Terminator Armour

Tactical Dreadnought Armour, more commonly known as Terminator Armour, is an advanced form of powered armour developed for close-quarters melee fighting done by Space Marine Terminators, for whom slaying power is more important than manoeuvrability. These suits are primarily utilised in situations where standard Space Marine Power Armour does not provide enough protection for a warrior.

When battle calls for durability and protection over agility, it is to mighty suits of Terminator Armour that the Space Marines turn. Massively thick armour plates and powerful servo-muscles drive these defensive shells, in the times of the Legion, these suits were common enough that entire Chapters, Divisions or other large formations within the legions could take to the field wearing the armour, some, like the Star Guardians during the time before Ullanor, being believed to have enough suits that every member of the IVth could stride to war in its nigh impenetrable plated protection, though this was never proved.

Terminator Armour is an incredibly durable suit comprising an outer shell of heavy-gauge ceramite plasteel composite plates, mounted on an adamantium exoskeleton with servo-assisted interfaces that integrate with an Astartes' own neurological and muscular systems to enhance movement.

Its advanced composition allows the wearer to survive hits from firepower that could penetrate even the armour of a tank, and it is the heaviest combat armour in any Imperial arsenal, able to withstand tremendous punishment. Offensively, it provides the strength to maintain mobility while serving as a solid heavy-weapons platform in open-field combat.

The Terminator armour project went through many different iterations in the days before the Antarus Apostasy, some being considered a failure by all, such as the otherwise unnamed “MkII Terminator Armour”, while others were widely adopted, such as the “Cataphractii” and “Tartaros” armours, seeing use across every legion, though some did favour their deployment above others, as with all weapons in the Astartes arsenal.

## History

Space Marine Power Armour has a long and glorious history, having its origins in the long-forgotten time before the Emperor's unification of Mankind on Terra during the Unification Wars fought by his legions of gen-enhanced pseudo-Astartes, known as the Thunder Warriors.

Nothing is known of this time, but it is speculated that the first suits of human-developed powered armour were worn by the techno-barbarians that fought alongside the Emperor as he battled to bring Terra under his rule during the Unification Wars of the 30th Millennium. Over time, these suits were refined and improved, becoming the earliest incarnations of fully enclosed Power Armour.

The first suits of Space Marine Power Armour were developed from this armour during the late 30th Millennium, and were said to have been worn by the first Space Marines of the Legiones Astartes as they launched the Great Crusade to reunite the worlds of the Sol System under the Emperor's control. Legends tell that once the Terran Solar System was secure, and the process of rebuilding firmly in hand, galactic conquest began in earnest.

Faded techno-arcana of the Adeptus Mechanicus tell that even before the Age of Strife had ended, the Emperor had started to make provisions for his Great Crusade. Part of these plans included the re-equipping of the Space Marine Legions with a far more sophisticated fighting suit that Imperial historians have dubbed Mark II "Crusader" or "Crusader Armour". Alongside these developments, the Emperor initiated a programme to develop a system of armour that would provide even greater protection than that offered by Power Armour for Space Marine Legionaries on the field of battle.

The technology for Exo-armour was originally developed during Mankind's Age of Technology. These sealed environment suits enabled maintenance crews of spacecraft to operate in extremely hazardous environments such as hard vacuum or in other adverse atmospheric conditions. Exo-armour was constructed from heavy gauge Plasteel plating, forming an armoured shell that could withstand even the colossal impact of high-speed orbital micro-debris.

It is the only armour suitable for working inside the high-pressure casings of plasma reactor shields, or the extremely corrosive environments inside the holds of bulk chemical carriers. These same qualities, suitably enhanced, were used to make Tactical Dreadnought Armour virtually invulnerable to most weapons. The development of Terminator Armour, as Tactical Dreadnought Armour soon became known, was well underway during the Great Crusade to replace Power Armour, but was relegated to its current role due to a lack of maneuverability.

During the Great Crusade era, the ancient Mechanicum was receiving a steady influx of new and rediscovered technologies from each planet brought to Imperial Compliance, and, in an effort to stem the horrendous loss of Astartes lives resulting from the ferocious conquests, attempted to design the "ultimate" pattern of Power Armour which would render a Space Marine virtually invulnerable.

The design emerged from a hybrid of standard Astartes Power Armour, the cybernetic shell of a Dreadnought and the armoured hostile environment suits long worn by Terran engineers who worked in difficult conditions like debris-plagued orbital space and the radioactive engine cores of interstellar spacecraft. Tactical Dreadnought Armour, as it was called, would turn the Astartes warrior within it into a living tank.

The eventual result of the Mechanicum's travails was only a partial success: the first suits of Terminator Armour did, as intended, afford a level of protection previously unattainable for its wearer. Like Power Armour, these suits were equipped with fibre-bundle synthetic muscles and imposed few movement restrictions upon the wearer despite their immense weight. But they were also too bulky, and their massive weight made running difficult despite built-in auto-balancers.

The suits suffered from voracious power demands, and few existing armaments could be carried as the armour's sheer bulk made handling and reloading impossible. But most importantly, the sheer amounts of raw materials and manpower required to craft Terminator Armour were so great that retrofitting the whole of the existing Space Marine Legions with it was simply not feasible for the already thinly stretched logistics of the nascent Imperium of Man.

Several patterns of Terminator Armour evolved in parallel from the Forge Worlds of the Mechanicum and the armouries of the Space Marine Legions. The Mechanicum refined their concept, and developed weapons specially adapted for it, like Combi-weapons and the Reaper Autocannon. Terminator Armour was then presented in limited numbers to the crusading Legions, who quickly found a use for it. Massively armoured, sealed against any hostile environmental conditions and incorporating their own heavy ranged or close combat armament, Terminator Armour designs soon proved their worth.

Terminator Armour, with its ability to maximise the firepower and protection for a Space Marine, became standard on missions in extremely confined spaces like the corridors of a hive city, or during a boarding action on a Space Hulk where Dreadnoughts and armoured vehicles could not operate because they were too large to fit.

According to fragmented records of the Adeptus Mechanicus, Terminator Armour was originally designed to be the ultimate Space Marine Power Armour, and was envisioned to replace the older suits. However, as the Horus Heresy devoured the Imperium's resources, and the ancient Mechanicum divided into separate factions during the Schism of Mars, Terminator suits became increasingly rare, for they were exceptionally difficult to create and maintain.

In addition, during most battles their bulk became a disadvantage against the lighter power-armoured warriors who easily outmanoeuvred them. These suits were highly sought after, and they were used to great effect in the countless bloody and short-ranged battles waged in cramped conditions, such as boarding actions in ship-to-ship engagements, hive cities and tunnel fighting. It is in these kinds of engagements that Terminator Armour excels, as it is under these conditions that their bulk and sturdy frame serves best.

## Terminator Armour Composition

erminator Armour contains a full exo-skeleton and a complex arrangement of fibre-bundle muscles that allow a warrior to fight with deadly skill in close quarters, where agility is not of paramount importance. These incredibly durable suits are comprised of an outer shell of heavy-gauge ceramite and plasteel composite plates, mounted on an adamantium exoskeleton with servo-assisted interfaces that integrate with an Astartes' own neurological and muscular systems to enhance movement.

Its advanced composition allows the wearer to survive hits from firepower that could penetrate tank armour, and it is the heaviest form of combat armour in any Imperial arsenal, able to withstand tremendous punishment. Offensively, it provides the strength to maintain mobility while serving as a solid heavy-weapons platform in open-field combat.

In the same manner as Power Armour, Terminator Armour contains its own independent power supply and fully enclosed life-support functions, though those incorporated in Terminator Armour are more powerful and longer-lasting. Various augers and auspex enable the Space Marine operator to be fully aware of his environment, both externally and internally, and to monitor such things as radiation levels, proximity of biological entities and the life signals of the body.

These operate in the same way as the support systems in power armour, although several other devices have been added to improve the protective aspects even further. Teleport Homers enable the bearers to teleport into the midst of battle with a good degree of accuracy.

Meanwhile, threat detectors and motion sensors aid the Space Marine in avoiding enemy weapon emplacements and other situational dangers. In addition, the suit is fully equipped with a range of auto-senses and targeters, allowing the tracking of targets with the utmost accuracy. Terminators are linked to each other with pict-display units, allowing the Space Marines to see what their brother warriors see. All suits are capable of this, but to avoid confusion, it is usual for only the Sergeant's armour to broadcast pict-signals.

## Terminator Armour Usage

During the Great Crusade, Terminator Armour was assigned to the vanguard units of many legions, those who would be the first into a new breach alongside those bearing breacher shields, weathering the worst of the enemies initial fire and forging the path for lighter armoured units to move up in their wake to provide more varied support.

However, some legions use their terminators in different ways; the Palatine Wings for example, famed for their lightning fast jetbike warfare, find the ponderous nature of the armour more of a liability than a boon, prefering to bypass enemy fortresses via speed or teleportation, leaving their Terminators to old taken ground while other units, considered as more elite, would secure forward objectives.

Regardless of legion however, what is known is terminators are the final word in defencive armour, and when a position must be held above all else from overwhelming odds, but tanks or dreadnoughts are unavailable or unable to reach the position due to their size, few look anywhere other than to their Terminator units, the suits fast becoming synonymous with the famed holding stands that the Legions became known for as much as their lightning strikes.

## Deployment

Unlike Space Marines in Power Armour, Terminators are bulky and slow-moving. As a result, methods have been developed to allow the squads to reach the enemy in enough strength to prevail. Terminator Armour is designed to allow its wearer to utilise the technology of teleportation, and through this sometimes treacherous method of transport, Terminators may teleport right into the heart of the enemy battle lines.

Although teleportation can be far from accurate, it is often the best way to get Terminators into the thick of the fighting quickly. Teleportation is a barely understood science, and the technology is far from perfect. Some legions of Space Marines, such as the Star Guardians or the Wisps of Archeron, have a healthy distrust of such methods, and while they do not outright refuse the use of such deployments, they much prefer other methods of deployment, despite the slower nature of such deployments. Many times these fall back onto more traditional methods, Land Raiders, Spartan and Mastodon Heavy Transports or Thunderhawk and Stormbird assault gunships. In this way, Space Marines in Terminator Armour can reach the heart of the battle in relative safety.

The Land Raider is one of, if not the most powerful tank in the Imperium's arsenal, able to withstand the impact of a Battle Cannon and barely be slowed. These tanks were designed primarily to enable Terminator Squads to travel in safety through the very worst warzones. They are equipped with frontal assault ramps that deliver the warriors within straight into the thick of the fighting. In addition, the most common pattern of Land Raider is armed with powerful Lascannons, and can act as mobile fire support for the Terminators once they have disembarked.

Beyond these methods, Terminator armour is capable of being deployed across the ground as with any infantry armour. Possessing enough power to supply the suit for years at a time if needed without resupply, the suits can, and have been recorded to do so, march across the harshest and most unforgiving of terrain, a merciless, if ponderous advance that drives their enemies before them, leaving them with two choices; stand, fight and die, or run and die tired.

## Terminator Armour Variants

### Saturnine Pattern Tactical Dreadnought Armour

The first suit of Tactical Dreadnought, or Terminator Armour, to be created by the Mechanicum, the MkI suit, later dubbed the Saturnine pattern by the proto-Star Guardians, the Dark Watchers, started production on ancient Terra before the end of the Unification Wars, but was only finished by the artifice of the Mechanicum of Mars in the years after the Great Crusade had started. Extremely heavy, bulky and unwieldy, the suit only ever saw widespread use in the IVth Legion, those suits sent to other legions quickly being mothballed as a liability, not a boon.

For the IVth however, the armour found its calling as a perfect breaching tool, nigh impregnable to enemy fire, moreso that any future iterations of the project, and able to carry the heaviest weapons into battle with ease, mounted between the oversized shoulders of the armour. Far from being without purpose, these shoulders houses both additional shield generators that would one day be scaled back and mounted in the Cataphractii armour, as well as massive recoil dampeners to allow for heavy weapons fire on the move, suits often mounting heavy bolters, lascannons or mighty Cyclone missile launchers.

### “MkII” Prototype Terminator Armour

Unlike the other terminator suits, the second attempt to refine the Saturnine pattern was deemed a complete failure. Many different patterns were trialed, but each were deemed failures in one way or another, be they too weaker, expensive or power hungry. The project was soon abandoned in favour of a brand new iteration which would eventually become the MkIII Cataphractii project.

Though there were truly dozens if not more different prototypes created during this phase of the Tactical Dreadnought project, most simply refer to armours of this time as the MkII Terminator Armour, or Prototype Terminator Armour. Little else is known about these suits, none ever seeing combat within the Legions.

### Cataphractii Pattern Tactical Dreadnought Armour

The Cataphractii Pattern of Terminator Armour was the first suit of Terminator armour that would ever see widespread use, being deployed across the Space Marine Legions and and the warriors of the Legio Custodes throughout the Great Crusade, the Antarus Apostasy, and beyond.

Whilst similar in many respects to the later, and cheaper, Indomitus Pattern Terminator Armour used by the Legions during the late Great Crusade and the Adeptus Astartes of the late 41st Millennium, it was set apart by a number of features such as the large, layered pauldrons, the pteruges protecting the elbow and thigh joints, and a helmet that resembled that used by the Mark III Iron Pattern suit of Power Armour.

The suit was initially developed to fully replace conventional power armour, creating nigh invulnerable warriors surpassing the early legions who walked in conventional armours, though this never came to pass, the suit having enough shortcomings that Power Armour was still deemed the superior standard battle armour by almost all within the Imperium.

### Aquilon Pattern Tactical Dreadnought Armour

Aquilon Pattern Terminator Armour is a variant pattern of Terminator Armour uniquely designed to operate in conjunction with the physiology of the Legio Custodes, the elite cadre of genetically-engineered transhuman warriors who are responsible for guarding the Imperial Palace and the physical body of the Emperor of Mankind.

The origins of the Aquilon Pattern lie with the Cataphractii Terminator suits of the ancient Space Marine Legions, but the Aquilon Pattern is a masterwork variant that possesses far greatly augmented power capacity and customised neuro-fibre uplinks which it is said were redesigned by the mind of the Emperor Himself for His elite forces.

Aquilon Pattern Terminator Armour was said to have adjusted for the enhanced physique of the Custodes, who were capable of bearing more weight and strain than even Space Marines. This allowed it to be fitted with additional power systems and capacitors, increasing its durability and maneuverability.

Aquilon Pattern Terminators were given more advanced weaponry than their Astartes counterparts, wielding weapons such as Lastrum Storm Bolters, Solerite Power Gauntlets, Power Talons, Infernus Firepikes, and twin-linked Adrathic Destructors. Within the ranks of the Custodes, Aquilon Pattern Terminator Armour was deployed by the Tharanatoi caste.

### Tartaros Pattern Tactical Dreadnought Armour

Tartaros Pattern Terminator Armour was originally developed concurrently with several other patterns of Tactical Dreadnought Armour, such as the Arkonak, shortly after the Ullanor Crusade, though none of the other armours ever saw widespread use.

Perhaps the most advanced form of Terminator Armour ever designed, the Tartaros Pattern shares many systems with the Mark IV Maximus Pattern of Power Armour developed alongside the Tartaros Armour, and provides an incredible range of movement for its wearer compared to the Cataphartii or Indomitus Patterns, with little to no loss in durability or protection.

Of the shared characteristics between the Tartaros and Maximus Pattern armours, the most obvious is the helmet, though there are other more subtle ones such as the design of the armour on the back of the Tartaros' legs or the vambrace and gauntlets.

The Tartaros Pattern also seems to share design characteristics with the Contemptor Dreadnought, most especially in the design of the torso plates. There are also characteristics inherited or derived from the venerable Cataphractii Pattern Terminator Armour, the pauldrons being the more obvious of these.

### Indomitus Pattern Tactical Dreadnought Armour

Originally designed during the later years of the Great Crusade, the Indomitus pattern was cheaper and easier to produce, allowing legions to continue their use of Terminator Armour despite casualties, without compromising on protection in any meaningful way. During the Crusade, the armour was only ever intended to be a stopgap suit to allow the legions to still field Terminators, but during the Antarus Apostasy and the years beyond, the Indomitus proved its worth in its comparatively low construction cost, leading to this armour becoming the standard Terminator Armour across the Adeptus Astartes in the years after the Codex Astartes’ enforcement, as well as in many Chaos warbands who struggle to maintain the older and more complex patterns of armour.

The standard armament of the Indomitus Terminator Armour for loyalist Chapters is the storm bolter, superior to the older combi-bolters used on other terminator armours, while the other hand is often taken up with a power fist. However, the armour is more than capable of equipping other weapons in their place, heavy flamers, assault cannons, lightning claws, thunder hammers and storm shields all being seen amongst their ranks, while occasionally the dreaded cyclone missile launchers will be added to a squad, sitting upon the armours back to provide long range artillery support for the squad as it advances.

## Unique Terminator Armour Suits

***The Hydra Pattern Terminator Armour*** - The *Hydra Pattern Terminator Armour w*as a unique suit of expertly wrought Terminator Armour, crafted of the same auramite alloy that the creators Armour, the Emperor himself, was crafted from, and gifted to Shaaa Hydrades of the IVth Legion upon his reunification with the Imperium. Initially forged in gold to invoke the likeness of the Emperor himself, the armour mimicked the mighty Saturnine Terminator Armour the IVth Legion still utilised, as well as mounting a plethora of features to further aid the Breacher Lord and future Praetorian. As well as providing a phenomenal level of defence against outside attack, the armour contained sophisticated command and control systems which linked Shaaa cybernetically to every facet of the forces under his disposal and a shifting array of weapons and secondary systems created by his vast intellect. The Hydra Pattern Terminator Armour incorporated the finest technology of its age, including a Teleport Homer, a Cortex Controller for controlling Automata, a Nuncio-Vox and a Cognis Signum, as well as a hardpoint for mighty heavy weapons worn upon his back.

## Sources

1. Art by Shane Cook - Deviant Art - https://www.deviantart.com/slaine69
2. Art by Falkz - https://www.thecommguild.com/gallery/user/21439-falkz.html