Not trying to spill too much, as some of my players read a few of the boards here every now and then, but I've hit a point where I'd like some sanity checking done on a few ideas. That said, I know that the W40K is vague on purpose so that people write in their own stuff to personalize it; I understand that, but at the same time I'd like to make sure some of what's bouncing around in my head isn't so outlandishly outside canon/fluff that it would break immersion for me to run with it all.

I've read a lot of fluff, to include the Horus Heresy series up to the latest book, the Thousand Sons and Prospero Burns being the most pertinant here, but my memory isn't perfect, so in specific,

When the Thousand Sons were ordered to return to Prospero:

1) I've always heard (but never confirmed 1st person) that a decent amount of the 1KS never returned to Prospero, and their absence was one of the 'nails in the coffin' as it were that convinced others that they were traitors in addition to Magnus inadvertently blowing up the Emperor's webway project. Has anyone else heard this or care to confirm?

From what I remember reading, the 1KS were more or less ordered home in shame, almost to the point of lock and key;.

2) Would it be plausible that 1KS ships or those carrying them would have some sort of hexagrammatically (or otherwise) warded seclusion capsules on board, primarily for use as meditative chambers (which explains why they're warded, keeps out the noise), but also usable as medical stowage for severely wounded 1KS or perhaps even some of the 1KS that started to mutate but hadn't gone full tentacle-terror yet (hence the stasis fields), etc ?

3) Would it be plausible that, given the assumption #1 is true, in the face of a surprise warp squall that the 1KS senior marine order (or the ship's captain, flotilla Commodore, etc ask) that the 1KS marines stow themselves in said seclusion modules, primarily to shelter them from the incoming warp storm? I'd figure the senior Marine would do this to shelter the psykers, and the Navy commanders might do this to keep their charges out of the way unless needed.

I've read quite a bit that once someone get's brain-in-a-jarred and put in a dreadnought that it's pretty permanent.

4) Given the assumption #3 is true, would they decant the 1KS in the dreadnoughts for storage as well? Put them into "stand-by"?

Which leads to the fact that 'm not really familiar with the care and feeding of dreadnoughts as a whole...

5) I'm fairly sure I remember reading something about how dreadnoughts would be shut down for extended periods of time until they were needed, but I don't remember seeing anything on how this was accomplished... do they just dose em with some kind of soporific and flip off all the power knobs, is there some kind of stasis field in the dreadnought they activate and power everything else off, do they pull the pilot out to do any of this?

6) Anyone have any links or other info on the 1KS command structure, etc? If I'm going to use any of this, I'd like to be able to name the more senior people involved, but I'm at a loss as to where to begin other than it can't be anyone in the Thousand Sons/Prospero Burns book. Will probably have to just improvise, but a more thorough understanding of the 1KS would definitely be appreciated.

All that aside, a few other questions:

A task force returning to Prospero from the Crusades would have more than a few ships in the flotilla, or would be a battle barge in and of itself..

7) I haven't really seen anything nailing down what exactly a battle barge is, other than not-small and filled with angry beatface that wants to hurt you. Would it be safe to assume that the label is much like "flagship" where it's accorded to any capital ship (cruiser and larger) carrying a sizable space marine contingent and used as a base of operations? I also acknowledge that there are a few classes of ships that primarily are used as battle-barges, but they vary in size/capabilities enough that I'm trying to get a general feel for what people think.

8) Would it be reasonable for a sizable battle-barge (ie. battleship+ sized) to carry its own forges, etc to be as independent as possible?

9) Assuming 7 is true, would one figure these forges might make use of STCs in some form or fashion to aid the production of wargear / ammunition?

10) Seeing as the vessel in question is pre-Horus Heresy, what do you figure the likelyhood of the presence of Knight Walkers would be? Ie. Scale of size: Dreadnought -> Knight Walker -> Titan) This is taking into account that this is a rediculously massive ship and scads and oodles of space intent on operating for extreme periods of time behind enemy lines. I'd almost liken it to a battleship with a construction yard in it, with some light carrier functions.

That should be enough for now. Thanks for reading this far

For the last section, Battle Barges are explained here .

The Horus Heresy books, especially Mechanicum, indicate that combat ships often don't carry their own forges for the production of arms and ammo, and so require resupply/forge ships that produce ammunition in order to be able to be operational at reduced capacity, and regular supply drops from forge worlds or their home world in order to operate at maximum capacity.

MILLANDSON said:

Cool, thanks for the link, that'll help a fair amount in how I put things together. Now if I could only get people to comment on the rest of my post, I'll be much happier. Getting comments on some subjects around here is like pulling teeth, which is funny, because I know there are some people around that are probably foaming at the mouth when they read something like that.

I haven't read Prospero burns so I do not know what happened there.

About dreadnoughts:

the marine is encased in a sarcophagus. When they 'store' the dreadbnought as far as I have heard they remove the sarcophagus from the rest of the machine. I guess the marines inside are then put into a sort of stasis.

Knight Walkers are as far as I understand a part of the Legio Titanicum and as such exclusive to the Adeptus Mechanicus. I would not expect them to see with space marines.

Octus said:

Correct, in the fluff I remember, as more and more Titans came online, the Knight Walkers were relegated to guarding Mars and that's about it... thing that got me was that, IIRC, at the time of the Heresy, Knight Walkers were in-use during the Crusades. I don't remember the exact dimensions of a Walker other than 'Bigger than a breadbox, smaller than a Titan' so I was pondering if they needed dedicated deployment platform/ships like the Titans did, or if they were small enough to stuff onto larger craft... and if they could stuff them onto larger craft, I'd say that giving the Mechanicus a small section of the ship to use as Walker maintenance/transport might not have been such a bad idea.

It's also my understanding that the Mechanicus cannot replicate the Walker anymore and that by M41-42ish there really weren't any of them left. Dunno how accurate that understanding is, aside from the "Can't build em anymore" bit.

Also, for you guys that have replied and anyone entertaining the idea of dropping info off, I really do appreciate any effort you guys put into it, and I'm sure my players will enjoy it as well, as every detail I can glean from you guys, either from links or the discussion itself, will hopefully make my sessions a heck of a lot better and non-immersion breaking.

This blog has some good images of Knight's in comparission to Marines for scales sake. And here is the Lexicanum link about Knight's, it explains that they are still in use in M41.

I agree that Battle Barges don't have their own forges, although it wouldn't break fluff for a really large ship to manufacture it's own ammo and maybe even small arms.

I think Dreadnoughts may just stand there and 'sleep' when not in use. In their own little corner of a Chapter (Legions) forge getting regular rubs of holy ungents and scented oils.

As to the locations of the 1KSons it is more than reasonable that some didn't make it home in time to be killed by Space Wolves or teleported away. I mean the Blood Ravens had to come from somewhere right?

Drake Pendragon said:

This is the part where I facepalm and wonder why I didn't find that one on my own. There's a lot of good background info there that I was unaware of. As for the Blood Ravens, the way I figure it, and correct me if you think I'm wrong, is that there has always been a geneseed levee against the space marines, both to allow testing of the seed to check for corruption, etc, and to bank up extra seed in the case of castastrophe. I'd always figured the Ravens were formed using the seed tithe from the 1KS long after they split to Team Chaos, probably after the Mechanicus Biologis spent a few centuries/millenium poring over the seed looking for corruption and purifying it.

As for the Barge having a full forge, after reading around on the various links and talking to some other people, I'm pretty certain it wouldn't have a full forge, but like you said, it wouldn't be a stretch for it to have smaller manufactorums for ammo and small arms production, seeing as they'd chew through their normal ammo stores at a prodigious rate to begin with. I'll probably have the targeted task force in my game consist of a Battle Barge, a hand full of Strike Cruisers, and a forge ship or three... maybe throw an escort carrier in there for giggles.

The presence of a forge on a Battle barge would all depend on the nature of the Chapter. After the Heresy, fleet based Chapters like the Black Templars would more than likely incorporate forges on some of their Barges. Also, it stands to reason that highly technically oriented Chapters such as the Salamanders, Iron Hands, and maybe Iron Warriors would have forges on a Barge. Some of the Salamanders ships are called Forgeships, IIRC.

You know, I wish I could just outline and detail the exact scenario I've been plotting up. It'd make this so much easier... Sucks that my players read these forums too!

The new Rogue Trader supplement mentions a component on a ship can be used to manufacure small weapons and the like (hadn't read it through yet).

As for the Thousand Sons? You may check out the novel of the same name. They had gone home to refit and rest after fighting alongside the Space Wolves. They were summoned to the Council where the use of sorcery and psychic powers was put an end to. Magnus had his vision of the Betrayal of Horus and took his Legion to speed home to decipher the meaning of the vision and to see how he can stop it. He wasn't banished to his homeworld, he just wanted to see if he can save Horus from turning traitor, and failing that to warn his Father.

This being said, there were Thousand Sons out and about. Maybe on journeys of self-discovery and learning? One such Thousand Son was Captain of a small starship. He aided in the destruction of the Furious Abyss as best he could. He did not survive the story that I recall, fighting a daemon. So there could be a handful of Thousand Sons out there, but they would not be protected by the flesh change if Ahriman's spell didn't effect them that is. They could be Loyalists still, but they would not be welcomed as Thousand Sons. They would be hunted by the Imperium at large unless they could broker a deal with the Inquisition and change their name, heraldry, and so on. This could be the secret origin of the Blood Ravens, though some work would have been done to stabalize their gene seed. Otherwise, they could be a whole different Chapter that has to constantly reign in their powers lest the Flesh Change take them. Because of this, they would not work with other Chapters often due to being branded with Chaos taint because of mutations (see Soul Drinkers). They may not even be a authorized Chapter at all, though many would not question the authority of a Space Marine to exist as a Chapter unless they were of high enough stature within the Imperium. They would best then be seen outside of normal Imperium authority.

About the warded chambers again the book of the same name as the chapter gives the impression that the 1KS used his personal chambers for meditation etc. its not beyond reason to think that this would be warded, I would imagine a larger ship would have a couple of larger areas for general use of the Marines, with Captians maybe having personal chambers of their own.

There's certainly mention in 1KS of some battle-brothers not being on Prosperro.

Meditations chambers on ships... sounds viable to me. Although the Geller Field stops any warp influence within the ship and if it fails, the vessel is basically screwed. So aside from a nice smell of sandlewood and some comfortable throw-cushions, I'm not sure what extra solace a meditation area would offer. Still: It's viable that they might have them.

Given the size of Imperial ships, you can fit a forge on there if you like. They are after all vast things.

The Legion is organised into Chapters, it seems. I can't remember the details if they're mentioned. It might not be a reach to use the 'existing' 40k structure for each one, and assume each to be a battalion-like formation within the regiment of 1KS. Then there are the cults, each of which has a head, although the cults are generally not an organisational unit, and troops within squads come from a mix of cults to ensure tactical flexibility.

As others have said: I believe Dreads are put into Stasis. However, I don't recall any mention of Dreads in the book. And it seems that the Grey Knights and the Blood Angels are the only Chapters who use Psyker Dreads for some reason. It may well be that such things don't exist because of mental stability issues or something. So it may well be that there simply are no 1KS dreads, as all the brothers are psykers to some degree it seems. Alternatively, it may be that this lesson hasn't been learned yet and that psyker Dreads might have been constructed, and might go completely insane in an unpleasant way, ED209 style.