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BlaxicanX wrote:
Where is all this balls-deep man-love for Vecht's black-hole-in-a-box coming from? It was unleashed in Commoragh, if I recall, and it was only strong enough to blow up the building Vecht's rival was in. H-how in God's name does that make it a more impressive weapon than a machine that can instantly supernova any star in the Galaxy?

Because it's a friggin Black Hole.

The fact that it actually was "contained" on top of it and didn't wipe out Commoragh and the entire Dark Eldar race makes it, if anything, even more scary (or simply an example of clueless GW-writers).

But if you can contain a black hole in a birthday box than, you know, you can also instantly supernova any star in the Galaxy! And you don't need a Crownworld for it either. And it is actually written to occur instantaneous, unlike that Necron weapon.

 Absolon wrote:
Matt Ward's pen

The Dark Emperor is worse. No matter how many of his Space Marine chapters you destroy, he'll still show up with you leaders and sign a peace treaty.

And that's another unsuspecting threat that has had Dark Emperor/SlurmKrieg dragged into it.

Huzzah!

But I'd probably agree with others, and say the Blackstone Fortresses.

Time.

One Eldar in a party mood, at the right place, at the right time.

Viod whales, a hammer, the shiny red button that activates the exturminautis (in hands of inquisition), oh and apparently that one terminator that Horus killed.

p.s. Ascalam your post make me happy mainly because the eldar rainy day theory is one of my favorite 40k stories

Vect's singularity-in-a-box is a frightful weapon of focused destruction. On a galactic scale however, being able to make any and all stars supernova is by far much more destructive than those boxes of Vect's. Also, considering the range of mass effected by Vect's black-hole-in-a-box, the black hole had to have been made by something with relatively little mass, I mean, it would definitely surpass the Planck mass but no where near a stars. A black hole's gravity is no stronger than that of any other object of the same mass (in other words, if our Sun found a way to turn into a black hole, Earth would not be sucked in, rather it would continue to orbit in the same path it does today. Hell, Mercury wouldn't even get sucked in. The only things that would - for certain - get sucked in would be anything that crossed the event horizon which would have a measly 6 km diameter. Otherwise, it'd have precisely the same gravitational pull as it did while it was a star burning ever so brightly).

Handheld? Vortex grenades. From the Apocalypse book: "The most potent man-portable weapon in the galaxy."

 King Pariah wrote:
if our Sun found a way to turn into a black hole, Earth would not be sucked in, rather it would continue to orbit in the same path it does today. Hell, Mercury wouldn't even get sucked in. The only things that would - for certain - get sucked in would be anything that crossed the event horizon which would have a measly 6 km diameter. Otherwise, it'd have precisely the same gravitational pull as it did while it was a star burning ever so brightly).

Our Sun cannot become a Black Hole (without sucking in a lot more mass).

It does not have enough mass, even compressed, to prevent light from crossing the Event Horizon. You need a lot more mass than is currently available in Earth's solar system to create a Black Hole.

Presumably, if Earth's sun goes supernova, it would collapse to a White Dwarf.

Micro-Black-Holes of around the Planck Mass don't suck anything into them to begin with, so they couldn't be used as a weapon in the way described by the Dark Eldar Codex. Any self-sustainable Black Hole would start at about ~10 MSun minimum (and Vect doesn't strike me as the guy who's going for the small stuff).

The Angry Marine's Battle Barge the Litany of Litany's Litanies.
It's a flying fortress filled with the most terrifying and destructive monstrosities ever witnessed by man or alien.

Eldar D-Cannon, nothing like ripping open real space and tearing someone apart in the warp.

But on a larger scale, Matt Ward's pen could destroy the entire galaxy.

 Zweischneid wrote:


But if you can contain a black hole in a birthday box than, you know, you can also instantly supernova any star in the Galaxy!

The most powerful weapon? Why a bolter and chainsword of course! Any weapon wielded by one of the chosen wolves of Russ is far deadlier than anything else!

A keg of fungus rum, and the effects on ork digestive systems..

Chemical warfare, very nasty

The Virus Outbreak strategy card from back when was pretty nasty too, unless you just happened to be encased in power armour

An Activated Blackstone.

BlaxicanX wrote:

We don't know how the black-hole-in-a-box works. We don't know if it can be calibrated to be stornger or weaker, or even if its actual Dark Eldar tech, or just some ancient artifact Vecht picked up somewhere. The extent of its capabilities that we have seen is that it can blow up a building. That is not > a machine that can make any star in the galaxy explode.

We don't know how a Celestial Array works.

Infact, we know more about Black Holes than we know about pretty much the inner workings of any 40K weapon, including Bolters and Lasguns.

A Black Hole is a gravitational singularity with enough mass to prevent light from escaping the Event Horizon. It also has a demonstrated effect of being able to "suck-in" things. So it is not a largely gravitation free quantum-based effect sometimes called "micro-black-hole" (and neither is it called that in the Codex). Based on this information, it's at least ~10x the mass of the solar system contained in a "birthday present box".

You can most definitely wipe out a solar system (and a few neighboring along with it) with this. No maybe, no hypothetical, no whatsoever.

If the Vect/Dark Eldar have technology to "contain" the effect on top of having that Black Hole in the first place, that only makes in even more scary, not less so.
Unlike bullets, etc..., the trick (and technological wizardry) with this how to NOT wipe out a minor spiral arm of the galaxy by accident.

Except, we don't know if Vecht "has" the technology to contain the effect. It's never stated to be Dark Eldar technology; in fact it's origin, or an explanation of how it works, is not offered at all, a fact you seem to be trying really hard to avoid.

The weapon has been shown to be capable of destroying roughly a city. That is not superior to blowing up a star, or even a planet with a cyclonic torpedo.

BlaxicanX wrote:
Except, we don't know if Vecht "has" the technology to contain the effect. It's never stated to be Dark Eldar technology; in fact it's origin, or an explanation of how it works, is not offered at all, a fact you seem to be trying really hard to avoid.

The weapon has been shown to be capable of destroying roughly a city. That is not superior to blowing up a star, or even a planet with a cyclonic torpedo.

Does it matter if "Dark Eldar" have the technology or not? Necron's certainly no longer have the technology to build a Celestial Array. Noone has the technology anymore to build a Blackstone Fortress.

Vect has that weapon and the question was what is the most deadly weapon.

Yes, it has been shown to be capable of destroying a city. And it has been said to be a Black Hole, which you keep ignoring. If Vect can somehow limit the effect of a Black Hole to a city block, that is impressive. But it is still a Black Hole and it would destroy entire clusters of stars if Vect didn't do anything at all to limit the effect. Simply by being a Black Hole, it's potential destruction is by definition much greater.

It's like someone using a TnT to clean his teeth without getting hurt. It's a most impressive feat, but it doesn't change the fact that TnT used with less precision would likely blow your head off.

Yes, it matters if it's Vecht's tech or not, because the burden of proof is on you to prove that the weapon has a greater damage potential than what has been shown to us. How do you know Vecht is the one who limited the effect of the black hole? How do you know it wasn't created by the Old Ones, or some other alien civilization, and all he did was find it somewhere, and then later hit the switch? How do you even know if the casket can be calibrated to various levels of intensity? How do you know that destroying a block isn't the maximum the weapon's failsafe allows it to go, in case it gets turned on by accident somewhere?

BlaxicanX wrote:
Yes, it matters if it's Vecht's tech or not, because the burden of proof is on you to prove that the weapon has a greater damage potential than what has been shown to us. How do you know Vecht is the one who limited the effect of the black hole? How do you know it wasn't created by the Old Ones, or some other alien civilization, and all he did was find it somewhere, and then later hit the switch? How do you even know if the casket can be calibrated to various levels of intensity? How do you know that destroying a block isn't the maximum the weapon's failsafe allows it to go, in case it gets turned on by accident somewhere?

Because nothing in the text says this is so. Why did the the authors stress that it is a Black Hole, if it is but a weapon of forgotten technology used to raze the odd building. They could've just written "Vect used an ancient alien weapon of unknown origins to kill his rival". They didn't. They wrote he used a BLACK HOLE!!! That seems to suggest rather strongly that he has a weaponized Black Hole!!!! It makes no sense whatsoever for the author to call it a Black Hole if it isn't.. after all.. a Black Hole. He could have used a Vortex Grenade or something. Would've worked as well in the story without the Black Hole being mentioned.

And yes, there might be failsafes, etc, settings no one alive could deactive. But those would apply equally to most of the other weapons listed in this discussion. Blackstone Fortress, Celestial Array, etc.. .

As far as I know, none of these have destroyed anything in the fluff yet. How do you know that a Blackstone Fortress could harm as much as a fly?

 Zweischneid wrote:


As far as I know, none of these have destroyed anything in the fluff yet. How do you know that a Blackstone Fortress could harm as much as a fly?

Because Abaddon blew up stars and planets with them during the Gothic War. Would you like me to quote from the BFG rulebook?

Out of interest, where are folks getting their information on a minimum mass for a black hole? Minimum density, yes, but as far as I was aware you can have a black hole of any mass. If it's quite small, it'll 'evapourate' due to Hawking radiation. Maybe the Box of Tricks stops this happening long enough for a small Black Hole to be used as a weapon?

Phil Kelly must have asked Matt Ward what crazy weapon Vect could have.which is why they have the Black-Hole-in-a-Box. We still have to remember that the Warhammer 40k Universe is NOT our universe. Its a parallel one set in the far flung future. The names of certain things and phenomena may be the same but that does not mean that the laws and theories of physics that we have today apply to those in W40k. I agree that, if the circumstances were the same, it would indeed be impressive but with scifi we have to give the authors certain freedoms.

Other than the inevitable coming of The End by Matt Wards pen, I believe staying alive and healthy is the strongest weapon in 40k. If you're alive another day then that's one more day you can spend killing your enemies.

Graphite wrote:
Out of interest, where are folks getting their information on a minimum mass for a black hole? Minimum density, yes, but as far as I was aware you can have a black hole of any mass. If it's quite small, it'll 'evapourate' due to Hawking radiation. Maybe the Box of Tricks stops this happening long enough for a small Black Hole to be used as a weapon?

No. Because a micro-black-hole doesn't have the gravity to "suck" in things. It would need several Gs of gravity to pull a (near-)Human with something akin to a "sucked-in" effect, no? And at that point, you are well above micro-black-holes. You need "normal" black holes, and those start about at ~10x Msol, simply because any less would not be a Black Hole (i.e. would not have enough mass to prevent light from escaping).

Even ignoring that, why would it be a micro-black hole? Might just as well have been an over-massive black hole. We don't know.

But it seems pointless of Phil Kelly to stress in his text that it is a Black Hole, when he really didn't want it to be a Black Hole, but only some tipsy Quantum Effect. He could've just written the same story with Vect using the Dark Eldar equivalent of highly-effective-TnT. If he went to the great lengths to stress that it was a Black Hole, it seems prudent to assume that he wanted it to be a Black Hole.

Dakka.
Lots o' Dakka Dakka.

I GOT IT! The most powerful weapon in the 41st milleniun was only ever used once during the Horus Heresy! If anyone can guess in five posts or so I'll divert the chocolate I'm sending to miniwargaming to that person.

 Zweischneid wrote:
No. Because a micro-black-hole doesn't have the gravity to "suck" in things. It would need several Gs of gravity to pull a (near-)Human with something akin to a "sucked-in" effect, no? And at that point, you are well above micro-black-holes. You need "normal" black holes, and those start about at ~10x Msol, simply because any less would not be a Black Hole (i.e. would not have enough mass to prevent light from escaping).

Well... sort of. If the "Thing in a box" had a mass of, say, the Earth, and you were sitting in the same room as it, it would "suck" you in - a 9.81m/s/s, unless you could run away from it at greater than the escape velocity of your current distance away. If you say that the room is REALLY BIG (hey, we're in Magic Space Elf city, why not?), i.e. the radius of the Earth across and it's at the far side, you need to be running at 11.2 km/s to get away from it. Otherwise you'll fall towards it, and eventually get close enough that the escape velocity is now higher than the speed of light, i.e. the event horizon. Tidal forces will probably have killed you long before that, though.

Eldar are quick, but I don't see them running away at over 11.2km/s. So you'd only really need to have a relatively small black hole, certainly less massive than the earth. From a quick calculation, if you can run at 50km/h, i.e. faster than Usian Bolt, and you open a box at arms length, about 1m, according to:

escape velocity = sqrt(2GM/r)

The mass required to drag you in is 1.45 E9 tonnes, or roughly equivalent to a steel cube 570m each side. Not really THAT big.

enooNaMI wrote:
I GOT IT! The most powerful weapon in the 41st milleniun was only ever used once during the Horus Heresy! If anyone can guess in five posts or so I'll divert the chocolate I'm sending to miniwargaming to that person.

.....
Mind Bullets?


seriously though
I would say the most powerful weapons in the M41 are the blackstone fortresses or perhaps the necron pylons on Cadia, they do hold back the combined forces of all four chaos gods and their minions, no?
Of course I don't have the wealth of fluff knowledge that others in this thread have, so I could have missed a thing or two.

Alternatively, Orks are the most potent weapon, not to mention they make things happen by believing them to be true. Red wunz go fasta and all that.

 Zachariel wrote:

Alternatively, Orks are the most potent weapon,

I read through this whole thread so I could say "Orks" and it was in the last post.

Not some Orks, or even a lot of Orks. Nothing can stop all the Orks. Nothing.

They are an engineered weapon that is fueled by their own victories and sustained by their losses. There's no going backwards against Orks.

Graphite wrote:

 Zweischneid wrote:
No. Because a micro-black-hole doesn't have the gravity to "suck" in things. It would need several Gs of gravity to pull a (near-)Human with something akin to a "sucked-in" effect, no? And at that point, you are well above micro-black-holes. You need "normal" black holes, and those start about at ~10x Msol, simply because any less would not be a Black Hole (i.e. would not have enough mass to prevent light from escaping).

Well... sort of. If the "Thing in a box" had a mass of, say, the Earth, and you were sitting in the same room as it, it would "suck" you in - a 9.81m/s/s, unless you could run away from it at greater than the escape velocity of your current distance away. If you say that the room is REALLY BIG (hey, we're in Magic Space Elf city, why not?), i.e. the radius of the Earth across and it's at the far side, you need to be running at 11.2 km/s to get away from it. Otherwise you'll fall towards it, and eventually get close enough that the escape velocity is now higher than the speed of light, i.e. the event horizon. Tidal forces will probably have killed you long before that, though.

Eldar are quick, but I don't see them running away at over 11.2km/s. So you'd only really need to have a relatively small black hole, certainly less massive than the earth. From a quick calculation, if you can run at 50km/h, i.e. faster than Usian Bolt, and you open a box at arms length, about 1m, according to:

escape velocity = sqrt(2GM/r)

The mass required to drag you in is 1.45 E9 tonnes, or roughly equivalent to a steel cube 570m each side. Not really THAT big.

Again, why would Kelly make it a point stressing it is a Black Hole, when all he meant was an extreme exception towards the lowest possible end. If he just said Black Hole, it seems reasonable to assume that he meant a Black Hole similar to 99.8% of all Black Holes out there, not an extreme exception such as a micro-black hole (or an over-massive black hole).

Yes, it could be a tiny black hole with the mass barely that of earth. It could also be an over-massive black hole with a mass > 50% of the galaxy it is situated in it, many trillion times the mass of Sol. There is no indication towards either. If no qualifications were made, it seems reasonable to assume that it's an "average" Black Hole.