Volkite Caliver

The Volkite Caliver is a relic of a lost golden age of technology, a thermal ray weapon that channels a beam of deep-heat energy into its target. Where the ray touches flesh, the victim's own body is superheated in an instant, and the doomed are consumed as they burst apart in a violent deflagration, the fire spreading to those unfortunate enough to stand nearby.

Volkite weapons were once carried in vast numbers during humanity's earliest crusades, but the knowledge of their manufacture has all but faded, leaving each surviving pattern a treasured artefact. Today the Caliver is most often found in the arsenals of the adeptus-mechanicus, whose magi and Skitarii bear these ancient guns as symbols of the Machine God's lost genius. Certain elite cohorts of the adeptus-custodes also field volkite weaponry drawn from the deepest vaults of Terra.

The Caliver is a mid-weight weapon, portable yet potent, its beam capable of scything through ranks of infantry as the chain of fiery destruction leaps from body to body. To face it is to watch comrades ignite and rupture in cascading horror, the very air shimmering with murderous heat. Each firing is a small resurrection of a vanished age, a reminder of the heights from which Mankind has fallen and the terrible power it can no longer replicate.