House Vyronii - Origins: Hailing from the Knight World of Damaetus III/II, House Vyronii was allied to the Imperium in the bitter war against the Traitors of Horus. One of the most ancient of Knight houses in the Segmentum Obscurus, the Vyronii shed so much of their Nobles' blood during the Age of Strife that their numbers and resources were perilously depleted by the closing of the Great Crusade and the outbreak of galactic civil war. Determined not to become mute spectators to their own destiny, the Nobles of House Vyronii swore they would stand firm against the Arch-traitor, or else perish.The Nobles of House Vyronii are noted for their uniquely sorrowful mien, a manner born of the knowledge that their ancestors' five-thousand-year vigil against the terrors of Old Night might be rendered utterly meaningless or obliterated entirely at the hands of a warrior who was at one time the Emperor's most beloved son.It is a demeanour bred into the bloodline by the lonely, forlorn moon orbiting a bloated emerald green gas giant that the Vyronii call home. Damaetus III/II, found in a star system at the junction of several minor but stable Warp routes, is a world of deep, twisted forest and mist-shrouded swamps, above which towers the imposing Felweather Keep, a vast fortress edifice erected from the corpse of their founding colony ark when the planet was settled during the Age of Technology.When first discovered, Damaetus III/II was found to harbour a vast array of autochthonic life forms. Its dark forests were populated largely by cephalopod-mammalian hybrid forms, many of prodigious size, lurking in the trackless swamps or nested in the hollow boughs of colossal yet rotting trees, some of which were possessed of a malevolent, alien intelligence. These most malign creatures were capable of communication and demanded obeisance from the Human newcomers, like hungering chthonic deities from Mankind's forgotten pre-history, just as they had from other starfaring races and travellers that had happened upon their world before and now whose mutilated remains were sunk beneath the loam.The Knight-colonies were of a different power and temper though, and an age of war ensued, the Human settlers drawing upon the STC system at the heart of Felweather Keep to battle the hideous creatures that would feast upon them. When battle was joined, the swamp seas boiled and the vine-wrapped forests burned black as the two sides fought, the emerald skies turning to a night that lingered for solar decades until, at length, the god-things were cast down or driven into the most remote depths of the trackless wastes to become the object of noble quests by Knights yet unborn. Thus did the Knights of the Vyronii become quite literal god-slayers, the carcass of the vanquished god-beast being then served at a banquet of epic proportions (as some legends would have it).By then, Mankind's golden age was at an end and an era of damnation was upon the galaxy. Thoughout the long darkness of Old Night, the Knights of Damaetus stood firm against countless invasions, many by alien species not encountered since and which must remain nameless, other by infamously familiar enemies such as the piratical slaver-caste of the Drukhari and brutal Orkoid marauders. One strain of xenos in particular turned its gaze upon the Damaetus System with deadly consequence -- the Mitu Conglomerate, under whose long shadow vast swathes of the Coronid Deeps had already fallen.For many lonely centuries, the Knights of Damaetus stood resolute against the hated Mitu. Through they cared not for conventional invasion as such, their periodic attentions brought unspeakable destruction, and when a fresh wave of alien horror descended from the emerald skies, the noble keeps built across the surface of Damaetus III/II were reduced to ruin and ashes, and soon even the mighty Felweather Keep was itself irrevocably wounded and riven.Still the Vyronii stood at the edge of the precipice. Resigned to their inevitable doom, they renewed their oaths and took their places to await the attack all thought would finish them; in what they had every reason to believe was the death vigil of Humanity itself.But the doom of the Vyronii never came. There was nothing but silence in the heavens until, at length, a new star appeared in the firmament. An unfamiliar contrail speared downwards to the surface of Damaetus III/II and the craft set down amidst the forests, having blasted a landing zone clear of the dense undergrowth.The Knights of House Vyronii strode out to meet it, suspicious but ready to sell their lives dearly should the end be revealed. It was however not to be, for the spacecraft was a Stormbird of the Ist Legion, the Dark Angels, and represented an outrider of the Great Crusade in the region, which was now piercing deeper into the surrounding void having scoured the stars of the xenos Mitu Conglomerate.Had providence afforded them the luxury, the masters of the Vyronii might have considered themselves betrayed by cruel fate, denied both the glory of a last stand against and the vindication of victory over their ancient foe. The enemy they and generations of their forebears had shed so much blood simply to hold at bay was gone, exterminated with almost contemptuous ease as the Imperium swept through the Segmentum Obscurus. But instead, the Vyronii were carried up in the fire and fury of the Great Crusade, bound to a debt of liberation they believed they could never repay.The Vyronii took their place amongst the great hosts of Mankind, adhering to the established chains of command, albeit never fully committing themselves to the ambitions and intrigues that came with them, and always maintaining a respectful and honourable distance born of countless years of isolation. They served alongside the Dark Angels Legion that had found them, then later with the Word Bearers and the Imperial Fists Legions in turn, as well as a dozen Excertus Imperialis commands.They gained great honour and the respect of their peers, if a reputation for melancholy and withdrawn reserve. Beneath the harsh lights of alien suns, the Nobles of the house saw their armour for the dull ceramite it truly was, not the shining emerald green it had appeared under the reflected light of the lambent gas giant about which their homeworld slowly spun.So it was that crusading Scions ordered their Sacristans to apply emerald green heraldry to their armours in memory of their home, a livery that soon became established as theirs alone by the Officio Militaris College of Arms as the Great Crusade ground inexorably onwards.A period of assimilation and rebuilding began whilst the bulk of the house was away fighting amidst the stars, during which delegation after delegation came before Grand Master Jahk of the Vyronii and his court. The visitors' shock at the decrepit state of holdings was impossible to conceal as envoys came from the nearby domains of the Mechanicum, including Mezoa and the recently established Cyclothrathine Holdfast, as well as from Forge Worlds much more distant and illustrious such as Lucius.All desired that the house swear themselves as feudal subjects, and in return offered to replace the ancient and oft-repaired Knight armours with newly-minted war machines of more advanced and potent classes.These would-be benefactors desired more than service though, for they coveted the ancient crystal data-stacks buried beneath Felweather Keep. Scornful of the undisguised avarice of some and the strange dogma of others, Jahk sent the envoys away from his court on the pretext of pondering their many solicitations. Even as the grand master considered his house's future, those Nobles serving in the armies of the Great Crusade were winning untold glories across the stars.Serving across five different expeditionary fleets in the closing solar decades of the Great Crusade alone, the Crusading Knights of House Vyronii fought with distinction in the costly Orthrus Extermination, the Kusarikku Nebula Suppression and the Calistaria Compliance campaign, word of each victory bolstering Jahk's position with regards to the pacts he must eventually enter into with the greater Mechanicum, whose emissaries still pressed for an audience many years now since they had first appeared. The wars fought out amongst the stars, however, garnered not just honour, but an ever more pressing need to replace those Knight armours lost in battle.The point of decision eventually arrived, and Jahk determined that to survive, his house must finally align itself to a Forge World. Expediency determined his choice and he settled with Cyclothrathe, whose offers of materiel aid had been by far the most generous of those received.Little did the Vyronii Nobles know that the hour they had picked for such an allegiance was an ill-chosen one, for it was the year 005.M31 and unknown to them, already events were unfolding at Isstvan III that would plunge the Imperium into civil war.The act of bonding between Knight World and Forge World was to take place on Damaetus III/II, before the crumbling and vine-swathed Felweather Keep. Those Scions assigned to the Great Crusade who could be contacted had been recalled, and mustering in the landing zone first blasted by the Ist Legion's Stormbird years before, almost the entire house awaited the coming of one of the high magi of Cyclothrathe and his honour guard of House Ærthegn Knights.A solar hour before the appointed time, a lander plummeted from the skies belching flames and boiling black smoke from a blasted thruster. It bore the crowned skull emblem of the Vyronii, and before its engines had even cycled down, its access ramp lowered on stuttering hydraulics and a lone, limping figure emerged.The assembled Nobles recognised the figure immediately, for it was Gios, eldest son of Grand Master Jahk. Gios limped across the landing zone and fell to his knees before his father's Cerastus Lancer, one word on his bloody lips -- "Betrayal".