House Cadmus reigns over Raisa, a world drowned in endless green whose lush forests conceal a grim affliction. The population of Raisa suffers an unnaturally high rate of mutation, and its wilds crawl with abhuman degenerates and fouler things besides. For untold centuries only the household's Knights stood between the people and the horrors of the deep forest, and by long custom even the Nobles themselves withdrew to their fortified plateaus once darkness fell, ceding the murk below to the beasts until the coming of dawn. Once counted among the Questor Mechanicus, House Cadmus has since transferred its oaths to the Adeptus Terra, and now marches as a household of the Imperium proper.
Out of this ceaseless war against corruption grew the tradition that defines the household above all others: the Cull. Held each year upon the eve of midsummer, this ritual hunt sends the Nobles of Cadmus down into the mutant-infested jungles to compete in the eradication of the verminous abhumans that plague their world. Far more than mere sport, the Cull is a proving-ground in which the scions of the household sharpen the very skills they will one day turn against the greater enemies of Mankind, and to distinguish oneself in the hunt is to earn honour that endures for generations.
Those skills have served the wider Imperium well. During the Yoladrian Crusade, detachments of Cadmus Knights made planetfall upon the swamp-choked world of Nalibraxis II, striding to war in support of Catachan Jungle Fighter regiments of the Astra Militarum. There, amid the reeking mires, the household was caught in a sorcerous ambush laid by the traitor Legion of the Thousand Sons, a trial of a wholly different order than the beasts of home, and one that tested the discipline of the Cull against the treacheries of the warp itself.
Imperial Knights
Order of battle
The House Cadmus field the units of the Imperial Knights — a detachment from the roster:
Kindred formations
Other Imperial Knights formations
House GriffithHouse Griffith is a proud and ancient loyalist house whose scions temper valour with cunning, favouring measured warfare over heedless aggression. Long allied with the Astra Militarum, Griffith's Knights are famed for their discipline on the battlefield and their willingness to fight as part of a wider host rather than seeking solitary glory. Their tacticians are studied and respected throughout the Imperium's war colleges.
House HawkshroudA Questor Imperialis household bound by an unbreakable code of honour, whose Knights answer every call to arms and are therefore forever scattered across a thousand distant war zones.
House KrastHouse Krast is a fervently loyal Questor Mechanicus house defined by its relentless, unforgiving prosecution of war and its particular hatred of the Chaos-corrupted Traitor houses. Krast follows the austere Code Martial, subordinating individual glory entirely to the cause of the Emperor. Its scions are grim, uncompromising warriors who show no mercy and expect none.
House MortanThe grim Dolorous Knights of the night-world Kimdaria, a household forged by twenty millennia of lonely war against the horrors that stalk its sunless forests.
House RavenHouse Raven is a loyalist house that swears its oaths to Mars rather than Terra, ranking among the foremost Questor Mechanicus houses. Its scions are known for their close and sometimes uneasy relationship with the Adeptus Mechanicus, and for fielding some of the largest concentrations of Knight suits in the Imperium. Raven's warriors combine chivalric tradition with the cold discipline of the Machine Cult.
House TaranisThe First House, most ancient of all knightly lineages, forged upon Mars alongside the Knight suit itself and sworn in undying fealty to the Machine God.
House TerrynHouse Terryn is among the most storied and populous of the loyalist Knightly houses, renowned for its fierce cavalry doctrine and its reverence for the purest ideals of the Code Chivalric. Its scions favour the headlong charge, closing with the foe to win glory in the crucible of close combat. Terryn's warriors are famed for their bravery bordering on recklessness, a trait celebrated in the ballads of their homeworld.