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The most powerful weapon ever used in 40k was that singular energy bolt the Emperor used to kill Horus. You can have all your Black Holes and Laser Cannons and thermonuclear missiles but as long as you exist in the Warp you can be brought back by any God-like entity that can manipulate the Warp enough. The Emperor didn't just kill Horus with that bolt, he literally erased Horus' existence in the Warp. A weapon powerful enough to destroy a quad blessed Daemon Primarch in full Daemon-Power Armour in both the physical and ethereal realms.

 Zweischneid wrote:
Because nothing in the text says this is so.

It doesn't say that it can be calibrated to have a larger destructive radius either; which is the point. Double-standards are not a valid argument.

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.

It's stated as a "casket containing the unstable essence of a black hole". Anyway, you're committing a begging the question fallacy here. That it's a black hole is irrelevant because it's specifically noted within the text that A. It's contained within the casket, and B. it's damage was restricted to that one city. Therefore, the burden of proof is on you to prove that the weapon can be calibrated to have a bigger destructiveness potential then what we've already seen.

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?

Because, as mentioned above by the other poster, the Blackstone Fortress has been stated to be capable of blowing up a planet, and the Celestial Orrary has been stated to be capable of blowing up a sun. More pertinently, you specifically made the claim that the casket is a more powerful weapon than any of these other weapons; thus the burden is on you to prove this assertion. I'm not sure why I have to ask you to prove this assertion a fourth time, but this is it.

BlaxicanX wrote:

 Zweischneid wrote:
How do you know that a Blackstone Fortress could harm as much as a fly?

Because, as mentioned above by the other poster, the Blackstone Fortress has been stated to be capable of blowing up a planet,

It's capabilities are a fact. During the Gothic War, Blackstone Fortresses destroyed a star. The Planet Killer.

 Zweischneid wrote:

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).

Because GW employees are very, very bad with numbers and science. I once calculated that according to the originally described population of Necromunda from the Confrontation game that never got released, they'd breathe all the oxygen out of the planets atmosphere within about 1000 years.

Anyway, I'm just in this debate because I find physics type things fun and wanted to work out a vaguely sane way that turning on a black hole would destroy only a limited area. From a Dark Eldar point of view, watching the victims try to run away from the thing and failing would also be hilarious. Yes, Kelly probably did mean a collapsed star, which is a stupidly destructive thing to level a building with but not enough to wipe out the galaxy. Generally speaking, it'll wipe out one other star in a binary system, which is how we found the things in the first place if I recall. Then they just sit there, being heavy.

enooNaMI wrote:
The most powerful weapon ever used in 40k was that singular energy bolt the Emperor used to kill Horus.

I agree with enooMaMI, but I'd like to expand it to the Emperor's mind in general. If he can hold back the combined power of all 4 chaos gods simultaneously and mostly prevent them from flooding the material realm with daemons, with the power of his mind alone, direct ships through the warp (with the help of the astronomican) and still find spare psychic potential to empower his most faithful minions when they require it, all whilst on some serious life support, think about what he could do if he focused all of his mental might on one thing (the Horus-felling energy bolt is an example of this I suppose).

The best hand weapon is either the Shokk Attack Gun or a Conversion Beamer.

 Zweischneid wrote:

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.

Not that Kelly is likely to know this, but primordial black holes are one possible theory to explain dark matter. If true, they would be much more common than large black holes as something like 73% of the visible universe is dark matter.

Also, gamma ray bursts are possibly explained by micro black holes that occur when high energy particles collide in our atmosphere, in which case these sorts of tiny black holes would be even more common.

What is the primary difference between a micro/primordial black hole and traditional black hole? One is more or less stable, and the other is not. All black holes emit radiation at a rate inversely proportional to their mass, so very small black holes evaporate due to radiation emission extremely quickly. This is why micro black holes created in our atmosphere are not a threat to us, and the same reason why any potential black holes created by the Large Hadron Collider are also not a threat.

And why I agree this is probably not what Kelly meant, it should be noted that the excerpt talking about the black hole in a box does state it is unstable, which would point to it being a black hole of lesser destructive power.

I am curious to know if the codex states how Vect avoids dying in his own black hole as well? People forget that a black hole would not pull you much faster than the same object would have done until you are already close to it. It seems to me a weapon like this would need to be fired at stationary targets unless the black hole was massive enough to simply envelop everything, which leaves the question of how Vect plans to escape it.

Ultimately, there is not much competition between a black hole and a super nova. People hear black hole and they think super destructive, but a black hole (unless absolutely enormous) is not going to threaten more than a single planet or perhaps a star system. A supernova however, could threaten earth from upto 30 light-years away. The Ordovician-Silurian mass extinction could have possibly been caused by this, although it was hypothesized to have been caused by an even larger hypernova ~600 light-years away. Wiki says there isn't enough evidence, and climate change might have been likely, but it's still scary. 600 light-years is a huge radius. So again, there is really no competition here.

The warp (or the people that use it) but that's not really a weapon

Insanity.

Tesseract Labyrinths are quite powerful. i can imagine a big enough one would just suck a planet out of existance.

 KingDeath wrote:

 Zweischneid wrote:
Vect's insta-black-holes-in-a-box

I am still convinced that Vect simply bought a particularly strong vacuum cleaner.

Lol. I wish I had one of those.

autopistols for sure!

I love all the forum posts asking who/what is the best/strongest etc. because that only depends on how you view it.
If you're a ultramarine fan, Macragge obviously is the best character, but when you play nids, it's the swarmlord.
If you read the codexes closely you'll see that EVERYTHING is THE best, nothing can beat it.
nobody can help it, but it's still funny as hell seeing you people discuss it

 HumeyKillar wrote:
autopistols for sure!

I love all the forum posts asking who/what is the best/strongest etc. because that only depends on how you view it.
If you're a ultramarine fan, Macragge obviously is the best character, but when you play nids, it's the swarmlord.
If you read the codexes closely you'll see that EVERYTHING is THE best, nothing can beat it.
nobody can help it, but it's still funny as hell seeing you people discuss it

EXALT +1

And my I add, its even more funny how some dudes respond when someone skips their creature or when haters respond with "comparision " who has bigger.....

 Iranna wrote:

 Absolon wrote:
Matt Ward's pen

I see Matt Ward's pen, and raise you Robin Cruddance.

Iranna.

I see you Robin Cruddace and raise you a black irish leper

Well the birth of Slaanesh was a pretty impressive event. Maybe psykers being decadent is up there? Beyond that the thing what shattered the catan seems exciting.

 Lucre wrote:
Well the birth of Slaanesh was a pretty impressive event. Maybe psykers being decadent is up there? Beyond that the thing what shattered the catan seems exciting.

An Eldar who has access to coccaine.

I call C. S. Gotos literature.

 LlamaAgility wrote:
I call C. S. Gotos literature.

That'd be toilet paper.

 King Pariah wrote:

 LlamaAgility wrote:
I call C. S. Gotos literature.

That'd be toilet paper.

POWERFUL toilet paper. A loo roll with a multilaser!

DE shattershard?

Draigo. He's practically more OP than the emperor. You want me to walk through the warp which is impossible because it cannot hold any physical matter? No problem!

Warp can and does hold physical matter dude

The CSM live in the Warp, on Daemon worlds.

Warboss Tuska led a waagh into the Eye of Terror, and rampaged all over the place, until he finally found a place where the fighting never stops. He's still there

Space Hulks drift through the warp, and space ships use it to travel quickly from place to place.


Draigo's fluff though, i'll agree, is Ward fanwank at it's worst , or a very very poorly executed attempt at describing a futile quest (for those that will inevitably argue this).

welshhoppo wrote:
Love is the most powerful thing in the 40k universe, no sweat.

This. Huey Lewis even confirmed it in Back to The Future

 Ascalam wrote:
Warp can and does hold physical matter dude

The CSM live in the Warp, on Daemon worlds.

Warboss Tuska led a waagh into the Eye of Terror, and rampaged all over the place, until he finally found a place where the fighting never stops. He's still there

Space Hulks drift through the warp, and space ships use it to travel quickly from place to place.


Draigo's fluff though, i'll agree, is Ward fanwank at it's worst , or a very very poorly executed attempt at describing a futile quest (for those that will inevitably argue this).

Physical matter can exist within the Warp, but the Warp itself holds no physical form, so Draigo should have suffocated or been ripped apart or something the moment he went in there. The Eye of Terror is a fusion of the real universe and the Warp, which is why there are planet there in the first place to become daemon worlds.