Chaos Knights - Chaos Knights: The Chaos Knights, also known as Renegade Knights, Daemon Knights, and the Questor Traitoris in High Gothic, are Imperial Knight combat walkers, their Fallen Noble pilots and Knight houses corrupted to the service of Chaos.Humanoid war engines that tower over their foes, each Chaos Knight carries an army's worth of firepower upon its weaponised limbs and hulking carapace.At close quarters, their roaring Reaper Chainswords and crushing Thunderstrike Gauntlets destroy what their trampling feet cannot, scattering terrified survivors before their unstoppable advance. The ground shudders beneath the godlike tread of the Renegade Knights.Even one such looming war engine possesses the firepower to annihilate entire regiments of enemy warriors, pick apart armoured columns, and swat squadrons of aircraft from the skies. Chaos Lords and rebellious demagogues will go to great lengths to secure the services of such a lone warrior, sacrificing whatever they must to ensure that this god of destruction fights at their side.Deployed in great number, the Questor Traitoris are more fearsome still, and have been known to bring entire worlds to heel, scourging them by blade and flame in the name of the Dark Gods.Each Chaos Knight is an unhallowed relic of Humanity's ancient past. They are twisted reflections of the Imperial Knights, corrupted in form and spirit by fell sorceries, dark worship and malefic re-engineering. The Knight suits were first created using Standard Template Construct databases during the Age of Technology, and many have survived through the innumerable wars that have characterised the long Terran millennia since.For generations uncounted, the colossal war machines have been piloted by Nobles -- aristocratic warriors possessed of enough physical, mental and spiritual fortitude to survive the Ritual of Becoming, commune with the Throne Mechanicum at each walker's heart and thus bond with their Knight suit.In the case of Chaos Knights, such rituals are tainted by Warp entities, malefic sorceries and the perversions of the Nobles themselves. At first, the Knight may appear unchanged, but in its core the irrevocable process of rot has already begun.Over Terran years or even centuries, Chaos energies seep into the war engine, torturing its Machine Spirit and mutating its mechanical form. Where once the suit and its pilot were a gleaming beacon of Imperial honour, the Chaos Knight and its Fallen Noble comprise a symbiotic beast of unfettered wrath and base hatred.A Noble is enabled to pilot their war machine by being wired into an arcane contraption that is implanted into their Knight's cockpit -- a Throne Mechanicum in the larger Knights, or a Helm Mechanicum in the smaller classes. Neural jacks and cerebral uplinks connect the pilot's nervous system to the device, allowing them to directly interface with the machinery of their steed.Actuators and omni-motivators are driven by streams of hateful thoughts, whilst sensory information and multi-spectrum Auspex relays feed back into the Noble's mind with burning clarity. Within each Throne Mechanicum are the spectral neural echoes of its previous pilots, screaming techno-gheists whose suffering increases exponentially as the Knight to which they are bonded grows ever more warped.Only the most indomitable Fallen Nobles are able to commune with a Throne Mechanicum. Those that do are able to spur their Chaos Knight into action by inimical will alone. Nobles who are wired into a Helm Mechanicum are similarly twisted by Chaos energies that have been absorbed by their war engine. The Helms also yoke these pilots mind and soul to the will of their Knightly overlords.Since the Horus Heresy, thousands of individual Knights and even whole Knight houses have fallen to Chaos. Each instance of treachery is a monumental blow to the Imperium. The Nobles and their Knight suits are not only crucial cogs in Humanity's war machine, they are considered to be among the most unshakeably loyal servants of the Emperor.The mere suggestion that a Noble could forswear their vows and fight against the Imperium's servants is tantamount to blasphemy. It is whispered that the Departmento Munitorum has had Imperial officers executed for heresy rather than acknowledge their claims that they have done battle with turncoat Nobles. Yet the terrifying reality is that Chaos Knights bent on anarchy and slaughter march upon the Emperor's realm in ever-greater numbers.Fallen Nobles embark on campaigns of destruction for many reasons. Some do so to conquer territory in the name of the baleful deities they worship. Others have sworn fealty to the Dark Mechanicum, the Heretic Astartes or powerful daemonic entities, and answer the dread summons of war whenever they are called upon.Others still are driven by insanity and profane visions, launching quests to upend the very fabric of existence and transform the galaxy into a twisted hellscape.Chaos Knights are able to cover enormous distances when battling across a planet, marching unhindered through toxic atmospheres and across irradiated continents to reach their enemies. When their wars stretch beyond a single world, many of their kind use corrupted Dark Mechanicum Explorator craft and mass conveyance barges to transport themselves to the front lines. On the most Warp-drenched battlefields, the horrific war engines have even been known to storm forth from tears in reality, emerging from local Warp rifts called into being by the powers of Chaos.A single Chaos Knight has as much resilience and firepower as a small army. Those that have turned upon or even butchered the rest of their Knightly household are termed Dreadblades by the Ordo Hereticus. They typically operate as lone wolves and mercenaries, lending their immense might to heretical warlords in exchange for powerful relics, arcane knowledge or fief planets upon which they can enact their cruelties.Dreadblades are often followed into battle by hordes of warriors, Chaos Space Marines who revere the Knights' destructive potential, and throngs of Chaos Cultists who worship the machines as manifestations of their Dark Gods' will. At other times, multiple Dreadblades will gather together, focusing their disparate fury towards a single malefic purpose.But even more terrifying than the individualistic Dreadblades are the Knight houses that have fallen in their entirety to Chaos. Those that have sided with Traitor Titan Legions and the Dark Mechanicum are known as "Infernal houses" in the Imperium. They use techno-sorcery and summoned daemonic entities to bolster the already formidable capabilities of their Knight suits.Other Knightly courts, known as "Iconoclast houses," have more varied heretical allegiances; some have maintained oaths of fealty to Heretic Astartes Legions or the Dark Gods themselves, whereas others have renounced their allegiance to the Imperium to carve out their own dread empires.