Terminator Armour - History: Space Marine power armour has a long and glorious history, having its origins in the long-forgotten time before the Emperor's unification of Mankind on Terra during the Unification Wars fought by his legions of gen-enhanced pseudo-Astartes, known as the Thunder Warriors.Nothing is known of this time, but it is speculated that the first suits of human-developed powered armour were worn by the techno-barbarians that fought alongside the Emperor as he battled to bring Terra under his rule during the Unification Wars of the 30th Millennium. Over time, these suits were refined and improved, becoming the earliest incarnations of fully enclosed power armour.The first suits of Space Marine power armour were developed from this armour during the late 30th Millennium, and were said to have been worn by the first Space Marines of the Legiones Astartes as they launched the Great Crusade to reunite the worlds of the Sol System under the Emperor's control. Legends tell that once the Terran Solar System was secure, and the process of rebuilding firmly in hand, galactic conquest began in earnest.Faded techno-arcana of the Adeptus Mechanicus tell that even before the Age of Strife had ended, the Emperor had started to make provisions for his Great Crusade.Part of these plans included the re-equipping of the Space Marine Legions with a far more sophisticated fighting suit that Imperial historians have dubbed Mark II "Crusader" or "Crusader Armour".Alongside these developments, the Emperor initiated a programme to develop a system of armour that would provide even greater protection than that offered by power armour for Space Marine Legionaries on the field of battle.The technology for Exo-armour was originally developed during Mankind's Age of Technology. These sealed environment suits enabled maintenance crews of spacecraft to operate in extremely hazardous environments such as hard vacuum or in other adverse atmospheric conditions.Exo-armour was constructed from heavy gauge plasteel plating, forming an armoured shell that could withstand even the colossal impact of high-speed orbital micro-debris.It is the only armour suitable for working inside the high-pressure casings of plasma reactor shields, or the extremely corrosive environments inside the holds of bulk chemical carriers. These same qualities, suitably enhanced, were used to make Tactical Dreadnought Armour virtually invulnerable to most weapons.The development of Terminator Armour, as Tactical Dreadnought Armour soon became known, was well underway during the Great Crusade to replace power armour, but was relegated to its current role due to a lack of maneuverability.During the Great Crusade era, the ancient Mechanicum was receiving a steady influx of new and rediscovered technologies from each planet brought to Imperial Compliance, and, in an effort to stem the horrendous loss of Astartes lives resulting from the ferocious conquests, attempted to design the "ultimate" pattern of power armour which would render a Space Marine virtually invulnerable.The design emerged from a hybrid of standard Astartes power armour, the cybernetic shell of a Dreadnought and the armoured hostile environment suits long worn by Terran engineers who worked in difficult conditions like debris-plagued orbital space and the radioactive engine cores of interstellar spacecraft. "Tactical Dreadnought Armour," as it was called, would turn the Astartes warrior within it into a living tank.The eventual result of the Mechanicum's travails was only a partial success: the first suits of Terminator Armour did, as intended, afford a level of protection previously unattainable for its wearer.Like power armour, these suits were equipped with fibre-bundle synthetic muscles and imposed few movement restrictions upon the wearer despite their immense weight. But they were also too bulky, and their massive weight made running difficult despite built-in auto-balancers.The suits suffered from voracious power demands, and few existing armaments could be carried as the armour's sheer bulk made handling and reloading impossible.But most importantly, the sheer amounts of raw materials and manpower required to craft Terminator Armour were so great that retrofitting the whole of the existing Space Marine Legions with it was simply not feasible for the already thinly-stretched logistics of the nascent Imperium of Man.Several patterns of Terminator Armour evolved in parallel from the Forge Worlds of the Mechanicum and the armouries of the Space Marine Legions. The Mechanicum refined their concept, and developed weapons specially adapted for it, like Combi-weapons and the Reaper Autocannon.Terminator Armour was then presented in limited numbers to the crusading Legions, who quickly found a use for it. Massively armoured, sealed against any hostile environmental conditions and incorporating their own heavy ranged or close combat armament, Terminator Armour designs soon proved their worth.Terminator Armour, with its ability to maximise the firepower and protection for a Space Marine, became standard on missions in extremely confined spaces like the corridors of a hive city, or during a boarding action on a space hulk where Dreadnoughts and armoured vehicles could not operate because they were too large to fit.Anecdotal evidence of this adaptability and willingness to embrace new weapons of warfare can be found in Horus' vocal backing of the Tactical Dreadnought Armour project, with the result being that his Luna Wolves Legion was one of the first and most widely equipped with Terminator Armour and at the forefront of the development of tactics for its use in assaults.By the time the Horus Heresy erupted and the Arch-traitor Horus first struck a blow against the Emperor during the Isstvan III Atrocity, these heavily armoured suits had become widely available to the Space Marine Legions.According to fragmented records of the Adeptus Mechanicus, Terminator Armour was originally designed to be the ultimate Space Marine power armour, and was envisioned to replace the older suits.However, as the Horus Heresy devoured the Imperium's resources, and the ancient Mechanicum divided into separate factions during the Schism of Mars, Terminator suits became increasingly rare, for they were exceptionally difficult to create and maintain.In addition, during most battles their bulk became a disadvantage against the lighter power-armoured warriors who easily outmanoeuvred them. These suits were highly sought after, and they were used to great effect in the countless bloody and short-ranged battles waged in cramped conditions, such as boarding actions in ship-to-ship engagements, hive cities and tunnel fighting. It is in these kinds of engagements that Terminator Armour excels, as it is under these conditions that their bulk and sturdy frame serves best.Very few suits of this early Terminator Armour were ever manufactured by the Mechanicum before the Horus Heresy began, and the secrets of the technology's design have now almost been lost. As a result, every suit of Terminator Armour is treated as an irreplaceable, precious relic by the Space Marine Chapters that own them.In the 41st Millennium it is a rare thing to see a "new" suit of Terminator Armour. If an additional suit is required, it is usually cobbled together from refurbished parts salvaged from the remains of Terminators killed in action.Indeed, as time marches onward, the knowledge of how to fabricate some of the more complex pieces of Terminator Armour has become only a desperate hope in the minds of the Tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus, whose understanding of science and technology has been slowly decaying for the last 10,000 standard years.Due to the amount of labour required and the difficulty of reproducing a single suit of Tactical Dreadnought Armour, this armour is only produced in extremely small numbers.There are dark rumours that Heretek Warpsmiths within the Eye of Terror may also possess some rare copies of the original STC blueprints, thus making it possible for them to reproduce new suits of Terminator Armour for the Chaos Space Marines of the Traitor Legions as well.