Right, I'm not the world's best at image hosting, so I really hope this works...

I always really liked the comparative size charts for Star Wars vessels in the old West End Games Dark Empire books, so I thought I'd have a go at putting some together for Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader. These are "best guess" sizes for a handful of Imperial vessels.

img532.imageshack.us/img532/2314/miserichord.png

The sizes for the lunar class vessel, the Pale Sepulchre and the Bountiful Beast are correct, based upon information in Rogue Trader and the Radical's Handbook.

The size of the Emperor class battleship and the Miserichord are guesses on my part, based in part upon descriptions of the vast scale of the MIserichord in DH, and the side by side estimation of the different scale of the BFG miniatures. But I think the scale of these vessels feels right.

And on a slightly lower scale, here's a Sword Class Frigate, a Hound Class Corvette and a Cobra Class destroyer. The Sword class is to the correct scale using the information in Rogue Trader, the Hound Class is a vessel I made up myself, and therefore to scale, and the Cobra Class is my own best guess as to its actual size (say around 750 metres).

img714.imageshack.us/img714/1253/comparitive.png

And the one at the bottom right is a 21st century Nimitz class aircraft carrier on the same scale.

Those really give a true sense of how profoundly massive those things are. Particularly in Rogue Trader, there's a danger you can start chucking around kilometres and crew sizes without really considering what they mean. I also like the supercarrier there for comparison.

When it comes to space combat, you definitely have to take the size of your BFG models (if you're using those) and the corresponding void units with a pinch of salt. Then again, 40k models aren't exactly renowned for being to scale, so I guess most of us are quite accustomed to a skewed sense of size and distance. This helps straighten it out a bit!

Niqvah said:

Aye, and when you consider that the Nimitz has about 5-6k people on board, it really doesn't surprise me to see crew sizes of tens of thousands with the 40k ships.

Niqvah said:

As a bit of a Battlefleet Gothic aficionado, I'd like to chime in here briefly. One of the first points the BFG rulebook makes is the size of space, and scale of the game...namely, that space is utterly enormous. The models are designed to look good, show which ship is which, and be easier to paint. However, when measuring things like gun ranges and movement, you always measure from the plastic stem that holds the ship up—because in the game, that thin plastic bit is a lot closer to the ship's actual size. The clear plastic base the stem inserts into is 'near space' (the space that is close enough to a ship that asteroids, warheads, bomber wings, and nova cannons could effect it). Though they don't give exact scale, that base is supposed to represent an area thousands of kilometres across.

Like I said, just an interesting point. Hope you don't mind me mentioning it!

Of course, you're quite right. As far as BFG goes (and Rogue Trader for that matter), you wouldn't want the models to be exactly to scale, because then it would stop being a tabletop game and start being a football pitch game. Or else you'd be pushing tiny ships about that you're more likely to accidentally inhale than enjoy playing with. It has to be this way to make the game fun.

40k models don't quite have the same excuse as the scale issues I'm referring to are of the classic Guard versus Space Marine variety... but happily this isn't a 40k Forum, so that doesn't need dragging up!

I think it's best to just have fun playing with your models, accepting that it's a representation rather than a precise, scaled overview, and then, when you want to get a proper idea of how things actually are for purposes of roleplay within said representations, you can look at the artwork and reference things like these charts that Lightbringer has produced. Best of both worlds.

Ultimately, we are roleplayers. We ought to be comfortable using a little imagination!

True dat, Niqvah! The charts are just a bit of fun, but the old West End Games charts always helped ground me in the scale of the ships being discussed: that's what I was trying to do here.

Scale is a difficult thing to express, and BFG famously simply dispensed with trying. Nothing wrong with that, but RPGers kind of "live" in the worlds of 40k when playing, so it's useful to have some kind of reference point when dealing with the specifics. That's why I was so pleased when Rogue Trader came out and made everything much clearer.

Of course, and I should say I find work like Lightbringer's utterly fascinating. I didn't mean to comment on the issue of scale with the models in relation to one another, simply the all of the models' scales in relation to the tabletop distances in Battlefleet Gothic.

Wow... And I thought that the Emperor Class Battleship was the biggest. What are the Miserichord and the Bountiful Beast? They're massive!!!

Chaospling said:

The Bountiful Beast may very well be an example of a similar hull to the Excolati-class refinery ships; mentioned on pg. 158 of The Inquisitor's Handbook under the "Bulk Cargo Transport" entry. As to the Misericord, it's mentioned to be unique, so no idea what type of hull is under there in the nougaty center.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Brother Praetus said:

I'm not sure about that. That entry says that "Greathold" ships dwarf all but the Misericord And Emperor Classes and that Excolati are "almost as large" as Greatholds. It looks like the Bountiful Beast might be unique. I'm still amazed at its size, though. The Emperor Class is massive and the Misericord is a unique and ancient monster, but in it's description the Bountiful Beast didn't seem to be all that special. At least from the outside, that is.

numb3rc said:

Right you are. Maybe it's supposed to be an ancient Agro-ship of some sort. But yes, it is massive.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Chaospling said:

The Bountiful Beast is a "Livestock and Victual Mass Conveyance Provender" (spaceborne Abbatoir) from the Radical's Handbook, page 30. It's described as "an irregular fat cylinder nearly 16 kilometres long from stem to stern." So I'm not exaggerating its proportions! I tried making it fatter, but it looked too big, and I tried making it thinner, but it looked ridiculous. At this scale it's huge, but not as massive or heavy as the Miserichord, given that it's mostly filled with open livestock breeding/slaughtering areas. It's also kind of ungainly and inelegant, which fits the source material.

The Misericord is a Chartist ship, described at length in the Dark Heresy Core Rulebook. I thought long and hard about its proportions. On page 158 of the Inquisitor's Handbook, it states that the MIsericord is a "Unique Monstrosity" which is even bigger than the vast bulk cargo vessels. It is explicitly described as being of the same kind of scale as an Emperor class battleship.

Now I'm guessing as to the size and proportions of the Misericord, and indeed the Emperor Class. I knew a Lunar class cruiser was 5km long from Rogue Trader. I have an Emperor Class Battleship BFG miniature and a lunar class, and compared the two by eye. I reckoned that given the size of the Lunar class, an Emperor Class was about 8-9km long, and far more massive, so I scaled it accordingly on the chart.

There are two pictures of the MIsericord, one on page 308 of the DH core rulebook, and one tiny picture of it on the Calixis Sector map on the inside covers of the same book. It is portrayed in both as a rather stubby, bulky ship, with the characteristic prow of a later Imperial vessel.

Given the prominence of the Misericord within the DH source material (and its very groovy write-up in the core book), and it's status as a unique vessel, I opted to make it bigger than an Emperor Class. Many will disagree with this, but I think it is entirely feasible that there are many classes of civilian vessel in the Imperium that are larger than the Emperor Class, and if one deserves to be big, it's the MIsericord! It is effectively a self-contained world, after all. Plus, in the real world, the biggest ships are all civilian bulk transporters. Even Nimitz Class supercarriers are smaller than the largest oil tankers.

So on that basis I made it about 9-10km long and very massive indeed.

I would stress that the only vessels on the first chart where I've drawn my own interpretation of their size are the Emperor Class and the MIsericord. All of the others are based on Dark Heresy material already published.

EDIT: I'm also aware that the second Sandy Mitchell book set in the Calixis Sector deals extensively with the Misericord, but I haven't got around to reading it yet... If anyone can give me any pointers as to any specific mentions as to the size of the ship in the book, I'll amend the chart!

Howdy, I'm a new poster here. I've bought all the Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader books that I can lay my hands on here in Australia and I'm preparing to run my first campaign of Dark Heresy. I've been refereeing RPGs for 26 years and I want to do this campaign right so I've been reading every 40k novel I can find to fully emerse myself in the game universe. I've played maybe a couple of dozen games of tabletop 40k over the years and I love the 40k universe but I'm certainly no expert. I'm trying to bootstrap myself to at least a solid working knowledge level.

I have a question for those more learned about the 40k universe than myself. Is it possible that the Misericord large troop transport mentioned in the Horus Heresy books is in fact the same vessel as the Misericord chartist vessel in the Calixis Sector in the 41st millenium. When I say the same vessel I don't mean looking the same obviously. I mean could the original Misericord be the long-buried core structure of the chartist Misericord? I know the Misericord in the 41st millenium is a conglomerate structure made up of entire ships and parts of ships which have been added to the structure over (at least) centuries. I haven't yet read all of the Horus Heresy novels so for all I know the original Misericord may have been destroyed 10,000 years before. If so fair enough. But if the novels don't mention the original Misericord being destroyed is it at least plausible that the two vessels are one and the same?

Hey, Targan, welcome aboard!

I must admit I haven't read all the Horus Heresy books, so I can't comment on whether the Misericord in those books is the same one that appears in the Calixis Sector 10,000 odd years later. But I'm certainly prepared to accept that it COULD be the same vessel. Imperial ships are often thousands of years old, and you would expect that they've been modified many many times over their long lives.

Is there any description of the MIsericord you mention in the Horus Heresy book? How does it match up with the one from Dark Heresy?

EDIT: I've just noticed that the original comparative size chart at the head of this thread appears broken - sorry about that, don't know what happened there. I've uploaded the image again, hompefully this should work (I'm a technical ignoramus):-

img710.imageshack.us/img710/2314/miserichord.png

In "Innocence proves nothings" the Misericord is discribe as a congloramtion of several ships, and it is visible from the outside.

Inside it may habben that when you enter a new section, you stop walking over the floor. Instead yo are walking on what was once a wall or roof of a corridor.

It is immense and certainly bigger than an Emporer class BB.

Greetings

Wolflord

Lightbringer said:

The Misericord in the Horus Heresy books is first mentioned in the first book of the series Horus Rising. In that book it is described as being a "battle barge" and I get the impression that it is a sizeable vessel, probably a slow, heavily armed and armoured variety of bulk troop transport. It is chosen by the Warmaster Horus to be the location of a council of war in high anchorage above the planet dubbed Murder, the home of a xeno race called the Megarachnid.I have by no means yet completed a comprehensive search of the Horus Heresy novels but from what I have gleaned so far the Misericord had multiple embarkation decks (an obvious requirement for a vessel carrying large numbers of combat-ready troops).

Then there is this pasage: "They assembled for council in the strategium of the Misericord, a massive rotunda situated behind the barge's main bridge". The "they" mentioned are the Warmaster himself, the four highest ranking company captains of his personal Astartes legion, the Master of the 140th Expedition Fleet Mathanual August (a grand admiral basically), representatives of two other Astartes legions and a number of high ranking Imperial Army commanders. The fact that the Warmaster chose to hold this council aboard the Misericord and not his own flagship suggests to me that it must have been a vessel of some significance. It may also have been used as the ground-operations headquarters for the 140th Expedition Fleet.

Interesting stuff, Targan....I had actually read Horus Rising, but completely missed the reference to a ship called the MIsericord, probably because I read it before DH came out!

If they ARE the same ship, it would explain the vast size of the Misericord in the DH setting. Space Marine Battle Barges are huge vessels, and if the DH Misericord is an amalgamation of lots of other vessels too, it would be even bigger. Perhaps the DH Misericiord contains the ancient angines, Gellar fields etc of the Battle Barge, which give it enough power to heave its vast bulk around...

Dan Abnett is credited as a writer for part of the Dark Heresy rulebook. It's never clear which sections were witten by which person, but I had wondered if the Misericord section was his. It's certainly gothic and colourful enough. It struck me it was either his creation or that of Reason, another DH writer who has a very vivid, colourful gothic style. If it was written by Abnett, it would kind of follow that the two ships are the same vessel.

Plus, of course, it means that the DH Misericord is over 10,000 years old and a former traitor marine chapter battlebarge, which makes it all the more interesting as a setting....

Lightbringer said:

Perhaps it was badly damaged in battle late in the Horus Heresy conflicts and was paid off, later being refurbished and issued with a civlian charter of trade?

I've been loving reading the backlog of threads on this forum. Some really good discussions. You guys rock.

Remember at that point there wasn't a worry about things being tainted (quite possible because they hadn't yet retreated to the eye of terror to be tainted) and with technology being so revered they wouldn't have thrown it away.

Maybe it was intercepted on the way to the Eye (which is one sector away from Calixis) and abandoned or captured. Perhaps it took serious damage during the fight. Although it may have been pressed into service as a troop ship for the Imperial Army or a Loyalsist Space Marine legion. Of course it's battle damage and hasty repairs would have meant that it was relegated to cargo transport.