Manticore

The Manticore is a rocket artillery piece mounted on a Chimera-based chassis, capable of loosing annihilating barrages over tremendous distances. It carries four great rockets, and in ages past could arm them with a wide array of warheads: high-explosive fragmentation, incendiary oxy-phosphor, high-altitude gas, even surface-to-air interceptors that gave it a role as an air-defence weapon.

That versatility has dimmed with the centuries. As forge worlds fell and technical lore slipped into myth, the standard set down by the Departmento Munitorum became four Storm Eagle rockets and little else. Each Storm Eagle is a two-stage, solid-fuel missile that screams to speeds of some three hundred metres per second once clear of the launch rails, streaking far beyond the sight of its crew.

For all the crudity of the wider Guard's artillery, the Manticore is a sophisticated machine, steering its missiles with audio-modulated radio control, gyroscopic stabilisation and radar tracking, a far cry from the blunt Earthshaker cannon. It remains an ancient engine, its lineage stretching back to the earliest days of the Imperium. Fired in a single thunderous salvo, its rockets can flatten a fortified position, break an armoured formation or scour an entire swathe of infantry from the field, and more than one battle has been decided by the fall of its shots.