A Goliath-class Factory Ship of the Adeptus Mechanicus active in the Calixis Sector.
A Goliath-class Factory Ship is a transport vessel of the Adeptus Mechanicus that is used to transmute raw material into massive amounts of plasma energy that can be used to fuel the industrial demands of Hive Worlds and Industrial Worlds.
The Imperium swarms with transport vessels. Millions of these civilian voidcraft plough the space lanes, ferrying pilgrims, ore, fuel, foodstuffs, weapons, materiel, machine parts and luxury goods to untold billions of eager consumers across the galaxy.
Role[]
The Goliath-class Factory Ships are Adeptus Mechanicus vessels, gigantic energy-processing and transport vessels that harvest the very essence of stars. They devour solar plasma to power their own arcane fuel production techniques, in order to sate the endless hunger of the Imperium's Hive Worlds and Industrial Worlds. Even larger than the Jericho-class Pilgrim Vessel, they are fragile and potentially explosive voidcraft treated with much respectful caution by other spacefarers, given their propensity to detonate in catastrophic explosions that are capable of scouring the atmosphere from entire worlds.
The Goliaths plod slowly along certain traditional trade routes through the Warp, such as the principle Calixian route that consists of Sepheris Secundus, Scintilla, and an obscure blue star known only as Delta 7815. The full round trip -- which can take up to two standard years -- begins at Sepheris Secundus, where the Goliaths take aboard millions of tons of unrefined ore, hacked from the frozen surface of the Ice World by billions of serfs. The ship refines this ore to extract the priceless rare elements contained within, converting them in primal furnaces to their base molecules -- suspended in a plasma state and stored within fragile, spinning electromagnetic containment fields. These plasmas are highly desired to fuel the most powerful Imperial plasma reactors.
This hugely demanding process drains the factory ship's own enormous power plants, so it translates from the Warp to scoop the plasma from the corona of the brilliant blue-giant star Delta 7815, restoring its own power reserves, before slowly propelling itself back to Scintilla to off-load its precious cargo of energy-rich plasma fuel and begin the cycle anew.
The Goliaths of the Calixis Sector are an ancient and inelegant class of transport vessel; bulbous and totally utilitarian, they are of interest to Rogue Traders only because of their potentially infinite range (subject to finding stars of the correct type to recharge their plasma engines) and their not inconsiderable transport capability.
Operations[]
This vessel is a freighter that was ultimately designed for transporting goods and fuel, and no amount of retrofitting can fully change this. This hull comes pre-equipped with two main cargo hold components.
The Goliath also comes pre-equipped with a unique component, an Adeptus Mechanicus plasma refinery, used to create high-grade fuel for Imperial plasma reactors and plasma drives. This is a huge facility that is mounted amidships. This grants the ship the ability to scoop plasma from the stars, refine it, and sell it on. The profits gained by this enterprise are closely matched to the costs of running the vessel, however the vessel's owners can use it to augment their own endeavours.
The plasma refining process simply requires a large supply of low-grade ore, however the plasma harvesting process is more involved. The ship must enter a retrograde orbit around a blue-giant star, a manoeuvre that takes three solar days and can prove highly challenging if not outright fatal for inexperienced helmsmen.
Dimensions[]
- Hull: Transport
- Class: Goliath-class Factory Ship
- Dimensions: 4.9 kilometres long, approximately 0.9 kimometres abeam at fins
- Mass: 16 megatonnes approximately
- Crew: Approximately 41,000 crew
- Acceleration: 1.5 gravities maximum sustainable acceleration
Sources[]
- Rogue Trader: Battlefleet Koronus (RPG), pp. 29-30