Editing Aprior Sector (section)

== Technologies ==

In their long isolation, the Apriori have had to develop novel technologies to fill gaps left by lack of access to [[Forge World|Forge Worlds]] and other [[STC]] patterns.  While much of their technology is inferior to the ancient relics in size, mass, or performance, the losses are more than outweighed by the gain in other areas, like ease of repair and mass-production.  A techno-relic may have better performance in a smaller, lighter package, but when it fails, it is gone forever; on the other hand, the Apriori counterpart may be restored to functionality or replaced by one if its siblings, while hundreds more are rolling off the assembly lines to be pressed into service.

===STC's===
The majority of novel STC's claimed by the Tech Adepts in the Aprior System are militaristic in nature, relics from the outermost reaches of the Great Crusade and more warlike times even before then.  

'''Invisibility STC'''- The first one lays down the groundwork for superior visual stealth systems, though it is actually very costly to produce due to the STC being somewhat corrupted from time.  The complete systems are utilized exclusively by the Knights Inductor for now until the relatively rare materials needed for the system's production can be simplified or replaced.  Virtually all Knight Inductor power armor features a lesser form of this visual distortion technology while the Terminator armor alone has the space to house a complete stealth generator.  Contrary to what most outsiders believe, the original stealth systems are not based off of Tau technology, though influences and later assimilation did later incorporate Tau aspects into the design to increase efficiency.  It was this assumption that caused great tensions between the Apriori Mechanicus and their more traditional counterparts.  

'''Impakt Armor'''- The second STC is for a lighter armor composite that can stand up to the penetrating power of bolt weapons, though it only has limited kinetic dispersal capabilities.  Unlike the stealth system STC, this composite is very easy to produce and the Apriori Guard have completely phased out flak and carapace jackets in favor of the lighter and more durable Impakt Armor.  The only drawback if it even is one is that there is little room for improvement to Impakt Armor, the design being highly optimized to begin with.  Power Armor also proves itself to be more durable so Impakt armor finds little use amongst the Knights.  Aprior Scientists find the way the composition is melded together to form a stronger whole more interesting than the components themselves, hoping to apply the technique to even more durable materials.

As with all technology the Apriori Tech Adepts would be more than happy to share their findings with the greater Imperium... were it not for the Adeptus Mechanicus mistakenly deeming such technology as heresy against the Omnissiah.  They are well aware of the perversions of technology that the R&D departments of the Apriori Mechanicus makes on a daily basis and link that to the "STC" technology that the Apriori Armed Forces use.

===Research and Development===
The Apriori Adeptus Mechanicus has three major branches or departments in terms of developing technology.  Simply put, there is Applied Research, Domestic Application Development, and Military Application Development.  

For a simple example, we'll take the small headway into reverse engineering gravitic manipulation by study of the Landspeeder design.  Enough was gleaned from the merest fragment of the STC to grant the Tech Adepts to apply the anti-gravity concepts and technology they learned to other things.  This is '''Applied Research''', testing and experimenting with what they had to work with to partially recreate a forgetten technology.

'''Domestic Application Development''' is the use of the knowledge taken from Applied Research to better the lives of civilians and planetary populations in general.  The anti-grav trains running on the advanced planets in the Aprior Sector are an example of such.  They are improved and function based off of the technology gained from Applied Research and are continually developed to be more efficient.

'''Military Application Development''' for the gravitic manipulation technology can be summed up in the massive headway made into the Gravitic Accelerator Cannon and its derivatives.  The ability to fling a suitable projectile using a controlled series of gravity wells even faster than a Tau Rail Cannon is something currently being developed for widespread use in the Apriori Armed Forces.  The Grav Mass Driver is a massively downsized version of the GAC, meant for eventual use with standard infantry not unlike Pulse Rifles of the Tau, though the materials needed to make it aren't cheap, and the massive recoil means it can only be used by those in Trooper armor or better.  The biggest example of the GAC technology series would be the Harbinger.  It is a bow mounted weapon of massive proportions that takes up much of the length of a Strike Cruiser, and it fires with the force and power of Necron technology.  It currently out-ranges all Imperial space weapons and has such an extreme effective range that making it accurate for "space artillery" use is becoming an issue.  Applications like these are what may save humanity from falling in the face of encroaching enemies...

===Technological Breakthroughs===
The following is a more comprehensive list of what a little over one thousand three hundred years of relative peace and hard research brought to the Aprior Sector...

*'''Skimmer Drives'''- Gleaned from the capture of a Tau ship and with help of the Underminer and other Tau engineers, it allows for limited but highly accurate semi-Warp jumps.  The violent Warp currents makes even short-distance hops by Warp Drive extremely dangerous, but ships equipped with skimmer drives can jump without fear. Skirting the boundary between the Materium and the Warp, a ship so equipped avoids all but the very strongest Warp currents. While not quite as fast as a Warp Drive for the same reasons, skimmer drives execute much safer and more predictable jumps, capable of delivering entire fleets in close formation with little trouble.  With improved cogitator logic engines and inertial dampeners, this provides devastating mobility in space warfare.  It however cannot be mounted on ships of older designs, as they have proved too risky to modify so extensively.  
*'''Multiple Void Shield Emitter Array'''- By using alternating emitters this array effectively doubles the number of Void Shields a ship can boast, or prolong the lifespan of its existing shield system considerably.  However it is only able to be mounted on more modern Aprior ships, as the power required to maintain a system of fallback Void shields cannot use standard Plasma fusion generators
*'''Cold Fusion Reactor'''- Only three Strike Cruisers in the entire Apriori Armed Forces and the Knights Inductor Chapter Fleet boast the Cold Plasmatic Fusion Reactor.  By meticulously lowering the required energy to initiate a reaction, the reactor is able to put out power roughly equal to a plasma reactor while being many times more efficient.  So great is the power provided with multiple cold fusion reactors, that the current ships armed with this reactor run the reactors at quarter strength most times to avoid overloading current systems.  Should the Apriori Mechanicus manage to implement this and other innovated technologies in the Chapter's Battle Barges or the largest ships in the AS Fleet, the possibilities are almost unfathomable.  
*'''Lux Prismatic Crystal'''- Study of Eldar Fire Prisms have led to the development of the Lux Prismatic Crystal, which focuses light energy into a more penetrating and direct form that bores through adamantium armor with ease.  Upgraded lasweapons of all kinds however have to put more charge into each shot, cutting down energy capacity to about half the amount of typical shots.  The sheer penetrating power can be traded off for a higher rate of fire if presented with more numerous, lightly armored targets.  The fact that the crystal is the only upgrade to the rifle and extensive modifications are not necessary, virtually all lasguns wielded by the Apriori Imperial Guard have the potential bring down an Astartes with a few well-placed beams.  Replacing the bolt weapons of the Knights Inductor have been considered but most of the Astartes prefer the stopping power of a bolt and with Kraken bolts being standard, are not lacking in armor piercing ability either.  However, the Knights do make use of the larger if more complicated Lux Cannon, a Lascannon with a larger version of the focus crystal installed, and the Beam of Undying Light which is an upgraded ship-based Lance weapon with the Lux crystal.
*'''Nanomite Booster Machines'''- Arguably the most controversial technology the Tech Master of the Knights Inductor has come up with, it allows for near instant internal repair of organs, tissue, and bones.  Based upon nano-scarabs kept in stasis by the eccentric Master of the Forge and nearly a hundred years of intensive study, these machines are used exclusively by the Knights Inductor in deference to how expensive they are to make and the sheer superstition surrounding them.  It has also been discovered that by binding the microscopically sized repair scarabs to a vehicle's machine spirit, they can be directed to repair the vehicle's "injuries" as well.
*'''MkI Damocles Powered Assault Armor'''- The current generation of powered armor used by the entire Knights Inductor, it is considered to be Tech Master Gajet's finest creation.  It took over 200 years of development, 82 prototypes for testing, and several tons of oily recaf in order for this armor to be created.  It features first-aid nanomite boosters incorporated into the armor and is linked up with the power armor's machine spirit to target the worst of the Knight's injuries, essentially a built-in narthecium of sorts.  The gravitic impellers serve to reduce the weight of the armor, allowing the Knight to be able to move faster and longer in his armor, and includes small thrusters in place of the backpack's exhaust ports to provide huge bursts of speed.  While initially difficult to control (the testing was highly amusing to the eccentric Master of the Forge), a practiced Knight can use the impellers to traverse great distances within the space of a few seconds.  Scouts go into Incursion squads now not only to get close combat training out of the way, but also to get used to the general motion of gravitic impellers in the form of their jump packs.  All of this is powered by a Cold Plasmatic Fusion Micro-Reactor, which provides the power necessary to use the Gravitic Impellers to their full capacity.  
*'''Inertial Dampeners'''- While the Knights have never captured a Necron vessel and never have even come close to doing so, extensive study on their inertialess drives and the research data on gravitic manipulation have allowed the Knights to come up with a technological compromise.  By creating an anti-acceleration field that can be manipulated as a fast moving object shifts direction or brakes on a second's notice, the Knights have been able to development a form of inertial dampeners that allow their vessels to make maneuvers that would've otherwise torn the vessel in two.  While still a far cry from their Necron counterparts, this form of intertialess drive has been able to be implemented on virtually all ships in the Aprior Battle Fleet, giving them a huge advantage versus slower Imperial ships and helping them to keep on about average footing with Eldar and even Dark Eldar ships, much to the latter's surprise.

=== Vehicles ===

;Cerberus Rapid Response Vehicle: A wheeled variant of the [[Chimera Transport| Chimera Armoured Transport]] employed by the Aprior Sector Armed Forces.  It is slightly less capable of negotiating broken terrain than its parent vehicle, but it is much more mobile in urban and open environments, and its wheels require significantly less maintenance than heavy tracks.  Unarmed Cerberus vehicles are often used by planetary governments and other non-military organizations as ambulances, firetrucks, and cargo carriers.

;Fenris Battle Tank: The Adeptus Mechanicus guilds working in the Aprior Sector keep track of every maintenance report generated when their products are brought in for repair.  That way, they can identify patterns of problems and improve future production runs.  One of the workshops contracted to build [[Leman Russ Battle Tank | Leman Russ Battle Tanks]] for the sector's [[Imperial Guard | Imperial Guard regiment]]s, Staalus Armorworks, found themselves needing to make too many compromises when they tried to modify the Russ in response to post-battle reports, and decided to make a bold gamble.  They spent years testing designs and retooling their production lines to create a novel battle tank that addressed every identified shortcoming.  The result was the Fenris Battle Tank, a lower, sleeker vehicle that resembled a miniature [[Baneblade]] with some features of the [[Predator Tank]].  It was a marvel of engineering, superior to the Russ in almost every respect, but it was also more expensive to produce, required a much longer training program for crews to master it completely, and only shared a few common components with the Russ.  For ease of maintenance and interoperability with other Imperial Guard regiments, the Apriori regiments stuck with the dependable Leman Russ.  Staalus had not lost all of their Leman Russ production lines, and thus retained some of its contracts, but their gamble cost them a great deal of Russ production capacity, which forced them to surrender many of their contracts to other workshops.  As for the Fenris, only Staalus's own Skitarii and their world's PDF chose to use it; the production lines lie cold and the majority of Fenrises produced wait in storage.

;Sky-shroud Drop Pod: Sky-shroud Drop Pods do not carry Marines like regular Drop Pods, but break up in mid-flight, releasing decoys that look like Drop Pods to ground sensors and clouds of metallic sensor-blinding chaff.  They are sometimes used to provide cover for an orbital assault, making it impossible for ground defenses to target arriving forces, or on their own, to feint the enemy into responding to a false attack, exposing their capabilities and drawing them out.

;Valkyrie Avenger: The Knights Inductor saw a need for a vehicle for covertly delivering small power-armored strike teams – the [[Thunderhawk]] was far too big for the task, while the Land Speeder Storm was too small.  The Apriori tech-priests of Apodidax Aeronautics created a variant of the Valkyrie to fill that role (as the [[Stormraven]] STC pattern was limited to the Grey Knights and Blood Angels, and unknown to the Apriori).  Modifications include increased armor and engine capacity, as well as internal adjustments to accommodate powered armor.  Unfortunately, the Stormraven STC was later released to all Space Marine Chapters who desired it; when one of Apodidax's competitors won the contract to build them for the Knights Inductor, Apodidax found itself in dire financial straits...at least until they got the contract to build Avengers and Sky Talons for the Aprior Sector's Imperial Guard and PDF regiments.

=== Weapons ===

;Gravity-Manipulation Mass Driver ("grav-driver") : From their study of various anti-grav STC patterns (like the [[Land Speeder]] and [[servo-skull]]), not to mention xenos hover-vehicles, the Apriori have developed a general-purpose theory of gravity manipulation.  Its latest application is the grav-driver, where a high-intensity localized gravity field accelerates a projectile to many times the speed of sound, while anti-grav plates in the barrel make it nearly frictionless.  Besides the projectile, the grav-driver has no moving parts in the firing mechanism, which means it is more reliable and capable of a higher theoretical rate of fire than most bolt, auto, and stub weapons.  Its solid slug is also less prone to losing energy over distance or through obstacles than a lascannon's beam, and its ballistic nature means that it can strike targets beyond visual range.  The most common form of this is the Gravitic Accelerator Cannon or GAC, an ordnance weapon used for destroying fortifications and heavy armor.  Other weapons of the same class include the infantry-portable Gravitic Mass Driver Rifle, the high-rate-of-fire Gravitic Repeater Cannon, a vehicle-mounted weapon which fires smaller slugs at an extremely high rate of fire, for destroying massed infantry and light armor, and even incoming missiles and rockets, the super-heavy Unity-pattern grav-driver, and the Strike Cruiser mounted Harbinger cannon.  Combined with the skimmer drive, a flanking volley across a vanguard of battleships can instantly cripple a small fleet.  The Apriori Armed Forces and the Knights Inductor together own three Strike Cruisers armed with the latest technology available at the time of the Damnos Crusade against the Sector.    

;Sagitta missile: Noting that most armored vehicles are less armored on top and on the bottom than they are on the front, several Apriori foundries have worked to develop missiles that target these weak areas.  Missiles that flew low to the ground to attack vehicles' vulnerable undersides seemed promising in laboratory tests, but proved unfeasible in the field as no logic engine small enough to fit in a missile could execute the course corrections required to avoid hills, vegetation, and other obstacles.  Other workshops experimented with missiles that tunneled through the earth, but found that such devices could only have a very limited range (the tech-priests who devised the mole launcher for the [[Death Korps of Krieg]] ran into the same issue, but because the Death Korps usually form siege regiments, their engineers would not be fighting at long ranges anyway, so it was not considered a problem).  The design that caught the eye of the Apriori armed forces (and brought a great deal of good fortune for the workshop that made it) was the Sagitta, a missile that flies up immediately after launch, and then dives onto the vulnerable upper armor of its target.  Many enemies that rely on heavy armor have found their advances halted with a storm of death from above.

''(More to come.)''

[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]
[[Category:Imperial]]
[[Category:Knights Inductor]]
[[Category:/tg/ 40,000]]