 The warrior astride his mount, his mini-feature in the warfare of humanity for years uncountable. In the shadowed eras of old Earth's ancient past, nobles took to the field atop mighty steeds, charging the foe with banners of flurry and armor shining. As stirring as the image may be, above all, the mounted rider combination was a practical one. Weapons used commonly included the lance, which was unusable but for the speed that the warrior's steed allowed him to achieve, and was lent power simply by virtue of the animal's own weight. In effect, these creatures long dead were humanity's first weapons platforms, and it is perhaps unsurprising that so many traditions evolved from their use, as not only were they effective weapons, they were status symbols, expensive to purchase and keep, and requiring careful reading to ensure their efficacy in the thunder of open battle. It is a notable thing that the mounted warrior has been a facet of conflicts since this primordial time. We may pass from reality to legend, but the cycle appears to begin a new time and time again, and the customs and means of war, albeit on a grander scale, survive to this very era, in the subjects of this account. Know then that this is a record of the high-born nobility of the Imperial military, the inheritors of this primeval human institution. The Questorus Imperialis. The Imperial Knights. The Knights of the Imperium are far, far older than the regime they now pledge their service to, with the origins of their society emerging in the ancient age of technology, during humanity's first steps into the interstellar void. Human colonization of extra-solar worlds was painfully slow in those early centuries, with colonists crammed into the holds of vast, sublite starships, known collectively in memory as the Long March Fleets, owing to the sheer, almost impossible amount of time they took to reach their destinations. Whole generations could pass on board before the ship reached its final port, at which point it would be beached like some massive cetacean and immediately cannibalized for every possible scrap of material and technology the new settlers could use to establish this latest of human colonies. There was no question of return, or rescue should the situation destabilize, or the world prove impossible to settle. And, often, the world did prove that harsh. A myriad of threats could assail the colonists, native Xenos species who saw the humans as hostile invaders, or simply highly aggressive Xenoform fauna. Other worlds had environments utterly uninhabitable to baseline humans, necessitating colonies remained entirely within pressurized and sealed atmospheric domes. But, humanity being humanity, it learned from its mistakes. And what data could be salvaged from early, lost colonies was provided to the greatest invention in our species' history, the standard template construct. Hybrid database and fabrication facilities, whose mysteries must remain for a later record, these devices, supplied to later colony efforts, now came with the solution fledgling settlements needed. Massive suits of powered exo armor, sheeted in class steel and capable of mounting a host of the heaviest military-grade weaponry that was ground-portable. As with all products of the STC system, they were the perfect answer to the colonists' problems. Few Xenos, sentient or otherwise, could withstand their punishing firepower. And there were little to no environments these suits would not permit their pilots travel through. Mundane colonial tasks could also be accomplished, such as heavy lifting, logging or mining operations, as the suits were designed to be as versatile as possible. What this ultimately gave birth to on many worlds was what can be ultimately seen as a reassertion of a form of human tradition not seen since ancient times. The colonists, reflecting upon the suits' presence amidst them in light of their collective knowledge of humanity's past, dubbed the suits and their pilots knights. And the knights, in turn, began to emulate these warriors of old, both through the status granted upon them by those that they were protecting and through a bizarre quirk of the neural bonding procedure the suits entailed, which will be discussed in a later record. Adamantium came to replace the plasticile of these suits as a rapidly emerging social hierarchy began to give knights the ability to institute formal ranks and roles, delegating routine tasks to those lower than them and outfitting those more senior exclusively for war and combat. These social orders, perhaps inevitably, would cohere on many worlds, each fascinatingly independent of each other, into knightly houses, once again emulating the aristocratic warrior castes of old earth. Fascination with ancient concepts of chivalry were rediscovered, as the knights saw it as their duty to be the shields that protected their colonial charges and the spear that would annihilate any foe that sought to threaten them. The colonists, while in some cases less than happy with the increasingly feudal society that was emerging upon their worlds, nonetheless saw the vital military and economic role these knights now had within their societies. At some point in the 22nd millennium, human society began to fracture, splitting apart at the seams under the emergence of psychers from the human genome and succumbing to the conflagration of the devastating conflicts wrought by the abominable intelligences of the men of iron and other rogue thinking machines. Worlds claimed by knighthouses were not immune to this, with thousands falling prey to AI swarms, resurgent Xenos species, or warped predator manifestations brought about by unrestrained psychic activity. However, many more survived, perhaps ironically, due to the sheer conservatism of their societies. Many were at this point millennia old, mining and agricultural worlds which had developed feudal systems of government in response to the traditions and power the knightly houses kept and held. Their resistance to change and obsession with the preservation of tradition led them to shun the advanced thinking machines that would have made their lives easier for both themselves and their entire subservient populations. And many actively persecuted psychers as an altogether dangerous form of human life. As hideous conflicts led to the downfall of the human stellar empire and as warped storms cut off surviving worlds from each other by the 25th millennium, the knights of these worlds cemented their control, progressing further into their feudal ideal as the galaxy went dark around them. As political systems degenerated, so too did the technological capability of many of these knight worlds. As mentioned, those that survived were inherently conservative, favouring millennia old technology over newer devices. And as the long dark of old knight crept onwards, STC systems failed, were corrupted, or simply ran out of resources. Many a colony became a kid into a pre-industrial society with knight rulers dwelling in towering stone fortresses. Their technologically adept class of artificers, known as sacristans, carefully tending to ancient knight armor exosuits with knowledge generations old and barely preserved. These houses were not always one genetic line. Sometimes they were a collection of several families ruled by a dominant dynasty or a council of the oldest amongst them. In some cases, more than one house was present upon a planet, while on others, knight pilots owing no allegiance to no regime sold their services to the highest bidder. On every world, however, one thing was common. Attributable to a psychological side effect of the bonding of the knight armor, the nobles became increasingly insular, inward looking, and hidebound by their traditions as the millennia advanced inexorably. Courtly life became a stultifying morass of ancient customs and pointless politicking, which, cruxotically, though the nobility was obsessed with, they longed to break free from, which knight combat was the most effective way of doing so. Though full-on warfare amongst members of a house or between separate houses was uncommon, it was not unknown. Far more common, however, were internecine feuds fought upon the field of honour between knight pilots or tournaments between them to provide some respite from court life, the chance to hone one's skills or the opportunity to best one's rival and demonstrate one's prowess before the gathered masses. The first knights to be encountered by the Imperium were those of House Taranis upon Terra's sister planet Mars. A pilot, Teimon Verticorda, was in fact the first representative of the Martian Mechanicum to encounter the Emperor himself upon the slopes of Mount Olympus, as he, come onto the cult Mechanicus in his guide as the Omniceia of the Machine God, prepared to treat with the Red Planet and forge the Treaty of Olympus. House Taranis had avoided the regression to feudalism that many other houses had due to their presence in the home system and their close association with the machine cult and it was this relationship that the Mechanicum sought to maintain as the first extra solar fleets left to embark upon the Great Crusade. The very first knight world to be rediscovered was the planet Crysis by the flotilla of rogue trader Militant Jeffers. A rogue trader, Paragon of a long lineage in his own right, was indeed the best case scenario for an initial Imperial diplomatic mission as the courtly subtleties of the knight world were second nature to one such as he. Besieging the War Council, Jeffers was quick to point out the similarities between these knights and those subservient to the Martian Mechanicum and noted that if this world had survived the millennia of the Age of Strife surely others must have too. Mars, once learning of this discovery, was quick to act outlining that the similar provisions in the Treaty of Olympus towards how the Imperium dealt with the god machines of the Calesio-Titanica gave the Mechanicum primacy when it came to dealing with newfound knight worlds. Such a call faced objections from the Imperial officio-militaris who saw the sheer military power inherent in a collection of such ancient but lethal technology and the rogue traders militant who saw similarities between their dynasties and the knight houses as well as the roles the knights had played in early exploratory and colonial efforts as being more suited towards foraging a permanent relationship between the two. The politicking went on for decades as more and more knight worlds were rediscovered with no solid eventual outcome. It was ultimately the policy of the Imperium that rather than effectively devolve into a political war with their Mechanicum allies over the issue the burden of choice should be placed upon the knight worlds themselves as to whether to pledge allegiance to Terra or to Mars. Both sides were free to entreaty the nobles of knight households however they wished but this ultimately expedient solution ensured that the power of the knights could still aid the great crusade and the great human endeavor while avoiding a more heated conflict between factions Terran and Marsha. Envoy's on behalf of Mars were sent to hundreds of knight worlds in the new Imperium promising the resources and knowledge these worlds desperately needed to repair their now millennia old suits in exchange for exclusive Mechanicum rights of trade with a knight world resources or Archaeotech. This relationship was essentially symbolic. Knight houses reap the rewards of fealty to Mars and all the access to newer more advanced suits and weaponry that promised while the Mechanicum gained a valuable military asset to be called upon when needed and a fine supplement to their own tag matter besides. As such many but not all knight houses came to o fealty to a local forge world some of which were established within the systems the houses claimed as home through the dark of old knight. It must be remembered that many knight worlds had begun life as mining colonies or vassals of the original Martian regimes and the Mechanicum greedily laid into their resource rich crusts In other cases, agrarian societies became bread baskets for the planet-wide manufactories of the local forge with yearly shipments of new knight suits and weapons arriving as compensation. Where neither were adequate the Mechanicum sated itself by reaping tides of the planet's peasant population to feed its ever-present need for manpower. Whatever the cost the knight house repaid them readily as their personal coffers and armories were swelled with the rewards of a grateful Mechanicum and their insatiable appetite for combat to break from the routine of noble life was fed by the conflicts the various Mechanicum tag matter and imperial expeditionary fleets engaged upon during the span of the great crusade. The complex web of obligation, fealty and pledges of allegiance these represented became known as the Sidon Protocols the Mechanicum-wide system of legal precedent designed to provide a roadmap for the induction of a household into the neo-feudal regime of the Empire of Red Mars. There were no such similarly named system for the Imperium whose contacts were more ad hoc. Imperial-aligned knight households were often swayed to the side of the Emperor of Man through rogue trader-led negotiations or encounters with the Legion as a startys or in some cases liberation and relief of their homeworlds by expeditionary fleets. The inherent belief in honor and debts possessed by knight households in many cases led to them pledging eternal bonds of loyalty to their liberators in the case of the latter while others retained enough political clout through sheer force of arms to extract supplies and resources in the case of the former. Through whatever means the houses of the knights became imperial pledged in many ways a hundredfold to the service of the great crusade to fight for humanity once more. Several hundred independent knight worlds had been encountered and brought within the greater Imperium and Mechanicum fold. Throughout the two centuries of the crusade the houses of the questorus had intermingled with the wider Imperium and Mechanicum in an intricate web of alliances, allegiances, deaths and brotherhoods that, once the heresy broke out ensured that no house was spared from the ensuing conflict. Just as with all others they were riven in two picking sides and drawing up battle lines in accordances with long histories or petty squabbles. It is unknown just how many houses fought in the conflict or indeed were lost as records from the time are sparse and sparse are still in light of the puritanical purge undertaken by surviving houses during the great scouring. As ever your humble servant will endeavour to uncover whatever he can regarding such matters. Request ident codes for any sub-records appended to this one at a future date. Until such a time Ave Imperator Gloria in Excelsis Terra. Thank you for watching.