Part 2
Page 220
“I have weapons of my own, just not as obvious as yours. An electropulse projector, built into my cogitator gauntlet. And I have my menagerie. The psyber eagles, the eyerats and netfly swarms.”
Kell thought of the pods he had seen elsewhere aboard the Ultio, where Tariel’s cybernetically-modified rodents and preybirds and other animals slept out the voyage in dormancy..
Vanus 'weapons'.
Page 220-221
Every Vindicare used a longrifle that was uniquely configured for their biomass, shooting style, body kinestics, even tailored to work with the rhythm in which they breathed.
...
“Spectroscopic polyimager scope. Carousel ammunition loader. Nitrogen coolant sheath. Whisper-head suppressor unit. Gyroscopic balance stabiliser.” He paused. “As much of your original weapon as possible was salvaged and reused in this one.”
Vindicaire Exitus rifle.
Page 223
He returned Skelta’s nod and took a wary step through the field barrier and into the room, careful not to disturb the cluster of small mapping automata that scanned the crime scene with picters and ranging lasers.
CRIME SOLVING ROBOTS!
Page 227
“Oh. Yes. It’s a winestock. Many of the smaller lodges store vintage estufagemi here, holding barrels of it for years so it can mature undisturbed.”
“How many staff?”
Sabrat shook his head distractedly. “It… It’s all automated.”
Automated wine storage
Page 233
...vessels that were built as pleasure yachts or shuttlecraft, suborbitals and single-stage cargo barges for the runs to the near moons. Many of them had fallen foul of the system frigates blockading the escape vectors, torn apart under hails of las-fire; but more had simply failed. Ships that were overloaded or ill-prepared for the rigours of leaving near-orbit space had burned out their drives or lost atmosphere.
Ships fleeing the warzone. It seems (for civilian craft at least) total weight for liftoff matters as to whether or not they can make orbit. This may reflect the drive system (Chemical rockets would not be impossible on many insystem 40K ships, or it may just be something omre realistic than magical.)
Also frigate-scale system defense vessels.
PAge 233-234
Cloaked in stealth technologies so advanced they were almost impenetrable, it easily avoided the ponderous turncoat cruisers and their nervous crews...
...
The pilot’s brain drew information from scans of the traitorous ships to alter the electropigments of the hull, and by the time the assassin craft touched down at the capital’s star-port, it wore the same blue and green as the local forces, even down to the crudely crossed-out Imperial aquila displayed by the defectors.
Stealth capabilities of the Assasinorum vessel. also note the mention of system 'cruisers'
Page 237
Hyssos aimed the gun and fired at the place where a man’s heart would have been, but down came the arms and the shot was deflected away. He smelled a slaughterhouse stink coming off the creature, saw the sizzling pit in the limb from the impact as it filled with ooze and knit itself shut.
Spear's defensive abilities.
PAge 242-243
The iron-hard proboscis that penetrated there had licked at the matter of the lawman’s brain and siphoned off the chains of chemicals that were his memories, his persona. Then, Spear’s daemonskin had patterned itself on those markers, shifting and becoming. The change was so strong, so deep, that when Spear surrendered control to it, the camouflage aspect was not merely a mask that the murderer wore; it was a living, breathing identity. A persona so perfect that it believed itself to be real, resilient enough that even a cursory psionic scan would not see the lie of it.
...
With a guttural choke, Spear spat the proboscis from the soft palate of his mouth and into the skull through its right eye. Seeking, penetrating, it dug deep and found the regions of the dead man’s brain where his self was growing cold.
The Spear's 'stealth' impersonation capability. Seems like he is able to do something akin to what Space Marines and Lictors can do - basically absorb the thoughts/personalities of individuals and actually 'become' them, which alsos eems to includ ethe psiritual/psychic aspects. In this respect it's not only a Culexus but also a Callidus.
We learn the 'personality/thought' aspect is so strong that unless it is purged it can remain as a somehwat independent aspect of Spear.
Page 244
It fit snugly, but the adjustment of the fluid-filled morphing bladders layered underneath the Callidus’ skin allowed the assassin to alter body mass and dimension to accommodate it a little better.
The 'mass alteration' seems to involve bladders of some kind, but whether they ingest air, moisture or what we dont know.
Page 247
Spear pawed at a face that now resembled that of the Eurotas operative. It felt odd and incomplete. The churn of new memories and personality sucked in from Hyssos was curdling where it mixed with those of Sabrat, making him thought-sick. It seemed it would be necessary to purge the stolid reeve’s self sooner rather than later.
...
....Spear found the cage and tore it open, clawing inside to gather up the mind-scraps that were all that remained of Yosef Sabrat.
...
Then he began the purge, ripping and tearing, destroying everything that had been the man, vomiting up every nauseating, cloying skein of emotion, little by little sluicing Sabrat’s cloying self away.
More on the mental aspect of Spear's camo trick.
Page 248
...the toxin-filled stiletto hidden in a wrist sheath flew out in a shallow arc, piercing the stomach of the man on the left. The liquid inside was a consumptive agent that feasted on organic matter, even down to natural fibres and cured leather. He fell to the floor and began to dissolve
Callidus toxin stilletto.
Page 248
Koyne watched with detach ment as the Culexus’ dark power enveloped the man and destroyed him. His silent scream resonated and he became a mass of material like burned paper. In moments, a curl of damp smoke was all that marked the man’s passing; the other hapless soldier was now a puddle of fluids leaking away through the gridded decking of the elevator floor.
Culexus power in action. I still can't tell if it cremates or not.
Page 249
“His name was Mortan Gautami,” Iota said suddenly. “He never told anyone of it, but his mother had been able to see the future in dreams. He had a measure of postcognitive ability, but he indulged in narcotics, preventing him from accessing his potential.”
The skull head turned slightly. “I used that untapped energy to destroy him.”
Culexus destroy psykers with their own power. As a side effect it gives them some of the targets memories and knolwedge. Also some mention of pre and post coginition.
Page 250
The assassin learned quickly that the astropath was one of only a handful of its kind still alive in the Dagonet system.
...
...some of the newly empowered nobles had thought otherwise and made sure that at least a few telepaths capable of interstellar sending were kept alive.
The Dagonet system had a large number of astorpaths.. having 'a few' or 'a handful' alive implies there were a great many more to begin (double digits?)
Page 262
Beye knew that the patrol flyers carried nine-man teams with cyber-mastiffs and spy drones.
Police surveillance gear.
Page 262
Beye saw the glint of metal nozzles at her wrists just as she pursed her pale lips and blew out a long breath. A vaporous mist jetted from the nozzles and engulfed them all.
Venenum assassins seem to have all manner of dispensers or such for poison.
Page 286
Under Tariel’s guiding hand, the simple drive-brains of the monorails had obeyed his command and cut fast routes through the network that confused the PDF spy drones sent to follow them.
Automated trains and PDF spy drones.
page 294
The Venenum was precise in what she did; surgical and clean. Collateral damage was a term she refused to allow into her lexicon, and yet here they were, their presence more damaging to the locals than the guns of the nobles.
An interesting peek into Venenum philosohpy. And with the exception of perhaps the Eversor and (maybe) the Culexus, this is probably true of Vindicaire and Callidus as well.
Page 294
The man reached for her robes to stop her, and she tapped a dot of liquid onto the back of his hand from one of her wrist dispensers. The effect was immediate; he went pale and fell to the ground, the muscles in his legs giving out.
More Veneneum poison dispensers.
Page 298
"Hundreds of clanner troops, a dozen fan-jeeps and armoured GEVs, all of it scrap at the bottom of the Redstone river."
Fan jeeps and armoued GEVs. some sort of flyers/skimmers I'd guess. Not sure what GEV is - Gravitic Engine Vehicle maybe?
PAge 299
Grohl opened the case and produced a memory spool, the commercial kind that any core world civilian home of moderate means possessed.
Data storage tech.
Page 303
Spear had extruded a number of eyes and allowed them to wander the room, sweeping for surveillance devices.
Spear can create/emit independent 'eyes' for detection purposes.
Page 307
“Sadran turned his fury on the thing and it reflected it back.”
...
“Fires, lord. Sadran was consumed by his own fires.”
...
“I’ve never encountered a pariah capable of that…”
...
“It may be a fluke birth,” says the injured one. “Or perhaps some throwback from the experimentations of the Adeptus Telepathica.”
Spear's reputed origins. He must be a rare pariah variant, although we learn more later.
Page 314
Hair-like tendrils emerged from his epidermis, sampling the air and the ambient light all around. In moments Spear’s body became wet with sticky processor fluids, changing colour until it was night-dark. His features retreated behind a mask of scabbing crusts, and then he leapt soundlessly to the high ceiling. Secreted oils allowed him to adhere there..
Spear has camo and wall-climbing abilities too.
Page 315
It had been easy to sample the Void Baron’s breath; simply by standing close to him, Spear’s daemonskin sheath had plucked the microscopic particulate matter and DNA traces of his exhalations from the air, and stored them in a bladder.
Another useful trick.
Page 319
Once they were within the boundaries of the Segmentum Solar, security around the Eurotas flotilla would increase tenfold..
Security in Segmentum Solar is, for whatever reason much more intense. Whether this is internal (flotilla) security or Segmentum security we don't know
Page 319
The killer kept to the lines of tiles that glowed phosphor-green through the gelatinous lenses the daemonskin had grown over his eyes; normal human vision would have noticed nothing to differentiate the tiles on the floor of the reliquary, and so a luckless entrant would wander into one of the zones of contra-gravity stitched into the chamber..
Spear's Daemon-enhanced vision.
PAge 320
The daemonskin’s fronds waved gently as he moved, continually tasting the ambient atmosphere and temperature to keep the intruder cooled in synchrony. The thermal monitors studding every square centimetre of the reliquary walls looked for the glow of body heat, but saw nothing. All the patient, clever machines continued to believe the chamber was still empty.
Spear can fool thermal sensors too, it seems.
Page 324
“He is blood kindred to you. The animus speculum reads the colour of your auras. I saw the parity between them the first time I watched you through the eyes of my helm."
The culexus speculum can read auras. Interesting.
Page 338
Inside the case, concealed inside clever modules and secret sections, there were vials of powder, flat bottles of colourless fluid, thin strips of metallised chemical compounds, injectors and capsules and dermal tabs. The manner and means to end an entire city’s worth of human lives, if need be
More Venenum tools of the trade.
Page 339
It was a tarnished voc-locket, a type of portable recording device that lovers or family members gave to one another as a memento. The device contained a tiny, short-duration memory spool and hologram generator.
Fun visual/audio recording device in pendant form.
PAge 342
But in the depths of warp space, things were different. Here, with only metres of steel and the gauzy energy web of a Geller field between him and the thunder and madness of the ethereal...
...
Eurotas had granted him the use of a ship called the Yelene, a fast cutter from the Consortium’s courier fleet designed to carry low-mass, high-value cargoes on swift system-to-system runs.
Hull thickness of a rogue Trader fast cutter.
Page 352
He led Soalm out of the caverns through a vaulted hall of rock that had once held fuel rods for Dagonet’s long-dead atmosphere converters, and to a waiting GEV skimmer.
Once they were on their way out into the wilds, the noise of the hovercraft’s engines made conversation problematic at best.
GEV further defined. Seems to be some sort of hover craft. Also fuel rods mentioned.
Page 358
Four men, each armed with heavy-calibre weapons, were crowded around the only hatchway that led inside. They had hard eyes and the solid, dense builds of humans from heavy-gravity worlds. The assassin knew immediately that they were, to a man, career soldiers of long and lethal experience.
This seems to imply 'heavy gravity' worlders tend to be common soldiery (because heavy gravity always means high strength, although as discussed before on this forum this isn't inherently so without modification. Or maybe its weird warp magic BS tied to belief
)
PAge 359
She knew the design; the chest was of advanced Martian manufacture, a highly secure transport capsule fitted with its own internal support fields, capable of longterm survival in a vacuum, even atmospheric re-entry.
Another reentry-capable security chest.
Page 362
..the husks of gutted space stations or the hulls of dead system cruisers still burning with plasma fires.
system defense cruisers.
Page 362
Places where the map-logs said there should have been cities were smoke-wreathed craters glowing with the aftershock of nuclear detonations; other settlements had simply been abandoned.
Cities cratered by nuclear detonations. We dont know how big of cities or whether it was just oen or multiple nukes, but it would imply fairly high yields (megatons is a fair approximation for city killers, but a big enough city with a big enough crater could be gigaton for a single detonation. Of course, multiple smaller detonations could be much lower, kiloton range.
Page 363
“This craft has a cogitator core aboard. Is it capable of taking us to orbit on its own?”
“Aye,” said the pilot, uncertain of where the question was leading. “It’s not recommended, but it can be done in an emergency.”
...
“if the crew are incapacitated...
Shuttle autopilot.
Page 365
..the location that Tariel had selected for the hide was a good one, high up inside an empty water tower on the roof of a tenement block a kilometre and a half from the plaza.
sniper position. Exitus rifle has at least a 1.5 km range.
Page 365
The water tower was too obvious a locale to make the hide. It was too… easy, and if Kell thought so, then any officer of the PDF down in the plaza might think the same, make a judgement and have counter-snipers put in place.
Might imply that other non-Assassin snipers (or PDF troops) could have weapons of similar range, which we know as likely from other sources.
Page 366
..arranged his cameoline cloak between the heat-distorted frames of two chairs. Combined with the deadening qualities of his synskin stealthsuit, the marksman would be virtually invisible.
Vindicare stealth systems
Page 366
An encrypted burst transmitter in his gear vest sent a signal lasting less than a picosecond.
Vindicaire transmitter.
Page 369
He frowned and went to work on the rifle, dialling in the imager scope, flicking through the sighting modes.
..
Microscopic sensor pits on the muzzle of the rifle fed information directly to his spy mask, offering tolerance changes and detailing windage measurements. He flicked down the bipod, settling the weapon. Kell let his training find the range for him, compensating for bullet drop over distance, coriolis effect, attenuation for the moisture of the late rains still in the air, these and a dozen other variables.
More Exitus rifle features.
Page 369
A figure swam into view, blurred slightly by the motion of air across the kilometres of distance between them. A middle-aged man in the uniform of a PDF troop commander. As he looked in Kell’s direction, his mouth moved and automatically a lipreading subroutine built into the scope’s integral auspex translated
the words into text.
Implied range and the lip-reading functions of the Exitus rifle.
Page 375
The massive craft passed in front of the sun, throwing a partial occlusion of black shadow across the landscape far below. It sank into a geostationary orbit, stately and intimidating, hanging in place over the capital city as the dawn turned all eyes below to the sky.
Every weapon in the battleship’s arsenal was prepared and oriented down at the surface – torpedo arrays filled with warshots that could atomise whole continents in a single strike, energy cannons capable of boiling off oceans, kinetic killers that could behead mountains through the brute force of their impact. This was only the power of the ship itself; then there was the minor fleet of auxiliary craft aboard it, wings of fighters and bombers that could come screaming down into Dagonet’s atmosphere on plumes of white fire. Swift death bringers that could raze cities, burn nations.
Firepower, both direct and indirect, of an Astartes 'battleship'.
Torpedoes that can demolish continents. We dont know whether 'strike' means single torpedoes or single salvoes, but it implies gigaton/teraton range at least (depending on how one defines the destruction and the size of the continent and other factors.)
Kinetic Killers that can demolish mountains is more probably megaton range (gigaton isn't impossible, but I doubt there are many 10 km mountains..) depending on whether it just demolishes the mountain or the mountain and the ground beneath.. On the other hand what does 'kinetic killers' mean? Is it a dedicated bombardment weapon, some sort of turret weapon (like a bobmardment cannon), or is it a broadside weapon?
"boiling off oceans" for energy cannon is perhaps the most energy-intensive feat. For an Earthlike (or similar habitability) planet we're talking e26-e27 J (depending on whether it just boils or if 'boil off' is meant to imply vaporization.) The one problem is that it doesn't imply duration - others indicate 'single' strikes, but that's not neccesarily the case here. But even if we assumed over a year of constant bombardment, at the yields above we'd probably be talking e19-e20 watts sustained firepower (still in the gigaton range!) On the other hand of course, it could be 'years'
Or more likely it may not refer to oceans entirely (maybe just 10-15% of an ocean?
)
Overall its probably more reasonable to say a battleship could amass gigaton/teraton range firepower per 'salvo/strike' - which isn't neccesarily 'per second' either - it depends on delay per weapons. It's also for a battleship - not the biggest of battleships, but not neccesarily a minor one either, which means cruisers and escorts would have less firepower (megaton range perhaps for a gigaton range battleship, depending where in the 'gigaton range' it sat.)
Oh and then there's the attack craft which can destroy 'cities' or 'nations' Again might be anywhere from 'megaton' (for a city, depending on how one defines 'destroy') up to gigaton/teraton ranges for a nation (Depending on the nation and the method.) And no duration is given here - it could mean in a single strike, or multiple attack runs.)
PAge 380-381
Who could have known that something as rare and as disgusting as a psychic pariah would be found here on Dagonet?
...
Unseen by the mortals around them, for a brief second the psyker bitch’s aura of icy negation had clipped the raw, mad flux of the daemonskin and the ephemeral bond that connected it – and Spear, as its merge-mate – to the psionic turmoil of the warp.
..
The girl was an engineered thing, something vat-grown and modified to be a hole in space-time, a telepathic void given human form. A pariah.
rather interesting.. the 'Pariah' in this book is acutally a type of pskyer (or anti pskyer).. which is a bit different from how they're portrayed elsewher. Its' not strictly impossible.. Swallow's blood angels novel had a psyker experiment that was similar.. and there were the SoulGuards from Inquisitor and Annihiliaton Squad Gav Thorpe invented (which were psychic/sorcery constructs.) And we know untouchables in Eisenhorn technically had souls (FRauka) besides looking over the old 2nd edition fluff for Pariahs.. it isn't explicitly 'non psyker' - that tended to evolve later when Necrons came about. And in any case there's plenty of.. variation in the material to imply different kinds and capabilities of pariah just as psykers can diversify.
Page 382
Ambient moisture levels began to drop and the Exitus rifle’s internals automatically compensated, warming the firing chamber by fractions of degrees to ensure the single loaded bullet in the breech remained at an optimal pre-fire state.
More of the Exitus rifle's internal systems.
Page 383
The Vanus crouched by the side of the Lance, and laid a finger on the side of its cylindrical cowling. The device was almost as long as the footprint of the tower, and it had been difficult to reassemble it in secret.
...
..through the cowling Tariel could feel the subtle vibration of the power core cycling through its ready sequence.
The Lance.
Page 383
The infocyte was careful to be certain that he would not be seen by patrol drones or ground-based PDF spotters.
More patrol drones.
Page 384
He took a moment to check the tolerances and positioning of the hyperdense sentainium-armourglass mirrors for the tenth time in as many minutes. It was difficult for him to leave the mechanism alone; now that he had set a nest of alarm beams and sonic screamers on the lower levels to deal with any interlopers, he had little to do but watch the Lance and make sure it performed as it should.
The lances' 'mirrors' - not a normal mirror/lense I'd gather. At least not in the way we know them. Also the Vanus security devices.
Page 386
Between them and the barriers, the faint glitter of a force wall was visible with the naked eye, the pane of energy rising high in a cordon around the point of arrival. Nicran’s orders had been to place field generators all around the entrance to the hall, in case resistance fighters tried to take his life or that of one of the turncoat nobles.
Forcefield generator defenses.
PAge 387
He dropped into the open gallery, where uniformed officers pored over sensor screens and glared out through smoked windows overlooking the plaza. Their auspexes ranged all over the city, networking with aerial patrol mechanicals, ground troops, law enforcement units, even traffic monitors. They were looking for threats, trying to inpoint bombers or snipers or anyone that might upset the Governor’s plans for this day.
PDF/Police defenses.
Page 388
All of them were moving in slow-motion compared to him, not a one could hope to match him. The Eversor killed with break-neck punches and brutal, bullet-fast stabbing.
implied speed of the Eversor
Page 389-390
The single shot in the chamber is a .75 calibre bullet manufactured on the Shenlong forge world to the exacting tolerances of the Clade Vindicare. The percussion cap is impacted, the propellant inside combusts. Exhaust gases funnel into the pressure centre of a boat-tail round, projecting it down the nitrogen-cooled barrel at supersonic velocities. The sound of the discharge is swallowed by suppression systems that reduce the aural footprint of the weapon to a hollow cough.
Exitus Rifle firing. Should I be amused its the same calibre as a bolt round? also note the supersonic velocity.
PAge 390
The Lance marshals its energy to expend it for the first and only time. It will burn itself out after one shot.
The round crosses the distance in seconds, dropping in exactly the expected arc towards the figure in the plaza. Windage is nominal, and does not alter its course. Then, with a flash, the bullet strikes the force wall. Any conventional ballistic round would disintegrate at this moment; but the Exitus has fired a Shield- Breaker.
Energised fragments imbued with anti-spinward quantum particles fracture the force wall’s structure, and collapse it; but the barrier is on a cycling circuit and will reactivate in less than two-tenths of a second.
Shield breaker and how it works, as well as the round taking 'seconds' to travel at supersonic velocities. I'd guess at least mach 2 or 3 at least given implied ranges earlier, and it can't be TOO many seconds.
Page 390
The energy of the Lance follows the Shield-Breaker in as the force wall falls; the Lance is a single-use X-ray laser, slaved to Kell’s rifle, to shoot where he shoots. The stream of radiation converges on the exact same point, with nothing to stop it. The shot strikes the target in the throat, reducing flesh to atoms, superheating fluids into steam, boiling skin, vaporising bone.
The only sound is the fall of the headless corpse as it crashes to the ground, blood jetting across the white marble and the Warmaster’s shining mantle.
The Lance is an x-ray laser. Which has some implications given before. One, the Imperium has the ability to build 'mirrors' for X-ray lasers (something that I think we haven't quite managed, except in a sort of way, I could be wrong though.)
secondly the Lance is a rather large, cumbersome device, so Imperial lasweapons (at least the small arms and quite probably lascannon) aren't X-ray lasers. at least, those that are acutal lasers aren't.
Third, the effect of the weapon is to partly (or totally?) vaporize and/or explode a Space Marine's head. Considering they mistook this guy for Horus, he must be a damn big marine (bigger than 3 metres or so, anyhow) - in armour and a helmet, so we're talking a lot of energy.. maybe high kj to low MJ. Of course whether this corresponds to any other laser weapon (and what kind) is up in the air.. it could be a lascannon sized weapon for all we know, or bigger. Then again something similar happened in Black Tide so...
It also explains the daemonskin.
Page 393-394
More than just a pariah, she was… She was in a small way like him. But where Spear’s abilities were inherent to the twisted, warp-changed structure of his soul, the girl was only a pale copy, a half-measure. She needed the augmentation of the helmetweapon just to come close to his perfection.
Parallels between the Culexus and Spear.
Page 395
Impossibly, his psionic signature was changing, transforming. The sinuous nimbus of ghost colours spilled from the peculiar flesh-matter shrouding his body, and with a sudden leap of understanding, Iota realised she was seeing into a hazy mirror of the warp itself; this being was not one life but two, and between them gossamer threads of telepathic energy sewed them both into the inchoate power of the immaterium. Suddenly, she understood how he had been able to resist the animus blast. The energy, so lethal in the real world, was no more than a drop of water in a vast ocean within the realms of warp space. This killer was connected to the ethereal in a way that she could never be, bleeding out the impact of the blast into the warp where it could dissipate harmlessly.
more on Spear's nature and abilities
Page 396
Where the clever mechanisms of the animus speculum sucked in psionic potentiality and returned it as lethal discharge, this man… this freakish aberration…
he could do the same alone.
It was the blood that let him do it. Her blood, ingested, subsumed, absorbed.
More Culexus/Spear parallels.
PAge 399
With a small movement, the warrior raised the barrel of his bolter and shot the Governor at point-blank range, blasting his body apart.
Bolter blows apart a human body.
Page 400
She managed to fire two quick bursts from the bact-gun as she tumbled, rewarded with the pop and hiss of acids striking flesh.
Venenum assassins apparently use acidic weapons (either mutagentic acids, or the corrosive virus weaponry type stuff.)
Page 405-406
Nearby, system boats in service to the PDF’s space division were either turning to flee from the ships of the Warmaster’s fleet...
...
The Vengeful Spirit’s gunnery crews had been sparing with the use of their megalaser batteries, striking the ships hard enough to cripple them but not enough to obliterate them.
Now the PDF cruisers would burn up in the atmosphere...
...
The Vengeful Spirit and the rest of her flotilla encroached slowly on Dagonet’s orbital space, approaching the staging point where Luc Sedirae’s vessel, the Thanato, was waiting for them.
Again the Thanato is the 'ocean boiling' battleship mentioned before.. already in orbit. It isn't the biggest ship, but its not neccesarily the smallest either. Sedirae was an important leader after all. Also mention of more PDF 'cruisers.' and the megalaser batteries.
Page 409
The missile-like bolt shells could not fail to find targets, and for each person they hit and instantly killed, others fell dead or near to it from the shared force of impact. The blasts rippled out through flesh and bone, the crowds were so closely packed together.
Bolt rounds killing from direct hits as well as proximity kills. This acutally makes them somewhat more practical.
Page 411
A heavy thunderclap shot rang out, and the bolter blew a divot of brick from the third floor. A body, trailing threads of blood, came spiralling out with it, killed instantly by the proximity of the impact.
Another bolter proximity kill.
Page 412
The knife was the size of a short sword, and the fractal edge gave off a dull gleam.
Astartes combat knife.
Page 412-413
...in the next second a crash of bolter fire echoed and impact points appeared in a line of silver blooms across the chest plate and left shoulder pauldron of the Astartes.
...
...Koyne saw a man-shape moving faster than anything human should have...
...
...the Garantine sprinted around the Astartes in a tight arc, rolling over fallen counters and leaping from pillar to wall. As he moved, his Executor pistol was snarling, spitting out low-gauge bolt shells that clattered and sparked off the towering warrior’s armour.
Eversor vs Astartes. Note the 'low gauge' bolt shells.
Page 413
The Astartes let the combat blade drop and brought up his bolter; the weapon was of a far larger calibre than the Executor. A single direct hit at the ranges these close quarters forced upon thecombatants would mean death for the Eversor...
Astartes vs Eversor weapon. I wonder which one is the .75 cal?
Apparently as well Eversor toughness isn't up to handling a bolt round, which means Astartes are tougher than (Heresy era) EVersor assassins. The Eversor has the edge on speed though.
Page 413
Stimm-glands chugged and injectors hissed as the Garantine’s bloodstream was flooded with biochemicals and cocktails of drugs that pushed him beyond the speed of even an Astartes’ enhanced reflexes.
As noted, Eversors have greater speed/reflexes than Astartes.
Page 414
...the Astartes punched and bludgeoned the Eversor, but if any pain impulses reached the Garantine’s mind, the brew of rage-enhancers and sense-inhibitors swimming through his bloodstream deadened them to nothing.
Pain resistance seems to be the primary defense of the Eversor.
Page 415
Koyne’s neural shredder was at hand and the assassin fired a full-power discharge into the skull of the Son of Horus; the blast disintegrated tissue in an instant wave of braindeath.
Neural shredder in action.
Page 417
A bombardment had begun, and the people of Dagonet’s capital feared it was the end of the world. They knew so little of the reality of things, however. High above in orbit, it was only the warship Thanato that fired on the city, and even then it was not with the vessel’s most powerful cannons. The people did not know that a fleet of craft were poised in silence around their sister ship, watchful and waiting. Had all the vessels of the Warmaster’s flotilla unleashed their killpower, then indeed those fears would have come true; the planet’s crust cracked, the continents sliced open.
Implies the sum total of horus fleet (dozens? hundreds?) of ships could have wiped out all life on the planet. Implied in a single salvo, but not definite.. crust cracking and sundering continents implies far more firepower than the 'one billion' threshold at least.
Also the one in orbit mentioned before (with the 'ocean boiling' guns) was apparently the Thanato, Sedirae's flagship. It's not the largets batleship
Page 436-437
“A genetic lock,” Tariel said, nodding to himself. “Powerful psionic rituals require the use of an organic component as an initiator.”
“A blood rite?” Koyne shot him a look. “That’s primitive superstition.”
“It might appear so to a certain point of view.”
..
“The Vanus watch all. Our stacks are filled with information on all the clades. It is how we maintain our position.”
Koyne nodded. “You blackmail everyone.”
...
“Indeed. We know that the Culexus seek to improve upon their psychic abilities through experimentation. They gather subjects from the care of the Silent Sisterhood. Those they do not induct into their ranks, they spirit away for… other reasons."
...
“There was a project… it was declared null by Sire Culexus himself… they called it the Black Pariah. A living weapon capable of turning a target’s psionic force back upon it, without the aid of an animus device. The ultimate counter-psyker.”
The origins of the Black Pariah and the importance of obtaining the victim's 'blood'. also mention of the Culexus experimenting to enhance their abilities.
Als the Vanus means of maintaining power. I rather like the rational approach of the Vanus to it.
Page 438-439
Koyne snorted. “THE Emperor’s blood? That cannot be! This is madness… Horus’ assassin tears a page from some ancient tome and with that he can strike at the most powerful human being who ever lived? The very idea is ridiculous!”
...
“Synchrony with the God-Emperor’s gene-marker."
...
“The same thing that happened to Iota, but multiplied a million times over. A collision of the most lethal psychic forces conceivable.” The infocyte swallowed
hard. “Throne’s sake… He might even… kill him!”
...
Koyne gave a sarcastic snort. “The Emperor of Mankind wounded by something so fantastic, so ephemeral? I can’t believe it is possible. Spear will be swatted away like an insect. This woman’s reason cannot be trusted! Her kind are governed by archaic spiritual fanaticism, not facts!”
I quoted this bit for two reasons. One, it shows or implies a relative power level of the embodied emperor.. implying he is many thousands, or a million times more powerufl than more mundane psykers (or Pariahs).. and even then Spear
might only kill him. Though this is only approximate since there is no hard data we're going by, but more belief.
The second factor is the amusing hypocrisy behind the 'Imperial Truth' in the Callidus assassin's statement. He/she/it dismisses Spear's abilities as supersition and sorcery, yet finds it utterly impossible for someone to 'kill' the Emperor of Mankind.
Page 441
The stubby aerodyne had a single, medium-wattage lascannon mounted along the line of the fuselage, and Spear aimed it with twists of the jetbike’s steering handles, lashing along the battlement of the wall with lances of yellow fire. Bodies exploded in blasts of superheated blood-steam as shots meant to knock down aircraft eradicated men with each hit.
Jetbike equipped lascannon blasts apart humans with single shots. Depending on mechanism, there are several ways to calc it. One way is comparing it to explosives. As I've covered many times before, a grenade level explosion can easily blast someone apart, and that is around half a MJ to a MJ of TNT equivalent, although it assumes a high intensity, pulsed (micro to nanosecond) laser discharge.
On the other end of the spectrum is 'vaporizaiton' - we dont know what percentage of vaporization (other than it is *probably* less than total) but this could mean tens or hundreds of MJ, depending on extent of vaporization and efficiencies. You wouldnt need to totally vaporize the body to blow it apart (steam explosions) but a fair chunk of it probably owuld have to be, esp for an inefficient lasweapon.
Method three is from flash burns as I've discussed before. 400 j per square cm will flay the skin to the bone (Steam explosions.) andwe just need surface area. If we just assume the chest was blown apart (say 30-40 cm square, or 30x30/40x40 cm) you get between 360-640 kilojoules per shot. at a 1-2 meters (whole body) by half a metre or so we might call it 2-4 MJ.
None of the above really account for any thermal effects (third degree burns or cauterization)
Page 441
The little turret turned to track the jetbike as Spear came in but it did not fire; the sensors saw nothing when they looked at him, only a jumble of conflicting readings the primitive machine-brain could not decipher
Defence turret with a 'machine brain.' rare inorganic mechanical?
Page 442
..he glimpsed a small drum-shaped vehicle on fat tyres; it was a mechanised fuel bowser, governed by simple automata. The device was one of many such systems in the star-port, machines that could do the jobs of men by loading, unloading or servicing the ships that passed through the facility...
...
..no one had thought to stand down the robots, and so they went on at their programmed tasks..
...
The automaton had dutifully done its job, and refuelled the shuttle with fresh promethium.
Automated/robotic star-port personnel, and promethium-fuelled starship. Its a shuttle of some kind probably not a warp capable one.
Page 446
There was a high-velocity Splinter round in the chamber – on impact with an organic target it would fracture into millions of tiny hair-like fragments, each a charged piece of molly-wire. The wires would expand in a sphere and rip through flesh and bone like a tornado of blades.
vindicaire splinter shot. Nasty.
Page 452
If his purpose on Dagonet had been known, if the forces of the arrogant Emperor had really, truly understood the threat Spear posed to their precious liege lord, this world would have been melted into radioactive glass the moment he set foot on it.
Spear considers that if his presence were known to the imperium, they would destroy the planet to kill him. I'm not sure if 'radioactive glass' means they simply just nuked it, or if they actualy melted the crust via bombardment (if not both) but its still pretty hefty either way. And it shows they can at least superficially melt planets (we know they can slag them from other sources, anyhow.) We dont know how many ships or how many bombardments (or how long) to do it - wec an guess (hundreds or scores of ships maybe? Millions of bombs?) but its just a guess. Radioactive would imply some sort of fusion or nuke or something along those lines - its not impossible that it is somethinc like cyclonics but they generally don't seem to leave much radiation behind either.
Page 453
In a corner formed by two fallen walls, Tariel dropped into a lotus settle and used the cogitator gauntlet to bring up a schematic of the building. It was among the millions of coils worth of files he had copied from the stacks of the Dagonet governmental librariums over the past few weeks, the data siphoned into his personal mnemonic stores.
We dont quite know what the storage space of a 'coil' is, but if we assuemd something between a floppy disc (hundreds of kb to a MB) or a CD/DVD (hundreds to thousands of megabyttes) we're talking anyhwere from millions of megabytes to billions of gigabytes. Even at the 'hundreds of kb' stage we're probably talking hundreds of gigabytes.
Page 458
It was the particles in the air; they were hurting him in ways that the killer thought impossible, frequencies of psionic radiation blasting from every single damned speck of the glittering powder, bathing him in razors. Spear’s mouthparts gaped open and the sound he released from his chest was a gurgling cry of pain. His nerves were alight with phantom fires unseen to the naked eye. In the invisible realms of the immaterium, the shockwave was sawing at the myriad of threads connecting the killer to his etheric shadow. The daemonskin was battering itself bloody, tearing at his subsumed true-flesh as it tried to rip away and flee into the void.
Psyk-out grenades against Spear (EG royally fucks him up.) Seem to be psychic particles, which I assume is the Emperor derived residue crap (what kind of residue it is best not to think about.,)
Page 461
He hesitated, the question spinning in his thoughts, the pulse generator humming and ready. Attack or flee? Flee or attack?
...
Tariel triggered the blast of focussed electromagnetic force, but it was too late.
...
Wicked talons punctured the Vanus’ torso and tore through dermal flex-armour and meat..
VAnus has dermal armour, and his EMP generator seems to work on living beings. Neural/electircal disruption?
PAge 462
Koyne pivoted to touch down on altered legs, shifting the muscle mass to better absorb the shock of the landing. The koans of the change-teachers learned in the dojos of the clade came easily to mind, and the Callidus used strength of will to forcibly alter the secretions of polymorphine from a series of implanted drug glands. The chemical let bone and flesh flow like tallow, and Koyne was a master at manipulating it from moment to moment. The assassin allowed the compound to thicken muscle bunches and bone density, and then attacked.
Callidus can alter its body shape (Create glands, improve muslces/bone structure, etc.) to better make it able to fight, jump etc.
Page 462
Spear opened his mouth and shouted awls of black cartilage into the air. Glancing hits peppered Koyne’s green-eyed hood and the darts denatured, dissolving into tiny crawling spiders that ate into the ballistic cloth with their sharp mandibles.
Spear's weird attack. Probably part of the daemonskin shot at the target. Callidus covered in ballistic cloth of some kind.
Page 464
The killer and the assassin fell into a blade fight, fat yellow sparks flying as the molecule-thin edges of Koyne’s rapiers cut into the organic swords and broke off brittle, sharp fragments with every hit.
Memory swords again/
Page 464
Where blood was drawn, it was slow to clot. The tooth-matter exuded some kind of oily venom that kept the wounds from scabbing over.
spear's bone blades exude anit-coagulants.
Page 465
Koyne did the trick with the koans once again, marshalling the density of bone and lining of musculature for a leap into the air that defied human potential. The Callidus jumped upwards and pivoted in mid-flight, falling out of Spear’s line of sight over a buckled wall
Callidus super jumping skillz.
Page 468
A breath of faint energy, a pinprick of ultraviolet light.
...
The bullet entered the killer’s head through the hollow black pit of his right eye, the impact transferring such kinetic force it blew Spear off his feet and into a spinning tumble, down into the debris and floodwater. The shot fractured into thousands of tiny, lethal shards that expanded to ricochet around inside the walls of his skull, shredding the meat of his brain into ribbons.
Vindicare bullet. Headsplodes. Also UV targeter.
Page 470-471
The skull, already malformed and inhuman in its proportions, had been burst from within by the lethal concussion of the Shatter bullet. Cracked skin and bone were visible in lines webbing the face; it looked like a grotesque terracotta mask, broken and then inexpertly mended.
Shatter bullet did the damage beofre.
Page 472
It was so ingrained in the matter of his being that even the obliteration of his cerebellum was not enough to end him. The proxy-flesh of his warp-parasite contained the force of the bullet detonation – or as much as it was capable of, forcing the broken pieces of Spear back together into some semblance of their undamaged form.
But the daemonskin was a primitive creature, unsophisticated. It missed out petty things like control and intellect, holding tight to instinct and animal fury. The killer was self-aware enough to know that he had been murdered and returned from it, but his mind was damaged beyond repair and what barriers of selfcontrol it had once had were in tatters.
Daemonskin (on Spear) self repair capability, and its limits.
Page 474-475
Kell’s gun came up and he fired. The weapon bucked with a scream of torn air and the heavy-calibre Ignis bullet crossed the short distance between gunman and target.
The round slammed into the meat of Spear’s shoulder and erupted in a blare of brilliant white fire; the hollow tip of the bullet was filled with a pressurised mixture of phosphoron-thermic compound. On impact, it ignited with a fierce million-degree heat that would burn even in the absence of oxygen.
...
Kell took aim again and fired a second shot, then a third, a fourth. At this range he could not miss. The rounds blew Spear back, the combustion of hot air boiling the water pooled around him into steam. The white flames gathered across the killer’s body, eating into the surface of his inhuman flesh. Kell did not stop. He emptied the Exitus pistol into the target, firing until the slide locked back. He watched his enemy transform from a howling torch into a seething, roiling mass of burned matter.
...
..Kell watched as Spear’s blackened, crumbling skeleton hissed and crackled like fat on a griddle.
Exitus pistol Ignis bullets in action. entire clip seems to be enough to cause the creature to cremate, although whether the rounds, or something in the body contributing it is hard to say. The ronds at least carry enough reactive whatever to do severe (million degree) burning, at least, which is pretty damn impessive consideirng the bullets (Even at heavy calibre) can only have grams of incendiary material at most (if it was heating a gram of air to a million degrees, for example would require a single megajoule. Most chemical reactions have tens or a couple hundred kj per kg, by contrast.)
If it DID cremate them with the enitre clip alone (and its not impossible, the ASsassin codexes have awlays had something similar) this is a very impressive, and very magical incendiary material. Assuming 10 rounds in the clip and 20 gram bullets.. hundreds (thousands) of MJ of incendairy effect from a few hundred grams worth of bulllets. Insane.
Page 478
The pilot had reconfigured the gravity field in the cockpit to off-set the g-force effects of their headlong flight, but Kell could still feel the pressure upon him. But he was thankful for small mercies – had he not been so protected, the lift-off acceleration from the port would have crushed him into a blackout, perhaps even punctured a lung with one of his cracked ribs.
Internal gravity field doubling as inertial damper. implied grav compensation of 10 or more gees (tens?). Seems like it isnt perfect - it masks most of the acceleration but not all (Suggesting that depending on efficiency there may still be limits.
Page 480-481
“put us on an intercept heading with the command ship. Put all available power to the aura cloak.”
The cyborg helmsman clicked and whirred. “Increased aura cloak use will result in loss of void shield potentiality.”
...
The sensors were showing the first curious returns from the picket ships in Horus’ fleet. They were sweeping the area for a trace, uncertain if their scry-sensors had seen something; but the Ultio’s aura cloak was generations ahead of common Naval technology. They would be inside the fleet’s inner perimeter before anyone on the picket vessels could properly interpret what they had seen.
Ultio's Aura cloak. Like reflex shields, it seems to affect void shield protection to allow for stealth, but it seems to be a different thing entirely. Ultios cloak is 'generations' ahead of Naval sensors (Whether this means the Navy has aura cloaking we dont know, it doesnt imply whether the generations aead is vs sensor technology or naval tech in general)
Page 482
Fusion motors unleashed the tiny suns at their cores and pushed the craft away, climbing the acceleration curve in a glitter of void shields and displaced energy. In moments, the vessel was rising towards one-quarter lightspeed.
Picket ships on the far side of the Warmaster’s fleet, ex-Imperial Navy frigates and destroyers crewed only by human officers, saw it running and opened fire.
...
Targeting solutions on the odd craft that had suddenly appeared on their holoscopes behaved unexpectedly, however.
Weapon locks drifted off it, unable to find a true. Scans gave conflicting readings; the ship was monstrously over-powered for something of its tonnage; it seemed unmanned, and then it seemed not. And strangest of all, the glimmer of a building warp signature built up around its flanks the further it strayed away from the gravity shadow of the planet, racing for the jump point. Warships dropped out of formation, and powered after it, following the unidentified craft up and out of the plane of the Dagonet system’s ecliptic. They would never catch it.
The Ultio's drive section breaks from the planet to escape. The 'rising towards one quarter light speed' is interesting, given the acceleration it implies. However, it isn't neccesarily saying t is AT that speed within moments, it sjust heading towards that speed. Even if it wasn't we're talking a matter of minutes or hours to reach that speed tops. For 'moment's hundreds of thousands or millions of gees. For minutes- thousands to tens of thousands of gees. For hours? hundreds to thousands of gees. The higher (and crazier) accels would require some sort of magical aid to boost acel - fusion engines will no way in hell provide that (hell no reactiond rive would) - mass lightening of some kind is a possibility
Also of interest is how the Naval ships are moving to pursue and opening fire on (and very shortly hitting) the target. If it is moving at or close to a quarter lightspeed (or even a fraction of it) the weapons would have to propogate very quickly - Projectile cannon (macrocannon, railgun) - and it is likely they are using them since they ARE NAvy ships after all - would have to be capable of that magnitude of speed to reach the targets. Of course its possible they were firing just laser and plasma weapons, but its doutbtful.
Page 491
Displays showing tactical starmaps, fragments of scout reports and feeds from long-range observatories shimmered into clarity. “News from the Taebian Sector is, at best, inconclusive. However, it appears that most, if not all, of the prime worlds along the length of the Taebian Stars trade spine are now beyond the influence of Imperial governance.”
They know their trick has failed, but the ship hasn't arrived yet. apparently Horus' fleet is still within the system and planet 9as we learn later) - hours or days to receive detailed info from the Segmentum Ultima to Terra.. across tens of thousands of light years.
Also mentioned ar e'long range observation posts' we dont know how they are observing, but they must be able to monitor the sector in detail to note all this, which implies some sort of FTL (psychic) scanning/observation method.
Page 492
“My clade has already engaged with the information emerging from the Taebian Sector,” said Sire Vanus. “My infocytes are in the process of performing adjustments in the overt and covert media to best reflect the Imperium’s position in this situation.”
“Papering over the cracks with quick lies, don’t you mean?” said Siress Callidus.
The colours of the Vanus’ shimmer-mask blue-shifted. “We must salvage what we can, milady. I’m sure—”
Vanus seem involved in spin doctoring, damage control, and general information manipulation on the homeworld. Possibly for dissemination elsewhere.
Page 495
“My warriors intercepted a starship beyond the edge of the Oort Cloud, attempting to vector into the Sol system,” Dorn told them. “It identified itself as a common freighter, the Hallis Faye. A name I imagine some of you might recognise.”
The Ultis' emergence point in sol was the Oort cloud. I'm not sure thats what that really was, I supsect it means the Kuiper blet or so (unless it really WAS thousands of AU out, which I doubt - because that would mean the Imperial Fists and Terran security is scanning/detecting and intercepting ships light yeras from the system. Not impossible but.. interesting to say the least.
This also implies the passage of the ship could have been no more than days or weeks tops, possibly even less than that. Again hundreds of thousands or millions of c implied.
Page 503
Dagonet was all but dead now, her surface a mosaic of burning cities, churned oceans and glassed wastelands. And yet this was a show of restraint from the Sons of Horus; had they wished it, the world could have suffered the fate of many that had defied the Warmaster, cracked open by cyclonic torpedo barrages shot into key tectonic target sites, remade into a sphere of molten earth.
Instead Dagonet was being prepared. It would be of use to the Warmaster and his march to victory.
...
The far side of the vast bowl of dirty glass and melted rock was lost to him through a mist of poisonous vapour...
Fate of Dagonet from conventional bombardment. not sure if 'churning oceans' means they are boiling but thats possible. Not sure if 'glassed' surface means parts or much of the surface is melted, but I doubt it. We see, ot be having a lesser or incomplete mass extinction effect (something more in the teraton range tops) over however long it took (hours? Days?) Megatons/s sustained bombardment at that rate. But that is 'restrained' too.
Cyclonics would have turned it into a ball of slag. Not quite conventional bombardment but still damn impressive. Certainly many petatons of firepower in totality, at least.
Page 507
On his command, the lines of melta-bombs buried beneath the hundreds of thousands of survivors detonated at once...
[/quote]
Horus is pretty nasty. but it also shows the scale of the 'bombardment' more clearly. also if people are still alive on this planet after everything that started we can't be talking more than hours or days as I alluded to before.
)