Logos Aeternus

The Logos Aeternus is the personal flagship of Archmagos Veneratus Alphaeus Gearhardt and flagship of the Battlegroup Primus of the First Grand Convocation of Hephaestia.

History
Constructed in 2.469.332.M39 to mark the resurgence of Hephaestian power in the newly re-compliant Ixaniad sector, the Logos Aeternus was built to serve as the flagship of the Archmagos-Veneratus Arachnos.

Sailing at the forefront of the Mechanicum fleets which joined the Angevin Crusade, the Logos saw conflict in a dozen battles and served as a powerful symbol of the Machine Cult in a sector which had long slipped from the proper Machine Orthodoxy. The ship would serve until 2.839.334.M39 when Archmagos Archanos would meet his doom at the hand of the Draxulite xenos-empire, and the Logos was damaged by a Draxulite boring pod, the aliens running amok in the ship until they were exterminated by internal defenses. By the time the Hephaestian Mechanicus fleets reordered themselves, the breakneck clip of the early crusade days would see them overshadowed by the Calixian Mechanicus, and the Logos would return to Hephaestia for repairs, after which it would serve as the flagship of various tech-priest lords moving around the sector to shore up planetary gains.

Flagshp of Gearhardt
In time, the ship would come into the influence of the Malagra Directorate of the Prefecture Magisterium, and was subject to extensive retrofitting to turn the ship from a general purpose battleship, to a command and control vessel. Equipping the ship with powerful auspex and scanning equipment, as well as the Dark Age Secret; the Mimic Drive. When the then Magos Gearhardt overcame and slew the corrupted Prefect, Werner, the ship went to the possession of Archmagos Pemelton, until finally it was claimed by Gearhardt at the time of his ascension.

Over the next two centuries, the ship would be further upgraded to serve as both command and control and a front-line battleship, appropriate for one who would lead the prosecution of so many wars of purity and expansion.

Secrets of the Dark Age
As an Ark Mechanicus, the Logos is equipped with technological power which would place any other ship of the Imperium to shame. Housed within it's hull is a forge fane all of its own. Self contained and sufficient, save for food supply, the ship possesses the industrial capability of a hive city with miles of manufactoria, refineries, crackling Plasma Reactors and laboratories, test ranges, chemical vats and gene-bays.

Greatest of all technologies are the lost secrets of the Dark Age of Technology; mighty technological powers almost impossible to replicate on any sort of productive scale. Mimic Drives allow the ship to cloak itself from sensors, appearing as a small escort craft on focused augery scans, and as nothing at all upon general sweep. Probability missiles which cannot miss; vanishing from space to strike at odd angles and through shields derived of technology or sorcery. Grav Nova shells which open tearing graviton singularities at the point of detonation, and Dark Energy agitation machines, causing radiation to erupt forth from the vacuum of space.

Notable Conflicts

 * 042.M42 – Censure of Enetheos: The world of Enetheos, a Vassal world sworn in fealty to Hephaestia, rebelled amidst the chaos of the Lightless Century. With warp travel now possible in brief jumps and communication severed with the forge, the civilized and industrious world deigned to throw off the yoke of the Mechanicum and rose up against the Forge in the 36th year of the 42nd millenium. The PDF forces and system defense flotilla, swayed by the populist movement of the Planetary Governor, swiftly eliminated the Hephaestian citadels within the worlds cities by orbital bombardment and invasion by the millions of soldiers. As the warp settled enough for local jumps to be made in 040, the Forge sent out small explorator fleets to the nearby worlds under their dominion, and upon translation into the system, were beset upon by their own defensive platforms and Imperial system defense ships and forced into retreat after being warned off by vox transmission. Two years later, Hephaestia would return with a retribution fleet led by Alphaeus Gearhardt to bring censure to the world. The response was swift, brutal, and utterly merciless. The system defenses and fleets were swept aside by the arcane armament of the Mechanicum ships and the world burned in orbital bombardment. In tow with the retribution fleet was the ally to the forge, Rogue Trader Greggario, who by compact would lend the use of his bulk landers. The Logos Aeternus featured prominently in this destruction of the defense fleet; Rad-Tek projectors swallowed lesser ships as the powerful shields of the vessel absorbed the fire of the system cruisers before returning fire with shredding beams of energy. It's bombardment of the planet below would be utterly devastating, and it's powerful augeries captured screeds of useful bombing data for the Ordo Reductor.


 * 098.M42 – The Perverted Ark: In the waning years of the lightless century, a dark herald appeared in the Herakali sub-sector, an Ark Mechanicus thought lost to the Machine Cult and its true name lost to time. Sporadic sightings were interspersed with recordings of harrowing raids upon the feifdom worlds of Hephaestia. Final contact would reveal a small fleet of the Dark Mechanicum ravaging these worlds, led by the warped Ark Finis Rationale. Gearhardt would redirect a small fleet of his own to meet the perverted craft in battle. Meeting finally above the planet Gaerethra amidst the wreckage of the defense fleet, the Logos Aeternus would join the fight. The two fleets would duel in the void for hours, each side unleashing cataclysmic weaponry spawned of lost ages and forbidden sorcery. Rents in reality vomited forth horrors, techno-arcane machines teleported ravaging hunter killing automata to enmy ships, and ships boiled and blistered away beneath the heat of lance and witchfire. In the end, the two fleets would nearly annihilate each other, but at the end of it all, the escort craft of the First Convocation were able to blast away a key series of retro thrusters upon the Finis, preventing its maneuvering. A final barrage of neutron lasers and lance batteries brought down the void shields, and a last shot of the Nova cannon cored out the corrupted Ark.
 * 115.M42 – Battle for Correlius: As the Mechanicus attempted to expand its influence, the First Covenant of the First Grand Convocation arrived in the Gandus system. The planet below was the source of a cataclysmic conflict, and when the true extent of the trechery was revealed, the Logos was forced into a sustained orbital battle with the T'au. After victory was attained, the Logos bombed the planet extensivly before retrieving the most important priests via teleportarium and making an emergency warp translation to escape the planetary destruction.