Changes: House Vornherr

Revision as of 19:27, 21 February 2020

House Vornherr was an Imperial Knight House of the Questor Imperialis that had direct ties of allegiance to the Imperium of Man.

This Knight house hailed from the Feudal World of Luhnborg-IX, located in the Ultima Segmentum, and were known to be an honourable company of warriors with a record of distinction within the Great Crusade and had, by fortune of war, sworn to Roboute Guilliman, Primarch of the Ultramarines Legion, a binding oath.

This was a promise which saw the majority of the house muster in the Veridia System for the auspicious Calth Conjunction in preparation for the Imperial assault by the Ultramarines and Word Bearers Legions against the Orks of the Ghaslakh Xeno-hold, and what ultimately led to the house's terrible losses in the Battle of Calth.

When the Warmaster Horus ordered the Calth Conjunctions, the Knights of House Vornherr did not hesitate to answer. Though a small contingent remained to secure their holdings within Luhnborg, the majority mustered at Calth, several hundred Knight armours marching in answer to the Primarch's call.

Such loyalty was to be unjustly rewarded, for the betrayal enacted upon Calth dealt a severe blow to House Vornherr, reducing their numbers to fewer than half a centuria of Nobles. With their numbers scattered across the galaxy on secondments to other warfronts, the household issued a call for withdrawal stating their oaths to fight until death fulfilled.

Those that remained obscured their bold colours with black and set themselves upon a path of vengeance and eventual destruction. Only a few aging barons remained upon their homeworld, setting aside choleric humours for pragmatism to ensure their legacy was rebuilt once more.

House Vornherr are held as a pristine example of an honourable company of warriors, spoken of with reverence earned by a record of distinction within the Great Crusade. Wardens of the Luhnborg System, their house emerged as victors in a millennia-long conflict against rival Knight houses whose history was eradicated in the wake of Vornherr's ascension.

Chronicles penned by the hands of Vornherr claim such actions were necessary in the face of a terrible emerging evil, though the truth of such a claim is impossible to verify. The erasure of their foes from all records is perhaps the only black mark upon the reputation of House Vornherr.

House History

Scarlet and Sun-fire

Vornherr Cerastus Knight-Acheron — House Vornherr Colour Scheme as displayed by the Cerastus Knight-Acheron *Surcease of Sorrow*.

The Knight-scions of House Vornherr were renowned the length and breadth of the Ultima Segmentum, for they served with great honour and achievement, first in the Great Crusade's cause in the later Compliance campaigns of the 12^th Expeditionary Fleet and subsequently in numerous operations across the leading edge of the wars of the Eastern Fringe.

In terms of the number of war engines alone, the Knights of Luhnborg-IX were counted as one of the greatest houses in the region and in bearing the most aristocratic of all their class.

Each Knight-scion was a noble of high birth, refined in demeanour and lofty in ideal, educated not just in war, but in culture, philosophy, rhetoric and all of those pursuits that would raise Mankind from the darkness of Old Night and, in time, turn Feral World savages into civilised subjects of Terra.

All such intentions were to die at Calth, however, leaving behind the remnants of a once-noble house, now forlorn and desiring nothing so less than a vengeful death.

The Knights of House Vornherr hailed from the Luhnborg System, itself part of a scattered stellar drift deep in the gulf between the galactic spiral arms. What led the colony arks of Old Earth to settle this system cannot be known and it is thought likely that the colonists who made it their home were simply washed up there by the capricious tides of the Warp.

In time, seven Knightly households rose up across the system, an unprecedented number in what little remains of the histories of Mankind prior to the Unification Wars. When the darkness of Old Night fell and consumed the galaxy, the Luhnborg System too was plunged into an era of ceaseless war.

For many long centuries, the seven houses fought bitterly against one another and against the numerous foes that descended upon their system from the cold void beyond.

Whatever madness had gripped the galaxy at large must have tainted them too, for no one house ever sought to broker peace and unite as one against the foes that assailed them all. Instead, the houses vied for supremacy and a militaristic culture arose, one in which mercy was regarded as weakness and compromise treachery.

Luhnborg's wars ground on for a thousand Terran years and more until, at length, one house rose from the bloody tumult and gained ascendency over the others. Rather than displaying magnanimity however, the victor claimed the lands and the Knight armours of the vanquished as its prize of war and burned their standards in a great, symbolic pyre.

In a single night, six ancient households symbolically ceased to exist and only the bloody scarlet and sun-fire yellow livery of the victor remained.

The colours of the defeated houses were erased from the rolls and their coats of arms defaced, whilst their sons and daughters were offered the choice of assimilation by marriage into the bloodlines of their new overlords, or exile, albeit one they must undertake without the benefit of their Knight armours. The names of the six vanquished houses will ever remain unknown; the name of the victorious house was Vornherr.

Generations later, the Grand Masters of House Vornherr would claim that their forebears were forced to lay their fellow houses low in this manner to end some terrible evil that had overcome them. Of course, this claim can never be verified and long has it been said that to the victor falls the privilege of writing the histories of its kind.

Having forcibly united the worlds of the Luhnborg System, coerced the defeated Knight-scions to join its ranks and claimed many hundreds of Knight armours, House Vornherr assumed the position of a ruling aristocracy, and within the span of a handful of generations, all traces of the vanquished houses disappeared and the culture and traditions of the Vornherr supplanted all.

After assimilating so many other bloodlines, the genealogical tree of House Vornherr was a sprawling mass that by its very essence nurtured internecine rivalries and plots, and its Knight-scions raised themselves ever higher above their subjects until they existed in a rarefied world of privilege and high culture.

This was nonetheless tempered by intrigue and the need to assume a unified defence against the myriad alien horrors that would periodically assail them from the depths of the void.

In time, strangers appeared at the verges of Luhnborg who were not intent upon the destruction, enslavement or consumption of its peoples; a flotilla of scout frigates under the command of the veteran and celebrated aristocrat-explorer Rogue Trader Kohnwallis pressed cautiously in from the system's borders, the leading element of the 12^th Expeditionary Fleet's pathfinder units illuminating the vast, stygian gulfs between spiral arms.

Possessed of few spacecraft, none of which were capable of Warp travel and none a match for the Rogue Trader's flotilla, there was little House Vornherr could do to oppose its advance.

A veteran of a hundred such contacts, Rogue Trader Kohnwallis displayed the utmost tact in his opening Vox-hail setting the rulers of House Vornherr at their ease so that by the time the Imperial delegation made planetfall at Luhnborg-IX before the gates of the household's ancient manse, it was clear that hostilities were largely out of the question.

Soon thereafter Duke Khorvun Bhaevenwulf, Lord of the House of Vornherr and Grand Master of its Knightly Order, and Rogue Trader Kohnwallis entered into talks.

It quickly became clear that the two men shared many characteristics of temper and mien, and both were drawn from aristocratic bloodlines which shared certain trappings of the nobility of Ancient Terra, suggesting a common descent which provided the foundation of subsequent negotiations.

Within a solar month, those talks were concluded and Duke Bhaevenwulf announced that his house would ascend to the Imperium. Luhnborg-IX would remain independent of the Mechanicum, to start out with at least, for its size and power made a pact with any Forge World largely unnecessary, and when the bulk of the 12^th Expeditionary Fleet laid over at Luhnborg on its great voyage towards the southeastern galactic fringe, Vornherr took its place amongst the crusading hosts, leaving a cadre of veteran Knight-barons behind to defend its holdings and govern its people.

Upon aligning itself to the Great Crusade, House Vornherr was present at and central to many of the 12^th Expeditionary Fleet's greatest victories.

Vornherr's Knights-scion took part in the latter half of the 12^th's Long March to Ultramar, where they confronted numerous xenos strains, several of which they knew of old and took immense satisfaction in scouring from the stars for all time.

Others were long known to Mankind at large, in particular the barbarous Orks, whose monstrous engines of war the Knights of House Vornherr had confronted in battle on numerous occasions before Imperial contact and soon became increasingly adept at slaying.

Other foes Humanity had never encountered before and never would again, indescribable horrors banished from existence by the deeds of House Vornherr.

The greatest and most portentous battle the Knights of House Vornherr fought in would be the First Scouring of Jardingris. It was here on this grave-world, under the baleful light of its black sun, that the house first took to the field of battle under the overall command of the Primarch Roboute Guilliman as part of a combined force consisting of twelve full chapters of the Legiones Astartes Ultramarines, the might of the Legio Metallica, ten cohorts of the Solar Auxilia and scores of Excertus Imperialis line regiments, along with the Conquestor companies of Rogue Trader Kohnwallis.

The war against the anti-human revenant-organisms of Jardingris was a bitter one indeed, and by its end the necrogenic xenos strain had paid for its crime of existence with its utter extermination.

The victory came at the cost of a dozen Titans and a hundred Knights, tens of thousands of casualties amongst the human infantry and almost three thousand Legiones Astartes were slain; a truly phenomenal tally for a single planetary assault, but one not unexpected given the threat.

At the height of the victory parade, carried out at the conclusion of the war amid the dust of that now silent world, the duke of House Vornherr went down on one knee in his battle-scarred Cerastus Knight-Lancer before Guilliman's review stand, and his entire house echoed his act.

In that moment, the duke pledged his house to fight alongside the hosts of the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar unto death, and although detachments of Vornherr would be committed to battle under other Primarchs, in particular Magnus the Red in the gruelling jungle wars of Sophias-Mors and Rogal Dorn at the costly Delta-Arbuthnot Landings, the house would hold none in such high regard as the Lord of Ultramar.

Thus when the Warmaster Horus ordered the Calth Conjunction at the Veridia System in preparation for war against the Orks of the Ghaslakh Xeno-hold, the Knights of House Vornherr were proud to answer.

In the aftermath of the Triumph at Ullanor, which the house had received the honour of attending, House Vornherr had separated into numerous detachments assigned to war zones across the Imperium, and as the Ultramarines voyaged from the Sol System to Veridia, so the scattered elements of House Vornherr mustered at their home system of Luhnborg.

There Duke Sorvak Bhaevenwulf, the heir of old Duke Khorvun, tasked some of his most trusted and experienced barons with guarding House Vornherr's ancient keep before leading the remainder of his force -- a formidable army of several hundred Knight armours and their supporting Sacristans -- to the muster at Calth.

Legend of the Dark Messenger

Within the House of Vornherr, a particular legend pertains to the cataclysm at Calth which cannot be independently verified but is taken as sovereign truth by the scions of the house.

The tale recounts that upon the very eve of the Word Bearers' betrayal at Calth, Duke Bhaevenwulf had completed a review of his entire house upon the landing field at Platia City and afterwards retired to his pavilion justly satisfied by the strength at his command.

Gazing southward across the star-lit ocean, the duke is said to have sensed a presence behind him and turned. A robed stranger had entered the tent having slipped past the house's guards and stood leafing idly through the many scrolls, maps and data-slates heaped upon the large command table at its centre.

Taking the measure of the stranger with a practised glance, the duke knew him for a messenger rather than an assassin, and demanded he be out with his missive and leave.

That missive was a simple one, an offer delivered in a whisper from beneath a hooded cowl. The Warmaster Horus would bestow his favour upon the House of Vornherr in honour of its service to the Great Crusade and in recognition of its devotion to a higher ideal its forebears had shown when they had crushed the other six Knight houses of Luhnborg.

The duke's pride swelled, but he sensed duplicity and the trap of hubris and so demanded to hear the price of the Warmaster's largesse.

"No price but obedience," replied the messenger, but the offer would have to be accepted immediately and in doing so, the Knights of Vornherr would be provided the means to depart Calth before the dawn.

Not a moment passed before the old duke gave his reply, dismissing the messenger with his words. Vornherr had bent the knee to Guilliman and would heed the call to war. The duke had sworn that his house would follow Ultramar, an oath it would maintain unto death.

The Doom of House Vornherr

"Fear not the guns of their Titans nor the death they promise. We are the scions of Luhnborg and though we may fall today, they will forever be stained by treachery and doomed to be forgotten, while our courage and honour will see our names echo for millenia!"

— Heredia Vornherr, Seneschal of House Vornherr

At the moment of the death of Calth Veridia Anchor, the bulk of the Knights of Vornherr were arrayed in a great phalanx on the muster field at Platia City, with perhaps a further quarter forming a demi-House assigned to shadow the Titans of the Legio Praesagius in the coming war and thereby mustered with them at the great city of Ithraca.

The departure of the house from the surface had not long begun and one orbital conveyor, the Iaxth-CV, had embarked its cargo of the house's war machines but had yet to lift off, two dozen Knights secured in its hold, including Duke Bhaevenwulf himself.

When the Mechanicum's planetary data-manifold fell silent, the Sacristans gathered in echelon upon the muster field set to invoking their own localised command and control net, a task doomed to failure as the darkening skies overhead filled with the contrails of burning debris already falling from orbit.

The Sacristans had all but completed their task just over a solar hour after the Campanile had struck the orbital yards, mere seconds before the Word Bearers planetary assault squadron, led by the Destiny's Hand, unleashed its bombardment of the southern island cities, and even though a sudden warning pulsed outwards through the mustered Household at the speed of thought, none had time to heed it, for hell was quickly descending upon Platia City.

The Destiny's Hand is a said to have loosed an atomic bombardment so potent that the city and every Knight gathered at its mustering field was incinerated in a creeping barrage of inexorable nuclear fire. As if anything could possibly have survived the assault, the Word Bearers followed it up with an attack of singular, almost vastly overkill, as simultaneous waves of meson-converter attacks, rad-caster saturation and pin-point lance strikes hammered home so that the island that had been Platia City's foundation was broken into rubble, the rubble scoured from the sea bed and vast swaths of the ocean around it vaporised.

Not a single Knight of House Vornherr was left upon the Platia battlefield, nor indeed did any living organism on the entire island survive.

At the moment of the death of Calth Veridia Yard, the Iaxth-CV with its precious cargo still inside had performed an emergency launch as its auguries detected the incoming wall of missiles from above, and its ponderous bulk had been rising through the skies away from the target zone as the atomics struck.

The blast blinded its pilots and the electromagnetic fury of the assault all but burned out the conveyor's command systems, and even though the damaged craft struggled valiantly to reach Ithraca for an emergency landing, a wall of fire rising behind it, the wounded craft was soon spiralling towards the turbulent ocean entirely out of control.

The conveyor overshot its destination and crash-landed off the coast of Ithraca, the wreck rapidly settling to the sea bed. Those crew not killed on impact were quickly drowned, but the Knights inside survived, their systems keeping the pilot-scions alive as the starship's hull, intended to withstand the vacuum of the void, collapsed under the pressure of the ocean.

Recovered tactical in-load archives depict the scene as the doomed conveyor's interior flooded and Duke Bhaevenwulf girded his mighty Reaper Chainfist. With a grinding downwards stroke, he tore a great slash in the hull and as the ocean crashed in and the interior cargo space was flooded, the Knights inside were able to push through the breach and into the open sea beyond.

Only fragmented battlelogs exist from which an account of the Knights' march across the sea bed can be constructed, and it is apparent from the garbled tacticae-vox traffic that passed between them that they had no way of knowing what had occurred in orbit.

All they could attempt to do was head north towards the coast of Ithraca in the hope of linking up with outlying elements of the Legio Praesagius. They had no way of knowing that just over an hour into their sea bed trek, the remainder of their house would be gone and they would be its only survivors on Calth.

Scrolling data-tracks imprinted over the recovered pict-feeds showed at that point a sudden and drastic rise in exterior temperature and in moments the seas through which the Knights trekked were boiling.

With visibility reduced to almost zero, all that could be seen was the Knights' arc-lights stabbing through churning clouds of sea-debris, and as they pushed forwards, chunks of rock were torn from the sea floor by the blast and cast along the boiling tides, striking the Knights as they fought with desperate resolve towards the coastline of Ithraca, the temperature soaring ever higher as the seas vaporised and raged around them.

Finally deliverance came as at last they forged across the burning shoreline of Ithraca City. The lead Knights found themselves stumbling from the boiling oceans, their pict-feeds depicting not churning sea but a bank of super-heated fog from which torn and ember-hot docking cranes towered like a twisted forest.

Within minutes, a dozen or so Knights had emerged from the flash-boiled seas and it was clear that those not at their sides must surely have perished.

What happened next has gone unrecorded, or at least the Knights' datacore in-loads returned to Luhnborg by agencies of Ultramar much later were purged in order to spare the surviving Vornherr the truth.

The very last scene captured was of a mass of dark figures parting the fog, their eyes lambent with the guttering hell-light of the Warp. Then nothing.

Months later, a Legion recon squad of the Ultramarines operating from Arcology Epsilon-XXIV in the central massif of the Ithraca Basin came upon a scene that more resembled a deathly tableaux vivant than the aftermath of any battle they had ever witnessed.

A dozen Knights were arrayed as if in battle against an unseen foe, their joints frozen and their armour scoured, rent and pitted as if by the talons and teeth of a host of predatory animals.

The Knights were mustered about a single figure -- the Cerastus Knight-Acheron Surcease of Sorrow of Duke Bhaevenwulf himself, as if rallying to him in the midst of heated battle.

All were dead, their forms burned coal-black by the touch of some second empyrean fire. Of the foes the duke and his Knights had fought on that blasted battlefield, no trace remained but blackened smears upon the cratered ground.

When at last word of the fate of the Knights of House Vornherr that had joined the Calth Conjunction reached the garrison at Luhnborg-IX, all knew this must surely spell the end of the ancient house.

All that remained was a handful of old barons and young squires, and in token of their fate they obscured the bold colours of their armours with black and pronounced their oath to serve Ultramar unto death discharged.

Released from their bond, they swore a new oath -- to avenge the fallen duke at any price, and in so doing go boldly to their doom.

Their death-oath sworn, the remnants of House Vornherr deactivated the stasis seals on their ancient armoury vaults and equipped themselves for the final war of the house's long and glorious history.

Notable Campaigns

Long March to Ultramar (Unknown Date.M30) - Following their alignment to the Imperium and the Great Crusade, House Vornherr was at and central to many of the 12^th Expeditionary Fleet's greatest victories, including the campaign known as the Long March to Ultramar, where they confronted numerous xenos strains, several of which they knew of old and took immense satisfaction in scouring from the stars for all time, including the dread Orks, whom House Vornherr had confronted in battle on numerous occasions and had become increasingly adept at slaying.
First Scouring of Jardingris (Unknown Date.M30) - The greatest and most portentous battle the Knights of House Vornherr fought in, it was here on this grave-world, that the Household first took to the field of battle under the overall command of Primarch Roboute Guilliman as part of a combined force consisting of twelve full chapters of the Legiones Astartes Ultramarines, the Legio Metallica Titan Legion and ten cohorts of the Solar Auxilia and scores of Excertus Imperialis line regiments, along with the Conquestor companies of Rogue Trader Kohnwallis. The Imperial forces were victorious, as they wiped out the necrogenic xenos strain for its crime of existence with utter extermination. The victory came at the cost of a dozen Titans and a hundred Knights, tens of thousands of human infantry and almost three thousand Legiones Astartes. At the height of the victory parade, the Duke of House Vornherr and his fellow knights bent their knee in their Knight suits to Primarch Guilliman, and pledged themselves to fight alongside the hosts of the Five Hundred Worlds unto death.
Compliance of Sophias-Mors (Unknown Date.M30) - Detachments of Vornherr Knights fought under the command of Primarch Magnus the Red and his Thousand Sons Legion during the gruelling jungle wars of Sophias-Mors.
The Delta-Arbuthnot Landings (Unknown Date.M30) - Detachments of Vornherr Knights fought under the command of Primarch Rogal Dorn and his Imperial Fists Legion during the costly Delta-Arbuthnot Landings.
Battle of Calth (ca. 007.M31) - Duke Sorvak Bhaevenwulf lands a formidable army of several hundred Knight armours and their supporting Sacristans to the muster at Calth. They were to fight alongside the XIII^th Legion ("Ultramarines") and the XVII^th Legion ("Word Bearers") as well as supporting elements from various Titan Legions, Solar Auxilia and Excertus Imperialis forces in a crusade against the Orks of the Ghaslakh Xenohold. The Knights of Vornherr were arrayed in a great phalanx on the muster field of Platia City, with a demi-Household assigned to shadow the Titans of Legio Praesagius at the city of Ithraca. When the Word Bearers revealed their treachery, they callously attacked the Knights of Vornherr with an orbital atomantic bombardment, wiping out all the Knights in a creeping barrage of inexorable nuclear fire. The few surviving two-dozen Knights secured within the holds of the orbital conveyor, the Iaxth-CV, had not yet begun its embarkation. When the auguries of the Iaxth-CV detected the wall of incoming missiles from above, they performed an emergency launch. Rising to the skies away from the target zone as the atomantics struck, the the electromagnetic fury of the assault burned out the conveyor's command systems, and the massive conveyor overshot its destination in Ithraca city and crash-landed off the coast of the city. Those crew not killed by the impact were quickly drowned. As the conveyor sank to the ocean floor, the Knights of Vornheer safe inside their suits, survived. Led by Duke Bhaevenwulf they managed to cut their way out of the bulkhead of the conveyor and make their way across the ocean floor towards the coastline of Ithraca. As they did so, the temperature rose until the ocean flash-boiled away from the blast. A dozen or so Knights managed to emerge from the boiling oceans. What occurred next is unclear, as the pict-feeds aboard the Knights datacore in-loads returned to Luhnborg-IX were purposely purged by the agencies of Ultramar in order to spare the surviving Vornherr the truth. Months later, a Legion recon squad of the Ultramarines came upon the grisly scene of the Knights' demise. A dozen Knights were arrayed as if in battle against an unseen force, their joints frozen and their armour scoured, rent and pitted as if by the talons and teeth of a host of predatory animals. All were dead, their forms burned coal-black by the touch of some second empyrean fire.
Battle of Beta-Garmon, "The Titandeath" (006-013.M31) - House Vornherr took part in the long and savage Beta-Garmon campaign, which included hundreds of war zones across dozens of worlds. During this conflict, House Vornherr provided Knight support to the Legio Honorum and Legio Atarus. Even before the greater armies of the Warmaster Horus reached the star cluster, the battle lines had long since been drawn, and fighting had been going on for many Terran years. It was a cauldron of battle that would consume millions of lives before its end and see the demise of entire Titan Legions, earning this campaign the dire moniker of the "Titandeath." The Beta-Garmon Cluster, also known as the gateway to the throneworld of Terra, was the last hurdle that the Warmaster Horus' forces had to overcome before they reached the Imperium's capital world. Heavily fortified by the Loyalists, Beta-Garmon would become one of the greatest and bloodiest battles of the Horus Heresy, as well as one of the longest-lasting.

House Strength

Upon taking its place alongside the crusading hosts of the 12^th Expeditionary Fleet, House Vornherr was allotted a nominal house grade classification of Primus Belicosa, a rating that recognised the very high number of Knight armours the house was able to field.

While the majority of the House took its place in the Great Crusade, the preparatory stages of integration into the Imperium of Man progressed on its homeworld, leading to its eventual recognition as an autonomous domain in line with many other planets classified as Knight Worlds.

Part of that process was a thorough survey of the world's military potential, as well as its ability to produce new Knight armours, and it was during this stage that the Imperium's assayer-adepts discovered something of the wars fought across the Luhnborg System during the Age of Strife, and that the reason for Vornherr's numerical superiority was its defeat of the six other houses.

Further investigations into the matter yielded very little, for the masters of House Vornherr would not allow the assayers to make a full account of their arsenals. All that could be estimated was that the five hundred or so Knight armours fighting with the 12^th Expeditionary Fleet represented the upper level of available Knight-scions, but many more armours were stasis-sealed within the house's inner armoury vaults.

Only as the bloodline issued heirs entitled to don these armours, and then trained them in the arts of war, would these reserves be drawn upon. This fact made it entirely unnecessary for the masters of House Vornherr to enter into compact with any of the many Mechanicum Forge Worlds whose envoys sought access to their vaults, and while it was never determined how many Knight armours laid within those hallowed chambers, it must have been a large quantity indeed for the house to feel secure in rebuffing the Mechanicum's advances.

It was only in the field of conveyance across the stars from one war zone to the next that Vornherr was deficient. In practice this mattered little, for the vast armada of voidships of all imaginable type that was the 12^th Expeditionary Fleet was well able to accommodate their Knight armours, and after years of service, many of these vessels were permanently assigned to the service of House Vornherr.

In composition, the house was able to commit a wide range of armour types to the field of battle and displayed a singular organisation in this regard. Unlike many other Knight houses, the Vornherr deployed their Knights into broadly homogenous wings.

The largest number were the Knights of the Line, generally equipped with Questoris class armours, predominantly Knight Errant and Knight Paladin types. Other Knights were fielded as a vanguard phalanx, invariably equipped with Questoris Knights-Lancer and similar types of armours.

The duke himself favoured an ancient suit of Cerastus Knight-Acheron type armour called Surcease of Sorrow and he was ever attended on the field by a veteran Life Guard formation equipped with Cerastus Knight-Castigator suits.

On the eve of the Calth Conjunction, as House Vornherr mustered for review by its Grand Master Duke Bhaevenwulf, it was numbered at almost six hundred Knight armours and thus rated as the largest Knight house known to be operating along the entire Eastern Fringe. Less than a solar day later, the Word Bearers would erase that honour, along with the entire southern island city chain where they were mustered.

Notable House Vornherr Knights

Surcease of Sorrow - One of the oldest and most Knight armours in the service of House Vornherr, this Cerastus Knight-Acheron belonged to Duke Sorvak Bhaevenwulf himself and had inherited it from his father, Duke Khorvun. The amrour bears several key examples of Duke Sorvak's personal heraldry, of particular note the icon of the Legiones Astartes White Scars, which the Vornherr served alongside during the First Kolarne Circle Compliance.
Nepenthes - A Cerastus Knight-Castigator armour of Knight-Scion Ulas Karn.

Notable House Vornherr Personnel

Duke Sorvak Bhaevenwulf (KIA) - Lord of the House of Vornherr and Grand Master of its Knightly Order who was slain at the Battle of Calth.
Knight-Scion Ulas Karn - Kinsman of Duke Sorvak Bhaevenwulf and a senior member of the lord's elite Lifewatch phalanx. As such, Nepenthes was rarely more than a dozen strides from Surcease of Sorrow, and the remains of both were recovered in the aftermath of the Battle of Ithraca.

House Appearance

House Colours

House Vornherr's colours are bloody scarlet, sun-fire yellow and black.

House Arms

The heraldry of House Vornherr is a skull-headed raptor.

Livery and Honour Markings

The personal heraldry of House Vornherr Knights often utilised a number of motifs common across numerous Knight Households, as well as several unique to Vornherr.

Where the crimson fields are rendered with a jagged edge, this is commonly indicative of deliberate erasure of some facet of the Household's history, most likely in reference to the Knight Houses the Vornherr defeated and absorbed during the Age of Strife.

The dark blue check pattern is indicative that the bearer has inherited the mantle of power from an immediate forebear.

The skull-headed raptor icon of House Vornherr was often prominently displayed on the Knight's shoulder armour or guardbrace as well as the Knight's personal banner.

Other honours that were often displayed include a white band upon a red field, which indicated that a wound had been suffered, and that sword symbols within the band recorded the fact that the wound was sustained in the course of the bearer's duty to the elite duke's Lifewatch.

Sources

The Horus Heresy - Book Five: Tempest (Forge World Series) by Alan Bligh, pp. 62, 122-131, 174
Adeptus Titanicus: The Horus Heresy - Shadow and Iron (Specialty Game), pp. 48, 52
Adeptus Titanicus - The Horus Heresy: Titandeath (Specialty Game), pg. 93