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| - Driven by the will of the Emperor, the first Expeditionary Fleets pushed outwards into the galaxy. Preceding each great Expeditionary Fleet of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of vessels often ranged smaller contingents of independent flotillas led by a class of martial leader that would become known as the Rogue Traders Militant. Many of these individuals were former rulers of the numerous realms the Emperor had cast down first during the Unification Wars and later as the Great Crusade spread, formerly independent human worlds. They were offered a stark choice--bend their knee before the Emperor and swear service to the Great Crusade, or die by His hand. Though many set pride before what they regarded as slavery, others chose service and took up the Emperor's Warrant of Trade. There was a price, however. The Rogue Traders Militant were expected to scout ahead of the leading edge of the Great Crusade, accompanied by their own armies as well as whatever assets had been ceded them by the Emperor. Operating so far ahead of the Emperor's crusading armies, the Rogue Traders Militant could expect little or no aid should they encounter foes too powerful for them to overcome. After several Terran decades penetrating the inky black of the void, Rogue Trader Militant fleets often appeared as ramshackle vagabonds, many of their starships taken from defeated enemies, sometimes including xenos vessels of entirely novel or esoteric form. They were forbidden to return to Terra, for in His wisdom the Emperor sought not to just rid Himself of powerful rivals, but to ensure that even in their deaths they might serve Mankind. Many vanished alone and unheralded; slain, consumed or enslaved by nameless xenos abominations far from the light of Terra. As the Imperium expanded, so too did its fleets. Countless long-lost wonders of technology were recovered, some wrested from the dead hands of unwilling custodians, and others surrendered willingly as fitting tribute to the Master of Mankind. Some vessels were unique, constructed by methods even the most accomplished Adepts of Mars could not hope to replicate: the Terminus Est, the Nicor, the Mirabilis and the Phalanx foremost among them. Other patterns and classes proved possible to reproduce and replicate, and before long the various arms of the Imperium's military acquired their own distinctive panoply of warships. Those of the Legiones Astartes were often blunt of prow and slab-armoured, built to endure the withering storm of fire that accompanies a planetary invasion, their plasma furnace-hearts powering some of the most destructive weapons known to Mankind. But beyond these practical needs, each fleet favoured the nature of its Legion, from the sable black marauders of the Raven Guard to the baroque crimson and gold battlecruisers of the Blood Angels to the brute functionality and unadorned steel of the Iron Warriors' siege-barques. The ships of the Emperor's wider naval armadas were more diverse affairs, built for void supremacy. They ranged from stately battleships, multi-kilometre long engines of doom, their armour concentrated to the fore and their flanks repleted with rank upon rank of broadside batteries, to lithe and deadly destroyers and stripped-bare Warp Runners, to watchful piquet frigates and lumbering star-fortresses. Beyond these were innumerable classes of transports, arks, conveyers and supply ships, the forge vessels of the Mechanicum and their own strange space-going engines of war. As the terrible extent of the Warmaster Horus' treachery unfolded, other disturbing characteristics revealed themselves slowly amid the vessels under the Traitors' command. Fell runes appeared upon the flanks of the Warmaster's voidships and the barrels of their cannon were mutated or re-forged into gaping, fanged mouths. Viewports flickered with the fiery glimmer of the beyond and the once true and solid forms became twisted into hideous mockeries of respected and familiar classes. As both sides girded themselves for full-scale war after the terrifying events of the Drop Site Massacre of Istvaan V, so the centres of production each controlled increased output exponentially. Demand was insatiable, and while the Emperor had once overseen the creation of the Imperium's fleets according to His own all-encompassing vision, following His return to Terra such matters were turned over to others. The Council of Terra made ever more strident demands on the Forge Worlds of the Mechanicum as the awful scope of the coming civil war became clear. To make matters worse, many Forge Worlds declared for the Warmaster, while Imperial assets and materiel were co-opted or plundered for the armouries of the Traitor Legions. Both sides had pressed into service every class of vessel at their disposal, from mighty and unique relics of the Dark Age of Technology to the newly-produced and often all but untested scions of newly established Forge Worlds. Before long, those warships unsuited to total war would be reduced to void-drifting nebulae of super-heated vapour and broken hulks, the tombs of all aboard, while those that survived would go on to fight in the greatest battles of the Horus Heresy and forge legends both bloody and glorious in their own right. Throughout the seven brutal standard years of the terrible Imperial civil war that was the Horus Heresy, both Traitor and Loyalist fleets clashed repeatedly in numerous long-running void battles, many of which still echo down the ages of history: the Battle of Phall, the Thramas Crusade and the epic final battle of the rebellion, the Battle of Terra. Horus fell at last at the hands of his father, as the Emperor vanquished His traitorous son after confronting him aboard the Traitors' flagship Vengeful Spirit. The surviving Traitors broke orbit over Terra and fought their way free of the battle and escaped into the void. A time of reprisal and retribution known as the Great Scouring followed, and countless worlds were put to death by the Loyalists for siding with Horus, their corpses left as a warning to others. Those Traitor Legions that remained in the Imperium were hunted mercilessly and hounded across the stars by pitiless Loyalists. The Traitors took refuge in the Eye of Terror, choosing to plunge into that maelstrom of madness rather than face extinction at the hands of the Emperor's vengeful warriors.
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