Kalimanthor Squadron
Anvil of War
Classification (multiple allowed)
Fleet-based
Sector / Segmentum
Eastern Rim
Description
The Kalimanthor Squadron cruised three jumps east of Khom-Habara along the fragile trade routes to the edge of the known Imperium, between isolated outposts whose nearest fleet base lay several weeks of warp travel away. To the settlers of this region the squadron was not a fighting force but a lifeline. It brought seed grain, spare parts for water purifiers, consecrated ammunition and, occasionally, a priest who married couples and blessed the dead who had been waiting in cold storage for months.
Two battleships formed the core, flanked by four cruisers and numerous smaller vessels: freighters, tenders, a hospital ship with rusted docking clamps. As is usual in such formations, whole generations lived aboard without ever setting foot on solid ground. The lower decks spoke dialects of their own, and the crews of the two battleships cultivated a rivalry that expressed itself in knife wounds and gunnery contests.
In 742.M41 the squadron was dispatched on a supply mission between the outposts. The route was considered known, though not safe. After that, every radio contact broke off. The last message received, garbled and partly transmitted twice, reported unusual warp anomalies in the Voltis-Nox sector. An astropath who intercepted it is said to have written down nothing but number sequences for three days before he was sedated. Then silence fell.
What followed survives only in fragmentary archives. One report speaks of a daemonic incursion, resting on little more than the astropath's visions. Another suspects xenos interference, because traders later told of strange signals near Voltis-Nox. A third, more quietly voiced assumption concerns the Navigators themselves: that their guilds at this edge had long been quietly disintegrating and that the squadron jumped into the warp without reliable guidance.
Several outposts that depended on the deliveries did not report in again in the following years. No one has investigated why.
No one knows whether the ships are still drifting in the warp, have made an emergency landing on an unknown world or have long since crumbled to dust. In the harbour taverns of Khom-Habara, old spacers claim that on certain frequencies one can still hear the identification signal of one of the battleships, faint, regular and without answer.
Two battleships formed the core, flanked by four cruisers and numerous smaller vessels: freighters, tenders, a hospital ship with rusted docking clamps. As is usual in such formations, whole generations lived aboard without ever setting foot on solid ground. The lower decks spoke dialects of their own, and the crews of the two battleships cultivated a rivalry that expressed itself in knife wounds and gunnery contests.
In 742.M41 the squadron was dispatched on a supply mission between the outposts. The route was considered known, though not safe. After that, every radio contact broke off. The last message received, garbled and partly transmitted twice, reported unusual warp anomalies in the Voltis-Nox sector. An astropath who intercepted it is said to have written down nothing but number sequences for three days before he was sedated. Then silence fell.
What followed survives only in fragmentary archives. One report speaks of a daemonic incursion, resting on little more than the astropath's visions. Another suspects xenos interference, because traders later told of strange signals near Voltis-Nox. A third, more quietly voiced assumption concerns the Navigators themselves: that their guilds at this edge had long been quietly disintegrating and that the squadron jumped into the warp without reliable guidance.
Several outposts that depended on the deliveries did not report in again in the following years. No one has investigated why.
No one knows whether the ships are still drifting in the warp, have made an emergency landing on an unknown world or have long since crumbled to dust. In the harbour taverns of Khom-Habara, old spacers claim that on certain frequencies one can still hear the identification signal of one of the battleships, faint, regular and without answer.