Wiedergänger

The Wiedergänger was the first capital ship assigned to the Absolvers, later known as the Hounds of Surmah, XX Legion of Legiones Astartes, by the Emperor of Mankind himself. It is of a unique design that pre-dates the Great Crusade and which was later copied in the 36th Millennium as part of the Gareox Prerogative to create the Exterminator-class Battleship. As might be expected, this ancient vessel was considerably more powerful than its inferior successor. Few vessels conjure such dread in their foes as the Wiedergänger does, its very name is a curse upon the lips of Imperial ship captains and commanders across the breadth of the Imperium, and has been present at some of the greatest betrayals and bloodiest days in Imperial history.

Built in the decades before the Great Crusade, the vessel’s unique design made it larger and more powerful than any previously constructed pattern until the advent of the Gloriana-class; kilometers in length and with the power not just to decimate entire cities, but entire worlds single handedly. Unlike most vessels of the Legions, the Wiedergänger had no great drop bays or launch pads, nor hangers for carrying ships to ferry warriors of the legion to the battle below. Instead, it had another, far darker goal. While many warships of the Great Crusade would be equipped with Exterminatus grade weaponry, cyclonic torpedoes or the dreaded Virus Bombs, very few would be equipped with the truly feared Mortalis Atmospheric Missile’s; Phosphex weapons of unparalleled devastation, able to reduce a world to a ball of living hellfire in a matter of hours. Combined with its thick armour and excess of heavy guns, the Wiedergänger was more than capable of battering it’s way through a planet’s defence fleet and delivering the only cargo it carried; death.

Serving as the flagship of the XX Legion since its inception, the vessel would reap a fearsome tally of dead worlds; by the time of the Antarus Apostasy, no ship, not even the Star Guardians’ Herald of Destruction nor the Hounds' own Sielun Murskaaja, had a greater tally of dead worlds left in its wake, having conducted more Exterminatus sanctions than any other vessel in Imperial History. Indeed, the Wiedergänger carried more such sanctions than the entire Palatine Wings legion combined, an achievement her Captain was darkly proud of.

When the legion finally threw off its veneer of loyalty to the False Emperor, the Wiedergänger quickly joined the betrayal, revelling in being truly unleashed upon the galaxy, without petty-minded lesser men holding it back. As Chaos seeped ever further into the XX legion, the Wiedergänger seemed to develop a true mind of its own, until all, save it’s ancient Captain, Surmah or Tursari Härkönen, were slain if they attempted to set foot aboard the ship, which now ran itself at a far greater level of efficiency than it had with a human or trans-human crew. Finally, even the Captain was subsumed, the ship absorbing her into its now organic interior, becoming the first true symbiotic Daemon-Vessel to stride the stars.

Since the days of the Antarus Apostasy, the vessel has been sighted countless times, whether alone or at the head of the Hounds of Surmah’s fleet, its prestige the equal of the Sielun Murskaaja itself. Where it flies, entire worlds die in agony, the ship conducting its deadly task as it has always done, though no longer with the conventional weapons of old, but with the pure, unbridled power of Chaos itself.