Beneath the Imperial Palace lie vaults holding weapons and war engines too dangerous, too sacred, or too old to be trusted to any other custodian, and it is the Dread Host that has traditionally stood sentinel over them. Where the Aquilan Shield embodies protection, the Dread Host embodies retribution, mustering the Order's ancient Dreadnoughts, its heaviest armaments, and its most battle-scarred veterans for campaigns where the enemy must not simply be repelled but erased.
Hosts drawn from this lineage carry a graver bearing than their kin, tempered by centuries spent in close company with the interred dead and the terrible machines of ages past. When a Dread Host deploys, it is rarely to hold a line; it is to break one, driving into the heart of whatever abomination or army threatens to unmake an Imperial world, and not withdrawing until the threat is a memory.
Order of battle
The Dread Host field the units of the Adeptus Custodes, a detachment from the roster:
Other Adeptus Custodes formations
Aquilan ShieldThe first and most storied of the Shield Hosts, marching under the double-headed eagle to defend worlds Terra cannot afford to lose.
Emissaries ImperatusThe Emissaries Imperatus are the shield-host that carries the Emperor's light beyond the walls of the Palace and out into the darkness of a broken galaxy. When the Indomitus Crusade was launched to reclaim the Imperium, it was Custodians such as these who stepped forward to leave sacred Terra and fight upon distant worlds. Wherever they go they bear the authority of the Master of Mankind made manifest, and they strike with such certainty that no foe endures their opening blows.
ShadowkeepersThe Shadowkeepers are the grim wardens of the Dark Cells, the black-armoured shield-host that keeps watch over the forbidden things imprisoned in the deepest vaults beneath the Imperial Palace. Theirs is the duty of the jailer, to hold entrapped the dread entities and heretical technologies too dangerous to destroy. Should any such horror ever slip its bonds and appear abroad, it falls to the Shadowkeepers to hunt it down and drag it back into the dark.
Solar WatchThe Solar Watch, styled the Castellans of the Blessed Worlds, is the shield-host charged with the eternal defence of the Sol System and the sacred worlds of the Segmentum Solar. Held always at the highest pitch of readiness, its warriors are the first of the Ten Thousand to answer any threat to the Throneworld's approaches, striking with a swiftness that grants the Emperor's enemies no chance to draw breath. Their pale, gold-trimmed ranks stand as a living rampart about mankind's holiest ground.
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