The official height of a CustodeWe slammed together, and the impact rippled the stone around us. Our weapons crunched into a brace-lock, showering plasma over both of us. I swung away, hilt-first, and smashed him back a pace. He shoved back, aiming to ram the fizzing hammerhead into my chest.
He nearly connected. I judged his weapon was within a few microseconds of an impact that would have cracked my auramite breastplate. That interval, however, was comfortably sufficient to spin my blade over in my grip, ram the spear tip into the Traitor’s gorget and fire at point-blank range.
-Watchers of the Throne: The Emperor’s Legion
They tower over mortal men; each has the statuesque physique of an ancient hero, close to nine feet in height even without his scarlet-crested helm.
Codex: Adeptus Custodes (7th Edition)
Out of long habit, virtually unconsciously, I reached a judgement on the fastest method of killing him. I found the optimal results – less than a microsecond of effort required – slightly amusing.
The novel reveals a couple of important facts, first that it is a star system with three stars, one of them is a red giant.Horrors untold and unfathomable in word or thought screamed and cursed the Blood Angels as their last foothold on Signus Prime was broken. The upper storeys of the temple’s thick conical tower were blown to pieces as a seething globe of raw warp-fire tore free of the surface of the planet. Broken fragments of bone scattered wide, tumbling from the sky in an obscene rain.
The warp-mass lost its grip on the material universe and was dragged shrieking through the sky, searing the ash clouds, breaking through the thin membrane of atmosphere and accelerating. It consumed great gulps of wreckage from the death belts in low orbit, and the surviving ships of the Blood Angels flotilla burned hard and fast to get out of its path, many of them becoming the battle’s last victims as their ships reacted too slowly to avoid obliteration.
The swirling sphere of immaterial witch-fire lost cohesion and, like a dying, drowning man striking out with mad violence as death encroached, it clawed at the planets and suns of the Signus Cluster, ripping at their surfaces and sucking in matter. But it could not hold. This time the psychic scream was suffocated and a brief supernova blossomed before the fire bled out into embers and at last, nothingness.
Slowly, tentatively, the veil of shadow that had engulfed the full span of the star system broke apart, dissipating like a storm before the wind.
It is also revealed that a strange dark cloud was invoked that covered the entire star system, which had a size of 6.3 light days. We also know that despite this anomaly, they were still in the reality, in addition to the energy necessary to fill an entire star system to the warp requires more energy than what the galaxy produces (this last info will be used for other calculations later)A crimson star hung high against the velvet dark, shining hard. Signus Alpha was a red giant of no marked abnormality, a vector at the end of many a colonist’s journey out here to the galactic rim. Rendered smaller by distance was the far blue sun Signus Gamma, and barely visible with it the white dwarf Signus Beta. As before at the rendezvous point, this was a system at the edge of a spiral arm, but further up the curve. From the approach angle chosen by the Blood Angels, the stars and their planetary cluster seemed to lie against a bed of pure, seamless black. The ghost halo of an Oort cloud glistened far above and below, and there were shimmers of strong albedo here and there where the glow of the trinary suns reflected off the planets turning in their long orbital paths.
Well, since we have the size of the star system, we also know that it affected the orbits, it damaged the stars and affected their orbits, plus it moved that entire cloud, I can think of 2 methods to calculate it.The Sanguinary Guard produced a data-slate and read aloud from it. ‘This is from the fleet log. Picket ships among the sternguard wings report that an opaque mass resembling a black cloud has formed, six-point-three light days beyond the designated outer marker of the Signus Cluster. Long-range optical observations in all directions appear to support the conclusion that this mass has completely shrouded the system.’
‘Is it some form of displacement?’ said Galan. ‘There are stories of worlds falling wholesale into the immaterium after catastrophic warp space events. Could that happen to an entire star system, and to us along with it?’
Nearby, Metriculus stroked his chin, dismissing the question. ‘The energy to achieve such a result would likely be greater than the sum total output of the galaxy itself. It is irrational to conceive it.’
‘Are these rational times?’ Redknife’s reply was almost a whisper.
The primarch shook his head slowly. ‘We remain in normal space, Captain Galan. Our Navigators confirm this to us, although they report that they have lost all contact with warp beacons beyond the line of the veil.’
Red Giant Radius: 6.957e+10 mWhen a star has reached the tip of the red giant branch (the highest point in luminosity on the track above), it has a radius of approximately 100 solar radii.
Slowly, tentatively, the veil of shadow that had engulfed the full span of the star system broke apart, dissipating like a storm before the wind.
There was so much gone from the ruin of Baldwin Morrov. He did not know where he was, or how he had come to be there. He did not remember being a miner. He did not know that he was in one of the largest of the thousands of small moons that orbited Phlegethon in a thick cloud. Some were a few metres in size. Others were hundreds of kilometres in diameter. Rich in ore, this particular moonlet’s interior had become the site of a gigantic mining operation.
Atmosphere generators permitted work unfettered by void suits. Enough miners to populate a small city had worked the veins for over a century.
The mining asteroid had been struck by another chunk of rock, one much smaller, but large enough that the blast had destroyed all surface installations and collapsed the access to the mines.
Power had failed. Light had died. Enough of the moon had been excavated over the decades that its volume contained sufficient breathable atmosphere for months. But there was only enough food for weeks. As the days had passed and rescue had not come, cooperation had given way to competition for the diminishing resources. And competition had given way to war.
Light was the edge. Light was the key to finding stores and spotting those who would take them. Portable lamps became more precious than the food itself.
They became targets. Once the battles began in earnest, it was only a matter of days before night came to the tunnels, never to leave.
Several kilometers, so it must be more than two kilometers, so 3 kilometers would be a pretty acceptable low ball.Khevrak thought. All the miracles thus far were still a prologue. A being was coming. Arrival. That would be the moment of transfiguration and redemption. He hoped there would still be Blood Angels left alive to witness the full measure of their defeat.
The blood called the moons of Phlegethon. The phantasmal force of the pillar of blood, pulled from the warp, powerful with the irrational, impossible potential of the immaterium, reached into the cloud. Given purchase in the material realm, it devoured the real, and grew stronger as it spread its infection. The more it destroyed of the real, and the more it propagated the unreal, the more its power grew, and the greater the scale of its wonders became. It destroyed the fragile gravitational equilibrium that kept the moons in such close orbit. The cloud of rocky bodies contracted around the parent world. The orbits decayed. The moons fell in their thousands. Many burned up before they reached the surface. Many more did not. The storm hit the entire planet at once. The southern land mass had been spared the plague of wrath. Now wrath came in another form, and the war was truly global.
A moon several kilometres wide hit the ocean south of the equator, within sight of the coastal city of Penitence. The city did not tower like Profundis. It spread its hundreds of millions over a region a thousand kilometres on a side. The blast hit with a wind of seven thousand kilometres per hour. It levelled all the spires.
Ten million inhabitants died in an instant. Those who survived, in stronger habs or in the underhive, lived a few more minutes. The wave arrived. A hundred metres high, it brought the ocean with it. It swept over Penitence, scouring it from the earth, reaching deep into the city’s roots to drown all who hid and trembled there.
Most likely they refer to the moon that measures hundreds of kilometers‘The Prophet’s work nears completion,’ Dhassaran said. ‘You know this in your blood, brother.’ Lhessek grunted. ‘Chance could finish them for us. One large impact.’ ‘There is no chance.’ Dhassaran raised his arms. ‘Profundis crumbles. The enemy is battered. And not a single meteorite falls close enough to do our position any damage. Is that chance? There are moons in orbit large enough to sink this continent. They do not fall. Is this chance?’ ‘No,’ Lhessek admitted. He gestured at the hundreds of thousands of mortals gathering before the base. A hundred metres separated them from the Prophet’s hill of rubble. ‘Why has he called them?’
The darkness lightens. Perhaps dawn is breaking beyond the cloud cover, but the light that falls on us is crimson. The entire sky stains red as the pillar of blood rushes up, leaving the ground entirely. A deep wound in the earth remains in its wake. The vitae spreads across the firmament. The clouds are heavy with blood in an instant. There is a fraction of a second of suspension. The world waits beneath a crimson dome. The time is long enough only for me to bring the Blood Crozius back for another strike at the Blood Disciple. It feels like an age.
There is so much weight. I will fight this Traitor. I will give my life to kill the Prophet. But I know I am too late.
The moment ends. The skies open. The deluge is here.
The blood fell everywhere. Over the plains of Profundis. Over the burning ruins of Corymbus. Over every land mass of Phlegethon. Over the oceans too, and where the blood touched water, the water became blood. Billions had died when the moons had plunged to the surface. Billions had survived, the alchemy of tragedy taking despair, grief and terror and turning them into rage. And now the billions drowned. Flash floods roared through ruined streets. The underhives filled rapidly, subterranean oceans rising in darkness. Craters became lakes.
Plains became seas.
At Hive Dacrima, the people stopped tearing at each other. They saw the new inland sea turn crimson. They were slicked by the downpour. They slid in the cascades that washed down from roofs. They watched in terror as the sea rose, lapping first at the city’s ruined walls, then reaching further and further into the streets. They did not think to look up into the mountains. They did not think about the streams and rivers that burst their banks within the first few minutes of the bloodfall.
The rioters in the upper reaches of the city had a warning. They heard a rushing rumble over the constant drumming and sheeting of the falling blood. Some looked. They saw a huge, boiling wave come surging through the mountain pass.
It was twenty metres high. Funnelled by steep valleys, it raced to the city with the speed of a maglev train. The people who saw it were the ones who had time to scream, to give full expression to their horror and rage. Then they were swept away by the great flood. The streets were narrow. They forced the surge higher.
The pressure of the impact collapsed rockcrete. The towers of Dacrima fell. The city vanished beneath red waves.
Rage had draped the planet. Rage had spilled blood, so much blood that it covered the globe. Phlegethon became the perfect sacrifice to the Blood God.
Everything that came before was prologue. Even the meteor storm is reduced by the total, all-encompassing nature of what falls on us now. The blood is everywhere. The blood is all. The world vanishes in the torrents. At the centre of all, on the mound of the Prophet, the fall of blood is massive, concentrated, opaque. It is as if the pillar had returned, reversing its direction to strike downward from the sky. It cannot be withstood. The Blood Disciple and I are battered down and carried off. I am submerged again. The blood smashes me against rubble. It hurls me back from the walls. I am caught by blood, pulled by blood. But I will not be drowned by blood.
The entire sky stains red as the pillar of blood rushes up, leaving the ground entirely. A deep wound in the earth remains in its wake. The vitae spreads across the firmament. The clouds are heavy with blood in an instant. There is a fraction of a second of suspension.
Skarbrand whirls, striking at my brothers, hurling them aside. I lose two more when he cuts them in half, bringing axe blades together in a cross stroke. The daemon roars at the sky, quivering with anger.
He spreads his ruined wings. He beats at the air. He rises, the movement ponderous at first. The wings are so damaged they should not work at all. Still he climbs. Then, ten metres off the ground, he pauses. His arms are outstretched, his jaws gape wide. The air around him shimmers as reality is stretched to the breaking point. Recovered, I start my jump. I must stop what is coming. My brothers are with me.
We are too late. Skarbrand roars again, and from the span of his wings comes a great crimson fire. It spreads wider as it streams from him. It envelops us all. It is burning blood. Blinded, coated with the flaming vitae, I drop to the ground again. I wipe the flames from my helmet, but all I can see is the fire. Its propagation is a storm. All the blood, on the ground and in the air, combusts.
The battlefield is consumed by burning wrath.
The mortals came to their final end. The pyres of the individual deaths were swallowed in the enormous conflagration.
Visibility was subject to the currents of flood and fire. One moment Corbulo could see where the raging Skarbrand flew and the Death Company struggled forward, and in the next he could see nothing but waves of crimson flame. He saw fragments of the war: the corpses of mortals who drowned as they burned, the clash of maddened Blood Angels against the mutated foe.
He saw battle-brothers fall.
Forcas hit a serpentine Traitor with the Rhino. He backed up, then ran over the daemonic foe again, grinding the body to pulp. Then he slowed the vehicle to a crawl. Between the firestorm and the heaving earth, every metre forward risked destruction.
As far as I have read, I have not gotten official data on the temperature of the flames of the Khorne daemons, but it is mentioned that the Astartes' armor had a hard time resisting that heat, in fact those whose armor was damaged died.There was a heavy thump on the roof of the Rhino. Then an impossible sound:
flesh grinding through metal. A rent appeared through the upper hatch. Sparks and drops of flame scattered into the compartment. As the shielding tore, Corbulo felt the spiritual poison of the blood reach inside. Castigon’s breathing became strained, almost a growl. The stench of blood tore again at Corbulo’s self-control. He held fast and took a position three steps forward of the hatch, Heaven’s Teeth in his right hand, the Red Grail in his left.
A flesh-covered chainaxe cut all the way through the hatch. It withdrew. Heavy blows smashed the two halves of the door in. It fell to the vehicle’s deck. The burning rain and a Blood Disciple followed. The Traitor’s arm and chainaxe had become one. His reach was huge. He brought the weapon down in a vertical slash. Corbulo blocked it with Heaven’s Teeth. Relic and daemonic transformation fought. The Rhino filled with a sound that was roar of bone and scream of metal. Blood from the Traitor and flames from the sky splattered over Corbulo. The Thirst sank its claws into his throat and mind. The world became fevered. He clutched the Grail harder. He concentrated on its reality, on its strength.
I also don't know the temperature limit that Astartes armor can withstand but they are made of Plasteel and Ceramite which have greater heat resistance than real world steel and ceramics, which have a melting point of 2000 °cOver the hiss and hollow wind of the flaming blood, I hear a paroxysm of snarls on the vox. The inferno drives Fourth Company towards a terminal frenzy. The Blood Angels are animals, goaded by the Thirst and the fire. My armour withstands the flame for the moment, but the temperature is rising, and the burning rivulets seek my flesh through seams and cracks. There are brothers on the ground whose armour has taken worse blows, others with no helmets. We are losing many.
All blood Mass= 1.27005863599999995e+21 kgThe total mass of Earth's hydrosphere is about 1.4 × 1018 tonnes, which is about 0.023% of Earth's total mass. At any given time, about 2 × 1013 tonnes of this is in the form of water vapor in the Earth's atmosphere (for practical purposes, 1 cubic metre of water weighs 1 tonne). Approximately 71% of Earth's surface, an area of some 361 million square kilometres (139.5 million square miles), is covered by ocean. The average salinity of Earth's oceans is about 35 grams of salt per kilogram of sea water (3.5%).[97]
From the description, it affected the tectonic plates, so the earthquake must have been between 7 and 9 worldwide.The colossus of rage roared, and the planet shook. Skarbrand spread his wings.
Their span was huge, majestic. Yet they were torn, ragged. The blood rain fell through the rents in their dark flesh. They were banners of tragedy. His hide was the red of exposed muscle. He was a monster of blood, nourished by blood, standing in the endless deluge of blood. In each hand, he carried an axe. Their blades were almost as large as Khevrak.
The captain of the Blood Disciples watched as Skarbrand raised the axes high and brought them down, hacking deep into the earth. Still he roared. He roared with the thunder of absolute wrath, with the shattering of grief and loss, and with the hurricane chaos of a mind that was gone forever.
Skarbrand roared, and the moment of transcendence had come. Khevrak felt the hand of his god reach into his core. The warp broke through the real and began his metamorphosis.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_scaleThe mound shakes. Eldritch lightning crackles around its width, and lashes the Blood Disciples. The Prophet’s sermon has ceased. In the vacuum created by its sudden silence comes a different voice.
It is louder, deeper. It is the sound of tectonic plates grinding against each other.
It emerges from the mound, but it reverberates through the air, the rain of blood, the ground itself. No sermon from this voice, no exhortation, no call. No words at all. Only a growl building to a roar. It is grief, loss, rage. The emotions are disturbing in their familiarity. I must refuse the bond they seek to forge. I find the difference: the growl is also mindless.
The mound shakes. The movement ripples outward. The tremors reach me.
They race past. They bring the touch of dark power across the plain. The mound shakes again, violently. A death throe.
The hill of rubble bursts apart. Chunks of rockcrete fly in all directions. There is a flash of energy that is not light, yet it blinds. It is red and it is black, and it is both, and it is no colour at all. My photolenses do not recognise it, and I am dazzled. I keep staring. I will have clarity. I will see this to the end.
And when the false light fades, the enemy is revealed. He stands upon the ruin of the mound. He towers over the Blood Disciples. He is the mindless perfection of rage.
Skarbrand.
The 237th Siege Regiment of the Mordian Iron Guard marched in perfect lockstep, weapons at the ready. Discipline marched to make a final stand against a rage to split worlds.
He prayed. He had no consciousness of the words, only of their intent, and of the rhythm of the prayer. It was the drumbeat of his march. He prayed with all the more fervour when the thing burst from the mound of rubble. The winged, horned, gigantic figure of myth battered the world with its roar. The daemon struck the ground with its axes. Around it, the Traitor Space Marines transformed into monstrosities. Some became things far more terrible and powerful than they had been before. What gods they worshipped had answered them.
The daemon raised its axes again, and Phlegethon began to tear itself open.
A god walked before Reinecker.
Skarbrand strikes the ground, and something of immense import begins to happen to Phlegethon. The wound in the earth spreads outward from his axes. It lengthens. The sides draw apart with the deep cracking of stone.
And the Iron Guard still marches forward. Still in formation. The Mordians begin to fire on Skarbrand. They cannot hope to survive this engagement. Yet they are a miracle. They still hold out against the contagion of rage.
I think again that they must be a source of hope. Their doomed charge must lead to something greater.
As the land convulses, Castigon calls to me on the vox. His voice cuts through the choir of snarls. He urges me to return to Fourth Company. ‘You must lead us, Chaplain Lemartes,’ he says.
The Lord Adjudicator is correct. But we need time, and Skarbrand will be on us in moments.
And then Reinecker performs his miracle.
The 237th closed in on the gates of Phlegethon, cutting through the surviving wrathful who still blocked the way. Reinecker fought to keep his feet as the ground bucked and the crevasse spread towards the Blood Angels. The Iron Guard were approaching the monstrous host from the flank. The huge daemon began to advance on the Space Marines. It and the transformed Blood Disciples paid no attention to the advance of the Mordians.
Reinecker saw opportunity.
We face the daemon that Commander Dante bested in single combat. Their struggle is legend. Now we must be worthy of the Chapter Master. I do not know if the daemon thinks. If he remembers the battle and seeks vengeance on the Chapter. Has his rage been growing since that defeat? The question is irrelevant.
My task is the same.
Thanks, I'll see if I can continue tomorrow.Awesome thread. Awesome calcs
1 Microsecond = 1e-6 secThe Space Marine opens fire and bolt-shells roar through the air, but they do not strike their target. This is not because the Space Marine’s aim is inaccurate, as such: he expertly placed his shots where he saw the hunter. It is just that in the microsecond between the Space Marine’s hands starting to twitch and his transhuman reflexes bringing his weapons up, the hunter has already moved.
The hunter dives to his right, because there are people immediately to his left, and although he could avoid them, he does not wish to draw the Space Marine’s shots towards them. They are not as fast, as resilient, or as well armoured as he is, and even being winged by a bolt-shell could be fatal. His hands touch down first as he finishes his leap some twenty feet away, cushioning his impact and distributing his weight. He pivots slightly on his left hand to bring his legs around; they are in contact with the ground for a mere moment before he pushes off again.
The hunter leaves the ground in another stunningly fast bound.
Lion El’Jonson, primarch of the First Legion, collides with the Space Marine and bears him to the ground.
The Space Marine tries to bring his weapons up, but the Lion casually slaps them out of his hands. Thoughts are still sleeting through his forebrain, but enough have found their homes for him to remember who he is, and what has happened to him. Caliban; the Order; his father, and his brothers. Horus, that wretched traitor; Curze, the thrice-damned monster;
noble, tragic Sanguinius, and brash, swaggering Russ, and the infuriating Roboute.
‘I am slower than I should be. Curze would have my flesh off my bones,’ he adds in a murmur, as a phantom of his cackling, raven-haired brother flashes through his memory.
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