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"Open your heart to hatred. Open your mind to fury. Open your soul to the Dark Ones. Let not your forebears stand between you and the power that is offered. The sun has set on the Age of Chivalry, and the night that is to come belongs to those with the strength to assert their rule."

Canticle of the Warped Becoming, from the Liber Idolator

The Chaos Knights, also known as Renegade Knights, Daemon Knights, and the Questor Traitoris in High Gothic, are Imperial Knight combat walkers, their Fallen Noble pilots and Knight houses corrupted to the service of Chaos.

Humanoid war engines that tower over their foes, each Chaos Knight carries an army's worth of firepower upon its weaponised limbs and hulking carapace.

At close quarters, their roaring Reaper 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 flame in the name of the Dark Gods.

Each Chaos Knight is an unhallowed relic of Humanity's ancient past. They are twisted reflections of the Imperial Knights, corrupted in form and spirit by fell sorceries, dark worship and malefic re-engineering. The Knight suits were first created using Standard Template Construct databases during the Age of Technology, and many have survived through the innumerable wars that have characterised the long Terran millennia since.

For generations uncounted, the colossal war machines have been piloted by Nobles -- aristocratic warriors possessed of enough physical, mental and spiritual fortitude to survive the Ritual of Becoming, commune with the Throne Mechanicum at each walker's heart and thus bond with their Knight suit.

In the case of Chaos Knights, such rituals are tainted by Warp entities, malefic sorceries and the perversions of the Nobles themselves. At first, the Knight may appear unchanged, but in its core the irrevocable process of rot has already begun.

Over Terran years or even centuries, Chaos energies seep into the war engine, torturing its Machine Spirit and mutating its mechanical form. Where once the suit and its pilot were a gleaming beacon of Imperial honour, the Chaos Knight and its Fallen Noble comprise a symbiotic beast of unfettered wrath and base hatred.

A Noble is enabled to pilot their war machine by being wired into an arcane contraption that is implanted into their Knight's cockpit -- a Throne Mechanicum in the larger Knights, or a Helm Mechanicum in the smaller classes. Neural jacks and cerebral uplinks connect the pilot's nervous system to the device, allowing them to directly interface with the machinery of their steed.

Actuators and omni-motivators are driven by streams of hateful thoughts, whilst sensory information and multi-spectrum Auspex relays feed back into the Noble's mind with burning clarity. Within each Throne Mechanicum are the spectral neural echoes of its previous pilots, screaming techno-gheists whose suffering increases exponentially as the Knight to which they are bonded grows ever more warped.

KnightRampager

A Chaos Knight Rampager on the battlefield.

Only the most indomitable Fallen Nobles are able to commune with a Throne Mechanicum. Those that do are able to spur their Chaos Knight into action by inimical will alone. Nobles who are wired into a Helm Mechanicum are similarly twisted by Chaos energies that have been absorbed by their war engine. The Helms also yoke these pilots mind and soul to the will of their Knightly overlords.

Since the Horus Heresy, thousands of individual Knights and even whole Knight houses have fallen to Chaos. Each instance of treachery is a monumental blow to the Imperium. The Nobles and their Knight suits are not only crucial cogs in Humanity's war machine, they are considered to be among the most unshakeably loyal servants of the Emperor.

The mere suggestion that a Noble could forswear their vows and fight against the Imperium's servants is tantamount to blasphemy. It is whispered that the Departmento Munitorum has had Imperial officers executed for heresy rather than acknowledge their claims that they have done battle with turncoat Nobles. Yet the terrifying reality is that Chaos Knights bent on anarchy and slaughter march upon the Emperor's realm in ever-greater numbers.

Fallen Nobles embark on campaigns of destruction for many reasons. Some do so to conquer territory in the name of the baleful deities they worship. Others have sworn fealty to the Dark Mechanicum, the Heretic Astartes or powerful daemonic entities, and answer the dread summons of war whenever they are called upon.

Others still are driven by insanity and profane visions, launching quests to upend the very fabric of existence and transform the galaxy into a twisted hellscape.

Chaos Knights are able to cover enormous distances when battling across a planet, marching unhindered through toxic atmospheres and across irradiated continents to reach their enemies. When their wars stretch beyond a single world, many of their kind use corrupted Dark Mechanicum Explorator craft and mass conveyance barges to transport themselves to the front lines. On the most Warp-drenched battlefields, the horrific war engines have even been known to storm forth from tears in reality, emerging from local Warp rifts called into being by the powers of Chaos.

A single Chaos Knight has as much resilience and firepower as a small army. Those that have turned upon or even butchered the rest of their Knightly household are termed Dreadblades by the Ordo Hereticus. They typically operate as lone wolves and mercenaries, lending their immense might to heretical warlords in exchange for powerful relics, arcane knowledge or fief planets upon which they can enact their cruelties.

FallenKnightWorldsMap

Map of known Fallen Knight Worlds across the galaxy in the Era Indomitus in the wake of the formation of the Great Rift.

Dreadblades are often followed into battle by hordes of warriors, Chaos Space Marines who revere the Knights' destructive potential, and throngs of Chaos Cultists who worship the machines as manifestations of their Dark Gods' will. At other times, multiple Dreadblades will gather together, focusing their disparate fury towards a single malefic purpose.

But even more terrifying than the individualistic Dreadblades are the Knight houses that have fallen in their entirety to Chaos. Those that have sided with Traitor Titan Legions and the Dark Mechanicum are known as "Infernal houses" in the Imperium. They use techno-sorcery and summoned daemonic entities to bolster the already formidable capabilities of their Knight suits.

Other Knightly courts, known as "Iconoclast houses," have more varied heretical allegiances; some have maintained oaths of fealty to Heretic Astartes Legions or the Dark Gods themselves, whereas others have renounced their allegiance to the Imperium to carve out their own dread empires.

History

"All that the Code Chivalric demands from us, they have spat upon. They twist virtue into sin and then name it fealty. They mock the solemnity of every vow ever sworn by Noble or bondsman by the mere depraved fact of their continued existence. They sully the tormented Thrones upon which they sit, while the corruption and darkness within their hearts leeches out to infect their steeds. For all this, their most heinous crime is their betrayal of the God-Emperor. For this heresy, if no other, these Fallen Knights must be harried across the stars unto the furthest edges of the void. They must be resisted with utmost ferocity wherever their heresy is felt, and slain to the last lest their rot spread to us all."

—A Noble describing his Fallen brethren
RenegadeKnightBattle

The war-ravaged Generatorum Phenelion-Alpha played host to an earth-shaking clash between the deranged Knight Despoiler Litany of Destruction and the implacable Red Might of House Taranis. The Traitor war machine's immense Reaper Chainsword roared and screeched as it struck against Red Might’s unyielding adamantium armour, while the Loyalist Knight's cannons spat a ceaseless torrent of high-explosive rounds in answer.

A Legacy of Betrayal

The history of the Chaos Knights stretches back into the dark recesses of Humanity's past. Long before the Emperor arose on Terra and forged the Imperium of Man, the Knights had established their bastions on worlds across the galaxy. Through countless horrors and long millennia they endured -- but even they were not immune to the corruptions of the Warp.

The first Knight houses were established shortly after Humanity began expanding its domain into the stars. Groups of colonists struck out from Terra aboard Long March generation ships, travelling for solar decades or even Terran centuries through the cold void of space to reach their destination worlds.

Countless colonists were lost to empyric disasters and navigational errors, while those who arrived successfully upon their new planets were faced with all manner of extreme hardships.

Some worlds were battered by savage electrical storms or burned with unrelenting volcanic activity. Others were bathed in exotic radiation, covered in carnivorous flora or infested with strange pathogens that decimated the new arrivals.

Many planets played host to sentient indigenous species who violently resisted Human encroachment, leading to bloody wars for supremacy. Yet the hardiest groups of colonists not only endured, but thrived in their new environments.

Using Standard Template Construct technology, the pioneers were able to fabricate the structures and machines they needed to assert their dominance over their new planet. Each STC database could replicate a specific creation, repeatedly and without fail. In this way the colonists built vast habitats to shield them from the ravages of their planet's atmosphere and devices to reconstitute life-giving essentials such as food, water and breathable air.

In many cases, the vessels that had transported the colonists through space were transformed into fortified enclaves that in time formed the basis for mighty fastnesses. This allowed for the creation of heavy mining tools, refineries and processing plants with which the wealth of the new worlds could be rapidly exploited.

STCs were used to create devastating machines capable of annihilating hostile alien races that offered resistance or invaded the burgeoning Human domains. The first Knight suits were both tools of settlement and weapons of war, equally as capable of sawing down towering trees and crossing inimical environments as they were of gunning down hostile xenos.

Only the most skilled and forceful individuals were equal to the task of operating the Knights suits, and it was to these warriors that the other colonists turned to for protection and, eventually, leadership. Long bloodlines of pilots emerged, and they were subtly mentally conditioned by the systems of their Thrones Mechanicum to become ever-more stringent and authoritarian. These were the Nobles of the first Knight houses.

The planets over which they ruled grew insular, rejecting new advancements in technology in favour of the traditions established and enforced by the Nobles. Due to their isolationist cultures, the Knight Worlds diverged from the path taken by the rest of Humanity, and in doing so were saved from the nightmares that followed.

Consumed by Strife

AbhorrentChaosKnights

A pair of heavily mutated Abhorrent-class Chaos Knights stride through an inferno of their own making, firing reaping salvoes into the flames to cut down the last surviving enemies scrambling through the wrecked manufactorum.

As rapidly as Humanity expanded into the stars, the collapse of its galactic domain was even swifter. Vast distances between settled worlds led to the emergence of divergent cultures, and with these came rapid genetic evolution and mutation.

Individuals emerged with the ability to sense and manipulate the tumultuous Warp that existed parallel to realspace. On some worlds these so-called "psykers" were mercilessly persecuted, being hunted down and slaughtered wherever they were found, but on many they were revered and allowed to rule over their mundane kin.

Alongside psykers came other sub-species of Mankind -- Abhumans whose genetic pool had been irrevocably tainted by the environments in which they dwelt. Interstellar wars broke out as the ideologies of neighbouring systems grew ever-more incompatible.

Sentient machines turned violently on the masters they had been built to serve, entire planets were overrun by xenos armies, and as worlds burned, many of the wonders of the Age of Technology were lost forever. With the seething tumult came Warp Storms that tore through the void of space.

Routes of contact between Humanity's manifold domains were severed, leaving distant regions cut off from one another. Their denizens were forced to face the horrors that befell them in isolation.

The Knight Worlds fared better than most in this time of terror and darkness. The Noble houses had swiftly purged mutations that had developed amongst their subjects, and had strangled branches of their own family trees where genetic deviance had appeared. From the first they had rejected thinking machines, trusting instead to hard work and personal sacrifice to make their planets strong, and so were largely spared from the rampages of the Men of Iron during the Cybernetic Revolt.

Armed with their Knight suits, they repelled xenos incursions into their domains, and crushed the savage mobs of mutated Humans that came flooding in from nearby planets. The Knight houses fortified their holdings, kept watch over their worlds and endured as the Human galaxy was overtaken by strife.

Over long centuries the cultures of these Knight Worlds regressed even further. Superstitions about the enemies of Old Night became enshrined in codes of Noble conduct. The technologies that had allowed their colonist forebears to survive became worn, the knowledge of their functions lost. But the Knights themselves survived, as did their traditions and the peoples whom they had sworn oaths to defend.

Coming of the Emperor

When the Great Crusade spread across the galaxy in the late 30th Millennium, a great number of Knight Worlds were reunited with the rest of Humanity. Vast fleets set out from Terra to find the remnants of Mankind that were scattered amongst the stars, and to bring them under the aegis of the Emperor of Mankind.

Many of the worlds to which the Great Crusade came were ruled over by obstinate tyrants -- warlords and despots who had risen to power during the anarchy of the Age of Strife, and who refused to humble themselves before the Emperor's might. These regimes were ended with brutal swiftness, crushed by the armies of the burgeoning Imperium.

The first account of a Knight World being rediscovered came from a Rogue Trader named Jeffers. His reports to the Administratum noted both the formidable technology of the Knight suits as well as the loyalty and staunchness of the Nobles who piloted them.

In the years that followed, hundreds of other Knight Worlds were encountered and brought into the fold. Most Noble houses were quick to swear fealty to the leaders of the Great Crusade, for in the Imperium they saw their own values of order and duty implemented on an incomparably grand scale.

Amongst the myriad organisations that made up the Great Crusade, it was the Mechanicum of Mars that was most successful in securing oaths of fealty from the Knight houses. The Martian Tech-priests coveted the ancient archeotech that existed on these planets, and were eager to exploit the rich mineral wealth of the various Knight Worlds.

Many Noble families swore their service to the Mechanicum, though others gave their loyalty directly to Terra and the Emperor. Regardless of who they pledged themselves to, the Knights loyally answered the call to war whenever it came.

In return, the Sacristan orders who tended to the Knights were inducted into the secrets of the Omnissiah, regaining many lost secrets of mechanical artifice that allowed them to better serve their masters.

Dawn of Heresy

The Great Crusade saw worlds across the length and breadth of the galaxy brought under the Emperor's almighty rule. But at its zenith the Imperium was shattered by treachery. The Imperial Warmaster Horus and fully half of the Space Marine Legions succumbed to the corruptions of the Dark Gods, and in the name of Chaos launched an apocalyptic campaign against the Imperium.

The galaxy was riven by civil war -- the Legiones Astartes slaughtered their erstwhile allies, worlds were incinerated by teeming armies of Heretics, and the light of hope carried forth by the Emperor was replaced by bitter darkness. It was during this time that the first Knights fell to Chaos.

Many amongst the Imperium had thought it impossible for the Noble houses to be corrupted. The Thrones Mechanicum to which they were bonded altered the Nobles' psyche and synaptic makeup, conditioning them against harbouring thoughts of betrayal or sedition.

Indeed, the majority of the Knight Worlds fought aggressively to stem the tide of heresy, putting down any rebellious elements within their own societies before joining in the battle alongside the Loyalist Space Marine Legions. Due to their sheer power and unflagging loyalty, the Knights were crucial to the Imperial war effort on countless bloody battlefields. Yet it was this same loyalty that led some to side with the Archenemy.

Innumerable Mechanicum Forge Worlds sided with Horus, as did many of the Knight houses that had sworn undying fealty to the Tech-priests of those worlds. As the Dark Mechanicum delved deeper into the arts of profane techno-sorcery, so too were the Knights in their service tainted by Chaos.

Rune-marked Knights marched to war alongside Traitor Titan Legions, unleashing devastation upon the defenders of the Imperium. Other Fallen Houses upheld their oaths to Space Marine Legions that turned Traitor. The Nobles of these houses followed their own codes of conduct to the letter -- serving without question and answering all calls to war -- and in doing so placed themselves on the path to damnation.

Still other Knights turned upon their own houses and renounced all ties to their bloodlines. Some were swayed by the whispering of malefic entities in their dreams, whereas others were bound to the will of the Dark Gods through sorcerous rituals.

Thus were the Chaos Knights born, and in the hundred centuries since they have continued to spread death and terror throughout the stars.

An Eternity of Corruption

ChaosKnightsBattle

On the Forge World of Nysairene Delta, a lance of Chaos Knights drawn from across the galaxy marched at the fore of a vast heretical army, slaughtering the Imperial warriors who had arrived on-world as part of the Indomitus Crusade. Among those slain by the Questor Traitoris war engines were several Knights of the Loyalist House Terryn, whose blasted chassis were trampled ingloriously into the ash and mud.

Knights have continued to fall to Chaos in the millennia since the Horus Heresy. Knight Worlds lying on the edges of raging empyric storms have been inexorably transformed by the outflow of raw Warp energy.

On more than one occasion such a planet has been enveloped entirely by a nightmarish tempest only to later re-emerge, its population devoured by Daemons and its war engines hideously transfigured.

Other Knights have slowly succumbed to corruption over the long campaigns they have fought on the side of the Imperium. After butchering endless tides of frenzied Heretics for centuries without rest, the pursuit of carnage can become synonymous with duty.

This is especially true for those Knights fighting in isolation from their household kin, or in war zones where reality is distorted by the dread influence of Chaos. Caked in the blood of a thousand conflicts, and faced with horror in every direction, the mechanised warriors lose the ability to differentiate between ally and enemy.

Even the spectral gestalt of their Throne Mechanicum becomes blinded by the need to kill, not caring who or what is the focus of the Knight's destructive fury. Several Knights thought lost in battle have later been discovered to have fallen to the service of the Dark Gods, and to have continued their slaughters unabated.

Notable Events

The Chaos Knights are descendants of valiant Noble houses, forged long ago when Humanity first ventured into the stars.

Many of these Knights once committed acts of great heroism and honour, but this chivalrous past has been buried under the slaughters they have since committed, and is now little more than a source of dimly remembered and tragic myths.

Age of Isolation, M15-M31

  • The Long March (ca. M15) - Long March generation starships depart from Terra and the Sol System, making centuries-long voyages to colonise the planets of distant star systems. Some of the pioneer groups take with them STCs capable of creating Knight suits, and from them the first Knightly households are born.
  • A Chivalrous Code - As the Noble houses that rule the Knight Worlds are established, so too do the principles of duty and obedience become synonymous with their mighty war engines. Though the cultures that develop on disparate Knight Worlds are as varied as their planetary environments, each adopts strikingly similar conservative notions of virtue and morality that would, in later millennia, come to be known as the "Code Chivalric."
  • The Gilded King - On the world of Aurelion Major during the lost Age of Technology, a Knight known as the Gilded King is piloted for the first time. This inaugural bonding of a Noble and their Knight is recorded through towering relief sculptures carved into the gold escarpments that encircle the planet's equator.
  • 'The Age of Strife (ca. M25-M30) - The galaxy is consumed by the horrors of Old Night. Human colonies that had prospered for hundreds of generations collapse in upon themselves, torn apart by warlike xenos, or mutated members of their own populations who become renegade psykers. Mankind's hold over the stars is eradicated almost entirely, but the Knight Worlds stand strong throughout this time of bloodshed and strife, their cultures conservative enough to weather the storm and their people protected by the great war engines.
  • The Great Crusade (ca. 798.M30 - 005.M31) - The Emperor of Mankind's fleets spread out across the galaxy, uniting the Human worlds one by one and annihilating all who pose opposition to His rule. Those Knight Worlds that are discovered are quick to swear oaths of allegiance to the rapidly-expanding Imperium of Man, with the Noble houses pledging their fealty to various Explorator fleets and Titan Legions of the ancient Mechanicum. The Knights themselves become invaluable warriors in the Great Crusade, and by their indomitable power countless other planets are humbled. Yet in the vastness of the galaxy there are Knight Worlds upon which the Emperor's envoys never arrive. These planets continue to cleave to their traditions of old, watching the skies for the incoming threats that have hounded them during the long Age of Strife.

Age of Broken Banners, M31

  • The Horus Heresy (ca. 005-014.M31) - At the height of its glory, the Imperium is plunged into civil war as the Warmaster Horus leads half of the eighteen Space Marine Legions in open revolt against the Emperor in service to the Dark Gods. The corruptions of the Warmaster spread quickly, with large portions of the Imperial Army and Mechanicum pledging themselves to the Ruinous Powers. Though the Knight houses are amongst the staunchest defenders of the Imperium, even they are not immune to the taint and temptations of Chaos. Through unbreakable oaths to the Traitor Legions, profane experimentations of the traitorous Dark Mechanicum and numerous other perversions of nobility, the first Chaos Knights join in the slaughters perpetrated by Horus.
  • Battle of Beta-Garmon, "The Titandeath" (006-013.M31) - Numerous Traitor Titan Legions engage in battle with their Loyalist counterparts throughout the Beta-Garmon star cluster during the Horus Heresy. Knight houses fight on both sides of the sprawling conflict, upholding oaths to follow the god-machines into the fray. Whole houses are lost in the war zone, their once-mighty engines reduced to flaming wreckage alongside the metallic carcasses of annihilated Titans. House Vextrix, having marched dutifully alongside the Titans of the Legio Mortis, take severe casualties. Those Vextrix Knights who had expressed even the slightest reservation in siding with their bond-lieges against the Imperium are placed on the front lines, where they suffer the greatest losses. The conflict therefore becomes known amongst the nobility of Vextrix's homeworld of Daxos Gemini as "the Great Cull."
  • Battle of Molech (009.M31) - As they journey towards Terra, the Warmaster's fleets descend upon the Knight World of Molech, which is ruled over by the Knights of House Devine. Horus' initial assault devastates many cities and strongholds. The terrified populace turns to the nobility for protection only to find that the Nobles have succumbed to the temptations of Slaanesh and are utterly corrupted. When the Warmaster launches his second attack,the Knights of House Devine attack the remaining Imperial forces from the rear, leaving them with no way to retreat from the invading Heretics. Caught between the treacherous Knights of House Devine and Horus' rampant forces, the shattered remnants of Molech's defenders are slaughtered without mercy.
  • Siege of Terra (014.M31) - The Horus Heresy is brought to an end when the Warmaster and the Emperor are both cut down in battle with each other on the Traitors' flagship in orbit of the Imperial throneworld. Vast numbers of Traitors withdraw from the Sol System to the Warp-riven region of space known as the Eye of Terror. Some of the Knight houses who had fought alongside Horus follow the fleeing forces, others launch new campaigns of brutality across the galaxy, while many return to their own worlds to carve out domains of tyranny.

Age of Degradation, M31-M41

  • Rise of the Idolators (ca. M31-M36) - In the aftermath of the Horus Heresy, some amongst the Imperium believe the threat of the Chaos Knights to be diminished. However, such wishful thinking is quickly disproven. Even after the Traitors' defeat, Knight houses continue to turn upon the Imperium, swearing allegiance to powerful Chaos Lords or Daemon Princes, while the Dark Mechanicum delves deeper into their profane arts to pervert the ancient technology of the Throne Mechanicum. The Inquisition and later its Ordo Hereticus also become aware of the cults of technically-skilled Idolators who now serve the Fallen Noble households, and through whom corruption is spread to new Knight Worlds.
  • Psychic Reign (ca.M34) - After learning of the existence of the Imperium of Man, the colossal alien cyborg known as the Cacodominus uses its potent psychic abilities to secure the services of seventeen wandering Dreadblades. Each of the Chaos Knights is charged with a different mission -- one is sent to find a sunless planet on which an ancient technological marvel is buried, another is tasked with rounding up and butchering every member of a rare alien species called the Axlo, while another is given the esoteric duty of protecting the time stream against the Tzeentchian Daemon Kairos Fateweaver. Meanwhile, the Cacodominus itself conquers hundreds of systems. When the creature is finally slain by the massed armies of the Legio Cybernetica and Black Templars, its dying psychic scream echoes across the galaxy, even distorting the guiding light of the Astronomican. The resulting backlash burnt out billions of Astropaths across the Imperium and resulted in millions of starships being lost and entire sub-sectors descending into barbarism. But the seventeen Dreadblades who serve it make no effort to seek revenge. Each had been commanded to pursue the individual task they had been given, come what may, and even the death of their liege is of little concern so long as the Cacodominus' will is eventually fulfilled.
  • Wounded Prey - Whilst en route to the War Zone Kilda, the mass conveyance barge Dark Cloud becomes stranded in the Warp with a full lance of Imperial Knights of House Mortan waiting in its hangar. The Gellar Field that shields the disabled craft from the denizens of the Empyrean holds firm at first, until a series of massive objects impact with the ship's hull. The objects turn out to be Chaos Knights of House Khomentis. After clamping themselves to the barge, the Khomentis Knights begin blasting and cutting their way through its outer bulkheads to allow waves of Warp energy to flood inwards. Knowing that the Dark Cloud cannot survive long against such an assault, the Knights of House Mortan venture out onto the barge's exterior to do battle with their corrupted attackers. Though they fight bravely, the Mortan Knights are blasted to scrap by the Chaos Knights, and the souls of their pilots devoured by great flocks of predatory Daemons. With its last line of defence annihilated, the Dark Cloud is swiftly torn apart.
  • The Spoils of Fate - In a single solar decade, nine Knight Worlds fall to the corruptions of Chaos, each launching a campaign of horror that sets dozens of Imperial planets ablaze. Though scattered across different sectors of the Imperium, these Iconoclast houses are found to have a connection that causes great vexation amongst the investigating Inquisitors. During the Great Crusade, Remembrancers had transcribed the ancient legends of each of these worlds, and all nine spoke of a figure that had appeared to their rulers during the Age of Strife. Known only as Manat, he had served as a vizier to powerful leaders of each of the Noble houses, and was reputed to have great powers of foresight. On some of these worlds he was seen as a villain, and on others a hero, but on all he had disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared, taking with him the head of the Noble household he served.
  • Battle of Oumo - The Hatred of Krastellan, a Dreadblade and Fallen Knight of House Hawkshroud, descends upon the planet of Oumo and opens fire on the siege walls of the Agri-world's capital harvester city. The Oumoans, having been granted the sworn service and protection of Hawkshroud, are caught completely by surprise. After sending an astropathic distress signal to the nearby Forge World of Mezoa, they receive a reply from Tech- priest Dominus Telemetenos Vrae ordering them to cease all such communication. Vrae informs the Oumoans that it is a logical impossibility for a Hawkshroud Knight to be attacking them, and therefore firing upon this loyal Knight would be an act of treason against the Omnissiah. This message is disseminated across the planet, and the Oumoan regiments ordered to hold their fire. Without any form of resistance, the Hatred of Krastellan tears its way through the defences of Oumo's harvest cities one by one.
  • The Kreen Scar - House Herpetrax launched a long and brutal campaign through the Kreen Worlds. Stretching over more than a hundred light years, this network of planetary systems served as a vital manufactorum hub in the galactic south of the Ultima Segmentum. Despite concerted defence efforts by the Astra Militarum and Adeptus Mechanicus, the Herpetrax advance progresses with staggering speed. The denizens of worlds that are conquered by the Iconoclast house are enslaved, and are put to work excavating the foundations beneath the towering hive cities in which they live. Billions die in the process, crushed beneath slabs of ferrocrete, buried in catastrophic cave-ins or simply collapsing from starvation and exhaustion. But on several of these planets the Fallen Noble overlords uncover what they are searching for. The long-forgotten remains of ancient Long March generation ships are prised from the earth -- the remnants of failed Human colonies from the Dark Age of Technology. These precious cargoes are taken back to the Fallen Knight World of Jedathra, while the surviving slave populations are exterminated by massed orbital bombardments. Over the course of a generation, the belt of Imperial manufactorum worlds is transformed into a ruined and lifeless stretch known as the "Kreen Scar."
  • Price of Betrayal (ca. M36) - Word spreads across the Imperium of the death of Goge Vandire, the tyrannical Ecclesiarch and High Lord of Terra. Those who are still loyal to Vandire begin exacting their revenge upon the Imperium on multiple fronts, attacking Shrine Worlds and tearing down monuments to Imperial saints. None are more fervent in this regard than Hope’s Shroud. The Freeblade Knight and its pilot -- whose identity was known only to Vandire himself -- had sworn to serve the Ecclesiarch in life and death, and so set about taking revenge on those who had betrayed him. The first targets of the excommunicant Knight's wrath are the Sisters of the Order of the Ebon Chalice, for it was their Matriarch Alicia Dominica that slew Vandire. After a series of escalating battles, Hope's Shroud succeeds in claiming the head of the Order's Canoness Superior. Over the next two millennia, the fanatical Knight claims the heads of other Canonesses Superior, one for each of the six Matriarchs that turned on Vandire. The skulls are hung as trophies from the increasingly warped armour of Hope's Shroud.
  • Dark Siege - Lances from five Fallen houses besiege a Webway portal inside a hollowed out, wandering moon. The portal leads directly to Seyahmva'ar, an outer district of Commorragh ruled over by the Drukhari's Kabal Opaque. Rather than helping to repel the Chaos Knights, Commorragh's Supreme Overlord Asdrubael Vect instead dislocated Seyahmva'ar from the city proper, leaving the Kabal Opaque to be torn apart.
  • Fall of Graggen Keep - On the Death World of Friggenswald, Renegade Astra Militarum infantry regiments lay siege to the towering fortress known as Graggen Keep. Though the keep is defended by only a handful of soldiers, two factors prevent the attackers from achieving a swift victory. The sludgy acidic river surrounding the fortress instantly dissolves those Renegades who attempt to launch an assault. Furthermore, from its position inside the walls, the Freeblade Knight Unflinching Steel fires a ceaseless hail of Rapid-Fire Battle Cannon shells into the ranks of the encroaching army. The Knight had once been a member of House Lucaris, but had abandoned his household when they turned Traitor, and had fought valiantly for the Imperium ever since. Yet the initial victories of the defenders only delayed the inevitable. The Chaos Knights of House Lucaris arrived on Friggenswald and marched upon Graggen Keep. Having served their purpose of holding Unflinching Steel in place, the Renegades withdrww out of firing range while the Lucaris Knights wade through the acid flows surrounding the fortress. A trio of Knights Rampager made short work of the fortress walls, allowing the remaining war engines to pour through the breach and annihilate the defenders. Unflinching Steel was brought down and dismembered by the members of its former household, but was not destroyed. Instead, its battered and mutilated chassis was taken back to the Fallen Knight World of Morda Prime to face judgement.
  • Tower of Scintillus - The High King of Barragon, a Loyalist Knightly household, was abducted by a sorcerous Chaos Cult of Tzeentch. Those Knights that served the king set out to find their liege, eventually tracking his location to the world of Scintillus. But upon entering the reality-bending tower in which the king was imprisoned, each Knight was transformed into a crystalline statue, lifeless and utterly immobile. Only when another Knight entered the tower did the statues come to life and fire upon their erstwhile compatriots.
  • Battle of Tellerax Prime - The Dreadblade Litany of Destruction fought alongside Heretic Astartes of the Iron Warriors Legion during the invasion of the world of Tellerax Prime. Telleraxi infantry regiments establish bristling defensive lines across the planet's sump fields and around key hive cities, but even with the support of an armoured detachment of the Ultramarines 3rd Company they are unable to repel the influx of Chaos warriors. A grinding siege ensues. The Iron Warriors pin their foes in place with ceaseless orbital and land-based bombardments, allowing Litany of Destruction to rove freely, annihilating any Imperial forces unfortunate enough to be caught in its path. Only when the Knight Paladin Ever-Stalwart arrives to aid the besieged forces does the state of battle shift. Amidst the shattered remains of Hive Permillion, the Dreadblade and the Imperial Knight engage in a titanic duel. After an hour of traded blows, the Litany of Destruction gains the upper hand, striking down its Loyalist opponent and readying the killing strike. But the Chaos Knight is denied its victory when a column of Predator tanks fire upon its flank. The Litany tears its way through the armoured column and retreats under the covering fire of the encroaching Iron Warriors, enraged at the Ultramarines for interfering with its rightful kill.
  • The 13th Black Crusade (ca. 999.M41) - Iconoclast households, Infernal households and Dreadblades from across the galaxy flock to the banner of Abaddon the Despoiler, the Warmaster of Chaos, as he launches his 13th Black Crusade. Dread lances march on multiple fronts. In the Mackan System, Chaos Knights of House Khomentis hunt the Howling Griffons' 5th Company, using the mutants of the Stigmatus Covenant to flush the Space Marines from cover. On Belismar, the Dreadblade Bleak Dawn single-handedly wipes out the unsupported Narsine 18th Infantry, filling the Gracien Trench with their corpses. Meanwhile, on Macharia, Chaos Knights of House Vextrix, House Iattol, House Mesmr and House Lucaris battle alongside various warbands of Heretic Astartes to lay waste to the militarised hive cities. Throughout the crusade, many Knights pledge fealty to Abaddon for the first time, whereas others settle blood oaths against the Imperium that had stood for millennia.
  • Slaughter at Armageddon (ca. 999.M41) - In the wake of massive Warp upheavals follwoing the fall of Cadia to the 13th Black Crusade, the first Khornate daemons spill onto the surface of Armageddon, attacking Orks and Imperial soldiers without discrimination. Shortly after, the Dreadblade Incarnate Slaughter, which accompanied the daemonic forces, rises from the gore of the slain.

Age of Merciless Conquest, M41-M42

Note: All dates from this point forward are provisional due to errors in the Imperial Calendar, meaning these events could actually have occurred at any time from the early 41st Millennium to the early 42nd Millennium.

  • The Great Rift Opens (ca. 999.M41) - Savage Warp Storms rage across the breadth of the galaxy, coalescing to form the Cicatrix Maledictum from one side of the galaxy to the other. Scores of Knight Worlds are swallowed as the Great Rift yawns open, and more are beset by the ravenous Warp entities that come spilling from this scar in reality. But to many Chaos Knights, the nightmare divide in the stars is a signal for them to march to war. Dreadblades and Fallen households that had maintained isolated domains of tyranny on the fringes of the Imperium now gather en masse, heeding the clarion call of the Dark Gods.
  • The Nachmund Gauntlet (Unknown Date.M42) - Dharrovar, a Knight World thought lost since the Horus Heresy, is rediscovered inside one of the few known passages through the Cicatrix Maledictum. Imperial envoys are sent to the Nobles of Dharrovar, and entreat them to secure this vital gateway to the Imperium Nihilus that lies captive behind the Great Rift, cut off from the light of the Astronomican. Yet these requests are met with violence. It soon becomes clear that Kaligius, High King of House Mandrakor, has fallen to Chaos, his Throne Mechanicum riddled with daemonic presences. Many of his most loyal Knights follow him into treachery, leading to a devastating civil war on Dharrovar.
  • Conflagration of Rho Zapphire (Unknown Date.M42) - Above the gas giant of Rho Zapphire, a strike force from the White Scars 6th Company fights a war of speed against an invading host of Slaaneshi daemons. The Space Marines race to secure the vital aether-derricks that are suspended in the planet's thermosphere, cutting their way through screaming droves of Daemonettes and Fiends of Slaanesh that skitter along the equatorial gantries, even as more depraved beings pour from the nearby maw of the Great Rift. The fuel from these derricks is crucial for the Imperial fleets withdrawing from the encroaching Warp Storms, but the daemons outnumber the White Scars a hundred times over. The battle appears to take a shift when a flotilla of macro-conveyance barges swoops into low orbit and disgorges its cargo of Knights. But the hope of reinforcements is short lived. The Knights of House Khymere that march onto the floating gantries open fire on the Space Marines, obliterating those few that remain. When cruisers from the Imperial Navy arrive to refuel, the Chaos Knights depart, but not before overloading the core of each aether-derrick. The ensuing chain reactions ignited the volatile atmosphere of Rho Zapphire, incinerating the refuelling fleets as the entire planet exploded.
  • Forge Infernus (Unknown Date.M42) - On the Industrial World of Nemendghast in the Vigilus System,the Master of Possession Vorash Soulflayer and his acolytes transformed a sprawling manufactorum complex into the daemonic foundry known as the Forge Infernus. Among the victims of Soulflayer's vile rituals were two Freeblade Knights that were hobbled and captured while defending Nemendghast from the Chaos incursion. The first Freeblade and its pilot were subjected to agonising Warp exposure, their metal and flesh blasted with pure daemonic energies. The second was pumped full of sludge rendered from the writhing corpses of the recently possessed, the Knight and its Noble drowned in the viscous fluid. Though they resisted the corruptive rituals for almost a Terran year, eventually the Freeblades are broken in body, Throne Mechanicum and soul. The first of them Vorash renames Bale Star, and the second the Hand of Mourning. Each of these Dreadblades swears fealty to its creator before being dispatched on individual quests. Bale Star is sent to find and slay the Baroness of Tanika, a Knight reputed to be the greatest duellist in the galaxy, and to drag the felled Knight suit back to Nemendghast. Meanwhile, the Hand of Mourning is given the true name of an ancient Daemon Prince, and is told to bring this creature to Vorash, one way or another.
  • Stomping Grounds (Unknown Date.M42) - A cloud of Ork Roks plummets to the surface of the Infernal Knight World Cobbran, home of House Qiln. Before the dust of impact has settled, dozens of Stompas bearing the mark of the Deathskulls klan emerge from the crude landing vessels and begin a lumbering march toward the nearest keep. Filled with outrage, the Chaos Knights stride out en masse to meet the invaders, forming a lance of over five hundred roaring war engines with which to charge head-on into their foe. Such is the scale of the ensuing battle, so heavy the metallic footfalls and so destructive the barrages, that the tectonic crust of Cobbran shifts, leading to explosive volcanic activity. Those Knights that are felled are quickly hacked to scrap by wide-eyed Big Meks. Meanwhile every Stompa that is toppled is dragged into the open lava flows by cults of Idolators loyal to House Qiln, and in profane rituals new, fully formed Chaos Knights are summoned into being from the bubbling slag.
  • Dysephamine Campaign (Unknown Date.M42) - The Dreadblade Hatred of Krastellan aligned itself with the Renegade Space Marines known as the Company of Misery. Together they waged a harrowing campaign through the Dysephamine System, which culminated in them enslaving the populace of the world of Dyseph IX. The Company of Misery set about slaughtering every psyker on the planet, but not before a distress call was sent off-world. Yet this call for aid was not only anticipated but planned for by the Hatred of Krastellan. The Dreadblade's own message was added to the distress beacon -- a formal challenge to the Freeblade Sir Hekhtur and his Knight Canis Rex, the so-called "Chainbreaker." The Hatred of Krastellan then travelled to the sole moon of Dyseph IX, and on the barren surface awaited the coming of the renowned Freeblade.
  • To Hunt the Hunters (Unknown Date.M42) - On the Jungle World of Y'tach'grra, a lone War Dog of House Khomentis is cut down by a roving band of Kroot mercenaries. As is their custom, the carnivorous Kroot pry the pilot from the fallen engine and devour his flesh. But in doing so the daemonic entities the Fallen Noble had welcomed into his body are released. After a swift and brutal skirmish, these manifestations are similarly cut down, their essences dissipating back to the Warp, but not before they have marked each of the Kroot mercenaries with a burning rune. More than a Terran year later on a distant world the truth of these markings becomes apparent. A lance of Khomentis Knights attack the Kroot from out of nowhere, having tracked the burning runes through the Warp to take revenge on their prey.
  • Eternal Avarice (Unknown Date.M42) - Upon learning of a chamber filled with ancient archeotech and lost knowledge, the Gilded King sets out on a quest to find this secret repository, and to slay its guardian -- the Freeblade known as the Green Knight.
  • Battle of Vigrid (Unknown Date.M42) - The Great Game for supremacy between the Chaos Gods spills into realspace, leading to a series of hellish conflicts across the worlds deep in the Imperium Nihilus. Greatest of these was the Battle of Vigrid, where vast armies of each of the Ruinous Powers engaged in a sprawling combat. Eventually a contest of champions was proposed whereby the Greater Daemons of each god would engage in single combat. The nightmarish war cries from this contest echoed through the Warp, liquefying the minds of psykers for light years in every direction -- and drawing the attention of House Lucaris. Four Lucaris Knights were sent to engage in the Vigrid tourney, to prove the might of the Iconoclast house. Those Knights that duelled the champions of Khorne, Nurgle and Slaanesh were all victorious, but it soon became apparent that they had been bestowed with a portion of Tzeentch's fate-bending power. These three Chaos Knights managed to escape the battle zone before the daemonic armies descended into open war once more, carrying with them the sorcerous gifts of the Changer of Ways.
  • False Idol (Unknown Date.M42) - After nearly two and a half Terran centuries of ceaseless war, the Knight Rampager Death’s Sabre was covered in a thick layer of shredded skin and rancid fat claimed from its most worthy opponents. Throngs of cultists gather around the mad Knight in battle, displaying their loyalty through acts of increasing depravity. The continued slaughters perpetrated by Death’s Sabre soon drew the admiration of an even more bizarre sect of worshippers, as a teeming pack of Necron Flayed Ones emerged from their bleak dimension. After swiftly butchering the deranged Human followers, the Flayed Ones fell to worship of the Chaos Knight, believing it to be a manifestation of the C'tan Llandu'gor. In its own state of savage madness, Death’s Sabre did not even notice its xenos thralls.
  • Indomitable (Unknown Date.M42) - On countless fronts, the Fallen houses waged war against the myriad fleets of the Indomitus Crusade. Dread lances of Chaos Knights struck worlds where Imperial reinforcements were inbound, daring the approaching armies to meet them head-on, while more rapacious households and Dreadblades laid waste to planets that lay in the wake of the crusade fleets. Many age-old blood debts were settled and even more were incurred as the warped war engines loosed their fury on the Emperor's servants across the divided galaxy.

Path to Damnation

"Honour through annihilation. That was the only truth to be found among our house's rotting tomes of histories before we burned them to ash. Our forebears upheld their nobility and their code through the slaughter of millions. They won praise for bloodshed and acclamation for massacres, and the Corpse-Emperor's mewling slaves whined in horror when their betters carried out deeds that duty demanded. Deeds they could not bring themselves to do. We serve greater lords now, gods who smile on the bloodshed that honour demands. Take your Thrones, Nobles of Annihilation. Let these insignificant insects see how we have been honoured so much more than they could hope to be. Show them how we won such favours. Demonstrate our superiority to these maggots!"

—A Fallen Noble's perspective on his house's service to Chaos
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A Knight Despoiler issues a mortal challenge to its Imperial counterpart from House Terryn, its vox horns projecting the words of the Fallen Noble above the roar of the surrounding battle.

Where each Loyalist Knight represents a long history of honour and self-sacrifice, the Chaos Knights come from a lineage of horror and depravity. Only through unspeakable atrocities and malefic rituals were these Knightly lines able to be corrupted, and the tally of slaughter has only been added to since their fall.

Those who pilot Imperial Knights are brave and noble warriors, drawn from ancestral knightly houses. In their eighteenth standard year, aspirants face the Ritual of Becoming, a strange rite where the mind of the Noble is fused with the Knight's Machine Spirit (artificial intelligence), allowing the pilot to occupy the machine's Throne Mechanicum and control it with their thoughts alone.

For a Noble to bond with their Throne Mechanicum is a harrowing process. Only the most worthy individuals -- women and men possessed of formidable physical, mental and even spiritual strength -- are able to survive the Ritual of Becoming. Those who do are forever changed.

In the fastness of each Noble house there is a sacred room known as the Chamber of Echoes. Within the Chamber of Echoes the would-be pilot is wired into a Throne Mechanicum and left in isolation so that their worth may be judged.

Residing inside the Throne Mechanicum are the gheist-like remnants of each of its former occupants. Every one of these electro-spirits was once a Noble, and it is they who assess the new supplicant's worth. Coursing through the neural sockets directly into the Noble's mind, they are able to pry open the supplicant's innermost thoughts and closely guarded secrets.

The ritual lasts long and terrible hours, and those Nobles who are found wanting are utterly consumed by the process. But those who are deemed worthy are bonded eternally with the Throne Mechanicum, and with the digital echoes of their forebears who dwell inside it.

The Ritual of Becoming is not only the means by which a Noble becomes a pilot, it is a necessary defence against corruption. A Throne Mechanicum is a shield to prevent the awesome power of a Knight being wielded by one capable of treachery. From the moment they Become, a pilot's thoughts are influenced by their Throne, even when they do not sit upon it.

Notions of fealty, obligation and hierarchy are emblazoned at the forefront of the pilot's mind, as is a deep and undivided respect for the Noble's ancestors and their household traditions. Such organic mental conditioning should make treachery impossible, but the will of the Dark Gods is strong, and their corruptions truly insidious.

To believe any person is immune to the temptations of Chaos 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 mechanical 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, the Prince of Pleasure. With the Cicatrix Maledictum now 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' pilots 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.

Many Fallen Nobles have been seduced by the poisoned promises of the Chaos Gods, just as the Traitor Legions were before them. In some cases, entire Iconoclast or Infernal houses devote themselves to a single deity. They daub that god's sigils upon their Knight suits, raise profane temples and idols to their chosen patron and dedicate the souls of those they slaughter to their empyric master.

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A Renegade Knight stalks its next prey in battle.

Others are pantheistic in their worship, with individual Fallen Nobles choosing different patron gods to the remainder of their household, or offering dark prayers to whichever deity they believe will aid them in any given moment.

The Chaos Gods are vast entities whose gaze spans all of time and space, and to catch their fleeting regard for even an instant requires deeds so ghastly that they will stain their perpetrator's soul forevermore. Yet for those damned few who earn the gods' blessings the rewards can be great.

Suddenly flourishing psychic abilities, boons of physical might or unholy fortitude, even the sudden conjuration of daemonic armies to fight alongside the chosen Noble -- such are the gifts of earthly power for those who sell their eternal soul to the Chaos Gods.

The Inquisition's agents 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 Terran year, and their devastating rampages have become difficult to conceal.

Iconoclast Houses

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A Fallen Noble of the Chaos Knights, heavily mutated by exposure to the energies of the Warp.

The pilots of the first Iconoclast households had already Become before the start of the Horus Heresy. The enormity of the Imperium's fracturing had devastating effects on those Knight houses whose allegiances lay with the Traitors.

As the heretical war spread across the galaxy, the ghosts within hundreds of Thrones Mechanicum howled in anguish, their imprinted spirits tortured by the impossibility of upholding their honour in the face of their Traitor masters' deeds of betrayal whilst maintaining their loyalty.

The neural outcry was such that some Nobles were driven insane by it, while others suffered gruesome cerebral haemorrhages. Others still followed blindly into damnation, claimed by that most insidious trap of believing honestly that those to whom they had sworn their oaths fought for a just cause.

The vast majority of turncoat Nobles, however, were subjected to immense torments. They were ceaselessly assaulted by feelings of shame and hatred, their every negative emotion amplified and echoed by the ancestral spirits of their Thrones Mechanicum.

According to the Code Chivalric, failure to perform one's duty is a transgression that can only be absolved through selfless service. As such, these Knights fought all the harder for their treacherous lieges. At the commands of their heretical lords, lances of Chaos Knights tore bloody paths through the Imperium's armies.

Once-honourable Nobles led attacks to desecrate cities and enslave the populations of entire planets. Kilometres-high statues dedicated to the Emperor were toppled by Knights' ceaseless bombardments, and in their place profane monuments were erected to glorify the cruelties of the Dark Gods.

These attempts to quell their self-loathing through unquestioning service only added further fuel to the fire. The Knights were compelled towards greater extremes of brutality and further depths of depravity, and with their every debased action the screams of their Throne Mechanicum grew louder.

Over time the Chaos Knights became unrecognisable as the valiant warriors they once were. Some had transformed into incarnations of carnage. They hacked their way through the steel and flesh of their foes, seeking only to drown their unrelenting anguish in oceans of blood.

Others became agents of instability, their motivations and allegiances upended constantly by the hateful tempests that raged in their souls. The growing insanity that festered inside each Chaos Knight corroded their notions of chivalry, twisting concepts of honour and duty into new and nightmarish ideals.

These Fallen Nobles justified the most heinous atrocities they committed in the Traitors' name, reasoning that they had been bred to be exemplars of virtue, so every action they took must therefore be virtuous. Whilst incinerating the defenders of an Imperial bastion, a Renegade Knight would conclude that such measures must be necessary, for otherwise their codes of virtue would not allow them to immolate their victims.

By the same grotesque logic, if roasting alive a hundred Imperial soldiers was an act of honour, then there could be no greater honour than seeing the entire galaxy set ablaze.

The tortures endured by each Chaos Knight pilot served to permanently corrupt their Throne Mechanicum. Upon their death, the imprinted remnants of a Fallen Noble remained in their Throne, where their twisted visions of virtue spread to the other spectral echoes like a rampant digital infection.

No longer would the Throne serve to shield the pilot from corruption -- it now fed the depraved desires of those who would bond with it. Bloodlust, sadism and psychosis were fostered in the lines of Fallen Nobles that flowed from the first Chaos Knights, giving rise to the tyrannical warlords of the early Iconoclast houses.

Iconoclast houses are defined by the malice and madness that led to their corruption. In place of honour they pursue only conquest, destroying whatever enemies stand before them to expand their tyrannical domains. Many have long histories of depravity that stretch back for thousands of years, though new Iconoclast houses can be formed wherever the taint of the Warp takes hold.

Infernal Houses

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A Fallen Noble of the Chaos Knights showing the characteristic physical corruption of the Questor Traitoris after exposure to the energies of Chaos.

Not all Knights fell to Chaos in the same manner as those of the Iconoclast houses. Those whose pilots had sworn allegiance to the Hereteks of the Dark Mechanicum were the subjects of countless dread rituals, each designed to corrupt the supposedly incorruptible technologies of the Thrones Mechanicum. The true knowledge of how the Thrones functioned was beyond the ken of even the most ancient magi, but the colossal military potential of the Knights spurred them to conduct ever-more depraved experiments.

On the nightmare Forge Worlds called Hell-Forges, Dark Magi created their own grim simulacra of the Chamber of Echoes, and into these Screaming Oubliettes they dragged the Thrones Mechanicum from captured Knight suits, often with the broken and bloodied pilot still attached.

Many of these chambers were lined with arcane devices that were used to bombard the captive Thrones with focused Warp energy. Others bristled with mecha-dendritic tentacles that parasitically fused themselves to the Throne, and through them daemonic entities were able to surge into the host tissue of the cybernetically-wired pilot.

Certain sects of the Dark Mechanicum raised up base warrior champions who fought one another for the right to Become. These individuals were not trained in the ways of the Noble houses, but for them the prospect of piloting a Knight blinded them to the dangers of attempting to Become. The results of these procedures were ubiquitously gruesome. But amidst the tortured cries, the explosions of flesh and the scrapcode howls of the tainted Thrones, the magi of the Dark Mechanicum gleaned volumes of morbid data. Arcane procedures were devised to scramble the gheists that dwelt within each Throne.

Specterphagic Daemons were summoned to devour the spirit echoes of pilots past. The Thrones Mechanicum and the Knight suits themselves were seeded with pathogenic scrapcode, and in some rare cases the magi used their technologies to open interstitial Warp rifts inside the ancient circuitry clusters. Though only a fraction of the Knight suits and Thrones that were captured survived these torturous experiments, those that did were corrupted beyond redemption, as were any pilots unfortunate enough to survive.

Through unspeakable procedures the Dark Mechanicum bonded these Fallen Nobles to their tainted war engines, thus creating the progenitors of the Infernal houses who still serve the Hereteks today.

Through close ties with the Dark Mechanicum, the Infernal houses of the present era find ever-more twisted ways to warp their weapons and machinery. In brutal campaigns they strip worlds of their material resources and enslave entire populations, funnelling their plunder into nightmarish rituals to infuse their Knight suits with the power of Chaos.

Dreadblades

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The Dreadblade Knight Tyrant Sire of Doom.

The term "Dreadblade" is used by the Ordo Hereticus to denote those Chaos Knights who serve no master, similar to their Loyalist Freeblade counterparts. This notion is not entirely accurate, for certain Dreadblades do indeed pledge themselves to various heretical warlords or profane demagogues, but such loyalty is fleeting, and these wandering Knights will swiftly betray their masters if it proves advantageous.

The horrors that cause a Knight to become a Dreadblade are as varied as the currents of Chaos themselves. Some are led onto this path of damnation through illusion and trickery. Others find themselves becoming roving warriors as a result of their growing insanity. Others still choose violent solitude of their own volition as a means to pursue revenge, and to fulfil their sworn oaths of murder.

Regardless of the underlying reason, a Knight that turns its back on the Imperium and its own house is forever outcast. Yet this only makes them more deadly. Freed from the bonds of fealty and subservience, there is nothing to stop a Dreadblade pursuing its own nightmarish desires, travelling from war zone to war zone to slake its lust for carnage, or hunting down and destroying all in the galaxy who have offended its twisted dignity.

A great deal of Dreadblades hail from houses that are still loyal to the Imperium and the Omnissiah. During the Horus Heresy, when the rest of their houses sided with the Loyalists, individual Knights felt honour-bound to maintain their fealty to the Traitors.

Countless such schisms occurred across the galaxy, and though many of the rebelling Knights were permanently silenced in titanic duels, others disappeared into the stars only to re-emerge alongside the armies of the Warmaster Horus.

Other Knights who become Dreadblades are those captured in battle, their allies wiped out and their suits damaged to the point that they can no longer fight. Handed over to the Hereteks of the Dark Mechanicum, a long and horrific fate awaits these warriors. Their minds and souls are gradually shattered through the use of sorcerous torture and daemonic rituals. Notions of loyalty and honour are replaced with the depraved ideals of their captors and a screaming desire for carnage.

Then there are those Dreadblades who, over the course of long and bloody campaigns, have lost the ability to perceive the path of righteousness. Surrounded by so much slaughter, their only notions of honour are tied to the killing strike of their blade or the obliterative blast of their Rapid-Fire Battle Cannon. Many such Dreadblades are completely unaware that they have fallen from grace, their single-mindedness blinding them to the atrocities that they so wantonly commit.

Idolators

"Awaken, oh plasma generator, and pump thine blood of fire. Awaken, oh cannons, oh rockets, oh blades and fists, and prepare to kill. Awaken, oh ion shield, and muster thine scornful defiance. Awaken, oh Throne Mechanicum, the time for slaughter has come."

—The Idolators' Chant of Awakening

To maintain the integrity of their Chaos Knight suits over the course of countless brutal wars, Fallen Nobles rely on the corrupted artisans known as Idolators. Like those whom they serve, Idolators are an aberrant offshoot of peoples loyal to the Imperium.

Where the Sacristan orders are trained by the Adeptus Mechanicus, inducted into the holy mysteries of the Omnissiah so that they might minister to the Knights of the Noble houses, Idolators learn their craft within the screaming soul forges of the Dark Mechanicum.

Through diabolic rituals they entreat the entities that dwell within the Warp, sacrificing living victims and mighty machines on great cog-shaped altars. Through such practices they glean knowledge of how Chaos Knights function, and -- more importantly -- they learn how to desecrate the ostensibly incorruptible technologies of the Thrones Mechanicum.

Often times there will be multiple cabals of Idolators dwelling on each Fallen Knight World, each with the ability to repair battle damage sustained by the mechanical suits. The power of these cabals waxes and wanes with the services they can provide to the Fallen Noble house.

Some know the secrets to performing mecha-inductive rituals that will vastly augment a prominent Knight's power. Others may be able to subjugate their liege Noble's rivals through the installation of psychic yokes and spiritual shackles.

Then there are those Idolators who have learnt the sorcerous ways of the Warp, and can provide glimpses of the future so that a Knight despot can better direct their next campaign of terror.

Competition between cabals is encouraged by the corrupted nobility, and it is common for wars to break out amongst opposing groups of Idolators. Should a cabal fall out of favour with the Fallen Nobles they serve, their flayed corpses may be used to decorate the Fallen house's Knight suits.

However, such actions are not taken lightly, for to incur the ire of the Idolators is to invite a nightmarish demise. Many a Fallen Noble who has slaughtered an Idolator has subsequently been devoured by their own Knight suit, or has had their soul ripped to screaming pieces by a Warp-surge within their Throne Mechanicum.

The most cunning Fallen Nobles therefore ensure that the Idolators in their service have some other target upon whom such malice is likely to fall.

Fallen Knight Worlds

As the Knight houses became ever-more corrupted, so too were their Knight Worlds transformed into horrific mockeries of their former glory. Where once the denizens of these planets had looked to their Nobles for leadership and protection, they were swiftly reduced to a terror-filled existence.

The populations of entire cities were hunted for sport by their Knightly overlords. Fallen Nobles supplied tithes of living Humans to their heretical lieges to be used in sadistic rituals or the forging of daemonic pacts. Where once the would-be Knight pilot prepared for their duty over standard years of training, and proved their worth in solemn duels, they now engaged in competitive slaughters of their own subjects.

Depraved cultures took root in every echelon of society on these Chaos Knight worlds. Teeming Chaos Cults worshipped the Dark Gods openly, Fallen Nobles competing to raise the greatest temples to the Ruinous Powers.

The landscapes became pocked with charnel pits that overflowed with the corpses of defeated enemies. These planets that had been bastions of order throughout the Age of Strife metamorphosed into deep wells of anarchy from which the taint of Chaos seeped further into reality.

Chaos Knight Transformations

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A Knight Despoiler warped by the power of the Dark Gods into a savage reflection of its former noble self.

It is not only the pilots, but the Knight suits themselves that are warped by the corrupting power of Chaos. Daemonic energies course through the weapon systems and ancient circuitry of these dread war machines, and their tortured Machine Spirits (artificial intelligences) growl like wounded beasts. Over time, even the armour plates and bristling armaments of the Chaos Knight are mutated beyond recognition.

Chaos corruption seeded into a Throne Mechanicum spreads into the rest of the Knight like rot. Machine Spirits that drive the Knight's massive actuators are bent to the insane will of the pilot and the spectral inhabitants of the Throne. No longer does the war engine march with bold and purposeful strides, its every colossal movement the result of generations of discipline and training within the Noble houses.

Instead, the Chaos Knight lopes forwards with predatory haste, eager to drink in the deaths of its next band of foes. Gone is the imperative to protect its allies, to form the immovable centre of a defensive line or the unstoppable speartip of a combined charge.

The Chaos Knight's Machine Spirit cares nothing for those alongside whom it fights -- whether they live or die is of little concern, so long as it can engage in rampant slaughter.

Ancient mechanical joints that had been ritually oiled for scores of centuries now spark and crackle as they are driven into motion. Plasma Reactors roar with fury as they are fired into overdrive to supply the Chaos Knights with the immense power they need to loose their wrath.

Gouts of scintillating flame burst from exhaust ports, scorching the surrounding metal with their jagged tongues and warping the very air around the Knights' immense carapaces. As the Chaos Knights advance, they tilt their Ion Shields to the fore, the better to ward off the enemy's incoming fire before they charge headlong into the fray.

Gone are concerns of strategic forethought or target prioritisation, and in their place is the predatory desire to wreak indiscriminate slaughter, to torment those too weak to fight back, or to claim the most magnificent trophy from the enemy in the name of personal glory.

If a Loyalist Knight is akin to its Noble's valiant steed, Chaos Knights are closer to rabid warhounds, their Fallen Noble pilots fighting constantly to retain dominance over their hate-filled war engine and force it to obey their will.

Drooling blood or acidic oils, ocular lenses burning with murder-lust and hulls wreathed in miasmal fumes or crackling hellfires, it is clear to all who look upon Chaos Knights that whatever nobility resided within these deranged war engines, it has long soured into hate and madness.

Some bodies within the Imperium stringently resist the notion that Chaos Knights could possibly exist, and more than one internecine doctrinal conflict has erupted upon Adeptus Mechanicus Forge Worlds whose Tech-magi found themselves divided on this point.

Regardless of such wilful self-delusion, the Ordo Hereticus has produced grimoires in which war engines have been declared Questor Traitoris in High Gothic and subsequently redesignated. In part this is necessary because Fallen Nobles soon abandon the age-old doctrines of armament obeyed by Loyalist houses, choosing instead to arm their Knights with whatever combinations of weaponry best suit their preferred methods of murder.

Chaos-tainted Armigers are known as War Dogs. The lightest walkers of the Fallen Noble houses, they are also the most wanton in their savagery. They seek out unprotected flanks and isolated enemies, and crush whatever resistance can be brought to bear against them.

Questoris Pattern Knights are reclassified as Knights Despoiler. Making up the bulk of many Iconoclast and Infernal houses, their thick armour and punishing arrays of weaponry allow them to wreak untold havoc on any battlefield. Often it is the pilot of a Knight Despoiler who reigns as the despot of a Fallen house, directing the house's murderous campaigns and charging at the head of each brutal assault.

Corrupted Dominus Pattern Knights are designated as Knights Tyrant, and it is these who are most likely to have fallen to Chaos in the throes of endless combat. Practically Titan-class in size and resilience, it is the task of entire armies to fell such a towering engine of destruction.

The longer a Chaos Knight has been corrupted, the more physically warped it becomes. Internal mechanisms burst through its outer carapace, winding together to form rows of irregular spikes. Gun muzzles sprout teeth and gauntleted fists curl into cruel claws.

In extreme cases the structure of the towering machine contorts into new configurations, legs bending backwards on mutated joints, Vox grille splitting into a snarling maw. Known as "Abhorrent-class Knights," these deformed engines are nightmares of metal and flesh. They lope hungrily towards wherever the fighting is thickest, annihilating all before them with streams of gunfire and brutal swings of their close-quarters armaments.

So twisted are these Abhorrent-class Knights -- both in form and spirit -- certain Ordo Hereticus Inquisitors have speculated they may have been created from STC machines corrupted by the Dark Mechanicum.

DamMarta

Dam Marta of House Herpetrax, pilot of the Knight Desecrator Eternal Dread, displaying the hideous transformation that overcomes many Fallen Nobles who pilot a Chaos Knight.

As grotesque as the exterior of a Chaos Knight becomes, the cockpit where the pilot sits enthroned is even more horrific. In many Knights, the Fallen Noble is fused bodily to the Throne Mechanicum, their flesh melding with the surrounding metal, their neurons parasitised by manifold dendritic relays. As the mechanical suit around them absorbs ever-more corrupting psychic energy, the pilot is physically warped into a being of pure Chaos.

Some are absorbed completely by their Throne Mechanicum. Their body peels open like a rotten carcass, forming a cage of splayed ribs and exposed organs inside which the next pilot can be seated. Over multiple generations, such corrupted Thrones take on the appearance of a morbid rose, with layer upon layer of fleshy fronds sprouting from them, each with a dim portion of the original pilot's sentience remaining.

Others pilots devolve into Chaos Spawn while atop their Thrones. Transformed into amorphous beasts comprised of horribly mutated muscle and bone, they thrash in a state of abject insanity. Yet a portion of their consciousness remains held within the Throne, allowing them to still control their Knight suit and experience the true horror of their own existence.

Infernal Quests

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Imperial propaganda poster of a Renegade Knight

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 Imperial 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 simple 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 Chaos Knights

Hell-Strider

Hell-Striders

  • Hell-Strider - The Hell-Strider is the smallest of the Daemon Knights, but still stands many times the height of a man. They are armed with Lascannons and short-range, Knight-sized Melta Weapons. Hell-Striders are extremely mobile, able to flush the enemy out of woods and ruins with their powerful short ranged weaponry. Given sufficient numbers, Hell-Striders are even capable of toppling a Titan, picking off their prey's Void Shields with their Lascannons before closing in for the kill with their Melta-beams.
Hell-Scourge

Hell-Scourges

  • Hell-Scourge - Hell-Scourges are one of the largest patterns of Slaaneshi Daemon Knights. As living machines in the service of the Prince of Chaos, they have crushed countless opponents in the last ten millennia, screeching deafening cries across the battlefield. They are the perfect predators, hunters who mercilessly run down their quarry with the bounding strides of their elegant, powerful legs. The Hell-Scourges attack without warning. As one appears, the enemy turn their weapons on its blurred form, only to see it disappear. At that moment, others attack from all sides, mowing through armour and flesh with their massive Castigator Cannons. Hell-Scourges possess a certain pack instinct and are in constant telepathic communication with each other. As such, they make exceptionally well co-ordinated assaults, out-flanking their enemies with ease. This telepathic contact seems to encompass all Hell-Scourges present on the battlefield, or perhaps even further. This enables Hell-Scourge detachments exceptional flexibility on the battlefield.
Hell-Knight

Hell-Knights

  • Hell-Knight - Hell-Knights are one of the most specialised types of Daemon Knights. Aside from Bolters, their main weapon is a Thermal Cannon which, albeit short-ranged, has enough power to pierce almost any armour plate with relative ease. Hell-Knights are often used to hunt down enemy Knights and Titans, exploiting their speed to attack from the sides and overwhelm opponents. In addition to this, they are perfectly suited to perform ambushes, and are often used in this respect. A notable exploit of the Hell-Knights took place on the Hive World of Kado as part of a massive daemonic incursion. Imperial forces and the Titans of the Legio Crucius suffered grave losses in the defence of that world's capital hive city. As the Titans fired upon the advancing hordes of Chaos, felling hundreds upon hundreds of daemons and Heretics, a large force of Slaaneshi Daemon Knights infiltrated the hive city's massive subterranean transportation network. As the battle raged above them, the Chaos walkers sped through the dimly lit tunnels and corridors, quickly obliterating any resistance they encountered. On the second day of the hive city's siege, the Daemon Knights emerged from beneath the ground and burst into the main streets and arcades of the city, indiscriminately destroying everything, killing thousands of helpless citizens. The transports of the Adeptus Arbites arrived, but these too were totally crushed and the Hell-Knights fought their way back to the surface. They emerged within firing distance behind the Titans of the Legio Crucius. With a single massed salvo from the Daemon Knights' Thermal Cannons, nearly the entirety of the Loyalist Titan battlegroup was destroyed, the august forms of the Titans turned into molten slag. Amongst the victims of this attack was the colossal Praeco Deictus, an Imperator-class Battle Titan which had survived the grim days of the Horus Heresy and brought victory to the Imperium on over a thousand worlds. As Hell-Knights are super heavy they cannot be pinned in combat except by other super heavy vehicles or Titans. Anything smaller than this is simply pushed aside by the massive war machine. Hell-Knights are excellent at infiltrating enemy positions, setting ambushes for enemy supply columns and attacking enemy support detachments and artillery.
  • Abhorrent-class Knights - Abhorrent-class Knights are Chaos Knights of any standard class who have been so warped by the energies of the Warp that their very structures have mutated into savage new forms. These war engines are often hybrids of the Knight's original mechanical form and daemonic flesh grafted onto its frame by the reality-reshaping powers of Chaos.
  • Knight Desecrator - A Knight Desecrator is a type of Questoris Pattern Knight that excels at close-to-mid-range combat, particularly hunting down other war engines and destroying fortified positions.
  • Knight Rampager - A Knight Rampager is a type of Questoris Pattern Knight that excels at melee combat. Knights Rampager are the Knight equivalent of uncontrolled berserkers, launching themselves into close combat with the foe without care or concern for their own survival or the tactics of their allies.

Questor Traitoris Heraldry

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An example of the principles of heraldry used by most Chaos Knights on the House Lucaris Knight Rampager Bringer of Extinction, piloted by the Fallen Noble Ifanor.

Though the heraldry of Chaos Knights within a given Iconoclast or Infernal house follows the same pattern, there is a great deal of diversity between individual Knights, with each bearing markings that tell of its unique and bloody history.

The panoply of Dreadblades is even more diverse. These Chaos Knights eschew household markings in favour of personal emblems, and often bare twisted remnants of former Imperial iconography.

Notable Chaos Knight Houses

  • House Ærthegn - Accepted amongst the ranks of the Imperial Knight houses by the writ of Horus, and treated by their peers with disdain and wary hostility, the Knights of House Ærthegn were masters of the marauder's bloody trade. Following the Archtraitor's defeat, House Ærthegn was driven along with the rest of the Traitor Legions into the Eye of Terror, where they remain to this day. They serve Chaos Undivided.
  • House Arcanus - House Arcanus is a Renegade Knight house that fell to the service of Tzeentch and was among the forces in service to the Changer of Ways that successfully invaded the Stygius Sector, during the Stygius War.
  • House Atrax - Founded sometime during the Age of Strife and rediscovered during the Great Crusade by the dour Mechanicum Tech-adepts of the Forge World of Cyclothrathe in the latter 30th Millennium, this unfortunate Knight house from the world of Arrian was forced into indentured servitude in accordance with the Sidon Protocols. These unfortunate circumstances led to House Atrax's tragic fall during the Horus Heresy. At the end of this tragic conflict, House Atrax, along with the rest of the Traitor Legions, were driven into the Eye of Terror. House Atrax served Chaos Undivided.
  • House Caesarean - During the Horus Heresy this Knight house threw their lot in with the Traitor forces of the Warmaster Horus. Notably, they took part in the Battle of Tallarn as part of the first Traitor reinforcements and provided support to the Legio Krytos. During that campaign they faced the Loyalist Legio Gryphonicus Titan Maniples in Tallarn's southern polar regions.
  • House Chromatic - House Chromatic is a Renegade Knight house that fell to the service of Tzeentch and was among the forces in service to the Changer of Ways that successfully invaded the Stygius Sector, during the Stygius War.
  • House Devine - House Devine fell under the sway of Slaanesh, and was the first of the Knight houses to betray the Imperium of Man and the Mechanicum. On the planet of Molech, the sudden defection of House Devine proved to be the pivotal factor in the defeat of the Loyalist forces seeking to halt Horus' relentless advance on Terra. At the end of this tragic conflict, filled with righteous indignation, a combined strike force of Knights from Houses Cadmus, Terryn and Borgius annihilated the turncoats of House Devine as Imperial forces reclaimed Molech.
  • House Drakon - During the dark days of the Occlusiad War, in 550.M37, for the first time in thousands of Terran years, a knightly house betrayed its oaths of loyalty, joining the Apostles of the Blind King to cause ruinous destruction across the northwestern fringe of the Milky Way Galaxy. Though the Blind King's rogue Tech-priests were eventually defeated, the traitorous Knights of House Drakon remain unaccounted for.
  • House Drear - House Drear is a Renegade Knight house that fell to the service of Nurgle and was among the forces in service to the Plague God that successfully invaded the Realm of Ultramar during the Plague Wars.
  • House Felcarn - There is little information on this formerly loyal knightly house in Imperial records. It is said that House Felcarn became corrupted from within by Chaos. Rumours state that a single surviving member of that family somehow escaped the subsequent Inquisitorial purges, proving his innocence, and went on to prove himself as the Freeblade known as "Penitent Blade," through his tireless efforts to rid his world of the Chaos Cults that plagued it. House Felcarn served Chaos Undivided.
  • House Gotrith - House Gotrith is a Knight house that betrayed the Emperor during the Horus Heresy and provided support to the Legio Mortis during the Battle of Beta-Garmon.
  • House Herpetrax - The Herpetrax are considered an Iconoclast house, and they have served the powers of Chaos for many centuries. House Herpetrax is one of the few members of the Questor Traitoris to have never served the Imperium of Man in any form, having remained independent since the Age of Technology when their world was first colonised. Though their homeworld of Jedathra was invaded by an Imperial force in the 36th Millennium, the Chaos Knights' strong connection to the Ruinous Powers provided them the strength to throw back the Imperial troops and maintain their independence. Since that time, the Chaos Knights of House Herpetrax have proved to be a thorn in the side of the Emperor's realm.
  • House Hyboras - House Hyboras is a Renegade Knight house that repudiated its oath of loyalty to the Imperium of Man during the Horus Heresy. It provided support to the Legio Vulpa during the Battle of Beta-Garmon.
  • House Ju'll - There is little information on this formerly loyal knightly house in official Imperial records or from what world they originally hailed from. All that is known is that they were allied to the traitorous Legio Mortis Titan Legion. Its fate is unknown. House Ju'll served Chaos Undivided.
  • House Khomentis - House Khomentis is a Renegade Knight house of Chaos Knights and an Infernal house in service to the Dark Mechanicum. Though once loyal to the Imperium, the house's homeworld of Matarakh was struck by a daemonic invasion in the 33rd Millennium. During this time House Khomentis was turned to the service of Chaos and the Dark Mechanicum. Its Fallen Nobles are most famous for actively seeking out daemons in the hope of becoming possessed and further corrupting their Knight to the service of the Dark Gods.
  • House Khymere - House Khymere is a Renegade Knight house of Chaos Knights. The Khymere are considered an Iconoclast house, though for thousands of years they were staunchly loyal to the Imperium. After the opening of the Great Rift in the late 41st Millennium House Khymere was corrupted to the service of Chaos when its homeworld was unexpectedly attacked by a force of the Indomitus Crusade, whose Space Marines claimed Chaos-corrupted House Khymere Knights had been attacking Imperial worlds. Unwilling to make war against the Imperium they had so long defended, the entire house fled into the Warp Storms of the Great Rift. Their exposure to the empyrean energies of the Warp corrupted many of the Khymere Knights, who returned to realspace filled with hatred for those they felt had betrayed them. Unknown to the Chaos Knights, their travels in the Warp had also displaced them in time. The Renegade Knights had been thrust into their own past, unleashing the very attacks that had led to the Imperial assault that resulted in their damnation.
  • House Kepsydra - House Kepsydra is a Renegade Knight house that repudiated its oath of loyalty to the Imperium of Man during the Horus Heresy. It provided support to the Legio Krytos at the Battle of Beta-Garmon.
  • House Lucaris - House Lucaris is a Renegade Knight house of Chaos Knights. Of all the Iconoclast houses of the Renegade Knights, there are none more bold nor tenacious than House Lucaris. They have waged multiple barbaric campaigns against the Imperium, butchering those who fight in the Emperor's name in all corners of the galaxy, and over the course of ten thousand Terran years have reaped a toll of carnage too high for any single scriptorum to record. They have been called the "House of Serpents," the "Fanged Knights" and many other names, but are always synonymous with terror.
  • House Makabius - Transformed by the century-long civil war that had engulfed their homeworld of Baroda in the Grail Abyss, House Makabius was always known for its bellicose temper, and some would even say avarice and recklessness. Makabius served Mortarion the Reaper, Primarch of the grim Death Guard Legion, during the Horus Heresy. At the end of that tragic conflict, House Makabius, along with the rest of the Traitor Legions, were driven into the Eye of Terror.
  • House Mandrakor - An intermittent passage through the Great Rift was discovered in the early 42nd Millennium, yet it brought little hope to the Imperium. The Cicatrix Maledictum had at least one gap, although others were reported but not confirmed. The passage was near the Eye of Terror, which had been avoided by Navigators since the Great Crusade, for Warp Storms and strange anomalies had always made the region too dangerous to travel. There, when the swirling nebula lulled, was revealed the Nachmund System, near to Agripinaa on the near side of the rift. The Tyrant King of its primary world, High King Kaligius, ruled over a House of Renegade Knights on the world of Dharrovar that had not been seen since the Horus Heresy. Claiming Old Night had returned to plague the galaxy once more, Kaligius rejected communications from the Imperium, instead making pacts with Renegades and pirate fleets. Some starships have run the Nachmund Gauntlet successfully, but many more have been destroyed attempting the journey -- the ruined hulks of innumerable craft hang suspended in space as a voidship graveyard. In order to end their threat to the Imperium, Lord Commander Guilliman has launched a long campaign to seize the Nachmund System, and House Mandrakor are currently defending Dharrovar from an invasion by the Imperium's forces. However, only Kaligius' most loyal Knights followed him into treachery against the Emperor and a civil war has now broken out within House Mandrakor.
  • House Morbidia - House Morbidia started its existence as one of the very first Knight households in service of the Omnissiah's priesthood on Mars and was one of the early rivals of the legendary Knights of Taranis and House Zavora. Yet where these Houses were to rise high in the esteem of the Martian priesthood, House Morbidia would fall in disgrace; sparking an internecine war that would see it defeated and shackled to the will of the Fabricator-General. Its final fate is unknown. It served Chaos Undivided.
  • House Mykorphas - House Mykorphas is a Chaos Knight house that serves the Plague God Nurgle. As a result of this allegiance, the Mykorphas Fallen Nobles have seen their Knights Despoiler become slowly coated in living rust.
  • House Perdaxia - There is little information on this formerly loyal knightly house in official Imperial records or from what world they originally hailed from. During the outbreak of the Horus Heresy, they answered the call of the mad Archmagos Inar Satarael, and willfully took part in the Invasion of Paramar V. They also provided Knight support to the Legio Fureans at the Battle of Beta-Garmon. House Perdaxia served Chaos Undivided.
  • House Rajha - There is little information on this formerly loyal knightly house in official Imperial records or from what world they originally hailed from. During the outbreak of the Horus Heresy, the ghost-grey Knights of House Rajiha answered the call of the mad Archmagos Inar Satarael, and willfully took part in the Invasion of Paramar V and the Battle of Beta-Garmon where they provided Knight support to the Legio Fureans.
  • House Senica - There is little information on this formerly loyal knightly house in official Imperial records or from what world they originally hailed from. All that is known is that they were allied to the traitorous Legio Mortis Titan Legion. House Senica served Chaos Undivided.
  • House Slughorn - House Slughorn is a Renegade Knight house that fell to the service of Nurgle and was among the forces in service to the Plague God that successfully invaded the Realm of Ultramar during the Plague Wars.
  • House Thryn - House Thryn hails from a savage world where the only law is that of the blade, and thus every Knight Despoiler in their ranks wields a Reaper Chainsword, as melee combat is a requirement for their Knights.
  • House Vorran - House Vorran is home to Zir Gedrim the Mahj, the Fallen Noble pilot of the Chaos Knight Sorrowsworn.
  • House Vyridion - House Vyridion was a household of Imperial Knights native to the world of Highrock that existed at the foundation of the Imperium of Man. Through treachery and to their ever-lasting shame, House Vyridion broke its vows of fealty to the Imperium and joined the forces of the Warmaster Horus Lupercal. Yet, House Vyridion recognised the error they had made and broke all ties with their former allies. House Vyridion was called upon by the Emperor's own bodyguard, the Legio Custodes, to fight alongside them in defence of the Imperial Webway Project in the dungeons of the Imperial Palace.

Chaos Knight Relics

"See what your worthless code has brought you. An escutcheon of wretched subservience, encircled with the leash of ignorance. Your pretensions to nobility shame your sires. Now, witness the boons my loyalty has earned, the prizes the Dark Gods have blessed me with. Scream as I open your soul to the truth."

—Zir Gedrim the Mahj, master of Soulsorrow, House Vorran

Amongst the most coveted relics of the Fallen Noble houses of the Chaos Knights are those whose destructive technologies have been lost to the march of time, as well as those that have been imbued with the power of the Dark Gods. More than once has a war been waged between households for possession of one of these malefic artefacts.

  • The Blasphemous Engine - To alter the workings of a Knight's Plasma Reactor is an act of heresy against the Omnissiah. But the magi of the Dark Mechanicum revel in such profane ingenuity. In rituals that can take solar decades or even Terran centuries to conduct, these heretical Adepts can bind a Greater Daemon within the reactor of a Chaos Knight, allowing the war machine to siphon off the enormous power of the caged entity. This artefact is only ever used by Chaos Knights of Infernal houses or Dreadblades.
  • Veil of Medrengard - At some point during the 33rd Millennium, the Warpsmiths of the Iron Warriors crafted an artefact named for the Traitor Legion's home Daemon World. Known as the Veil of Medrengard, this device appears to be based off an STC that either has not been uncovered in any other part of the galaxy, or has been so twisted by Warp corruptions as to become unrecognisable. When installed in a Knight suit, it projects a barrier of energy of far greater power than a standard Ion Shield. The Veil of Medrengard was originally gifted to the Fallen Nobles of House Garras for their service during the Horus Heresy, but has since been passed to many other Iconoclast houses.
  • Khornate Target - Wrought from the metallic carapaces of slain Imperial Knights and embossed with the skulls of their pilots, the Khornate Target pulsates like a throbbing heart as its bearer draws closer to its enemies. When a Fallen Noble activates this cursed shield, psychic barriers are silenced and technological force fields blink out of existence. By removing the esoteric defences of both their enemies and their own Chaos Knight, the pilot opens a window in which unadulterated carnage can occur.
  • Tzeentchian Pyrothrone - The gheists that inhabit this constantly burning Throne Mechanicum are all members of the Tzeentchian cult. Through their whispers they impart to the bonded Fallen Noble the malefic secrets they learnt across many lifetimes of arcane study, divulging the horrors known only to those who serve the Changer of Ways. Such is the power contained within this Throne that the Fallen Noble is able to manipulate the Warp from within their Knight suit, summoning pillars of coruscating fire to immolate their enemies, or rebuffing the psychic conjurations that are levelled against them.
  • Helm of Warp-Sight - Only six of these faceplates were crafted by the heretical Magos Vex- Prodotian before he was slain by warriors of the Grey Knights. It is said that this techno-blasphemer adapted Knight Helms to allow the pilot constant vision within the Warp -- showing them glimpses of the future to guide and enhance their aim, but also inevitably driving them insane through their exposure to the terrors of the Empyrean. It can only be used by the pilots of Questoris Pattern (Abhorrent-class) Chaos Knights.
  • The Diamonas - Towards the end of the Moirae Schism in the 35th Millennium, a radical sub-sect of the Moirae creed known as the Xarisians indulged in rampant techno-heresy in the attempt to win the civil war that split the Adeptus Mechanicus. Hunted down as Hereteks even by the members of their own creed, the dark adepts of the Xarisians were slaughtered and their malefic technologies destroyed. However, one of their creations -- the powerful Laser Destructor known as the Diamonas -- survived the war, and it is said that many bitter battles have been fought amongst the Fallen houses for possession of this remarkably powerful Knight weapon.
  • The Tyrant's Banner - The dark runes of power emblazoned upon this banner carry a great weight amongst the worshippers of the Dark Gods. When a Chaos Knight bearing this heraldry arrives within a war zone, planets in nearby sectors that have sworn fealty to the Tyrant's house will do anything to fulfil the tithes that are demanded. Whole continents are stripped of resources and offered as tribute, while cities are slaughtered in bloody sacrifice. But these runes are not merely symbolic. In battle, the power of the Warp pulsates from this banner, enrapturing the servants of darkness, binding them to the pilot's will and increasing their morale and coordination. It can only be properly displayed by Questoris Pattern Chaos Knights.
  • The Teeth That Hunger - It is said the deadly sharp teeth of this Reaper Chainsword spin thrice the speed of lesser weapons, resulting in a horrific scream roaring from the weapon as it cuts through its foes. However, to bear such a weapon is to forever fight to keep its insatiable hunger at bay, for if it is not given enough souls to devour, it may instead feed upon the life force of the Knight pilot who carries it.
  • Rune of Nak'T'Graa - A number of Dreadblades who have been exiled from their houses join the Cult of Nak'T'Graa -- a mythical king from the Age of Strife who sought to achieve godhood. Those that submit to the cult carve a dreaded rune upon the hull of their Knight suit before setting upon a dark quest to find his temple, which supposedly lies within the Realm of Chaos itself. Few return from such a quest, but those that do are forever transformed...
  • The Putrid Carapace of Nurgle - It is unclear where the Putrid Carapace first came from, but it is certain that this sentient Warp ooze is a creation of the Plague God Nurgle. By melding with a mechanical host, it causes a Chaos Knight's outer layers of adamantium and plasteel to transform into a bubbling semifluid capable of melting through the armour and flesh of any enemy foolish enough to strike it.
  • Bound Varadian Psychogeist - Many Chaos Knights have quested upon the Daemon World of Fell Varad. Once home to a mighty Noble household, Fell Varad is now a hellscape in which the remnant gheists of shattered Thrones Mechanicum roam unbound across the wastes, wailing in a state of utter insanity. A questing Fallen Noble of strong enough will can bind a Varadian Psychogheist to their own Throne. The reward for most who do so is to have their soul immediately devoured, yet those who can tame the warped entity learn much from its demented tutelage about how to defeat other Knights.
  • The Traitor's Mark - The fell deeds and bloodstained heraldry of this Chaos Knight are recounted across the galaxy, and all know that to confront it is to face a painful death. Each icon is redolent of the betrayals and treacherous deeds committed by the bearer, and in the minds of those who look upon them appear visions so gruesome in nature that the beholder is gripped by unnatural dread, badly weakening the morale of the enemy.
  • The Quicksilver Throne of Slaanesh - The Quicksilver Throne is inhabited not by the remnant personalities of slain pilots, but by the most rapacious daemon servants of Slaanesh, the Dark Prince of Chaos. They impart a portion of their daemonic grace to the Fallen Noble, allowing the Chaos Knight being piloted to move and strike with terrifying speed.
  • The Gauntlet of Ascension - This taloned Thunderstrike Gauntlet has been wielded by many ambitious Knights, and it has filled each of its bearers with an insatiable battle-lust and the desire to seek out worthy foes upon the battlefield. As the crushed carcasses of formidable opponents are bled out within its iron-tight grasp, a flood of daemonic energy washes over the Chaos Knight, increasing its resiliency and combat prowess.
  • Twisted Mask - This Knightly faceplate is inlaid with a psychoamplifying matrix, made from crystals mined upon the liminal world of Terminos and designed to act as a lodestone for Warp energies. Runes of channelling are worked into the mask's reverse facing, bound to neuroempyric shunts by macabre tethers of braided theldrite and witches' finger bones. Through these, the power of the Immaterium surges into the pilot's mind and enhances their dark psychic powers. It is only usable by Fallen Nobles who have been gifted with psychic abilities.
  • Panopoly of the Cursed Knights - Borne within an unmarked casket by an order of silent Idolators, this collection of tattered pennants, chain-strung charms and armour scraps represent the last remains of the Knight suit of Carnivus Grymm. It is said that festooning one's Knight suit with these charms instils the legendary fortitude of that doomed war engine. Yet it is whispered that doing so also invites the attentions of the same dread curse that eventually lead to Carnivus Grymm's ghastly end.
  • Soul-raptor Swarm - This Knight is ridden by a flock of predatory avian Daemons, their wicked talons anchoring them to fuel pipes and spiked trim. The presence of such soul-raptors is a mark of the pilot's favour in the eyes of the Dark Gods. It is also a source of terror amongst the foe, whose slightest show of fear is enough to invite attack by the awful creatures. The Soul-raptors tear apart their victims' animus and, as they feed, so their link to the chosen Knight sees their victims' life force channelled to regenerate battle damage or heal its wounded pilot.
  • Helm of Dogs - It is rumoured that an infamous former Apothecary (Fabius Bile) of the Emperor's Children Legion aided in the crafting of this nightmarish Helm Mechanicum. Employed as an implement of punishment, the helm tears into its agonised wearer's psyche like a wild animal. After solar days of suffering, they are reduced to little more than a feral beast -- obedient only to their master and dominant over lesser War Dogs, but a snarling shadow of their former self. This relic can only be used by the pilots of a War Dog-class Chaos Knight.

Artificer Relics

  • Damned Crucible - A Fallen Noble pilot who is in possession of the Damned Crucible has only obtained it by forging dark pacts with no less than four Greater Daemons, exchanging power for ever increasing peril to soul and body alike.
  • Craahdekh's Throne of Sacrifice - This thrice-cursed Throne Mechanicum feeds off the blood and soul of the bearer as a perpetual offering to the Dark Gods, in return for a mote of their favour.
  • The Harbinger's Chains - Said to have been forged from the despoiled ramparts of the Keep Inviolate, these Warp-soaked chains radiate a malice that can make even the stoutest heart falter.

Antiquity Relics

  • Shades of Ruin - Those who assail this Chaos Knight are beset by a squall of shadowy wings, flashing beaks and gouging talons. It is a determined foe indeed who can forge a path through these shades of ruin.
  • Icon of Damnation - This eight-pointed Star of Chaos emblem is bestowed on a Chaos Knight by dark artificers in return for a bounty of stolen technology. Striking it causes it to shatter, the fragments running like quicksilver to patch rent armour and mend broken power lines.

Legendary Relics

  • Helm of the Dread Knight - Rumoured to be the faceplate of the first Knight sworn to the service of Chaos, this mask infuses a war engine with dread power and malign forces of the Warp, rendering its every shot and blow anathema to mortal life.

Favours of the Dark Gods

Certain Chaos Knights that have given good service to the Dark Gods can be gifted with a special item dedicated to one of the four major Chaos Gods or to Chaos Undivided that grant enhanced capabilities and special, Warp-based powers.

Khornate Favours

  • Blood Shield - Wrought from the carapaces of slain Knights and embossed with the skulls of their pilots, the Blood Shield pulsates like a throbbing heart. When activated, the enemy's psychic barriers are silenced and force fields blink out of existence, opening a window of opportunity for unbridled carnage to erupt.
  • Collar of Infernal Brass - Forged in the molten core of a Khornate Daemon World and inscribed with runes of nullification upon a thundersmote anvil of thrice-cursed noctilith, this collar wards away even the most potent Warpcraft.
  • Throne Mechanicum of Skulls - This brazen Throne Mechanicum is inlaid with the carved bones of slain champions and decorated with the skulls of former Knight pilots. Through it an all-consuming need for murder grips the pilot of the Chaos Knight who rides this Throne and never lets go.

Tzeentchian Favours

  • Pyrothrone - This Throne Mechanicum burns with spectral flames, out of which whisper the tormented gheists of nine-hundred and ninety-nine sacrificed Tzeentchian magisters. A pilot who sits upon this Throne finds their mind filled with the gheists' accumulated malefic lore and so are able to manipulate the Warp, summoning pillars of coruscating fire to immolate their enemies or rebuffing psychic conjurations levelled against them.
  • Cursed Rune of Fate - Tzeentchian rune of sorcerous power shimmers across the surface of this Chaos Knight's hull, ever-moving like a reflection across rippling water. Bound to the strands of fate, the rune pulses as enemies fire upon its host Knight, twisting the web of causality so that hideous and immediate misfortunes befall-the attackers -- from weapon malfunctions and deadly ricochets to ghastly sorcerous mutations.
  • Mirror of Fates - The interior of this Chaos Knight's cockpit is coated in a polished crystal skein so that the pilot sits enthroned within an all-encompassing scrying glass. The Mirror of Fates reveals that which will happen and that which may happen. Proliferating possibilities dance across its surface in a mind-bending kaleidoscope that allows the pilot to predict their enemy's plans and exploit them.

Nurglish Favours

  • The Putrid Carapace - Resembling the stinking skin of spoiled foodstuffs long-gone rancid, this repugnant and semi-sentient organic membrane stretches itself across the iron hide of a Nurgle-blessed Knight suit. At its touch, slablike armour thickens with layers of rust and blubber. Servo-motors and actuator bundles are reinforced with rotted tendon and seeping muscle, while fat buboes swell around vital systems to shield them from harm.
  • Blessing of a Thousand Poxes - Though they appear rusted and pocked, this Chaos Knight's weapons drip with such virulent plague-slop that they need only graze their targets in order to inundate them with withering agues, viral corrosions, pustulant poxes and gnawing parasites beyond count.
  • Aura of Corruption - The rusted exhausts of this Chaos Knight belch clouds of toxic fumes, thick with whirling plague spores and fat-bodied Daemon flies. These stinking emissions gather about the Chaos Knight in such profusion that they form a miasmal shroud that moves with the war engine wherever it strides. Those engulfed in this toxic fog find their flesh breaking out in sores and pustules, their lungs clogging with foul mucus even as armour and weapons corrode and fall apart.

Slaaneshi Favours

  • Quicksilver Throne - This semi-organic Throne Mechanicum invades its pilot's nervous system with hair-thin cilia, binding their senses to the haptic feedback circuitry of the Chaos Knight itself. The pilot is able to move their Knight suit as though it were their own living flesh, at the price of feeling the blissful agony of every blast and blade to strike its hull.
  • Beguiling Majesty - About this Knight hangs an intoxicating aura, as though the Dark Prince himself had infested it with a sliver of his own nightmarish beauty. Those who look too long upon the war engine must be strong-willed indeed, lest their minds and souls be captured by its ineffable allure.
  • Subjugator Machine Spirit - Agile and deadly, Subjugator Scout Titans are Slaaneshi god-machines far more powerful than the greatest Knight. Nonetheless, the sundered Machine Spirit (artificial intelligence) of just such a god-engine has been bound within this Knight suit, and now strains at the overloaded senses of pilot and steed until both are ready to burst asunder. Only by satisfying the Subjugator's constant desire for savage combat are they able to stave off this grisly fate.

Chaos Undivided Favours

  • Mark of the Dread Knight - This fell rune was said to have branded the first Knight to cast off their oaths of fealty to the Imperium and follow Khorne's Eightfold Path to Damnation. A Chaos Knight that bears this cursed rune upon its hull enjoys a measure of infernal protection from the pantheon of the Dark Gods as it inflicts destruction in their names.
  • Warp-borne Stalker - Daemonic whispers guide this Chaos Knight's pilot along secret paths through the etheric tempests and accursed Daemon Worlds of the Empyrean. In this way, it is able to burst through coruscating tears in the fabric of realspace and straight into battle.
  • Blessing of the Dark Master - The pilot of this Chaos Knight gives worship to a daemonic demigod, the first Daemon Prince Be'lakor, who embodies the manifold might of the Octed of Chaos. They and their mechanical steed are blessed in return with a modicum of their dark master's power, which manifests about them as an obfuscating cowl of shadows.

Warp Storm Discipline

Some Fallen Nobles, such as those that pilot Knights Abominant, possess the ability to project psychic powers as a result of the gifts of the Warp. These abilities are collectively called the Warp Storm Discipline by psykers, and several examples of what the discipline can accomplish are included below.

  • Winds of the Warp - A localised tempest of empyric energy roars into being around the Chaos Knight and its bondsmen, striking enemy projectiles from the air in flashes of empyric lightning and sealing damaged hulls with its mutating touch.
  • Vortex Terrors - Down from the tortured skies rushes a howling empyric gale thick with tortured souls and screeching avian gheists. They whirl about the foe in an ephemeral storm that sows terror and confusion amongst the enemy ranks.
  • The Storm Malevolent - Drawn forth by words of dark power, a storm from the depths of the Warp surges up against the skin of reality. Its lashing tendrils tear the veil until corrupting empyric energies spill through to taint all they touch. Trapped amidst this maelstrom of cursed unreality, the enemy are left horribly exposed to attack, and may even be driven back into the pulsating Warp rent to suffer a horrible fate.
  • Cyclonic Lamentation - Spectral winds sing through the rents and channels in the Chaos Knight's armour, their fury building as they meld with the rising shriek of its infernal plasma reactor. In an instant, the nightmare cacophony melds into a single tormented note that rolls outward like a shock wave, shredding the souls of all who hear it and slaying many.
  • Coruscating Hate - So potent is the caster's loathing of the foe that it manifests as roiling thunderheads amidst the darkened skies above. One after another, shrieking bolts of heliotropic lightning stab down from on high to explode amidst the enemy. Those struck are twisted by the raw power of the Warp, their bodies erupting into grotesque mutations or burning with unholy soulfires until they are naught but ashes.
  • Spitesquall - Viscous black rain is driven into the enemy upon howling and hateful winds. Bad enough that this bitter precipitation is freezing cold and blinding as it hisses viciously from armour and flesh, but as it drenches its victims' bodies so too does it numb them and, eventually, drowns their souls, letting their lives ebb away with the unnatural rain.

Forces of the Chaos Knights

Chaos Knight Forces
Armiger Pattern Knights (War Dog-class) War Dog (War Dog ExecutionerWar Dog StalkerWar Dog KarnivoreWar Dog BrigandWar Dog Huntsman)
Slaaneshi Daemon Knights Hell-StriderHell-ScourgeHell-Knight
Cerastus Pattern Knights Cerastus Knight-AcheronCerastus Knight-CastigatorCerastus Knight-Lancer
Questoris Pattern Knights (Abhorrent-class) Knight DespoilerKnight DesecratorKnight RampagerKnight Abominant
Acastus Pattern Knights Acastus Knight Porphyrion
Dominus Pattern Knights (Tyrant-class) Knight Tyrant

See Also

Sources

  • Adeptus Titanicus - The Horus Heresy: Rulebook (Specialty Game), pg. 16
  • Adeptus Titanicus - The Horus Heresy: Titandeath (Specialty Game), pg. 95
  • Codex: Chaos Knights (8th Edition), pp. 3-39, 52-58, 62, 68-69
  • Codex: Chaos Knights (9th Edition), pp. 3-37, 70-73, 75-78, 93, 96-109
  • Codex Heretic Astartes - Death Guard (8th Edition), pg. 22
  • Codex: Imperial Knights (8th Edition), pg. 55
  • Index: Chaos (8th Edition), pg. 108
  • Index: Renegade Knights (8th Edition), pp. 2-5
  • Kingsblade (Novel) by Andy Clark, Ch. 9
  • The Master of Mankind (Novel) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Chs. 3, 8, 12, 15, 17, 20, 22, 24
  • Psychic Awkening - Faith & Fury (8th Edition), pg. 17
  • Warhammer 40,000: Rulebook (8th Edition), pp. 53, 158-159, 164-165
  • White Dwarf 190 (UK), "Epic: Slaanesh War Machines," pp. 27-31
  • White Dwarf 182 (UK), " 'Eavy Metal: Forces of the Imperium," pg. 38; "Titan Legions: Knight Households," pp. 39-40
  • White Dwarf 180 (UK), " 'Eavy Metal: Imperial Knights", pg. 26
  • Forge World Chaos Knight
  • Warhammer Community - You Asked for Renegade Knights..You Got 'Em
  • Warhammer 40,000 Website (Faction Icons)
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