Chaos Warfleet

The powers of Chaos, and likewise their fleets, are myriad. Abaddon the Despoiler may have led a fleet of Chaos Undivided during the Gothic War, but there are nonetheless numerous fleets dedicated solely to the service of one of the Great Powers of Chaos – Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh and Tzeentch.

The Shape of Change
Just as the powers of Chaos visit their warped and twisted blessings upon those followers who prove themselves worthy, so too do their gifts fall upon the great and aged machines devoted to them. A ship’s form, its very materials, may be warped by the touch of Chaos to take on a form ever more pleasing to its patron. So it is that a ship might come to truly bear the mark of its god. It is not merely the will of a god that can alter a ship, though. A dedicated and worshipful crew will lavish much time on their vessel, reshaping it in their god’s image, branding great runes all across it, covering it in colours, symbols, substances or geometries favoured by their god as testament to their fervoured devotion. By weird enchantments and dark rituals, daemons, spirits and other entities likewise in their service of their patron may be summoned up, or even gifted whole areas of the ship, invited to dwell within its engines, sustained in the material realm by the same bound psykers and warp engines that once allowed the ship safe passage through the Immaterium. Alone amongst the material creations of man, his magnificent starships are designed to travel both the material and the immaterial, and so offer a sanctuary to daemons which cannot be found elsewhere. These beings of Chaos might slumber within a ship’s guns, launching fire from them with an unnatural fury; sweep formlessly throughout the ship’s decks like a wailing ghost, driving off would-be boarders; or even lurk deep within the hull of the vessel itself, binding their own ancient malice with the intangible, yet no less resolute, will of the aged machine, birthing a vessel with a true heart of Chaos.

Chariots of Slaughter-Fleets of Khorne
To all but the blindest and most deranged of Khorne’s followers, the need for ships to transport them across the stars is obvious, though beyond such cold utility even the most ancient of vessels deserves little more reverance. To Khorne’s followers, such vessels are little more than steeds, chariots even, to take them to slaughter. Where other gods might visit their blessing equally upon their followers both man and machine, Khorne cares little for the beasts of steel, and it is instead upon the deranged and bloodthirsty warriors that slay in his name that Khorne’s blessing falls.

Khorne’s lust for blood eschews as cowardly and unworthy long-ranged guns of many traitor vessels. Even a perfectly well-armed and equipped warship of Khorne may forgo all firing as its frenzied crew instead plough furiously forwards, impatient to fall upon their enemy hand-to-hand. With little love of magic or arcance technology, followers of Khorne are often equally loathe to rely upon such tricks as teleportation and instead enact the will of their god with their frenzied boarding actions.

So insanely devoured by the lust for blood are some that they forsake any form of shooting entirely, and instead populate drifting hulks, from where they can fall upon enemy fleets, or even worlds, in an unstoppable tide of boarding actions. Khorne is not blind to the need for firepower, though he gives no favour to it, and his fleets remain rigidly utilitarian in this regard, willing only to utilise those weapons and those tactics which will ultimately bring them closer to their target, closer to the slaughter.

Floating Palaces of Slaanesh
Those vessels favoured by Slaanesh are nothing short of palatial – the finest and most delicately crafted of galleons, carefully maintained and lovingly restored, their every inch bedecked in the most precious metals and glittering gems, smothered in the richest and most extravagant of dressings, details and iconography, decorated with the most exquisite portraiture, sculpture and art, invariably portraying acts of the most perverse kind of beauty. Within the followers of Slaanesh both slumber in a malaise of ecstacy, drawing themselves into action only to further their exhausting pursuit of pleasure.