When a Deathwatch hero falls whose knowledge is too precious to lose, his shattered body may be sealed within the adamantium sarcophagus of a Dreadnought, that his hatred and hard-won wisdom might serve the Long Watch for centuries still to come. The most ancient and revered of these war-engines are the Venerable Dreadnoughts, towering relics whom the black-armoured brethren name the Old Ones and treat as living saints of the war against the xenos.
To be so interred is an honour of terrible finality. It is rare almost beyond reckoning for a kill-team warrior to be granted the sarcophagus, for the rite binds him to the Deathwatch forever; he will never return to his parent Chapter, but will wake and slumber within the walls of a watch fortress until the stars themselves grow cold. Only a handful of such ancients exist, scattered across the fortresses of the galaxy, and each is a treasure beyond price.
These slumbering giants are roused only when the need is truly dire. Filled with the accumulated experience of campaigns against foes now long extinct, the Venerable Dreadnoughts are prized as much for their counsel as for their guns; kill-teams seek their guidance before setting out, that the memory of ancient battles might sharpen the fight to come. In this way the Old Ones serve as both weapon and archive, their armoured hulls housing the ghosts of a thousand alien wars, ready to wake and to kill once more should the xenos darken the Emperor's domains.
Order of battle
