House Griffith - The Dragon War: In the early years of settlement on Dragon's End humans lived in almost constant fear of attack by dragons. Hidden in the billowing ash clouds that constantly obscured the planet's skies, the beasts would seek out their prey, glowing red eyes occasionally visible in the gloom. So in tune with their surroundings were the beasts that Auspex and Augur were nearly useless in detecting them or following their movements, as the creatures blended into the background heat of the world or vanished into its ash-laden skies. Workers would toil in the near-dark glancing fearfully up at the heavens, while equally nervous sentries held tight their Lasguns, knowing full well how useless the weapons would be in the event of a dragon attack.Into this oppressive time of fear and dismay came the knights of Griffith, men who had practised the skills of horse and lance during the long voyage from Terra. When no one else would dare venture beyond the high walls and reinforced domes of the settlers' cities, the knights rode out onto the wastes seeking out the foe. Though many fell, their legend grew, as did their understanding of the beasts. A shiny black stone akin to obsidian was mined and fashioned into armour, the knights discovering it had the power to turn dragon fire, and was hard enough to defend against a glancing blow from talon or tooth.At first the knights had no weapons that could kill a dragon, for even the most powerful guns possessed by the settlers had little effect on the stony hides of the beasts. Energy beams and plasma blasts seemed to wash off the dark scales of a dragon like water, while solid rounds needed to hit an eye or open maw to have even the slightest effect. In time, the knights of Griffith discovered the only sure way to slay a dragon was to pierce its heart, and the only thing strong enough to punch through scale and muscle was the bones of the dragons themselves.The knights were forced to raid the dragons' graveyards for the bones to fashion into lances, creeping in while the beasts slumbered to plunder the remains of their dead. These were the weakest of the lances made, their shafts pitted by age and worn away by wind and fire. Even so, it allowed the knights to kill their first dragons, and harvest better lances from the remains. Eventually it became a tradition that a knight would carve his lance from the corpse of the first dragon he slew, tempering it in the cooling blood of his kill and carrying it until his demise.For years the knights fought against the dragons, taking the battle deep into the fiery wastes, and killing scores of the beasts. By the time the first true Knight suits were fabricated using the knowledge contained within the STC database that had accompanied the colonists, House Griffith was well-established and had learned much about fighting dragons. With their new weapons of war the Noble warriors of Griffith were able to devastate their foes. Although the new weapons proved more lethal and adept at the task, the image of the obsidian-armoured knight on horseback would endure as the true symbol of the Dragon War.After solar decades of dragon slayers eventually drove the beasts to extinction and freed the world of their curse, it left behind a warrior elite within the settlers' society, long before even the whispers of the Throne Mechanicum helped create a feudal society of Nobles. By the time humans had created the mines capable of refining materials like adamantium to make Knight armour, the Nobles who piloted them were already peerless swordsmen and fighters. This strife-filled history has served House Griffith well in its wars against the foes of the Imperium, forging a Noble House unmatched in skill with blade and cannon.This legacy of knightly virtue and might would soon be writ large upon the stars, and though the Dragon War had taken a heavy toll upon the people of Dragon's End it would prove invaluable in their alliance with the Imperium. When the Nobles of House Griffith talk of their ancestors it is tales of men and women that once fought beasts from horseback. Some rare surviving Griffith Thrones Mechnicum still hold memories from that time, filled with the ghostly whispers of long-dead dragon slayers.