THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL GAMES WORKSHOP PRODUCT YOU NEED A COPY OF THE KILL TEAM CORE MANUAL AND TO USE THIS SUPPLEMENT Dedication This book is dedicated to everyone who has spent the past year hunkered down but still supported others through their passion for gaming. From the members of social media groups (looking at you Adeptus Titanicus 2018) to the community based gaming groups, regardless of size, that managed to meet virtually or in person. I salute you, Lords and Ladies all! DB. Sources This is not an original work. Almost all of the words and imagery used were taken from the following sources: • Forge World (www.forgeworld.co.uk): Horus Heresy Black Books 1-8 were the primary source for background text, images, and troop information, Horus Heresy Red Books detailed the options for models and the basis for weapon profiles. • Black Library (www.blacklibrary.com): Horus Heresy Novels provided the context for the background and use of novel cover images, Viva Neil! • Games Workshop (www.games-workshop.com): Kill Team for the layout, typographic elements Adeptus Titanicus for context and Houshold rules and images o References: I make frequent references to existing rules found in the Kill Team Core manual These are noted as the page number preceded by the KT-CM • Lexicanum Wiki (wh40k.lexicanum.com): An excellent resource for the minutia of the setting • Warhammer 40K Wiki (warhammer40k.wikia.com): An outstanding Horus Hersey background resource, this PDF has pieces copied wholesale from it. IF YOU ENJOY THIS EXPANSION PLEASE BUY THE BOOKS/ MODELS THAT INSPIRED IT OR SUPPORT THE WEBSITES AND COMMUNITIES THAT KEEP IT GOING. Copyright and Legal Information GW, Games Workshop, Citadel, Black Library, Forge World, Warhammer, the Twin-tailed Comet logo, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, Space Marine, 40K, 40,000, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Battletome, Stormcast Eternals, White Dwarf, Blood Bowl, Necromunda, Space Hulk, Battlefleet Gothic, Dreadfleet, Mordheim, Inquisitor, Warmaster, Epic, Gorkamorka, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world. All Rights Reserved. THE ORDO UESTORIS PLAYTEST VERSION 0.1a ORDO QUESTORIS An Imperial Knight, or Questor Imperialis in High Gothic, is a type of robotic combat walker in the service of the Imperium and sometimes the Mechanicum. Each Knight is piloted by a single human warrior drawn from an ancient feudal aristocratic culture that stretches across the galaxy. Knights Arise The pilots of these bipedal walking machines were protected by a hard shell of plasteel and armed with Long before the rise of the Emperor and the birth of an array of military-grade heavy weapons. The suits the Imperium, during the Age of Technology proved invaluable: few, if any, natural predators or humanity reached out to the stars, eager to occupy hostile alien warriors could stand against them, and new worlds and expand its burgeoning interstellar they could travel through even the most dangerous empire. Vast colonisation starships carried eager environment with ease. The towering armoured human settlers, along with all the resources they figures soon became a common sight on the might require, and landed on far-flung, often colonies, where they were known as Knights by the isolated worlds. settlers, after the legendary armoured warriors and protectors of ancient Terran history. The first Knight Worlds were founded at the very start of the Age of Technology, when scouts from Terra travelled far through the galaxy seeking planets to use as agricultural worlds to provide food for Mankind's burgeoning population, or as mining colonies to provide the materials needed to fuel their expansion across the stars. Indeed, the Knight Worlds had already been established for thousands of standard years when the Imperium was first founded in the 30th Millennium. Compelled by the mind-altering effects instilled by the Thrones Mechanicum (a control platform that When those first human scout ships discovered a allows a pilot to interface with their Knight suitable planet for colonisation, gigantic spacecraft battlesuit), over the course of a few generations, were dispatched to settle them. These ships were these elite warriors gradually developed a society part of Terra's Long March fleets, named after the that evolved into the knightly houses. The plasteel duration of their voyage and their destination plates of the original exo-skeleton suits were slowly among the stars. The name was apt; each of the Long replaced with more ornate armour made from March colony starships carried thousands of settlers Adamantium, providing better protection as well as on a solar decade-long journey to a far distant a panoply befitting the wearer's prestige and rank in planet. Upon arrival, the colony ship would land and his society. be immediately cannibalised by the colonists to provide the raw materials needed for their first The more mundane duties that the Knights had settlements; there was no hope of return to once taken part in on the colony worlds -- logging Mankind's distant homeworld. with their mighty Reaper Chainswords, for example, or blasting apart rock ore with their rapid- The struggle for survival on many of these worlds fire Battle Cannons -- were delegated to those of was grim. On some, the settlers found themselves the prey of vicious predators or were attacked by lesser ranks, allowing the Knights to focus on the native alien races, which saw the human settlers as arts of war and governorship. invaders. On other worlds, extreme weather conditions or an unbreathable atmosphere made Dwelling in tall strongholds, the Nobles strove to travel outside of domed habitat-zones next to protect the lives of their subjects (as they now saw impossible. However, problems like these had been the settlers they protected) and to bring order to the anticipated, and in order to deal with them, the primeval maelstrom on the planets that were their settlers were supplied with Standard Template homes. The knightly houses proved to be highly Construct (STC) databases and fabrication facilities successful at both of these things, and soon became that allowed them to build powered suits of a vital part of human society during the Age of exoarmour. Technology. 24th December 2020 FANMADE SUPPLEMENT Page 1 PLAYTEST VERSION 0.1a The Age of Strife Tragically, the Age of Technology was doomed to fall and devolve into a shadow of its former glory. Around the time of the 22nd Millennium AD, Mankind's vast galactic empire began to suffer a pandemic of terrible wars and massive invasions, caused, at least in part, by the emergence of the first human psykers and the widespread use of quasi- sentient machines remembered in human myth as the Iron Men. By the 25th Millennium, ferocious Warp Storms had largely isolated the widespread human colonies, and the era that came to be known as the Age of Strife had well and truly begun. During this lamentable era of human history, also sometimes referred to as Old Night, interstellar travel to many of these human- settled worlds was made impossible due to the massive Warp Storms caused by the birth of the foul Chaos God Slaanesh during the Fall of the Eldar. Although vast swathes of the Knight Worlds fell to this storm of death and destruction, some survived, aided considerably by the innate conservatism and resistance to change of the knightly houses. Where other planets welcomed psykers into their midst, and revelled in the luxurious lifestyle that advanced thinking machines could provide, the knightly houses had largely shunned both, preferring to stick with the traditions and technology of the past. Thus, when the violence that presaged the Age of Strife struck, hundreds of Knight Worlds were sidelined or ignored, and took little direct part in the terrible conflicts that tore the rest of humanity apart. Cut off and alone, the knightly houses were quickly forgotten by the other colonies. Left to their own devices, the warrior aristocracy cemented their control and -- encouraged by the psychological manipulations caused by the process of imprinting their suits of Knight armour -- almost all of them enforced neo-feudal systems on their homeworlds. During the latter years of this tumultuous age, the Mechanicum of Mars began sending out many starships that made use of sublight drives to explore the galaxy in search of Standard Template Construct (STC) technologies on lost human colony worlds. In the course of their travels, these slow-moving exploratory expeditions discovered large clusters of human-settled star systems that had once belonged to the ancient interstellar human confederacy that had existed during the Dark Age of Technology. But these worlds had regressed during the Age of Strife to become Feudal Worlds possessed of a pre-industrial, feudal culture dominated by castes of warrior aristocrats. 24th December 2020 FANMADE SUPPLEMENT Page 2 PLAYTEST VERSION 0.1a The societies that evolved were built upon concepts of fealty, honour and duty; three things that all Knights hold in the greatest regard. All of the Nobles on a Knight World owed their allegiance to a knightly house, whose ruler could call upon them at any time to carry out his commands. Each house could also field large numbers of men-at-arms, either mounted or on foot. The houses also had groups of artificers and technicians who maintained the suits of Knight armour as best they could, and over time, became an integral part of society on all of the Knight Worlds. Sometimes the ruler of a knightly house would come from the same family for generation after generation, but more often than not, the death of an incumbent ruler would lead to a period of political manoeuvring or even outright warfare rediscovered a Knight World, Chrysis, for the first until a new monarch was selected.