Chaos Knights - 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.