Terminus Est - History: The Terminus Est was built in the years before the Great Crusade in the shipyards of Luna. Its unique design was larger and more powerful than any previously constructed pattern, but also more cumbersome.The Emperor created the vessel for His Space Marine Legions, gifting the ship to kilometres in length with the firepower to lay waste to entire cities. Specially crafted for the Space Marines, it incorporated decks of launch bays capable of carrying hundreds of Stormbird dropships.Its distinctive forked prow allowed it to act as both launch bay and gun deck, meaning it could send out assault craft while bombarding a planet from orbit, making it ideally suited to the needs of the Legion.Such was the success of the Terminus Est's design that it would be later reproduced in great numbers by the Imperium. These copies were designated Despoiler Class, and were used extensively for planetary assaults.It would be the influence of its captain Calas Typhon -- as Typhus was once known -- that would eventually see the Terminus Est become a tool for Chaos, his own corruption infecting the ship he captained. Typhon's fall to Chaos happened before the rest of his Legion, before even his Primarch Mortarion, the promises of Nurgle taking deep root within his soul.When the Death Guard finally sided with Horus, the taint of the Plague Father had already begun to seep into the hull of the Terminus Est. During the Horus Heresy the vessel made a bloody name for itself, taking a heavy toll on the Loyalist fleets and bringing fire and death to dozens of worlds.As part of the Istvaan V Drop Site Massacre, the Terminus Est was central to the fierce battle that raged above the planet, destroying the Raven Guard flagship Shadow of the Emperor and sending its flaming hulk tumbling into the void.It is argued that this engagement was the earliest recorded conflict between battleships specialised to carry attack craft. The engagement was swift and deprived the embattled Loyalist forces of any air support in the Dropsite Massacre that followed.The vessel was to be the site of Typhon's transformation to Typhus; from a Space Marine into a true servant of Nurgle. While returning to Terra the Terminus Est became becalmed in the Warp, utterly at the mercy of the Dark Gods.It was here that the Lord of Decay visited his most virulent gift upon the ship: the Destroyer Plague. The Warp-borne disease struck down every soul on board, save Typhus, who swelled with the gifts of the Plague Father, becoming his Herald and host to the Destroyer Hive.Perhaps the most infamous appearance of the Terminus Est came during the Siege of Terra. By this point in the Heresy the vessel had already begun to change, the blessings of the Plague God firmly upon it. When it appeared as part of the Traitor fleet its hull was teeming with rot and decay, rust-blood and plasma-pus leaking out into space from the corroded seams in its hull.Legend has it that the vessel was the first to bombard the Emperor's Imperial Palace, those initial titanic explosions marking the beginning of the siege.While the Death Guard Primarch Mortarion fought on Terra with the Legion, Typhus commanded the Terminus Est for much of the siege, and when Horus was slain, it was Typhus and the Terminus Est that covered the Legion's retreat to the Eye of Terror, and disappeared from human knowledge for centuries.