Lore question about mission on Demerium

[Bobamelius]

The mission where you get to Demerium and crash a decommissioned battle barge into the silver tower - why the hell was there a decommissioned battle barge there? Ships are incredibly precious resources in 40k and there's no way anyone would just discard one on this planet, especially if it was still functional.

What gives? Did I miss the explanation in-game?

[BALTA]

It's just a supposition since I've never heard of Demerium before and I don't remember it being explained in the campaign, but I think they left that battle barge abandoned because it fell on a burial wolrd (property of the Ecclesiarchy) which is secretly a necron tomb world, so the Adeptus Mechanicus would take control of the operations in search of their secrets, so the Imperium cant do anything.

[CheesyBread501]

Originally posted by BALTA:

It's just a supposition since I've never heard of Demerium before and I don't remember it being explained in the campaign, but I think they left that battle barge abandoned because it fell on a burial wolrd (property of the Ecclesiarchy) which is secretly a necron tomb world, so the Adeptus Mechanicus would take control of the operations in search of their secrets, so the Imperium cant do anything.

yeah, from what I can understand from the operations mode, the mechanics are repairing it slowly, and they also highlight the importance of the vessel to the imperium when your team informs them that you plan to ram it into a tower.

[Targaryen22]

Originally posted by EXDr bad timing:

Originally posted by BALTA:

It's just a supposition since I've never heard of Demerium before and I don't remember it being explained in the campaign, but I think they left that battle barge abandoned because it fell on a burial wolrd (property of the Ecclesiarchy) which is secretly a necron tomb world, so the Adeptus Mechanicus would take control of the operations in search of their secrets, so the Imperium cant do anything.

yeah, from what I can understand from the operations mode, the mechanics are repairing it slowly, and they also highlight the importance of the vessel to the imperium when your team informs them that you plan to ram it into a tower.

Demerium iirc is a tomb world. The barge iirc as well (my memory is adhd shot 🤣😭) crashed during I think the horus heresy era on the planet and it seems from what conversation bits I got from the game the imperium, or maybe just the astartes portion of it don't ♥♥♥♥ around much with tomb/burial worlds for whatever reason.

[Chief Spreading Bull]

Originally posted by Bobamelius:

The mission where you get to Demerium and crash a decommissioned battle barge into the silver tower - why the hell was there a decommissioned battle barge there? Ships are incredibly precious resources in 40k and there's no way anyone would just discard one on this planet, especially if it was still functional.

What gives? Did I miss the explanation in-game?

It was explained in game that the The Sword of Atreus is a derelict ship from a prior battle over the Tomb World that no one's bothered to put any serious effort to salvaging until the events of the game. Nothing really out of the ordinary in Warhammer 40K. Eventually either the Imperium would've gotten around to bringing it back online or some squatters would've turned it into a space hulk down the line. I mean this is an empire that works on a geologic time scale. There was even a short story focused on a primitive Aztec-style world that was building a tiny Sword-class frigate over the course of decades. It lit up one day, left and they were told by the Mechanicus to start building another one.

[4L3X4ND3R18K]

Even more funny there is another one in the rock formations if you take a proper look, remember the imbacilicus Mechanicus from Mars keeps us stagnated to be ill equipped, soon we shall destroy the Adeptus Mechanicus and conquer the milky way with Terran Technoligies

[SievertChaser]

It wasn't flyable and hadn't been restored to truly flyable status - presumably (to try to reconcile 40k "space is an ocean" physics with reality) the engines were in such a state they would give out long before it attained enough velocity for a stable orbit.

Given such a state, it wasn't too unlikely they used Demerium as a slightly more honourable alternative to turning it to scrap metal. Even the Imperium, with its scrounger obsession, can write stuff off as too difficult to salvage.

[Hellsteeth30]

It wasn't functional. It was beyond getting it space worthy (even our space is rough, this one is worse). A brief atmospheric flight is not the same as getting it out the atmosphere then flying it.

Then you have the situation at hand, pretty desperate. In the operations, you nuke a spot with a nova missile for a delaying action, blow up an entire promethium deposit, for a delaying action.

The Imperium is getting pretty desperate these days, so sacrificing a broken down ship is a drop in the ocean.

[4L3X4ND3R18K]

Originally posted by Bobamelius:

The mission where you get to Demerium and crash a decommissioned battle barge into the silver tower - why the hell was there a decommissioned battle barge there? Ships are incredibly precious resources in 40k and there's no way anyone would just discard one on this planet, especially if it was still functional.

What gives? Did I miss the explanation in-game?

I think you find that the small amount of resources the Adeptus Mechanicus had to spare, besides eagerly discovering all the stuff underground in Demerium and everything else in the universe that they actually have been working on it. Hence why when Gadriel brings it up they got the key and its ready to go pretty much.