Reaver-class Titan

The Reaver-class Titan is a flexible, multi-role humanoid war engine known as a Battle Titan that is commonly used by the Imperial Titan Legions at the forefront of the fighting. Amongst the honoured ranks of the Collegia Titanica the Reaver, likes its larger counterparts, is regarded as a holy engine of destruction, an incarnation of the power of the Machine God, thrice-blessed by the Tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus before striding into battle. Reavers are of an ancient design, predating even the Age of the Imperium and having seen action on Mars during the battles of the Age of Strife when the Mechanicus first seized control of the sacred soil of the Red Planet. Reaver Titans are not as heavily armed as the Warlord-class Titan which forms the mainstay of the Titan Legions' Battle Titans, or as fast and agile as the Warhound-class Scout Titan, though the Reaver is still a potent war machine in its own right. The Reaver was designed at approximately the same time as the Warhound-class.

Design
The Reaver-class Battle Titan differs considerably from older designs, such as the Warlord Battle Titan, in placing the Titan's vulnerable plasma reactor towards the rear of the carapace housing. While this makes the Reaver difficult to knock out from frontal attacks, the more exposed cooling bars of the reactor make it a comparatively easy target from the side or rear. The greater speed of the Reaver over the Warlord minimises this problem but it does make Reavers unsuitable for heavy fighting in cities or other close terrain (such as urban assault) where they can be easily struck from all sides. A Reaver Battle Titan is an immense war machine that towers 22.3 metres (approx. 70 feet) high.

Armament
These medium weight Battle Titans can mount up to three separate Titan-grade weapons systems. They are protected by 4 Void Shield generators and are sheathed in thick, sloped armour from all sides. A single Titan-grade weapon can be mounted atop its carapace, which is usually an Apocalypse Missile Launcher, equivalent in size to that of a smaller Warhound-sized Scout Titan weapon. The Reaver's arms carry the heavier weapons, which are equivalent in size to the Titan-grade weapons used by the Warlord, and usually includes a Gatling Blaster or Melta Cannon. The largest Titan-grade weapons, however, are beyond the load capacity of a Reaver. These are the most common weapons systems employed by the Reaver, though it is not unknown for close combat weapons such as Siege Hammers and Titan-sized Chainfists to be employed.

Operation
A Reaver-class Titan, like all such war machines, is commanded by an officer known as a Princeps, whose cerebrum is cybernetically interlinked through his command throne directly to the Titan's Mind Impulse Unit (MIU). He is assisted by two junior officers known as Moderati, who control the Titan's movement and weapons systems. A Tech-priest attends to the Reaver's plasma reactor, its main power source, and carefully monitors the Titan's available power supply. The Tech-priest is assisted in his complex engineering task by various Servitors who have been hard-wired into the Battle Titan's systems.

Deployment
Reaver-class Titans are most commonly deployed in a shock/assault role, giving close support to infantry and armoured attacks. In this capacity they are usually armed with a number of short-ranged, rapid-fire weapons and a single close combat weapon. When operating as part of a Titan battle group formation, one or two of the Reavers will always be equipped with longer-ranged anti-armour weapons.

Chaos Ravager Battle Titans
Within the Forces of Chaos, the Reaver-class Titans are ancient and irreplaceable relics left over from the days of the Horus Heresy. To differentiate these corrupted Reavers from their Imperial counterparts, the Imperium has redesignated these war engines Ravager-class Titans, though this name is rarely used. They are the remnants of those Traitor Titan Legions who sided with the renegade Warmaster Horus during those dark times and whose blasphemous names still echo with dread thousands of Terran years later. The majority of these monstrous war engines have seen millennia of service with the Chaos forces and have long since become utterly corrupted by the touch of the Ruinous Powers and the Warp. Others are salvaged Imperial war engines taken from the battlefield as spoils of war, much to the eternal shame of their former masters. These captured Battle Titans have been subjected to bloody rituals in order to consecrate them to the service of the Chaos Gods. Over time, Chaos Reaver Battle Titans become an amalgam of daemon and machine, their once living crews fused to the controls and their souls subsumed into the Titan's tainted Machine Spirit, the war machine itself now a single being dedicated to destruction and butchery, reborn to spend an eternity of battle in servitude to Chaos. Revered and tended to by the Warp-tainted Hereteks of the Dark Mechanicus, lesser servants of the damned view these towering engines of destruction as incarnate gods of fire and death. Many of the lesser beings who serve Chaos make obeisance to them, offering sacrifices of captives and even their own lives to slake these towering monsters' thirst for blood.

Source
[[Category:R]]
 * Titan Legions, pp. 17-18
 * Imperial Armour Apocalypse II, p. 70
 * Imperial Armour Volume Six - The Siege of Vraks - Part Two, pp. 118-119
 * Imperial Armour Volume Seven - The Siege of Vraks - Part Three, pp. 161-163