Repulsive-class Grand Cruiser - History: In the superstitious and hidebound realm of Imperial starship construction, entire classes of vessel can come to be regarded as cursed since the design stage. Spacefarers mutter that these starships are star-crossed, prone to dragging entire crews with them into the Warp at a moment's notice, there to leave them starving or bedevilled, until the ship re-emerges in the Eye of Terror, ready to serve the twisted lords of Chaos.This dark reputation has followed the grand cruisers of the Repulsive-class, originally known as the Corinus-class since their inception in the Imperium's early days. A disturbingly large number of the Repulsives have turned Traitor or been captured into the Archenemy's service since the class became operational -- so many that some have forgotten the ships were originally constructed in the Emperor's service.This is a tragedy indeed for the Imperium, for these are graceful and powerful warships, with a radically different weapons configuration from all other known grand cruisers, fully realising the ancient doctrine of a fast and manoeuvrable heavy warship. Their design cannot be duplicated, as the secrets of constructing powerful-enough Plasma Drives has since been lost to the Adeptus Mechanicus.Only a handful of these warship hulls remain uncorrupted by the powers of the Immaterium, and these are either mothballed, sealed, and guarded in the Reserve Fleets of the various Segmentum Fortresses, or under the command of certain extremely powerful Rogue Traders.The story of how the Corinus-class became known instead as the Repulsive-class is little known. When the first variants of the original Corinus-class reappeared in the sporadic warfare of later centuries, they had been changed by the heavy Warp contamination of the Eye of Terror, sporting modifications and eruptions that baffled, excited and appalled the Tech-priests who studied them.One unnamed scholar, toiling away in some obscure Forge World's record collation citadel, amended his report on these studies, changing the term Corinus to Repulsive, possibly as some recondite form of Martian humour. The Mechanicus, not being a humorous order, took up the emendation as purely literal, and like some spreading organic virus, it became the preferred classification for what remained a rare class of warship within Imperial zones of control and a more common one among the forces of Chaos.A few ancient grand cruisers of various classes can still be found in the reserve fleets of the Segmentum Obscurus and Segmentum Pacificus, but they are largely obsolete. Of the 25 grand cruisers believed to have abandoned the Emperor of Mankind for the service of the Dark Gods since the inception of the ship type in the 34th Millennium, roughly a dozen have yet to be recaptured or destroyed.Of those still at large, the Foe-Reaper is the most active, having been sighted in over a score of major fleet engagements in the 23 standard centuries since her corruption by the Ruinous Powers.Most infamously, it was the Foe-Reaper which destroyed the Adeptus Mechanicus facility on AFR-74, killing 50,000 Adepts within a few heartbeats, when a salvo of specially-modified torpedoes shattered the eco-shield protecting the inhabitants from the metha-nitrous atmosphere of that satellite.