Among the noble households of the Questor Imperialis, none hold their given word more sacred than House Hawkshroud. To its Nobles, honour is not merely a virtue but the very foundation upon which the household stands, and the reputation of the line is guarded more jealously than any relic or fortress wall. The Hawkshroud creed is captured in a single unyielding oath, that no plea for aid shall ever be refused, and it is a promise the household keeps at ruinous cost to itself.
Because Hawkshroud will honour any summons issued by those who have earned its respect or loyalty, its Knights are almost never gathered together in one place. At any given moment the greater part of the household's strength is dispersed across the galaxy, marching in the service of old allies and settling debts that may reach back thousands of years. From their austere seat upon the world of Krastellan, the Nobles reject the comforts and extravagance that other households indulge, regarding luxury as a slow poison and the surest road to weakness. They accept the culture and machinery of the wider Imperium only insofar as their obligations demand it, and the lore their Sacristans glean from forge worlds such as Graia is kept strictly to that which sustains their war-suits.
The household's ledger of honour is long. Repaying a debt first incurred amid the fires of the Horus Heresy, a detachment of Hawkshroud Knights marched beside the Imperial Fists through the campaigns of the Tyros Gulf, breaking raiders of Craftworld Alaitoc in a series of desperate engagements at the side of the sons of Dorn. When one of their own was delivered from certain death by Krom Dragongaze of the Space Wolves, the entire household swore itself oathbound to the sons of Russ. Yet such boundless generosity has left Hawkshroud dangerously overstretched, and when the greenskin horde of WAAAGH! Zagsmasha descended upon Krastellan, the household was forced at last to call in the countless debts owed to it, summoning home the allies it had so selflessly served across the long millennia.
Order of battle
The House Hawkshroud field the units of the Imperial Knights, a detachment from the roster:
Other Imperial Knights formations
House CadmusJungle-lord Nobles of mutant-haunted Raisa, whose annual ritual hunt, the Cull, hones them into peerless slayers of the Imperium's foes.
House GriffithHouse Griffith is a proud and ancient loyalist house whose scions temper valour with cunning, favouring measured warfare over heedless aggression. Long allied with the Astra Militarum, Griffith's Knights are famed for their discipline on the battlefield and their willingness to fight as part of a wider host rather than seeking solitary glory. Their tacticians are studied and respected throughout the Imperium's war colleges.
House KrastHouse Krast is a fervently loyal Questor Mechanicus house defined by its relentless, unforgiving prosecution of war and its particular hatred of the Chaos-corrupted Traitor houses. Krast follows the austere Code Martial, subordinating individual glory entirely to the cause of the Emperor. Its scions are grim, uncompromising warriors who show no mercy and expect none.
House MortanThe grim Dolorous Knights of the night-world Kimdaria, a household forged by twenty millennia of lonely war against the horrors that stalk its sunless forests.
House RavenHouse Raven is a loyalist house that swears its oaths to Mars rather than Terra, ranking among the foremost Questor Mechanicus houses. Its scions are known for their close and sometimes uneasy relationship with the Adeptus Mechanicus, and for fielding some of the largest concentrations of Knight suits in the Imperium. Raven's warriors combine chivalric tradition with the cold discipline of the Machine Cult.
House TaranisThe First House, most ancient of all knightly lineages, forged upon Mars alongside the Knight suit itself and sworn in undying fealty to the Machine God.
House TerrynHouse Terryn is among the most storied and populous of the loyalist Knightly houses, renowned for its fierce cavalry doctrine and its reverence for the purest ideals of the Code Chivalric. Its scions favour the headlong charge, closing with the foe to win glory in the crucible of close combat. Terryn's warriors are famed for their bravery bordering on recklessness, a trait celebrated in the ballads of their homeworld.
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