Battlefleet Azuran

**Battlefleet Azuran** is a relatively young (founded first in mid-M38) Imperial Navy fleet consisting of 59 active capital ships and cruisers as well as 79 Escorts and 21 support ships, while 17 ships are currently in-production. It is tasked with the protection and patrolling of the Azuran Sector, protecting commerce, transportation of colony ships, lending assistance to sanctioned Rogue Traders, and, at times, accompanying the various Imperial military forces which maintain strong presences in various worlds within the sector. It has so far met with few losses and several great victories, particularly in suppressing the recent Night of a Thousand Rebellions and the Macharian Heresy alongside their home sector's patron Adeptus Astartes chapter.

## History

Battlefleet Azuran was founded once Imperial rule was brought along with the Ordinators and the Ark Mechanicus that would become the beginning of Forgeworld Ferunus shortly after. Though initially, the sector was protected by a small number of Imperial Navy cruisers and escorts temporarily drawn from nearby Segmentum Pacificus sectors, as the Ordinators managed to import newly christened Strike Cruisers and a Battle Barge, and Forgeworld Ferunus' ability to produce both Imperial Navy and Astartes-pattern ships, the sector's naval strength began to become produced and maintained from within. The first ships of the Battlefleet (the fleet consisted primarily of Cruisers and Frigates or Destroyers by 588.M38). It reached its current, full strength within five centuries by 079.M39. As the Ordinators grew into a full chapter of their own - often departing with much or most of their fleet for mysterious missions around the entire Imperium - the drydock manufactorums of Ferunus began to dedicate themselves to creating large numbers of Imperial Navy-pattern warships (though the Lord Admiral's flagship, a *Nemesis*-class Battlecarrier, christened *Wrath*, was imported from elsewhere in the Imperium by Forgeworld Ferunus in some manner of trade). As Ferunus accumulated more and more STCs, it became fully capable of producing the current Battlefleet to protect their home sector in addition to their own naval forces - more often away from home seeking various tech or STCs than not - fully aware they needed a powerful, dedicated naval defensive force to protect themselves and the worlds they had taken as allies and *de facto* vassals.

After a series of constant wars in Segmentum Pacificus around the nearby Gerrhae and Macharia sectors in late M41, it was only by the end of the first half-century of M42 that Forgeworld Ferunus managed to repair and restock the fleet with its appropriate number of void and atmospheric craft, as well as refitting them with several rare defensive technologies.

## Combat Doctrine

The Imperial Naval forces of Azuran are smaller than many other Imperial Navy Battlefleet formations in more populated or defensively-critical sectors. It is reluctant to split into more than four primary defensive patrol/strike force Battlegroups at any given time, and whenever Lord Admiral Baracus Armandius is given the opportunity to, he will pursue a major threat with typically most of his sector's battleships forward along the flanks - with the exception of his *Nemesis*-class Battlecarrier, which charges directly into the center - as the vanguard of a four-pronged, three-dimensional pincer attack where he rushes into broadside range as his lance craft and Cruisers fire and fly into the center. As the Battlecarrier and its cruiser escorts absorb the initial volleys of the enemies, his flanking battleships unleash massively powerful broadside macrocannon attacks and swarns of interceptors and bombers  that make them impossible to ignore. As this occurs, the fleet frigates and destroyers circle the field, trying to find weakened ships or other targets of opportunity to strike at with lance and torpedo fire, using their cannons as defense against enemy escorts. This is Lord Admiral Baracus' defining tactic and has

 resulted in tens of victories in the course of his short career as the youngest officer to ever hold the post in the sector. Commissars are regulated retained aboard the Bridge of each ship in the fleet to ensure his iron sense of discipline is retained by all his subordinate Captains and Commanders.

Surrounded by such a cloud of overwhelming firepower and hundreds-strong clouds of Fury Interceptors and Starhawk Bombers, most enemies of the Imperium are forced to attempt a retreat before long, though the Admiralty of Azuran do not believe in letting a battle end in anything but a total massacre of the enemy. Ships attempting to make emergency warp jumps will tyically be rammed from both sides to prevent their escape by the colossally armored prows of heavy cruisers or even battleships.

If an enemy chooses to engage in boarding combat, the fleet's relatively few Shark Assault Boats are rarely used except in particular scenarios where something or someone of value is needed retrieved in the heat of battle by a specialist shock assault troops - most often consisting of Deck Battalions formed from multiple Naval Tempestus Scions Regiments, formally known as the "Naval Special Warfare Operations & Recovery Detachments", or, "the *NAV-SWORD*", by the line ratings of the Azuran Battlefleet. Though highly trained in boarding operation, these carapace-armored, hellgun, melta, and plasma weapon-armed Stormtroopers are primary retained to act as counter-boarding quick reaction forces, while the rank-and-file Armsmen are trained to both fight as supporting naval infantry with boarding shotgun, plasma guns, multilas cannons, and melta guns as well as maning fortified positions throughout their own ships. The Battlefleet has shown a particular affinity for installing fortified, twin-linked plasma gun turrets found at junctions retrofitted to most ships in the various ships of Azuran for ship protection. On the offense, the standard operating procedure is to have Navis Armsmen, supported by Endurants, Gunners, and C.A.T operators begin the initial breach and open combat, while *NAV-SWORD* deck battalions breach the generatorium and bridge when full battle is already underway and enemy forces are distracted. Occasionally, the Battlefleet will dispatch NAV-SWORD companies to the surface of a planet by Valkyrie with Avenger attack craft and Thunderbolt fighter support to accomplish naval objectives such as suppression of enemy air or void defense, rescuing of downed pilots, execution of an enemy's command & control, destroying aircraft before they can leave launch pads, or the detonation pf munitions or fuel sources before they are transported to the foe's naval forces.

The pilots of the fleet are trained almost entirely on how to make devastating bombing runs on enemy ships - training particularly to fight the craft of forces of Chaos, Eldar Corsairs, Dark Eldar Raiders, Ork Freebootaz, and occasionally Necron warships (though these are rarely found in the area of operations in Azuran). Civil conflict has been increasing common since the final year of M41, and Battlefleet Azuran in M42 has adapted to utilize tactics that focus on utilizing bombers and lance/torpedo salvos to disable the engines of secessionist or renegade Imperial-manufactured warships before raking it with broadside fire onto the exposed and less-armed dorsal side of their targets. Special squadrons of the fleet consisting primarily of Marauder Bombers and Thunderbolt Fighters (with a somewhat lesser number of Valkyrie Assault Transports and Lightning fighters, respectively) do frequently find themselves fighting alongside the Imperial Guard (particularly the Arothi Storm Guard), though they have accompanied the Ordinators on several large crusade-level missions such as in the Suppression of the Macharian Heresy.

Despite this aggressive tactical doctrine practiced by both the current and the past two millennia of leading Lord Admirals of Battlefleet Azuran, the Ordinators and Forgeworld Ferunus - the *de facto* co-rulers of the sector - insist that at least a third of the Battlefleet remains within its home sector at all times, and it has become an unspoken rule that the Battlegroups that are allowed to conduct warfare or logistical/transport operations out of the Azuran Sector must return within under four years. The Ordinators have been known to chase down overambitious Captains or Commanders who have been out of the home sector for too long attempting to earn glory only to forcibly return them home in order to ensure the Battlefleet remains a primarily defensive force, despite the relatively small number of worlds in the inhabited sub-sectors of their home.

The atmospheric fighter and bomber fleets of Battlefleet Azuran have begun to gain fame among the Segmentum High Command of Hydraphur since the first century of M42 as they have been engaged in prolonged campaigns within a three-way war in the Azuran sector between Waaagh! Orgnuk and raids by the remnants of the Hakarian Flesh-Reapers who have returned in small bands to raid settlements in the sector. The now-famous Meteor Squadron is accredited with over 700 kills against Ork pirate fighters and bombers during the bloody and ongoing Sarin's War.

## Ranks Structure

Officer Ranks:

* Lord Admiral
* Admiral
* Fleet Admiral
* Rear Admiral
* Captain
* Commander
* Lieutenant-Commander
* Lieutenant
* Junior Lieutenant
* Ensign
* Officer Cadet

Enlisting Ranks:

* Supreme Chief Petty Officer
* Command Chief Petty Officer
* First Chief Petty Officer
* Chief Petty Officer 1st Class
* Chief Petty Officer 2nd Class
* Petty Officer 1st Class
* Petty Officer 2nd Class
* Petty Officer 3rd Class
* Voidman 1st Class
* Voidman
* Recruit

## Void Fleet

### Battleships

* 1 *Nemesis*-class Battlecruiser, Flagship of the Lord Admiral Baracus
* 9 *Oberon*-class Battleships
* 8 *Retribution*-class Battleships
* 5 *Apocalypse*-class Battleships

### Cruisers

* 15 *Armageddon*-class Cruisers
* 10 *Overlord*-class Battlecruisers
* 12 *Dictator*-class Cruisers

### Escorts

* 33 *Firestorm*-class Frigates
* 46 *Cobra*-class Destroyers

### Logistical Support Ships

* 2 *Universe*-class Mass Conveyers
* 19 *Meteor*-class Transport Conveyers

### Void Warfare Craft

* *Fury*-class Interceptors
* *Starhawk*-class Bombers
* *Shark*-class Assault Boarding Torpedo Boats

## Atmospheric Wing Craft

* *Thunderbolt* Heavy Air Superiority Fighters
* *Thunderbolt Fury* Heavy Air Superiority Fighters
* *Avenger* Strike Fighters
* *Marauder* Heavy Bombers
* *Marauder* *Destroyer* Ground Attack Craft
* *Marauder Colossus* Siege Bombers
* Marauder Vigilant *Surveillance Craft*
* *Valkyrie* Assault Dropships
* *Vulture* Gunships
* *Valkyrie Sky Talon* Transporters
* *Aquila* Landers
* *Arvus* Lighters

## Wars and Crusades of the Fleet

* **Battle of the Justinian Point (917.M38):** When a massive Space Hulk of unknown origin emerges from the primary Mandeville Point within the sparsely populated Valdorius-subsector, a region within their own home sector, the hastily assembled quarantine battlegroup under Admiral Rorke that blockades it finds itself under fire from Chaos renegade forces within. The limited vox communication between the space hulk and the battlegroup suggest the hulk was the result of the fusing of several cruisers belonging to an Imperial faction loyal to the Arch-Traitor Goge Vandire dating back to the Reign of Blood during M36 that had since converted to the worship of Chaos in their two millennia of realspace time spent in the warp. Many of the space hulk's weapon systems were no longer properly functional, though those that remained managed to destroy several escorts and a cruiser, while two more cruisers were lost when daemons and enough boarding parties aboard Shark Assault Boats made it through the cloud of defensive Fury Interceptors. Losses on the Imperial side ran into the hundreds of thousands, while it is suspected at least 1.2 million traitors and daemons were slain or otherwise destroyed when one of the overrun cruisers rammed into the Space Hulk and detonated its warp drive to devastating effect. The remnants of the hulk which had escaped being sucked back into the warp were annihilated by sustained torpedo and lance barrages until a series of lucky hits penetrated their plasma reactors - the ensuing detonation managing to destroy a Cobra Destroyer too close to the hulk outright.

* **The Hakari War -** (**004-378.M41)** - A disparate but massive coalition of Khornate pirates calling themselves the Hakarian Flesh-Reapers - a faction of once-loyal voidsmen and Imperial adepts once serving Chartist Captains, Rogue Traders, and even the Imperial Navy fallen to worship of the Blood God - arrive en masse from the lower Western edge of the sector to raid various sub-warp void travel lanes and outlying settlements on mining colonies around the peripheral systems. They engage in acts of extremely brutal violence without seizing any of the valuable goods in the hands of their most regular victims. Though many bands are isolated and destroyed by the Ordinators chapter and Imperial Navy time and again, their numbers seem to somehow grow as more arrive from the warp to establish hundreds of various bases all over the Lower Western reaches - the bases themselves being described as hellishly brutal places where cannibalism, flaying, and arena fighting are practiced by the accounts of the Ordinators and NAV-SWORD Scions sent in to purge them. Their massive numbers - somehow constantly being replenished - and wide range make them impossible to stomp out until they decide to attempt to raid the Azuran sub-sector itself in concentrated force. The Ordinators' entire fleet, and a powerful Battlegroup led by Lord Admiral Batiorius in his *Nemesis*-class Battlecarrier and its accompanying Battleship guards, intercept the pirates - unified in a single armada for the first time in their known history - en route to attempt an attack on Azuran itself. Though thousands of Imperial Navy ratings and officers are slain in the decisive battle, a series of incredibly successful ship defense and counterboarding actions by the heavily armed Ordinator fleet annihilates the Hakari almost to the man. Only a small number of escorts manage to escape, tens of thousands of Khornate pirates are left dead, and they ultimately flee the sector permanently. Though the Ordinators have taken it upon themselves to find and exterminate any remnants of the Hakari Flesh-Reapers, they have only been able to find evidence of their gory passings and goings throughout the very edge of the Segmentum Pacificus since.
* **Battle of the Redoubt of the Righteous (614.M41)** - A Drukhari raiding fleet of the Kabal of the Bloodied Claw attempts to strike at the construction crew working on a refit of the Star Fortress that serves as Battleflee Azurant's command headquarters as a new set of anti-voidship turret decks and a massive set of engines, warp drive, and gellar field is being constructed with tens of thousands of Adeptus Mechanicus servitors, laborers, and Techpriests present within. The strike is timed to coincide within less than two hours after the departure of a Battlegroup consisting of nearly a third of the full strength of the fleet, apparently having gathered intelligence on the movement of the fleet and the movement of Forgeworld Ferunus assets. Arriving days ahead of schedule, a large Battlegroup returns within kilometers of the station from the almost-adjacent Mandeville Point. The Dark Eldar raiding party suffers from the overwhelming firepower of the close range Macro-Cannon broadsides, Nova Cannons, and the massive swarm of Fury Interceptors and Starhawk Bombers unleashed by the Lord Admiral's *Nemesis*-class Battlecarrier flagship, *Wrath.* The SWORD Scion Regiments and Skitarii Legion within the halls of the *Redoubt of the Righteous,*  already tacticall well-dispersed to protect the workers, force the attackers to flee back to the webway as the largest ships in the Dark Eldar fleet are obliterated when caught in between the Battlegroup fallen upon their rear flank and the active guns of the garrison. No Imperial ships are lost in the raid, with casualties below 200 in total, at the loss of at least several thousand Dark Eldar Kabalite raiders. It marks the first time the station sees combat, but its most resounding victory in its half century of existence since it gained mobility through the Adeptus Mechanicus refits.

* **The Gerrhae War (993.M41-998.M41)**
* **Sarin's War (79.M42-112.M42)**
* **The Siege of Ashimar (???.M42)**
* **Laeran-Azuran War (112-128.M42)**
* **The Oemboran War - (167.M42)**