Voidsmen-at-Arms

For every kilometres-long warship that plies the void, there must be soldiers to defend its cavernous interior, and that duty falls to the Voidsmen-at-Arms, the armsmen of the Imperial Navy. Their foremost task is to repel the boarding parties that seek to storm their vessel, and to put down any mutiny among the vast press of indentured labourers who toil in its bowels. When a hull is breached and the enemy pours inside, the Voidsmen are the last line between the intruder and the ship's beating heart.

They are trained above all to fight with the massed discipline of the Astra Militarum, keeping the foe at arm's length with volleys of lasgun fire, though each also carries a laspistol for the close, desperate work of corridor fighting. In the cramped and twisting passages of a warship their concussion grenades come into their own, the confined space multiplying each blast into a devastating shockwave. Baroque flak armour shields them, and hard-won experience teaches them to turn every chokepoint into a killing ground.

To become a Voidsman is to be wedded to a single ship for life. In a solemn rite of assignment the recruit drinks incense-laced oil drawn from the vessel's own workings, so that its essence flows in his blood as surely as he moves through its arterial halls. Such crews are led by Voidmasters, grizzled petty officers risen from the ranks who bear artificer shotguns, and they often go to war with a faithful ship's canid padding at their heels.