In the great engine wars of the Knightly Houses, oil runs as blood. Metal strikes metal in peals of thunder, casting dazzling sparks the size of men. The great and terrible fury of these demigods of iron is as no other, a seething ancestral hatred shared by these warriors that no mere mortal of flesh and bone could comprehend.
He was there, you know. He was there when the House split in twain, for the Warmaster and the Emperor both. His is a dying breed - Mortifex Malefica was the last to fall, and the impostor that now wears his iron skin is a pale imitation of the great Knight’s former glory. Only he remains, in all his dark majesty. Only he remembers.
She does not know how many came before her, between now and the Great Reaving - so many have passed into the Throne Mechanicum that their voices simply flow together, each carrying their millennia-long grudge to the next in line. She knows full well what the crimson and bronze monstrosity in front of her represents, and her Knight’s burning heart rumbles in hateful sympathy.
No words could convey this mutual loathing, and none are needed. Both know that only one warrior will leave the field this day, and the other’s lineage will end in the dirt of this planet, their legacy naught but dust on the wind. Honour demands nothing less.
As is customary, the Dawnstar offers its salute - raising its weapons on high and clashing them together. The Corpus Belicosa, as if remembering something that it once was, returns this fleeting gesture in kind. For a moment, one could almost imagine what the warrior had once stood for, an echo of a long-lost age of honour and chivalry, before becoming the monster it was today.
It is not a moment that lasts.
Metal strikes metal, and oil runs as blood...
For some ancient rivals, the covenant of hatred runs thicker than either blood or water. Carrying a vendetta nine thousand years in the making, Annabeth Weiss is the latest Scion to pilot the legendary Dawnstar, one of the last surviving Knights of the original founders of her House. In opposition, Corpus Belicosa - a dread war engine so ancient that the pilot and machine have long ceased to be separate entities, the last remaining traitor from the House's fratricidal split in the dark days of the Horus Heresy. Theirs is a hatred forged in centuries of war across generations of Knights, born of ceaseless nuclear hearts shackled in steel, and when their reckoning finally comes it shall end as all things must end - in iron and blood.
In celebration of the new Questor Imperialis updates, Dawnstar and Corpus Belicosa have received some much needed TLC! These include improved bases and weathering, extra touches of crimson on Belicosa's weapons, and Dawnstar's banner finally being an actual banner rather than a white rectangle!