Title: Darkness Rising: The History of the Chaos Knights
From the shadowy recesses of humanity’s past, emerges the tale of the Chaos Knights; a saga steeped in darkness and treachery. Individualistic Dreadblades, these are the houses that have succumbed entirely to the insidious allure of chaos. Having pledged allegiance to traitor Titan Legions and the sinister Dark Mechanicum, these entities are ominously known as Infernal Houses within the Imperium.
These Houses adopt techno-sorcery and conjure demonic entities to enhance the already formidable capabilities of their Knight suits, making them a force to be reckoned with. However, their heretical allegiances are not uniform. Some, known as Iconoclast Houses, maintain their oaths of fealty to heretic Aarti Legions or the dark Gods themselves, while others have boldly renounced their allegiance to the Imperium, seeking to carve out their own dread empires.
These Chaos Knights trace their origins back to a time long before the Emperor arose on Terra and established the Imperium of Man. The Knights had already laid down their roots on myriad worlds across the galaxy. Through countless horrors and enduring millennia, they managed to survive, but not without succumbing to the corrosive influence of the warp.
The first Knight Houses emerged as humanity expanded its dominion amongst the stars. Colonists, driven by their ambition and courage, embarked on harrowing journeys from Terra aboard Long March generation ships. These voyages, extending across solar decades or even Terran centuries, carried them through the cold void of space towards their uncharted destinations.
Many fell victim to empirical disasters, navigational errors, or encountered hostile alien races. Some worlds were plagued by savage electrical storms, volcanic activity, exotic radiation, carnivorous flora, or strange pathogens that threatened to wipe out the new arrivals. Yet, the most resilient of these explorers endured, even thrived, using Standard Template Construct technology to fabricate the structures and machines they needed to assert dominance over their new planets.
These early pioneers transformed their vessels into fortified enclaves, which over time, evolved into mighty strongholds. They exploited the wealth of their new worlds with heavy mining tools, refineries, and processing plants, all created from STCs. The first Knight suits were both instruments of settlement and potent weapons, equally capable of taming the wilds as they were of decimating hostile xenos.
The task of operating these Knight suits was entrusted to the most skilled and forceful individuals. These warriors, over time, became the nobles of the first Knight Houses. The planets they ruled over grew insular, rejecting technological advancements in favor of traditions established and enforced by the nobles. Their cultures diverged from the path taken by the rest of humanity, saving them from the nightmares that followed.
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, which in turn, gave rise to genetic evolution, mutation, and the birth of Pyers – individuals imbued with the ability to sense and manipulate the warp.
Interstellar wars broke out, sentient machines rebelled against their masters, and entire planets were overrun by xenos armies. Warp storms severed routes of contact between humanity’s manifold domains. Lost in isolation, they were forced to face the horrors that befell them. Nevertheless, the epoch of the Chaos Knights had only just begun…
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