House Cratax is an almost forgotten former household of Imperial Knights which once ruled upon the Knight World of Valnum and which was destroyed during the Great Crusade for its crimes.
Whereas most Knight Worlds that had survived the countless dangers of the Age of Strife and maintained the technological levels to retain the use of their Knight- armours grew to be shining beacons of humanity, on Valnum this long period of isolation had the opposite effect. Instead of its great protectors, House Cratax had become the tyrants of their people, ruling them from their dark keeps built upon the bones of the fallen and whose dark dungeons echoed with the screams of the tortured.
Lacking the understanding of the Great Enemy that we now possess, the chronicles of the Great Crusade attributed Valnum's fall to "the darkness that lurks in men's hearts", which might constitute a hint that House Cratax had in truth succumbed to the insidious taint of Chaos. A fact that could be confirmed by the fate suffered by the first Imperial emissaries to reach Valnum: all emissaries were strapped to the muzzles of House Cratax' Knight and annihilated by the exiting rounds or cooked alive on the overheating barrels, all save one which was flayed and whose skin served as parchment for the head of House Cratax to write his rejection of Imperial Compliance.
House History
Notable Campaigns
Sources
- The Horus Heresy - Book Seven: Inferno (Forge World Series),pg.157