I am no expert on history, but did your race not once claim to have ruled the galaxy?"

"Claim? We did rule it once, and it was thanks to our arrogance and complacence that we lost it. But do not ask of such things again, for I will speak no more of those lost days"

Eldrad claims the Eldar ruled the galaxy.

Page 291

"Gods of Chaos?" cried Fulgrim, as a red mist of hate fuelled power raced throughout his body.

"What in the name of Terra are you talking about?"

Eldrad's implacable mask slipped and his face was transformed in horror. "То travel the warp and yet you know not of Chaos? Khaine's blood! I see now why they chose your race to strike at."
..
"The warp, as you call it, is home to the most malign beings imaginable, terrible energies that are elemental and ferocious. They are gods that have existed since the dawn of time and will outlast this guttering flame of a universe. Chaos is the worm at the heart of the apple and the canker in the soul that devours from within. It is the mortal enemy of all living things."

Much as with the Interex, the Eldar tried to warn the Imperium about Chaos. With pretty much the expected failure. This is pretty much the Emperor's doing, since he encouraged outright ignorance of their existence, and this is the second race whose society is more stable and generlaly more positive than the Imperium's who is horrified at the Imperium's lack of knowledge of the Chaos gods.

Page 293

Fulgrim leapt into the air just as the eldar pilot saw the danger and tried to gain height. It was already too late. The primarch's sword hacked through the side of the vehicle and tore downwards, ripping through its hull as he gave a bellow of hatred.

The tank's pronged front section dropped to the ground and the vehicle slewed around, the bevelled edge carving into the ground, flipping the vehicle over onto its side with a terrific crack of what sounded like splintering bone.

Fulgrim chops through Eldar tank.

Page 297

How could he not have seen this? Fulgrim was already on a dark path, his soul embroiled in a secret war he did not even realise it was fighting. A dark and terrible force sought to dominate him, and though Fulgrim was resisting, Eldrad knew there was only one way such a battle could end. He knew now that this dark presence had been what shielded Fulgrim from his sight, jealously keeping its victim veiled so that none might unmask its designs.

The sword... he should have felt it the moment he laid eyes upon it, but the deceits of the Great Enemy had ensnared him with subtle illusions and rendered him blind to its presence.

Eldrad realizes Fulgrim is struggling against possession.

Page 302

So far every one of them had come through the violence of the eldar attacks alive, though they all sported wounds from the hails of razor sharp discs fired by the eldar weapons. One of the discs lay on the ground next to him and he picked it up, turning it over in his hands. It seemed ridiculous that such a thing could cause injury, but its edges were lethally sharp and could penetrate even Mark IV plate if it struck a weak area such as a joint.

Effect of shuriken weapons on Marine armor. implied to only penetrate at weak areas, much like las weapons.

Page 304

A shape began to form in the light, massive and dark, its outline humanoid, but surely too large for an eldar warrior. Marius wondered if they would have to face another of the wraithlords.
A mighty speartip emerged first, blazing runic symbols writhing on its wide blade, followed by a brazen arm that bled molten light into the air. The limb groaned like hot iron as it flexed and the body it belonged to emerged from the gateway.

Solomon let out a breath at the primal horror of the giant warrior that stood at the base of the hill. Towering above the eldar warriors, the mighty creature's body was fashioned as if from dark iron, its veins rippling like rivers of lava across its surface. Curling horns of smoke and ash oozed from its skin and coiled about its head like a living crown of fire-pierced smoke.

Its head was a roaring, wailing terror, and its eyes blazed like ingots straight from the forge. The living avatar of bloody death bellowed its promise of carnage to the skies, and raised its mighty arms, a thick red gore oozing from between its fingers.

Avatar of Khaine appears.

Page 306

Fulgrim saw the blazing spear hurtling towards him, and swayed aside as its fiery heat slashed past his head. He laughed as he saw that the eldar god had disarmed itself, but the laughter died in his throat as he heard the voice in his head scream a warning.

..

He turned to see the spear twisting in the air like a serpent, swooping back in a graceful arc towards him. It roared as it flew, the noise like the eruptions of a thousand volcanoes. He brought up his sword and deflected the flaming missile, the heat of its passing scorching the skin of his face and setting the plaits of his hair on fire.

The Wailing doom can fly around in mid-air, rather like an Autarch's weapon.

page 306-307

No, this was a creature with a power to match his own, a terrible god-like being that bore the heart of its fading race within its iron breast. It would not be baited or riled with petty insults, it was a warrior creature with one purpose and one purpose alone: to kill.

Fulgrim believes the Avatar of Khaine matches him in (physical) power.

Page 307

The two beings leapt towards each other, Fulgrim's sword slashing down to meet the mighty creature's blade, which he now saw resembled a great sword, where once it had been a spear. Both blades met with a tearing shriek that echoed in realms beyond those of the five senses and an explosion of unlight that left those who saw it blinded. The roaring eldar god recovered first and its molten sword arced for Fulgrim's head.

He ducked, and slammed his fist into its midriff, feeling the hard impact on iron and the blistering heat that seared the skin from his knuckles. Fulgrim laughed with the pain, and raised his sword to block a murderous slash towards his groin.

The eldar god attacked with wild, atavistic fury, its blows driven by racial hatred and the ferocious joy of unbound emotion. Flames wreathed its limbs, and dark tendrils of smoke enveloped the two combatants as they struggled. Silver sword and fiery blade sparked and clanged as they traded blows, neither able to penetrate the other's defences.

More fulgrim vs Avatar action.

Page 308-309

He stepped in close to the flaming eldar god and hurled his sword high into the air.
Instantly, its burning gaze snapped upwards, the coals of its eyes homing in on the spinning blade. It drew back its arm to hurl its spear at the sword, but before it could throw, Fulgrim leapt towards it and delivered a thunderous right hook to its face.

Every ounce of his power and rage powered the blow, and he let loose a bellowing cry of hate as he struck. Metal buckled and an eruption of red light exploded from the eldar monster's head. Fulgrim's fist hammered through its helmet and into the molten core of its skull, and he cried out in agony and pleasure as he felt the blow smash from the back of its head.

The wounded creature staggered, its head a twisted ruin of metal and flame. Spears of red light streamed from its helmet, and the molten rivers of its blood blazed like phosphor against its iron skin. Fulgrim felt the pain of his maimed hand, but savagely suppressed it as he stepped in again and wrapped his hands around its neck.

The heat of its molten skin seared his flesh, but Fulgrim was oblivious to the pain, too intent on his foe's destruction. Plumes of red light streamed from the eldar god's face, the sound like a manifestation of the combined rage and heart of its creators. An age of regret and lust flowed from the creature, and Fulgrim felt the aching sadness of the necessity of its existence pour into him even as it poured out of the dying monster.

His hands blackened as he crushed the life from his enemy, the metal cracking with the sound of a dying soul. Fulgrim forced the creature to its knees, laughing insanely as the pain of his wounds vied with the powerful elation he felt in crushing the life from another being with his own bare hands and watching as the life fled from its eyes.

The sound of a great and terrible thunder built, and Fulgrim looked up from his murder to see a graceful bird of fire carve its way across the heavens. He released his hold on the dying eldar creature and punched the heavens as the Firebird streaked overhead, followed by a host of Stormbirds and Thunderhawks.

Fulgrim returned his gaze to his defeated foe as whipping light and noise poured from it like the nuclear fire blazing at the heart of a star. The light of the creature's death flared, and its body exploded in a thunder of hot iron and molten metal. Fulgrim was hurled through the air by the screaming explosion, and he felt the touch of its power sear his armour and skin.

Fulgrim defeats the Avatar, which promptly self destructs.

Page 317

The music was deafening. Dozens of phonocasters were scattered around, blaring a multitude of what appeared to be different kinds of music. Paintings of all manner of vileness hung from the walls, some depicting acts of violent barbarity and others, of unspeakably vile conduct that was beyond pornography. Braxton felt his trepidation grow as he heard arguing voices from the central stateroom beyond.

One must ask how and where such pictures came to be onboard the ship if they were that horrifying. But hey. CHAOS.

Page 320-321

"Firstly, I bring word of Lord Magnus of Prospero. It has come to the attention of the Emperor, beloved by all, that, contrary to the dictates of the Council of Nikaea, Lord Magnus has continued his researches into the mysteries of the immaterium."
..

"The Sigillite has despatched the Wolves of Fenris to bring Magnus back to Terra to await the Emperor's judgement upon him."

...

"At present, the 63rd Expedition makes war against a civilisation calling itself the Auretian Technocracy."

Events currently going on in the rest of the galaxy. Horus has already fallen then, and is waging war on the Technocracy. Magnus is being sought by the Space Wolves. Interesting that Malcador does the dispatching here, rather than the Emperor.

Page 334

The eight-week journey to the Auretian system had been one of enormous tedium for Fulgrim, with every diversion delighting him for only the briefest moment before becoming stale.

eight week journey to join Horus.

Page 336

"Order all ships to unmask, but not to fire." he ordered.

Captain Aizel leapt to obey, and Fulgrim watched as the fleet before the 28th Expedition suddenly became aware of his ships and began to scatter, desperately trying to manoeuvre into a position where it could avoid being blasted to pieces. Fulgrim knew that the frantic change of formation was a fruitless endeavour, for his vessels were in the perfect attack formation, and at the perfect firing range.

The vox-system burst into life as dozens of hails were received from the 63rd Expedition, and Fulgrim nodded as a channel was opened to the Vengeful Spirit, the Warmaster's flagship.

"dozens" of hails implies dozens of warships in the 63rd Expedition fleet.

Page 356

Solomon wouldn't have given the matter a second thought against any other foe, but the greenskin warriors were monstrous brutes whose strength was very nearly the equal of an Astartes warrior. Their central nervous systems were so primitive that they took a great deal of punishment before they lay down and stopped fighting.

A greenskin warrior was not the equal of an Astartes by any means, but they had enough raw aggression to make up for it, and they had numbers on their side.

Orks are nearly as strong as astartes, and incredibly tough, but overall are not equal to an Astartes individually.

Page 358

They fired noisy, blazing weapons from the hip or brandished mighty, toothed blades with smoke belching motors. Some wore armour attached with thick leather straps, or simply nailed to their thick hides, while others wore great, horned helmets fringed with thick furs.

A huge brute in wheezing, mechanical exo-armour led the charge, bolter shells sparking and ricocheting from his protective suit. Solomon could see the rippling heat haze of a protective energy field sheathing the monstrous chieftain, though how such a primitive race could manufacture or maintain such technology baffled him.

Ork weapons and armour.

Page 359

He saw a pair of his warriors borne to the deck by a pack of howling greenskins, a roaring axe hacking their Mark IV plate to splintered ruins. Another was ripped almost in two by a close range burst from a monstrous rotary cannon that was carried by a greenskin as though it weighed no more than a pistol.

Ork weaponry vs Astartes.

Page 360

The greenskin before him looked up in response to the sound, and Solomon did not waste his opportunity, unloading his weapon full in its face, pulping its thickly-boned skull in a torrent of explosive shells.

Multiple bolter shells pulp ork skull.

Page 379

Ferrus held up his shimmering, mercurial hands and said, "I don't think he liked the fact that I could shape metal without heat or hammer. He returned it to me a century ago, saying that it should remain here with its creator. I think Nocturne's superstitions aren't as forgotten as our brother would have us believe."

Ferrus discussing Vulkan.

Page 384

Fulgrim brought his sword up as Ferrus Manus swung his hammer for his head with blinding speed. The two weapons rang with a clash of steel that Fulgrim felt echo in the very depths of his soul. Flames blazed from his blade and lightning crackled from the head of Ferrus's hammer. The two primarchs stood locked together, Fulgrim pressing his fiery blade towards Ferrus, and the commander of the Iron I lands holding him at bay with the haft of his hammer.
Burning light and sound filled the Iron Forge, the weapons roaring as the unimaginable forces harnessed in their creation were unleashed. Ferrus dropped his guard and hammered his fist into Fulgrim's face, the force of the blow enough to crush the helmet of Tactical Dreadnought armour, but barely enough to bruise the flesh of a primarch. Fulgrim rode the blow and smashed his forehead into his brother's face, spinning on his heel and slashing his red hot blade towards Ferrus's throat.
The blade clanged on Ferrus's gorget, sliding clear without so much as scratching the black plate.

Ferrus vs Fulgrim

Page 386

...Ferrus dropped the hammer and turned into the blow, catching the descending blade in his molten silver hands.

Fulgrim cried out as the pain of the impact jarred his arms. He tried to pull his weapon free, but Ferrus had it locked tight in his hands. The blade was utterly immobile, the chrome-steel of his brother's hands swirling as though changing from solid matter to liquid metal. Fulgrim blinked as the metal of his sword seemed to liquefy and the fire of its blade rippled up Ferrus's hands.
Ferrus opened his eyes, and the fire of the sword was alive in the silver coins of his eyes.

"I forged this blade." hissed Ferrus, "and I can break it too."

No sooner had the words left his mouth than Fire-blade exploded in a bright flare of molten metal. Both primarchs were hurled from their feet by the force of the blast, their armour and flesh burned by white hot gobbets of molten metal.

Fulgrim rolled and blinked stars from his eyes, stunned by the force of the explosion. He still held the ruined Fireblade, though all that was left of the sword above the hilt was a smoking nub of hissing metal.

Ferrus' hands destroy Fireblade.

Page 391

Initially, things had gone as smoothly as could be hoped for, but barely a week into the journey to Isstvan III, storms of fearsome power erupted in the warp, tsunamis of unreality that crashed around the vessels of the 28th Expedition and smashed one to destruction before the few surviving Navigators had managed to fight their way through the storms and guide the ships to relative safety.

Moments prior to the first maelstrom of force, terrifying shrieks of agony and terror had echoed the length and breadth of the Pride of the Emperor's astro-pathic choir chambers. Alarums had sounded, and one entire chancel was blown clear of the vessel by the force of the psychic forces unleashed, forks of purple lightning dancing across the hull before null-shields and integrity fields had contained the breach. Hundreds of telepaths were dead, and those wretched ruins of flesh that survived were reduced to babbling, moronic psychotics. Before their elimination, those that retained some form of communication spoke of terrifying, galaxy changing forces unleashed, a world devoured by a monstrous, creeping death, fires that reached to the heavens, and the ending of billions of lives at a single stroke.

28th Expedtionray fleet encounters aftermath of the death of Isstvan III.. hundreds if its astropaths dead.

Page 398

Solomon had watched in horror as the first streaks of light lit up the sky and the detonations covered the skies in thick starbursts of deadly viral agents. The screaming of the city as it died haunted him still, and he couldn't even begin to imagine the horror that must have filled the minds of those who watched as the Life Eater devoured the flesh of their loved ones, before reducing them to disintegrated hunks of rotted, dead matter. Solomon knew how deadly the Life Eater was, and he knew that within hours the entire planet would be a charnel house.

Then the firestorm had come and razed the surface bare of any signs of its former inhabitants, burning them to ashen flakes on the wind as it destroyed all in its path and howled across the surface of Isstvan III in a seething tide of flame. He shut his eyes as he remembered the underground bunker that had sheltered both himself and Gaius Caphen from the viral attack finally yielding to the molten heat of the firestorm. The roar of the fire had been like that of some ancient dragon of legend come to devour him, and the agony as his armour melted in the heat and seared his flesh was still fresh in his consciousness.

Trapped beneath the rabble, they had called for help, but no one had come, and Solomon had wondered whether they were the only survivors of the Warmaster's treachery. On the third day, Gaius Caphen had died, his injuries finally claiming him as sunlight filtered into their prison of rabble.

destruction of Isstvan III.

Page 398

The first month of the battles that followed the failed viral attack had passed in a blur of agony and nightmares, his life hanging in the balance until Saul Tarvitz had come to him and promised that he would make the traitors pay for their betrayal.

The rebels lasted at least a month.

Page 408

He looked down to see the glowing blade of Lucius's sword protruding from his breastplate. The sizzle of burning meat and melting ceramite was strong in his nostrils as Lucius thrust his sword completely through his torso.

Power sword burning meat and melting ceramite.

Page 414

In this, however, they had been stymied as the ships' Navigators and astropaths had been unable to penetrate the warp, monstrous storms of terrifying force erupting through the depths of the imma-terium, preventing any contact with or from Terra
...
A hundred astropaths had died in attempts to penetrate the roiling miasma of churning warp storms, but though their heroic sacrifice was commemorated on the Iron Column, their efforts were in vain, and the Iron Hands remained incommunicado.

For weeks, the ships of the 52nd Expedition travelled by conventional plasma engines, hoping to locate a break in the warp storms, but it seemed as though the Realm Beyond was at odds with them, for the Navigators could see no way to break through and live.

Ferrus' fleet is immobilized by the Warp storms. 100 astropaths lost.

Page 414-415

When Astropath Cistor had brought word that his surviving choristers were at last receiving faint messages hurled out across the stars, the news had been greeted with great joy, until they had been deciphered and transferred to the command logic engines.

All across the Imperium, war was raging. On countless worlds, traitorous curs were revolting against their loyal leaders. Many Imperial commanders had declared for Horus and were denouncing the rule of the Emperor. Many of these traitors had launched attacks against neighbouring systems still loyal to the Imperium...

Astropathic messages deciphered by logic engines. also Horus has turned many Imperial Commanders. AS I suspected before, he fanned the flames of conflict the administratum's taxes would have inflamed, and those rebels are launching attacks on other systems (indicating they have both military forces and warp capable ships.)

Page 416

Santar knew he himself was lucky to be alive, the grievous wound inflicted by the First Captain of the Emperor's Children having torn through his heart, lungs and stomach. Only the timely ministrations of the Legion's Apothecaries, and a determination to wreak bloody vengeance upon Julius Kaesoron, had kept him alive long enough for him to have his ruined flesh replaced with bionic components.

Santar's toughness.

Page 416

"I thought the astropathic choirs could not yet reach Terra?"

"Until a few hours ago, we could not." agreed Cistor, stepping forward to stand next to Santar. "The warp storms that frustrated our every effort at communication over the previous weeks have dissipated utterly, and my choristers are receiving the most urgent communiques from Lord Dorn."

Implied astropathic contact with Terra occurin gin less than hours. If we knew the distance Ferrus was from TErra this might help. assuming they're outside segmentum solar (likely) we're talking at least 10-20K ly.. so at least millions, tens of millions of c.

Page 417

"This sudden calming of the warp disturbs me."

"Disturbs you, Cistor?" asked Ferrus. "Why? Surely it is a good thing?"

"That remains to be seen, my lord. It is my belief that some external force has acted upon the warp, aiding our efforts to navigate through it and to send messages across the void of space"

"'Why would you think this is a bad thing, Cistor?" asked Santar. "Might not the Emperor have worked to achieve this?"

"That is certainly a possibility." conceded Cistor, "but it is only one of many. I would be remiss in my duties if I did not voice my concern that some other agent, perhaps one of our enemy's, is calming the Sea of Souls."

Mention that various agencies, including the Emperor (and Chaos) can act to aid navigation through and calm the warp.

Page 427

After he had rejoined his Legion, the Warmaster's forces had withdrawn from Isstvan III, and commenced an orbital bombardment that had pulverised the surface of the planet until not a single structure remained standing. The Precentor's Palace was a rain of vitrified stone, and the force of the bombardment had levelled even the might of the Sirenhold. Nothing lived on Isstvan III, and Lucius felt a thrill of delicious excitement as he considered the future the fates had opened up to him.

Post Life eater bombardment of Isstvan. Melting the palace implies at least some of the surface of the planet was melted.

Page 428

"Well, he's a thorn no longer, lord commander." said Lucius, thinking back to his last sight of Isstvan III, the swirling, cloud streaked glow of its atmosphere flickering with the mushroom clouds of high yield atomics and incendiaries.

Use of atomics and incendiaries on the planet.

Page 429

"Well, no matter, whatever Rylanor's purpose, it is irrelevant, for he is buried beneath thousands of tonnes of radioactive slag"

again implying at least some of the surface was melted in the bombardment.

Page 436

Vast teams of Mechanicum earthmovers were shifting the sand from before the walls of the fortress and using it to form a vast network of earthworks, trenches, bunkers and redoubts that stretched along the ridge before the fortress. Laagers of anti-aircraft batteries were set up in the shadow of the walls, and mighty orbital torpedoes on mobile launch vehicles hid in the warrens of the fortress. If the Emperor's Legions wanted to destroy them, they were going to have to come down to the surface to do so.

Mechanicus forces setting up for the defence of Istvaan V. Note the mobile torpedo launchers.

Page 436

..he watched a gigantic bulldozer the size of a Titan lander scooping hundreds of tonnes of sand and rubble into a similarly gigantic hopper.

Titan sized bulldozer.

Page 438

With the destruction of the last surviving warriors on Isstvan III, the Legions of Horus made their way to Isstvan V, a flotilla of powerful warships and carriers bearing the martial pride of four Legions, their ranks fully comprised of those whose loyalty was to Horus and Horus alone.
Mass conveyers of Lord Commander Fayle's Army units brought millions of armed men and their tanks and artillery pieces. Bloated Mechanicum transports bore the Legio Mortis to Isstvan V, dark priests of the Machine ministering to the Dies Irae and its sister Titans as they prepared to unleash the unimaginable power of these land battleships once more.

Horus' forces deployed to Isstvan V.

Page 442

Julius nodded, and though he had no real memory of feminine splendour or any frame of reference against which to compare her, the composer's curves and obvious womanhood stole away his breath. Julius had felt such stirrings of emotion when he gazed upon his primarch, heard a particularly inspiring piece of music or went into battle, but to feel his senses aroused by a mortal woman was a new experience for him.

Again we see that in a natural state Astartes have no context or real passion for women as objects of desire. The transformation to Astartes either displaces it, or neutralizes it.

Page 451

Julius tried to reply, but a vast explosion of noise erupted from behind him and he turned to see a portion of the stage wreathed in smoke and collapsing rubble. Marius stood in the centre of the orchestra pit, electrical fire dancing across his flesh as he strummed his hands across the screaming instrument. A howling, pyrotechnic blast of sonic energy shot from it and ripped one of the balconies from the wall in a devastating explosion. Chunks of marble and plaster flew through the air and the sound of the instrument drew howls of pleasure from Marius's fellow Astartes.

Within moments, each had mastered his device and a renewed crescendo of howling, shrieking blasts of energy began ripping the theatre apart
..
Marius turned his instrument into the crowd and unleashed a thrumming bass note that built to an explosive climax. Clashing chords like howls of ecstasy tore through a dozen mortals with an ear-splitting concussion, and each of Marius's victims thrashed helplessly as their bones snapped and heads exploded beneath the barrage of noise.

And the Noise Marines are born.

Page 454

Next to the broad, mightily muscled Primarch of the Iron Hands, Corax of the Raven Guard was tall and slender. His armour was also black, but it seemed to be utterly non-reflective, as though it swallowed any light that dared to fall upon it. The white trim of his shoulder guards was fashioned from pale ivory, and great wings of dark feathers swept upwards to either side of his pallid, aquiline features. His eyes were murderously dark coals, and long, gleaming talons of silver were unsheathed over his gauntlets. So far, the Primarch of the Raven Guard had said nothing, but Balhaan had heard this of Corax, that he was a taciturn warrior who kept his counsel until he had something of worth to impart.

The third of the primarchs was Vulkan of the Salamanders, a brother with whom Ferrus Manus had a great friendship, for both were craftsmen as well as warriors. Vulkan's skin was dark and swarthy, and his eyes carried a depth of wisdom that had humbled the greatest scholars of the Imperium. His armour was a shimmering sea green, though each gleaming ceramite plate was embellished with images of flame picked out in a profusion of coloured chips of quartz. One shoulder guard was fashioned from the skull of a great firedrake, said to have been the beast Vulkan had hunted in his contest with the Emperor hundreds of years ago, while over the other was draped a long mantle of iron-hard scales taken from the hide of another mighty drake of Nocturne.

Corax and Vulkan along with Ferrus, pre Isstvan.

Page 456

...checking the link to the choral chambers of the Legion's few surviving astropaths. The same ritual had been repeated every few minutes as Ferrus Manus chafed at the delay in ordering the attack, the waiting interminable for warriors who lusted to strike back at those who tarnished the honour of their brothers with their treachery.

implied transmission/response time of minutes between Manus' forces and their supporting troops.

PAge 457

"The Legions of the Word Bearers, Alpha Legion, Iron Warriors and Night Lords are mere hours behind us, my lord Vulkan." said Cistor calmly. "They will break warp close to the fifth planet."

The others are "hours" behind. If they are 2 hours away and take 1-2 minutes to respond either way we're talking astorpathic transmissions being 60-120x faster than warp travle. If we just assume (for example) they're 100-200 LY away we're getting tens of millions of c for transmission speeds.

Page 458

Nearly thirty thousand Astartes hunkered down on the northern edge of the Urgall, their guns ready and their hearts steeled to the necessity of what must be done.

Traitor forces amassed against the Loyalists.

Page 460

The noise was horrendous, a never-ending howl of fire that turned the interior of the drop-pod into a blisteringly hot oven. Only the ceramite plates of their armour allowed the Astartes to launch an attack in this manner, and Santar knew that their lightning assault would catch the traitors at their most vulnerable while they reeled from the power of the orbital barrage.

Power armor enables Astartes to make assualts on the close end of orbital bombardments even when enviromentla conditions are high temperature or radioactive or otherwise dangerous.

Page 461

Nearly forty thousand loyal Astartes fought along the length of a ridge before the towering walls of an ancient fortress, the speed and ferocity of their assault catching the traitors completely off guard. Even with the filtering of his armour's senses, the noise of battle was appalling: gunfire, explosions and screaming cries of hatred.

The combined forces of Vulkan, Corax and Ferrus. IIRC though, the bulk of the Iron Hands is still some distance behind, Ferrus only took his veterans. Which means the bulk of the Legions comes from both the Raven Guard and Salamanders, and its quite possible the Raven Guard are more numerous - I dont remember the Salamanders being a populous Legion even in the Crusade era.

Page 462

The flames of war lit up the clouds above, and streaks of fire whipped across the battlefield in deadly arcs of bullets and high-energy lasers. The ground rumbled with the footfalls of an angry leviathan as the Dies Irae strode through the flurries of missiles and gunfire, its mighty weaponry blazing and gouging huge tears through the loyalist ranks. Miniature suns exploded in the desert as the Titan's plasma weaponry blasted craters hundreds of metres in diameter, obliterating hundreds of Astartes at a stroke and turning the sand to shimmering dark glass.

Dis Irae's weapons blast craters at least 200 metres across in the dessert, and turn the sand to "glass". Hard to estimate crater size, but playing around with the crater calculator here and using a 200 metre crater as a benchmark. you get maybe e13 joules (give or take an order of magnitude either way, depending on parameters and type of crater and such). Melting a 200 m diameter area, even assuming it doesn't blast a crater out, and only melts to a depth of a few cm, is going to be worth at least a few TJ.

No matter how you cut it, an Imperator Titan should be chucking out at least single or double digit kilotons (or terajoules, which ever you prefer) per second from its plasma weapons. Of course, it's the largest and most powerful titan, so that's not really surprising, is it?

PAge 462

Ferrus Manus was a god of war, smashing traitors to the ground with blows from his shimmering fists or blasting them apart with an ornately crafted pistol of enormous calibre. The sword he had brought was belted at his side, and Santar wondered what it was and why he had bothered to bring it.

Ferrus at war. His magic energy gun has been replaced by some enormous caliber pistol.

Page 462

Santar disembowelled his first opponent, and waded into the rest with a speed that would have done any warrior in Mark IV plate proud. Bolts and the roaring blades of chainswords struck him, but his armour was proof against such things.

Santar, like Abbadon, seems to be able to move considerably faster and more agilely in Terminator armour due to skill and experience.

Page 463

Sure enough, the mighty figure of Vulkan strode through the torrents of bolts, killing with every sweep of his sword and shot of the weapon his brother had forged in his name. A colossal explosion erupted at the primarch's feet, wreathing him in killing fire, and dozens of his Firedrakes were hurled through the air, their armour molten and the flesh seared from their bones. Vulkan marched through the fire unscathed, continuing to kill traitors without missing a beat.

Vulkan seems to be shrugging of bolter fire as well as explosions that melts/cremates Firedrakes.

Page 463

Behind the tremendous thunder strike of the assault, the heavy landers of the loyalist fleets braved the storm of anti-aircraft fire ripping upwards from inside the ancient fortress. Burning craft spiralled to the ground, ripped apart in streams of tracer fire, or blown apart by mass-reactive torpedoes. Hundreds of aircraft jostled for position as they descended to the dropsite, bringing heavy equipment, artillery, tanks and war machines to the surface of Isstvan V.

"mass reactive torpedoes" targeting dropships... which carry all the combat vehicles of the Loyalists.

PAge 464

Billowing clouds of granular dust obscured much of the landing zones as cavernous holds disgorged scores of Land Raiders and Predator battle tanks. Entire companies of armoured vehicles roared onto the surface of the planet, churning the sand beneath their tracks as they raced to join the battle on the ridge.

Whirlwinds and Army artillery units deployed on the desert flats, spreading out and zeroing in on enemy emplacements, added their own thunder to the constant crack and rumble of battle. Even heavier craft descended on burning columns of fire, and the super heavy tanks of the Army rambled out, the barrels of their massive guns hurling huge shells against the glassy walls of the fortress.

Loyalist armour. Note the artillery seeming to deliver precision fire.

Page 464

All told, over sixty thousand Astartes warriors clashed on the dusky plains of Isstvan V, and for all the wrong reasons, this battle was soon to go down in the annals of Imperial history as one of the most epic confrontations ever fought.

Full scope of the battle.

Page 465

The terrifying form of the World Eaters primarch cut through hundreds of loyal Astartes as they tried to force a crossing through a killing zone of World Eater support squads.
..
In contrast to the brute savagery of Angron, Mortarion, the Death Lord, killed with a grim efficiency, harvesting scores of loyalist lives with every sweep of his terrifying war-scythe.

Angron and Mortarion.

Page 468

Julius swept up the helmet he had just cut from his enemy and plucked the head from within, taking a moment to savour the stink of the blood and scorched flesh where his blade had cauterised it.

Power sword cauterizes what it cuts.

Page 469

A mutilated monster in power armour draped with bloody flaps of skin shrieked as he swept some bizarre weapon back and forth, its deadly sonic energies tearing warriors apart in explosions of ruptured armour and liquefied flesh.

Noise marine.

Page 470

He caught the descending blade of his opponent's weapon between the digits of his energy wreathed fist and a fiery explosion burst between them. He twisted his wrist, and Julius's blade snapped, leaving only the length of a forearm above the quillons.

Santar grunted in pain as he felt the skin of his fist fuse with the melted plates around his hand. He saw Julius sprawled on his back, the ceramite armour of his breastplate bubbling with the residue of the explosion, his face a screaming, burnt horror of seared flesh and exposed bone.

Power weapon detonation, I guess. Definitately megajoule range.

Page 473

Ferrus Manus smote all around with his fists, twin balls of silver steel that crushed bone and clove armour wherever they struck. His gun was discarded, his load of ammunition long since expended, but he needed no mere weapon to be a lethal killing machine. No blade could wound him and no shot could penetrate his armour..

Ferrus Manus - dangerous even if unarmed.

Page 475

Tens of thousands of his fellow Astartes poured onto the surface of Isstvan V, and in a single stroke, the loyalist force was more than doubled in size. Ferrus punched the air in righteous vindication as he watched the power and might of his brothers' Legions fill the black desert behind him, their warriors, fresh meat for the battle.

the 4 other legions seem to contribute another 40K troops.. which only dooms them.

Page 480

"ever since you came to me with betrayal in your heart. For months I have dreamt of this reckoning. Only one of us will walk away from this, you know that."

Months seem to have passed since Ferrus and Fulgrim met. Which means months since Ferrus travelled to Isstvan, as wels as months since Fulgrim visited and left. That would imply that whatever the journey was, it took weeks either way.

PAge 482

Unanswered vox hails requested medical aid and supply, but the line of Astartes at the top of the north ridge was grimly silent as the exhausted warriors of the Raven Guard and Salamanders came to within a hundred metres of their allies.
...

And the fire of betrayal roared from the barrels of a thousand guns.

..

Hundreds died in the fury of the first moments, hundreds more in the seconds following, as volley after volley of bolter fire and missiles scythed through their unsuspecting ranks. Explosions flashed to life in their midst, vaporising warriors and tearing through tanks as the force of four Legions ripped the beating heart from the first wave of loyalists.

the Traitors massacre the Raven Guard and SAlamanders.

page 483

The primarchs' weapons, forged in brotherhood, but wielded in vengeance, met in a blazing plume of energy, and the battlefield was illuminated for hundreds of metres by their ferocious energies.

The two primarchs traded blows with their monstrously powerful weapons, the strength to defeat armies and topple mountains unleashed as they fought like gods forced to end their dispute in the realm of mortals.

Fulgrim and Ferrus.

Page 484

Fulgrim swung his hammer in great, looping arcs, its heavy head powerful enough to crush the armour of a Titan to paste. Both warriors fought with the hatred only brothers divided can muster, their armour dented, torn and blackened by the fury of their conflict.

Ferrus.. Titan smasher.

Page 487

Unnatural warp-forged steel met the iron flesh of a primarch, its aberrant edge cutting through Ferrus's skin, muscle and bone with a shrieking howl that echoed in realms beyond those knowable to mortals.

Blood and the monumental energies bound within the meat and gristle of one of the Emperor's sons erupted from the wound, and Fulgrim fell back as the searing powers blinded him, dropping the silver sword at his side. He heard a shrieking wail, as of a choir of banshees, whip around him as phantom, skeletal hands clawed at him, and a thousand voices tore at his mind.

Ghostly whirlwinds seized him and spun him around, twisting him like a limp rag in their grip, and threatening to tear him limb from limb in retribution. Even as he welcomed such oblivion, he felt another presence move to protect him, the same presence that had guided his sword arm, the same presence that had been his constant companion since Laeran, though he had not known it.

We get an interesting insight into what makes a primarch.. "monumental energies" released on wounding. REminds me of the analogies to the Avatar of Khaine or Daemons, entities which also tend to have unnaturally augmented flesh due to the powers of the warp. I guess we would translate it as some sort of superman like-skin level force field reinforcement.

Out of universe, I have this really strong feeling that McNeill is just channelling Highlander here.

Page 492

The Dies Irae killed scores with every shot of its mighty weaponry, striding like a giant daemon of legend through the benighted slaughter. White-hot fire blossomed amongst the loyalists and killing flames sawed across the black desert, vaporising men and turning sand to glass.

Effect of Dies Irae's weapons.

Page 505

Orbital space around Isstvan V was as busy as any fleet docking facility around the lunar bases, with the vessels of eight Legions assuming formation prior to transit to the system jump point. Over three thousand vessels jostled for position above the darkened fifth planet, their holds bursting with warriors sworn to the Warmaster.

Tanks and monstrous war machines had been lifted from the planet with incredible efficiency and an armada greater than any in the history of the Great Crusade assembled to take the fire of war into the very heart of the Imperium.

Horus' combined traitor fleets from eight legions comprises 3000 ships.. thats 375 ships per Legion on average. This may not be the whole force, but.. *shrugs* In any case it is implied this is the armada set to invade Terra.

Page 506

Following the Warmaster's misdirection of Leman Russ, the Space Wolves were known to be operating in the region of Prospero after their attack on Magnus's Thousand Sons. In the nearby system of Chondax, the White Scars of Jaghatai Khan were sure to have received word of Horus's rebellion and would no doubt attempt to link with the Space Wolves. Horus could not allow such a grave threat to appear, and so the warriors of Alpharius were to seek out and attack these Legions before they could join forces.

This pretty much duplicates what we know from HH the collected visions.

Page 506

Night Haunter's fleet had already departed, bound for the planet of Tsagualsa, a remote world in the Eastern Fringes that lay shrouded in the shadow of a great asteroid belt. From here, the Night Lords' terror troops would begin a campaign of genocide against the Imperial strongholds of Heroldar and Thramas, systems that, if not taken, would leave the flanks of the Warmaster's strike on Terra vulnerable to attack. The Thramas system was of particular importance, as it comprised a number of Mechanicum forge worlds whose loyalty was still to the Emperor.

Same thing.

Page 507

One by one, the fleets of the Warmaster's rebellion began the long journey to the planet from which they had begun the Great Crusade, each Legion's ships diminishing to silver specks in the darkness before vanishing utterly.

Soon, only the Sons of Horus remained in orbit over Isstvan V.

Yep, they're heading off to Terra, minus a few of the fleets (alpha Legion, Night Lords, etc.)

Connor MacLeod · Post by **Connor MacLeod** » 2012-09-23 12:22pm

Well, I'm back after a month absence (or nearly so) because of other things going on IRL (among other things, lack of consistent internet access.) Assuming things get back to sanity maybe I can resume a semi-faster upgrade pace or something. We'll see I suppose.

Next up on the Horus Heresy cavalcade is 'Descent of Angels', which is a Dark Angels centric novel. It's interesting in that its the first HH novel to deviate from the 'From the Crusade expedition fleet' POV type thing. The bulk of the novel actually is pre-Imperium in the sense it takes place on Caliban during the Lion's attempts to claim the planet for humanity. More specifically, it chronicles the exploits of two young boys who join one of the Calibanite knightly Orders.

Honestly, that is probably the least interesting bits about the book, and there really isn't much to it from a story or technical perspective (indeed, I'll be covering it in a single update.) But what makes it so interesting (aside from the pre-Imperial POV) is all the little ways in which it sets things up for later, developing events. We get the familiar 'the Imperium is not all shiny perfect and wonderful as its made out to be' of course, but we also get a strong glimpse of the personality of the Lion (particularily his flaws, whcih are many) and his relationship with Luther. There's a very close and personal element to this in the interactions of the Lion with certain characters (Zahariel and Luther in particular) and it plays very much into Gav Thorpe's excellent 'Angels of Darkness' novel (indeed Astelon from that makes an appearance later on in this series thread.) which is hardly a bad thing. Most notable for me, however, is the plot threads involving the Watchers in the Dark, the nature of Caliban (and the Chaos-tained Beasts inhabiting it) and how that relates to the Knightyl Orders (And to the Dark Angels as follows.)

It also sets the scene for a great many of the flaws and conflicts that plague the Dark Angels before, during and after the Heresy (the conflict between the Loyalist and 'Fallen', the rifts between Luther, hints about the nature of Cypher, etc.)

So really, the novel is more an introduction, and its value lies in relation to subsequent novels and short stories and should not be judged in isolation. It's definitely not one of the high points in the series by itself although its still good as part of the greater whole for the stage setting.

***

Page 12

They were aided in this by the persistence of certain traditions in the making of weapons and armour. Most of the technology our distant ancestors brought with them to Caliban had been forgotten in our isolation, but the knowledge of how to repair and maintain pistols and explosive bolts, swords with motorised blades, and armour that boosted a warrior's strength and power had been preserved. Granted, they were relatively primitive versions and they lacked the reliability of the more powerful models later brought to Caliban by the Imperials, but they were effective all the same. We had no motor vehicles, so the knights of Caliban rode to war on the backs of destriers - enormous warhorses selectively bred over thousands of years from the equine bloodstock brought to our world by its first settlers.

Ancient Calibanites retained the ability to make revolvers, explosive ammo, chainswords and primitive power armor. Makes you wonder why they can't incorporate this sort of power armor into the military.

Page 14

Having been brought to human society, Jonson soon demonstrated a prodigious talent for learning.
He quickly assimilated human ways, learning the habit of speech within a matter of days. From there, his rate of progress increased exponentially. Within a few short months, he was the equal in mind of our finest savants. A month later, he had exceeded their greatest achievements and left them trailing in his wake.

Jonson's pace of educational advancement. Presumably all PRimarchs can match this.

Page 64

Another of their group rode alongside Zahariel and pushed up the visor of his helm to speak. The helmets the supplicants wore were the hand-me-downs of the Order and only those issued to team leaders boasted an inter-suit communications system.
Zahariel's helmet allowed him to communicate with the leaders of the other groups of riders and Brother Amadis, but his fellow supplicants had to open their helmets to be heard.

Some Power armour has built in comms.

Page 73

Zahariel's armour hissed as breaches in its structure caused it to fail, the mechanisms of its protective systems grinding and seizing. The full mass of the plate began to weigh heavily on him, and he grimaced in pain as the plates at his hip settled on his hurt leg.

Suit failure.

Page 75

He drew a magnificent, rotary barrelled pistol and aimed it at a point between the monster's eyes. Zahariel watched the hammer draw back and flinched at the percussive bang as the explosive bolt detonated with a hollow boom inside its skull.
Viscous fluids leaked from the monster's skull and the dark, predatory hunger in its black orbs of eyes was finally extinguished

Rotary pistol with explosive ammo. Doesn't blow apart the skull.

Page 87

Zahariel dropped the magazine feed onto his blanket and sprang to his feet.

Magazine feed? Some pistols have magazines I guess.

Page 87-88

The Lord Cypher.
It was not a name: it was a title of office given to the man responsible for preserving the Order's traditions, and Zahariel felt nerve-wracking fear at the thought of being brought before the old man.

Might he offend the Lord Cypher through some inadvertent breach of the Order's protocols?

They have not yet specified that in this book, but Lord Cypher and Cypher seem to hint at the modern cypher's origins. It's a title rather than a name.

Page 132

"Course, those youngsters won't get no food now," said Narel, checking for the twentieth time that there was a round in the breech of his bolt-action rifle and the trigger safety was off.

Bolt action rifle. Other Calibanites have weapons it seems.

Page 136-137

Of special significance to their beliefs were a class of shadowy unseen watchers who would sometimes choose to intervene in human affairs for their own mysterious and unknown purposes.
These "Watchers in the Dark' were not said to be the only kind of supernatural creatures at large on Caliban. Among those of the traditionalist faith, it was claimed that the great beasts were evil spirits that had taken on physical form in order to create suffering and hardship among mankind.
With this in mind, it was not uncommon for individuals and families to make votive offerings to the Watchers in the Dark in the hope of persuading them to intercede in keeping the beasts away.
..
The Watchers in the Dark were a myth, and he did not believe in guardian spirits keeping benign watch on humanity from the shadows.

First mention of the Watchers in the Dark in the novel, and perhaps one of the more intriguing elements of any Dark Angels story.

Page 141

The shadowy watchers retreated further into the darkness at the sound of his voice, perhaps surprised that he was aware of them or that he had heard their wordless mutterings.
He carries the taint within him. Better to kill him now...
Zahariel's hand slipped towards his sword at the threat, but a ghostly touch upon his thoughts warned him against such hostile action.
You waste your efforts, Zahariel of the Order. You cannot harm us with the weapons of this realm...
The voice echoed within his skull, and Zahariel cried out at the sound, the voice resonating as though the speaker was directly in front of him.

Watches are immune to normal weapons.. possibly implying either they can phase out of reality or are innately intangible. They're highly psychic though, and hate Chaos.

Page 142-143

A figure stepped from the darkness of the trees. It was no more than a few feet in height, and was swathed from head to foot in a hooded hessian robe that obscured every inch of its flesh. The darkness beneath its hood was more complete than that which surrounded Zahariel, and he had the conviction that were he to see the truth of what lay beneath its cowl, he would be driven irrevocably mad.
Its hands were clasped before it, each sunken in the opposite sleeve. Its posture was servile, though Zahariel detected no servility in its demeanour.

"What are you?" asked Zahariel. "Are you the Watchers in the Dark?"
That will suffice as an appellation for our purpose.
'Purpose? What purpose?' asked Zahariel.
Communicating with you in a manner you will understand. Humans require labels upon their world to make sense of it.
"Humans?" said Zahariel. "Such a word implies you are... not human, yes?"
Correct, we are of a species unknown to the majority of your race.
..
We are members of, a brotherhood, much like yourself... a cabal dedicated to thwarting the most ancient evil.
"What evil?" asked Zahariel. "You mean the great beasts?"
No, they are but a symptom of a greater ill. I will not name this evil, suffice to say it is the bane of your race and will one day consume you.
..
Evil such as this can never be defeated. It can be held at bay for a time, but so long as there are humans, it will exist.

Watchers describe themselves. The word "cabal" makes me wary.. is this like the "CAbal" from Legion, or what?

Page 144

Individually, none, but as a race, your kind threatens to doom the galaxy to eternal suffering.
Zahariel's mind spun with the implications of the creature's words, that humans existed beyond the confines of Caliban and that an entire race of humankind inhabited the stars above. The sensation was exhilarating, and to know that many of the old myths must be true was like the finest wine dancing upon his tongue.

The Watchers have an awareness of events in the greater galaxy.

PAge 148

Zahariel lifted the rotary barrelled pistol that the dying Amadis had given him and fired a rippling salvo of shots, sending every bolt towards the centre of the lion's mass as his teachers had taught him.

The bolts struck home, but the lion appeared not to feel the blasts as they hit its thick hide. The rounds from his pistol had explosive cores designed to detonate deep inside a target's body, and had enough stopping power to kill almost anything, even a creature of such startling appearance and shape.

chaos lion reisstant to explosive ammo.

PAge 148

His gun clicked dry as he emptied the last shots from the magazine, and the lion let out a deafening bellow that was part roar, part howl. Zahariel hurriedly reloaded his weapon, as he backed away from the monster, horrified at the sheer power of it.

Rotary pistol has a magazine.

PAge 149

Counting the magazine he had just loaded, he had two clips left for his pistol. There was more ammunition in a pannier hanging from the saddle horn of his thrashing mount, but it was out of reach. Assuming he did not charge into close combat, he had twenty-four shots at hand with which to kill the lion.

Ordinarily, he would have considered twenty-four rounds enough to defeat any foe, or any other creature in the universe, but the great beasts of Caliban were chimerical monsters, combining the worst aspects of several different species of animal into one foul body.

3 magzazines = 24 shots, meaning 8 shots per clip. Also the great beasts sound basically like Chaos warped mutants.

Page 150

His armour was equipped with mechanisms designed to keep him cool and support his movement, but they were no match for the exertions of his fight against the lion.

The Power armour has built in cooling syste,ms

Page 153

Everything stopped.

Though his eyes were closed, he could see the shimmering outline of the lion, its every bone and internal organ laid bare to his sight as though lit from within by some strange pellucid sun. He could see the blood pumping around its body, the pulse of its heart and the foul energy that had brought it into existence.

The tableau was in motion, but glacially slow motion. Each beat of the lion's heart was a dull, thudding boom, like the arc of an ancient pendulum. Its fangs still descended upon him, but their movement was so infinitesimally slow that it took him a moment to even realise they were moving.

..

He looked down at his flesh, seeing the veins and bones beneath his skin.
As he had suspected, the beast had fractured several of his ribs. He could see the splintered ends grinding together beneath the transparency of his breastplate.

He lifted his arm towards the beast, his hand passing through the ghostly outline of its translucent flesh as though it were no more substantial than smoke. He smiled dreamily as he saw that he still held Brother Amadis's pistol, its mechanisms and internal workings laid bare to his newfound sight.
He pressed his pistol against the monster's heart, within the ghostly outline of the beast's body. He opened his eyes and pulled the trigger.

Interesting bit of psychic stuff... time stop and super x-ray vision.

Page 154

Zahariel's hand was buried in its flesh, his armoured vambrace penetrating its chest as though it had been implanted there. Its jaw snapped closed on his shoulder guard, the blades of its fangs punching through the plate armour and burying themselves in his body.

No sooner had its jaws closed than the lion's chest expanded with internal detonations.

Fire built behind its eyes and portions of its flanks exploded outwards as ammunition blasted out from inside the monster's body.
Its underbelly exploded in a wash of steaming entrails and it collapsed to the ground, bearing Zahariel down with it.

Some sort of phasing stuff.

Page 182

The air was thick with flames of a dozen shapes, colours and patterns. Zahariel saw the short-lived green and orange flare trails left by tracer rounds, the streaming red haloes of burning incendiaries in flight and the smoky yellow fireballs of cannon bursts.

the Knights have cannons and stuff as well as power armour.

Page 184

The enemy guns did not have the range to hit the Order's emplacements directly, but their shells fell close enough to shower the forward positions with debris.

As Zahariel neared the front lines, he heard a series of sharp, high-pitched whines as shrapnel ricocheted from the plates encasing his body. The armour did its job, deflecting harm and keeping the meat and bone of him safe, but he was relieved when he finally saw Sar Hadariel's tattered war banner fluttering from the maze of trenches around him.

Power armour resists shrapnel from artillery shells.

Page 194

He saw knights caught in the blast of incendiaries, their bodies wreathed in flame and arms flailing uselessly around them as they stumbled past his field of vision to their deaths.

According to the artificers, each suit was once capable of being sealed against its environment, but such days were now gone. A close enough strike from an incendiary and a knight was all but guaranteed a horrific death as the heat from the fire leaked through his armour.

The power armor is no longer self contained... probably because they no longer have the ability to maintain them fully. They'd probably be able to resist incendiaries better if they were self-contained too.

Page 195

The curtain of smoke twitched with the passage of bullets, and Zahariel heard the awful sound of their impacts on the knights' steel plates. The air was filled with buzzing and whining as projectiles whizzed past him.
..

A shot ricocheted from his shoulder guard, sending him lurching off balance, but he quickly recovered from the impact and pushed on.

Bullets vs power armor.

Page 234

As the first of the giants took a step forward, he was struck by the similarity in size between him and the Lion. Though the Lion was taller even than this giant, there was a similarity in scale and proportion that was unmistakable.

Jonson is taller than a Space Marine, but similarly proportioned.

Page 235

The giant reached up to his helmet, and Zahariel saw that he was armed with a sword and pistol similar in appearance to his own, though of an order of magnitude larger than those employed by the Order.

The Knight's stuff is similar to but larger. not sure if "order of magnitude" should be literal, though of course since Marines are stronger than a human, its possible that the weapons are bigger/heavier (in this case I'm opting for mass - Deathwatch RPG would sort of support this, although not an exact 10x difference in mass. Possibly volume)

Page 239

"They say he created the Astartes, and that he can read minds and perform miracles. They say he is the greatest man who ever lived. They say he is thousands of years old. They say he is immortal. What does a man like that look like?"

The Emperor. Lots of rumors about him.

Page 240-241

The knights of Caliban were armed and armoured in the same style as the Astartes, but the motorised blades, pistols and power armour the Terrans were equipped with were demonstrably better and more effective in every aspect than the versions used on Caliban.

Zahariel found the difference most visible when he compared the merits of his armour to that worn by the Astartes. Even beyond the gulf in physical stature, Astartes power armour was superior in every possible way. Zahariel's armour protected him from blows and impacts, whether from the claws of predators or the swords of men. He could even close his helm to filter out smoke or other hazards to breathing like the deadly pollen of Caliban's sweetroot flower.

In comparison, Astartes armour offered a much higher level of protection. It gave its wearer the ability to see in absolute darkness. It allowed him to survive extremes of heat and cold that would otherwise be unthinkable. It included its own separate air supply. Equipped with this technology, the warriors of the Astartes could survive and fight in any environment, no matter how hostile.

Everything Knight armour does, Marine armour does better. That said, I'd imagine the Knight armor would be useful for regular troops. Hell the technocracy and several other groups had shit like that too!.

Page 242

Upon hearing of Moniel's injury, a Terran apothecary had overseen his treatment, a treatment which, in this case, involved using esoteric methods to cause a new leg to re-grow from the stump where the old leg had been amputated.

limb regeneration.

Page 248

"It was as if... as if time had slowed, and I could see things that I couldn't before."
"Things like what?"
"I could see inside the beast," said Zahariel. "I could see its heart and skeleton. I could reach inside it, as if it was some kind of ghost."
"Terrorsight," said Israfael, "very rare."
"You know of this? What is it?"
"It is a form of scrying," said Israfael. "The psyker uses his power to look beyond the realms of the physical and shifts part of his flesh into the warp. It is very powerful, but very dangerous. You are lucky to be alive."

Zahariel talking about his super X-ray vision powers. It's rather interesting that they call it "Terrorsight" - it basically IS super X-ray vision - and even more it's a psychic version of the Technological 'terrorsight' Boreas had in Angels of Darkness, so this 'scrying' can be replicated artifiically. It's an interesting glimpse at their scrying/sensor technologies, at least.

I also wonder if there is a more mundane explanation for Boreas' Terrorsight, or this also means that his version is warp-based super-vision as well (some sort of exotic warp sensor.)

Page 249

"..but it is also to see if the human strain on Caliban is pure enough to warrant its inclusion as a world that our Legion can recruit from over the coming years."

Even being the homeworld of a Primarch is not enough to guarnatee that the place becomes a recruiting ground - it has to match up to the requirements.

Page 251

The Emperor had fought countless wars on the ravaged surface of Terra, finally conquering it with the aid of the first genetically engineered super-soldiers. They were crude things, to be sure, but they were the first proto-Astartes, which, now that Terra was his, had gone on to develop into more sophisticated creations.

All of which had inexorably led to the development of the primarchs.

The primarchs, explained Israfael, were to be twenty warriors of legend. Heroes and leaders, they would be the generals who would lead the Emperor's vast armies in his grand scheme of conquest. Each one would be a mighty being, imbued with a portion of the Emperor's genius, charisma and force of personality. Each would bestride battlefields like a god unleashed, inspiring men to heights of valour undreamt of, and campaigning across the stars to ultimate victory.

Comments on the Thunder Warriors and the development of Astartes.

Page 257

Imperial recruiters spread throughout the planet's population, offering a chance to journey from Caliban and fight in the Emperor's armies on a thousand different worlds. They offered a chance to travel, to see strange new worlds and to become part of history.

Tens of thousands flocked to join the Imperial Army...
..
When the aexactors of the Army had achieved their quota of recruits, thousands of camps were set up throughout Caliban where discipline masters and drill sergeants began training the adult population of Caliban in the ways of the Imperium's war.

Army recruitment on Caliban. In the Crusade era, regular soldiers served from the homeworlds of astartes as well as the worlds of the Imperium as a whole. Also, recruiting quotas.

PAge 259

Zahariel nodded as Nemiel pointed at the boxy structures dotted around the outskirts of the fortress: barracks, weapons stores, mess halls and vehicle parks. Ugly grey boxes on tracks were parked there, vehicles that were called Chimeras by the Imperials. They were noisy and uncomfortable to ride in, and they churned the ground they crossed to ruined mud.

Chimeras

PAge 279

The Lion was a truly imposing physical specimen. A giant, standing at a little under three metres tall, it was impossible to escape the suspicion that he had been cut from a broader canvas than the majority of men. His body was perfectly proportioned and entirely in scale with his height. He was powerfully built, lithe yet muscular.

The Lion is 3 metres tall. That means he's taller than some space marines, but not all.

Page 285

The satchel tore at the sudden movement of the heavy weight within, and six discs of bare, matt-finished metal clattered onto the ground.

They were simple in appearance, each no more than 30 centimetres across, a few centimetres thick, and equipped with a rubberised grip on one face. Though he did not know what they were called, he had learned enough in his time with the instructors of the Imperium to know that the pictographic symbols on their faces denoted explosives.

Melta-bombs

Page 286

Like a mountainous spire shorn from the side of some basalt landmass, the city was studded with light and colour, its dimensions enormous beyond imagining. A great, eagle-winged prow of gold marked one end of the floating city, and towering battlements like the highest towers of the mightiest citadel flared like gnarled stalagmites from the other.

..

Mighty winds whipped around the surface of the planet, whatever means the great spire utilised to stay aloft generating a terrifying, exhilarating downdraught of force.

The Emperor's flagship. Has antigrav apparently.

Page 295

Blinking afterimages flared in his mind and he saw a glittering silver web of light form behind his eyes, the outlines of armoured warriors, their bodies limned with light in the same way as he had seen the beast.

Zahariel twisted his head and saw that the chamber was circular and an almost exact mirror of the structure of the Circle Chamber on Caliban. The edges of every surface trailed a nimbus of glittering light, like shimmering dust blown by unseen winds, and he saw the Astartes around him as clearly as though they were illuminated by spotlights.

..

"Careful, Zahariel," said a soothing, sourceless voice, one that eased the pain searing along his every nerve ending. "You are unschooled in such matters and it does not do to tap so recklessly into such power. Not even the most powerful of our breed can know the dangers of such things."
Though he heard the words clearly, Zahariel knew they existed only for him: that Israfael, Midris and the others could not hear them. By what means they were transmitted into his head, he did not know, but he suspected it was the unknown power that had helped him to defeat the beast, one that the unknown speaker was also clearly imbued with.

Zahariel being spoken to by the Emperor.

Page 298

He turned to see a tall figure, resplendent in a mighty suit of gleaming armour silhouetted in the doorway. The voice was the one he had heard in his head before he had begun his tale, its tones mellifluous and as deep as an ocean trench. Zahariel tried to see past the glare of the light behind the figure, but his eyes were still adjusting from the total blackness to the light, and he could make out litde, other than the golden halo of light behind the armoured warrior.

The Emperor again.

Page 301

Though thousands filled the parade ground, Zahariel knew that this represented the elite of every knightly order of Caliban. Hundreds of thousands of knights had been tested, but only these few thousand had met the unimaginably rigorous standards of the Astartes.

Hundreds of thousands (millions?) of knights tested, only a few thousand pass. At least some (most) of which may or may not get the same augmentations Luther does - we know of at least several. The above meshes roughly with the 1:1000 ratio mentioned in Horus Rising.

Page 302

Even standing beside the Astartes, the Lion looked enormous, towering over the armoured warriors and dwarfing them all with his presence.

the Astartes are considerably shorter than Jonson.

Page 307

He had expected his life to last him a matter of fifty or sixty years at most, in all likelihood not even that.

On Caliban, there were so many dangers. Even the merest cut could become infected and prove to be a fatal wound. He had been only human, and to be human is to be slave to death by a thousand insignificant means.

Average lifespan of a human on Caliban.

Page 311

"This is the reason we've crossed ten star systems? It doesn't look like much."

Ten star systems - hundreds of light years covered.

Page 311

They stood by a view-portal on the observation deck of the strike-cruiser, Wrath of Caliban. Through it, Zahariel could see the planet Sarosh, its size magnified by the enhancement technology cunningly concealed in the transparent substance of the portal window.

The visual ports/windows of the strike cruiser has built in visual enhancement/magnification tech. I wonder if this is common on other starships too?

Page 312

"They may call the 4th an expedition fleet, but really it's little better than a secondary deployment group. This is what they send in once the fighting is done and they need someone to see to the cleanup. They don't think we're ready yet."

4th expedition fleet is a "secondary deployment group." of which there are at least 60,000 as per Horus Rising. Basically they're second line troops designed to do the mopping up after the speartip (the primary fleets) do the bulk of the work. I assume they move in and assist whatever miltiary forces left with the Governor by the Primary fleets.

Page 314

Chapter Master Hadariel had briefed his senior officers around the wide table of the strategium on board the Wrath of Caliban nearly three weeks earlier.

Maybe 3 weeks to cross "ten star systems" - maybe hundreds of LY.. thousands of c?

Page 317

The 4th was one of the smaller expedition fleets of the Great Crusade, incorporating seven vessels in total: the flagship Invincible Reason, the troopships Noble Sinew and Bold Conveyor, the frigates Intrepid and Dauntless, the destroyer Arbalest, and the White Scars strike cruiser Swift Horseman, soon to be replaced by the Dark Angels' ship, Wrath of Caliban.

The handover of control between the two Legions had been carried out with due respect and reverence, but in reality the fact that there was an Astartes contingent present at all was something of an anomaly. Strictly speaking, the 4th was still a second-line fleet. Lacking the firepower, training or resources to mount a full-scale military campaign against a hostile world, its job was to oversee the transition to compliance among worlds that had already shown they were friendly to the Imperium's aims.

Composition of the 4th and its role as a secondary deployment group. For the first part: assuming the ratios hold constant, 7 ships, 5 of which are warships (Flagship, 1 astartes cruiser, 3 escorts) and 2 transports. That means 300,000 ships (60,000 flagships of unknown type, 60,000 strike cruisers, 180,000 escorts.) and 120,000 troop transports. Assuming 1 company is held onboard the strike cruiser... 6 million astartes potentially, but they may not all be full companies or may not all have Space MArines. Assuming each troop ship holds around 20,000 troops.. 2.4 billion troops. Again this is probably in addition to the permamant garrisons mentioned in False Gods (EG Temba's fleet at Davin) and of course the primary fleets.

Secondly, the purpose of second-line fleets seems to be more or less as I said before - they assist the new planetary governments (the governor and his garrison) to basically settle in where military force is not really required.

One other question that remains unanswered: Why is a Primarch being attached to a secondary fleet group?

Page 318

Accordingly, the latest planetary census, compiled at three-monthly intervals on Sarosh, indicated that twenty-five per cent of the adult population held some form of bureaucratic position, with the remainder comprising those who had failed to pass the planet's exacting Examination of Basic Bureaucratic Proficiency.

Based on the same census data, that meant there were currently more than one hundred and eighty million bureaucrats working on Sarosh.

Population of Sarosh and the census taking measures.

Page 322

The deck was vast, with an immense vaulted ceiling reminiscent of the great ruined cathedrals of ancient Caliban. One entire wall was dominated by the view-portal that Zahariel was standing beside. More than sixty metres tall, the portal was composed of a number of tall arched panels like stained glass windows in some pagan house of worship.

The windows of the Invincible Reason flagship.

Page 325

He had been chosen to join the Dark Angels Legion by the Astartes, but in common with a large proportion of that initial intake, he had been too old to benefit from the implantation of gene-seed.
In its place, Hadariel and others like him, including Luther, had undergone an extensive series of surgical and chemical procedures designed to raise their strength, stamina and reflexes to superhuman levels. They were taller, stronger and quicker than normal men, but for all that they were not Astartes. They never could be.

Hadariel is one of the others like Luther who got the augmentation so they can fight alongside the Dark Angels. Again this is interesting in that it suggests that a great many of the Order - the bulk of that "hundreds of thousands" perhaps - were enhanced.

One has to wonder why this was done so rarely - was it expensive? Was it only because Jonson was a primarch that allowed this to be swayed? Rather hard to believe, given the bureacratic nonsense sweeping through the Imperium... but it's possible that Jonson was found early enough that he could get it done before the bureacrats could step in.

Page 329

"Shang Khan has already ordered preparations to be made for us to get underway and head to our new duties. The Swift Horseman is to leave this system in four hours."

White Scars strike cruiser. It seems that the secondary deployment groups are used as a place to rotate Astartes into and out of frontline duty.

Page 338-339

"There's something else. As part of the process of compliance, the calculus logi with the fleet asked to see the census data from Sarosh for the last decade. I have no head for figures, brother, but something I heard when the logi reported back to the fleet strategium has stayed with me. Based on the planet's birth-rate and the number of deaths recorded in the census, it is estimated the population on Sarosh should be much bigger than the figure the Saroshi have reported back to us. When asked about this, the Saroshi government claimed the census data must be in error."
"What kind of figure are we talking about?" Zahariel asked him.
"Eight per cent," Kurgis told him. "Put that way it doesn't sound much, I know, but if the calculations are right, it means more than seventy million people have disappeared on Sarosh in the course of the last ten years."

Calculus logi doing census calculations as part of routine fleet operations. I could be wrong but.. given the population was 180 million.. how is 70 million going to be 8 percent? 70 million would be 8 percent of 875 million, not 180 million. Oddly depending on if you do 70 million from 180 million or 250 million (180 + 70) you get between .28 and .388... which is close to what is stated. I'm guessing it was meant to be twenty or thirty eight percent and the White Scar misspoke.

Page 358

As he stared at the open panel he suddenly realised what was wrong with the shuttle, at least partly. This was no orbital shuttle, for there was no heat shielding on the craft's belly, this was a purely atmospheric craft, primarily designed to fly within the bounds of a planet's airspace, which explained the oversized engines, presumably retro-fitted to allow their one craft to reach orbit.
Without heat shielding, anyone who tried to descend to a planet's surface in this craft would not survive the journey. The craft would turn into a flaming comet as the heat of re-entry seared anyone inside to ashes before melting to nothing as it plunged to its death.

Modified shuttle has the engines but not the protection for atmospheric reentry.

Page 360

Metal bent and buckled, and finally came free, the welded joint unable to withstand the strength of one of the Emperor's finest. Zahariel tossed aside the ruined panel and stared into the gap he had torn in the front section.
Inside he saw a mass of thick blocks of dark metal fitted around a circular core about a metre across. Thick struts of the same dark metal protected the central core, and a procession of winking lights circled the device hidden within the secret compartment.
"It's a weapon of some sort," said a voice behind him, "an atomic warhead I think."

..

"An atomic warhead?" asked Zahariel.
"Yes," said Luther, coming closer and peering into the opened access panel. "I think the whole shuttle is nothing but one giant missile."

Shuttle converted into an "atomic warhead" of some kind. I have to wonder what sort of device would be designed the way described. I mean, it might be an implosion type devies and the dark blocks are th high explosive... but I'd think it would be more self-contained. Or maybe its a variation on tellar-ulam devices. Of course, given how "atomics" have bene used in 40K (eg as a rip off of Dune type atomics) they may be entirely magical and this is an entirely fictitious assembly.

In any case, its a bomb designed to go off inside the starship, and we dont even know how large the shuttle is, so trying to speculate from this isn't going to lead much of anyplace regardless of yield.

Page 366

Zahariel felt his skin blistering under the intense heat, and knew that they had seconds at best before the enemy missile's primary thrusters ignited, filling the deck with killing plasma and thrusting its warhead deep into the belly of the ship.

As noted, the missile was designed to detonate internally and blow up inside the ship. Like quite a few torpedo designs.

Page 368-369

Zahariel watched as the Saroshi shuttle spun away from the Invincible Reason, and he was suddenly blinded as the warhead secreted within it detonated.

Outside, in the cold unforgiving darkness of space, it seemed as though the battlecruiser had given birth to a miniature sun. In less than a thousandth of a second, a brilliant ball of light appeared at its flank, flared to incandescence, and was gone.

Despite having been designed to withstand hostile bombardment by enemy guns, many of the view-portals on the ship's hull shattered, fragments of toughened glass raining out into the void like glittering diamonds.

The blast wave thundered towards the ship, and only its automated damage control systems prevented further loss of life. Reacting to the abrupt decompression, blast proof panels slammed shut all along the ship's length.

The ship shuddered as though in the grip of a great leviathan of the deep, yet more klaxons and warning lights coming to life in the wake of the explosion. The blast wave rolled over the ship, and Zahariel felt as though every bone in his body was being shaken loose.

At last, the terrible juddering ceased, and he collapsed to the deck, exhausted and groaning at the pain of his burns. He lay there for several minutes, the sirens, flashing lights and shouts of rescue crews sweeping over him without understanding.

The nuke detonates outside the battlecruiser Invincible REason. aside from blasting out viewports (which for some odd reason are described as being designed to withstand bombardment - even though we know they often put shutters down in combat like in Execution hour/Shadow point...) it doesn't do much damage.

Also, our "atomic" as a blast wave in space, even if it lasts a fraction of a second, this would be the strongest indicator of how magical it apparently is.

Alternately its quite possible that it's some sort of "shaped charge" nuke like the Casaba howitzer, and the "blast wave" is just the plasma jet released.

PAge 379

"I believe it may be possible to counteract the build up of psychic energy by detonating an electro-psychic pulse weapon in the vicinity."

"What is this 'electro-psychic pulse weapon' you talk of?" asked the Lion.

"It is simply a modified cyclonic warhead," explained Israfael. "With the help of the Mechanicum adepts, we can remove the explosive part of the warhead and replace it with an electro-psychic pulse capacitor that will generate a massive blast of energy inimical to creatures composed of immaterial energies. As for destroying the psychic build up, ideally we need to detonate the device as close to the source as possible."

...

"Obviously, it is a bomb, but can you adapt it to be dropped from a shuttle?"
"No," said Israfael, "For the pulse of the blast must be directed by one schooled in the psychic arts."

..

"How long do you estimate the work will take?"
"A few hours at most,"

"electro-psychic pulse" warhead - anti warp creature weapon. This reminds me strongly of the pulse" created when the void shields were collapsed to fuck with the alpha psykers in Malleus.

Note as well how they modify a cyclonic warhead to do this, suggesting it is at least partily "electro" or "psychic".. but it also has a HE warhead.

What is also odd is that cyclonics aren't mentioned as a planet killing weapon (EG virus bombing is frequently used, but not cyclonics. It's possible Cyclonics haven't advaned to planet-killing potential yet.)

PAge 385

"We will be using jump packs for the descent," said Hadariel. "Our orders are to deploy from the shuttle at an altitude of five hundred metres to make a controlled combat drop."

jump pack combat drop from 500 metres.

Page 386

Eliath, Attias, Hadariel and the others were right behind him, exhaust flares spreading from their packs like fiery wings as they descended towards the mining station five hundred metres below.

..

As the angels descended, they were not met by anti-aircraft fire from ground-based batteries, or entrenched and heavily armed defenders. Their drop was unopposed, and Zahariel was thankful for such small mercies, remembering far worse training drops where live ammunition had been used to make things more 'interesting'.

Anti-aircraft fire from ground batteries and individual defenders from 500 metres up.

Page 397

Israfael's Stormbird had touched down barely moments after the Lion's order had been issued, a team of servitors and Mechanicum adepts helping to deploy the modified cyclonic warhead from the aircraft's interior.

The modified cyclonic is apparentyl small enough it can be carried on a stormbird, and easy enough that a group of servitors and Mechanicum types can help the Marines deploy it. We're not exactly talking hundreds of epople to move it, even allowing for superhuman strength.

Page 400

The entire roof of the cavern was covered with what appeared to be a creature of translucent mucus, its surface gelatinous and festooned with a million unblinking eyes.
It occupied the roof of the chamber like some enormous parasite, hundreds of metres in diameter, and it seemed to shift and ooze so that its boundaries were fluid.

hundreds of metre long daemon. .with all th eyes I'd guess Tzeentch but i think they're Slaaneshi.

Page 402

Brother Israfael staggered under the psychic assault, but remained on his feet, the psy-damping mechanism wired into his helmet protecting him from the worst of the pain.

Librarian has "psy damping" mechanisms - probably useful in protecting against hostile psykers as well as controlling/limiting the psyker's own flares.

Page 402-403

He spared a glance over his shoulder to ensure that the hover gurney and its servitors were keeping pace with the Astartes.

..

The electro-psychic pulse weapon gleamed in the half-light, and he shivered at the fearsome potential he could feel in the warhead.

The cyclonic is on a hover gurney as well.

Page 403-404

A wave of revulsion flowed through Zahariel as he emerged into the cavern, though he was not the source of that emotion. It washed from the robed figures that surrounded an upright slab of dark, veined stone as they chanted and sang a hideous chorus around a screaming woman bound to the slab.

Zahariel followed the howling gaze of the Saroshi's prisoner and felt a crawling, sick horror as he saw the source of the monstrous evil that dwelled in this forgotten, red-lit cavern beneath the world.
Its jelly-like body was like that of some deep ocean trench-dweller, shimmering, apparently fragile, and lit from within by bursts of coloured, electric light. A million eyes stared out from its hideous form, and he could feel its raw hunger as a gnawing ache in his chest. Even as he watched, the outline of the creature was fading, but instead of a sense of triumph, Zahariel knew that it was close to achieving its goal of translation.

Where others, including Zahariel, remained paralysed by the horrific sight of the creature above, the Lion was already in motion. His pistol shot down two of the robed and masked figures as they chanted, and his sword flashed into his hand as he charged.

..

Zahariel raised his pistol, but even as the monstrous essence of the creature on the roof of the cave began to pour into its host, something of the woman surfaced for the briefest second, and a moment of connection passed between them, more profound than Zahariel had ever experienced before, or ever would again.

She simply said... Yes.

Zahariel nodded and pressed down the trigger.

A trio of bolts erupted from Zahariel's pistol and crossed the space between him and the woman in a heartbeat. They penetrated her skin and muscle, and went on to punch through her ribcage with equal ease.

As the mass-reactive warheads within the shells detected an increase in the local mass, the explosive charges inside detonated.

Zahariel watched as the three shells blasted the woman apart, her ribcage blown out, and her stomach opening like the bloom of a red rose. Her skull ceased to exist, expanding in a confetti of blood and brain fragments.

Daemonic possession of an Imperial citizen, Zahariel blows her apart with three rounds (one for chest/ribcage, one for stomach, one for head.). Mass rective warhead described as some sort of detonator that triggers an explosive charge once the proximity of mass is shown (EG its density dependent, and probably vairable-programming).

Further, the bolt streaks across the chamber in about a heartbeat. Given the daemon was described as "hundreds of metres in diameter" that gives us an idea of bolt velocity.. hundreds of metres per second perhaps.

Also Jonson is completely unaffected by the Daemon's presence . Benefit of a Primarch.

Page 409

He turned at the sound of his name, watching as Brother Israfael mashed the activation stud on the warhead's firing mechanism.

A colossal bass note erupted from the device and a titanic wave of psychic force erupted from the warhead in an ever-expanding halo. The Dark Angels were swatted from their feet by the blast and Zahariel felt the force coalesce in his mind alongside the iron will of Brother Israfael.

Knowing what he had to do, Zahariel focused every ounce of his psyche and took hold of the electro-psychic force, turning it to his own ends, wielding the power as a technician wields a plasma cutter.

He felt the force within him grow and take flight, and he relished the fearful potential that flowed through his veins. Fierce fires blazed in his eyes, and as he stared at the tentacles emerging from the streaks of light in the air, they snapped shut.

More screeches filled the chamber, but Zahariel and Israfael blazed with pure white light, the power of a million suns flowing through them, shaped by their will. As though they were fire-fighters in a hangar blaze, they washed their borrowed power around their comrades, destroying the waving tentacles and sealing shut the tears in reality from which they had emerged.

Within moments, though it felt like an age, the chamber was silent once more, the battle was over, and the angel of the Saroshi had vanished.

Zahariel cried out as the power of the electro-psychic blast faded, and he collapsed as the fuel of his body was spent. He lay still, letting his breathing return to normal after the fury of battle and the exhilarating, yet exhausting, channelling of so much power.

Electro-psychic warhead goes off. The fact it needs two Librarians to guide/shape the detonation is interesting. "million suns"b it will be left to interpretation since its psychic power anyhow

Lost Soal · Post by **Lost Soal** » 2012-09-23 06:34pm

Connor MacLeod wrote: Page 338-339
"There's something else. As part of the process of compliance, the calculus logi with the fleet asked to see the census data from Sarosh for the last decade. I have no head for figures, brother, but something I heard when the logi reported back to the fleet strategium has stayed with me. Based on the planet's birth-rate and the number of deaths recorded in the census, it is estimated the population on Sarosh should be much bigger than the figure the Saroshi have reported back to us. When asked about this, the Saroshi government claimed the census data must be in error."
"What kind of figure are we talking about?" Zahariel asked him.
"Eight per cent," Kurgis told him. "Put that way it doesn't sound much, I know, but if the calculations are right, it means more than seventy million people have disappeared on Sarosh in the course of the last ten years."
Calculus logi doing census calculations as part of routine fleet operations. I could be wrong but.. given the population was 180 million.. how is 70 million going to be 8 percent? 70 million would be 8 percent of 875 million, not 180 million. Oddly depending on if you do 70 million from 180 million or 250 million (180 + 70) you get between .28 and .388... which is close to what is stated. I'm guessing it was meant to be twenty or thirty eight percent and the White Scar misspoke.

180 million is the number of bureaucrats, who represent approx 25% of the population. That makes 70 million 9.7%, still slightly off but you can probably fudge population ratios a bit to get there.

Irbis · Post by **Irbis** » 2012-09-25 10:07am

Lost Soal wrote:
Connor MacLeod wrote:Calculus logi doing census calculations as part of routine fleet operations. I could be wrong but.. given the population was 180 million.. how is 70 million going to be 8 percent? 70 million would be 8 percent of 875 million, not 180 million. Oddly depending on if you do 70 million from 180 million or 250 million (180 + 70) you get between .28 and .388... which is close to what is stated. I'm guessing it was meant to be twenty or thirty eight percent and the White Scar misspoke.
180 million is the number of bureaucrats, who represent approx 25% of the population. That makes 70 million 9.7%, still slightly off but you can probably fudge population ratios a bit to get there.

Yeah. Adult population being 720 million, you only need 155 million non-adults (which is too low, even) to get your 875 million figure.

Plus, why atom bomb wouldn't produce small shockwave? Matter from vaporized bomb has to go somewhere, you know.

Connor MacLeod · Post by **Connor MacLeod** » 2012-10-17 07:21pm

So we're back on track wit hthe HEresy series and this time we delve into Dan Abnett's Legion, covering of course the Alpha Legion. Its a book I Have some very mixed views on. It's got plenty of good points to it, and I liked the premise - indeed as usual Abnett does fairly well with characterizations, but as a stand alone novel it really falls flat compared to alot of the other series both before and after. Much as I wasn't fond of Fulgrim, it (alongside Thousand Sons, Mechanicum, etc. which are soon to follow) have a story that follows pretty well from start to finish. Legion it... I don't quite know how to explain it. It's a Horus Heresy novel trying to be an Imperial Guard novel trying to be a Space Marine Legion introduction novel. And you throw in all that Grammaticus and Cabal stuff and it just feels well... muddled. Confused. There's alot going on, but nothing really gets tied together in any satisfactory way.

Now bear in mind by Abnett standards, a 'bad' novel is more average (you can still read it and enjoy it, but its not on the par of some of his better work.) which says something about him as a writer. I know others have echoed similar sentiments about Legion's issues - often centered around the Cabal. Indeed there seems to be a strong dislike for it. Myself I'm.. mixed. It introduces a new element to 40K, and it brings back some of the mystery to the HH that gets taken out with all the demythifying going on. The main problem, I see it, as that it's far from complete, and we are only seeing bits and pieces thus far. Part of me is wondering/hoping that once more of the HH series comes out, we'll see more of the Cabal/Alpha Legion stuff develop, and it will hopefully be much better than it started out.

Indeed, one could say that Legion's purpose is to be both introductory an bridging - it sets the stage for alot of the events to come (such as Grammaticus's cameo in Know No Fear, and the Alpha Legion in Deliverance Lost, the various short stories, etc.) In that respect the story *probably* will work out better, which is why I say it lacks as a stand alone book.

As an aside, part of me suspects the Cabal represents a throwback to that whole 'Illuminati' business - instead of having the Eldar pulling human strings it's a more generic coalition of alien elders. The HH series seems fond of recycling stuff (again Olls Person/Ollianus Pius in KNF) As another aside, this novel raally makes me wish they'd stop dicking around with Space Marine crap and write something else, like some guard stories. Abnett would rock there.

The update for Legion will be handled all at once, in two parts. This is part one:

Page 17-18

The Geno Five-Two Chiliad was one of the oldest brigades in the Imperial Army. An elite force of one thousand companies, it had a martial tradition that stretched back through the time of the Great Crusade and into the era of the Unification Wars that had preceded it. The geno was a proud member of the Old Hundred, the Strife Epoch regiments that the Emperor, in his grace, had maintained after Unification, provided they pledged loyalty to him. Many thousands of others had been forced to disband, or had been actively purged and neutered, depending on their level of resistance to the new order.

Terran raised Imperial army force. 1000 companies is 100-300 thousand troops maybe? Assuming thousands of other "brigades" were of similar size, we're talking tens or hundreds of millions of troops on the Emperor's side in the Unififcation.
Page 19

He made a signal, and his bashaws brought the troops in along the rim of the wadi and down into the dry basins beyond. Geno armour followed them, bounding along on their treads, and spuming wakes of red dust behind them as they churned out across the basin floor. Soneka's Centaur was waiting, its engine revving, but he waved it on. This was a time for walking.

They have armour as well as infantry. Centaur is a Forge world design.

Page 19

The geno uniform was a bulky, tight-buckled bodyglove of studded leather and armour links, with a waist-length cape of yellow merdacaxi, a Terran silk, much rougher and more hard-wearing than the pink silks of the Nurthene. The ornate leather armour was marked with devices and trimmed with fur, and the backs of their capes were richly embroidered with company emblems and motifs. They carried lightweight packs, munition slings, long sword bayonets, and the bottles of their double water rations, which clinked against the liqnite cylinders they had all been issued with. Standard weapons were laser carbines and RPG sowers, but some men lugged fire poles or support cannons. They were all big men, all genic bred and selected for muscle. Soneka was slight compared to most. Their headgear was spiked helms, either silvered steel or glossy orange, often edged with brims of fur or neck veils of beaded laces. The glare shields were goggle-eyed: bulbous, paired hemispheres of orange metal with black slits across them.

Geno gear. Nothing too special here. Take note of the "genic" stuff.. we get alot of mention of how the Geno are basically genetically bred over long periods of times for specific traits.

Page 21

The man was big. He towered over Honen, though everyone towered over her. Even so, he had to be two twenty, two twenty-five maybe. That was gene-build big, Astartes big even.

Geno heights. Again Abnett LOVES putting his people 2 metres tall. Not that those sorts of heights tend to be "gene build" big - probably on the same order as 'vat grown' muscle and such, so it seems to be an indicator for genetic tinkering.
Page 24-25

Honen shot a questioning glance sidelong at her aides. She reached out to them with her 'cept too. They all looked away, recoiling from the touch of the scolding 'cept, concentrating on other things.
..

Honen clicked away on her heels, sending out a command with her 'cept.

Female counterparts to the Chiliad group. They all seem to be latent psykers which is used largely for intel/command and control purposes.

Page 28

He saw men thrown, burning, into the air by blooming flashes. He saw three of his company's tanks quiver and then explode in whickering storms of shrapnel fragments as the sizzling pyrophoric deluge struck them.
It wasn't a freak hail-storm. Despite the Dancer's scouts and recon, despite their auspex and modar, despite their careful deployment and marching cover, despite the omniscient monitoring of the expedition fleet in high orbit, the Nurthene had surprised them.

The Nurthene were of a tech level several points down the scale from the Imperium. They possessed guns and tanks, but still favoured blades. They should have been easy to overrun.
But from the opening actions of the expedition war, it had become clear that the Nurthene had something else, something the Imperium entirely lacked.

Lord Commander Teng Namatjira had described it, in a moment of infuriation, as air magick. The name had, perhaps unfortunately, stuck. Air magick was why Nurth had held off the might of an Imperial Army expedition for eight months. Air magick was why a Titan cohort had been decimated at Tel Khortek. Air magick was why a Sixth Torrent division had disappeared into the desert sink at Gomanzi and never returned. Air magick was why nothing flew above Tel Utan, why every attempt to destroy the place with air strikes, missiles, orbital bombardments and troop drops had failed, and why they were being forced to assault the place on foot.

It was Peto Soneka's first direct taste of air magick. All the horror stories that had leaked back from regiment to regiment and company to company were true. The Nurthene had lore beyond the Terran range. The elements obeyed them. They were casters-in of devils.

Sorcery can be a great equalizer against technology, as long as you have the favor of the gods. Contrast this with Pawns of Chaos, for example. It allows elemental control and suprrise (despite recon assets, orbital overwatch and auspex/modar.

Page 30

The falx was an astonishingly proficient and barbarous weapon. Two and a half metres long, it was essentially a hybrid spear, a scythe straightened out. Half its length was a straight handgrip, the other half a long blade with a slight bias hook, the inside curve of which was razor sharp. Spinning and sweeping a falx like a flail, an expert echvehnurth could lop off limbs and heads, and even bisect torsos. The blades went through almost any metal. Only liqnite could break the blades, but it was impossible to use it in combat. Liqnite canisters came out when the fight was done, to neuter the fallen weapons of the enemy. A spray of liquid nitrogen froze the metal brittle so that it could be shattered under foot.

Nurthene blades.

Page 30

He kept running. He fired his carbine one-handed, drawing his sword bayonet in the other. An echvehnurth ran at him and Soneka blew his face off. The man cartwheeled backwards.

Las-fire blows a face off. Partial head blowing apart, probably. Single digit KJ.

Page 31

He dropped on one knee, raised the carbine to his shoulder, its barrel resting on the fork of his blade grip, and picked off two more of the charging enemy with aimed shots. Their pink robes trailed out as they crashed backwards. Lon was beside Soneka, along with three other men, firing in sustained bursts. Their shots made bright darts in the air. Echvehnurth toppled and fell, one on fire, another with his ribcage blown wide.

Lasfire ignites one enemy, another has his chest blown open. Almost certainly from sustained bursts. Former case? ASsuming it sets the chest on fire, 30x30 cm area, and 125 j cm^2 call it 100 kj or so at least. Hundreds of MJ maybe (wide beam mode perhaps?) double, maybe triple digit kj to blwo chest open, depending on how many shots and how large a hole made.

Page 33

Her aides winced and oohed at every snap of flame. She could feel their responses through her 'cept.

Emotionla and telepathic data, I'd guess. It seems to be some very specialized, low level psy. So low they don't rate blackships I guess. Wyrds perhaps.

Page 33

"There are two things I want to say. The Emperor protects is one of them. The other is a word of admiration for the Geno Five-Two. You have bred good soldiers, in the finest genetic tradition. You ought to know that the old genie legacy of the Chiliads was an inspiration the Emperor acknowledged in creating us."
"I didn't know that." said Honen, surprised.
"Ancient history, pre-Unification,' said the specialist. There's no reason you should."

Geno supposedly inspiration for Astartes... so it may be more than just selective breeding, they may do genetic tinkering.

Page 38

Soneka's hand healed. Field surgeons had cut back the wound, and packed it with basal sensors and motor plugs so that it could later accept a machine graft.

Preparations for augmetic grafts.

Page 46-47

"Hetman Soneka, is there any reason you can think of why one of your men would have no heart?"
"What?"

"No heart?" Ida repeated emphatically. "What the fug did he have in there then?" Bronzi asked, nodding at the corpse's covered chest.

"A cadmium centrifuge," replied Senior Medicae Ida gently. "The subject has undergone some extreme and non-standard organ modification. His liver was... well, I've never seen anything like it."

At this point in time it isn't made clear whether this is a man of the Chaos forces, or perhaps the Alpha Legion, or what. I hav eno ide awhat the hell he's supposed to be.

Page 54

The transport Koslov provided was a Scarab-pattern carrier, a medium-sized armoured speeder with a troop hold for stowage and a stern-mounted auto turret. Its long, gently curved hull had been sprayed in a desert tan, but as it slid towards them out of the night on its powerful suspension fields, it looked like a desert phantom, cold and moonlight blue.

Antigrav speeders available to the Chiliad back in the old days.

Page 54

He was lugging a pack and a twin-barrelled las carbine.

twin barrelled las weapon.
Page 55

They ran the Scarab into the west, along the old trail, using only auspex and the low-light viewers wired to the dashboard. The viewers showed the world like a green moonscape, but they had only a one hundred and ten degree forward spread, so when Bronzi or Shiban turned their heads too far left or right, the ghostly view vanished in a wash of fizzle and telemetry junk.
The Scarab coasted well, and made eighty kilometres per hour over the clearest terrain. Bronzi loved grav-effect transports, and always tried to secure them for his Jokers when dismount assaults were on the cards. He let Shiban drive for the first three hours, through the tipping point of midnight. The stars came out over the desert rim with a rare magnificence, heightened by their viewers.

Our speeders not only have guns, but telemtry, auspex and low light viewers. Also mention of use of grav transports for mechanized/mobile assaults.

PAge 56

The world ahead of him was a jumbled, fast-moving path of lime-cast furrows, with the occasional emerald crag looming for a moment before it was lost behind them. Shiban sat back, reclining in the shotgun seat, and took a pinch from his box. Then he played with the auto-turret controls, impelling the sense-net to target the stern guns at passing rocks and crumbling slopes of sand rock.
"Set it on auto-serve and get some kip, Dimi," Bronzi suggested.

Automated systems too. At least for the gun at least.

Page 56

Shiban yawned, and promptly fell asleep, rocking in his leather cradle. Bronzi envied him. It had been years since he'd been able to manage the old geno trick of crash-sleep, the hypno-suggestive shut-down that allowed a man to catch a wink under any circumstances. Bronzi had been trained that way, but the knack had left him.

Hypno-conditioning tricks, but they can lose them if they don't keep up on them.

Page 58

He wanted to raise the alarm, but he didn't want the enemy to know he'd raised the alarm. Koslov had a silent signal device that trembled every post resident's wrist cuff.

Useful warning device.

Page 60-61

He walked back to Koslov's body, staked the falx blade down in the ground, and pulled out the service pistol, a heavy las model.

Two Nurthene raiders burst in through the habitent mouth and Soneka shot them both in the face. They walloped over on their backs, their silver plates dotted with droplets of blood.

..

With the pistol in his good hand, he went outside into the baking air. A Nurthene ran at him, falx raised. Soneka blew the man's throat out with a single shot and dropped him on the sand. All around him, las carbines rattled on auto.
..

A Nurthene raider burst in behind them, and Soneka spun around, firing a shot that silenced the man forever.
More followed, falxes raised. Soneka began to shoot. By his weapon's digital display, he had twenty shots left.

Hheavy laspistol. Throat blown out. Maybe 24-25 shots, at least?

Page 66-67

The Cabal had seen some particular quality in those mammalian hominids. They had recognised that the hominids would one day rise, inexorably, to play a pivotal role in the scheme of all things. Mankind would become the greatest weapon against the Primordial Annihilator, or it would become the Primordial Annihilator's greatest weapon. Either way, the Cabal decided that the unprepossessing mammalian hominids developing on that backwater world were not a species to be dismissed.

Grammaticus knew that this fact frustrated most of the Cabal's inner circle. They were Old Kinds, every damn one of them, and regarded all the upstart species of the galaxy as inferior ephemera. It pained them to accept that their destiny, all destinies, lay in the purview of creatures that had been simple, single-cell protocytes when the Old Kind cultures were already mature.

Gahet had once told Grammaticus that the Cabal had made its first subtle advances towards the human species long before the advent of the Age of Terra. Gahet had said this bitterly, and more bitterly still had admitted the Cabal's repeated failure to apply influence on human development.

..

"Did you not think it might have been easier to cull us before we grew teeth?"
Gahet had nodded, or at least, he had flexed his secondary nostrils in a mannerism that equated to a nod. "That was not our way then. We all deemed such notions as gross barbarism. All of us except Slau Dha, of course."

"Of course. And now?"

"Now I regret we did not abort you when we had the chance. Destruction has become our only tool in latter days. I miss the subtle methods."

We're introduced to the Cabal and John Gramaticus. the most un-interesting aspects of the entire novel. Basically the Cabal is yet another Eldar like, Watcher in the Dark like xenos race of ancient beings opposed to Chaos. In fact they all seem to share the Eldar traits - obsesison with precog and divination, hatred of younger, shorter lived upstart races. They actually come across as failed Eldar wannabes, since we know the Eldar have actually manipulated humanity far more rapidly and effectively. Hell Eldrad Ulthran has done that singlehandedly multiple times.

Page 68

John Grammaticus had no physiological need to perspire, but he permitted his body to do so. Every other human around was sweating freely, and he didn't want them to notice that he wasn't like them.

We dont knwo whether this is something the Cabal engineered or taught him, or its a psychic power.

Page 69-70

They were all female, all aged between thirteen and sixteen, uxors in waiting. Their ovaries had already been harvested for the Geno Five-Two Chiliad stock banks. They were now honing their 'cept powers, and acting as a support buffer for their assigned uxor.

Grammaticus found the operational structure of the Geno Five-Two Chiliad quite fascinating. Formed during the savage continental wars that had engulfed Terra at the end of the Age of Strife, the geno had proved to be a most effective and adaptable force. No wonder the Emperor had permitted them to endure after Unification. No wonder he had looked upon their system and stolen from it.

The geno practised genie mustering. Grammaticus had been thoroughly briefed on this. Genie mustering had been an essential tool during those caustic years of atomic hurricanes and drifting rad clouds. The core of the regiment was the uxors, a bloodline of latent psychically sensitive females. The females had their eggs harvested at puberty, and from them the heavy-built uterine soldiery of the unit were vat-grown, using the genetic codes of several proven, robust agnate gene-pools notorious for their martial merit. The geno grew tough warriors, but they complemented their brute strength and kept the pool clean by importing smart, proven field commanders from other forces. The hetmen were always non-stock individuals who excelled at tactics and strategy.
The uxors, at the top of the Chiliad's command tree, were no longer capable of carrying children of their own to term. This, in ways not entirely understood, freed their minds, and allowed them to operate as per-ceptives, operational coordinators who could appreciate, as Gahet had put it during the briefing, 'the behaviour of their children'.

At best, the uxors were weak psykers. Each one was capable of a rudimentary talent known as the 'cept, enough to enable their forces in the field and supply them with some insight. They burned out quickly. By twenty-six, twenty-seven, they were done as uxors, and restricted to other duties. During their active phase as perceptives, they were always accompanied by aides, uxors in training, whose raw psychic talent bolstered the 'ceptive power of their uxor even as they learned from her.

The Geno in more detail.. they're "vat grown" which I take to mean in-vitro, rather than cloning, although cloning might be involved given all the gene-pool stuff. Officers and such are drawn from outside sources it seems. The Uxors are basically wyrds who act as psychic communicators/locators/comand and control.

Aside from the Uxor approach, this isn't unheard of even in modern times. The Meatrdroid-variant Krieg might be an example, but there were also those gene troopers we saw from GAv Thorpe's 13th Legion novels, as well as the "bio-screened techno troopers" of the 5th edition codex. Hell, the Necromundan hive gangers (or from Eisenhorn ravenor with "vat grown" muscles) indicate similar can be employed.

Pgae 74-75

When the Emperor, a figure long foreseen by the Cabal, had finally unified the anarchic fragments of Terra, he had undertaken a Great Crusade - oh, how telling was that title! - to seek out, and reconnect with, the lost outposts of the human race.
..

John Grammaticus had met the Emperor once, close on a thousand years before. The Emperor had been just another feudal warlord then, leading his thunder-armoured troops in an effort to consolidate his early Strife-age victories, and pave the way to eventual Unification.

..

During the festivities, the Emperor - even then he had been known only by that objectionable epithet - had grandly toured the tables to personally thank his foreign allies and the leaders of the mercenary clans. Grammaticus had been one of hundreds present to receive his grateful handshake. In that moment of contact, he had seen why the Emperor was a force to be reckoned with: a psyker of towering, unimaginable strength, not really human at all by any contemporary measure of the fact. Grammaticus, who had never met anyone else like himself, had shuddered, and felt like a drone insect in the presence of its hive king. The Emperor had felt Grammaticus in the same passing second of contact. He had smiled.

"You have a fine mind, John," he had said, without having to ask Grammaticus his name. "We should talk, and consider the options available to beings like us."

Grammaticus remembering the Emperor. Something I find interesting in all this is that Grammaticus does not seem to remember him as the semi divine "super glowy" Emperor of the Great Crusade era. That particular quais-divine quality seemed to develop later, although why we dont know (perhaps the religion cropping up around him hadn't been around then.)

Page 75-76

Gahet had once remarked to Grammaticus that the Emperor was the only human who would have ever made a viable addition to the Cabal's inner circle. "He sees the long picture of it," Gahet had said. "He understands the vast, slow cycle, and is content to allow it to run its course. He appreciates the epochal dynamic of true and thorough change."
..

"Then you have no idea what a bloodthirsty bastard he really is."

Gahet had smiled. "That's as may be, but he understands that the Primordial Annihilator is the true enemy of everything, so perhaps we need a bloodthirsty bastard on our side?"

The irony is, yes he probably does understand it, and more to the point the soul gestalt that birthed him and bolsters him understands it... but the bloody bastard plays all that information close to his chest when he ought to know better. As I've said before, that is one of his biggest faults in the entire Heresy. The fact that the Cabal seems to approve of his approach perhaps underscores what colossal morons they are.

Page 80

"I'm sure we can do the rest of the tactical plan with drone spotters and the fleet appraisal"

"You can't. You need me in there."

Fleet appraisal and drone spotters.

Page 83

They got in and rode out of the yard, and through the descending levels of the ancient desert palace, via checkpoints, gateways and night-watch barricades where sentries lurked beside sputtering braziers, their rifles hooked through their folded arms. Papers and biometrics were routinely checked.

The Nurthene had a subversive streak. Experience had taught the Imperial Army that the Nurthene had spies of their own, saboteurs too.

Security measures for the Army force. Note the biometrics.

Page 84

Apart from the geno sentries, automated gun-servitors watched it, unblinking, day and night.
..
Maryno wanded the servitors to default/passive, and stood watching with the bashaw as Grammaticus slithered down the shattered embankment into the maw of the outfall.

Gun servitors bolstering the sentries. I guess they don't have tarantulas.

Page 85

His journey along the dark chute had provided him with almost enough time to complete his identity immersion.

..

Grammaticus never went to such extremes, even though his Imperial spymasters recommended he should. He knew that his mind was more than capable of smoothing over most epistemological blemishes.

Grammaticus is a good spy because, I gather, he becomes the identity, and his psychic powers allow him to adopt the neccesary physical, visual, and language cues to pass scrutiny.

Page 87

"Show me your palms, your face, and your brands."
Grammaticus made as if to do so.
+ I'm safe and you've seen all you need to reassure you, + he sent at the same moment.

The echvehnurth nodded, and waved him into the city, already sweeping the incomers for his next subject.

Grammaticus had shown him nothing.

Grammaticus pulling his version of the Jedi mind trick.

Page 89

On impulse, he reached into the bag of mineral salts hooked to his broad over-belt, and closed his fingers around the memeseed hidden in the salt inside. The seed was the size of an earlobe, set into a small silver clasp. Gahet had given it to him. The seeds, fruited from some xenotype tree on a world somewhere in the Cabal's range of influence, were psychically sensitive. If they grew warm, or desiccated in any way, it was a sign that psychic activity was close by.

Grammaticus looked at the memeseed. It was always a little warm and dry, because it reacted to his own talents. In his hand, the seed was positively hot, like a burning coal. It had shrivelled in its setting.

memeseed - organic, psychic detectors.

Page 95

There was a brief pulse of telekinetic effect, and several dozen wax candles arranged around the room spontaneously lit, a decent pyrokinetic display. The light from the candles was soft and yellow.

Pyrokinesis.

Page 100-101

"You're a gifted pyrokine. It's a technique that never manifested in me."

Shere shrugged. "You get what you get, John. I'm far more impressed by your particular talent. Logokinetic skill. That's rare."

"You can read that in me?"

"Of course," said Shere, "but I can't understand it. Is it any language, or just specific groups?"

"I've never encountered a tongue I couldn't master."

"Including xenos?"

Grammaticus smiled. "They're not so hard. It depends on the organ they use for speech. I can understand some, but am unable to respond in kind because I lack the necessary biology to manufacture reciprocal sounds. And some are just abstruse. The eldar have a particular verb form that always trips me up."

"And you can tell where a person is from, just by their speech?" [He can]
..

"You're very good. I presume, as a result, you are very good at reading the truth?"
Grammaticus nodded. "I am. It is particularly hard to lie to me, a fact which I hope you'll mention to your masters when you report this conversation back to them. I excel at recognising truth, so I am not unwittingly conveying someone else's lies to the ears of the Alpha Legion."

Emphasis mine in brackets. Grammy's talent is identified as Logokinesis. We also learn that the Alpha Legion makes extensive use of psykers for their purposes. No doubt the Emperor would not approve.

Page 102

"It's taken about a decade," said Grammaticus. "Agents like me have been planting seeds and suggestions for a while now. Using Imperial codes and cyphers, we've logged reports and bulletins into the Crusade's data-architecture, certain things that we thought would tantalise the Alpha Legion. We diverted a few orders, reversed a few command communiques. Little by little, we made sure that when the time came for the 670th Expedition to request assistance in prosecuting the Nurthene campaign, it would be the Alpha Legion that responded to Lord Commander Namatjira's plea."
..

"That's astonishing. The level of influence, of access... the strategy, the patience. Incredible! Such subtle manipulation!"

"That's the Cabal's way, Shere," Grammaticus replied, "Strategy, subtle influence, the long view."

The Cabal has been fishing around to attract the Alpha Legion.. spending a decade to plan this meeting. It shows the scope of their resources and influence, I suppose.

They're still morons.

Page 104-105

Two were standard humans, dressed in mail sleeves and head shawls, carrying crude pattern lascarbines.

..

Grammaticus risked a quick surface read of the men's minds, and saw they were soldiers of the Imperial Army, though there was something definitely non-standard about the biological samples he was getting. He dared not risk a deeper probe.

Alpha legion agents seem to work in the army, and presumably carry Army gear, but have "non standarD" bio samples.

Page 106-107

"Arkus! Delay them!" Herzog yelled out.

"Why me?" one of the mail-sleeved operatives wailed.

"Just do it. Broad burn!"

The operative turned, adjusting his lascarbine to the widest emission setting. He started to fire, blasting unfocused washes of energy back down the stairs, singeing and crisping the wriggling mat of advancing lizards. Tiny, smouldering bodies dropped off the ceiling and walls. The hand-painted wallpaper crisped.

Arkus kept firing, cooking thousands of squirming shapes, adjusting his aim rapidly to check each front of the swarming plague in turn.

Widebeam flamethrower setting for lasguns (widest emission setting), burning large numbers of tiny lizards. We dont knwo the exact "focus" but we can make guesses. The beams seem to cover a fairly large area, cooking lizards off the walls and ceiling at the same time. Assuming 50x50cm area, we're talking 2500 square cm. Assuming something on the order of 3rd to 4th degree burns (50-100 J per square cm at least) 125-250 kj per shot. If we assume each lizard is a few sq cm apiece, we also get hundreds of thousands of kj - which may or may not be per shot, but it would be in a short period of time (one or two shots) .

Overall call it triple digit kj, to within an order of magnitude (this could get up to single digit MW, or it could go down to double digit kj if its a particularily focused beam.) I have to say the mode demonstrated is pretty interesting, as it shows an increased level of versatility in lasweapons. "burning" mode would be quite effective against some aliens, and possibly serves as a stopgap if flamers aren't available. Truly the lasgun is the swiss army knife of the Guard - it can slice, pierc, burn, or explode.

Page 107-108

A snout, two metres long, shoved its way through the shattered opening. Shere yelped.
The crocodilian was a massive thing, the sort of creature that simply had no business existing on the second floor of a domestic house. It rammed its way forwards, its colossal skull swinging left and right as it came on. Its huge, scuted body and immense tail trailed back across the bridge into the neighbouring building. The house shook under its gigantic mass as it moved.

..

Herzog, on his back, fired his boltgun, and blew out one of the crocodilian's eyes. It thrashed in pain, slamming its vast body to and fro into the walls of the bridge and the corridor, shattering plaster and shaking the building. The mangled corpse of the operative tumbled out of its jaws and it snapped forwards, seizing Herzog by the leg.

..

He pushed Shere aside against the moving wall of lizards and adjusted his ring. It was an Old Kind digital weapon, a gift from Gahet.

He triggered it. An incandescent blue beam lanced out from it and exploded the crocodilian's braincase in a wet blast of meat, bone and tissue.

Boltgun fails to stop a croc, but Grammie's digital weapon does. double, maybe triple digit kj to blow out a croc sized brain.

Page 114

The Lucifers, an Ischian-raised elite brigade as old and celebrated as the Byzant Janizars or the Sidthu Barat, were all but extinct. Most of their strength had been depleted in the last years of the Unification Wars and, lacking the structural resilience of the Geno Chiliad, they had never rebuilt. During the Crusade, they had served a ceremonial role, providing companion retinues for distinguished commanders like Namatjira.

Lucifer blacks. Seem to be a rather high end old regiment from the Unification Wars.

Page 114

There were almost a hundred high officers and uxors in the chamber, the senior unit commanders of the serried forces deployed at Mon Lo, some three-quarters of a million men.

750,000 army troops deployed on planet.

Page 129

He was uterine, but his abnormally high IQ, an atavistic aspect that was occasionally generated by the Chiliad's genie pool, had qualified him for the special role of genewhip. Genewhips were the strict regulators of the Chiliad's ethos, specially empowered to maintain levels of conduct and morale, and to enforce discipline and punishment. In another age, Boone might have been called a political officer.

genewhips. Pre-Heresy commissars.

Page 135

Ranks of armoured warriors stood ready, ninety deep, their banners and standards fluttering in the wind. Battle tanks and armoured speeders elevated their weapon mounts in salute.

Armoured troops, tanks and speeders.

Page 136

The torso of his armour was engineered with two extra pairs of cybernetic limbs, and these spread to clutch a pair of daggers and a pair of sabres.

Namatjira's armor. I wonder if this qualifies as a sort of powered armor, or what?

Page 136-137

To Namatjira's left stood Khedive Ismail Sherard of the Outremars, a congenital dwarf dressed in graphite grey robes and a brow-circlet of titanium. His stature belied his level of influence in the Army and the hierarchies of Terra. Though the Outremars had supplied just five thousand foot soldiers to Namatjira's expedition, far fewer than the Chiliad, the Torrent or the Thorns, they were the backbone of the Imperial Army, accounting for almost seven per cent of the Army's overall numbers.

Outremar troops served in almost all expeditions and martial hosts, and their khedives, all dwarfs of the same blood dynasty as Sherard, were famed for their tactical insight and discipline. The Grand Khedive, Sherard's great uncle, was one of the Emperor's foremost advisors and confidants. Khedive Sherard stood on a small grav disk, suspended half a metre above the sand.

Part of me wonders if these are a self insert of squats or squat like beings. Hard to say without beards. I can't quite get how they form 7% of the army force, when the army has 3/4 of a million troops 5,000 is 7% of 75,000 or so. not 750,000.

Page 139

Two kilometres away, he was observing the great meeting through a high-power scope from the flat roof of the terracotta palace's kitchen block. He kept low, carefully avoiding the eyesight range of the palace sentries, the jamming module attached to his belt non-invasively blocking the field sensors and the stationed gun servitors.

His scope was a quality piece, an eldar long-gun sight, another gift from the Cabal. It resonated the images back into his eye, almost as though he was standing at Namatjira's shoulder.
He could not hear their words from that distance, of course, but he read lips as well as any high-function logokine.

2 km long-gun sight for eldar ranger. Probably indicates effective targeting range of the weapon. Also a useful (Alien) jammer to block gun servitors and sensors (possible fear of getting shot at from this range, at least from teh servitors?)

Logokines are goo dat reading lips

Page 140

Grammaticus's perception was so acute and specialised that he could even lip-read accents.

Heh.

Page 141

This was no life for a thousand year-old man. Grammaticus was beginning to think he had been a fool to accept the Cabal's gift of reincarnation. He began to wish, honestly and absolutely, that his first death had been his only death.

The Cabal can reincarnate people.

Page 143

Chayne crouched low, drawing his short, curved sword of folded Toledo steel. The palace sensors were feeding directly into his visor, conjuring subtle green tactical displays in front of his eyes. There was the blank, the absence. Twenty metres left, at the rim of the roof.

Toledo steel sword. His Lucifer Black helmet visor has telementry feeds from various sensors as well as tac displays.

Page 148

Grammaticus sighed and sat down on the bed. In looks and build, he was nothing like Kaido Pius, het of the Carnivales. It was amazing what a confident, clear tone of voice could do. Such was the strength of a logokine. A logokine's voice could tell you what you were seeing in defiance of your eyes and your better judgement.

But it had cost him. Exhausted, Grammaticus flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

More Logokinne tricks. Basically its alot like the bene gesserit voice tricks in this regard.

Page 154

Chayne made his way to the pavilion. A vast edifice of void-shielded silk marquees, it had been erected on a low tel south of the palace precinct.

Void shielded pavilions.

Page 154

In the older days, it was said that the antique Great Wall of Zhongguo could be seen from near orbit. The Imperial Palace could be seen from Mars.

an idea of how damn big the Imperial palace is.

Page 162

He took a pair of low-light goggles from his thigh pouch and put them on. The world around him was instantly rendered in fuzzy, caustic shades of red and ochre light. He read the rows of taut cables that stretched from the side of the pavilion like millipede legs, anchoring it to the ground. Between these physical lines, he made out the web of intangible ones: the sensor beams and harmonic tripwires that protected the skirts of the great tent. Invisible to the naked eye, these thin beams would set off a multitude of alarms if tripped. Grammaticus adjusted his goggles to pick them up, tuning them to a harmonic value he'd cribbed from Rukhsana's code book without her knowledge or permission

low-light goggles, including the ability to detect sensor beams and traps.

Page 164

His logokine skills had wrong-footed the Lucifer Black for a moment, but only a moment. Clearly, the elite companions possessed iron-willed, unsuggestible minds. The Lucifer had already questioned the encounter, and realised he had been tricked.

Jedi mind tricks don't work on Lucifer Blacks.

Page 165

As the Lucifer turned back, Grammaticus threw a wolf-paw jab that crushed the vox-hub bulge on the side of the Lucifer's jet-black helmet, preventing him from signalling an alert. The Lucifer began to shout, but his voice was muffled by the helmet's padded snout. Grammaticus rammed another jab in under the chin of the helm and crushed the man's larynx, rendering him mute.
Grammaticus briefly hoped that the larynx punch might also prove to be a killing strike, but the Lucifer was made of stronger stuff. His sabre was still drawn, and he slashed at Grammaticus. Grammaticus blocked the blade with the adamantium strips woven into the forearm sleeves of his bodyglove, and drove the palm of his right hand flat into the Lucifer's breastplate, a tension-reflexive strike that the eldar called the ilthrad-taic or breathless touch. The Lucifer lurched, his breastplate cracking.

...
The Lucifer threw a steel-shod fist at Grammaticus, who ducked left, and chopped a passing body-blow into the Lucifer's ribs. Grammaticus's hands, trained and subcutaneously strengthened though they were, were already sore and bloody from punching armour.

Lucifer helm has vox capability, its a full faced helmet as well, and they were rigid armor plates and gauntlets.

Grammaticus, for his part, knows eldar ninjitsu (attacks that can bypass armor), adamanitum reinforced sleelves in the bodyglove, and toughened hands/skin for punching solid stuff.

Page 168

"Vital trace from Zeydus lost."

"Report his last position."

"West side of the pavilion, twenty metres north of the West Porch."

Life sign indicator/locator beacon.

Page 170

Chayne realised, with alarm, that the Astartes was cheerfully striding through the serried sensor beams, breaking them without setting any of them off. Chayne followed, hopping and stepping over the harmonic tags.

..

"You are invisible to our security lattice." Chayne replied.

Alpha Legion troops can safely bypass Imperial security systems - at least those used by the army.

PAge 173

"That's Soneka." said Roke, passing the night-vision scope to Boone.

Boone took a look for himself, training the scope down the embankment towards the field of campfires.

Genewhips using night vision scopes.

Page 179

His face was blemished down the left side by an old las burn. Even without the burn, his face would have been mean and tight.

part of the face eclipsed by a las burn. ASsuming from eye to chin (15x15 metre area) and call it 2nd degrer burns (20-30 j per square cm) 4.5-6.8 kj. Probably a near miss or glancing hit, since his head isn't blown apart even partially and its not blackened to a crisp, etiher.

I'd guess the las burn probably is more severe though. 50-100 J per square cm maybe, since its permanant. even 2nd degree burns will heal with time and no scarring, and what this guy must have is scarring.. so maybe 10-20 kj is more appropriate.

Page 181

"What happened to the body? Did you deliver it?"

"Yes," said Bronzi. "I made the rendezvous. I handed the body back to the people who'd made it."

Remember the body from way back in the early part of the book with the strange and funny augmetics that the Alpha Legion intercepted? well it was one of their men, apparently. Like I said they infiltrate their men in lots of place,s and they have funny modificaitons.

PAge 181

"That wound he took, the shrapnel wound here," Bronzi said, gesturing towards his throat. "Some of it was bone, Nurthene bone."
..
"It was in him. It was in him and it was just a matter of time before it turned him."

Once more we learn that chaos corruption is so subtle that even a small fragment can turn an ally into an enemy.

Page 186

"Psykers are our best defence against Chaos. They will allow us to extinguish the enemy's advantage here. For the same reason, I would like the Geno Chiliad to be deployed at the front of our assault when it comes."

"For what same reason?" asked Namatjira.

"The Chiliad uxors are rudimentary psykers. That will lend us an advantage."

The uxors are psykers. It's believed that for some reason this provides some defense against chaos.

Page 191

He walked west for a kilometre, glanding a little boost to wake himself up and sharpen his senses. The chemical boost helped numb the throb in his arms, his knuckles and his skull.

Grammaticus seems to have built in chemical enhancement glands, much like Gland warriors do (but apparnetly without the drawbacks.)

Page 193

A berth on a supply vessel heading towards the core regions? Something simple. Something unfussy. A hundred ships came and went every day, servicing and supplying the huge demands of the advancing 670th Fleet. He'd be gone on one of them before anyone knew it, and on some backwater colony, ninety light years away, he'd step off and disappear forever.

Grammaticus notes that 100 ships daily are servicing and supplying the army.. indicating perhaps the frequency and scope of Imperial logistics in the great crusade (they can get daily supplies). 90 LY away within a day or so perhaps? Thousands to tens of thousands of c perhaps, its not really clear.

Page 194

He looked down at the stained pool. The Cabal was using it as a flect.

Flect. Abnett seems to like this term since he used it in Ravenor as well, although the usage seems alot more benign here.

Connor MacLeod · Post by **Connor MacLeod** » 2012-10-17 07:25pm

Part 2 of LEgion

Page 196

"Leave me alone. Stop flecting up and abusing me."
..
"Whatever made you think he was flecting himself here?"

Flecting seems to be the word for the "in a pool of water/mirror/mirror type object sort of communication the Cabal likes.

Page 197

"Two years, John. The Cabal has seen this clearly, compounding our farseer and visionist talents. Even the Drahendra have seen this, and you know how slowly they move."
Grammaticus nodded. The Drahendra was the most silent and inscrutable faction represented in the Cabal. Sentient, energised dust, virtually extinct, the last of them existed as membrane skins around dying gas giants. Even they perceived the rapid reshaping of universal destiny.
"We're all going to die. Only mon-keigh kind can alter the pattern."

..

"It will halt your species' growth in its tracks. Even your glorious Emperor will be lost in it."
"Lost?"
"He will die, John."
"Oh glory. You're sure?"
"It has been farseen. He will die forever. And his eternal death is the one thing we wish to prevent. Tiny thing though he is, you Emperor is a pivotal player in this."

The divination pertaining to the Heresy. Yet another indicator of how messed up the Cabal is, since they didn't appear to see what did happen. And remember, they have eldar members (possibly the short bus members of Eldar society...)

This is up for debate of course, but we'll see.

Page 198

John, we have tested them all, one by one. The Dark Angels first, centuries ago. There is too much inherent corruption in them. The gene-seed weakness in all of the older Legions has been exacerbated by the need to keep them up to strength for the Great Crusade. They have all, one way or another, weakened themselves. They are vulnerable. But the Alpha Legion, the last, the latest... they are still pure enough. Green, receptive to change."
..

"He [Slau Dha] let the Cabal into the Black Library, so they could read this truth. He broke all the ancient edicts to make that happen. It is predetermined."
..

"John, the Alpha Legion is our last hope. They are latecomers. Their gene-seed has not been diluted by the Terran and Alien Wars."

Why the Cabal wants the Alpha Legion. Rather hilarious again, given that the Alpha Legion become as big of Chaos Marines as any other faction, including sorcerors, cultists, Daemon princes, etc.

Page 217

Dinas Chayne entered the room, moving forwards between his braced and aimed men.
"Rukhsana?" he asked, his voice issuing from his grim helmet's loudspeaker.

Helmet speaker. Must be a full faced helmet.

Page 218-219

At ground level, to the east of the palace sprawl, Army pioneers had excavated a deep ramp, and removed the side wall of a giant ceremonial chamber to provide a vast depot for vehicles. The excised wall section had been replaced by load-bearing, pneumolithic girders, and fortified with flakboard and ballistic pumice. Trucks and transports toiled in and out along the ramp all day long in a haze of dust, under the direction of artificer banksmen and other security personnel. The engine fumes gathered in the roof space, slowly sucked away by powerful vent systems that had been bolted under the vaults. Lumen rigs hung from brackets all the way down the chamber.

Pioner groups, making a vehicle depot. They seem to have alot of vehicles.

Page 219

Soneka and Rukhsana came out from behind a turreted trans-trak painted in Thorn livery, and crossed with him to an armoured scurrier dressed in desert pink.

..

Bronzi had checked the vehicle out for use at the depot station. If he'd used his own biometric key, or Soneka's, or even the uxor's, klaxons would have been sounding already. Instead, he'd used the key they had given him.

...

Bronzi gunned the engines and brought the scurrier to life. It rose on its twenty sets of calliper legs and spurred forwards, leg units running in syncopation, racing it across the earth floor like a giant centipede.
They passed out under the gate. A banksman flashed their biometric signature, and waved them enthusiastically on with his luminous wand.

trans-trak, scurrier... biometric keys to chekc out vehicles.

Page 224

Half a kilometre from the west exit, a shadow flickered across them, and the scurrier's target alarms started to ping.
"Scurrier, scurrier." the vox crackled. "Come to a halt and open hatches. We have you at weapons lock."
..

A blizzard of sand was being kicked up around them by a circling Jackal gunship. A second gunship settled nearby on roaring turbofans, like a giant skeletal raven. Its occupants ran towards them.

Jackal gunship, has a target lock on the scurrier at half km range.

Page 239

The dynast and his tribune instinctively raised the spikes of their armour, barbing themselves with the psycho-receptive steel quills that gave their regiment its name. Studded all over with lethal blades, they drew their weapons, and turned to meet the onslaught.

The beautiful, mechanised blade systems of their ancient warsuits did not save them, nor did the weapons in their hands.

Regnault Thorns. I wonder if this "warsuit" qualifies as power armor of some kind, even if it might not enhance performance. Maybe its just memory material or something.

Page 241

A few seconds later, las-batteries in reboubts to the south-east began spitting incandescent shooting stars north into the dust cloud, adding their squeals to the communal murmur.

Emplaced "las batteries" lascannon perhaps?

Page 243

The Jokers moved like an intricate mechanism, forming structures across the land south of the earthwork. Two lines of alternating pike and carbine rifle solidified along the northern edge, behind the livestock corrals and the latrines. Cannon crews grimaced as they struggled to heave their heavy weapons, ammo crates and tripods to new positions. Men ran past him, lugging the iron tubes of mortars across their shoulders.

Mortars, tripod cannons, pike and carbines.

Page 245

"A major incursion has breached the earthwork in an eleven-kilometre line between CR88 and CR96, Wadi Ghez, so-called the Little Sink," said Sri Vedt, the Uxor Primus, tracing her finger across the hololithic chart. "I cannot appreciate precise numbers, but it feels like tens of thousands."

...
Dev glanced towards the uxors around the table. "Thank you for your frank appraisal, uxors. How accurate should I consider them to be?"
"Our 'cepts are sharp," said Uxor Sanzi.
"We feel this," added LIxor Bhaneja. "I have a Company at CR90, the Jacks. I 'cept that they are already dead."

'cept in action. I guess its sort of like telemetry as well as auspex in this regard. Not only sensing the enemy, but sensing the geno soldier's impressions of the enemy. They can also tell the status of any company and the degree of accuracy of information.

Page 246

He began to track deployment lines across the glowing chart, conferring with the adepts and officers. Sri Vedt watched, approving of his decisions, gently correcting any detail she 'cepted as unwise.

More 'cepting. I imagine this is the sort of stuff sanctioned psykers and astropaths do in a "modern" 40K army.

Page 248

A second Outremar unit, smaller, but armed with weapon servitors, was moving up behind them, and the vox said that a Sixth Torrent armour unit with infantry support was a minute or two behind the Jokers.

The army dwarfs have weapons servitors.

Page 248

They were getting decent tactical instruction over the vox, and the 'cept was with them. Bronzi could see how his men were tightening and adjusting their structures slightly as Mu's wisdom touched them.

'cept and Vox. Apparently they can "send" or impress on the troops as well as just sense them - some sort of psychic morale building, I guess.

Page 248

The tidal wave of enemy warriors was less than a quarter of a kilometre away, the dust storm rolling with it.

250 metres away. Just prior to engagement.

Page 249

On the low ridge to his right, the company mortar teams began to drop shells into their angled tubes and step back, heads turned aside. A plosive, hollow plunk-plunk racket began. Mortar bombs whizzed up and over onto the enemy formation, expertly ranged. Bronzi observed the thumps and flashes as they staick with a nod of satisfaction. Each blast cast up white smoke and flailing bodies.

..

The tripod-mounted cannons and crew-served weapons began to chatter and pulse tracer and blinding las at the oncoming foe. Sections of the leading ranks were demolished. Smoke and bloody steam furled back across the Nurthene press and chunks of shredded meat rained down on them. Bronzi saw echvehnurth elite judder and disintegrate as the heavy fire ripped through them. He saw a galloping monitor tumble over, disembowelled, crushing its rider under its rolling back.

Heavy weapons go into action.

Page 250

The effect was devastating. Five hundred Anatolian lascarbines, hefty pulse repeaters developed from the ubiquitous Urak-1020 combat gun that had been the workhorse of every Strife-Age warlord's army, trained and fired by professional soldiers drilled to perfection, blazed at the Nurthene. The Jokers were especially famed for the quality of their marksmanship, a fact that Bronzi took a great deal of personal pride in. livery Joker rifleman was a crack shot by Army standards. There wasn't a damn one amongst them who couldn't hit a moving gamebird at nine hundred metres. Bronzi regularly fielded requests from other regiments asking for the loan of a rifleman or two to conduct training programmes.

We get an idea bout the Geno weaponry. Range 900 metres (point target that is moving) and their marksmanship is taught to others. The Lascarbines are "pulse repeaters" by which I gather they work akin to atomic rockets/Luke Campbell style "blasters" (large numbers of explosive pulses to blow holes in the target.) Whether invidiaul shots are pulses or each shot is made up of multiple pulses.. it could go either way.

Note that by FFG terms a Carbine has a range of 60, and a lasgun a range of 100. This means that a lasgun would have a range of 1500 meters. This is roughly consistent with other knonw facts and evidence.

Page 251-252

The pikemen, laced in between the rows of rifles, took a step forwards with their left feet, and declined their weapons into a murderous fence. Strengthened by sheathes of gravimetric force, the telescopic pikes extended until each one was ten metres long. The pike-men kept the arches of their right feet braced over the grav counterweights in the spikes at the bases of their hafts.

The las-spines on the tips of the pike blades began to sizzle with cising power.

..

The first of them were split apart, sectioned and chopped. The next waves became impaled, bodies skewering onto pike blades like living souvlaki. The geno pikemen leaned into the weight and multiple impacts, some grunting as their elongated poles hoisted whole bodies off the ground, writhing like speared fish, others struggling and collapsing as the crude mass of corpses pulled their pikes down. Gravitic counterweights shorted out under the demands put on them, and hafts splintered as the gravimetric sheathes supporting their outlandish lengths evaporated. Pikemen started to use broken sections of their weapons to jab and flay at the pressing tide.

The pikes are odd weapons. Grav counterweights, gravitic sturctural reinforcement, and laser heads (some sort of variaiton of power weapons?)

Anyhow, make jokes about pike formations.

Page 252

Jokers fell down, cut open by whirring falxes, or toppled against the rows behind them. Carbines fired, point blank and scattershot.

Lascarbines apparently have a "scattershot" mode. I'm guessing this is more like a shotgun burst - going for wide area pulverization rather than penetrating shots. Alternately, it means something akin to a "broad burn" from earlier - wide aperture bursts.

Page 253

He roared and threw himself forwards, sabre in one hand, Parthian revolver in the other.
Sense departed. Instinct took over. He fired his pistol, and saw an echvehnurth's head spray apart.

revolver blows head apart. Laspistol probably can do the same.

Page 253-254

He drew his other sidearm, a shot-loaded backup piece with a pepperpot snout of six barrels.

...
He lined up on the howdah of the nearest crocodilian, and discharged all six barrels at once.
Bronzi made up his own cartridges, tight packing them with twists of monofilament wire, adamantium shot and pebbles of xygnite putty. Six of them were enough to explode and shred the howdah and everything in it. Flying shot and wire injured the animal too. It rocked, and shifted its slow bulk in a slovenly pain response. Bronzi broke open his pepperpot, the smoking cases ejecting automatically, and rammed in six more with shaking fingers.

..

Bronzi clacked the stock-less weapon shut and re-aimed, the ball of his right thumb wedged into his cheek. He fired again, and the tiny, lethal debris of his rounds blew out the creature's throat and right shoulder in a shower of meat and blood. It crashed over, its snout gouging into the ground like a ploughshare and its hindquarters kicked out in spasm. The tail whipped around and three dozen bodies, caught in its stroke, flew into the air.

Pepperpot gun (volley gun?) with monowire adamantium shot, and some sort of explosive putty. I bet they'd make good shotgun bursts too.

Page 256

The 'cept was urging the geno fighting men to fall back and reposition.

'cept is psychic vox then. Astrotelpathy and sanctioned psykers would fill this role.

Page 257

A large, low-walled terrace in the upper part of the palace precinct had been turned over to distance observation. Heavy scopes and detection grids had been erected along the parapet, and tall clusters of vox masts stood like pollarded trees in the centre of the terrace area. The observation crews made respectful namastes as the Lord Commander appeared.
..

He walked across to the east-facing section of the parapet, and two adepts bowed and stood aside from a high-gain optical scope mounted on a tripod servitor.

High gain scope on a servitor, as wlel as scopes and detection grids for the command staff.

Page 265-266

The first of them began to fire.

Bronzi winced and lowered his scope. The pulsing flashes of the Titan's limb mounts were dazzling bright, and left a neon after-image on his retinas.
..
Fat beams of luminous energy began to rake out of their cannons, and were quickly supported by huge, pumping bolts of light like shooting stars, and sooty blurs of hard ordnance. The Titans seemed to smoke from head to foot, but it was just dust coming off them. The sustained recoil vibration of their weapon arrays was so great that the dust and sand accumulated during their trek to the front was shaking off their vast, plated forms in powdery swathes.

Bronzi could hear the shriek and wail of their las weapons, and the brisk thunder of their machine cannons. The sounds rolled to him, out of synch with the flashes and light bursts. He'd seen Titans at war before, and the sight never failed to fill him with awe. He was always unprepared for the astonishing rapidity of their rate of fire, the zipping, torrential pulse and spit of green, amber and white light that unloaded from their forearms and shoulders.

...

The ground ahead of their slow advance began to ripple and distort as it sprouted sudden forests of blooming dust, thrown-up earth and writhing fireballs. A juddering, flickering carpet of destruction spread out before them, billowing dark smoke and vapourised sand back into the edges of the pale fog that the Nurthene had brought with them. Bronzi could feel the relentless plosive concussion of the onslaught quaking his viscera. The ground was shaking
..

The smell of wormwood had gone. In its place was the reek of superheated gases, of fycelene, of molten, vitrified sand and of burning flesh.

Titan bombardment. Hard to quantify due to lack of obvious time, surface area, etc.

Page 284

Titans and Hort armour, laying into the enemy with full military power, it was the stuff fireside tales were made of, the stuff that made grandpa or great-grandpa seem bigger than life.
An incredible sight, the Titans blasting all hell out of the landscape, slowly advancing into the vapour flume with the tanks of the Zanzibari Hort at their gigantic heels. Bronzi couldn't begin to guess how many thousand tonnes of munitions had been delivered into the enemy ranks. If there was a Nurthene left alive, he'd be surprised. The Imperial Army, combined with a Titan Legion from Terra's fraternal twin, Mars - Emperor bless the Mechanicum! - had done what it was designed to do. It had crushed, it had obliterated.
It had overwhelmed Nurth's last ditch effort.

Armour and titan bombardment.. hard to quantify excepf ro "thousands of tonnes" of munitions. Wehther this is mass or yield we dont know.

Page 285

"It's a device, an ancient device. Older than you can conceive, a weapon constructed before the rise of man. The Cabal believes that they were used in ancient wars between the first-comer races, in the galaxy's youth."
..

Modifying his tone and pitch with a skill finessed over centuries, he made Soneka start, and the Alpha legionnaires stare at him. "The Cabal believes there are no more than five of these infernal devices left in existence,' he said. 'It is a weapon of Chaos ritual. A Black Cube, once activated, manufactures a Black Dawn. From that point, no life on the planet is safe."

"How is a Cube activated?" asked Pech.
"By blood," said Grammaticus. "By the sacrifice of blood"

chaos doomsday weapon.

Page 296

Five months before, Nurth had died, exactly as John Grammaticus had said it would.
..

No force the size of the 670th Expedition could be deployed or withdrawn easily, even under emergency protocols. Waves of landers and heavy lifters braved the vicious windshear to set down at makeshift extraction points where Army companies had hastily gathered. Imperial strongpoints and vehicles were abandoned. Entire units, struggling to make their way to evacuation rendezvous, were lost forever in the encroaching blackness. Some lift ships, fully laden, failed to make it back through the blizzarding atmospheric wrath to orbit. Others returned to the fleet with their holds empty, having been unable to locate a landing site or anything worth rescuing.
The panic-fuelled nightmare of evacuation had finally been called off after seventeen hours. Almost half of the expedition's strength failed to make it off Nurth alive. The logistical difficulties of extracting heavy vehicles meant that armour companies suffered particularly heavy losses. Princeps leveth openly denounced Namatjira. A lack of specialist super-lifters resulted in six of his Titans being left behind. A week after the fall of Nurth, Jeveth detached his force from the 670th Fleet and returned to Mars, warning the Lord Commander that he might never expect collaboration from the Mechanicum again.

Evacuation of the planet. 17 hours manages to only get half (300-400 thousands?) troops, with heavy losses amongst the vehicles.

Also note that the loss of titans caused the expedition to break with the Mechanicum. Politics.

Page 297

No one in the Imperial expedition ever laid eyes on the object that slew Nurth. No confirmation was ever made of its size, construction, or process, nor even if it was actually a Cube at all. No one could account for its effect, or properly explain exactly the manner of the doom it unleashed, except that it was likened to some invasive disease, a plague that swept through organic and inorganic structures alike.

Imperial minds felt it, however. Its molten hiss escaped the failing edges of Nurth's atmosphere and bit corrosively into the astrotelepathic orders of the fleeing expedition fleet. It triggered madness and delusion. The uxors of the Geno Chiliad felt it less profoundly, but they felt it all the same. Privately, they agreed that it sounded like the mewling and squealing of some daemon, awakened and trapped in the light-less, broiling cinder pit that Nurth had become.

What is known about the cube.

Page 305

Nearby, perhaps only a hundred and fifty million kilometres away, lay a pale red sun, the local star and the source of the bathing yellow sunlight that made both the view and the chamber seem as if they were set in amber. Closer still, looming below them, was the night-side of a planet.
Alpharius pointed at the star. Hololithic graphics immediately lit up across the observation port, outlined the star, and contoured it. Numerical columns rapidly scrolled up the port, followed by block statistical data.

"Freeze there. Dim radiance and magnify by six." said Alpharius. The hololithic projection blinked, and centred a glare-adjusted magnification of the star on the port display.

Sensor ranges.

Page 307

"That is the venue. Elemental processors were activated there about five years ago, to prepare the area for your visit. They've barely had time to manufacture a decent micro-climate, but it's sustainable enough."
"Atmospheric engineering?" asked Herzog.
"Yes, sir." Grammaticus replied.

Cabal terraforming.

Page 308

"The Cabal is extremely old, and composed of various... what you would term xenosbreeds. They have no shared origin or homeworld. Since the earliest days, the time of their formation, they have been nomadic, moving from one world to the next, like the court circuits of the old kings of Terra."

Composition of the Cabal.

Page 309

"I need you to appreciate the duration and extent of the Cabal's activities.
The halting site at Mon Lo was constructed nearly twelve thousand years ago. The one here on Eolith is considerably older, about ninety thousand years. It was the Cabal's previous visits to Nurth, and their understanding of the culture developing there, that caused them to select it as a place to demonstrate to you the-"

Age of the cabal.

Page 312

"Warmaster?" asked Grammaticus sharply.
"Horus Lupercal is Warmaster," Alpharius replied.
"Since when?" Grammaticus asked. There was a queasy look on his face suddenly.
"Four months ago, after the Great Triumph on Ullanor. The Emperor retired from the Crusade and named his first son as Warmaster. I regret I could not attend the ceremony, but the retreat from Nurth and the business you presented to me was occupying my time. To be fair, I shun such occasions. I sent envoys."
"Horus is already Warmaster?" Grammaticus whispered.
..
"Already' Grammaticus murmured, shaking his head. "So soon. Two years, he said, two years. We haven't got two years."

We learn that already the Cabal's precognitive predictions are proving to be significantly off. This story also takes place some months after Ullanor. The Emperor is presumably laready back at Earth.

Page 318

There was a sudden, thunderous bellow of tank engines starting up. A row of forty, twin-barrelled assault tanks, drawn up along a line of thick yellow chevrons painted on the deck, began revving their turbines and snorting fumes from their exhausts, as service crews began to lower the cargo ramps of the massive bulk lifters.

twin barreled assault tanks.

Page 320

However, Namatjira had evidently made other plans. He had declared that the expedition would be mounting an operation in concert with the Alpha Legion, and ordered immediate embarkation, an act so premature that nearly eight thousand Army casualties had to be left at Empesal, unfit for service, along with four carriers with refits and repairs still pending.

To remedy the diminished strength of the 670th Expedition, Namatjira hastily enfranchised two brigades of Lusitan heavy infantry and an armoured cavalry company from Pramatia, together with their carrier ships and tenders, and sixteen fleet auxiliary and fire support vessels. When the expedition departed Empesal, its strength stood at about two-thirds of the force that had begun the Nurthene compliance. Even with leveth's Titans gone, it was a considerable presence.
...
Namatjira had subjected his forces to a four and a half month shift to an undisclosed location.

Namatjira recoups losses from ground and space assets. Note the organic setup of naval and army assets.

Page 322

He extended his right hand, and the Warden of the Seal carefully slid the heavy signet onto his middle finger. The ring was gold, with table-cut rubies at the shoulders, and a large, square bezel that bore, in intaglio, the crest of the office of Lord Commander. The band of the ring contained a biometric authority. Until the moment Namatjira had been ready to put it on, the ring had been secured in a stasis box, carried by the Warden's men-at-arms. No chances were taken. The ring had legal force in and of itself.

Nammie's ring of aturhority. A symbol of legal fofrce (military) - Peer of the Imperium perhaps?

Page 323

"The fleet abides, Lord Commander," he said, "All components and sub-components report smooth running. The escort squadrons are ready for launch. Target solutions for the surface coordinates have been supplied to the siege frigates, rail gun platforms, and all long range ordnance. We can commence orbital bombardment at your discretion."
..
"As I have advised you, sir, the bombardment should precede the drop. We can't very well hammer surface targets if our troops have already-"

Escort squadrons are launched? From carriers? Also note the siege frigates and railgun platforms.

Page 330

The deck quivered and they heard the distant rumbling squeal of the plasma catapults at the stern end of the platform discharging.

"Plasma catapult" may sound silly and impcractical, but it could refer to some sort of electrothermal launch mechanism. In fact thats what I think it is.

Page 330

"It's not often that the uxors get to ride down with us soldier types at the sharp end of things. You usually follow on with the support lines."

"Operational requirements." she replied. "We can't provide you with reliable 'cept coverage from orbit."

Limit of 'cept. Hundreds or thousands of km.

Page 331

Namatjira led Alpharius into the forward lookout of the flagship Blamires. Vast petal-form ports glazed the side walls of the triangular chamber and met in a sharp apex overlooking the kilometre of prow projecting ahead of them.

A kilometre long prow. The engines are likely at least that long too.

Page 332

Alpharius came and stood behind him. The view from the lookout was humbling. The plates of the ports had self-tinted to reduce glare, and diminish the blaze of the local sun.

Self-tinting ports

Page 333

"Tm sure you do, sir, but, oddly, I cannot name your great barge."
He glanced back at the ports. "That's it there, isn't it?" he asked, pointing towards a dark blur seven hundred kilometres off the Blamires's starboard bow. "That shielded object?"

700 km away.. shielded battlebarge.

Page 337

The drop-ship lurched and fell. Metal spalling from the release claws showered backwards in a glittering tail behind it.

They began to pull two Gs, three. The airframe began to vibrate.

3 gees pulled in a drop ship.

Page 340

"Just follow me and keep quiet." said Soneka. He opened the satchel over his shoulder and drew out a laspistol.

Laspistol pulled.

Page 340

"Peto, Peto just stop for a moment and look at me. Look at me. Control word Bedlame."
Soneka turned and faced him. His eyes were vacant.
..
"I didn't think it had worked,' he said, laughing in surprise. 'I really didn't think it had worked. All those lunches, five months of casual lunchtime conversations, dropping a weighted tell word in, now and then. I thought you were resistant."

Grammaticus using hynposis or control words. Another one of his tricks.

Page 341-342

They turned onto the vast spinal corridor, and came face to face with a maintenance servitor. The servitor jolted, whirring as it studied them, upper limbs raised in query.

"This section is monitored and private. Show me your authority." the servitor's vox speaker rasped.
Soneka shot it through the head. The servitor issued a thready whine, and clattered sideways against the wall, smoke trailing from its exploded cranium.

Soneka explodes a servitor's head with his laspistol. Single digit, maybe low double digit (10 or so) kilojoules.

Page 344

Soneka brought them to a long hallway that had eight massive blast hatches in its left-hand wall. Gigantic rotor fans turned lazily in the roof cage.

The identical blast hatches, each one large enough to accept a large transport vehicle, all stood open, waiting. They stopped outside the first of them, dwarfed by the hatch frame, and looked inside. Four armoured drop-pods sat in an oily black launch cradle, like bullets loaded into a revolver's drum. The chamber was lined with greasy black hydraulics. Feed lines were attached to the pods, and steam wreathed up slowly from the cradle mechanism.

Drop pods.

Page 349

Signals came in reporting that their supporting units were on the ground and advancing. No scan by eye, device or 'cept could detect any contact ahead.

Various scan modes - visual, machine, and psychic.

Page 352

Soneka had brought a locator. "How far do we have to go?" he asked.

Grammaticus took the device from him and activated it. He watched the display resolve, and turned slowly, checking other readings.

Locator

Page 369

"There's a ship approaching." said Mu. Bronzi called the company to halt and looked up into the saturated cloud cover. He couldn't see anything.

..

"It's there." she insisted, staring up into the sky. Her 'cept had caught its approach.
A dot appeared out of the clouds, and swooped down across the block valley, trailing vapour. It was a Jackal gunship.

Jackal gunship again.. located/tracked by 'cept.

Page 372

She opened the throat of her protective gear and revealed the pendant hanging there. "Psionic scrambler, Konig," she said. "It made my mind seem as if it were out of joint."

"Psionic scrambler" in a pendant.

Page 373

"Cut off one head and two shall grow in its place." said G'Latrro. "Alone amongst the genie sons of the Terran Emperor, you are the only twins. You are both the primarch, one soul in two vessels."
"The fact is not known outside our Legion." said Omegon.
"It is our most closely guarded secret." said Alpharius. "How did you know?" asked Omegon.

Da-dum! The big reveal about the Alpha Legion Primarch. One wonders if the Emperor knows or planned it that way, or if it was something "accidental" like Magnus or Sanguinius or the like..

Not an impressive reveal really.

Page 379

"Contact echo, sir." the tracking officer replied. "An object just appeared on the scopes, inbound to 42 Hydra Tertius."

"Appeared?" Van Aunger repeated.

"I don't understand it, sir." the tracking officer replied, adjusting his control panels with fast, expert hands. "There are no energetic or magnetic profiles that would suggest a real space translation. The object just appeared. I speculate that it was previously cloaked."

Cabal appears.

Page 380

"Negative, sir." the tracking officer replied. "It doesn't even read like a vessel. It's inert on all scans. It's... oh Terra..."
"What?"
"I'm marking it in excess of point eight superluminal, and it's big, sir. It's at least as big as we are."

Cabal is moving in excess of .8c. And this is Impressive to the Imperium.

Page 383

"Set the fleet to a war footing. Charge all main battery weapons, and target that object. You will only commence bombardment on my instruction."

"Sir, we have significant ground troop deployments adjacent to that craft." said Van Aunger. ‘They would most likely be caught in any orbital bombardment we unleashed. I told you this, Lord Commander, before the day began. I told you that bombardment
tactics would—"

Namatjira intends to bombard the craft, regardless of personal casaulties.

Page 385

"Get me a link to the primarch, Dinas." Namatjira said, "Person to person. Let's see what new lies he chooses to spin me, and see if we can't establish his location while we listen to them. Prepare the Lucifer Blacks for teleport assault."

Namatjira's flagship appears to have its own teleporters.

Page 390

"The Cabal is about to display the Acuity to us, Peto." Alpharius told him. "As far as we can tell, it's a perception device, a means of temporal lensing, based on eldar principles of farseeing."

The Cabal's precog/divination.. the Acuity. I'm sure this will be super-reliable.

Page 392-394

+ This is our veridical testimony. This is the future as it will happen. The great war will erupt across the firmament and engulf the human race. The stars will go out. The Annihilator will rise. +
..

+ The civil war brought against the Emperor by Horus Lupercal will end one of two ways. Either Horus will win, and Chaos will triumph, or the Emperor's forces will prevail and drive Chaos into retreat. +

..

+ Regard, then, the future. Horns wins, and Chaos triumphs, a terrible prospect, but likely. The Cabal sees a scintilla of honour remaining in bright Lupercal. He will secretly hate himself for the atrocities committed in his name. If he wins, his fury will accelerate, along with his self-loathing. I le will immolate the human species inside two or three generations. The self-destructive, redemptive urge in Horus will drive him to exterminate mankind in shame. Even his closest allies will war against him in a final armageddon. Chaos will burn brighter than ever before, and will then be extinguished. Its great victory will flare, and then gutter, as the dying Imperium takes it to the grave. The races of the galaxy will be spared, through the sacrifice of the human race. +

..

+ Consider the alternative, Omegon primarch. This is what we have farseen. The Emperor will give his life to achieve victory. He will fall, at Terra, striking Horus down. This will be his destiny. See. +

..

+ If the Emperor wins, stagnation will seize the Imperium. It will seek to perpetuate itself, over and again, across thousands of years, but it will decay, slowly and surely. It will decay, and gradually allow Chaos to seep back in and consume it. +
"Victory... is defeat?" asked Alpharius softly.
+ If the Emperor wins, Alpharius, Chaos will ultimately triumph. Ten, twenty thousand years of misery and rot will follow, until the Primordial Annihilator at last achieves ascendancy. +

The Cabal's view of the future. I have to point out that they'v been wrong at least once before in this novel, and we KNOW historically that things don't even turn out the way they predict. It is rather hard to take their viewpoint at face value or that it is truly as noble as they claim. In fact, it quite possibly comes off as self-serving Xenos factions simply trying to sow dissention in Imperial ranks. Or, as others have suggested, they're being manipulated by Chaos. It's bene known to happen.

On the other hand, we know the future if the Emperor "wins" has already come to pass, so its possible things may turn out the way they say. Or maybe not.. they're not exactly exact when Chaos supposedly "wins".

Another thing against this idea is that they think somehow that Chaos would "die" alongside humanity. How likely is that? Chaos exists as a consequence of all warp-snesitive living things. Hell the Eldar are strongly tied to both Slaanesh and Khorne. Slaanesh is tied to pleasure. Khorne to slaughter and war. Nurgle is tied to life and Death. Tzeentch is tied to change and lies and.. so on. None of that is going to stop when humanity dies out, nor will all the other races mysteriously stop existing. Humanity may be one of teh bigger, more dominant races in teh galaxy, but they are hardly alone, hardly the most numerous, and hardly the most psychically strong.

In fact, the odds are good this IS a chaos plot. remember the Inquisition War? The Eldar fear about humanity falling into Chaos and birthing a fifth Chaos god? IF Horus wins and stuff happened the way the Cabal expected... Chaos birthing a fifht god with humanity's demise would be rather likely, would it not, much the same way it happened with the Eldar? And chaos wil flood the galaxy. win for chaos! But no indication the Cabal sees this, even though Eldrad and other farseers did.

given everything that has happened, given everything that the Cabal has been wrong about (And will be wrong about, given what other novels tell us as to the fate of the future... it seems more likely that the Cabal's vision is simply, utterly, fucked up.

Page 402

"Give me that fugging launcher!" Dev screamed, throwing down his sword and snatching the heavy weapon out of the hands of one of the Outremars. He began to pump rocket grenades out through the chamber hatch.

Rocket grenade launcher.

Page 409

Chayne swung his sabre in, and it was barely blocked by the primarch's sword. He altered his attack dynamic. Alpharius had to take a step backwards to defend against Chayne's extraordinary swordsmanship. The primarch parried and thrust, but Chayne dodged the strike, and ran his sabre into Alpharius's side. The tempered blade, as strong and sharp as any metal known to man, punched under the side of the power armour, through the segmented layering, and deep into Alpharius's torso.

Alpharius looked down at the wedged blade. A tiny amount of blood oozed out.

toledo steel sword penetrates Alpharius power armor. Doesn't do much else, though.

Dr. Trainwreck · Post by **Dr. Trainwreck** » 2012-10-17 08:59pm

Connor wrote:given everything that has happened, given everything that the Cabal has been wrong about (And will be wrong about, given what other novels tell us as to the fate of the future... it seems more likely that the Cabal's vision is simply, utterly, fucked up.

Well, everybody in the Cabal went to the same special school. And the 'Chaos wins either way lol' prophecy is nice, but maybe -just maybe- someone should have noticed that the Cabal admits to hating humanity because they're upstarts.

That's the problem with a universe that is already a pileup of multiple manipulators: you can't just introduce yet another group of sneaky bastards, have them foresee what everybody else hasn't, and make it work. Damn you, Abnett. At least we'll be be meeting Bequin soon.

Zinegata · Post by **Zinegata** » 2012-10-18 01:45am

Part of me wonders if these are a self insert of squats or squat like beings. Hard to say without beards. I can't quite get how they form 7% of the army force, when the army has 3/4 of a million troops 5,000 is 7% of 75,000 or so. not 750,000.

I think he's referring to the entire Imperial Army as a whole, not merely Namatjira's army group. Which implies there are billions upon billions of Outremars in the Imperial Army.

The Old Hundred's also an interesting commentary on how the Golden Age Imperium was not entirely sunshine and happiness. There was definitely a lot of purging going on, with the Thunder Warriors being most prominent (covered in Outcast Dead I think).

Black Admiral · Post by **Black Admiral** » 2012-10-18 05:11am

My own perspective on the Cabal is fairly simple: they're lying. They want humanity dead and don't care how that's accomplished; there's no reason to trust them as to the purity of their motives (with how frequently they lie to everyone), and several things look very, very suspicious about the whole situation on further examination (like the Black Cube thingummibob; the timing of its "discovery" (if discovery it was) in Nurthene possession is awfully convenient for the Cabal, and I suspect they emplaced it and set it off themselves. Requires them to've lied to John Grammaticus, but they demonstrably don't have a problem with that). Short of outright mind control, I can't figure out why the hell Alpharius & Omegon fell for one vision of extremely dubious provenance (which, oh so conveniently, has killed the one member of Alpharius & Omegon's party who might be able to provide some idea of its veracity).

The Cabal probably didn't try getting the Dark Angels on-side with their plan because the Watchers in the Dark would've told Jonson the Cabal are completely full of shit.

Lost Soal · Post by **Lost Soal** » 2012-10-18 02:49pm

Connor MacLeod wrote: Page 312
"Warmaster?" asked Grammaticus sharply.
"Horus Lupercal is Warmaster," Alpharius replied.
"Since when?" Grammaticus asked. There was a queasy look on his face suddenly.
"Four months ago, after the Great Triumph on Ullanor. The Emperor retired from the Crusade and named his first son as Warmaster. I regret I could not attend the ceremony, but the retreat from Nurth and the business you presented to me was occupying my time. To be fair, I shun such occasions. I sent envoys."
"Horus is already Warmaster?" Grammaticus whispered.
..
"Already' Grammaticus murmured, shaking his head. "So soon. Two years, he said, two years. We haven't got two years."
We learn that already the Cabal's precognitive predictions are proving to be significantly off. This story also takes place some months after Ullanor. The Emperor is presumably laready back at Earth.

Not really, the prediction wasn't that he would become Warmaster in two years its that he would fall to Chaos as Warmaster then. John is misinterpreting it as him turning as soon as he got the title, but two years after Ullanor would quite easily fall in with his visit to Davin

Zinegata · Post by **Zinegata** » 2012-10-19 03:59am

Black Admiral wrote:Short of outright mind control, I can't figure out why the hell Alpharius & Omegon fell for one vision of extremely dubious provenance (which, oh so conveniently, has killed the one member of Alpharius & Omegon's party who might be able to provide some idea of its veracity).

They're Primarchs. Looking before leaping is not part of their M.O.

.

Except Guilliman, because he's on the extreme opposite end of this spectrum with his massive OCD and tendency to multitask 100 things at the same time.

Black Admiral · Post by **Black Admiral** » 2012-10-19 11:04am

Zinegata wrote:
Black Admiral wrote:Short of outright mind control, I can't figure out why the hell Alpharius & Omegon fell for one vision of extremely dubious provenance (which, oh so conveniently, has killed the one member of Alpharius & Omegon's party who might be able to provide some idea of its veracity).
They're Primarchs. Looking before leaping is not part of their M.O. .

Except Guilliman, because he's on the extreme opposite end of this spectrum with his massive OCD and tendency to multitask 100 things at the same time.

Yes, but most of the Primarchs would have responded to that vision with bolter fire, rather than meek acquiescence and going "Yessuh boss". Vulkan wouldn't have believed the Cabal for two seconds, nor would Ferrus, Corax, Magnus, Angron - hell, I don't think even Lorgar would be so utterly feckless as to fall for that one (well, not unless Kor Phaeron told him to go with it). Out-and-out mind control is the only thing I can think of that would stop Alpharius and Omegon (as they'd been written up to that point of Legion) laying down hatred and discontent on the Cabal.

I mean, I'll cut Abnett some slack for Legion's ending, as IIRC he was ill when he wrote it, but that was fucking weak.

Ahriman238 · Post by **Ahriman238** » 2012-10-19 06:08pm

I had to take a break of a couple weeks from reading Legion because all the countervailing plots and lies made my head hurt. Which is really perfect for a book about the Alpha Legion.

I take it almost as an article of faith that there's something deeper going on with the AL. If I knew less about the forces involved I'd say they were playing the Loyalists and Chaos against each other. See Deliverance Lost where they manage to steal Primarch DNA, and befoul the rest, for their own purposes. Are they earnest in supporting Chaos and the destruction of humanity, as outlined by the Cabal? Are they secretly loyal, undermining the traitors from within, even 10,000 years later? Have they since been corrupted? Are they taking a third option?

We'll never know, because GW will never advance a storyline like that, and we can never trust anything said by a Legionaire or anyone associated with them.

Connor MacLeod · Post by **Connor MacLeod** » 2012-10-28 08:40pm

Next up for the HH series... Battle for the Abyss, by Ben Counter. This is perhaps the only one, true, filler novel for the HH series, although it's not a bad one (IMHO) for all that. It's just that its really.. standalone. Events in this one haven't really had much *real* connection with the larger HH novels. It's alot like the short stories in the anthologies in that regard. (And the reason I call it the 'only' filler despite the fact you could consider novels like Nemesis and Outcast Dead to be 'filler' in that same vein is because those two novels actually introduce rarely-discussed aspects of the 40K universe that are sort of interesting to get a glimpse into - astropaths and the Assassins. So the filler aspect is forgivable. By contrast, Battle for the Abyss is pretty much a novellized version of a popcorn action flick.)

Basic Premise is the Evil Word Bearers (MUAHAHAHAHA) have built in secret a super secret uber warship called the Furious Abyss with the intentions of using it to make what amounts to a surprise attack on Ultramar (which they do again in KNF but.. I digress.) Standing in their way (or rather, chasing them) from Terra to Ultramar is the Ultramarine Cestus and his merry band including a Space Wolf, a World Eater, a Thousand Son, and.. some spaceship people.

The high points for me were the technical fluffy bits (like the building of the Abyss), as well as the tension between Cestus and the Space Wolf over the inclusion of the Thousand Son guy. It was also nice to see 'good' guys from the supposedly 'traitor' chapters who stayed loyal (the World Eater and the Thousand Son both stay loyal.) But other than that.. pure filler.

I'll do it in two updates, but I won't wait too long between updates one tonight, one shortly after.

Page 10

Thule had orbited the shipyards of Jupiter for six millennia. Suspended high above the gaseous surface of its patron planet, it dwelled innocuously beyond the greater Galilean moons: Callisto, Ganymede, Europa and Io.
...
Though of little consequence, Thule was to become something more than just a barren hunk of rock. It had been hollowed out by massive boring machines and filled with conduits, vast tunnels and chambers. Millions of menials, drones and acolytes toiled in the subterranean labyrinth, so great was the deed that they were charged to perform. In effect, the dead core of Thule had become a giant factorum of forge temples and compressors, a massive gravity engine its beating heart. This construction extended from the surface via metal tendrils that supported blister domes, clinging like limpets to the rock, and pneumatic lifter arrays. Thule was no mere misshapen asteroid. It was an orbital shipyard of Jupiter, and one that had guests.

It is possible that "Thule" references 279 Thule. Either way they turned it into a secret orbital shipyard.. one of many around Jupiter and MArs.. and even Earth. Note the use of construction drones, and a "gravity engine".

Page 13-14

A vast ship dominated the view through the hardened plexi-glass of the blister dome.
...
So armoured, it could withstand even a concerted assault from a defence laser battery. In fact, it had been forged with that very purpose in mind.
...
Twin banks of laser batteries gleamed in dull gunmetal down its broadsides. A single volley would have annihilated the loading bay and everyone in it. Cannon mounts sat idle on angular blocks of metal filled with viewpoints that hinted at the myriad chambers within. The rapacious bristle of the defensive turrets along the dorsal and ventral spines, and the dark indentations of the torpedo tubes, shimmered with violent intent.

Spiked antenna towers punched outward from multitudinous sub-decks, interspersed with further weapon arrays and torpedo bays. The ship's ribbed belly shimmered like oil and was replete with dozens of fighter hangars.

The Word Bearers super ship. Note the dozens of fighter hangars, the huge numbers of weapons turrets and batteries and arrays.. and tons of torpedo launchers.

Page 14

It was the greatest and largest vessel ever forged, unique in every way and powerful beyond reckoning.
..
This ship, this mighty ship, had been made for them, and here in the Jovian shipyards its long-awaited construction had finally reached an end. This was to be a blow against the Emperor, a blow for Horus. None could know of the vessel's existence until it was too late. Steps had been taken to ensure that remained the case. The launch from little known, and even less regarded, Thule was part of that deceit, but only part.

if we go by first heretic.. the ship might have taken no more than 50 years or so, give or take a decade, and quite possibly less. It was also built in secret, so its slow rate may make sense. More to the point, it being the Largest ship says alot, considering there are 20,30 even 60 km long ships (the latter being mentioned in Thousand Sons), so this must be quite a bit bigger than 60 km. It evne gives legitimacy to those weird super ships from the comics. That's maybe only 1% of the mass of the death star, and built in a longer period of time but.. thats one ship fo many, and its an actual warship rather than a battlestation. That they have built numerous other vessels of similar magnitude kinda makes up for that. And its not like its the largest thing ever built (star forts, Phalanx, various fortress monasteries...)
The upper limit on the ship is Thule itself.. the shipyard may be hollowed out by the starship has to be far smaller than 127 km.

Page 15

Smiling grimly, he thought of what the vessel represented, and he imagined its awesome destructive potential. There was none other like it in all of the Imperium: none with the same firepower; none with the same resilience. It had been forged with one deliberate mission in mind and it would need all of its strength and endurance to achieve it: the annihilation of a Legion.

Mechanicus supership, in other words.

Page 16

He had done it because it suited his purposes, the burgeoning desire, or rather intrinsic programming, within the servants of the great machine-god to gradually become one with their slumbering deity. Horus had unfettered Mars in its pursuit of the divine machine, countermanding the Emperor's chastening. For Kel-bor-Hal the question of his allegiance and that of the Mechanicum was one of logic, and had required mere nanoseconds of computation.

"nanosecond" computation implants. I also wonder if "slumbering deity" refers ot the Dragon.

Page 19

Pre-programmed activation protocols abruptly came on line in the servitor pilot slaved to the drone shuttle. A mix of chemicals, separated within the body of the servitor pilot became merged as they were fed into a shared chamber. Once combined, the harmless chemicals became a volatile solution capable of incredible destructive force. A second after the solution became fully merged a small incendiary charge ignited their fury. The immediate firestorm engulfed the ship and spread out, the growing conflagration billowing down tunnels and through access pipes, incinerating labouring menials. When it struck the gravity engine the resultant explosions began a cataclysmic chain reaction. It took only minutes for the asteroid to break into flame-wreathed fragments. There was no time to flee to safety and no survivors. Every adept, servitor and menial was burned to ash.

The debris field would spread far and wide, but the asteroid was far enough away, locked at the farthest point of its horseshoe orbit, not to trouble Jupiter. It would not escape notice, but it was also of such little consequence that any investigation would take months to effect and ratify. None would discover the thing that had been wrought upon the asteroid's surface until it was much, much too late.

Much technology was lost in Thule's destruction.

Ther'es always technology lost. The secret shipyard was blown up. Note how they were able to turn a servitor into a bomb.

Page 23

Hektor was full of pride at the thought of seeing Roboute Guilliman again, his gene-father and noble leader of the Ultramarines Legion. The deciphered messages from the Fist of Macragge's astropaths had been clear. The Warmaster himself, mighty Horus, had ordered the Legion to the Veridan system. Guilliman had ratified the Warmaster's edict and instructed all disparate Ultramarine forces to muster at Calth. There they would take on supplies and rendezvous with their brothers in preparation to launch a strike on an ork invasion force besieging the worlds of neighbouring Veridan.

Little do they know it is a setup.

Page 24

His ship, the Fist of Macragge, was a Lunar-class battleship, named in honour of the Ultramarines' home world.

Lunar class battleship.

Page 25

"It's another ship," said the helmsmaster. "It's huge. I've never seen such a vessel!"
"Impossible," barked Hektor. "What of the sensorium, and the astropaths? How could it have got so close to us, so quickly?"

Mention of using astropaths as a means of detecting starships at range. I didnt quote it, but we learn that the Word Bearers are using hordes of psykers to cloak the ship from detection.

Page 25

There, like black on night, was the largest ship Hektor had ever seen. It was shaped like a long blade with three massive decks that speared out from the hull like prongs on a trident.

Again the Word bearers supership is bigger than any previous design.
Page 26

The terrible vessel that had somehow foiled all of their sensors, even their astropathic warning systems, was firing.
"Raise forward arc shields!" Hektor cried, as the first impact wave struck the bridge.

It ends up crippling the unshielded battleship in two broadsides of lasers.. Presumably destroying it with however many others it fired.
Also, astropathic warning system. Precog? Scrying? Both?

Page 29

Word had reached them that the Warmaster Horus had already departed for the planet of Isstvan III to quell a rebellion against the Imperium. Cestus was envious of his Legion brothers, the World Eaters, Death Guard and Emperor's Children who were en route with the Warmaster.

Novel is taking place prior to Isstvan III.

Page 41

There were three astropaths in residence at the hub, and more in the space port at large. They were sunk into a deep, circular vestibule, just below floor level, and swathed in shadow. Dim lights set into the edge of the vestibule cast weak illumination onto their faintly writhing forms. A skin of translucent, psychically conditioned material was draped over the trio of astropaths like a clinging veil. Beneath it, they looked like they were somehow conjoined, as if feeling each other's emotions as one being. Other, less obvious, wards were also in place. All were designed to safeguard against the dangerous mental energies that could be unleashed during the course of their duties.

Withered and blinded, the wretched creatures - two males and a female - like all of their calling had undergone the soul-binding ritual; the means by which the Emperor moulded and steeled their minds, so that they might be able to look into the warp and not be driven insane. Astropaths were vital to the function of the Imperium; without them, messages could not be communicated over vast distances, and forces could not be readied and co-ordinated. Even so, it was an inexact science. Messages both sent and received by the Astra Telepathica were often nought but a string of images and vague sense-impressions. Wires and thick cables snaked from the vestibule, slaving the astropaths to the control hub, where their 'messages' could be logged and interpreted.

Astropathic hub, the security measures, as well as the problems in astropathic communiation. Interesting her eis messages are "images and sense impressions" - contrsted with symbology (although that might be a kind of image) in McNeill's books and the Shira Calpurnia novels. Messages are also routed into machinery for interpretation and logging.
Page 46

"It is possible that a message reached a way station, or some isolated listening spire at the edge of the segmentum, but we are well underway and there is little that any vessel can do to prevent our destiny."

The Word bearers seem to be in or around the edge of the segmentum (Solar?) by now.. although they're heading south and southeast when they destroyed the Fist of Macragge. Whehter they are in Ultima or Tempestus we don't know.

Page 47

It showed the Furious Abyss's cavernous engine room, the prostrate cylinders of the plasma reactors dwarfing the crewmen who scrabbled around them in their routine duties.
..
"Magos Gureod, you are to keep us at a steady speed, but be ready to increase our plasma engines to maximum capacity."

Furious abyss is currently operating at less than maximum reactor and engine capacity. also note the cylindrical plasma reactors.
Page 48

..most of his jaw and chin had been destroyed during the early years of the Great Crusade while he was aboard the Galthalamor, fighting the ork hordes of the Eastern Fringe. The vessel, an ancient Retribution-class battle cruiser, was all but annihilated in the conflict.

Retribution class "battle cruiser".

Page 49

Only the Furious Abyss could get close enough, could endure the awesome defences of Macragge to unleash its deadly payload.

Tey project the Abyss will be able to withstand Macragge's planetary defences.

Page 53

The reactor was a swirling mass of glowing blue-green energy, rippling in on itself as it drew in power from the plasma conduits looping around it like eccentric orbits around a star. It pulsed, streaked with black and purple, and chunks of scorched machinery tumbled into it. A hot blast of air, tingling with radiation, washed over them in a back-draught. More warning runes flickered against Cestus's helmet lens, transmitted through onto the display from the acute sensor readouts on his armour.

Plasma reactor. Functionally magic, not fusion.

Page 54

Cestus was about to detach the grenades from his clip harness when the reactor abruptly collapsed like a dying star imploding into a black hole. In its place a glowing sphere of deep purple blossomed, flickering like an image on a faulty pict screen. Purple lightning licked from the surface, playing over Cestus's armour. He took a step back.
Yowling static flared suddenly into life and the Astartes were floored by the wave of noise. A bright flash lit the entire chamber, overloading their helmet arrays in an instant. There, amidst the intense flare of light, Cestus saw an image, so fleeting and indistinct that it could have been an illusion from the overwhelmed optics in his helmet. He blinked once, seeing only white haze, and shook his head, trying to recapture it. The flare died down and when Cestus's vision returned the afterglow haunted the edge of his retinas, but the image was gone and the reactor was dead. The core had turned dark. Cracks of static electricity glowed over its surface. It shrank and became abruptly inert. The warning lights inside the reactor shell dimmed and went out.

Elsewhere on the station, secondary and tertiary reactors, registering the loss of the primary reactor, diverted power to the dock, allowing the tech-seers time to make the necessary repairs. The storm had howled itself out.

The reactor "collapses" and gives Cestus a vision. He sees a vision in the stations reactor. A psychic vision. I wasn't kidding about the magic.
Note the secondary and tertiary reactors.

Page 58

The serf was blind, and wore ocular implants; the augmetic bio-sensors built into his eye cavities could not 'see' as such, but detected heat and provided limited spatial awareness.

Augmentic visual aid.

Page 62

He wore battered Mark V power armour, rendered in chipped blue and white, the colours of his Legion, clearly eschewing the Corvus pattern suits worn by his battle-brothers. The armour was heavily dented in several places, sporting numerous replacement parts, and the battlefield repair work was obvious. Formed of basic materials, the plates were held together by spikes, the manifest studs clearly visible on the left pauldron, greaves and gorget. The helmet rested on the table next to the warrior.

Cesut's power armor I believe.
Page 66

The Saturnine Fleet had existed before the Great Crusade, carving out a miniature empire among the rings of Saturn. Its strength and longevity had been based on a tradition of navigational skill, essential to negotiate the infinitely complex puzzle of the rings. Its rolls of honour noted the first time it had encountered the warships of the fledgling Imperium. Its admirals saw a brother empire, based on the demonstration of power and not just empty words or fanaticism, and signed a treaty with the Emperor that still held pride of place in the Admiralty Spire on Enceladus.

The Saturnine fleet, remnants of the Pre-CRusade Naval forces, and still an allied force.

Page 67

As an Astartes fleet commander, it was within the remit of his authority to take command of the ship. For now, he decided he would allow the admiral some leeway.

Astartes authority outranks naval authority.

Page 70

The Tertiary Core Transit was the most stable warp route from Segmentum Solar to the galactic south-east. It would take them to their destination expediently, and hopefully allow the Wrathful to gain some ground on whatever foes, real or imagined, awaited them in the void. It was also the route that any void-farer, if he or she did not want to take a four to five year detour, would take to arrive at the Calth system.

Interestingly enough, the route is wide enough seemingly to allow for multiple entry/exit points along the route (the Furious Abyss uses the same Transit to travel from Terra to where it destroyed the Fist of Russ, then enters it again to travel on its way towards Calth. Either that, or the Transit is made up of multiple, smaller warp jump points.)
page 71

They found no sign of the Ultramarine vessel. There was merely a faint energy trace that matched the Fist of Macragge's signature. Unlike battles on land, where evidence of a fight could be seen clearly and obviously, conflicts in space were not so easily identifiable. Wrecks drifted, ships could be caught and destroyed in black holes, space debris drawn into the gravity well of a passing moon or small planet, even solar wind could scatter the final proof of a battle ever having taken place. So it was that Kaminska had instructed her Navigator to search for whatever energy traces remained behind, those last vestiges of plasma engine discharge that lingered in spite of all other evidence dissipating due to the ravages of space.

Differences between space and ground battles. Note the mention of the Navigator searching for useful traces. I'm not sure if the Navigator is using his/her powers (like in Rogue tRader), or searching via the sensors on the ship, or a combination of both, but it's interesting.
Page 74

"...but Navigator Esthemya has discovered a fleet of pursuing vectors in our wake."
"What fleet?"
"Two cruisers, an escort squadron and an Astartes strike vessel."

Again use of the Navigator as a detection system.

Page 80

"We have made visual contact with the ship from the site of the Fist's destruction."

They've just entered visual range of the ship. Given its probable size we're talking hundreds of thousands if not millions of km.
Page 81

It was the largest ship that Cestus had ever seen. Even at a considerable distance it was massive, easily three times the size of the Wrathful, and would have dwarfed an Emperor-class battleship. It bore an impressive array of weapons; tech-adepts aboard the Wrathful had suggested port and starboard broadside laser batteries and multiple torpedo tubes to the prow and stern.

Implied size of the Furious Abyss. The wrathful must be damn large if that ratio has any truth, but I suspect it doesn't, given that it also implies an Emperor class is less than 3x the size of the Wrathful. But who knows. Also stern torpedo tubes.

Page 81

"We're at extreme strike range." said Captain Commander Vorlov. "What are your orders, admiral?"
"Hold them back,"

"extreme strike range" for fighters and "visual range" seems to be roughly the same.
Page 83

"I have half a regiment of Prospero Spireguard standing by to board."

The Waning moon carries troops. Spireguard are troops raised from and native to Prospero, so they use troops from their home planet the same way the Dark Angels do.
Page 84

The image of his Macragge, seen as part of the astropathic warning in the reactor core, came to mind once more.

Reference to the "vision in the reactor" silliness agian. I'm pretty sure this means plasma reactors are at least partly warp based, to be honest.
Page 86

"They're within range, sire."
...
Additional readings flicked up on the viewscreen. The Waning Moon was showing life-signs equivalent to a full regiment of troops gathering at the boarding muster points.

The Abyss can scan the interior of the strike cruiser to determine crew and troop complements (And distinguish between the two, somehow - equipment perhaps) and their locations.
Page 88

A spread of torpedoes flew from the Furious Abyss towards the Waning Moon, which had positioned itself before the massive ship's prow. Starboard, a bank of laser batteries lit up at once, and beams of crimson light stabbed into the void. They struck the Fearless and the frigate was broken apart in a bright and silent flurry of blossoming explosions.
..
It was over in seconds, and after the conflagration had died all that remained was a blackened ruin. Then the torpedoes hit the Waning Moon.

Torpedoes take "seconds" to hit Waning moon. Much later they note the ship is "several hundred kilometres" away from the Furious abyss (but the range could have been greater) Assuming between 2 seconds and 10 seconds at 300 km, we're talking 30-150 km/s.
Page 88-89

"Evasive manoeuvres. Turrets to full! Withdraw boarding parties to damage control stations!"
...
Shields were useless against torpedoes; he had to hope their hull armour could bear the brunt of the Furious Abyss's opening salvo.
...
Warning runes flashed on multiple screens at once, presaging the missile impacts.
...

...the first of the torpedoes hit, sending damage klaxons screaming as a massive shudder ran through the bridge.

Suggests roughly the timefrmae for torpedoes I indicated. Shields won't stop torpedoes here. Range of turrets at least several hundred km.
Page 89

The professionalism of the Saturnine Fleet's officer class was evident as the weapons were brought to bear and shields focused prow-ward.

Void Shields exist in and can be focused into particular arcs.
Page 90

"Relay astropathic messages to Macragge and Terra at once," the Ultramarine added.

Considering they probably haven't quiet left Segmentum Solar yet - 10K LY. Maybe 50-60 thousand LY to Macragge. Regardless though, its tens of thousands of LY either way.
Page 93

The Waning Moon had burned its retro engines to kill its speed, and fired all thrusters on its underside to twist upwards and present its armoured flank to a second torpedo volley shimmering towards it.
The first torpedoes missed high, spiralling past the ship to be lost in the void.

A handful detonated early, riddled with massive-calibre fragmentation shells from the defence turrets mounted along the flank of the Waning Moon.

Several found their mark just below the stern. Another streaked in with violent force, and then two more amidships. Useless energy shields flared black over the impact points as hull segments spun away from the ship, the torpedoes gouging their way through the outer armour.

"Damage report!" shouted Mhotep above the din of the bridge.
"Negligible, sire," Officer Ammon answered from the engineering helm.
"What?"
"Minimal hull fractures, my Lord Mhotep."
"Sensorium definitely read four impacts,"

Second torpedo volley does not penetrate deeply into the hull. Energy shielding, oddly neough, still flares even though the shields penetrate. Also note frag shells used for point defense.

Page 93-94

Embedded deep in the hull of the Waning Moon, the outer casing of each torpedo split with a super-heated incendiary and six smaller missiles drilled out from their parent casing. They were ringed with metallic teeth and bored through the superstructure of the strike cruiser as they spun. Drilling through the last vestiges of hull armour, the missiles emerged into the belly of the vessel and detonated with a powerful explosive charge. With a deafening thoom-woosh of concussive heat pressure, the gun decks were ruined.
..
The Waning Moon shuddered as explosions tore through its insides. A destructive chain reaction boiled through the upper decks and into crew quarters. Stern-wards, detonations ripped into engineering sections, normally well shielded from direct hits, and ripped plasma conduits free to spew superheated fluid through access tunnels and coolant ducts.
..
Chains of explosions ripped huge chunks out of the Waning Moon's insides. Like massive charred bite marks, whole sections were reduced to smouldering metal and hundreds of crewmen were lost to the cold of the void as the vessel's structural integrity broke down.

There have been torpedoes that break into submunitions.. torpedoes that penetrate before detonating, and torpedoes with crazy drill tips.... but none that have combined all of them into a single package.
Oh yes and superheated plasma "fluid".

Page 95

"Massive internal and secondary explosions," replied Officer Ammon...
...
"Plasma venting from reactor seven, gun crews non-responsive and medicae has taken severe damage."
"Tertiary shielding is breached."

Internal explosions, at least 7 plasma reactors (probably 8, to keep things relatively even) and "tertiary shielding" whatever that is (It can't be void shields, and it's internal since these are torpedoes. Physical shields of some kind or force field reinforcement maybe?)

Page 95

"Some kind of Mechanicum tech that I have never seen before burned our insides."

New torpedo tech.

page 96

Errant bursts glittered past the Waning Moon as it opened up its gun ports and the snouts of massive ship-to-ship cannon emerged. Behind them, sweat-drenched ratings toiled to load the enormous guns and avenge their dead. They chanted in gun-cant to keep their rhythm strong, one refrain for hauling shells out of the hoppers behind them, another for ramming it home, and yet another for hauling the breech closed.
The signal to fire reached them from the bridge. The rating gang leaders brought hammers down on firing pins and inside the ship, thunder screamed through the decks.

Outside, jets of propellant and debris leapt the gap between the two ships. A split second later the shells impacted, explosive charges blasting deep craters into the enemy vessel.

Waning moon returns a broadside at 300 km, crossing the distance in a "split second" Assuming half a second (not too short, not too long) we're talking 600 km/s. Certainly no less than 300 km/s. Oddly the projectiles don't seem stopped by shielding.
Also interesting is that there is "propellant" of some kind involved - either its meant to carry the "projectile cannon" analogy along or they're rocket propelled. Sufficed to say that either way it isn't simple chemical propellant (electrothermal perhaps.)
The fact gun crews haul out the shells manually as well as load may put limits on their size, although we dont know the exact mechanism of loading either. either way they're also fired by the gun crews, which seems a bit of a departure, but like most things they do it different ways from ship to ship/world to world.

Page 97

Dozens of new contacts flared on the viewscreens, streaking from the launch bays of a ship identified as the Boundless.
"Assault boats, sire." Sarkorov informed him, monitoring the same feed. "Escorts are closing."

Dozens of assault ships.

Page 98

The fighters, ten-man craft loaded with short-range rockets and cannon, streaked past the Waning Moon, the pilots saluting their fellow ship as custom dictated. They locked on to the Furious Abyss, the squadron leaders marking out targets on the immense dark red hull already pocked with lance scars and broadside craters from the battering the Wrathful had given it. Shield housings, sensor clusters and exhaust vents all lit up on the tactical display in a backwash of emerald light. Targeting cogitators locked on and burned red.

Fighters deployed. Context wise it seems they're desigend to soft-kill the target - taking out shields, sensors and manuvering engines.,

Page 98

He ordered his weapons officers to lock on to their target, a stretch of gun turrets along the Furious's dorsal spine. The port guns obeyed, the lascannon mounts swivelling into position.
The starboard guns did not move.

Fighter mounted lascannons It seems like multiple cannon per side, and they are controlled individually.
Page 100

"Any defensive fire?" asked Vorlov of the nearest control overseer.
"None yet." said the overseer, whose shaved scalp was festooned with wires feeding information from each controller into her brain.
"But we're in range of their countermeasures."

Turns out the Word bearers used psychics to fuck up the attack wings. Note the Overseer with the MIU. Also "range of countermeasures."
Page 102

The prow was mangled, chewed up by the Waning Moon's broadsides and torn by the lances of the Wrathful, but the prow was merely armour plating and empty space. It didn't matter. It could soak up everything they could throw at it for hours before the shells penetrated live decks.

Prows, oddly, don't seem to be solid masses, although spacing isn't a bad thing per se (whipple shields) It would take hours for the Imperial ships to breach the Abyss' bow - a testament to how durable the prow itself is.

Page 102

"This is the Fireblade," came the transmission intercepted by the Furious Abyss's advanced sensorium from one of the approaching escort ships. "We've got a clear run. Lances to full."

The Abyss can intercept/decode vox transmissions.

Page 103

"You think this was a psychic attack, captain?" asked Cestus, suddenly glad that Brynngar was off the bridge.
"Yes, lord, I do,"

PAge 103

"Maintain lance barrage from the Wrathful and the Waning Moon. Captain Vorlov, add the Boundless's from distance and let the escorts engage. No ship, however massive, can withstand such a concentrated assault."

Two cruisers, a strike cruiser, and 3 escorts can overwhelm any warship. Supposedly.

Page 104

The Fireblade stitched the first volleys of lance fire down against the upper hull of the Furious Abyss. It had nothing like the firepower of the fleet's cruisers, but up close it could pick its targets, and each lance fired independently to blast off hull plates and shear turrets from their emplacements with fat bursts. Defensive guns retaliated in kind and shots blistered against the Fireblade's shields, some making it through to the escort's dark green hull. The Fireblade twisted out of arcs of fire and sent a chain of incendiaries hammering down into the dorsal turret arrays. Silent explosions blossomed and were swallowed by the void, leaving glittering sprays of wreckage like silver fountains.
..
It was small, but it was agile and packed a harder punch than its size suggested. Behind it was the Ferox, its younger sister ship, using the heat signatures of the Fireblade's strikes to throw bombs and las-blasts through the tears opened up in the upper hull.

Frigate vs Abyss. Interesting that the Fireblade seems to have gotten close enough to bypass the Abyss' shields, given the lance strikes seem to be targeting specific points. The Abyss is not inside the frigate's shields however.
Additionally, the implication seems to be that the frigate has multiple, turreted lances - they're "independently targeted" - most frigates can only mount a single lance in the axis. The other frigate is using the lance's impact points (residual heat?) to strike with bombs and lasers.

PAge 104

The Fireblade finished its first run and corkscrewed up over the Furious's engine housings, letting the heat wash of the battleship's engines lend a hand in catapulting it void-wards before it lined up for another pass.

Implication that teh ship can survive the engine exhaust of teh ship long enough that it can be accelerated some distance away by that same exhuast - probably by shield impact or something. Definitely megatons if not GTs of energy exerted on the ship over a short period of time.

Page 105

All three remaining escorts came under fierce fire, but their shields and hull armour held, their speed too great to allow a significant number of defensive turrets to bear at once and combine their efforts.

The supposed benefit of frigate mobility against a bigger ship.

Page 105-106

The massive bore of a gun emerged from behind it.
The end of the barrel glowed red as reactors towards the rear of the ship opened up plasma conduits to the prow and the weapon's capacitors filled. Licks of blue flame ran over the ruined prow, ignited by the sheer force of the building energy.

The prow cannon fired. A white beam leapt from the Furious Abyss. At the same time thrusters kicked in, rotating the Furious a couple of degrees so that the short-lived beam played across the void in front of it.

It struck the Waning Moon just fore of the engines. Vaporised metal formed a billowing white cloud, like steam, condensing into a silver shower of re-solidified matter. Secondary explosions led the beam as it scored across the strike cruiser's hull, until finally it was lost in the shower of debris and vapour as its energy expended and the glowing barrel began to cool down in the vacuum.

Further explosions rippled across the Waning Moon in the wake of the crippling barrage, and the rear third of the strike cruiser was sheared clean off.

It's a super ship, so it has to have a single super weapon. I think that's a rule of sci fi, or something. Either way it echoes an Ion cannon frigate (it only turns by turning the ship) which might be useful for orbital bombardment or fixed targets, but any halfway mobiel ship could likely evade it (for one thing, being bigger, its acceleration will suck compared to any smaller ship, and almost anything will be smaller than the Abyss)
The interesting thing is that the plasma lance seems to build up energy from the plasma reactors feeding the engines, running at significant power levels at that.
Page 107

The pace of space battles was glacially slow. Even when seen through viewscreens it was carried out at extreme ranges, with laser battery salvoes taking seconds to crawl across the blackness.

The battle had been raging for over an hour when the cannon on the prow of the Furious Abyss fired its maiden shot. The broadside from the Waning Moon had crossed a gulf of several hundred kilometres before imparting on the enemy ship's prow and that had been point-blank by the standards of ship-to-ship warfare. The Boundless's fighter wings had flown distances that would have taken them across continents on a planet's surface.

Typical pace of space combat... and the pace of this one. "laser battery salvoes" take seconds to cross space. At lightspeed, that's multiple light-second ranges for lsaer weapons (including laser lances.)
And the distances of this battle.. hundreds of km for guns (point blank range) and the fighters crossed a mere thousands (tops).

Page 108

"Did the Waning Moon just go plasma-critical?"
"There were no damage control signs that suggested major engine damage. They'd got the reactor-seven leak locked down. Maybe a weapons discharge?"
"What weapon could do that?"
"A plasma lance," replied Cestus.
...
"I did not know such a device had been wrought and fitted," he added.

Plasma lance. yet another new technology.

Page 108

"I have little idea," Cestus confessed, staring into the viewscreen, analysing and appraising tactical protocols in nanoseconds as he considered Kaminska's question.

Nanosecond appraisal of the situation.
Page 109

"Suffice to say that the plasma lance was developed as a direct fire close-range weapon for ship-to-ship combat."

Smart. A close range weapon that is so large and fixed-axis you have to use the engines to turn the ship.

Page 111

Ramket saluted and was about to turn and do as ordered when a sheet of fire rippled down the corridor, channelled through the Waning Moon's remaining oxygen. It flowed over Mhotep in a coruscating wave, spilling against his armour as it was repelled. Warning runes within his helmet lens display flashed intense heat readings. Ramket had no such protection, and his scream died in his burning mouth as the skin was seared from his body. Smothered by fire, as if drowning, Ramket thundered against the deck in a heap of charred bone and flaming meat.

Marine armour cna survive temperatures that would burn an unprotected man.
Page 117

It was impossible for such a ship, even one of its impressive size, to harbour fighter decks and the weapons system that had destroyed the Waning Moon. This fact had informed every scenario the escort squadron's captains had developed for any reaction to their attack runs. The Furious Abyss, however, was no ordinary ship.
..
The destruction of the Waning Moon, appalling as it was, had at least given the escort ships the certainty that the Word Bearers would not have the resources for attack craft. That was before the launch bays had opened like steel gills down the flanks of the battleship, and twinkling blood-slick darts had shot out on columns of exhaust.

Yet more indication of the advanced nature of the Abyss.
Page 117

"Multiple hostiles! Fast attack craft, registering impacts. Shutting down reactor two."

"Shield your engines, for Terra's sake!" snapped Captain Ulargo, watching the grim display from the viewport.

"What do you think I'm doing?" retorted Lo Thulaga. "I have fighters port, aft and abeam. They're bloody everywhere."

Again "shielding" can be angled in specific directions and even over specific areas it seems (reinforcement?)... and for some reason it will be effective against fighters.

Page 118

Tiny explosions stitched over the hindquarters of the escort ship, ripping sprays of black debris from the engine housings. Turrets stammered back fire from the belly and sides of the Ferox, but for every fighter reduced to a bloom of plasma residue there were two more pouring fire into it.
...
The Ferox was far larger than any of the fighters, which were shaped like inverted Vs with their stabiliser wings swept forwards. Individually its turrets could have tracked and vaporised any of the enemy before they got in range, but there were over fifty of them.

Point defnese turrets vaporize/plasmatize fighters (maybe). Assuming that isn't something like the reactor going up. The fact that 50 fighters couldn't be shot down by the frigate may mean they needed multiple turrets per frigate but the close range made coordinating difficult.
Like the earlier fighters, these ones seem to opt for exposed areas to attack (like the engines.)

PAge 118

The Ferox tried to pull clear, but the enemy fighters hounded it, darting into the wake of the escort's engines, risking destruction to fly in blind and hammer laser fire into its engineering decks.
One of the reactors on the embattled frigate melted down, its whole rear half flooding with plasma.
..
The fighters circled it, flying in wide arcs around the dead ship and punishing it with incessant fire. Crew decks were breached and vented.

Fifty fighters or so take down the frigate.

Page 119

It strayed into the arcs of the Furious Abyss's ventral turrets, and a couple of lucky shots blew plumes of vented atmosphere out of its upper hull. The fighters closed and targeted the breach, volleys of las-fire boring molten fingers into the frigate. Somewhere amidst the bedlam the bridge was breached and the command crew died, incinerated by sprays of molten metal or frozen and suffocated as the void forced its way in.

more of the Frigate's death... the Abyss joining in.

Page 120

"Contact your astropath, and find out what is keeping that message. I must warn my lord Guilliman at once."
Kaminska raised the astropathic sanctum on the ship-to-ship vox, even as Helmsmistress Venkmyer relayed disengagement protocols to engineering.
Chief Astropath Korbad Heth's deep voice was heard on the bridge.
"All our efforts to contact Terra or the Ultramarines have failed." he revealed matter-of-factly.
..
"When I say our efforts have failed, I mean utterly. The Astronomican is gone."
...
"We are detecting warp storms that could be interfering."

They've made multiple tries to communicate with terra and Macragge via astropath, which have all failed. Earlier they mentioned it had been about an hour since the battle begun, and so far it hasn't been a full day (context wise), os that gives us an idea of how fast they expected a message and response (hours, at most.) Millions of c at a very minimum, for contacting either Terra or Macragge within a day.. but hours is more likely (and tens if not hundreds of millions of c message speed.)

Page 122-123

Another volley of torpedoes sailed out from the Furious Abyss, this time in a tight corkscrew like a pack of predators arrowing in on the prey instead of spread out in a fan.
High explosives tipped the torpedo formation. They penetrated shields and used up the first volleys of turret fire from the Boundless.

The main body of the torpedoes were the same kind of bore-header cluster munitions that had ripped into the Waning Moon. A few magnetic pulse torpedoes were part of the volley, too. They ripped through the sensors of the Boundless and blinded it.
...
Cluster explosions, like flowers of fire, blossomed down one flank of the Boundless.
...
The final torpedo wave had single warheads that forced enormous bullets of exotic metals at impossible speeds. They shot like lances from their housings, shrieking right through the Boundless and emerging from the other side, sowing secondary explosions of ignited fuel and vented oxygen, transfixing the carrier like spears of light.

More fancy torpedo designs from the Furious Abyss. In addition to the boring/cluster munitions we get ECM torpedoes, and one that basically is a "explosively formed penetrator" type round (either that or the warhead is a single shot railgun or something equally odd.)

PAge 123

The plasma lance fired. It hit the Boundless amidships, at enough of an angle to rip through to the plasma reactors. The entire vessel glowed, the heat of the fusing plasma conducted through its structure and hull.
Then the plasma overspilled and, spitted like prey on the solid beam of the plasma lance's light, the Boundless exploded.

From his imperious position on the bridge of the Furious Abyss, Zadkiel watched the burning wreck of the enemy cruiser flicker into lifeless darkness.

Plasma lance fires again, destroying a cruiser.
Page 133

Only a Navigator, a highly specialised form of stable mutant, could look upon it and not go insane. Only he could allow a ship to travel the stable channels of the warp, fleeting as they were, and emerge through the other side. To traverse an unstable warp route, even with a Navigator’s guidance, would put a vessel at the capricious mercy of the empyrean tides.

The Furious Abyss had plunged into this sea. It was kept intact by a sheath of overlapping Geller fields, without which it would disintegrate as its component atoms ran out of reasons to stay neatly arranged in its metals.

Dangers of warp travel. Again we're told "Navigators are the only way to travel", and that without gellar fields ships would fall apart as physics took a flying leap, etc.

Page 133

From the ordnance bay, wrapped in its own complement of fields, emerged a large psionic mine, spinning rapidly as it tumbled away from the Word Bearers’ ship. Though not visible on the outside, within the mine’s inner core was a coterie of screaming psykers, insane with a poisonous vapour that had been pumped into the chamber and then hermetically sealed. Their combined death cry would send psionic ripples through the empyrean. With a flash of light, which bled away into emotion as it was absorbed into the warp, the mine and all its raving cargo detonated.
...
With a sound like every scream ever uttered, the Tertiary Core Transit collapsed.

The beginning, I think, of the proud tradition of the Word Bearers using psykers to create WMDs of various types. The 40K version of interdictor field technology.

Page 137

Huntsman killed the vox link and turned to the three armsmen waiting patiently for him in the upper deck barracks. They were equipped with pistols and shock mauls and light flak jackets.

Naval armsmen of the Wrathful.

Page 138

Warp psychosis could affect any man, and even Huntsman, though possessed of a stronger will than most, felt its presence, even through the shielding of the Geller fields surrounding the ship that acted as a barrier against the empyrean. He had seen many suffering from the malady, and it took many forms. Both physical and mental abnormalities could present themselves: hair loss, babbling, catatonia, even homicidal dementia, were common.

"Warp Psychosis" is the Crusade era term I suspect for possession or warp insanity.

Page 144-145

"The Tertiary Coreward Transit is down." he explained simply. "I had detected a worsening of the abyssal integrity, prior to the collapse, but we were already too far engaged in the warp to turn back."
...
"How did the enemy collapse the route?"

...
"They deployed some kind of psionic mine." Orcadus replied. "The effect would have been felt by our astropaths. As of now, we are sailing the naked abyss."
...
"We follow the enemy vessel and stay in its wake as best we can." said Cestus, cutting in. "They are bound for Macragge."
"From Segmentum Solar to Ultramar, outside stable routes?"
...

"The chances of success would be minimal, my lord."
..

"I can use their vessel as a point of reference, like a beacon, and follow it, but I cannot speak for the warp. If the abyss sees fit to devour us or make us its prey then the matter is out of my hands."
...

"The warp around it is in tumult, as it has been in the abyss these last several months. It does not bode well."

They figure out what the Word Bearers did, and that they can't follow outside stable routes without being at risk (They can risk travelling, but the dangers are much greater. STable routes are only increasing the odds of success.)

we also learn that they're still in/around Segmentum Solar, that the warp is in tumult for months (which may suggest why going outside the stable routes is dangerous, and even the stable routes are affected), and that the Navigator intends to use the Abyss as a reference point to navigate the Warp (giving yet another way Navigators can navigate through the warp... in addition to fixating on astropaths/life signs of planets, the AStronomican and related stuff, etc.)

Ahriman238 · Post by **Ahriman238** » 2012-10-28 11:43pm

The psyker-mine was less like an Interdictor field than the pulse-mass mines the Hapans use in SW. It doesn't stop anyone from entering the Warp, it just excites the Warp and makes it suicidally dangerous to travel.

I admit to enjoying this one, largely because of everyone's reaction to the Thousand Sons captain, but the Furious Abyss was a cool ship and the World Eaters always make for great villains.

Mind, I believe the Furious Abyss was supposed to coordinate with the WB fleet from Know No Fear, which would have probably ended the Ultramarines forever if they'd gotten through.

Zinegata · Post by **Zinegata** » 2012-10-29 03:25am

Yeah, the idea for the WB was to kill the 200,000 smurfs at Calth via surprise attack, while the Abyss nuked the remaining 50,000 that served as garrisons for the remainder of the 500 worlds.

Black Admiral · Post by **Black Admiral** » 2012-10-29 04:50am

Gotta say, Battle for the Abyss is about the only Heresy novel I almost unreservedly dislike (only part I actually like is the loyalist World Eater, Skraal). It's sloppy, even by Ben Counter's standards (if not quite to the level of the disappearing company of Crimson Fists from Phalanx), poorly plotted, and the Abyss itself really comes off as a collection of shitty gimmicks more than "teh supah-speshul warship" it's made out (and, I hope, intended) to be.

the atom · Post by **the atom** » 2012-10-30 01:03am

Connor MacLeod wrote: Julius tried to reply, but a vast explosion of noise erupted from behind him and he turned to see a portion of the stage wreathed in smoke and collapsing rubble. Marius stood in the centre of the orchestra pit, electrical fire dancing across his flesh as he strummed his hands across the screaming instrument. A howling, pyrotechnic blast of sonic energy shot from it and ripped one of the balconies from the wall in a devastating explosion. Chunks of marble and plaster flew through the air and the sound of the instrument drew howls of pleasure from Marius's fellow Astartes.

Within moments, each had mastered his device and a renewed crescendo of howling, shrieking blasts of energy began ripping the theatre apart
..
Marius turned his instrument into the crowd and unleashed a thrumming bass note that built to an explosive climax. Clashing chords like howls of ecstasy tore through a dozen mortals with an ear-splitting concussion, and each of Marius's victims thrashed helplessly as their bones snapped and heads exploded beneath the barrage of noise.

So basically the first noise marine was born when he annihilated a concert with a (literally) face-melting guitar-solo? I think that's the most awesome thing I've ever heard.

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