"This is the Captain. Our long range Auspices have sight of the Archenemy fleet. For too long they have eluded us, and for too long their depredations have gone unpunished. But no longer! Make ready the portside macro-battery. Armsmen, prepare to repel boarders. They bring with them a fleet, but the Emperor is with us."
— General Ship Announcement, Captain Hallas Tavo, prior to the disastrous second engagement of the Euryales Suppression
The Imperial Navy is responsible for the Emperor’s immense fleet of Voidships, a galaxy-wide armada locked in ceaseless battle against xenos and heretic forces alike. Each of its capital vessels is a massive amalgamation of metres thick armour, crackling void shields, devastating weaponry, and powerful engines. Thousands toil to maintain each one, their work as endless as it is vital to victory over the Imperium’s hated foes. "Even a minor detachment" of the Navy’s forces is sufficient to raze whole worlds from orbit. Fleet engagements light the void like the birth of a new star.
Life aboard these ships is often as cruel and unrelenting as the void itself, and not all have the will to endure it. Death can come at the hands of distant unseen enemies, or it may come at the hands of boarding parties composed of the vilest xenos known and unknown to the Imperium. Even outside of combat one is not safe, for to reach the stars every ship must delve into the Immaterium, a realm of chaos and horror navigated by the grace of the Emperor’s light and kept at bay only by the ingenious Gellar Field generators. The fields are imperfect however, and most veteran crews have experienced the dreams, visions, and even more visceral phenomena that can accompany a weakened Gellar Field.
Still, all this peril is "absolutely necessary" if the Imperium is to survive, for if communication is lost between the Emperor’s worlds they will all surely perish — precisely what many suspect has occurred in the benighted Imperium Nihilus, that half of the galaxy which the Emperor’s light can no longer reach. The myriad servants of the Navis Imperialis are aware of just how important a role they play, even if most are blessedly unaware of how truly dire the Imperium’s position would be should they fail.
Senior Officers, Pilots, Naval Armsmen, Non-Commissioned Officers, and all ranks among them are expected to know the ins and outs of their ship, and most have at least enough combat training to join in any attempt to repel boarders. Voidsmen-at-arms are specially trained for this purpose, or to take part in their own boarding actions on enemy ships. Of course, in the depths of the ship vital tasks are performed by menials with no hope of ever tasting anything so glorious. To them falls the back-breaking and dangerous tasks of hauling macrocannon shells into place, bearing radiation-laden fuel to the ship’s generatorium, and generally seeing to those tasks that most are happy to ignore as long as they are performed without complaint. Such folk occasionally form societies all of their own, and it is not unknown for the truly massive ships to house isolated communities of labourers that hardly interact with the rest of the crew at all.
There are many routes into the Imperial Navy, and plenty of positions to be filled. Like the Astra Militarum, you may have been swept up in a planetary recruitment tithe, forced into service at the Emperor’s behest, or you may have live on a voidship your entire life, certain to join the Navis Imperialis before you were even born. Perhaps you romanticised the idea of becoming a void captain one day, in command of a ship and a merry band of voidsmen, and signed your life away to an ill-realised dream. The reality of your position had you working tirelessly — at least until your new Patron found you amongst the ranks.
They might be in need of a pilot of their own, a sturdy Armsman, or an officer with the experience to run a ship. Whatever they have in store for you can be no less dangerous than what life in the Navis Imperialis has already thrown at you.
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