The Contemptor Dreadnought was among the most advanced war-machines fielded by the Legiones Astartes during the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy, a towering sarcophagus of ceramite and adamantium housing the shattered body of a mortally wounded Space Marine. Larger and swifter than the later patterns that would survive into the age of the Imperium, it married the interred warrior's transhuman skill to armour and weapons of the highest Terran craft.
The Contemptor's greatest distinction was its atomantic shielding, a semi-mystical field generator that turned aside shot and blade alike, and its cybernetica cortex, which lent it uncanny reflexes for so massive a frame.
Every Legion prized its Contemptors, entombing veterans and heroes whose deeds were too great to be lost to death. From the sieges of the Imperial Fists to the boarding actions of the Sons of Horus, these interred giants strode into the fiercest fighting, immortal engines of a bygone golden age.