Triton-pattern Gunboat

DIY gunboats made by Scrazza. A pretty good stand-in for the reverse Chimera.

The Triton-pattern Gunboat or simply known as the Triton, is an amphibious triple-decked littoral Imperial maritime seacraft, capable of operating on both sea and land, like an inverse Chimera Transport. Tritons are usually held within the decks of a Poseidon-class Oceanic Battleship-Carrier.

Overview

Each Triton is built in a broadly traditional Terran form. At the narrow prow, the boat's main armament, a turret equipped with a lascannon, shares space with the fore searchlight, both manually operated from the main deck. Guardrail-equipped gunwales wrap around the boat, providing firing positions and attachment points for those inside, as well as anchoring the Triton's port and starboard sponson-mounted autocannons. Small cabins and storage take up the bottom deck, holding supplies like spare searchlight bulbs and buckets, as well as an automatic bilge pump. The boat's wheelhouse is found on the upper deck, alongside a mast for flying flags and supporting a crow's nest, accessed via a ladder on its side. Flights of stairs connect all three decks, as does a boat-wide loudhailer. An armoured hull is reinforced on the boat, which makes it fully resistant to small-arms fire but vulnerable to anti-tank weaponry such as railguns.

When required to transition from water onto land, elaborate rituals are required to rouse the vessel's machine spirit, though, in an emergency, these can be bypassed. Once engaged, systems lower immense caterpillar tracks out of the bottom of the boat, raising the hull sufficiently for the boat to serve as a makeshift tank. While fast on neither land nor sea, once ashore the Triton's engine can propel it only slightly slower than a human can run. The boat is able to reverse directly behind it, and despite its slow speed, its sheer mass allows it to crush a Krootox.

A crew of 20 sailors and 8 marines (No, not those marines, the actual marines) is ideal for operating the Triton, but as few as 6 sailors can handle the boat if need be. In addition to these requirements, additional passengers and cargo can be carried.

Given that the Triton is a seacraft, and most military seacraft are part of the maritime branch of the Imperial Navy, it is likely that the Militarum Tempestus are allowed to own one as their Chimera-equivalent rather than the Imperial Guard. Hell, the "marines" in-question may actually be Stormtroopers, or a maritime division of them.

Triton made their first appearance in the Fire Caste novel.