The Battle Barge

The Battle Barge is the pride and stronghold of a Space Marines Chapter, the largest and most revered vessel in its fleet and often a fortress-monastery in its own right. These ancient warships are relics beyond price, many dating to the Great Crusade itself, their hulls layered with battle-honours and their reclusiams heavy with the relics of heroes ten thousand years dead. To serve aboard one is to walk the same decks as one's Primarch's earliest sons.

Unlike the ponderous battleships of the Imperial Navy, a Battle Barge is built for one purpose above all: to deliver the Adeptus Astartes to war. Vast launch-bays and drop-pod silos line its flanks, and its assault ramps can disgorge an entire company in a single thunderous descent. Its armour is thick enough to shrug off broadsides that would gut lesser ships, allowing it to close to point-blank range and vomit forth its lethal cargo of transhuman warriors.

Bristling with bombardment cannon capable of cracking a planet's crust, the Battle Barge is as much siege-engine as transport. When one enters orbit above a world, its very presence is a death-sentence pronounced upon the enemies of Mankind, for behind its guns wait the Angels of Death, and they do not come to negotiate.