The Defiler is among the largest and most storied of the Heretic Astartes' Daemon Engines, a monstrous war-machine that stalks the battlefield upon six great spined legs. It towers over most other engines of its kind and is possessed of a temper to match its bulk, a bound daemon's malice given a body of iron and ceramite. It was born of the First Black Crusade, devised by the Dark Mechanicum at Abaddon the Despoiler's command to bolster the Traitor Legions with fresh horrors, and it has scuttled through the Imperium's nightmares ever since.
Like all Daemon Engines it is no mere vehicle. In place of an honest crew, a powerful daemon is torn from the Warp and shackled within its rune-bound hull, its hatred lending the machine a cunning and ferocity no human pilot could equal. The engine's mismatched limbs serve it well in every kind of war: four bear it across the broken ground of the battlefield, while two great arm-mounted claws reach out to seize and crush, tearing apart tanks and infantry alike with equal ease.
For all its talent at close slaughter, the Defiler is also a mighty engine of bombardment, its hull-mounted battle cannon able to shatter whole formations at a stroke, backed by a bristling array of lesser guns. It advances with dreadful, spider-like purpose, blasting the foe apart at range before falling upon the survivors to rend them in its pincers. Terror follows it like a shadow, for to face a Defiler is to face a fragment of the Warp itself, hungry and unbound, clad in the shape of a titanic beast.
Order of battle
