Chaos Strike Craft
Swift Death Fighter
Length: 40 metres
Wing span: 15 metres
Crew: 1
Sub-light engine: Unknown
Power supply: Unknown
Standard Armament: 6 Lascannons (wing mounted)
Machine spirit: hosts a Daemon or spirit of war.
Warp capable: no
Lore: SwiftDeath fighter design started as a project of Kelbor Hal towards the end of the Great Crusade era to eventually become the standard fighter of the Imperial army. Following the outbreak of Horus Heresy, the plan was cancelled, and Kelbore Hal's fall to Chaos and defeat on Mars at the hands of Fabricator Kane, meaning the design was taken to the Eye of Terror and presented to Abaddon the Despoiler. The design immediately going into production and becoming the standard fighter of the Chaos War fleets.
The fighter was designed to be superior to the original Fury interceptor but has lost many of its old advantages when compared to the modern Fury. The newer Imperial interceptors having warp capacity, are faster and have more than double the armaments and durability. This does not, however, mean the SwiftDeath is outclassed.
The Chaos fighter is impossibly mobile. Able to pull off manoeuvres that shouldn't be possible for any human pilot. The original design already had an eye to increase mobility, but demonic blessing, the pilot being permanently fused with the fighter and its systems and sometimes said pilot being a traitor marine have all contributed towards making this advantage even more exaggerated. The Swift Death is also more than capable of killing a Fury despite its superior protection, and due to their smaller frames, lack of need for large crew quarters or ammunition of any kind means they outnumber Imperial squadrons on Chaos carriers by at least 2 fighters to 1 interceptor.
The large numbers of Swift Death Fighters proved so deadly it caused a massive shift in the Imperial Navy towards carriers, experienced pilots in the navy only able to survive or escape by remaining at a distance and hoping the Chaos horde doesn't catch them.
Doom Fire Bomber
Length: 60 metres
Wing Span: 40 metres
Crew: 5 (2 gunners, 1 pilot, 1 Heretek, 1 targeteer)
Sub-light engine: Unknown
Power supply: Unknown
Standard Armament: 1 twin-linked multilaser turret (dorsal mounted), 1 twin-linked multilaser turret (chin mounted), bomb-bay capacity for up to 20 plasma or cluster missiles, 8 plasma bombs or 1 plasma, Warp-field or melta torpedo.
Machine spirit: hosts a Daemon or spirit of war
Warp capable: no
Lore: The Doom Fire was developed by the Dark Mechanicus to combat the Marauder bomber that was used as the standard bomber of the Imperial Navy before the more wide-spread use of the Star Hawk. The Doom Fire completely eclipsed the smaller Marauder bomber. It had a significantly larger bomb load, a comparable PD suite, better armour protection and superior speed/mobility. This dominance over the Imperial Craft being one of the factors that lead to the Marauder being regulated to only ground-support duty. The Star Hawk now having replaced the Marauder completely as a void-bomber.
Vs the monstrous Star Hawk the Doom Fire is essentially a light bomber. While it can't compare for bomb capacity, PD suite or armour protection; they are faster, more mobile and come in greater numbers. The Doom Fire still being more than capable of cracking open most vessels with its payload, greater number of craft to shoot down per squadron and the superior speed and mobility of the bomber making them a lethal threat to all shipping that becomes the target of a Chaos Carrier.
Dread Claw Assault Pod
Length: 20 metres
Wing Span: N/A
Crew: N/A
Sub-light engine: Unknown
Standard Armament: N/A
Machine spirit: hosts a spirit of war.
Troop capacity: 8 Chaos Space Marines or around 16 cultist troops.
Warp capable: no
Lore: These serve as both the means for Chaos space marines to assault a planet and to board enemy vessels. Unlike the Shark assault boat, they have no permanent crew at all (also rendering them steerless, reducing effective range) these are exceptionally common and used often by Chaos war fleets. They are also very small, largest variants not exceeding a combined length of 20 metres.
They operate quite simply by ramming into the hull of an enemy at extreme speeds (they must be fast, since they can't steer to adjust for evasive action like a Shark can) in great numbers and dislodge a small team of chaos space marines directly into the hull once the hull is breached by Melta charges. The large claws preventing the pod from being sucked out into space after making a breach.
Unlike the IN, every chaos carrier is equipped with assault pods. Offensive assault actions being quite common for Chaos.