 Loyalty, as we are so often taught, is its own reward, yet so often in this wretched galaxy of ours does the cost of loyalty exceed even our most dreadful estimations. Honor is a bitter thing indeed, reaping from its pledges tolls unimaginable, its benefits perhaps debatable, yet important to those that keep it. Too often is it that the price of loyalty is everything, casting those who pay it into hallowed memory and little else. We speak of these honored dead with reverence, their loyalty, their honor perhaps erasing the black deeds that placed them in their positions in the first place, for within Memoriam is resolution birthed for our own convictions. The subjects of this record have passed into history, marked in ways scant and few survived by their comportment, their wars, and their deeds under the most extreme of privations. Know then that this is a record of the Sun and Scarlet, the bloody dukes of the Eastern Fringe, the lances of the Thirteenth Legion, the night household of Vornhair. To the Lundborg system in ancient days were born the colony arcs of old earth. The planets, part of the scattered stellar drift in the sparsely filled depths between galactic spiral arms, it is not precisely a common sort of destination, even in the days of ancient human pioneers seeking what worlds they could. The Staratours of the Crusade Era speculated upon this, stating that it is highly lightly that these ships were born to their new home upon capricious warp tides, arriving at their destination through accident and happenstance, as much as actual resolve. Regardless, the colonists set about their work, building a new home for themselves in the darkness of the eastern galactic reaches. In time, a total of no less than seven night households arose from the planets in the Lundborg system, a number almost unrivaled for one group of worlds in what histories remain of the dark age of technology and the nightly households themselves. And for a time it was good. The system prospered, the night houses ensured the prosperity of their worlds, riding to their defence in times of crisis, using their night suits admirably, honourably, and conducting their politicking with dignity in times of peace. Sadly, and perhaps predictably to students of that dreadful era, the age of strife befell Lundborg as much as it did the rest of the human galaxy. Trade with other worlds far afield collapsed, starving the worlds of Lundborg of priceless resources. After decades of privation, the night households turned upon each other, warring across the void in year after year of internecine warfare, bleeding each other even as the predations of the outer darkness, Xenos raids, continued unabated. Once paragons of nobility, the fall of these households was as rapid as it was terrible. Within a couple of generations, the concept of peace seemed impossible. No diplomacy was ever brokered, not to put a halt to the constant bloodshed, nor to unite against Xenos foes. To do so would have been regarded as unacceptable weakness. Negotiation was the pathetic resource of the idiot traitor. There was, and seemingly would ever be, endless war. The conflicts between the households persisted for millennia, most all records of which have since sadly perished. Of the scions that fell in these wars, of the suits that were destroyed, we have almost nothing in the way of chronicles. This is less to do with the issues of record-keeping in ages that have passed since the time and more so related to the manner in which the wars were concluded. Eventually, one house arose from the seven, claiming its victory over its fellows after thousands of years of war. And with an iron fist, this house annihilated the histories, titles, standards, and chronicles of the defeated. Their lands were claimed, their keeps were occupied, their night suits taken as prizes. And to great pires were cast their colours, and in every way that mattered, their memories. We do not even know the names of these houses. Six entire questorous households consigned to destruction. This should give Acolytes some idea of the totality of this purge. After millennia of warfare, the victors intended for their enemies to be committed to the ashes of history. What scions of the defeated houses survived, a choice was presented. Assimilation into the victorious household through carefully assigned and powerless marriages, merging the bloodlines in ways that simply would never challenge the succession laws, or be committed to exile, bereft of their night suits. One name would now persist in the Lundborg system forevermore. The name Victorious, Vornherr. Histories were now rewritten within the space of a generation. The barons of Vornherr that had led their house to victory ensured that the chronicles written thereafter, the great purge was presented as a terrible necessity, a last resort to ensure the fallen villains could no longer meet out their great evils upon the populace of Lundborg. Overcame as they were by some vague unspecified corruption. Such is the heroic light victors are ever able to cast themselves in once they control the quills of history. Their ranks now replenished with prized suits and coerced scions. Vornherr's ascendancy was immediate. They assumed the role of feudal aristocrats over the entire Lundborg system within a year, putting down peasant rebellions and rooting out vestigial loyalties to defeated enemies with utter ruthlessness. The latter took more time, of course, but within two generations of careful marriages the culture and blood of Vornherr had supplanted the lost households entirely. Naturally, the result was a genealogical tree that was a sprawling morass of relationships, marriages and dynastic connections that, by its very structure, spawned rivalries and feuds. Branches of the house competed with each other for titles, baronies, castellums, and night suits, seeking to secure their own power over those who had committed great crimes against their ancestors or those who were deemed to be in possession of weak blood. Furthermore did Vornherr take upon themselves the mantles of the privileged class, growing vastly wealthy with their total control of the political and military cultures of an entire star system. The highest amongst the house, however, were always diligent in ensuring that the spats between their lesser scions never arose to anything approximating all-out conflict. However editing their forefathers had done to the past, as it had actually occurred, it was an embedded part of Vornherr tradition that they owed their ascendancy to a victory in an impossibly long struggle, and that such a war could never again be let threaten those spoils-so-hard-one. Court intrigue was thus bent from the top down to ensuring that none of the branches developed into distinct enough polities, or amassed enough political or material power to attempt anything approximating secession. Tournaments were quite frequent, a means by which rivalries could be handled in as controlled a means as possible. The sparring of night suits upon the tournament field is only a tad less vicious and lethal than upon a real battlefield, but the trappings of honour and house fidelity tempered the bloodlust of spurned contestants just enough for them to be happy to win in those arenas. Never mind the work of poor sacristans that they had in repairing the damage done to sacred night armours in the process. There was, perhaps thankfully, the omnipresent scourge of alien pirates, isolated as it was, the Lundborg system was ever beset by such raiders, and the household's frequent wars against them served to bond its scions upon proper battlefields against proper foes, dispelling in the heat of life or death combat the feuds that percolated during peacetime. After centuries, ships broke reality at the system's Mandeville point. They were of an altogether different mark than the ancient starships that plied the various routes between the planets of the system. But they were also broadcasting hails of friendship and peace. Scout frigates flying the banners of the celebrated dashing and altogether idiosyncratic rogue trader Conwallis had found Lundborg, operating as an exploratory vanguard for the lead pathfinder elements of the twelfth expeditionary fleece of the great crusade. Had worn hair ever been set upon mounting a naval interdiction of these frigates, they were unable to. What ships they possessed were few and delegated entirely to the transport of persons, cargo, and night suits between this planet's systems. Rogue trader Conwallis was, at least, a man of deep tact when it came to the delicate first contact situations his role had so often cast him in. Having encountered many night households upon his travels across the galaxy, the rogue trader knew that deference was the best of primary plays, ensuring the nobility of this system were given all possible dues to their honor and, more importantly, their pride. Every flattery possible, delivered with the sincerity of one who fully knew the value of an entire system of night suits, was broadcast to the lords of worn hair, and Conwallis's sheer amiability was such that by the time the rogue trader personally hoeve into orbit over Lundborg 9, the gates of the household's ancient seat were open to his delegation. Possibility of hostilities long diffused. Conwallis met with Duke Corvin Bevenwolf, the lord of the house and grandmaster of her knights, to enter into immediate talks. The aristocratic mien of the rogue trader served the Imperium well that day. Drawn from ancient Terran nobility stock, Conwallis was quick to spot the potential pitfalls and dangers inherent in the patrician ceremonies and interactions he was now forced to be a part of. The Terran template of ancient class structures had clearly been exported to her colonies and had proven surprisingly resilient. Having not encountered greater humanity for millennia, worn hair were cast at ease by the clear similarities of dissent between them and the strangers. Within a month, the talks had concluded with total success. Under the approving and encouraging gaze of Conwallis, Duke Bevenwolf announced that the house would ascend to the Imperium. The Mechanicum Tagmata elements attached to the 12th Expeditionary Fleet lodged formal protests, common whenever Imperial forces encountered night worlds before the scions of the machine gods did, but their entreaties had fallen upon stonewalling. Worn hair's sheer size, history and infrastructure had ensured their independence for millennia without any forgeworld to aid them, and in this new era they needed fealty to none. With the 12th Expeditionary Fleet requiring onward passage to the southeastern Galactic Fringe, Worn hair seconded to the Armada a significant quantity of its strength, fortifying its home system with a cadre of veterans to await oncoming civilian elements of the Imperium. The onward advance of the 12th Expeditionary Fleet would eventually become known in Imperial annals as the long march to Ultramar. Night Scions of Worn hair comported themselves admirably during its course. Many of the Xenos strains encountered therein were utterly unknown to the Imperium, but ancient enemies of the Knights, which allowed Worn hair to provide incredibly valuable combat data to their new Imperial allies, as well as granting the household the distinct pleasure of ensuring the extermination of their longtime foes. Elsewhere, Orc holdings were frequently barriers to the Crusade's path, well known to the Imperium as they were, and against these Xenos did the Knights of Worn hair become increasingly adept. The clanking smog belching constructs of the Orcs no match for the swift and ever more experienced night suits. Following the assumption of command of the Eastern fringes by the Primarch, Rebut Gulliman, House Worn hair participated in the scouring of Jardin Gry, known portentiously as a grave world under the light of a black sun. Under twelve whole chapters of the newly renamed Thirteenth Legion Ultramarines, ten cohorts of solar auxilia, and Titan Manipals of the Legio Metallica, the Great Crusade brought the wrath of humanity against these worlds hideous necrogenic Xenos, revenant organisms whose sheer foulness saw their nature redacted and expunged from Imperial records. The slaughter however was catastrophic, though eventually victorious, the single planet campaign cost the Imperium a dozen Titans and hundreds of night suits, as well as almost three thousand Astartes and some tens of thousands of auxilia. Despite the losses, House Worn hair had emerged triumphant, hailed alongside the surviving campaign veterans at a triumphal parade. During the opportunity provided, the New Duke knelt his battered and war-scarred Sarastus Night Lancer before Gulliman, echoed by the entirety of his house, and pledged to the service of Ultramar and its five hundred worlds. The Thirteenth Primarch's conduct during the war had earned the respect of the Bellicose Worn hair, and the Primarch's respect for both their traditions and role upon the battlefield cast him as the patron of the house who wished to pledge their banners to him. Worn hair thereafter served the Thirteenth Legion across the breath of the Great Crusade, although were in occasion seconded to other legions and primarchs, most notably Magnus the Red of the Fifteenth Legion Thousand Sons during the war for Sophia's Moors. A staple of Ultramarine campaigning, the deep ties the house had forged with the Thirteenth Legion meant that, when the call came, Worn hair answered their oats with alacrity, sending hundreds of knights and detached sacristans to the Great Muster at Calth. At the time of the Calth Conjunction, house Worn hair was rated amongst the stratigo echelons of the Divisio Militaris as Primus Bellicosa, a classification reserved for a select number of nightly households pledged to both Imperium and Mechanicum that possessed the greatest number of suits and thus the greatest material strength. There was, initially, difficulty in establishing this rating. House Worn hair did not permit Militaris assayers accessing their crypts and only rendered unto the Imperium records and chronicles that met the barest minimum of commitment established under their Treaty of Loyalty. Undeterred, Militaris assayers attached themselves to the Twelfth Expeditionary Fleet to monitor the house in transit. As Worn hair possessed not even a paltry conveyor fleet of their own and were utterly dependent on the Navus Imperialis. Careful assessment determined that the initial force pledged to the Crusade numbered some 500 suits and interviews conducted with scions taken to cups to cope with the boredom of warp travel revealed that the house kept at least several hundred more in stasis vaults across their home system. The sheer number of suits, even those in reserve, allowed the household to avoid the necessity of pledging to a forge world, securing them against the rapacious Mechanicum's advances. The sheer range of armor marks the house could field was as impressive as its numbers although they were always deployed in almost entirely homogenous lance formations. There was never to be a mixing of suits rather the household collected scions into what could broadly be considered squads of identical armor marks to fulfill specific battlefield roles. Thus, Questora's patterns, predominantly of the errant and paladin varieties, fulfilled the role of Knights of the Line, the bulwark of Worn hair formations. While veteran scions took to the field in Sarastus patterned suits of Knight Asheron, Knight Castigator, and Knight Lancer varieties. Depending upon the enemy that the household was engaging. The doom of the house was to perform them on Calth. Another facet of that calamity that claimed so much. Assigned as Knight Support for the legio presagius of the Collegia Titanica, House Worn hair mustered alongside the god engines in the city of Ithrica. A scarce two dozen knights had made it to orbit before the annihilation event precipitated by the fleet tender Campanile. And before the scrap code infection of the traitor attack had crippled the Mechanicum's new spheric net. Invoking a localized communication protocol in order to maintain household coherence, the Sacristons of Worn hair sought to establish some means of operational efficacy amongst their scion masters. But all would be paltry efforts against the disaster that was unfolding. 17th legionship Destiny's Hand unleashed an atomic bombardment upon the cities of Calth's southern islands. With Ithrica and the muster conducted there, another target amidst a literally apocalyptic nuclear saturation barrage. So intense and so total was the word-bearer attack that every single night suit upon the muster field was simply incinerated. Even those that managed to activate defenses in time. A knight's ion shield was no match for the bombardment that was committed against them. Despite the total obliteration of their targets, the 17th continued their attack, following their atomics with directed land strikes and mason converter broadsides. It was a display of deliberately want and overkill. No living thing had survived the first bombardment, save for the Titans. And those that did managed to weather the second, third and fourth barrages. Across the whole of the southern reaches, flash-boiled oceans created massive atmospheric disturbances, and the very tectonic foundations of the Isla chain were shattered to near-rubble. The sole knight conveyor that had lifted to orbit immediately prior to the attack had, however, miraculously survived. Its pilots, having detected the incoming bombardment, with enough time to plot an emergency landing, moments before nuclear flash had blinded all of them. The electromagnetic pulses unleashed by atomic attacks were so overwhelming that much of the craft systems simply burnt out as it struggled valiantly to land, only to find amidst the boiling ocean and dust storms that all that remained of the southern island chains was a sundered boiling mess of rubble and seawater. Despite the best efforts of the surviving flight crew, the conveyor plunged into the ocean, settling upon the seabed amidst the devastation of a drowning island chain. What crew had survived the radiation deluge, swiftly drowned in ocean water that scalded their lungs even as it filled them. But surviving, ensconced within their night suits, were worn here, some two dozen knights, including the Duke. As the starship had been designed for atmospheric and orbital flight, its hull was rapidly collapsing under ocean pressure. Surviving video logs depict the scene within the hold from the pilot's own helm cams, showing water rapidly flooding the space as the Duke tore at the hulls with his knight's reaper chain fist. Bleeding his scions through the breach he forced, the Duke and his surviving kin escaped the conveyor and began to march across the seabed itself. Corrupted helm footage, all specks creed and vox logs, speak to a subsequent march to relative safety that was defined by confusion and fear, for the fate of their kinsmen and the planet in general, but also were resolved to survive. The environment was simply hellish. Pockets of water would flash boil, scouring the suits and raising their internal temperatures to nearly lethal levels. Visibility was near zero, the arc lights of the knights barely penetrating the chaotic murk of the seabed. Yet persists they did, rising through the catastrophe to breach the surface on the coastline of devastated Ithrica. Sensorium suites screaming radiation warnings, even as picked feeds captured banks of boiling fog and the twisted remnants of machinery still glowing hot from the passage of the word-bearer bombardment. Only a mere dozen night suits had survived the oceanic march. Half their number had been claimed by the boiling seas or had fallen into chasms torn in the very rock itself. The final video logs of the timestamp depict a dark horde marching towards the surviving scions of worn hair. Eyes at low with dark energies and then nothing. That we even know of the last moments of worn hair upon Calth is thanks to the recovery efforts committed by members of the 13th Legion in the years following the catastrophe. An ultramarine's recon squad operating out of the newly established nearby arcology discovered what can only be described as a grim tableau vivante. What was clearly the aftermath of a great battle, a dozen knights of worn hair gathered around the juke's personal suit Sir Crease of Sorrow stood in formation, arrayed outwards in the manner of a doomed final stand. All were scourged black, warped by arcane fire, their livery barely visible under the scorched armorials. Nothing remained of those that they had fought, safe for ashen smears upon surrounding rubble. All were dead, utterly dead. The ultramarines, as a mark of respect for the fallen, recovered the data one has thus far presented and returned it to the house's keep upon Lundborg. While the march across the seabed was presented to the Imperium as a matter of historical record, the final fate of the duke and the last of his kin was purged. Whether through worry for corruption or to spare the surviving scions of the house, the truth of what had finally ended their sire. Indeed, all that remained of the once mighty house were now several older barons on the verge of dotage and younger squires barely upon the cusp of elevation to scions. Debate amongst the surviving grandees as to the course of action the house must now take following the calamity was intense. But ultimately the resolution was passed that all surviving suits would be painted black as a mark of grief, but that the stasis crypts would now be deactivated. No matter the cost, Vorneher would have its revenge upon the forces of the traitors. It committed itself and its reserves of suits to the remainder of the war as it unfolded. The black lancers of house Vorneher, as they now were to become informally known, were a terrible scourge against the war masters hordes in the years to come. But as far as one is able to discern, the last of their scions fell during the titan death at Beta Garmin, scant year before the siege of Terra itself. Vorneher committed themselves to a revenge that they would not live to see, but that memory alone would honor. So shared they the fate of so many that pass into the annals of history in the age of darkness. Ave Imperator, Gloria and Excelsis Terra. This video and this channel were made possible thanks to the very kind donations and support from my Patreon subscribers. If you'd like to help support the channel, head on over to patreon.com. If you'd like to receive more updates about the channel and any future videos, you can contact me or follow me on Twitter at OculusImperia. Otherwise, please like, subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching.