An Adeptus Mechanicus Ark Mechanicus
An Ark Mechanicus is a vast and powerful Imperial starship that the ancient Mechanicum and the present-day Adeptus Mechanicus uses to scour the stars for their ultimate holy grail, a working Standard Template Construct and other forms of archeotech.
This quest is the most central tenet of the Mechanicus' religious Quest for Knowledge. As is to be expected, each Ark Mechanicus is filled with some of the most advanced current technology in the entire Imperium.
An Ark Mechanicus underway near Nemesis Tessera.
Though these rare, nigh-mythical ships are seldom brought to battle, when they do enter combat they can bring to bear nearly impenetrable defences and weaponry whose range and firepower puts even that of Imperial battleships to shame. An Ark Mechanicus-grade vessel is equipped standard with a Nova Cannon, four Lance batteries, and two weapons batteries. This makes these rarely-seen starships truly powerful opponents on those infrequent occasions when their missions of exploration are actually interrupted by void combat.
An Ark Mechanicus that was part of Battlefleet Gothic before being destroyed by enemy forces during the Gothic War.
Arks Mechanicus are truly massive in size, among the largest of all Imperial starships. The extreme mass of these vessels creates a distorted gravity field equivalent in strength to that of an unstable moon. Wider than a Dominator-class Cruiser is long, an Ark Mechanicus is also outfitted with industrial capabilities rivaling that of many hive cities, with kilometre upon kilometre of manufactoria, refineries, crackling plasma reactors and laboratories, test ranges, chemical vats and gene-bays. The engines of these vessels are larger than the full mass of most starships.
At least one notable Ark Mechanicus, the Speranza, secretly contained a fully functional and still updating STC database. The commander of the vessel, Archmagos Lexell Kotov, while cybernetically connected to the Speranza's Machine Spirit (artificial intelligence), learned of the STC's existence on his ship and theorised that all Arks Mechanicus secretly contained fully intact STCs, the artefacts which were the ultimate goal of the Tech-priests' sacred Quest for Knowledge, but the Mechanicus just did not realise this and had not retained the knowledge of how to access that portion of their ships' functions. Unfortunately, the knowledge of the STC's existence within the Speranza was wiped from Kotov's mind upon disconnecting from the vessel.
So valuable is an Ark Mechanicus that the destruction of an entire Forge World was considered a small price to pay by the Adeptus Mechanicus just to successfully reawaken one of these vessels' Machine Spirits (artificial intelligence).
The extreme rarity of these venerable voidships is such that to discover one intact is considered by the Cult Mechanicus a miracle rivalling that of the discovery of a fully-functioning STC database system in importance in the theology of the cult. This is because only a handful of Arks Mechanicus are said to still exist.
Notable Arks Mechanicus
The Omnissiah's Victory, an Ark Mechanicus
- Omnissiah's Victory - The Omnissiah's Victory is an Ark Mechanicus with a long and storied history. It is rumoured (albeit without proof) to predate the Great Crusade, and is definitely known for having participated in the Noloptis Crusade during the 33rd Millennium. The Omnissiah's Victory is armed with vast arrays of weapons batteries, lances, and a Nova Cannon, and is thought to be the original basis for the design of the Imperial Navy's Retribution-class Battleship.
- Speranza - The Speranza is an Ark Mechanicus that served as part of Archmagos Lexell Kotov's Explorator Fleet into the region of space known as the Halo Zone. The Speranza was equipped with powerful ancient graviton beam weapons that could create miniature black holes and chrono-weapons that were capable of shifting their target nanoseconds into the past. Sometime in M41, while interfacing with the Machine Spirit of the Speranza, Archmagos Kotov discovered that the ship contained a complete and still updating STC database containing all the knowledge of the Men of Gold and their ancestors. He theorised that all Ark Mechanicus ships contained such a database, but that the Priesthood of Mars had been unable to access the files. This information was wiped from his mind upon disconnecting from the ship's Machine Spirit.
- Iron Revenant - The flagship of Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl during the 13th Black Crusade in 999.M41, the Iron Revenant led Cawl's Mechanicus fleet to the Tomb World of Eriad VI on the instructions of the Aeldari Harlequin Shadowseer Sylandri Veilwalker. Later, after recovering a Necron artefact from Eriad VI, the Iron Revenant proceeded to Cadia, already under assault by the massed forces of Chaos of Abaddon the Despoiler, where it proved to be a desperately needed capital ship reinforcement for the battered Imperial fleet protecting that Fortress World. Cawl's attempt to use the Cadian Pylons to disrupt the Chaos forces' connection to the Warp failed when the Despoiler hurled the damaged bulk of the Blackstone Fortress Will of Eternity from orbit as an artificial meteor into the surface of Cadia. The massive kinetic strike destroyed what remained of the world's defences, ensuring its envelopment by the rapidly expanding Eye of Terror. Lord Castellan Ursarkar E. Creed ordered an evacuation of the dying world, and the Imperial survivors of Cadia led by Saint Celestine, now called the Celestinian Crusade, used every voidship at their disposal, including the Iron Revenant, to ferry the three million survivors off Cadia. Unable to enter the Warp because of the roiling instability of the Immaterium near the Cadian Gate, the Imperial fleet was forced to flee through the Cadia System at sub-light speed, and the Chaos warfleets gave chase. The largest and most powerful remaining Imperial capital ship, the Iron Revenant heroically sacrificed itself in battle against Abaddon's flagship the Vengeful Spirit so that the Celestinian Crusade could escape to the nearby ice moon of the world of Kasr Holn called Klaisus. The Iron Revenant's loss was not in vain, for the surviving Celestinians were rescued at the last by the arrival of the Ynnari through Klaisus' hidden Webway gate. Though his flagship was lost, Belisarius Cawl had rescued its most precious cargo -- the Armour of Fate, key to the resurrection of the Primarch Roboute Guilliman.
- Caestus Metalican - The Caestus Metalican was the flagship of Magos Dominus Faustinius, and carried his Explorator mission to the Necron Tomb World of Silva Tenebris. Since the Necron stasis tombs there were so deeply buried that even an Exterminatus action could not reliably destroy them, the Caestus Metalican instead served as the base and supply line for a punishing ground invasion by the forces of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Magos Faustinius' legions of Skitarii and teams of Tech-priests battled undying Necron warriors and Canoptek monsters through the planet's huge catacombs, seeking both to claim lost Human archeotech and the technological secrets of the Necrons, and to strangle the Tomb World's immense military power while it still slept. The mission was a desperate race against time, for the Explorators' intrusion triggered an exponentially accelerating reactivation protocol, which if unchecked would awaken every Necron on the planet only 264 solar hours after first contact. Nor were xenos the only threat the crew of the Caestus Metalican faced; lurking in the shadows of the immense voidship was the Arch-Heretek Epsilus Dammek-Yoth, whose fanatical cult schemed to usurp the mission and claim the Necrons' technology in the name of the Xenarite tech-heresy. Xenarites are blind to the perils of alien technology, and Dammek-Yoth sought nothing less than to bring the soulless, mechanistic "immortality" of the Necrons' biotransference process to the Imperium of Man.
- Ark Majesty - The Ark Majesty was the flagship of Fabricator-General Kubik of the Adeptus Mechanicus at the time of the War of the Beast and The Beheading in the mid-32nd Millennium.
- Cursus Majoris - The Cursus Majoris was an Ark Mechanicum that had become fused into the Ork-dominated space hulk known as the Krakamorg and provided one of the three Warp-Drives that powered it.
- Pattern Master - The Pattern Master was an Ark Mechanicum that was a part of the Segmentum Pacificus Batllegroup 9876 Redeployment Fleet.
- Pent-Ark - The Pent-Ark was an Ark Mechanicus battleship commanded by Clain Pent, one of the Traitor Fabricator-General Kelbor-Hal's Nine Disciples at the time of the Horus Heresy. During the Siege of Terra the vessel was deliberately beached near the Imperial Palace's Helios Gate to allow for the construction of a Traitor siege camp.
A Machine Spirit link to the Ark Mechanicus Red Ark as depicted in Space Hulk: Deathwing.
- Red Ark - The Red Ark was an Ark Mechanicus (designation 20022563529) from the Forge World of Mars. Assigned to the Blood Angels Chapter's homeworld of Baal, the Red Ark discovered the asteroid that would become part of the space hulk later designated the Olethros while searching for an unknown Chaos artefact. It mined the asteroid and successfully recovered the artefact. At some point after this, a catastrophe befell the ship and its crew and it became trapped in the asteroid. The ship next became infested with Tyranid Genestealers after it was trapped. The Red Ark was eventually found by the crew of the Rogue Trader ship Tregrom. After tethering their own vessel to the Red Ark, the crew of the Tregrom began to salvage what they could from the ship, including its inventories of weapons, Adeptus Astartes power armour, and even STC fragments for technology normally restricted for use only by the Blood Angels by agreement with the Mechanicus. While transferring the skeleton of a massive Tyranid, the Tyranids nesting within the Red Ark attacked the crew of the Tregrom, slaughtering them. In the 41st Millennium, a Dark Angels Terminator Squad entered the Red Ark and killed the broodmother nesting there, afterwards killing several Genestealer Cult psykers, before dispersing a mutagenic virus that would target and kill the rest of the Tyranid nest within the vessel. The Red Ark was destroyed when the Dark Angels succeeded in destroying the larger bulk of the Olethros.
- Zar-Quaesitor - Zar-Quaesitor was a great freighter-hulk, mass-conveyor and Ark Mechanicus that served as the flagship and mobile laboratory of Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl in his time with the Indomitus Crusade Fleet Primus. At the start of the Indomitus Crusade, Cawl's own Adeptus Mechanicus fleet joined Primarch Roboute Guilliman's Fleet Primus, headed by theZar-Quaesitor, that carried within its massive hull a vast number of Primaris Marines still in stasis hibernation. As the Indomitus Crusade penetrated deeper into the galaxy, Archmagos Cawl kept his automaton workers on overdrive, risking meltdowns with their accelerated speeds. Locked deep in the labyrinthine holds of Zar-Quaesitor, thousands of Primaris Space Marines -- some comprising entirely new Chapters and others designated as reinforcements for existing Firstborn ones -- were awakened out of stasis and made ready to join the fray. Despite cleaving a wide path through the darkness that beset the Imperium during the Era Indomitus after the birth of the Great Rift, the Indomitus Crusade eventually began to break down. When the vast holds of the Zar-Quaesitor were at last emptied of their precious contents, Archmagos Cawl departed from Fleet Primus, for he had many more secret vaults to activate in order to complete the Ultima Founding. The Zar-Quaesitor is capable of holding armies of the Mechanicus within itself, as it provided several Skitarii and Legio Cybernetica armies as well as three lances of House Taranis Knights during the course of the Indomitus Crusade.
Videos
Sources
- Battlefleet Gothic Resources: Ships of Mars
- Battlefleet Gothic Armada II (PC Game)
- Codex Adeptus Astartes - Space Marines (8th Edition), pg. 19
- Codex: Space Wolves (9th Edition), pg. 16
- Priests of Mars (Novel) by Graham McNeill, Microcontent 01, Microcontent 07
- Lords of Mars (Novel) by Graham McNeill
- The Beheading (Novel) by Guy Haley, Ch. 5
- The Gathering Storm - Book One - Fall of Cadia (7th Edition) (Digital Edition), pp. 6-89
- The Lost and the Damned (Novel) by Guy Haley, Ch. 17
- Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus (Video Game)
- Space Hulk: Deathwing (Video Game), Chs. 6-7, 9