Chaos Knights

The Questor Traitoris, also known as Renegade Knights, or Daemon Knights, are Imperial Knights and Knight Houses that have been corrupted to the service of Chaos. Humanoid war engines that tower over their foes, each Renegade Knight carries an army's worth of firepower upon its weaponised limbs and hulking carapace. At close quarters, their roaring Chainswords and crushing Thunderstrike Gauntlets destroy what their trampling feet cannot, scattering terrified survivors before their unstoppable advance. The ground shudders beneath the godlike tread of the Renegade Knights. Even one such looming war engine possesses the firepower to annihilate entire regiments of enemy warriors, pick apart armoured columns, and swat squadrons of aircraft from the skies. Chaos Lords and rebellious demagogues will go to great lengths to secure the services of such a lone warrior, sacrificing whatever they must to ensure that this god of destruction fights at their side.

Deployed in great number, the Questor Traitoris are more fearsome still, and have been known to bring entire worlds to heel, scourging them by blade and by flame in the name of the Dark Gods.

History
Those who pilot Imperial Knights are brave and noble warriors, drawn from ancestral knightly houses. In their eighteenth year, aspirants face the Ritual of Becoming, a strange rite where the mind of the Noble is fused with the Knight’s machine spirit, allowing the pilot to occupy the machine’s Throne Mechanicum and control it with their thoughts alone. This rite – coupled with psychosuggestive subroutines fed through the Knight’s neural jacks – is intended to weed out those who are weak in mind or soul, reinforcing notions of honour and selflessness so that few Knights risk falling to the temptations of Chaos.

No man is beyond the reach of the Dark Gods, however. To believe otherwise is dangerous arrogance. There are many ways that a Knight may stray from the true path laid out in the Code Chivalric, or else be driven from it by force. Most common are those times when Freeblade Knights – those who have already forsworn their knightly houses due to some shame or tragedy – find themselves driven to commit ignoble acts to survive. The ghosts of the Thrones Mechanicum are uncompromising and unforgiving, and the judgemental voices of ancestors long passed will lambaste such a fallen Knight mercilessly. Some pilots take their own lives, or abandon the throne forever – to a Noble pilot, there is little difference between these two terrible ends. Those who do not, or worse, cannot, are driven swiftly mad. It is this insanity that the Dark Gods prey upon, claiming the Nobles’ lost souls and twisting the machine spirits of their steeds into ravening beasts. In recent years, covens of Warpsmiths have taken to capturing lone Knights and giving them over for torture until this horrible end is achieved. There are even whispered rumours that some Renegade Knights no longer contain living pilots at all, but are instead the unwilling hosts to parasitic possessor Daemons who clad themselves in the war engine's adamantium plates as a mortal warrior might don a suit of armour.

Rarer and more terrible are those instances when an entire lance, or even a whole knightly house falls into damnation. During the dark days of the Horus Heresy, this was a tragedy that played out many times, most famously with the once glorious House Devine who fell to the temptations of Slaanesh. With the Cicatrix Maledictum splitting the galaxy, such wholesale corruption has become a hazard once again. Here, a compromised Sacristan creeps from one Throne Mechanicum to the next, tainting them with daemonic ichor brewed to drive the Knights to madness and mutation. There a Baron leads a noble crusade to purge a world of Chaos taint, only to become so immersed in blood that he and his followers degenerate into the very berserk beasts they strode out to slay. The Inquisition have gone to great pains in their efforts to suppress reports of traitorous knightly houses, for the mere notion of such loyal warriors turning traitor is every bit as horrifying as the concept of Renegade Space Marines. Yet more Knights fall with every passing year, and their devastating rampages have become difficult to conceal.

Infernal Quests
When Renegade Knights gather in great number they are compelled to swear grim oaths to the Dark Gods. In a twisted parody of their former nobility, they vow to complete mighty tasks on pain of death and dishonour. Such deeds may include the burning of a cardinal world or other great place of faith, the hunting of some feted Imperial hero, or the wholesale butchery of a star system whose defenders have offended the Dark Gods with their resistance. Once they have set themselves to such an Infernal Quest, Renegade Knights will not relent until either they emerge victorious, or they are slain to the last.

Types of Renegade Knights

 * Hell-Strider
 * Hell-Scourge
 * Hell-Knight
 * Chaos Knight Paladin

Notable Renegade Knight Houses

 * House Ærthegn
 * House Arcanus
 * House Atrax
 * House Caesarean
 * House Chromatic
 * House Devine
 * House Drakon
 * House Drear
 * House Malinax
 * House Makabius
 * House Morbidia
 * House Perdaxia
 * House Rajha
 * House Slughorn
 * House Vyridion
 * House Hydrax
 * House Medusos