"These Knights are vital components of the Taghmata that protect Forge and Fane, yet despite their pride, they are but one tool among many and they will bend to the Omnissiah's will or be broken by it."
- — Noted comments of Archmagos Draykavac upon the rediscovery of House Atrax, ca.3447853.M30
House Atrax was a Traitor Imperial Knight House that was forced to repudiate its oaths to the Emperor of Mankind and followed the Warmaster Horus into the service of the Ruinous Powers during the Horus Heresy. Founded sometime during the Age of Strife and rediscovered during the Great Crusade by the dour Mechanicum tech-adepts of the Forge World of Cyclothrathe in the latter 30th Millennium, this unfortunate Knight House was forced into indentured servitude in accordance with the Sidon Protocols. This complex web of obligation and duty bound both House and Forge in a dangerous accord, whose tangled precepts oft times easily led to the loss of any semblance of independence for a Knight Household that failed to uphold the protocols. These unfortunate circumstances is what led to House Atrax's tragic fall during the Horus Heresy.
History
House Atrax Knight Styrix Colour Scheme
Those Knight Households that remained in contact with one of their far-flung Forge Worlds of the Martian Cult during the Age of Strife have most often fallen into a symbiotic relationship with their patron, receiving technological and spiritual guidance from the Magos, while themselves acting as a potent shield for the Forge World. Many Forge Worlds might have faded from history during the Age of Strife were it not for the tireless efforts of the Knight Households bound to their service. Such a joining of cold logic of the Mechanicum and the impassioned zeal of the more typical Knightly Houses led to many widely varying oaths. Most common among these oaths was the form that had come to be known as the Sidon Protocols. Among the more well known rights provided by the Sidon Protocols was the right of the Knight Household to bear the symbol of the Opus Machina, the cog wheel-set skull, as part of their panoply of arms. This was both a sign that they carried with them the authority of Mars and the Cult Mechanicus, as well as a mark of their duty as part of the Taghmata of their patron.
Only a few Households maintained contact with the domains of the Mechanicum during the Age of Strife. Undoubtedly many of those that did not have long since perished, overwhelmed by the terrors of Old Night, or have lost the last of the Knight armours that marked them out, devolving into simple Feral Worlds that maintained only the neo-feudal traditions of their origins. Those few that survived the trials of the Age of Strife, prevailing alone and unaided, were much sought-after prizes for the expanding armies of Mankind. The Expeditionary fleets of the Great Crusade went to great lengths to secure such a world, prizing the skill of a Household's warriors and the power of their Knight armour. However, it had long been the Imperium's policy to secure the loyalty of these rediscovered Households directly to the Emperor and for Imperial factorums to represent the Household in all dealings with the Mechanicum. Yet, despite the efforts of the Emperor's servants, some few Knight Households escaped the Emperor's servants, only to be chanced upon by Mechanicum Explorator vessels alone or ceded to the control of a Forge World in exchange for some portion of its industrial output or the services of its assembled Taghmata. Such rediscovered Knight Worlds, often sorely in need of new armours and lacking any long association with their new patron Forge, found themselves caught in something of a devil's bargain. Their dire need for technological expertise and replacement armours served as a simple leash for the coldly logical Archmagos to wield in order to seal the Knight Household to its service, and one that was applied with chilling efficiency. Where in some cases the Sidon Protocols served to bind together House and Forge in amicable alliance, in the instance of House Atrax and the Cyclothrathe Mechanicum, the complex terms of debt and duty were manipulated to strangle the independence of the Household.
Bound in servitude to the grim Forge World of Cyclothrahte, the once-proud warriors of the House of Atrax suffered much since Archmagos Draykavac blasted their home world into submission. The Household of Atrax survived all the horrors of Old Night through stubborn force of arms, but over two decades under the direct control of Draykavac had left them hollow and distorted reflection of their former glory. Systematic and bloody purges of those scions who displayed any hint of rebellion had left the scions of Atrax a grim and brooding people in whom their Mechancium overlords had fostered a disturbing hatred of those who had escaped the fate that had befallen them. The poisoned husk of House Atrax's home world, Arrian, now served the Magos of Cyclothrathe as a source of raw materials for their wars of conquest and expansion, with legions of imported slaves tearing the ore from the blackened rocks. The remaining scions of Atrax were confined to the armoured vaults that lay beneath Arrian's scorched surface, released from this virtual captivity only when Draykavac summoned them to war. The Knight armours of the House were kept separate from the scions, ministered to by Cyclothrathe-trained Sacristans as hostages for the scions' loyalty, for in the case of any armed revolt, the Archmagos of Cyclothrathe could destroy all of the House's Thrones Mechanicum with but a word. With Cyclothrathe pledged in tactic supports of Horus' treacherous campaigns in the northern reaches of the sundered Imperium, Draykavac unleahsed the warriors of Atrax on the worlds of the Coronid Reach. There, the twisted scions took a measure of revenge by slaughtering those who had not suffered over the years as they had, exulting in the freedom to stalk the surface in their armour before Cyclothrathe caged them once again. Presumably when Horus was defeated and Arrian was reclaimed by Imperial forces, the survivors of this Chaos-corrupted Knight House fled alongside the Traitor Legions into the Eye of Terror, where they remain to this day.
Home World
Ancient Departmento Cartographic stellar map of the Coronid Reach
Arrian was a sulphurous, poisoned world with an atmosphere thick with chlorine gas, and therefore utterly inimical to human life. Rich in minerals and easily accessible chemical deposits, large scale mining and extraction facilities had been rapidly constructed across the world's surface to meet the industrial needs of Cyclothrathe, of which Arrian was a directly administered possession. Lacking a native population, Arrian's miners were directly imported by the Magos of Cyclothrahte, their hellish existence made only possible by extensive augmetic adaptation, despite which mortality rates were disastrously high. For many years, the demand for new labour was met by treaty arrangement between Cyclothrathe and the distant worlds of the Manachean Commonwealth, trading convicts by the thousand in return for arms and other advanced products of Cyclothrathe's forges. During the onset of the Horus Heresy, however, with Cyclothrathe's growing isolation, this agreement had been allowed to lapse and how the presumed shortfall in labour was replaced remains unknown.
Notable Campaigns
- The Liberation of Numinal (ca. 009.M31) - The Knights of House Atrax had long been used as a personal bodyguard for their master, the baleful Archmagos Yelav Draykavac which had ordered them to protect the amphibious crawlers that would reprocess Numinal’s population into adsecularis slaves and mindless servitors. With the planet's counter-invasion by Loyalsit Solar Auxilia Cohorts known as the Agathean Cohorts, the Knights of House Atrax assembled to crush the invaders after their first attack failed. As the Knights were about to engage the enemy, Ireton MaSade, commander in chief of the Ahathean Cohorts, deployed his own Knights at the host's rear flanks, via a daring drop-pod assault. Trapped between these newly arrived foes and the disciplined ranks of the Solar Auxilia, House Atrax moved to protect their master, who did not hesitate to sacrifice each and every one of them to deliver himself to safety. Abandoned, overwhelmed by their enemies, and outclassed by the more agile Cerastus Knight-armours of House Orhlacc, House Atrax suffered a crushing defeat.
Notable House Atrax Knights
- Rhadamanth - Questoris Knight Styrix, Atrax scion Andar Thon during the Horus Heresy era. This infamous Knight was released from its confinement on Arrian to the control of Scion Thon for the assault on the Agri-World of Numinal, Rhadamanth, whose Throne Mechanicum was tainted with aberrant malefic-machine spirits, claimed four confirmed Knight kills during the fighting. Despite the bleak fury of Scion Thorn and the other Atrax warriors, for whom defeat and death in battle held perhaps little terror when compared to servitude to Cyclothrathe. Rhadamanth was eventually surrounded and destroyed during the retreat of Draykavac's forces, Scion Thon battling on even as his armour was torn apart by Loyalist Knights and Battle-automata.
Notable House Atrax Personnel
- Andar Thon - One of the scions of House Atrax, Scion Thon piloted the Questoris Knight Styrix known as Rhadamanth. He died during the campaign on Numinal.
House Appearance
Personal heraldry of Andar Thon, which consists of the House symbol, its colours inverted, adorned with triple lightning bolts and with the emblem of Cyclothrathe placed surmounting the personal arms of the scion
House Colours
With such strong connections to the Forge World of Cyclothrathe, House Atrax bore black and the red of the Mechanicum as its livery.
House Arms
The arms of House Atrax was three white coloured daggers on a field of crimson, with the symbol of the Forge World of Cyclothrathe centered above it; the blood-red sigil of that dread Forge more a mark of ownership than a symbol of alliance. Typically, many Knight armours operated by House Atrax lacked adornment and personal icons; the dour tech-adepts of Cyclothrathe saw little military use in such extravagance and had forbidden the Thrall-Knights of Atrax its use. The Thrall-Knights upper dorsal plating would often bear the mark of the Sidon Protocols, though House Atrax suffered under a particularly harsh interpretation of this pact. On the Thrall-Knights' personal banners, the emblem of Cyclothrathe was placed surmounting the personal arms of the scions to indicate the primacy of Forge over House.
Sources
- The Horus Heresy - Book Four: Conquest (Imperial Armour), pp. 76, 98, 102-103
Gallery
