Shatterer-Class Grand Cruiser

The Shatterer Class is a type of Grand Cruiser - or Battle-Barge, depending on who's keeping track - of surprisingly swift design for its size. It is heavily armed and armored and was designed with one goal in mind: crushing naval battle lines with extreme prejudice and brutality. The Shatterer Class was commissioned to the specification of the Primarch Elias Dammerung and was as a result primarily found in the Obsidian Wyrms' expeditionary fleets. They would later on find their way into the hands of the Legion's Successor chapters.

## History

Unlike most ships produced by the orbital yards of Novae IV, the Shatterer was built according to the specifications and requirements of the Second Legion. After the two fought against one another during the Subjugation of the Corusco Cluster, the Second's Primarch gained a deep respect for the skill of Novaean shipwrights and wished to not only cement the tentative friendship between the former enemies, but also gain an extremely potent kind of warships with which to conduct the Imperial Compliance.

The design was deceptively simple, with extremely straightforward and easy to build and maintain armament, proven and reliable core components, and a streamlined, efficient hull that was a testament to the Novaeans' thousands of years fo experience in ship-building. This allowed it to be constructed fairly quickly in impactful numbers, but the same rugged and reliable components that were ubiquitous within the Cluster were utterly impenetrable to the Priesthood of Mars and the Tech-adepts of far-flung worlds, making Novaean engineers necessary to maintain them.

Shatterer Class warships would feature prominently at the forefront of the Second Legion's extensive war fleets, taking part in countless major engagements ranging from the Rangdan Xenocides to the Siege of Terra, passing by the Ullanor Campaign and so many more. Thanks to their great resilience, many Shatterers would survive these apocalyptic conflicts and go on to serve all the way into the 41st Millenium, with some individual battle-barges having archives that are the envy of the Inquisition and the Oculus, but loathed by those who wish to see the past buried or know the inconvenient truths that lay within.

## Specifications

* **Hull** - Approximately 7.2 kilometres long, 1.6 kilometres abeam at fins.
* **Mass** - Approximately 48 megatonnes.
* **Crew** - Approximately 52,000 crew.
* **Acceleration** - 3.3 gravities maximum sustainable acceleration.

## Design

The Shatterer is built around a Class-S 'Starblazer' plasma drive, the biggest and most powerful class to be actually mass-produced. It is part of what allows the massive warship to sail with the speed and agility of a Light Cruiser a fraction of its mass. Its Class-S 'Tsiokolvsky' Warp drive allows it to chart the Empyrean without the need for a Navigator through a sequence of short hops and powerful cogitator calculations, while its Gellar Fields will automatically activate if unscheduled exposure to the warp is detected.

To say that the the Shatterer is durable would be a bit of an under-statement. The triple banks Class-S 'Tempest' pattern Void Shields feature many redundancies and overlapping fields, and the rapid cycling protocols of each individual array makes it highly likely that at least one of the three will be up at any given time, potentially stopping considerable amounts of macro-cannon or lance salvos. Even if those were to fail, the Shatterer has thicker armor than any other Imperial Navy starship of similar size behind its formidable Void Shields.

The ship's armament is the crux of simplicity. The Shatterer does nor feature any Lances, plasma batteries or landing bays, it only features relatively straightforward banks of medium-weight missiles. However, it features such an obscene amount of of them that it can fire volleys so utterly enormous as to cause tracking auguries to plainly crash trying to keep up with the sheer number of inbound seekers. Moreover the Shatterer is fitted with the 'Oracle' serie of ship-to-ship combat augurs and illuminators, and its bridge is further augmented with fire control cogitators and advanced prediction matrices, which once added to the individual missiles' capacity for minor mid-flight course correction makes the swarm of missiles outrageously accurate, A single Shattered can simultaneously lock on an entire squadron of hostile warships trying to swarm it, hit every single one, and overload all of their Void shields from the onslaught. As if that wasn't enough, they are also fitted with a Rift-Pattern Nova Cannon that can threaten entire flotillas or massive star fortresses from extreme range.

The Shatterer Class is also notable for being the first ship to be designed to use the 'Adrenal' pattern of life sustainers, designed specifically by Novaean scientists for Imperial Voidships. While Novaean ones have very small crews of highly disciplined volunteers, it was common at the time for Imperial ships to be crewed by throngs of tens of thousands of less than reliable press-ganged ratings and even slaves. Though this problem was significantly lesser in Astartes vessels, Novaeans nonetheless developed a new kind of life sustainers which can lace the air with a cocktail of stimulants and combat drugs, greatly increasing the vigor and morale of the crew for a time. In addition to those, the vessel also feature Clan-Kin quarters to further increase the combat morale and loyalty of the crew by providing them with good conditions and a sense that the ship is their home and brotherhood.

Among the facilities included for the sake of the Legionaires within specifically are of course drop pod launch bays filled with rows of Elephas-pattern Dreadclaws, but also a Librarium Vault and a Medica Deck. The Vaults were originally the domain of the Remembrancers and the Wyrms maintain the habit of chronicling their battles long after the Remembrancer Corps were broken by the Inter-Legionary Wars, making these vaults true repositories of knowledge and art. As for the Medicae Deck, it is largely given over to the Apothecarion, as the Second Legion maintains above-average quantities of Apothecaries, with several taking part in any deployment of any true significance, and they require extensively furnished facilities to practice their art to its full extent.