House Taranis is the eldest of all the knightly households, its founding predating every other line by long centuries. It arose not upon some far-flung feudal world but upon Mars itself, in the twilight of the Age of Technology, born in the same era and from the same craft as the very first Knight suits. As the Red Planet swelled into the greatest of all the forge worlds, the Nobles of Taranis stood as its guardians, and so they are honoured to this day as the Knight Patriarchs, though among themselves they claim no primacy of one over another, styling their lords instead as Primus Inter Pares, first among equals.
Taranis is a household of the Questor Mechanicus, sworn in direct and absolute fealty to the Adeptus Mechanicus rather than to distant Terra. That bond was forged at the very dawn of the Imperium. It was the Knight Taymon Verticorda of Taranis who first met the Emperor upon His arrival on Mars, and who, having witnessed the Master of Mankind restore a wounded war-suit with a single touch, first hailed Him as the promised Omnissiah. Because the Martian Nobles who became the first Knights were already devoted body and soul to their Mechanicum overlords, the Thrones Mechanicum of Taranis were built without the subtle mind-binding technologies that shackle the pilots of other households, a mark of trust unique among the Questoris Familia.
At the outbreak of the Horus Heresy the household could field some six hundred war-suits, among them a wealth of rare and archaic patterns, Porphyrion and Atrapos, Magaera and Styrix, seldom seen elsewhere in such numbers. Taranis held loyal through the Schism of Mars, fighting for the loyalist cause against the traitors of the Dark Mechanicum, and was all but annihilated in the doing; of its entire strength, only Raf Maven and Leopold Cronus are said to have survived the slaughter. From those two survivors the household was painstakingly rebuilt, and alone among the Knights of Mars it endured the civil war to rise again as one of the mightiest households of the age.
Order of battle
The House Taranis 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 HawkshroudA Questor Imperialis household bound by an unbreakable code of honour, whose Knights answer every call to arms and are therefore forever scattered across a thousand distant war zones.
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 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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