Sonic Blaster & Blastmaster

Lore & history

Born in the depraved, sensation-mad final days of the 28th Expeditionary Fleet aboard the Emperor's Children flagship Pride of the Emperor, sonic weapons are among the most bizarre and horrifying armaments of the Chaos Space Marines. After Primarch Fulgrim and his officers attended the infamous premiere of composer Bequa Kynska's warp-infused symphony, the Maraviglia, the psycho-acoustic instruments crafted to channel the music of Slaanesh tore open the veil of reality and liquefied or drove mad listeners in the amphitheatre. The Space Marines who picked up those screaming instruments and carried them onto the blood-soaked fields of Isstvan V became the first Kakophoni—the progenitors of the Noise Marines.

For ten thousand years since the Horus Heresy, the senses of the Noise Marines have become so burnt out and overstimulated by the warp that ordinary sights, sounds and battle-din leave them in a state of unbearable sensory numbness. Only the ear-splitting, polychromatic crescendo of a Sonic Blaster, a heavy Blastmaster, or a helm-mounted Doom Siren can stir their deadened nerves to ecstasy.

Advancing through the smoke in garish pink, black and gold battle-plate, a Noise Marine squad plays its weapons like a choir of hellish instruments, weaving overlapping chords of destructive sound that reduce bunkers to dust and explode enemy soldiers inside their own armour.

Design, mechanism & battlefield effect

A Sonic Blaster does not fire bullets, lasers or plasma; it projects a focused, psychically amplified beam of high-intensity acoustic and psycho-sonic shockwaves through a grotesque, gargoyle-mouthed resonator barrel. Powered by a combination of warp-infused harmonic crystals, vox-amplifiers and the Noise Marine's own neural implants—and often triggered by frantic fretting bars or neural shrieks rather than a conventional trigger—the weapon converts raw electrical and warp energy into a wall of coherent sound.

When a Sonic Blaster's screaming wave strikes a target, no amount of physical cover can protect the victim. The acoustic shockwave passes straight through sandbags, rubble walls and ceramite breastplates, setting up a catastrophic resonant vibration inside the victim's body. Eyeballs rupture, eardrums burst in fountains of blood, bones shatter into splinters from harmonic resonance, and internal organs boil into jelly before the outer armour finally cracks apart from the inside out.

Because the weapon relies on psycho-sonic harmonics tuned to Slaanesh's sacred frequencies, the sound simultaneously assaults the minds and souls of those nearby with hallucinations, terror and agonizing sensory overload.

Patterns, variants & doctrine

The sonic arsenal of the Emperor's Children consists of three primary instruments of slaughter. The Sonic Blaster is the standard assault weapon carried by the rank-and-file of a Noise Marine squad, capable of unleashing either a stuttering staccato of sonic bolts on the move or a sustained, flesh-shredding harmonic chord from a stationary firing stance.

The Blastmaster is the squad's long-barrelled heavy support weapon; by adjusting its bass and treble frequency modulators in real time, a Noise Marine gunner can fire either a varied, sweeping multi-frequency wave that liquefies whole ranks of infantry or a single, ultra-low-frequency seismic thrum that shakes battle tanks and ferrocrete pillboxes apart at their weld-seams. Finally, Noise Champions wear the Doom Siren—a rack of writhing acoustic pipes wired directly into their throat-vox and helmet—to unleash a point-blank shriek of fatal sound before charging into melee.

Notable patterns & relic examples

• Sonic Blaster: The rapid-firing psycho-acoustic rifle of the Emperor's Children Noise Marines, ignoring cover with screaming walls of sound.
• Blastmaster: A heavy variable-frequency sonic cannon capable of switching between anti-infantry harmonic sweeps and tank-cracking bass blasts.
• Doom Siren: A helmet-and-backpack-mounted rack of screaming vox-pipes worn by Noise Champions and Lucius the Eternal to liquefy foes at close range.
• Sonic Helbrute / Sonic Dreadnought: Ancient Emperor's Children walkers fitted with vehicle-scaled Twin Blastmasters and Doom Sirens.

Wielded & Fielded By

Characters (4)

• 
  Lucius the Eternal · Champion of Slaanesh
• 
  Fabius Bile · Primogenitor, Clone Lord
• 
  Fulgrim · Primarch of the Emperor's Children, the Phoenician
• 
  Slaanesh · Chaos God of Excess, Pleasure and Perfection; the Dark Prince

Units (2)

Noise MarinesHelbrutes

Related weapons & vehicles

LasgunFlamer & Heavy FlamerBolter & Bolt RifleMeltagun & Multi-MeltaPlasma Gun & Plasma IncineratorStorm BolterChainaxePlague Knife & Balesword

Primary Faction

Heretic Astartes (Chaos Space Marines)