Ark Mechanicus Speranza

[Whitelion]

Hi everyone, I read about this wonderful ship, I wanted to know more about weapons and dimensions.

I have read that on the site of the common macrocannons there are cannons capable of firing black holes and altering time, and that it possesses a weapon called the cry of God, which is able to devastate and recreate entire star systems.

But for the size the nothing, some credit it at 40km, others at 150, others again in a range between 300-1100 km

 

What do you know about it?

[Black Knight]

Below be spoilers of the Mechanicus Trilogy.

Urm if its the ship from the Mechanicus three-story arc then that description is a bit over the top. It is a ship that is of ancient origin(Dark age of Technology). It has normal armaments most of the time but has a lot of weapons that are "offline" because the Tech-Priests do not even know they are there as a lot of the ship is dormant.

 

It does have a black hole firing cannon that is fired once when the Head Tech Priest interacts with the ships AI, yes it has an AI that is kind of seen as something that is beyond mortal level and most of the time ignores that it has humans aboard. In fact when it was re-birthed into the orbit of the planet it was found on it killed a lot of people with a birth cry.

 

The Cry of god was not on the ship if I recall but it was on a planet and is of Necron Origin. The time shenanigans were apart of the aliens that the "Bad Guy" was using to power his planet sized empire.

 

Unfortunately I cannot tell you the size but it is BIG, a lot bigger than a conventional ark.

[Xisor]

Yes, I've a vague notion that McNeill's description of it was "impossibly big" - but BL has form with their numbers being all over the place.

 

(And I'm sympathetic to the idea that you could have two 11km and 2km ships, respectively, that is each "functionally the same, with the same armaments and combat performance" - one might just be higher/lower tech - Imperial starship are mind boggling things in the first instance, they're not exactly rolling off of assembly lines - even like Baneblades or bespoke artisan (yet v similar!) Titans .)

 

As an aside, I usually find a lot to complain about when reading McNeill's works, but I found his Of Mars trilogy very consistently *good*. Enjoyable & exciting reads, if memory serves.

[Whitelion]

but then has black hole cannon only one?

As for the cry of God, they told me that once found it is equipped on board the ship as a technology of war.

[Prot]

I know very little about the ship but for reference I think it's in The Great Work as well.

[Black Knight]

From what is written the blackhole cannon is one of top guns if not the most destructive on the ship and it mentions only one. Then again I must mention that the people running the ship have no idea whats built into it and other weapons could be on it but no one knows about them. The only reason they get to fire the blackhole cannon is because the Prime Magos asks the AI to help destroy the Eldar ship that was attacking.

 

If the cry of god is the Necron artefact which I believe it is, it is destroyed at the end, they rammed a cargo ship into it, although the "bad guy" survives as a transfer of consciousness.

 

A last thing on size, it is truly huge. They were conducting war games within the cargo bays, multiple cargo bays with mock historic battles where Battalions of Imperial Guard, Skitarii, Black Templar and a Maniple of Titans would fight each other. At one point the Warlord Titan has a day dream and fires its Sunfury Plasma Cannon. This Plasma cannon has a range of many many miles and it is fired down the ship out of the cargo bay, it never breaches space but comes to a halt in the Engine Bay. The fact that it never breached space but just melted everything describes how long and wide the ship was.

[Whitelion]

sì, l'urlo di Dio è il manufatto che Necron è in grado di distruggere le stelle, penso che sia simile nel concetto al Celeste Orrey.

 

what seems strange is that the Black Hole Cannon, if I'm not mistaken, comes out of the side of the ship, if it was one I believe it would have been housed in a more practical position, such as the nova cannon.

[Black Knight]

The top is also a side and that's what I imagined like a Thunder Hawk and its oversized cannon. Although there could be more than one.

 

Edit: Just that the ship comes from the Dark Age so you really cannot make any assumptions on anything as the technology of that period is just beyond our comprehension, the black hole cannon could of been the bog standard weapon of that era. From what I can tell from art work of Warhammer 40K someone had to make the Dyson Spheres etc which I believe the Imperium can no longer make but only maintain such gigantic structures.

[Son of Sacrifice]

More ancient and mysterious weaponry for my Admech please! I really enjoyed the first book in the trilogy, but struggled so much with the second that I never bothered reading the third.

[Black Knight]

A lot happens in the third at the end. Universe threatening events :D

[Whitelion]

I'm desperately looking for the three books in my language, in Italian, but without success. Do you know if e-books are around? It would be easier to translate them into my language.

[Black Knight]

I am afraid I don't, maybe someone else knows of a translated copy.

[MajorNese]

Ebooks of the trilogy exist, I've read those books as ebooks. Considering my Kindle can't read other formats properly, it should have been a .mobi file, maybe .epub (which I always have to convert).

[Whitelion]

I can translate English, but reading a book in relaxation is not the same if it is not in its own language of origin. 

[Exilyth]

One could try and grasp the size by examining the loaded cargo - but there's so much stuff inside the speranza that never gets described in detail that guessing the size is impossible.

 

 

E.g. the Speranza is described as being able to fit multiple tank companies, but no exact number is given. Still, knowing the size of a chimera/leman russ, one could estimate the minimum size of the needed storage space.

 

Imperial Armour gives an example of a tank company as 1 lead tank (1x leman), 3 squadrons of 3 tanks (9x leman) and one scout squadron of 3 salamanders (3x chimera).

The same source gives the hull size of a leman russ chassis as roughly 7m x 6m (w/o sponsons) and the size of a chimera chassis as roughly 7m x 6m.

 

Such a tank company, parked tightly, would need around 21x24m of space + 7x6m for the lead tank. We'd still have to add ~3m for the guns of the foremost tanks extending further and we'd have to also add the quarters/barracks for the tank crews to the space.

[Whitelion]

On the various sites resulting from the comments of those who read the book it is clear that there are 4 terraforming machines with at least 10km each, huge factories, training centers, hangars capable of containing ships of the caliber of cruisers (which I remember a mars class is estimated 5.1 km), and even a large room for war simulations with the various legions on board.

Around the web they estimate 150km, a user of reddit reported quotations of precise environments, according to his estimates the length ranged between 350 and 1100 meters.

Who do you think is closer to you? Since I haven't read the book yet, I can't tell you. Anyway, I will read it and I will be able to tell you.