House Manticos



"A world of fire and slaughter, A bond of trust betrayed, The questing soul is broken, And broken is the blade. In blackened tower's shadow, The dracon there shall die, And from its scattered ashes, A queen, instead, shall rise..."

- The prophecy of House Manticos

House Manticos was once a powerful Knight House hailing from the distant Knight World of Adrastapol, but whose strength had been irremediably shattered when the savage Orks of WAAAGH! Skarjaw descended upon Adrastapol and destroyed most of their keeps. That was the tale propagated by the Loyalist Houses in the wake of their victory. In truth, the Ork invasion had uncovered the rot beneath House Manticos' trappings of honour: the taint of Chaos.

In secret, some within House Manticos had been worshipping the Ruinous Powers, especially Tzeentch, the Changer of Ways. Upon discovery, the Loyalist Knights purged House Manticos' keeps and blamed the destruction upon the Orks. However, not every member of the House was deemed tainted. In order to survive, these remains of House Manticos entered a close alliance with the most powerful of Adrastapol's knightly households, House Chimaeros. This alliance was formally sealed by the marriage of the House's ruler, Alicia Kar Manticos, and High King Gerraint Tan Chimaeros.

Unknown to the other Houses, the taint had not been eradicated and with one of their priestesses so close to the High King, the dark promises of Chaos slowly began to poison the sovereign's mind before spreading to the entirety of Houses Chimaeros and Wyvorn. The final treachery would occur during the dreadful events surrounding the Donatosian War. Declared reductum hereticum extremis and hunted down by the Loyalist Imperial Knights, House Manticos' strength has now been broken, but some of its members are still being hunted by the merciless Freeblade known as the Knight of Ashes.

House History
Like the other Knight Houses of the Knight World of Adrastapol, the origins of House Manticos are now lost to the dust of ages. It is generally accepted that -- as with most Knight Worlds of the Imperium of Mankind -- Adrastapol was first colonised during the Age of Technology. However, the only reliable sources confirming this are the memories embedded in the Thrones Mechanicum of the oldest suits of Imperial Knights still in service on Adrastapol. House Manticos was founded at the same time as the other Houses, though it remains unclear which position it held in the complex system of political alliances and rivalries that defined Adrastapol's culture. When eventually the Emperor's Great Crusade reached Adrastapol, House Manticos was formally recognised as an Imperial Knight Household with direct ties to the Imperium of Man rather than to the Adeptus Mechanicus.

As was customary in these glorious times when the Emperor and His Primarchs still walked amongst their people, House Manticos contributed troops to the vast armies forging the Imperium, although Imperial archives are curiously void of any reference to their actual contribution to the Great Crusade. This lack of historical sources tends to suggest that the House was not of great import within the gargantuan military hierarchy of the nascent Imperium. If anything, their role seems to have been a secondary one, their glory far outshone by their rivals within House Hydrax and House Medusos. The fact that those two Houses would rebel against the Emperor during the Horus Heresy speaks of a privileged connection to the Traitor Warmaster, Horus Lupercal.

The Roots of Chaos
When the Emperor's most trusted son, the Primarch of the XVI Legion and Warmaster of the Imperium, Horus Lupercal, betrayed his father's trust, he did not do so alone: countless men and women of the Imperial Army, Armada Imperialis, the Legiones Astartes and the Titan Legions followed him into rebellion. On Adrastapol his agents were the Knights of House Hydrax and House Medusos. Led by High King Rhoderic Tan Chimaeros of House Chimaeros, the remaining Knight Houses -- House Draconis, House Minotos, House Wyvorn, House Pegasson and of course House Manticos -- combined their forces to defeat those that would see their homeworld fall to the Traitors. With the destruction of the Renegade Knights, the power balance of Adrastapol was considerably altered. The power vacuum created by the elimination of Houses Hydrax and Medusos created new room for the other Houses to expand.

Even in the wake of the dire events of the Donatosian War, it is still unclear how the taint of Chaos may have spread from two Renegade Houses that were believed to have been utterly destroyed to one seemingly loyal Knight House.

Notable House Manticos Knights

 * Blade Aggressor - Blade Aggressor was the Knight Gallant piloted by Sire Hectour Dar Manticos during the Donatosian War. It is unknown if Blade Aggressor was initially commissioned with House Manticos, before their initial fall from grace or if Sire Hectour was re-issued an existing House Chimaeros Knight after he rallied to High King Gerraint's House. During the Donatosian War, Blade Aggressor fought in most of the great battles of that conflict and was the centrepiece in the devastating ambush at the Adeptus Arbites precinct fortress that narrowly missed slaying the newly-elected High King Danial Tan Draconis. Rejoining his liege, the Knight Gallant led the assault on the principal generatoria bordering the Square of Martyrs in an attempt to crush the resisting Word Bearers Chaos Space Marines that were sheltering there, but was recalled after the Loyalist Adrastapolian Knights entered the fray. With Archduke Dunkan Tan Wyvorn having awakened his House's most powerful war engine and killing indiscriminately every Knight that stood before him, the Traitor Gerraint Kar Adrastapol ordered Sire Hectour and his Lance to kill the mad Archduke before he took a heavy toll on their forces. Outmatched by Dunkan's relic Knight, Blade Aggressor was cut in two by the powerful blasts of the Acastus Knight Porphyrion's Magna Lascannons.

Notable House Manticos Personnel

 * Alicia Kar Manticos - The dire events of the Donatosian War and the treachery of Houses Chimaeros and Wyvorn can be traced back to a single individual: Alicia Kar Manticos, consort to Viscount Gerraint Tan Chimaeros and heiress to the throne of House Manticos. At the time of the Ork Wars and the discovery of House Manticos' corruption, Alicia was just a child. While roaming through the ruins of one of House Manticos' keeps, the then High King Gerraint discovered her frail and wounded body trapped by debris. As every honorable Knight would do, he rescued her, her frail body easily fitting into his strong arms before bearing her to his Imperial Knight and making way for the nearest medicae facility. From this seemingly random encounter, true love was born as Alicia and Gerraint quickly grew fond of each other. Back then, nobody would have dared to insinuate that Alicia Kar Manticos, an innocent and beautiful girl from a disgraced House was anything other than that, but in truth she was already an adoratrice of Tzeentch and quite possibly a witch. As Alicia grew into womanhood, her affection for Gerraint also turned into intimacy, the High King even recognising her as his official consort. From their love a child was born, Luk Tan Chimaeros, Gerraint's second son. In the years that followed Luk's birth, Alicia acted as a trusted and wise advisor to the High King, her diplomatic skills and personal friendship with many of the other House rulers ensuring that Gerraint's reign was a prosperous one. Even when House Draconis inherited the crown of the High King, her counsel was sought and highly praised, but in secret Alicia Kar Manticos was already plotting for a change of regime. In her frequent communions with a daemon, known only as That Which Dwells In Darkness, Alicia had become privy to a prophecy heralding the fall of House Draconis and the rise of a powerful queen. For Alicia, there was little doubt that she would be the foretold queen and with a patience so typical of the Chaos Cultists venerating the Lord of Change, she bided her time. First she sought allies within House Chimaeros, and found a ready friend in the House's High Sacristan Xededia Dar Mechanicus who would allow her to slowly corrupt the Manticos Knights' minds through filters of daemonblood and weirdroot applied to their Thrones Mechanicum. In the wake of the Galhorm Crusade and the death of Gedric Tan Chimaeros, Gerraint's son and heir, Alicia sunk her claws deeper into the mind of the former High King, turning his grief into anger at the merciless Imperium of Man, its cruel God-Emperor and the usurper now sitting on the High King's chair -- Gerraint's closest friend, Tolwyn Tan Draconis. Alicia Kar Manticos played an instrumental role in planning the great betrayal of Houses Chimaeros and Wyvorn during the Donatosian War, seeing it as her best chance to seize power. It was she who secretly contacted the enemy leader, the Dark Apostle Varakh'Lorr, and told him of Tolwyn's attack plan, and even offered herself as bait for a cunning ambush intended to kill the pretender Danial Tan Draconis after his father's death. She also orchestrated House Chimaeros turning on its Word Bearers allies and personally confronted Varakh'Lorr in a sorcerous duel for control over the Donatosian Renegades and Heretics. Her sorcerous powers were immense, strong enough to survive a direct blast of a Knight Errant's Thermal Cannon, but ultimately her ploy failed: Gerraint Kar Adrastapol was slain, his army annihilated and even though Varakh'Lorr died as well, the resurgent Imperium proved victorious. With no one to turn to, Alicia fled from Donatos Primus, knowing full-well that she would be hunted down by the most implacable foe there was: her own son, Luk Kar Chimaeros -- now the Freeblade called the Knight of Ashes. For he was the son she had been ready to sacrifice in the name of her future glory.
 * Sire Hectour Dar Manticos - With the official heiress to House Manticos still but a child, Sire Hectour acted as leader to those Knights of House Manticos deemed pure enough to be welcomed inside House Chimaeros. His skill at leading men would eventually ensure that by the time the Donatosian War dawned, Sire Hectour had become Viscount Gerraint's right-hand man. Sire Hectour was one of the very first Nobles to become corrupted by the powerful drugs and potions of Alicia Kar Manticos and her hold upon Sire Hectour only grew stronger. Formerly he was known to have been a jovial Knight who harbored no ill-will to House Draconis, even spending much time with future High King Danial in his youth. However, this changed dramatically following his corruption by Chaos, which unearthed an unsuspected cruelty in Sire Hectour's heart. Sire Hectour's role during the ill-fated ambush at the Adeptus Arbites precinct fortress where Grandmarshal Gustev Tan Minotos of House Minotos was slain was paramount for he posed as the leader of the Chimaeros detachment holding Alicia Kar Manticos captive before they sprung the trap on the unsuspecting Adrastapolian Loyalists. Escaping the destruction wrought by the ambush through sorcerous means, Sire Hectour would return to the Traitor camp and fight in the Second Battle for the Valle Electrum, where he was slain while leading a glorious last charge against the deranged Archduke Dunkan Tan Wyvorn and his relic Acastus Knight Porphyrion.

House Appearance
Having lost its independence in the wake of the Ork Wars, the colours and arms of House Manticos had gradually vanished and been supplanted by those of House Chimaeros.

House Colours
The colours of House Manticos have been purged from Imperial records.

House Arms
The arms of House Manticos are not fielded in Imperial records.