Stalk Tank
The Stalk Tank was a light armoured vehicle fielded by the Blood Pact during the Sabbat Worlds Crusade.[1]
Overview
Resembling a smaller, nimbler version of the Defiler Daemon Engine utilized by Chaos Space Marines, a typical stalk tank was powered by six spider-like piston limbs, and armed with double pulse-lasers in mini-turrets,[1] capable of slicing infantry in two. The pulse-laser's impact blasts even produced enough overpressure to lift persons into the air.[4a]
The vehicle was driven by a single pilot, often hard-wired into the cockpit; other variants were designed to carry battlefield psykers into combat.[2a] These variants lacked weapon pods, instead featuring a glassteel bubble in which the psyker is seated, connected to hundreds of plug wires. They were used for electronic warfare, jamming vox-links.[4b] Stalk Tanks can also alternatively be armed with an oversized head turret featuring a plasma weapon or multi-laser.[5]
Cheap and quick to manufacture in large numbers, especially after the Blood Pact occupied the forge world Urdesh, stalk tanks fulfilled a "niche" role on the battlefield, providing mobile support to Blood Pact infantry forces, rather than engaging enemy tanks.[2a] The Stalk-Tank could even climb grand staircases.[4c]
Mechanicus Adept Romulus Gwelt, on observation with the 9th Roane Deepers on Tarnagua, compiled several important observations of the enemy armour[2a]:
Of all the nefarious engines of destruction I have seen the Archenemy field, the so-called stalk tanks are the most divisive. Light and fast, they deploy like an infantryman, or at least like a fire team, yet the type of normal fire [which would kill an infantry man] is soaked up by their segmented armour plating. In my experience, it takes an anti-tank missile at least, normally a shoulder-fired round, to damage one of these mechanisms. They occupy, as it were, a space in the food chain between fighting man and battle tank, a light, supportive, fluid role, and one that we do not have an equivalent response to. If the Ruinous Powers win this Great and Holy War, I would attribute a portion of that victory to the niche predator that is the stalk tank.
In addition to their weaponry, stalk tanks were, like everything in the Blood Pact's armoury, a potent terror weapon, dominating enemy infantry with their size and grotesque appearance.[2a][3]
Sources
- 1: Blood Pact Article
- 2: The Sabbat Worlds Crusade (Background Book) by Dan Abnett
- 3: Double Eagle (Novel) by Dan Abnett, Day 266
- 4: Sabbat Martyr (Novel) — The Saint (Omnibus):
- 5: His Last Command (Novel) — The Lost (Omnibus), Chapter Eighteen
