A Heavy Conversion Beamer used on a Contemptor Pattern Dreadnought.
The Heavy Conversion Beamer is a vehicle weapons system used by both the Imperium of Man and the Chaos Space Marines. Conversion Beamers are an ancient relic-weapon of incredible and poorly-understood power. They are very rare and deadly antimatter-based pre-Heresy archeotech weapons most likely developed during the Dark Age of Technology.
The Heavy Conversion Beamer fires a directed energy beam of antimatter particles which cause a matter-antimatter explosion in its target. It is a powerful, long-ranged weapon whose beam intensity actually becomes stronger the farther the range to its target, up to a terminal distance point where the beam finally begins to lose coherence.
The Heavy Conversion Beamer is a larger, vehicle-mounted variant of the man-portable Conversion Beamer. Conversion Beamers are esoteric weapons that are both difficult to construct and highly complex to use, needing skilled calibration to operate as well as dedicated reactor core systems to power, especially the larger variants. As a result of this complexity, Conversion Beamers were primarily used during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras in the late 30th and early 31st Millennia for dedicated siege warfare and anti-armour operations.
In the 41st Millennium, Conversion Beamers and Heavy Conversion Beamers are incredibly rare, pre-Heresy technological artefacts, and their conservation and deployment is typically the responsibility of a Space Marine Chapter's Master of the Forge. The Heavy Conversion Beamer is even rarer in the late 41st Millennium than its smaller counterpart, as it was mostly equipped on the Contemptor Pattern Dreadnought and Deimos Predator Executioner vehicles.
Chaos Heavy Conversion Beamers[]
A Heavy Conversion Beamer that is used by Chaos Decimator Daemon Engines.
The Heavy Conversion Beamer is still in use by the Chaos Space Marines in the 41st Millennium on their Chaos Contemptor Pattern Dreadnoughts and their terrifying Decimator Daemon Engines.
A variant of the Heavy Conversion Beamer that is used on Chaos Rapier Weapons Batteries is the Cyclotrathe Pattern Conversion Beamer, which has a shorter range yet does not need the same level of calibration to operate. There exist no pict records of these weapons in current Imperial records.
Sources[]
- The Horus Heresy: Book One - Betrayal (Forge World Series) by Alan Bligh, pg. 230
- The Horus Heresy: Legiones Astartes - Crusade Army List (Forge World Series), pg. 82
- The Horus Heresy: Legiones Astartes - Age of Darkness Army List (Forge World Series), pg. 124
- Imperial Armour Volume 2 Second Edition - Warmachines of the Adeptus Astartes, pp. 77, 180
- Imperial Armour Volume 13 - Warmachines of the Lost and the Damned, pp. 125-129
- Forge World Webstore - Contemptor Heavy Conversion Beamer
- Forge World Webstore - Decimator Heavy Conversion Beamer
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