Materia Nucleus — Domains, Eras, Forges

The catalogue divides Republic matériel by the theatre it is built for:

• Habitus — the worn. Armour, powersuits, exoframes, mechasuits; personal wargear.
• Terra — the ground. Ground vehicles, walkers, artillery.
• Mare — the sea. Planetary naval surface vessels and submersibles.
• Aer — the air. Aerospace small craft: fighters, gunships, dropships, shuttles.
• Profundum — the deep. Capital ships and the void fleet; orbital platforms.

The Era axis

Three Eras, by generation: Founding (Prima Lectio), Vigil (Secunda Lectio), Modern. All three serve at once — the Republic refits; it does not discard; the active fleet is a palimpsest. The watersheds are doctrinal (Founding to Vigil, the Turning) and technological (Vigil to Modern, the Servitor Vox integration). The list of Eras is not closed.

Seven canonical Forges. Six produce for the regular combat service; one — the Adyton — produces exclusively for the Imperial Armada, and is held wholly outside the regular order of battle.

• Adamant Forge — Founding era, regular service. The founding Forge, predecessor lineage to every Vigil-era working Forge. Today nearly all its hulls are retired or in honoured reserve; a few are preserved in active ceremony.
• The Adyton — Founding era, Imperial Armada only. Adyton, from the Greek: the innermost sanctuary of a temple, the place not to be entered. Off-page like its master.
• Rampart Yards — Vigil era, Profundum. The Republic's voidship Forge: capital warships, carriers, destroyers, frigates.
• Stoop — Vigil era, Aer. Small atmospheric and void craft.
• Ironwright Forge — Vigil era, Terra. Ground vehicles, walkers, artillery.
• Tidehold — Modern era, Mare. The wet-water Forge, youngest of the roster. Mare hulls exist only from Tidehold; there is no Vigil or Founding-era Mare.
• Carapace Works — Vigil era, Habitus. Powersuits, exoframes, mechasuits, combat armour.

The roster is fixed. Seven Forges; no further additions planned.

The Founding-era asymmetry

The two Founding-era Forges do not produce for every domain, and the coverage is asymmetric by doctrine, not by accident. The Adamant Forge built Habitus, Terra, Aer and Profundum at the founding — but not Mare, because the founding Republic had no wet-navy. The Adyton builds Habitus, Aer and Profundum — but no Terra, because the Emperor has no army of his own; the Republic's army is the regular service — and no Mare, because the Imperial Armada is the void fleet, not a maritime force.

The Founding-era roster is intentionally small. Founding hulls are predecessors and reserved-fleet rarities; they are not staffing the line. A Founding-era hull in active service today is a heritage event. The bulk of the Republic's matériel weight is the Vigil and Modern catalogue; the Founding-era catalogue is the root the rest grew from.

Every Republic hull runs on one of five engineering families, in named tiers. The catalogue does not record one-off engineering: if a hull's plant is not in the list, it is not a Republic hull.

Power plant — Fornax

• Tier I · Capital Plant — multi-deck fusion array; the reactor of capital hulls.
• Tier II · Heavy Plant — single-installation fusion plant, vessel-scale.
• Tier III · Compact Plant — compact fusion cell, vehicle and craft scale.
• Tier IV · Personal Plant — personal fuel cell or microreactor, suit-scale.

Shield — Murus

• Class I · Capital Layered Array — multi-layer shield wall, capital-scale generator.
• Class II · Heavy Shield Array — standard heavy generator.
• Class III · Tactical Shield — compact tactical bubble.
• Class IV · Personal Screen — personal void and atmosphere screen. Vigil-era and Modern only; Founding-era personal kit predates it.

Propulsion — Motor

• Tier I · Capital Void Drive with Translation Array — void-fleet capable.
• Tier II · Heavy Void Drive — sub-capital, jump-capable.
• Tier III · Compact Void Drive — short-range and jump-incapable, depending on its parent hull for translation.
• Tier IV · Surface Drive — non-void propulsion: tracked, wheeled, legged, marine, atmospheric.

Fuel — Materia Combustionis

The Republic burns four fuels, and only four:

• Deuteride — stabilised deuterium-hydride; the standard fusion fuel and the strategic mass-fuel. Plant Tiers I to III.
• Personal Cell — solid-state hydride cartridge, standardised, replaced rather than refilled in the field. Plant Tier IV.
• Reaction Mass — hydrogen-based plasma propellant. Cheap, abundant.
• Translation Mass — stabilised exotic-matter compound for jump arrays. Not antimatter — too volatile for sober doctrine. Expensive and tightly controlled; Tier I and II drives only.

The jump-incapability of small craft is an economy, not an engineering limit. The Republic deliberately reserves Translation Mass for hulls above the small-craft scale.

Sensor — Sensus

Four tiers in parallel to plant and shield, bounded by a hard rule: sensor tier may never exceed plant tier, because a sensor cannot draw more than the hull can power. The Modern-era Vox integration added a network layer atop the sensor — a Modern Tier III suite sees more than a Vigil-era Tier III did, because it sees what the line sees.

The five binding principles

• Known family only.
• Sober technology — no marvel-class output, no fetish-weapons.
• Human integrity — no alien-origin, Mutant, or unverified-augment engineering.
• Redundancy. Every hull doubles its critical systems. A loss is doctrine before it is damage.
• Refit compatibility. Within a Tier, modern marks replace older marks without rebuilding the hull. This is the engine of the ancient-and-modern fleet.

A Republic hull is read not only by its plant and its gun but by how long it can stand the line without the line behind it. Six endurance bands:

• Voidfleet — months to years independent. Food production aboard, full water reclamation, atmosphere recycling, deep magazine. The hull does not depend on a supply chain for routine operation.
• Long-voyage — weeks to months. Extended provisions, partial reclamation; a resupply chain is still required but tolerates long absences.
• Medium-voyage — days to weeks. Stocked provisions only; regular resupply expected.
• Short-voyage — hours to days. Provisions for one mission window.
• Tactical — hours; a single engagement. Depends on a parent hull or base between engagements.
• Personal — minutes to hours. Operator-only endurance: the suit's own air, water and ration.

This is what makes “capital” a measurable distinction rather than a label. A capital of the deep is voidfleet-tier because it carries its crew indefinitely; a capital surface hull is long-voyage because, hull or not, it depends on its port chain. The size sets the plant; the endurance sets the logistics; together they set the hull's place in the line.

Production scarcity

Four bands — strategic, limited, production, mass-production. All Adyton hulls are strategic by definition: there are very few of them, the regular Republic does not replace them, and the loss of one is a fleet-strategic event the Imperial Armada feels for generations. Founding-era regular hulls range from strategic — the founding capital line, of which a handful survive in honoured reserve — to limited, such as the ceremonial plate worn by officers at formal Reckonings.

Adyton engineering

The Adyton's hulls draw on the same five families as the regular Forges, but at the upper bound of every Tier, with refinements not reproduced elsewhere. An Adyton plant runs cleaner; an Adyton shield holds more wave-volume; an Adyton sensor sees further by a measurable margin. The Imperial Armada works in the same engineering vocabulary as the Republic — the grammar is shared — but the Adyton's execution of that vocabulary is founding-tier work no other Forge has matched in eight centuries. The Republic's engineers know the families; the Adyton's engineers know them at a depth the Republic does not teach.

Each hull carries a status through a fixed lifecycle: in service → refitted → reserve → retired → derelict or lost. Most Founding-era hulls are reserve or derelict today; some remain in service for ceremonial use. The Adyton's hulls are in service by Imperial standing order, and their status is not further reported to the regular catalogue.

Three constraints bind every entry: sensor tier no greater than plant tier; fuel coherent with plant and drive tier; scarcity coherent with role. And one binding on the Imperial hulls: they are catalogued at their material profile but never described in the operational doctrine of the regular service — they belong to the Armada's own sealed standing orders.

With the Founding-era pass complete, the catalogue closes at fifty-one Classes across the seven Forges and the three Eras. Future updates are refit, loss and reserve-status changes on individual hulls — not expansion.

Pro Humanitate. Semper Vigilo.
Adamant builds the line that holds; the Adyton builds the reserve that does not deploy.