An Ursus Claw was a harpoon-like weapon that could be used both in starship combat and by Warhound Scout Titans. The weapon originated with the World Eaters Legion, which originally developed it for use in starship combat by the XIIth Legion's flagship , the Gloriana-class Battleship Conqueror, during the Great Crusade.
In battle, the Conqueror often employed a crude but unique weapon later called the "Ursus Claw" which enabled the massive vessel to get within close proximity of an enemy voidship in order to board it. From ridged battlements and armoured ports along the warship's hull, a tide of what looked like spears would burst out into the void. Each of these lances was the size of a smaller escort ship in its own right. Up to a dozen could be fired, either separately at multiple targets, or all at once, at much larger vessels.
These massive lances would then puncture home into the hulls of enemy vessels. Once impaled, the immense spears became active, locking to their prey's ravaged insides with magnetic strength. But while they were effective against regular foes, alien vessels like those employed by the Aeldari were forged from synthetics beyond mere metal.
Sometimes these vessels would manage to slide free, dragging their impaled carcasses away from the Imperial warship, but their cores would be holed right through and opened to space. They would prove to be the lucky ones. The other enemy vessels that were still impaled would shake, as they were dragged off course, stalling in the void. Their engines would burn in silent heat, but each of them would remain anchored in place.
The spears driven through their bodies were more than mere projectiles, they were lances launched to cripple. They were harpoons fired to claim prey. With malicious slowness, the Conqueror would then recall its spears. The lances would begin to ratchet back towards the vessel that fired them, dragged home on massive chains one link at a time. Only the World Eaters had the audacity to deploy something so barbarous, so primitive on such a scale. And only the World Eaters were able to make such crude weaponry into something so efficient.
Link by link, the Conqueror would drag the impaled enemy vessels closer, its massive engines straining against their stagnant thrust. Other enemy starships would often break away, finding it increasingly difficult to fire upon the Imperial warship, now using their own allied ships as barriers to protect itself. The Primarch Angron would then give the order to release the elite World Eater assault companies known as the Devourers upon their doomed enemies.
Boarding parties would be spat from the Conqueror's hull, crossing the short distance in the blink of an eye and disgorging World Eaters warriors into the bowels of the impaled enemy ships. The Conqueror would then fully retract the Ursus Claws that failed to strike.
Titan-Grade Ursus Claw[]
A Legio Audax Warhound Scout Titan armed with a Titan-grade Ursus Claw that was active during the Horus Heresy.
Smaller-scale versions of these Ursus Claws would be created to arm the Warhound-class Titans of the Legio Audax that supported the XIIth Legion and for the World Eaters' assault Dreadnoughts.
As the Shadow Crusade raged across Ultramar during the Horus Heresy, the princeps of the Legio Audax adapted this idea from their World Eaters allies and turned it into a weapon for their favoured Warhound Scout Titans. Ursus Claws allowed them to engage larger enemy god-engines and bring them low.
This tactic proved so effective that other Legios, Traitor and Loyalist alike, began equipping their Warhounds with this weapon.
Sources[]
- Adeptus Titanicus - The Horus Heresy: Loyalist Legios (Specialty Game), pg. 169
- Warhammer Community - Ready the Ursus Claws
- Imperial Armour - The Horus Heresy: Book One - Betrayal, pg. 96
- Butcher's Nails (Audio Drama) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden
- Betrayer (Novel) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden
- Legacies of Betrayal (Anthology) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Nick Kyme, Graham McNeill, Chris Wraight, John French, Guy Haley, David Annandale, Gav Thorpe, and Anthony Reynolds, "Heart of the Conqueror" (Short Story) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, pp. 385-391
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