A Devourer Dropship, showing both its in-flight configuration and how it unloads its cargo of troops and vehicles from its four-sectioned armoured nose cone using a telescopic catwalk.
The Devourer Dropship is an orbit-to-surface dropship of the Navis Imperialis used to get Imperial military personnel, usually members of the Astra Militarum, and their associated wargear and vehicles from an orbiting carrier voidship to a planetary surface, often under enemy fire during a planetary assault operation.
The vessel is uniquely designed so that during its landing it can literally punch through enemy fortified emplacements with its heavily-armoured nosecone and deliver its cargo of troops and vehicles directly into an enemy strongpoint if needed.
Role[]
The Devourer Dropship is used to transport Astra Militarum forces from orbiting transport ships to planetary surfaces. Carried in larger FTL Imperial Transports such as the massive Cetaceus-class Transport, Devourer Dropships are considerably larger than Adeptus Astartes Thunderhawks, which serve a similar role.
Each Devourer possesses two decks, with the upper deck housing the infantry units and the lower deck storing the heavier wargear and vehicles such as tanks and artillery. The Devourer is designed for planetary landings and assault deployments, with the heavily-armoured nose cone of the vessel opening up into four sections like a four-jawed beast, then deploying a telescopic catwalk so that the onboard armoured vehicles and infantry can rapidly depart.
The Devourer itself is not designed to participate in combat and is intended primarily for an orbit-to-surface transport role, but is equipped with two Heavy Lascannon turrets and Missile Launchers that fire Ram Missiles so that they can devastate armoured emplacements in support of their carried ground units.
Sources[]
- Inferno!, "The Conquest of Obzidion" by David Pugh