Hello,

I was wondering if there was a cannonical list of ship prefixes somewhere (I.E. H.M.S. or U.S.S., etc.) for the various factions flying around the universe. I'm what you might call a really part-time RPGer, and this is the first time I've ever GMed anything, so I'm sorry if this is a noobish question with an obvious answer sitting out there someplace I didn't think to look or in some book I couldn't managed to get ordered.

I'd just make them up myself, since no one in my group is incredibly familiar with the 40k universe, but I'm still working on my "imaginative grandeur" abilities, and would probably settle for something lame like "R.T.S."

There are no prefixes used for Imperial Navy craft. Spacecraft attached to an Imperial fleet will commonly be referenced as such, "Luminous Est, Battlefleet Gothic" for example, which tells you that it's part of the Battlefleet that patrols and protects the Gothic sector of the Imperium.

The one that I've heard used frequently, which I think was suggested in the novel Execution Hour, was His Divine Majesty's Ship, or HDMS, but it doesn't appear to be frequently referenced in the canon.

No Prefixes seen in the old boardgame "Space Fleet Gothic", never came across a prefix if a ship name was mentioned in the WH40K Codexes.

To me, Prefixes aren´t making much sense in the Imperium. As far as I understand the concept, prefixes like "U.S.S" tell what nation this ship belongs to.
In the Imperium, you are either belong to the Imperium or you are an Enemy of Mankind.

I hadn't really thought about it like that. I was thinking more along the lines of ships operated by different groups within the Imperium itself, a ship run by Space Marines having a different prefix than one of the Navy. It seems practical given how many millions of ships must be out there, counting non-warp capable vessels, but the sector/fleet thing clears that up. Thanks.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

This was more or less the reason I was wondering. I couldn't remember the title of the full novel, but I knew I'd read an excerpt from a story with something like that in it.


Is there a good wiki out there for this sort of thing? I've found the Lexicanum to be pretty useful, but not always well worded and a little hard to track some things down on.

Honestly I would not expect that the Imperial Fleet would use prefixes for named vessels. Now they may have something like a class prefix for the escort ships common to the fleet, IE IFF-2341 for a Firestorm Frigate. (That is a totally random example though) They may also have something similar for specific vessels that represent their class, yard of construction, and year commissioned.

After re-reading through the RT core book again, I realized it pretty clearly states that all craft in Imperial space (or at least everything that isn't probably getting shot at) are registered and emit a beacon which identifies them and where they belong, etc., getting rid of my rationalization for why something like this might be needed anyway.

I'm still getting familiar with the 40k Universe. XD

I laughed at the thought of beacons and standard nomenclature / IFF beacons for ships. It is a good idea (we do it now) and probably right, but can you imagine what the Administratum would do to a clean, easy system like that? Probably a thousand forms alone to fill out!!!

In all honesty, even ignoring the probable damage the Administratum will do to that sort of system, there's a pretty good reason to use ship prefixes anyway- an IFF transponder with the ship's registration is not necessarily going to be that useful if the ship in question hasn't visited a particular area before, as it'd squawk a short code-blurt with info that can be looked up by anyone with access to the registry data, but there's no way that every ship in the imperium can be kept up to date with every single other vessel's registry information, so a newcomer will have trouble figuring it out.
Even assuming every ship/port has a local registry, this is 40k; it could take several hours for the relevant scribes and cogitor-drones to track down the registration details, giving ample time for a pirate to sneak into weapons range or get away.

Quite aside from that, there are a number of situations when you wouldn't want to broadcast your ident (for example, you wanted to avoid certain... complications with the local authorities, and so would spend some time trying to work up a plausible forgery- having your ship proclaim its' true identity would be somewhat inconvenient).

Added to that, there is a fair chance that people just won't trust or fully accept the sort of data coming from an automated transponder, so they will want an actual person on the vox, which is where the need for ship prefixes comes in- people tend to assume the Imperium is a vast monolithic society, but it's closer to a feudalistic federation. A ship could belong to the Imperial Navy, the Civil Fleet (under direct Administratum control, IIRC), one of the Navigator Houses, a System Defence Force, the Inquisition, the League of Black Ships, the Adeptus Mechanicus or a local government fleet, aside from those owned by merchant conglomerates, chartist captains, free traders and of course rogue traders. Many of those can be thought of as effectively separate nations within the Imperium*; and given that unless in port or boarding one another most ships will probably not come within within range for a visual confirmation, a registration prefix would help matters greatly, although odds are it'd only be noted down in the abbreviated form in ships' logs: when used over the vox the full phrasing would probably be used (eg: "This is His Divine Majesty's Ship Venator ...", or "This is the Infusco Niger , of the Vediedi Rogue Trader Flotilla...", noted in logs as HDMS Venator and VRTS Infusco Niger , respectively).
Even without thinking of them as separate states, the sheer number of possible fleets a ship could be registered as a member of would probably make prefixes highly useful and desirable as a means of keeping track.

*Technically, ships belonging to the AdMech are from a separate (though allied) nation.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I agree, I have heard 'HDMS' used in something before, probably Execution Hour.

I used it myself on my ship roster back in the days of playing Battlefleet Gothic!