Cresting Sun Disc

A shining example of the Monastic Ascendants' mental fortitude, the Golden Sun Disc is an artefact given to those officers and specialists of the legion who have proven themselves singular of mind and focus in completing their duty.

## **History**

Brought into service as the middling stages of the Great Crusade, the Cresting Sun Disc proved to be a powerful augmentation to those marines within the seventh legion. First implemented amongst the Westernmost Expeditionary Fleets of the Legion, it was first used in the purgation of several systems infested with Dark Eldar hideouts and pirate coves which had taken to terrorizing and enslaving the local human populace.

As the individual pirate bands were wiped out and the last bastion of the foul xenos lay waiting in a densely packed nest of an asteroid belt, it was decided that the normal seventh legion tactics would be forgone for the sake of ending their tyranny all the quicker.

Deploying a hammer-blow force into the next the Monastic Ascendants lay waste to the slavers in quick order, marching from tunnel to tunnel breaking them with the sheer might of bolter and blade. The aliens seemed particularly taken aback by the ferocity of the legion, and the lack of effect their weapons seemed to have on those monstrous terminators leading the charge.

The splinter weaponry they fired at the walking monoliths simply stuck in their armoured plating, unable to pierce deep enough to bother the marines inside. The disintegrator weapons they levelled at them, meant to punch holes in tanks, had their darkened energy simply coalesce against the Sun Disc's shield array, before it merged with the shield itself and they were cut down in a barrage of plasma fire for their efforts.

Within the day the complex had been cleared fully, what little xenos left scurrying through a rift reality, presumably to crawl back to whatever dark hole of the galaxy spawned them.

Upon returning from the raid it was noted the lack of losses on the hammer-blow force was in part thanks to the innovative design of the Sun Discs in protecting their vanguard forces. Saving them in several situations where the xenos' eldritch weaponry would have otherwise injured or even felled them.

## **Design**

Like most Iron Halo shield technology, the Cresting Sun Disc is a mountable piece of wargear that can be added to either normal power armour or terminator armour relatively easy. Moulded into the form of a half-circle with intricate sun-patterns and flame spine calligraphy it is an ornate piece of metalwork all of it's own, to say nothing of the technology encased within.

When mounted onto a set of power armour, the Sun Disc generates several fields that surround the wearer, general observed outwardly as a 'pair of red shimmering halos'. These fields have proven powerful in their ability to negate ranged attacks against the user, with small arms fire relatively useless against it. The miracle of this systems however, is it's ability to defend against energy-based attacks.

When the shield is under fire from energy-based weaponry, it functions much the same in that it blocks those shots from reaching the wearer, but it also absorbs some of the energy of those same shots. This energy is then fed back through the Sun Disc, usually into the marine himself, his power armour or to the shield itself to be redistributed to whatever he sees fit. This is the reason the use of the Sun Disc is limited to those veterans and specialists of the Legion.

Only those who have walked the Monastic Ascendants path for a certain amount of time, and achieved certain Paramita's have been allowed access to the augmentations necessary to store and control the energies absorbed into the Sun Disc itself. While a marine without these augmentations might be able to give his power armour a small boost in strength with the energy fed back into it, he will be able to do little else. Compare this to a veteran who has the ability to not only absorb and store the energy stolen from enemy fire, but able to redirect it by feeding it into weapons or electronic systems and the combat potential skyrockets in comparison.

While this energy harvesting system is mostly meant for energy-based weapon attacks it has also been shown in testing to absorb some of the energy generated from a kinetic projectile when launched at hyper-velocity impacting with the shield, usually leaving a rapidly cooling mass of molten metal left over that falls to the ground harmlessly.

The system, while extremely potent, has been proven to have a flaw in it's design, that being the very energy absorption system that makes it so valuable. Should the shield be suddenly impacted with an extremely large amount of energy at once, the feedback of such a large amount of power being absorbed, and fed back into the marine and any systems he is using can prove catastrophic. For this reason several users have taken to adding blowout plugs on the Sun Disc so that, should it receive such extreme stresses it will simply shut itself off and leave the marine, shieldless, but alive.