Time passed slowly. It was now 941.M41.
Abaddon's Black Legion was preparing for the Thirteenth Black Crusade. This was before the Great Rift had appeared.
It had already been ten years since the Art Student had left the Teda Galaxy with his subordinates.
Only a single massive warship had once stood in the dim depths of space, but the area was now exceptionally busy. Beside the warship floated an enormous circular space dock, one hundred kilometers in diameter.
Warships were being built within the space dock: one Emperor-class Battleship, fifteen kilometers long. Four oversized Lance Emitters were mounted atop the vessel, while an Adamantium ram fitted with a power field was installed at its prow, capable of easily smashing apart enemy warships. Four torpedo launchers were embedded within the ram. Large numbers of macro-cannons and point-defense guns lined both sides of the ship, and a Nova Cannon was mounted beneath the ram.
Four cruisers, each twelve kilometers long; eight frigates, each five kilometers long; and sixteen destroyers, each three kilometers long.
(In the Warhammer World, warship classes from lowest to highest were destroyer, frigate, cruiser, battleship, Gloriana-class Battleship, and Abyss-class Battleship. The Imperium had lost much of the technology for the latter two classes.)
The cruisers and frigates carried far fewer lance weapons and macro-cannons than the battleship. Every type of warship designed and built by the Art Student was larger than the Imperium's equivalent class and delivered even greater firepower.
These twenty-nine warships were still under construction and would require another three years before they could be launched and put to sea. This was the number of ships the massive space dock could build at once. However, even with the assistance of Matter Converters, constructing an entire fleet's worth of warships in one go would take ten years.
On