Deathstrike Missile Launcher

The Deathstrike Missile Launcher is among the most feared weapons the Astra Militarum can deploy short of a Titan, a colossal strategic missile mounted upon a heavily armoured tracked carriage. It exists to deliver a single, war-ending blow. Its warhead may be a conventional payload capable of levelling a city block, or something far worse: chemical, radiological, or the dreaded vortex munition that tears a hole into the warp and swallows all it touches.

Preparing the missile for launch is a slow and vulnerable ritual, and the enemy will spend anything to destroy it before it can fire, so a Deathstrike is always guarded jealously and kept hidden until the last possible moment. When at last it roars skyward on a pillar of flame, entire battle plans hinge on where it falls.

A well-placed Deathstrike can obliterate a stronghold, cripple a war engine, or vaporise the heart of a massed formation in a single blinding instant, turning the course of a campaign with one pull of the firing lever. It is a weapon of last resort and calculated terror, unleashed in the certain knowledge that its silence, once broken, will be remembered by any who survive.