Warhammer 40K – Monday Evening Open Thread – Blackstone Fortresses

Per Usual: Images and links are from Lexicanum  or  Warhammer Fandom Wiki

So my personal computer is still offline (more due to my being stoned and lazy lately) so I am writing this up on my work computer, so I may have a lot more free time soon if I am violating any company policies.  So my spelling maybe way off as this laptop’s keyboard is very uncomfortable to use.  Anyway, there are all sorts of sports involving balls and handling of those said balls supposed to be on tonight – if you are into that sort of thing, if not welcome to my talk on the Blackstone Fortresses of the Warhammer 40 universe.

I was originally going to use tonight to discuss the planet Cadia and its demise, along with the history of that no-longer extant Death World, which made me think about what caused said destruction – the Black Fortresses, so I decided to go with that topic.  There were 6 Black Fortresses known to the Empire after the Horus Heresy, huge space fortresses made of a shiny obsidian looking material.  The material of course defies all known methods of analysis (or maybe the machine spirit was in a snit that day and didn’t want to work) and is almost impossible to cut, grind, or burn.  Sounds like the perfect material to build a survival bunker with.  Nobody can guess their age, with estimates ranging from 170 thousand years to a few billion years, what’s a few billion here and there against the backdrop of the universe.

The fortresses could be accessed but appeared to be mostly dead, with only the power appearing to be on.  There was some bits and pieces of tech laying around, but nothing really useful.  So the Empire in it’s usual use of anything and everything if it gets the job done, towed each of the fortresses to a different planetary system (the first one found was at Cadia and was left there) and proceeded to turn them into Naval Bases for the Fleet.  Wedging hangar bays into the fortress, adding defensive weaponry, and a lot of offensive weaponry to create a rather formidable Naval Base.  Which was fantastic until Chaos – actually Abaddon the Despoiler during the Gothic War (12th Chaos Crusade) was led by a sorceress to information about how to to reactivate the fortresses.  He had to find the Hand of Darkness and the Eye of Night and learn to use them to control the fortresses all at the same time.  So the Imperial Navy is sitting in their impregnable fortresses, when suddenly the power goes out in the fortress and the fortress is attacked by Chaos, who waltzes in, killing or capturing the Naval staff, taking complete control.

Now Abbadon wakes the fortresses, which waking up are not really happy about all the shit that the Empire placed all over (and in) the fortress, guess it would be like waking up finding yourself encrusted in someone else’s shit.  The fortresses do a purge or maybe a flush, not really sure, not really caring on that point and are now Abbaddon’s.  Over the course of the war Abaddon uses the warp cannons, on the now self mobile fortresses, completely obliterate a planet, cause a star home to multiple populated planets to go supernova, and destroys a fuck ton of Naval and Astartes ships.

Eventually the Imperium with some help from the Eldar (who really don’t want Chaos to have those weapons) launch a huge naval battle and are able to infiltrate and take back 3 of the structures.  Abaddon fled with 2 of the fortresses, one he gave to an ally (who probably forgot that Abbadon can take back full control at any time) and the other he has turned into his flagship according to one of the books I read.  The last one, the one at Cadia, was possibly destroyed when Abbadon slammed it into that world at a very high velocity but since there is now an impenetrable warp storm where Cadia once was.  Oh, and the ones the Empire took back?  They disintegrated after they were retaken – probably some sort of self destruct.

Oh and GW created a game based on the Black Fortresses, which looked really cool, but was too expensive for me at the time.

Y’all have a good evening.