Ciaphas Cain, Books #2-999
2.0 Stars
5-25-2025

Meh. These books are fine, but they all share the primary flaw of picking from a weird combination of thematic flavors. Too much Gaunt's Ghosts, not enough Wodehouse or Flashman.

The series is notable primarily for a deeply affecting scene in Book 3, in which one of my most dearly beloved warframes, a Desolator Class Chaos Battleship, is destroyed while on approach to the Imperial planet of Adumbria. Among discerning Battlefleet captain's the Desolator is known as the galaxy's premiered and feared laser boat, a ship with a wonderfully clear sighted and elegant design in a galaxy filled with compromises and poor naval design decisions. The Desolator has some modest secondary armaments (a bow mounted bank of heavy Lancer turrets, as well as a sizable torpedo spread which we will talk more about later), but the heart and soul of the ship are the massed ranks of extra long range, extra heavy Lancer batteries mounted along its broadside. Right out of the box these weapons have 1.5x to 2x the range of most armaments, allowing the Desolator to fire while outside the effective range of most enemy ships. A Slaanesh feat allows this range to be extended by 5000Km, and a Captain's feat adds another 5000 KM. Adding this up, the Lancer batteries have a max range of 30,000KM, and since they are beam weapons they have a perfect hit rate regardless of range. In a universe filled with ships that prefer to engage at 0 - 15000 KM, the Desolator is 100% effective at 30,000 KM, and is able to lay down massive and perfectly accurate barrages of fire long before most enemies can even begin targeting. Lancer weapons have the additional bonus of being armor piercing, so even when facing the super-heavy bow armor of an Imperial battleship, the Desolator's weapons have enough punch to pierce through the armorand do respectable damage. So just with its broadside, the Desolator is already a premier long range duelist, surpassing anything except some of the Eldari battleships in long range weaponry. Unlike the Eldari though, the Desolator has battleship level void shields, allowing it to absorb a ton of damage before the hull becomes vulnerable, and the shields have a quick enough recharge that there are only modest windows when the voids are down and standard weapon damage can reach the hull. Oh, and that hull is *titanic*. It can absorb truly massive amounts of damage, as much as any other main-line battleship, with the only possible complaint being that the Desolator has standard heavy armor rather than the super-heavy armor that some battleships equip. So while the Eldari ships are taking hull damage and losing systems right from the first exchange of fire, the Desolator first has lose its void shields, and only then is it vulnerable to taking hull damage and losing laser batteries, shield systems, engines, etc. Because of its heavy shields, the Desolator also has the option to break off and re-engage, or to destroy one enemy group before moving to another, allowing its shields to completely recharge between engagements. An Eldari Battleship on the other hand only has its relatively modest pool of hull points, which only grow smaller over repeated exchanges. And if its engines or holofield projector are ever damaged by incoming fire, the Eldari ship immediately becomes a pinata soaked in chum in a shark tank, as all of its ability to dodge incoming fire instantly evaporates. Basically, the Eldari battleships are glass cannons that are prone to being quickly crippled and killed, while the Desolator mounts equivalent or better armament while still being an absolute water-buffalo of a beast of a slugger. Also it is arguably more useful to have the main weapons mounted on the broadside, like the Desolator does, rather than on the bow, like the Eldari do, since it is preferable to circle-strafe enemy ships while trying to maintain the range, rather than to try and dart in and out, like the Eldari do. The "in" part of the Eldari tactic works fine, but the "out" part where the Eldari ship is retreating, and its bow weapon systems cannot fire, and its crucial engine systems are exposed to enemy fire, is a killer.

I can tell from the gleam in your eye that you're already sold on the Desolator. But wait, there's more! If the Desolator is picked as the flagship of a fleet, then it can be kitted out with a Chaos blessing, and this is where an excellent ship becomes a true object of wonder. Adding Slaanesh's blessing means that every time the ship's weapons touch an enemy hull, the enemy takes a small amount of bonus morale damage in addition to any other weapon effects. Now multiply this effect by the Desolator's countless Lancer batteries that all have a 100% hit rate at extreme range, and the combined effect is that a targeted ship's morale just melts away after it has been focused by a Desolator, leading to the target breaking into mutiny, turning tail, and running. You can see where this is going. The Desolator is a supreme long range duelist, so enemy ships want to close on it. As they do, they start taking fire, which both does tons of damage and breaks their morale. The broken ships stop firing, their void shield's regeneration is disabled, and they turn tail and run away from the Desolator, both increasing the engagement range and exposing the fleeing ship's engines. And engine damage is nearly fatal when up against a Desolator, since it removes any ability to affect the range of the engagement. Putting all this together, and you basically need 3 enemy battleships to charge 1 Desolator, so that at least one of the Battleships can close to within range to bring the Desolator into something approaching an even fight. And nowwwwwww we circle back to Desolator's bow mounted torpedoes that I mentioned before. The Desolator still has one feat left, and there is a Slaaneshi feat that adds a massive amount of morale damage when one of their torpedoes hits an enemy ship. Combine the Slaanesh blessed torpedoes with Slaanesh's Psychic Scream ability, which disables enemy ships in a short range cone for 5 seconds, and you are nearly guaranteed to be able to land a full spread of 8 torpedoes on a target ship, delivering a large amount of physical damage and a huge amount of morale damage, and almost certainly breaking the targeted ship's morale. So in the scenario from before, where 3 enemy battleships charge the Desolator, and 2 of the battleships are left drifting in space with engine damage so that the third ship can get into close battle, well the third ship just got stunned, torpedoed, and psychically broken, leading it to flee as well. Whew! Wrapping this all up, a Slaanesh blessed Desolator battleship is basically the most important thing on the battlefield, the equivalent of a miniature Blackstone Fortress. Absent some special tactic to destroy it, the Desolator will gradually but inevitably slag everything else on the battlefield. Really the only thing it has to worry about is A) being dived on by a group of Eldari battleships on a suicide run or B) being ambushed by a cloaked group of Tyrannid heavy cruisers, and then mauled, bounced, and boarded to death in extreme close range combat. Everything else in space is just so much target practice for the Desolator. Well, so long as it has its supporting scout ships.

With all that being said, you can understand why I was so, so, so very upset about the events in Book 3, where the Imperial defenders of the planet Adumbria manage to destroy a Desolator. The Desolator in that case was dedicated to Khorne, and not Slaanesh, and about the best thing I can say to that decision is that it is only the second worst choice of blessing you could make and not the absolute worst choice. (the worst would be Nurgle, which gives a very modest boost to extreme close range combat, which is the one place a Desolator should never be). Additionally, due to larger strategic/ritual reasons, the battleship *had* to quickly close on the planet in order to launch drop pods, and so it had to rush to within close range of the planet's defensive fleet. So it was about the worst strategic situation possible for a Desolator. Even then, the situation recounted in the Imperial annals seems improbable in the extreme. In the story an Imperial heavy cruiser manages to A) land a torpedo hit at extreme long range, which B) disabled the Desolator's bow mounts and its own torpedo spread. I barely even need to state how unlikely this result is; long range torpedo hits are vanishingly rare, and even if a torpedo came within range the ships PD should have taken care of it. Additionally, after closing on the planet, the Desolator is destroyed by massed freighter fire, which while not technically impossible, would in reality run aground on the fact that each of the freighters would take morale damage each time one of their number is destroyed, which would be about every 3 seconds. So in reality the freighters would collectively break and flee after just a few salvos were exchanged, as the compounding morale damage of their losses destroyed their fleet's morale. I think the conclusion is obvious; the Desolator was actually destroyed by other means than what was described in the story, and for whatever reason the Imperials are covering up the true nature of the void battle that occurred around Adumbria.