Thanatar Siege-automata

The Thanatar Siege-automata was a war-robot built for a single grim purpose: to shatter whatever stood before it. Larger and more heavily armoured than the Castellax, the Thanatar bore the dreaded Hellex plasma mortar, a weapon whose sun-hot shells could scatter a formation of infantry or crack open a bunker in a single blinding detonation. Where a Mechanicum host met a fortified line, the Thanatar was brought forward to break it, its cortex-mind coldly ranging its mortar with a precision no living gunner could match. Slow but implacable, it advanced under the protection of lesser automata and laid down a barrage that few defences could endure. The engine embodied the Mechanicum's faith that any problem of war could be solved by the correct application of overwhelming force, and its arrival on a battlefield signalled that the priesthood had judged a position worthy of annihilation. In the Schism, Thanatars turned their fury upon the forge-worlds that had built them.