Triumph

The vessel known only as the ***Triumph*** was constructed in the wake of the First Solar War by the Primarch-turned Imperium Secundus Council Member, Shaaa Hydrades. Designed upon lessons learnt from the *Phalanx* before the mighty vessel was lost, the *Triumph* was by far the greatest vessel constructed by the Imperium of Mankind, eclipsing any ship constructed during the Great Crusade, and indeed rivalling the largest of vessels made during the Dark Age of Technology. With this vessel at its head, Imperium Secundus had a flagship to provide them some answer to the other-realmly powers wielded by the traiterous forces of Antarus.

## History

During the Frontier Wars of the Almire Apostasy, Shaaa Hydrades poured almost all of his effort into building and maintaining a mighty invasion fleet, the likes of which the galaxy had never seen. Battleships, cruisers, escorts, even vessels designed to do little more than draw enemy attention before being detonated like the fire ships of old, all were constructed and mustered together, preparing for the greatest endeavour in human history. There was one vessel however that stood apart from even this mighty undertaking, its majesty and power terrifying to behold. This, was the *Triumph*.

Envisioned in a time before the Antarus Apostasy had ripped the Imperium in two, the *Triumph* was designed by Shaaa Hydrades himself in the wake of the Phalanx Incident, his rage at the loss of such a potent vessel forcing him to push ever onwards to match the ancient craft. The initial plan for the *Triumph* was for its construction to be split between the Jovian shipyards and the Ring of Iron above Mars itself, such a potent warship being constructed in the heart of the Imperium being as potent a symbol as any other. As fate would have it however, no aspect of its construction was begun before Terra fell to the traitors, both shipyards denied to the Imperium. In Shaaa’s mind, there was only one other shipyard that could be entrusted with such knowledge, his own homeworld of The Ring, long regarded as one of the greatest manufacturers of ships outside of the Solar System.

Construction of the *Triumph* began less than a year after the Imperium Secundus was formed, but would not be completed for over four decades, the Ring working tirelessly in all that time, every survivor of the unbroken space station working towards its construction. When the *Herald of Destruction*, the first of the purpose made Gloriana Battleships to be created, was constructed at the Ring, it was said to have taken five percent of the stations entire production capacity, no small feat from a construct with hundreds of billions of inhabitants. The *Triumph* however was no mere battleship, it was a war vessel the likes of which did not exist outside of the destroyed *Phalanx*, the Emperor’s own *Imperator Somnium* or the terrifying form of *Ghir'norgoth*, the black fortress of the Kraken Lords. No vessel such as this had been constructed by the Imperium, and for those forty years, the Ring had barely five percent of its production capacity left over to construct or maintain other vessels, almost all of its efforts taken up by the truly gargantuan task Shaaa had set it. The *Triumph* was the hinge that would see Terra retaken, all of the Imperium Secundus’s plans waiting until the mighty vessel was complete.

When it finally broke free of its moorings at the Ring, the stars themselves seemed to tremble in terror, large sections of the Ring itself warping under the gravitational strains of the vessel, even with the most potent dampeners the Mechanicus could provide working to lessen its effects. The *Triumph* was now the ultimate expression of the Imperium Secundus, a final defiant symbol to the rest of the galaxy that this last assault would be backed by everything the Imperials still had left. If they failed, if the *Triumph* fell, then the Imperium Secundus would not survive for a second try. The *Triumph* would lead them, and it would fulfill its primary and deadly purpose or die in the attempt; to pierce and overcome the Orbital Trenches of Ceres, the heart of the Solar Guardian Array.

The size of a small moon or large asteroid, the *Triumph’s* foredeck can dock a dozen Imperial Navy Cruisers around its circumference, carrying them like a lesser vessel may carry strike craft. Every surface is clad in solid armour, heavy enough to withstand even a concerted assault from a planet's Laser Defence Battery, and backed up by banks of void shields that alone could perfectly shield a cruiser. When it moved, the *Triumph* seemed invincible, though like all things, this was far from the truth.

On the offence, the ship was no less impressive, possessing more lance array’s than almost any other vessel in the Imperial fleet, as well as boasting a plethora of different patterns of macro-cannons, ranging from the energy disrupting forms of Disruption weapons, to the extreme power of Hecutor Pattern Plasma Macrocannon and Pyros Melta-cannons. The ship even mounted an experimental plasma lance within its prow, a weapon designed to be used as a direct fire close-range weapon for ship-to-ship combat, able to fire at point-blank ranges, relatively speaking.

All of these were but mere secondary armaments however, the true power coming from eight weapons of truly gargantuan size. Each of these cannons had the power to destroy a battleship in a single shot, though they would struggle to bring their firepower around fast enough to hit a moving target. These weapons were not designed to be used against a voidship however, no matter their power or threat they presented. The *Triumph’s* attendant fleet or its own secondary guns would deal with such annoyances, while the cannons the ship was built to carry would focus on their sole goal, bombarding an enemy world, piercing any defences, striking down any barriers, and ensuring that victory would be brought to the Imperium, no matter the foes arrayed against them.

The warship was instrumental in piercing the Solar Guardian Array during the Second Solar War, the cybernetic form of Shaaa interfacing directly with the ship during the void war, commanding it and those within it as if it was an extension of his own body. Only such an interface could hope to bring the vessels full potential to bare, the command and control nexus of the *Phalanx* the vessel would based on failing to be replicated despite the best attempts of the Mechanicus and the Star Guardians. At both the Third Battle of Ceres and the Liberation of Mars, Shaaa and the *Triumph* led the Imperial forces to victory while the Emperor and the *Imperator Somnium* led the final and devastating assault on Terra itself.

In the wake of the Apostasy, the *Triumph* remained in the Sol system, not taking part in the scouring against the fleeing traitors, having sustained significant damage in the fierce fighting that had claimed the lives of thousands of other vessels. Instead, the ship was relegated to hang above Ceres itself, a mighty defencive bastion augmenting the already extensively defended Dwarf planet, truly more a space station than battleship at those times.

Despite the efforts of the Star Guardians Frater Domitechnicus and the greatest of the Martian Magos, more of the mighty vessel's systems fail each standard year, and the skill required to repair them has long passed out of living memory. Even the ability to fully control the vessel has been lost, designed to require direct linking with Shaaa himself, something denied the legion after the Primarch disappeared on Mars after the completion of the SGA. Once, the *Triumph* bestrode the stars as a colossus of war, but now its zenith has passed, the ship guarding the Beta Garmon Cluster, part of the Hydian Empires last line of defence. Indeed, since the Second Solar War, the vessel has only moved for military purposes a handful of times, each time to face the deadliest threats mankind has ever known, its venerable engines coaxed to life in service of great vengeance or dire need. Though the *Triumph* is a shadow of its former glory, the starship's might still outshines any other vessel known to Mankind, and its name strikes terror into the hearts of the Imperium's foes. The venerable vessel has many more battles yet to fight and many more blows to strike in the name of Shaaa Hydrades.

## Design

### Weapons

* **Eight Firestorm Thermal Siege Cannons** - The eight Firestorm Thermal Siege Cannons form the main power of the *Triumph*, indeed they are what the entire ship was designed around. Based on the technology gleaned from the ancient archeotech cannons of the Dragon Lords *Furiar Imperator.* Each one of these cannons, built into individual turret housings with four along the top and four along the bottom of the vessel, struck with the power of an entire Nova Cannon salvo, able to theoretically destroy any other vessel, save perhaps the Eldar Craftworlds of the Emperor's own flahship, in a single shot, let alone eight of them. However, these turrets had an extremely slow traversal speed, and would struggle to hit even the slowest vessels, and yet this was not seen as a detraction, for they were designed with a larger foe in mind. Mounting these cannons upon the vessel, Shaaa was determined that he would be able to overcome his own greatest defence in but a single volley, piercing the Orbital Trench Network of Ceres, and reclaiing control of the Solar Guardian Array.
* **Hecutor-pattern Plasma Macrocannon Broadsides** - These rpresented the largest concertration of weapons on the *Triumph*, as well as providing most of its ship-to-ship firepower. Instead of firing a ballistic shell, the Hecutor-pattern was keyed to fire blasts of superheated plasma, held in a shotlived containment field, similar to a Thanatar's Plasma Mortar. These 'shells' were able to be fired over an extremely long distance, and could eat through meters of armour with little difficulty before exploding into deadly minature suns. The *Triumph* was designed to use such weapons instead of conventional solid shot weaponry due to its highly advanced reactor system, theoretically allowing the guns to fire for eternity, though the barrels of each would wear out long before that.
* **Disruption Macrocannon Batteries** - These cannons, while still firing a shell, were not intended to batter an opposing vessel to destruction like a standard Macrocannon, instead firing "shells" of highly charged, ionized deuterium atoms. These particles cause minimal physical damage to their targets, instead serving to overload systems and shut down power relays, making them hellishly effective at dropping shields on enemy warhsips.
* **Pyros Melta-cannon Batteries** - These squat, oversized, and highly insulated Macrocannons are designed specifically to fire shells tipped with powerful melta-charges that detonate with furious heat against the hulls of enemy voidships. While they lack the explosive force of the Hecutor-pattern cannons, these weapons are able to bore through meters of armour, creating terrible through-and-through wounds on lesser ships, potentially even striking a second vessel if the firing soloutions are calibrated correctly.
* **Godsbane Lance Batteries** - Longer than traditional lance weapons, the Godsbane-pattern boasts lengthened focus apparatus and quad lens-arrays as a result, giving the weapon a much longer effective range as well as a deverstating destructive capability. Most vessels, even the Gloriana's, can only boast a handful unless they are specifically built to carry full batteries of these, but the *Triumphs* sheer scale means such weapons can be easily mounted upon its metal skin.
* **Naval-class Volkite Weaponry** - Akin to the small squad based Volkite weapons used by the Solar Auxilia and the *Legiones Astartes*, the *Triumph* utilised ship grade varients of these deverstating weapons, their deflegrating beams able to penertrate all but the thickest armour, before setting anyone unfortunate enough to be within that area of the ship ablaze.
* **Phospex Launchers** - A rare, corrosive and toxic incendiary compound utterly inimical to life, the *Triumph* was known to boast a series of Phospex bomb launchers around its hull. When a breach was made in an enemy vessel, these bombs would be launched, containing a two stage activation. First, a void-shield projector flared into life, sealing shut the breach that allowed the weapon entry, before the true bomb detonates, spreading the living green fire throughout the vessel, destroying everything it touches before finally eating away at the void shield generator it was deployed with, re-exposing the vessel to the void and extinguishing the otherwise eternal flames. Incredibly expensive and difficult to manufacture, these Phospex bombs are rarely used as a result.
* **Point Defence Weaponry** - All but useless against ships larger than system monitors, the *Triumph* boasts thousands of small, point defence weapons, ranging from Vulcan Mega Bolters and Gatling Blasters to plasma blastguns and multiple missile launcher systems, all designed to be able to track and destroy smaller and more agile ships, such as fighters, bombers or torpedoes.
* **Frontal Torpedo Launchers - Variable Loadouts** - Measuring 500 meters in length, each torpedo was capable of destroying an escort vessel in a single hit, or even capital-class ships in a handful of volleys. However, the standard plasma warheads are only the beginning of the weapons carried by the *Triumph*, the mighty warship boastsing armour piercing metla warheads, anti-crew viral warheads, or the terrifyingly potent vortex warheads, as well as, of course, the Star Guardians prefered method of Ship-to-Ship combat, boarding torpedoes.
* **Rotary Lucian-pattern Nova Cannons** - Though the Forge World of Lucius is not known for its Nova Cannon technology, all worlds in the Imperium contributed to the *Triumph* in some form or another. Using their mastery of solar fusion, the Nova Cannons in use on the *Triumph* each contain a captive piece of a star, held within a stasis field powered by a dedicated reactor that alone would power a Star Fort. When this is fired, the stasis field rapidly breaks down, eventually detonating as a new star briefly flares to life, before snuffing itself out within the void. The Cannon takes an age to reload, but due to the weapons design, the *Triumph* is able to fire three shots in quick succession, or keep up a slower but continual barrage, the mighty Nova Cannon rotating a new breach into place, allowing the weapon to be reloaded even as it is being fired.
* **Prow-Mounted Plasma Lance** - An experimental weapon initial seen on the *Abyss-*class vessels developed by Artellion, the details of the Plasma Lance were taken during Camelous's strike on one of the three ships in the First Solar War. Built into the prow of the vessel between the power blades of the ram, the plasma lance launches a continuous stream of plasma, wider than an Imperator titan is tall, creating a perfect close range weapon capable of slicing an opposing vessel in half at point-blank ranges, relatively speaking.
* **Power Ram** - Characterised by four distinct blades curving to a surround the array of the Plasma Lance, the *Triumph* has a heavily armoured prow, each section of which is mounted with a gargantuan power field generator. If the ponderous *Triumph* ever manages to get itself into position, there is no vessel in known space that could survive its ramming attack.

### Defencive Capabilities

#### Void Shields

Like every large Imperial vehicle, the *Triumph* mounts a significant number of Void Shields, gravitically charged energy shields that work to shunt anything of a certain size or speed that attempts to pass through them into the warp. The shields form an invisible band of energy around the vessel, a variable layer of force that can absorb radiation, interstellar dust, particle showers and weapons hits such as Macrocannon shots or lance strikes, however, even the greatest examples of their construction have a maximum tolerance, void shields can be overloaded by sustained weapons fire, forcing the generators to shut down temporarily to vent the excess kinetic or direct energy. However, though they are proof against small, fast object such as enemy shells, they are less useful against larger, slower objects, such as torpedoes, which can often slip right through even raised shields.

The shielding system on the *Triumph* is predictably advanced, multiple reactors dedicated to each individual part of the shield array to ensure only the most sustained barrages of enemy fire, or most massive of impacts, will get through the shielding. However, its true power comes from its influence, the Aegis of the Imperial Palace. Though the void shields of the vessel are nowhere near those of the Imperial Palace, the idea of multiple smaller, overlapping void shields is the same, every part of the *Triumph* being covered by no less than three layers of shields, though some areas have even more, each one only covering a single square kilometer of the hull. If one layer is overloaded, enemy shots will have to remain accurate enough to continue to strike the relativly tiny area of vulnerability and drop the remaining two parts of the shields to reach the armour below, those on board usually able to raise the first shield once more before this happens, keeping the vessel fully protected from the vengeance of the enemy.

#### Armour

Boasting a multi-hulled construction, the *Triumph* is protected by five layers of adamantiun, plasteel and ceramite armour, each one meters thick, each layer possessing a 'void' between it and the next one. These voids are filled with heavier than air gas, creating a further buffer to slow down incoming enemy fire. If one of these compartments is breached, explosie decompression will fight with the incoming projectile, stopping or slowing it, further protecting the layer beyond it. This is an extremely expensive defencive method however, and is only useful against the first breach of the hull, but it is no doubt effective, its armour being regarded as far superior to even a Gloriana-class, despite being little thicker in terms of its actual composition.

### Power and Propulsion Systems

Like every vessel, the *Triumph* was equipped with both real-space drives for propulsion through the depths of space, and gargantuan warp drives for pushing the ship through the barrier that separates realspace from the Immaterium, allowing for travel at far greater than the speed of light. Power for all of these came from scores of Tachyonic-annihilation reactors, a single one of which could have powered a lesser vessel alone.

These reactors worked along a similar principle to nuclear fission used in atomic weaponry, which differed from the vast majority of Imperial Ship reactors, which utilised fusion-based plasma reactors. Existing both in and outside the normal flow of time, Tachyons were for a time purely thoeretical, but with advancements made during the Great Crusade, their existence was finally confirmed. It was the Forge World of Ryza however that managed to harness these powers, using their mastery of plasma based technology to annihilate these Tachyons. The resultant burst of energy was potent in the extreme, far more so than conventional reactors, but these were not distributed throughout the Imperium before the Antarus Apostasy errupted. As effective as they are however, they are gargantuan, requiring an entire plasma reactor simply to power the annihilation mechanisms. As such, only the largest of vessels or ground based installations are able to utilise such reactors, and only the *Triumph* would hope to mount more than a single one.

Thanks to these powerful generators, the *Triumph* is able to mount a collossal bank of 32 sublight engines commonly found in smaller numbers on the Ramilies-class Starforts. Though these are powerful and numerous, the *Triumph* is a void behemoth, and as such even with such power behind it, it is a slow and ponderous vessel, barely more mobile than a Star Fortress, though far more deadly.

Alongside these, as with all Imperial vessels, the *Triumph* mounts a trio of Warp Drives and Gellar-Field projectors, providing a backup system and a redundant system to allow the vessel to breach the barrier that separates realspace from the Immaterium and allow for interstellar travel.

### External Craft Compliment

Befitting its size, the *Triumph* boasts a huge number of attack craft squadrons, carrying everything from Shark Assault Boats and Stormbirds to Wrath Starfighters and Starhawk Bombers. In moments, dozens of these squadrons could be launched, themselves able to threaten entire battlefleets.

More than mere attack craft however, the *Triumph's* gargantuan size allows it to dock a dozen Imperial Cruisers around its foredeck, ten of them attaching to its super structure externally, while two of them are able to be taken inside, held in place by structrual integrity fields and anti-gravitic generators to provide some level of dry-docks to its attendant fleet. With the *Triumph* being as slow as it is, outflanking and long ranged mass-torpedeo attack is a constant worry to its crew, these cruisers able to form an attendant fleet in a heartbeat, ensuring that the *Triumph* is rarely ever alone.

## Known Battles Involving the *Triumph*

* The Second Solar War
* The Third Battle of Ceres
* The Liberation of Mars