Once the proud perch of turreted weaponry and flak batteries, the dorsal platform of the Ignis Aeternus has long since been stripped of its guns, its once-glorious role in void duels reduced to memory and rust. What remains is a vast, vaulted space of exposed reinforcement ribs, sealed mountings, and hollowed-out power conduits — a reminder that even warships must bend to necessity.
The dorsal gundeck, known among the crew as the Hollow Crown, was decommissioned following a near-catastrophic plasma feedback event two centuries prior. Rather than refit the aging turrets, the ship’s lords chose efficiency over sentiment. The deck was gutted. Weapons removed. Recoil systems salvaged and redirected to other batteries.
Now, the once-murderous space serves other functions — critical, if less glorious:
- Sections of the deck have been converted into auxiliary storage holds, stacked with cargo pods, ration crates, and barrels of promethium sealed in prayer-wrapped ceramite.
- An array of emergency barracks and crew overflow berths fill the former gunnery halls, where once shell-loaders ran and gun crews roared. Now, the only sound is the rustle of shift rotations and the low murmur of menials at rest.
- A portion of the chamber has been claimed by the Mechanicus as an interface annex, filled with cogitators, servo-altars, and thick data looms spooling from floor to ceiling like a forest of metal intestines.
- In the shadow of old recoil pylons, an unofficial shrine has been raised — a flickering lumen surrounded by scrap-metal saints, where crewmen go to whisper names of the fallen.
The Hollow Crown is no longer a place of fire and fury, but it remains vital to the ship’s rhythm — repurposed in the most Imperial fashion: nothing wasted, nothing lost, everything turned to function.
Yet the bones of the gundeck still remember.
The blast ports remain sealed but intact.
The targeting cogitators, though silent, still twitch at times — as if dreaming of the void.
Ignis Aeternus WH 40K campaign notes 