Chainsword

The chainsword weds a blade's reach to the savagery of an industrial saw. Its edge is a fast-moving loop of powered teeth driven around a central track by a motor set in the hilt, and where an ordinary blade must be swung with force to bite, a chainsword needs only to be pressed against its victim. The shrieking teeth do the rest, chewing through ceramite, carapace, bone and sinew and flinging the wreckage of a body in every direction.

It is the favoured close-combat weapon of the Space Marines, who carry marvellously wrought examples etched with battle-honours and Chapter iconography. Yet the pattern is far older and far more common than the Astartes alone. Guard sergeants, hive-gangers, Sisters of Battle and Chaos renegades all wield crude or ornate versions, for the design is simple enough to be forged in a million manufactorums and brutal enough to end almost any duel.

Warriors rev their chainswords before a charge, filling the air with a rising howl that unsettles even hardened foes. The weapon is unsubtle and unforgiving; a glancing blow that a true blade might survive becomes, with a chainblade, a maiming wound. In the press of boarding actions and trench assaults, where firepower gives way to butchery, the chainsword remains the Imperium's blunt, screaming answer to the question of what to do when the enemy is close enough to touch.