House Atrax

"These Knights are vital components of the Taghmata that protect Forge and Fane, yet despite their pride, they are but one tool among many and they will bend to the Omnissiah's will or be broken by it."

- Noted comments of Archmagos Draykavac upon the rediscovery of House Atrax, ca.3447853.M30

House Atrax was a Traitor Knight House that was forced to repudiate its oaths to the Emperor of Mankind and followed the Warmaster Horus into the service of the Ruinous Powers during the Horus Heresy. Founded sometime during the Age of Strife and rediscovered during the Great Crusade by the dour Mechanicum of the Forge World of Cyclothrathe in the latter 30th Millennium, this unfortunate Knight House was forced into indentured servitude in accordance with the Sidon Protocols. This complex web of obligation and duty bound both House and Forge in a dangerous accord, whose tangled precepts could easily lead to the loss of any semblance of independence for a Knight Household that fails to uphold the protocols. This unfortunate circumstance is what led to House Atrax's tragic fall during the Horus Heresy.

History
Those Knight Households that remained in contact with one of their far-flung Forge Worlds of the Martian Cult during the Age of Strife have most often fallen into a symbiotic relationship with their patron, receiving technological and spiritual guidance form the Magos, while themselves acting as a potent shield for the Forge World. Many Forge Worlds might have faded from history during the Age of Strife were it not for the tireless efforts of the Knight Households bound to their service. Such a joining of cold logic of the Mechanicum and the impassioned zeal of the more typical Knightly Houses led to many widely varying oaths. Most common among these oaths was the form that had come to be known as the Sidon Protocols. Among the more well known rights provided by the Sidon Protocols was the right of the Knight Household to bear the symbol of the Opus Machina, the cog wheel-set skull, as part of their panoply of arms. This was both a sign that they carried with them the authority of Mars and the Cult Mechanicus, as well as a mark of their duty as part of the Taghmata of their patron.

Only a few Households maintained contact with the domains of the Mechanicum during the Age of Strife. Undoubtedly many of those that did not have long since perished, overwhelmed by the terrors of Old Night, or have lost the last of the Knight armours that marked them out, devolving into simple Feral Worlds that maintained only the neo-feudal traditions of their origins. Those few that survived the trials of the Age of Strife, prevailing alone and unaided, were much sought-after prizes for the expanding armies of Mankind. The Expeditionary fleets of the Great Crusade went to great lengths to secure such a world, prizing the skill of a Household's warriors and the power of their Knight armour. However, it had long been the Imperium's policy to secure the loyalty of these rediscovered Households directly to the Emperor and for Imperial factorums to represent the Household in all dealings with the Mechanicum. Yet, despite the efforts of the Emperor's servants, some few Knight Households escaped the Emperor's servants, only to be chanced on by Mechanicum Explorator vessels alone or ceded to the control of a Forge World in exchange for some portion of its industrial output or the services of its assembled Taghmata. Such rediscovered Knight Worlds, often sorely in need of new armours and lacking any long association with their new patron Forge, found themselves caught in something of a devil's bargain. Their dire need for technological expertise and replacement armours served as a simple leash for the coldly logical Archmagos to wield in order to seal the Knight Household to its service, and one that was applied with chilling efficiency. Where in some cases the Sidon Protocols served to bind together House and Forge in amicable alliance, in the instance of House Atrax and the Cyclothrathe Mechanicum, the complex terms of debt and duty were manipulated to strangle the independence of the Household.

Bound in servitude to the grim Forge World of Cyclothrahte, the once-proud warriors of the House of Atrax had suffered much since Archmagos Draykavac blasted their home world into submission. The Household of Atrax survived all the horros of Old Night through stubborn force of arms, but over two decades under the direct control of Draykavac had left them hollow and distorted reflection of their former glory. Systematic and bloody purges of those scions who displayed any hint of rebellion had left the scions of Atrax a grim and brooding people in whom their Mecahncium overlords had fostered a disturbing hatred of those who had escaped the fate that had befallen them. The poisoned husk of House Atrax's home world, Arrian, now served the Magos of Cyclothrathe as a source of raw materials for their wars of conquest and expansion, with legions of imported slaves tearing the ore from the blackened rocks. The remaining scions of Atrax were confined to the armoured vaults that lay beneath Arrian's scorched surface, released from this virtual captivity only Draykavac summoned them to war. The Knight armours of the House were kept separate from the scions, ministered to by Cyclothrathe-trained Sacristans as hostages for the scions' loyalty, for in the case of any armed revolt, the Archmagos of Cyclothrathe could destroy all of the House's Thrones Mechanicum with but a word. With Cyclothrathe pledged in tactic supports of Horus' treacherous campaigns in the northern reaches of the sundered Imperium, Draykavac unleahsed the warriors of Atrax on the worlds of the Coronid Reach. There, the twisted scions took a measure of revenge by slaughtering those who had not suffered over the years as they had, exulting in the freedom to stalk the surface in their armour before Cyclothrathe caged them once again.