Chaos Repulsive-class Grand Cruiser
The Chaos Repulsive-class Grand Cruiser was a precursor to the Battlecruisers which are now more prevalent in most Imperial fleets. Almost rivaling true Battleships in its ability to withstand damage and lay down a barrage of fire, the Grand Cruiser fell out of favour when the means for constructing sufficiently powerful plasma engines was lost (more recently built engines are incapable of attaining a useful combat speed for such a large vessel).
History
In the superstitious and hidebound realm of Imperial starship construction, entire classes of vessel can come to be regarded as cursed since the design stage. Spacefarers mutter that these starships are star-crossed, prone to dragging entire crews with them into the Warp at a moment's notice, there to leave them starving or bedevilled, until the ship re-emerges in the Eye of Terror, ready to serve the twisted lords of Chaos. This dark reputation has followed the Grand Cruisers of the Repulsive-class since their inception in the Imperium's early days. A disturbingly large number of the Repulsives (their original names long-lost to antiquity) have turned Traitor or been captured into the Archenemy's service since the class became operational -- so many that some have forgotten the ships were originally constructed in the Emperor's service.
This is a tragedy indeed for the Imperium, for these are graceful and powerful spacecraft, with a radically different weapons fit from all other known Grand Cruisers, fully realising the ancient doctrine of a fast and manoeuvrable heavy warship. Their design cannot be duplicated, as the secrets of constructing powerful enough plasma drives has since been lost to the Adeptus Mechanicus. Only a handful of these ship hulls remain uncorrupted, and these are either mothballed, sealed, and guarded in the Reserve Fleets of the various Segmentum Fortresses, or under the command of certain Rogue Traders.
A few ancient Grand Cruisers can still be found in the reserve fleets of the Segmentum Obscurus and Segmentum Pacificus, but they are largely obsolete. Of the 25 Grand Cruisers believed to have abandoned the Emperor of Mankind for the service of the Dark Gods since the inception of the ship type in the 34th Millennium, roughly a dozen have yet to be recaptured or destroyed. Of those still at large, the Foe-Reaper is the most active, having been sighted in over a score of major fleet engagements in the 23 standard centuries since her corruption by the Ruinous Powers. Most infamously, it was the Foe-Reaper which destroyed the Adeptus Mechanicus facility on AFR-74, killing 50,000 Adepts within a few heartbeats, when a salvo of specially modified torpedoes shattered the eco-shield protecting the inhabitants from the metha-nitrous atmosphere of that satellite.
Dimensions
- Hull: Grand Cruiser.
- Class: Repulsive-class Grand Cruiser.
- Dimensions: 7.4 kilometres long, 1.5 kilometres abeam at fins approximately.
- Mass: Approximately 39 megatonnes.
- Crew: Approximately 134,000 crew.
- Acceleration: 2.4 gravities maximum sustainable acceleration.
Notable Repulsive-class Grand Cruisers
- Bloodied Sword
- Bringer of Despair
- Foe-Reaper
Sources
- Battlefleet Gothic (Blue Book), pg. 119
- Rogue Trader: Battlefleet Koronus (RPG), pp. 20-21