The Rock, illustrated

[The Shadow Guard]

Just finished reading the book..... Bought it because DA were involved...fantastic book..... That image is that of the entire Dark Angels chapter along with the Rock at the head of a retribution fleet including Iron hands, ultramarines and more entering the Fenrisian System...... More from the book below...

The story goes thus.... Warp Storms breakout in many systems and wulfen are spotted. Grimnar sends out his great companies to gather the wulfen - they are considered portents of Russ' return - before the inquisition or the imperium find out about the mutants. At each sit they fight chaos invasions along with the wulfen and return

One of the chaos incursion worlds is a site where the DA have buried tainted swords from the fall and a scout squad left there to quietly guard it. DA are sent to retrieve the weapons before chaos overruns the world but find their scouts dead amongst the dead form of a wulfen. They return with one survivor.... to the rock...

Similarly Brother Captain Stern goes to investigate one of the worlds and finds evidence of the wulfen...decides to go find Grimnar and have words....

Then one of the great companies lands in a world to find the wulfen there only to find the Ravenwing with Sammael close to capturing...then chaos attacks again and they fight together and in the mess the wolves and wulfen retreat and escape.... So Sammal goes to Azrael wondering about the status of the Solves.

Stern finds Grimnar and tells him that Fenris system is under attack...in fact all the Fenrisian worlds except Fenris itself is under attack and nearly overwhelmed by demons attacking through warp portal opened by a ritual conducted by an Alpha legion Lord in one of the Fenrisian worlds...

It's a trap.... as the great companies arrive and try to retake the world... space defences under the control of the Alpha force destroy the GK strike cruiser..while Stern and his band drop down with Grimnar to take the battle to the chaos traitors.... The idea is to blow up the world and create massive psychic overload that would seer in to the minds of listening astropaths with images of the wolves guns blowing up the GK strike cruiser and Sterns command being obliterated in an explosion. The wolves and Stern prevent this occurring..

mean while wolves fighting along side wulfen fall under the the stress and more mutate in to wulfen...

Then the crusade/retribution fleet arrives with the DA at the lead....

he book ends with us realising that the DA Scout who was rescued was a shapeshifter...who then tretends to be the DA's chief astropath on the rock and is not in charge of the orbital bombardment cannon son the rock... the booke ends with the DA preparing to fire on Fenris....

Cool stuff.... there must be a follow on book.....

Every DA should get this....

I think if you rae following DA hstory you should get this book.

SG

[Chaplain Raeven]

Continent may be a bit exaggerated, but it does seem huge compared to the escorts. And the Rock is still leaving the warp, so we may not see the whole of it. Depends on whether the Tower of Angels stand on the centre of the Rock or not.

[The Shadow Guard]

One of the earliest depictions of the rock was in cartoon form in #1 of the now defunct Inferno Magazine!

 

http://fortressofunforgiven.homestead.com/files/Img_Ch08_07MoF_DC001_017.jpg

 

The dear brother Radoslav created the following image for the old Fortress site..... You can see a tiny ship coming out of the docks on the right bottom of the image... that is a SM Strike Cruiser... that's the proportions we worked with...

 

http://fortressofunforgiven.homestead.com/files/Img_Ch08_07MoF_DC001_023.jpg

 

OLIS: I love that image of the rock ...it is more or less in proportion to what Radoslav envisaged and seems to be what is shown on the image..... where is it from?

 

SG

[Phoebus]

Something else. Remember, Aldurukh, the headquarters of the Dark Angels Legion, would not have been just the fortress it had been during the era of the Order. It would have been a significant stronghold responsible for training thousands of Space Marines and manufacturing the equipment for a legion. When you consider the auxiliary personnel, the factory workers, the administrators, etc... Yeah, it might have been the size of a small nation.

 

There's another example of this. When Astelan took over Tharsis, the majority of that world's infrastructure seems to have been devoted to supporting the Sacred Bands.

[The Shadow Guard]

1. The Rock looks like Hiveship.

2. Scale/prspective is terribly off - look at the size of these thunderhawks (facepalm)

3. Can someone explain to me these hundreds of strike crusiers?

 

This art is mega embarrasing.

 

 

No, I don't. Strike cruisers in the corner are, not thunderhwks.

 

 

 

honestly i pictured it more like a giant floating building on top of an asteroid over say a flying space rock. sort of like the phalanx only buried into a giant chunk of rock

 

the only way i can think of it being so is if the rock turns on its side to warp transition and really the "top" of the rock is technically still coming out of warpspace in the picture

I imagined Atlantis from Stargate Atlantis when you said that.

 

I also thought it would be more rounded since it was protected by a planetary void shield when the planet went Ka-Boom! At most, I would have thought the rock would be roughly the size of Ireland or Tasmania. That picture makes it look like the whole of Europe and the connected land mass of Asia survived! Way more space than the guessed at size of the original Legion needs to live and train.

 

Something that size could never escape the scrutiny of the Inquisition and alleged legion building.

 

In the lighter side, it would explain the sudden emergence of the Consecrators. It would take several millenia to build the trans-continental subway.

 

 

 

Why do people keep saying continent? It doesn't appear to be that large as depicted to me. I'd agree with Conn's estimate that it is likely just smaller than the size of Ireland, which isn't small mind, but not "all of Europe". The perspective is distorted some, and they can't be emerging that close to the planet (unless it is a lot smaller than a planet should be) or the Rock won't even have time to decelerate from where it emerged and it will just crash into the planet anyway.

 

It's a neat picture, a little flatter than I imagined, but it works.

 

 

Just to answer some questions (having read the book) in case you don't want to read the spoiler in my previous post....

 

1. The fleet includes Dark Angels, Ultramarines, Ironhands and another DOZEN chapters, Knightly Houses and Astra Militarum Mass Transporters.... The fleet depicted is as massive as it is meant to be!!!

 

2. The Rock has long said to be continent size.... it means nothing as we don;t know how big a Caliban was and how big a piece of land survived. What we know is that it is big enough to have an atmosphere and storms on its surface.... The Tower of Angel and the old citadel are part of that large land mass.

 

SG

[Isiah]

Although I like the overall 'look' of the artwork the depiction of the Rock itself was totally not what I expected to see. I'm not sure whether that's good or bad. But anyhow, for me it isn't the Rock. Enough said.

[Volt]

Lol, assuming those dots when zoomed in all the way are Gladius ships or Strike Cruisers, the Rock is around 500-600 kilometers long.

[twopounder]

Lol, assuming those dots when zoomed in all the way are Gladius ships or Strike Cruisers, the Rock is around 500-600 kilometers long.

 

I was addressing this in the original post:

 

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/318679-rumor-control-dark-angels-in-the-wolf-book-update/?p=4303803

[Olis]

OLIS: I love that image of the rock ...it is more or less in proportion to what Radoslav envisaged and seems to be what is shown on the image..... where is it from?

 

The Rock image in post #5? It's from a DeviantArt artist called Hapimeses, done for his own RPG campaigns. 

[Volt]

 

Lol, assuming those dots when zoomed in all the way are Gladius ships or Strike Cruisers, the Rock is around 500-600 kilometers long.

 

I was addressing this in the original post:

 

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/318679-rumor-control-dark-angels-in-the-wolf-book-update/?p=4303803

 

Yer calcs are off. Those tiny specs in the distance lack the prows of Battle Barges. They're either escorts or strike cruisers, which range from 1.6 kilometers long to 3.5 IIRC.

[Marshal Rohr]

I don't think the specifics of the rock,like the phalanx, are necessary to drive home it's sheer magnitude. If anything, depictions of it and technical specs will only diminish it's cool factor.

[twopounder]

 

 

Lol, assuming those dots when zoomed in all the way are Gladius ships or Strike Cruisers, the Rock is around 500-600 kilometers long.

 

I was addressing this in the original post:

 

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/318679-rumor-control-dark-angels-in-the-wolf-book-update/?p=4303803

 

Yer calcs are off. Those tiny specs in the distance lack the prows of Battle Barges. They're either escorts or strike cruisers, which range from 1.6 kilometers long to 3.5 IIRC.

 

 

I see prows on them.

[Corswain]

I always had the "ice-berg in space" image but this makes a lot more sense. Very cool!

[Athrawes]

This is awesome. One of my new desktop backgrounds!

[Cpt. Lacerus]

I...LOVE this concept. I always thought the idea of The Rock being an asteroid with engines or a cathedral on a rock with engines as just kind of dumb. I mean no offense for anyone who prefers that idea. But this is just epic and way more creative. It actually looks like a shard of a planet they built into a spacefaring vessel. The sheer size of that thing is 40k perfection. So is it bigger than the Phalanx? Judging by the scale of the ships closer to it, there is no way a purely man made vessel comes close to the size of that thing. Phalanx, star fort, doesn't matter. I like to think I'm rather unbiased as I love space marines as a whole and actually own Space Wolves models, but there is no way Fenris can face that fleet down. Not possible in the least. I adore the Wolves but their arrogant plot armor is REALLY annoying these days. They should have to back down for once.

[Grand Master Belial]

This does put a new spin on the phrase, "There are no Wolves on Fenris."

[jbaeza94]

This does put a new spin on the phrase, "There are no Wolves on Fenris."

I remember reading this in the first HH thousand sons book I think. You mind refreshing what it means?

[Grand Master Belial]

If I had to guess. There is something 'off' about the wolves on the planet. With the most recent release of the Wulfen, my stab in the dark is that all of the wolves on Fenris are actually humans or Astartes who succumbed to the Canis Helix completely to become the giant wolves of Fenris. In this way, they are not Wolves at all but mutated humans.

 

Again this is purely a guess.

[Harleqvin]

It seems to go back and forth about them being mutated with the Canis helix and some "alien" species. But technically mutated humans(well super humans,) would be alien to a planet that's not Earth (ahem... Holy "Terra".) lqtm

Also, I love the whole look of the rock as done for the art in CotW.

[HaSY]

Something else. Remember, Aldurukh, the headquarters of the Dark Angels Legion, would not have been just the fortress it had been during the era of the Order. It would have been a significant stronghold responsible for training thousands of Space Marines and manufacturing the equipment for a legion. When you consider the auxiliary personnel, the factory workers, the administrators, etc... Yeah, it might have been the size of a small nation.

 

There's another example of this. When Astelan took over Tharsis, the majority of that world's infrastructure seems to have been devoted to supporting the Sacred Bands.

Not forgetting countless catacombs and dungeons for those that Dark Angels need to interrogate for research purposes

 

Aldurukh is capable of training tens of thousands of First Legion, such is the vastness of its holding.

[Cactus]

Although I'm not keen on David Sondered's design of the Rock I do like the composition. It looks like the sword of Damocles, its thread finally cut, falling on Fenris. :tu: