Editing Planet Killer (section)

== In-Universe History ==

No one knows where Abaddon managed to pick the Planet Killer up and Abby isn't saying anything either.

There are two, mutually-contradictory origins presented for it. One story is by [[Gav Thorpe]] from an old issue of White Dwarf, who says Abaddon found the plans for the Planet Killer in a halo world, then press-ganged a renegade Forge World into building it for him. A more updated story in the 8th Ed Chaos Codex says that during the 10th Black Crusade, Abaddon found an ancient and abandoned shipyard deep in the Eye of Terror that contained the hull of a half-finished ship, which would be the Planet Killer. Regardless, whether Abby had the tech-priests build it from scratch or finished what the ancient owners of the ship started: he eventually completed the Planet Killer by 139.M41 and flew it for a test drive during the [[Gothic War]].

The ship gained infamy among the Imperials for being the Despoiler's flagship during the entirety of the 12th [[Black Crusade]]. Its armaments ended the cardinal world of Savaven, while the debris field that once was the three moons of Stranivar bear eternal witness to its wrath. Techpriests say that the Planet Killer's design is not possible to be constructed in reality (for some reason), and the reality-bending bullshit of the Warp was main culprit on how it was able to be completed. As to how it continued to function in realspace without breaking apart: it might have something to do with the several daemons a Chaos sorcerer named Zaraphiston bound into the vessel.

As mentioned above, it's main gun and namesake is the Armageddon gun, a forward-facing septuple-barreled energy weapon of gargantuan size that fires with such intensity that a single salvo from it is capable of killing a planet and anything else between it, although it does take time to charge and fire, which leaves it vulnerable. The gun is huge and the ship is pretty much built around the bulk of the gun itself, so its roughly half of the Planet Killer's size. To aid in anti-ship combat, it's also armed with an array of lance batteries, torpedo launchers, and assorted AA guns, along with a powerful shield generator and armor plating rivaling a Gloriana-class battleship.

Despite this, the Planet Killer is solely designed as an anti-planetary ship, not a battleship. While it does have an array of conventional ship heavy weapons and heavy armor plating: they're not nearly enough to fend off an entire fleet by itself, in comparison to the Primarchs' [[Gloriana-class Battleship]]s. Additionally, the Armageddon gun is a clumsy weapon in void combat, as the Planet Killer moves too slow to reposition itself and how long the gun charges to fire. Due to this, the Planet Killer needs an escort fleet, if it ever runs into a decently-sized enemy battlefleet in space.