Forces of the Emperor – Datasheets

Constantin Valdor sits at the right hand of the Emperor as perhaps his most trusted companion and guardian, a watchman of inviolable purpose and all but unmatched fighting skill. Such in fact is Valdor’s martial power and superhuman physical and mental abilities that there are those, even within the Imperial Court, who have in whispers called him ’Primarch in all but name’. This is no doubt a disingenuous claim, as for all his power Valdor was made and trained to serve a different and far more focused purpose, that of Lord Commander of the Custodian Guard, and to Valdor the petty concerns of conquest and glory, dominion and victory are as nothing when compared to his own sworn duty. Thus while Constantin Valdor holds a rank in some ways higher than that of even Primarch, and sits at the centre of Imperial power on Terra, he seldom exercises his influence, save where his purview is directly concerned, and then never with ambition or aggrandisement. But should his purpose be challenged or, worse yet, should anyone or anything seek to endanger the Emperor or his chosen representatives, Valdor is as a demi-god of vengeance made incarnate: unstoppable and unrelenting.

One of the most mysterious and feared warlords of the Imperium, Jenetia Krole, or as the remembrancers were wont to name her ‘The Soulless Queen’, was the indomitable Knight-Commander of the Silent Sisterhood. The foremost battle leader of her Order, Jenetia Krole stalked the shadows of the Great Crusade at the behest of her master, the Emperor. She commanded whole armies of the Sisters of Silence on those dread occasions when such were required to take to the field, sought out and slew psykers turned would-be gods, and cut the lives short of any who aimed either to deny or subvert the Great Tithe.

Below the absolute authority of the Captain-General and the three Legatii lies the Custodian Tribunate: the Legio Custodes’ council of war and policy, granted the incomparable privilege of providing counsel to the Emperor himself. Each Tribune must have earned at least ten names and won three great victories to be considered for service, and such figures are held in immense esteem by their fellow Custodians. Only by a Tribune’s authority may an entire Shield Host of the Legio Custodes be mustered for battle, for they are among the greatest warriors and strategists in the Imperium, and where they tread, death follows.

Drawn from the elite ranks of the Chamber of Oblivion, the Knights-Centura serve as the battlefield commanders of the Sisters of Silence. Elevated as a result of their seniority, martial prowess and power as psychic nulls, they are charged with the inviolate duty of commanding the tactical operations of the Great Tithe and the sworn duty of destroying rogue psykers deemed too dangerous to live. Each Knight-Centura is the unquestioned mistress of her own mission force through not only the strict customs of the Order but also the trust placed in her abilities by those under her command.

Elevated both through the trust of their peers and by the Emperor’s direct approval, Shield Captains are warriors of not only consummate and superhuman ability but also rare insight, acumen and knowledge. Afforded the finest of the Imperium’s arms, each of these legendary fighters commands the Legio Custodes against all manner of threats, and whether their Shield Company numbers a handful of Sodalities detached to mete out the Emperor’s judgement or over a hundred warriors assembled for mass battle, they bear with them the might and power of the Legio manifested in a single indomitable warrior.

When the ranks of the Hykanatoi are called together en masse, individual Sodalities will occasionally be outfitted with the Adrasite spear, a rare guardian weapon which substitutes the guardian spear’s lastrum bolter component for an Adrathic firearm. So equipped, these ‘Adrasite Sodalities’ hunt down the most monstrous creatures and constructs among their enemy’s hosts, matching peerless bladework with the annihilating energies of their Adrathic arsenal.

Incorporating a short ranged melta weapon in place of the guardian spear’s typical bolter, Pyrithite spears are wielded by the Legio Custodes in circumstances where vehicle mounted anti-armour weaponry is unavailable. Often fielded in the press of hive cities or the depths of voidcraft, ‘Pyrithite Sodalities’ can blast through fortifications and engage armoured elements against which bolter fire would prove insufficient, whilst maintaining the same fearsome melee prowess for which the Custodians are famed.

Advancing further upon the Cataphractii Terminator armour patterns of the Legiones Astartes, Aquilon plate is designed around the Custodians’ enhanced physiques, fitted with additional integrated power systems and capacitors to ameliorate the original pattern’s failings. Aquilon Terminator Sodalities were employed only as absolute need dictated, including the rare occasions which required the Custodians to operate in ‘Zone Mortalis’ environs, where the Legio was loath to risk unwarranted loss of life and relied on the superior defences of Aquilon Terminator armour to provide a platform of mobile heavy firepower.

Beyond their unique abilities as psychic nulls, the Sisters of Silence are a highly trained and relentless paramilitary force, ably equipped to their task and skilled in overcoming any opposition they may encounter in their sworn duty, be they deluded bystanders, mind-slaved soldiers, hordes of psychically puppeted corpses or even armed cults occupying a world’s ruling caste. Remorseless, dedicated and as formidably skilled as any of the Imperium’s human militaries, the line cadres of the Sisterhood’s fighting force weaponise their null aura as a tool of fear, while their vratine armour turns aside projectiles and blades alike.

Stronger, faster and more resilient than even the transhuman Space Marines, the Custodian Guard are terrifyingly potent fighters, the uniquely alloyed armour and lethal guardian spears they carry serving to render them into both living symbols of the Emperor’s authority and unrivalled warriors. Both in their duty of guardianship and in those shadowed situations requiring the action of the Legio Custodes abroad from the Emperor’s holdings, the Custodian Guard are the first to be deployed in service, and across its history, the majority of the Hykanatoi which made up the Legio Custodes’ ranks fought in this manner.

Sentinel Guard Sodalities are principally deployed to protect emissaries on hazardous ground and hold defensive positions against the most grievous onslaught, outfitted with energy field-reinforced ‘praesidium’ shields – a precursor to the Legiones Astartes’ later storm shields – that are capable of resisting the heaviest weapons fire. In spite of this protective role, the physical prowess of each Custodian and the peerless wargear with which they are outfitted also affords the Sentinel Guard the mobility to perform far more aggressive functions in open battle, where their resilience makes them formidable linebreakers.

Perhaps the oldest formal order of assassins operating with Imperial sanction, the Adamus Clade has its roots in the forbidden blademaster traditions of the Panpacific Terran region. The Clade’s history is much shrouded by the losses of the Dark Age of Technology, though scholars have posited that the Clade’s very name is drawn from an ancient theologic provenance, meaning ‘the first blades’. To practise the ways of Clade Adamus is to study the enemy, to learn their martial language and to reflect it against them, countering their strengths to reveal weaknesses. When these weaknesses are uncovered, the killing blow is struck.

The Callidus Assassin is an architect of anarchy, who uses a compound known as polymorphine in conjunction with subdermal implants to change their appearance, shape and size to confuse and misdirect their enemies. Taking the forms of bodyguards, commanders and close confidants of their foe, a Callidus Assassin gives contradictory orders to cause disarray among enemy lines. Only when confusion has reached its height among an enemy force does a Callidus Assassin strike directly against their target, revealing their true nature and arsenal of archaeotech weapons for the briefest of moments before making their kill.

In addition to being extraordinarily resilient and physically capable, each Assassin of the Culexus Clade is an extremis-grade ‘Pariah’, manifesting as a dark void of nothingness in the Immaterium, a vacuum so powerful that it drains the essence of other beings and, in a sense, consumes their very souls. Using arcane devices developed behind a veil of secrecy by the combined efforts of the Divisio Assassinorum and the Mechanicum’s Biologis Genetors, the abilities of these Pariahs can be manipulated and their potency contained or attenuated at will, rendering them into a formidable weapon.

Eversor Assassins are a weapon released in extremis, beyond the point at which collateral damage or the return of the Assassin themself are considerations. When an Eversor is deemed ready to undertake a mission, they are frozen in stasis at the height of an artificially induced fury before being inserted remotely into a killzone by means of orbital drop. When the Assassin emerges from stasis lock, their undiminished wrath is released to murderous effect, further fuelled by rage-inducing stim injectors. Indeed, when such a consummate killer is unleashed, their target’s death is all but assured, and only ruin is to be found in their wake.

Assassins like no others, the Vanus are superlative warriors but are foremost manipulators, thieves and hoarders of information. The mind of a Vanus Infocyte is trained and further augmented to sift vast quantities of data; hacking into vox, wire and noospheric networks and utilising a number of scrying devices and drones to gather ever-more knowledge, forming an intricate profile of their target’s life. The Clade Vanus Assassin then viciously exploits this information to manipulate others into making an assassination, through bribery, coercion and override control, whilst the Vanus Infocyte themself is safely ensconced at a distance.

Each Assassin of Clade Venenum is a rigorously trained and genetically enhanced shadow warrior, specialised in the study of alchemical and biological sciences. The Clade Venenum’s Assassins are selected from the finest alchemists and tox-artisans of their order, each a master of creating and improvising delicate, exotic poisons, cocktails of toxins, and recombinant virals which act to inflict death without leaving a metabolic trace, and in the case of some of the most deadly, leaving little more of their target than a steaming puddle of disassembled molecular matter.

The Assassins of Clade Vindicare are the subject of myth and legend, for it is said that once one of these unseen killers sights their quarry, death is inescapable, delivered via a single shot of unerring precision. Trained over decades to elevate their craft to a deadly artform, they utilise a combination of physical positioning, topological mapping and intricate study of their mark to deliver a swift kill from afar before vanishing and leaving only death in their wake. Of all the marksmen and sharpshooters that watch over the battlefields of the galaxy, none can claim to be the equal of a Vindicare Assassin.

Though less common within the ranks of the Legio Custodes than their peers, those warriors who comprise the Sagittarum Guard nevertheless fulfil a vital role within the Legio’s order of battle, for their art of war – unlike much of the Custodian Guard – is focussed on the slaying of the foe at range and upon the devastating application of firepower. When the Emperor walked the battlefields of the Great Crusade, their task was to precisely excise the greatest threats among the enemy assault, annihilating it in the actinic fire of weapons whose like had been unseen in such numbers since the dreaded Dark Age of Technology.

There is little short of utter destructive force able to fell a Custodian, and few injuries they cannot fully recover from given time. However, in those isolated cases where a Custodian has sustained irrevocable harm with their mind intact, interment within the cold and unyielding body of a Dreadnought is assured, for no Custodian would countenance an end to their service short of death. The Legio Custodes’ few Dreadnoughts are singularly advanced, with the most common being the Contemptor-Achillus, a general battle unit that weds phenomenal strength and speed with the interred Custodes’ own unmatched martial skill.

A sub-variant of the Contemptor-Achillus, the Contemptor-Galatus is designed to provide a mobile anchor point for the Legio Custodes in the field. The immense power blade with which the Contemptor-Galatus is armed allows it to swiftly and efficiently reap a murderous toll on any massed infantry assault, or indeed hack through armoured vehicles and monstrous xenos with equal ease. It is the defensive power of its hulking shield, however, that is the Contemptor-Galatus’ most singular feature, as with it the already durable Contemptor chassis becomes nigh on impregnable, even against the heaviest firepower.

The Telemon is thought to be the rarest among the Legio Custodes’ arsenal of masterwork Dreadnought patterns, each intended to stand sentinel over its charges no matter the force brought against it. The cost in labour and resources to create even one of these superlative engines of war is immense, and each bears at least one plate worked by the Emperor’s own hand. Despite this, the sheer power of an unleashed Telemon class Dreadnought far outweighs the trials of its construction, for few can stand against its array of esoteric, hand-crafted weapons or the ferocious warrior skill of the Custodian veteran interred within.

One of several unique and highly specialised vehicles utilised by the Silent Sisterhood, the Kharon pattern Acquisitor is a specialised design intended for the execution of the great psyker cull of the burgeoning Imperium. Incorporating numerous systems to approach its targets silently and with utmost stealth, it is also deliberately fashioned to be an object of mystery and terror when its presence is unveiled, cowing potential resistance through fear as much as the threat of force. When that force is required, however, the Kharon is fully capable of releasing a hail of murderous weapons fire to annihilate any opposition.

The Legio Custodes employ a range of heavily protected grav-craft, granting their forces a degree of speed and agility unmatched by the grinding armour of the Imperium’s other hosts, and which allows them to deploy, redeploy and evade without risk of being pinned down by enemy troops or hazardous terrain. The Coronus grav-carrier is perhaps the most widespread example of this, being both the primary transport for the Sodalities of the Legio and the template upon which several later Enyalas-pattern grav-craft would be based, furnishing the Legio Custodes with an arsenal of exclusive and highly advanced armoured vehicles.

Vaunted as a high honour among their Legio, the role of Custodian Venatari is reserved for those who have proven themselves both with success in the Blood Games – an exercise designed to test the Emperor’s personal defences – and through aptitude with the sophisticated flight systems and archaeotech weaponry which are the hallmark of the Venatari. Their domain resides both among the rooftops and spires of the Imperial Palace and in the skies above any Custodian assault, overseeing and assessing potential threats below before swooping into a killing dive – be it from their eyries on Terra or a dropship’s assault bay.