Vesalius
The Vesalius was a Gladius Class Frigate captured in a raid and renamed by Fabius Bile.[1][4]
Contents
Overview
Since coming into his possession it has undergone substantial modifications with captured xenotech and other heretical technologies, giving its machine spirit a level of awareness bordering on Abominable Intelligence.[1] The ship bears no markings of its prior owners, Ruinous Powers or any other iconography.[2g] It might be said that the ship has a strange sense of humour, occasionally allowing warp entities to pass through the Gellar Fields and study it with its internal sensors.[4] Wolver, the strategium overseer fully integrated into the helm of the ship, is keenly aware of the ship's moods.[1]
The vessel is crewed by mutants whose genetics and evolution have been heavily modified by Bile. The mutant crew worship Bile as a God and are intensely loyal to him. The lower decks of the ship are full of savage creatures which hunt the crew and vice-versa.[2b] At the centre of the vessel is a garden of wraithbone which Fabius has been secretly cultivating. The wraithbone has grown into the very bones of the vessel, something which worries the more xenophobic members of the Emperor's Children. At the centre of the wraithbone garden is a horrifically mutated and daemonically corrupted Eldar known as Key, who was once a member of the Sunblitz Brotherhood until his capture by Fabius. Fabius now uses Key to access the Webway.[2a]
The Vesalius has a crew easily in excess of thirty thousand.[2e] It is largely crewed by abhumans and mutants, such as beastmen. Fabius had chosen to set the crew's baseline human ancestors on the path of genetic change many generations ago, and they now view Bile as both their lord and god. Rather than the slave crews preferred by many, Fabius finds the beastmen hardier and more reliable, in their way. Although they still rank among the lowest rungs of the engineered society orbiting Fabius, ultimately being seen as little more than sturdy chattel.[2c]
Crew
- Wolver — strategium overseer[1]
- Key — captured Eldar used to access the Webway[2a]
- Petros — Chaos Space Marine Apothecary devoted to Slaanesh[3]
Locations
- Apothecarium - Location of Bile's main laboratoriums[2e] and an antechamber featuring a tertiary strategium display slaved to the command deck's strategium.[2f]
- Command deck - The mutant clans on these decks war for the honour to crew the bridge. The clan descended from the original bridge crew, referred to as the pale worm-folk, had held ascendancy for some string of centuries between M34 and M37. They wore the faded and frayed remnants of their ancestors' uniforms with great pride.[2a]
- Factorium deck - Location of fabrication bays where raw materials are processed into munitions and parts. The mutant tribes of these decks worship the machines of production as divine providers.[2i]
- The flesh market - A make-shift bazaar at the heart of a shantytown made by the crew at a common causeway between decks. Here they trade rations and trinkets. Taller than it is wide, it's made up of a thick forest of creaking metal beams, tents, steps and gantries.[2d]
- Gunnery deck - Location of one of Bile's laboratoriums.[2e] Inhabited by various warrior-clans.[2b]
- Hydroponics bay - Location of one of Bile's laboratoriums.[2e] A hellish and overgrown jungle of numerous predatory, poisonous, and medicinal plants. Much of the crew's foodstuffs also grow here.[2h]
- Lower decks - Crewed by the lowest of the low in Bile's society. Significant numbers of beastmen and other mutants exist here, tinkered with or culled in a fairly hands-off manner by Fabius.[2b]
- The wraithbone grove - The heart of the wraithbone garden where Key is kept.[2e] This wraithbone network was tended to by Ramos the Bull of the Eighth and a small choir of Kakophoni and their unique mutant slaves; singing to the wraithbone and subservient to the brain of the garden, the Key.[2f] Various crystalline spiders tend to the wraithbone veins extending throughout the ship.[2j] The wraithbone grove would become a thick warp-infused woodland growing wild and full of various dangerous warp creatures inhabiting it and preying on any who got lost within. The deepest grove of the garden grows strange clones of Bile, the grove being infused with his memories and thus the fruiting clones.[5]
Trivia
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- The Vesalius is possibly named for Andreas Vesalius, a Flemish physician instrumental in the development of the study of Human anatomy.
See also
Sources
- 1: Fabius Bile: Primogenitor (Novel), Chapter 4
- 2: Fabius Bile: Clonelord (Novel):
- 3: Genefather (Novel), Chapter 28
- 4: Prodigal (Short Story)
- 5: Fabius Bile: Manflayer (Novel), Chapter 16
