House Orhlacc - House Strength: Solar decades operating in the outer reaches of the Great Crusade served to strengthen House Orhlacc, not weaken it. Its Scions gained a wide experience in warfare, while the influx of new weapons, technology and wargear from the expeditionary fleets with which they served further strengthened the house.This, along with gifts of new Knight armours from the Mechanicum and their own independent production abilities in this regard, was to see their forces deal well with battlefield losses, unlike some of their peers. For these reasons, it is generally believed that at the time of the outbreak of the war of the Horus Heresy, House Orhlacc was of the higher end of the Secundus-grade, with perhaps as many as 300 Knight armours in viable condition under its command, and perhaps would have been greater yet had the relatively low population of Dark Haven been able to support more.This nevertheless put them as one of the stronger of the frontier Knight houses, although others closer to the Imperium's core could claim far greater strength.Most of these armours were of Knight Questoris and Knight Cerastus patterns. The low population of Dark Haven led House Orhlacc to maintain a number of unique servo-automata-type military retainers of their own seneschals' design; originally intended for use in harvesting the dangerous life forms on Dark Haven, they performed exceedingly well on the battlefield in support of the Knight house.At the outbreak of the Heresy, several household detachments were off-world, fighting far across the galaxy and cut off from any chance of return during the war's early years, leaving perhaps 150 Knight armours at Dark Haven for the conflict in the Coronid Deeps.The survival of the technology of Dark Haven's original foundation is a marked factor in House Orhlacc's power, with its own seneschals retaining a very high degree of interdependent arcana forms, including unusual facilities with genetics and bio-surgery not common among their kind.The men and women of the house, be they Scion or retainer, are also known to dabble in techno-arcana and many of the house's Knight armours feature unusual customisations and fine-tuning to suit their operator's needs in battle.A wide number of Knight armours and classes are utilised by the house, the most common perhaps being the Knight Errant type; a development likely to have been spurred by the effectiveness of thermal weaponry against Dark Haven's native fauna and the relative ineffectiveness of blast and fragmentation weaponry against the same.Following their inclusion within the ranks of the Great Crusade, the types of Knight armour available to House Orhlacc increased somewhat, with the number of Acheron and Castigator Patterns in particular seeing increase, while the spoils of the battlefield of Numinal would see them add a number of armours originating on Cyclothrathe to their household's arsenal for the ongoing war.During the opening stages of the war for the Coronid Deeps during the Heresy, House Orhlacc also acquired control of the largely intact flotilla of Rogue Trader Charid Undine, including the powerful galleass of war Hammer of the Deep, which would form their principal flagship and combat transport for the duration of the galactic civil war.