Better Know a Chapter - Knights of Glory: Rites and Rituals

KNIGHTHOOD

The Knights of Glory place a high value on nobility and station. As such, the transition from an unranked Squire to a Knight is a significant ordeal for any member of the Chapter. Occasionally a promotion will take place on the battlefield, but most knightings are held at the chapter's castle fortress on Avalon. For three days, the people of Avalon feast and celebrate, holding contests of skill and arms (though of course the Space Marines participate in separate events). The peasantry are granted a respite from their drudgery and merchants and minstrels awe the common folk on the land beneath the Rook while the nobility and gentry are invited to the floating fortress to witness the promotion.

The Knights of Glory are almost universally drawn from the noble families of Avalon, and so a Knighting ceremony is a chance for families to reunite with their superhuman relatives. For a scion of a noble family to be inducted into the chapter is a grand honour indeed. At Knightings, the various dukes and earls will strive to bring their children to the notice of the chapter, sometimes through feats of arms during the festivities and sometimes through generous gifts to the chapter's coffers or armoury. Once a child has been inducted into the chapter, his deeds influence the prestige of his family. Thousands of years ago, during the Age of Apostasy, a full Knightly Order opposed the will of the Council of Virtues and supported the tyrant Goge Vandire. They were slain to the last man and stricken from the Chapter records, and their families shamed and stripped of titles and lands. Just as a mighty hero or virtuous leader can bring great fame and wealth to his family, so can a traitor or a coward ruin the fortunes of his entire line.

For the Squire ascending to Knighthood, the ordeal is far more solemn. While the Chapter at large feasts, drinks, and tells tales, the Sqire spends three days in fasting, meditation, and prayer. At the end of that time, he is brought out by the Master of Deeds and presented to the Masters of the Knightly Orders. There, the Squire requests admittance into an order, in which case he must engage in a combat trial with the Order's champion. The Squire is not expected to win this fight; indeed, to date only seven Squires have ever won their admittance trial, and each of them rose to become a Grand Master of Virtues. No longer a Squire, the newly-minted Knight joins his Order and takes on all the responsibilities of a Knight. He takes a vow to defend the weak, defend Mankind, to behave with honour, to never abandon his duty, and slay the foes of the Emperor. Once the Master of the Order is satisfied, he presents the squire with his sword, steed, and a coat of arms. These things the Knight owns until the day he dies in battle.

Better Know a Chapter - Steel Revenants: Lord Revenant Vercingetorix (Part 1)

     Lord Revenant Vercingetorix is one of the oldest living members of the Imperium. He was a Captain in the Iron Hands in the days of the Emperor's great crusade. Months before the Istvaan massacre, Vercingetorix was swallowed whole by a giant Squiggoth. Assuming he was doomed to death, Vercingetorix began igniting and placing all his explosives, filling the creature's mouth and gullet with primed meltabombs. He killed the creature, and the Legion's apothecaries rescued his shatterd, mutilated body, intending to inter him in the Legion's crypt - only to find, to their astonishment, that he was still alive. The Primarch decided to honour his sacrifice with the greatest reward of all - Vercingetorix was placed in a sarcophagus and interred in a Contemptor-pattern dreadnought. The Captain's remains were taken back to an Iron Hands monastery in the Kokytus system deep in the Segmentum Pacificus to be prepared.

Better Know a Chapter - Knights of Glory: Fiends and Foes

Late post today; got caught up in some Vassaling. Today's entry is another little fluff bite from the ever-expanding Better Know a Chapter series.

Some of the enemies the Knights of Glory have faced who still lurk somewhere within the depths of the galaxy.

Better Know a Chapter - Knights of Glory: Chapter Organization

So, having modeled some Knights of Glory models has helped me determine a chapter organization for them, or at least, has helped me refine the organization I already had.

I have decided that the Knightly Virtues must be something that transcend the Orders themselves - because every Order must exemplify each Virtue or else be seen as lacking in a critical aspect of knighthood, every Order must clearly have a Master of each Virtue. Therefore:

Every Knightly Order must become somewhat independent of the other Orders. They must be like a self-contained Company or Clan.

Every Order must have six Masters: One of Faith, Brethren, Deeds, Justice, Flesh and Iron
Each subdivision must have a Grandmaster that oversees his purview in each Knightly Order; all the Masters of Brethren must be supervised by a Grandmaster. The same with every Master of Deeds - there must be a chief librarian to oversee all the epistolaries, of course.

Better Know a Chapter: The Dragons Rampant - Armada Draconis

     The Dragons Rampant are an Imperial Fists successor chapter that follows in the footsteps of the Black Templars - a fanatical, spaceborne crusade chapterthat specializes in brutal hand-to-hand combat. Many of the spacecraft in the Dragons' fleet are named after mythical creatures of ancient Terra. Likewise, upon attaining a sufficiently high rank in the Chapter, it is not unheard of for an aspiring Tyrant (roughly equivalent to a Marshal of the Black Templars) to assume the name of a mythical dragon. The office of Emperor's Champion is replaced in the Dragons Rampant by the office of Slayer. Slayers are peerless combatants, and also the ultimate arbiters of Armada law among Astartes and human crew alike. Each ship in the Armada nominates one Slayer, who takes the name of a dragon-killer of old (most ships' Slayers take the name of their predecessor). Slayers are always on the lookout for heretics and sorcerors within the Fleet, and are swift and merciless in disposing of both.

     Warning: May contain tl;dr.

Better Know a Chapter: The Steel Revenants - Major Engagements

Like any good seven-thousand-year-old Space Marine Chapter, the Steel Revenants have quite a few campaigns recorded in their massive archives. As much as I would love to write about every single one of them, most Space Marine engagements involve a few dozen Marines, a couple tanks, and a relatively short time in the field. Most Space Marine conflicts are, let's face it, not worth reading about. Because I'm not Matt Ward (SURPRISE!) and I don't get paid for that sort of thing, I'm not going to wax talkative about all the times my favorite Chapter Master victoriously wiped his own ass. However, the gaping maw of The Blog is ever hungry, and it is interesting to read about the campaigns where at least a full Battle Company takes the field for a protracted engagement.

But enough of this fool's jibba-jabba!

Better Know a Chapter - Knights of Glory: Questions

The same questions that helped refine the Steel Revenants now applied to the Knights of Glory.

Origins:

* When was your Chapter formed?
Late M34 ~ Early M35 (16th Founding)
* Why were they created?
One of three chapters founded to assist the conquest of the Aetherium star cluster and consolidate the Imperium's holdings in the remote regions of the Segmentum Pacificus.

Better Know a Chapter - Knights of Glory

Some RL news along with the fluff.
I have begun converting some marines with machiney bits, as befits a Mechanicus-loving Chapter such as the Revenants. Woooo! This includes a whole five-man squad of robo-Scouts. This is exciting for me.

The Knights of Glory

The Knights of Glory are a Dark Angels successor of the 16th Founding of Space Marines. They are one of the three Chapters sent into the Aetherium star cluster to take and hold the dozens of rediscovered planets in that region of space. They were vaguely inspired by the knights of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene.

Better Know a Chapter: Steel Revenants - Home System

A little bit of information on the Kokytus System, home of the Steel Revenants. Later BKAC installments will go into more detail about the individual planets.

Snippy snippy.

Better Know a Chapter: The Steel Revenants - Founding

The Better Know a Chapter series was originally intended to be a brief summary of the Steel Revenants' history, their beliefs, and what makes them special to me. I'm only one post in and already the project has begun to develop a mind of its own. Eventually, I would like the Better Know a Chapter series to encompass not only the Steel Revenants, but other Chapters as well - the Iron Hands, who are desperately underfluffed, as well as the other Chapters in the Aetherium cluster and those with whom the Revenants have associated over the past seven thousand years.  However, in the interest of starting small and not overdoing it (or outstripping my ability to concoct more fluff...) I will be breaking this down into tiny, digestible bits over a long period of time.

Now that the intro's out of the way, here's the good stuff.