Editing Nobledark Imperium Notes (section)

== Fallen ==

=== Murder-Class Cruisers and other Fallen warships ===

There is an in-universe explanation for the human forces of Chaos having vessels that function as Ironclads to the Imperium's Frigates, and while "Cronedar did it" is an easy explanation, it probably shouldn't be a universal one. For instance, having the Hellbringer-class ships be essentially vessels that fell to Chaos and got pimped out with Cronedar scraps, making them fast and hard-hitting raiders that are rather fragile due to being patch-jobs, is something that makes sense. However, its unlikely the Traitor Marines and any humans who didn't get their brains melted when they turned would be willing to rely completely on the Cronedar for ships.

Enter the Murder-class Cruiser, mainstay of the non-Cronedar forces of Chaos, and the first instance on the scale of ship-class that follows the design theme of the Ironclads- it's slow and somewhat difficult to perform complex maneuvers in, but makes up for it with a damn-tough hide that even armor-piercing weaponry can take time to cut through.

As for how they came about in the first place, well, the short of it is that they were initially a project undertaken by a sect of the Mechanicus in the pursuit of finding a way to recreate Neutronium. The theories were sound, and along the lines of "Stuff is easier to assemble underwater or in a vacuum because you don't have to fight gravity as much." See, the biggest hurdle to recreating Neutronium is that the laws of physics seem to say it's impossible.

Enter Port Nautilus. Yes, they had the brilliant idea of trying to build a dry-dock to build ships inside the Warp. Yes, that went about the way you'd expect it to. No, this was not okayed by the higher-ups in the Mechanicus, who would have shut it down the second they'd realized the new ship-dock was built to enter the Warp (because that's TECH-HERESY! Oh right, and because the warp is bad too I guess but mostly TECH-HERESY!)

At first they were just one of the groups of Cogboys who had grown up on their own world, then been forced to bow to Mars when the Imperium showed up. Their theories on Neutronium may have even held merit- it's not too unlikely that the DAoT humans were using warp-tech to produce impossible materials, and the Warp was a lot calmer back then so they didn't have to deal with everything warp-related immediately becoming daemons.

Indeed, it certainly explains a lot about Savlar if the production of Neutronium requires Warp machinery. Humanity and the Iron Minds were more than willing to use Warp machinery to build things (see the Men of Gold). Any improperly shielded core of Warpstuff would start leaking and having a gradual effect on the surrounding area, much like a nuclear plant leaking radiation. Indeed, that’s exactly what happened to Caliban. It also explains at least part of why the Savlar Order are so hostilely against anyone coming in- there's both risk of contamination, and a risk of somebody freaking out when they discover exactly what's being used to forge all this neutronium. That and Savlar is their home, all they have and all they hold dear and as much as they love it they will see it dead before defiled and they really don't like Mars.
(DM note- could be a forge that's somehow situated in the warp, some post-age of strife kludge that uses psychic/AI DAoT cybernetic tools, something more exotic like an arteficial Waagh! field or Necron derived physics tweaking, or a combination of all of the above.)

It’s also interesting to note that the Savlar Order is one of the few Mechanicus-esque orders to acknowledge any kind of small gods. All of the other Mechanicus sects are either monotheist or pantheist with the pantheists seeing the universe and the Omnissiah as one and the same and all other gods as either unworthy of consideration of phantoms that will draw you to damnation. All except the Savlar Brotherhood who seem to at least acknowledge and respect the Small Gods even if they don't actually worship them in any way. This could be just cultural bleed from the savages beyond their gates but they don't typically mingle with them and absolutely do not recruit from outside their walls.

Of course that's only speculation, and right now anything warp-related DOES become daemons, so even if the heretek Mechanicus sect of Port Nautilus were right and the production of Neutronium does require warp-shenanigans, the risks are too great. Also, resentment from how Mars came in and started acting like snobbish assholes and shutting down things that they'd been working on for decades may or may not have contributed to them not sharing everything about their theories with Mars- to the Mechanicum, it was known that they were somewhat obsessed with Neutronium and finding ways to reproduce it, but that their intended methods involved dipping into the Warp to circumvent the Laws of Physics wasn't apparent until it was too late.

I imagine the leader of the cult pulling off an impressive false-flag operation against the Mechanicus by playing up the Neutronium obsession thing by directing constant demands for access to something Neutronium-related, like access to Salvar or something on Mars related to Neutronium, and really being a total obnoxious asshole to the point where when one of his underlings approached Mars with a proposition for them to get assigned to go build a couple of cruisers in bum-fuck nowhere to give his boss a chance to cool down and focus on something else, it was almost immediately accepted as an excuse to not have to deal with him anymore. This is also why it took so long for their to be an in-depth analysis of the shipyard the sect was building- inspection crews didn't want to hang out any longer than they needed to.

Of course, nothing about the components of the shipyard itself were technically techno-heresy- organized in a strangely inefficient manner, yes, but all according to the sanctions of Mars. Maybe the assembly areas for the Cruiser's Warp-drives are a bit disorganized, and they're going to have to cut out some new doors to fit the drives back out again, the the drives themselves are being constructed in complete compliance of the rulings of Mars.

Then on the way back from one such inspection, a younger acolyte who got dragged along on principle rather than because he was needed asks if having the Warp-drives running and plugged into the dockyard is to placate the machine spirits.

The inspection crew charges back, then goes dark. The honchos back at Mars take the message the crew had sent before heading back and look back over their previous reports with actual scrutiny, and realize there's some serious tech-heresy at play, and immediately launch a fleet to stop them from making new things. Imperium picks up on the chatter and outrage among the cogboys, get a general gist of the situation, and launch their own fleet because "HOLY SHIT THEY'RE STICKING THEIR DICKS IN THE WARP THIS CAN ONLY END BADLY." 

When they arrive, the dockyards are already in the process of charging up their warp-drives to go deeper into the warp that the metaphorical toe-dipping they'd been doing for construction purposes. There's also several warships of almost-but-not-quite imperial design around it, as well as the first completed cruiser produced by the dockyards. Turns out their little project caught the attention of Luther, who is very enthusiastic about the possibility of getting a source of ships that are not only more advanced than the Imperium's, but are produced by honest humans rather than filthy xenos. The fleet holds the Imperials and Mechanicus at bay long enough for the dock to make the jump and escape into the warp.

Now, after who-knows-how-long stuck inside the warp, the cogboys of the dock aren't exactly normal anymore- you don't stay in the warp that long without getting changed one degree or another. However, they can still get mistaken for normal cogboys at a distance. 

Part of this is because Luther guards them jealously- any particularly-ambitious daemons looking to have some fun with the sillly shipbuilders tends to find itself getting violently and messily dissuaded from the idea. Not that the cogboys don't interact with and even try to use or work with daemons, but anything that might interfere with their ability to produce ships has to get through a bunch of Traitor Marines whose daemons are usually bigger than theirs.

The other factor is that the cogboys have gone from interest to single-minded obsession with rediscovering the secret to producing Neutronium. They are quite happy to keep pumping out ships as fast as they get supplied the materials they require, because each ship is a chance to tweak the formula a little, try a new mix of Iron and Daemon-claws, get just that one step closer to unlocking the secret to that elusive alloy.