Furious Abyss



The Furious Abyss was a one-of-a-kind Abyss-class Battleship of unique configuration, created and built in the Jovian shipyards of Thule which orbited Jupiter. This vessel was constructed in secret during the latter years of the Great Crusade by the renegade Dark Mechanicus faction loyal to Kelbor-Hal, the Fabricator-General of Mars' Adeptus Mechanicus. This vessel was gifted to the Word Bearers Legion who were ordered to bring their unfettered wrath down upon their hated rivals, the Ultramarines Legion, and was to play an instrumental in the Battle of Calth and the inevitable destruction of the Realms of Ultramar.

History
During the latter days of the Great Crusade, the Fabricator-General of Mars had already thrown in his lot with the traitor Warmaster Horus and committed to his cause. He had been tasked with the construction of a mighty vessel of unique design, built on a scale never before seen by man. Kelbor-Hal had allowed the commissioning of vast quantities of material, menials and munitions in the construction of the mighty king ship because it suited his purposes, the burgeoning desire, or rather his intrinsic programming. Horus had unfettered Mars in its pursuit of the divine machine, countermanding the Emperor’s chastening. For Kelbor-Hal the question of his allegiance and that of the Mechanicum was one of logic, and had required mere nanoseconds of computation.

The gargantuan ship, christened by the Word Bearers as the Furious Abyss, had been forged with such heavy armour that it could withstand even a concerted assault from a defence laser battery. Its blunt bullet prow, and the way its flanks splayed out to encompass the enormous midsection, spoke of strength and precision. Three massive crenellated decks extended from it like the sharpened prongs of a stygian trident. Twin banks of laser batteries gleamed in dull gunmetal down its broadsides. A single volley would have annihilated the loading bay and everyone in it. Cannon mounts sat idle on angular blocks of metal filled with viewpoints that hinted at the myriad chambers within. The rapacious bristle of the defensive turrets along the dorsal and ventral spines, and the dark indentations of the torpedo tubes, shimmered with violent intent. Spiked antenna towers punched outward from multitudinous sub-decks, interspersed with further weapon arrays and torpedo bays. The ship’s ribbed belly shimmered like oil and was replete with dozens of fighter hangars.

At the stern, the huge cowlings of the exhausts flared over the deep glow of the warming engines, primed to unleash enough thrust to force the warship away from Thule. Like chrome hexagons, the engine vents were so vast and terrible that to stare into their dormant hearts was to engulf all sense and reason in a fathomless darkened void. Finally, sheets of shielding peeled off the prow, revealing a massive figurehead: a book, wreathed in flame, wrought from gold and silver. Words of Lorgar’s choosing were engraved on the pages in letters many metres high. It was the greatest and largest vessel ever forged, unique in every way and powerful beyond reckoning. This ship, this mighty ship, had been made for the Word Bearers, and in the Jovian shipyards its long-awaited construction had finally reached an end. This was to be a blow against the Emperor, a blow for Horus. None would know of the vessel’s existence until it was too late. Steps had been taken to ensure that remained the case. The launch from little known, and even less regarded, Thule was part of that deceit, but only part.

The Furious Abyss was to be manned by one thousand Astartes, a full Chapter split into ten companies, each a hundred strong. All heeded the Word of Lorgar. The Legionaries were resplendent in their new crimson-coloured Power Armour, sheaves of prayer parchment, scorched trails of vellum writ over with litanies of battle, and the bloodied pages ripped from sermons of retribution were affixed to their battle plate, openly declaring their allegiance to Chaos Undivided. They were led by Fleet-Captain Zadkiel, a devout and zealous follower of the Word. He was charged by Lorgar to lead the assault upon the world of Calth, where they would strike the first blow against the hated Imperium of Man.

Cull of the Word Bearers
After their humiliation at Khur, thousands of World Bearers within the Legion detested the Ultramarines. Unknown to Zadkiel, the Urizen ordered a great gathering of his Legion while their primary fleet was already en route to Calth. The Primarch called for Argel Tal, the leader of the Gal Vorbak, and other Word Bearer officers who would eventually become commanders and apostles amongst the elite Vakrah Jal. The Primarch wanted their counsel on what to do with those amongst their Legion he no longer trusted. The Word Bearers had culled their ranks down through the decades, removing such unrepentantly Loyalist elements such as the Terran-born warriors of their Legion, but had carried out no purge like the Istvaan III Atrocity that Angron was so proud of. Lorgar knew that the loyalty of his own Legion to both him and his vision of Mankind transformed through an embrace of Chaos was never in doubt, but competence was another matter entirely. Lorgar asked what should be done with those warriors of the XVII Legion he felt were no longer reliable. Those whose hatred burned brighter than their sense. For tens of thousands of them -- whole companies, whole Chapters -- their rage was no longer pure. It was decided that these suspect elements of the Legion would be gathered into a single host and ordered to undertake the "sacred" mission to Calth to assault the Ultramarines that they had so craved. They would be led by such zealots as First Chaplain Erebus, the Dark Apostle Kor Phaeron and Fleet-Captain Zadkiel and were expected to martyr themselves in glory. The other Traitor Legions such as the Emperor's Children, Sons of Horus and the World Eaters might have purged their own ranks at Istvaan III, but the Word Bearers would proceed to purge their own at Calth.

Destruction of Thule
As the Furious Abyss finally launched from its moorings and was underway, a single drone ship had made its approach earlier into the heart of Thule and docked within the asteroid's core in a small antechamber for several hours. An hour earlier, Fabricator General Kelbor-Hal’s personal barge had departed the station, the head of the Mechanicum leaving his subordinate, Magos Epsolon, to organise the clean up after the launch of the Furious Abyss. It was to be the last vessel that left Thule. Pre-programmed activation protocols abruptly came on line in the Servitor pilot slave to the drone shuttle. A small incendiary charge ignited the fury of chemicals which merged within the body of the servitor. The immediate firestorm engulfed the ship and spread out, the growing conflagration billowing down tunnels and through access pipes, incinerating labouring menials. When it struck the gravity engine the resultant explosions began a cataclysmic chain reaction. It took only minutes for the asteroid to break into flame-wreathed fragments. There was no time to flee to safety and no survivors. Every adept, servitor and menial was burned to ash. The debris field would spread far and wide, but the asteroid was far enough away, locked at the farthest point of its horseshoe orbit, not to trouble Jupiter. It would not escape notice, but it was also of such little consequence that any investigation would take months to effect and ratify. None would discover the thing that had been wrought upon the asteroid’s surface until it was much, much too late. Much technology was lost in Thule’s destruction. It was a steep price to pay for absolute and certain secrecy. In the end, the Fabricator-General’s will had been done. He had willed the death of Thule.

Furious Abyss Unleashed
Fleet-Captain Zadkiel had been tasked by Kor Phaeron himself to take the Furious Abyss to Ultramar's capital world of Macragge and destroy it and to create as much havoc and destruction amongst the XIII Legion as was possible. During its maiden flight it encountered an Ultramarines' Lunar-class Cruiser, the Fist of Macragge, which was enroute to the Legion muster at Calth for the upcoming campaign into the Veridian System. The Fist was to make a short detour to the Vangelis space port to take on some more battle-brothers stationed there and the campaign to liberate Veridan would be underway. The Furious Abyss approached it's prey, undetected and unsuspected. As the Imperial vessel finally raised alarms at its approach, points of intense red light flared in unison down the vessel's port side as it turned to show the Fist of Macragge its broadside. The terrible vessel that had somehow foiled all of their sensors, even their astropathic warning systems, fired. The Captain of The Fist knew that they were doomed, and so, sent a desperate Astropathic message to the Vangelis space port -- warning them of the Furious Abyss.

Vangelis Space Port
Vangelis space port was a vast orbital station built into a large moon and based around several hexagonal blisters into which docks, communion temples and muster halls were housed. The bustling space port was crammed with traders, naval crewmen and mechwrights. A large proportion of its area had been given over to the Astartes. Vangelis was a galactic waymarker and small numbers of Astartes involved in more discreet missions used it as a gathering point. Once their objective was completed, they would congregate at one of the many muster halls designated for their Legion and await pick-up by their battleships. Though little more than a company from any given Legion would be expecting transit at any one time, sectors Kappa through Theta were at the complete disposal of the Legions. Few non-Astartes were ever seen there, barring ubiquitous Legion serfs and attendants, though occasionally Remembrancers would be granted brief access in concordance with maintaining good relations with the human populous. [[Category:F]]