In our Lore Explainer series we take a deep look at the lore of various games, settings, and factions. In this article we’re looking at the lore of the Grey Knights, a highly secret chapter of psychic Space Marines charged with protecting the Imperium from Daemonic influence and entities of the Warp.
There’s a secret chapter of Space Marines, clad in silver armor and consisting entirely of psykers. A group so clandestine that even other Space Marine chapters are not permitted to know of their existence. They are the militant arm of the Ordo Malleus, the Grey Knights. Their purpose is to fight Daemonic incursions, beating back the terrors of the warp and protecting humanity from the taint of Chaos at any cost.
Who Are the Grey Knights?
Created in the Second Founding following the end of the Horus Heresy, the Grey Knights are the 666th chapter of Space Marines and the chamber militant of the Ordo Malleus, the daemon-hunting branch of the Inquisition. The chapter is based out of a fortress-monastery on Saturn’s moon, Titan. Their existence is highly secret, known only to the highest orders of the Inquisition and Imperial leadership, and protected with such fervor that those who learn of the existence of the Grey Knights are either mind-wiped or killed.
The First Introduction in the Lore
The Grey Knights were first introduced in Rogue Trader, in the Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness expansion book, which introduced Daemons of Khorne and Slaanesh to the setting along with the legions of the Traitor Astartes. That book also contained a section on the Ordo Malleus and the Grey Knights, armies of space marines who specialize in hunting daemons who report to an Inquisitor. They were listed as a Third Founding chapter and given the number 666, “at the Emperor’s Instruction.”
Grey Knights were specially screened to only include the strongest and most resilient psykers – those most resistant to Daemonic contamination, and as a result very few Grey Knights were psykers. They went through more rigorous training to become accustomed to the horrors of the warp and had some of the finest equipment in the Imperium. As an army, Grey Knights could be accompanied by Imperial Guardsmen and even Adeptus Arbites, but it’s made clear in the lore that these are killed after the battle by the Inquisitor, as they’d now been exposed to Chaos and had seen too much. Marines fighting alongside the Grey Knights would be merely mind-scrubbed.
Some of this lore was reworked a bit in second edition in the Codex Imperialis lore book – there the Grey Knights were the only chapter created in the mysterious Second Founding. This obviously did not jibe very well with designating them the 666th chapter or the splitting of the First Founding chapters, and so would get changed later on. By this point Terminator models had been released for them, but they hadn’t quite made the transition yet to being a Terminator-only force – that would happen later in 2nd edition, with the release of the Dark Millennium expansion.
Dark Millennium re-established the Grey Knights as the fighting arm of the Ordo Malleus and established a number of new traits for them: Their home base on Saturn’s moon, Titan, they all share some psychic ability used to form a gestalt power greater than any could individually muster, and they use heavily ornamented and modified Terminator armour with Nemesis Force Weapons to slay daemons. While it’s hinted in the book that there are non-terminator Grey Knights, only “Grey Knight Terminators” are listed in the rules. Dark Millennium also gave us our first introduction to Brother-Captain Stern and his ongoing nemesis, the Lord of Change M’kachen.
The First Codex
The Grey Knights finally received their own book in 3rd edition with the release of Codex: Daemonhunters, which provided rules and backstory for the armies of the Ordo Malleus. Along with the new lore and rules for Inquisitors, the book re-introduced Grey Knights in power armour, armed with their signature Nemesis Force weapons and wrist-mounted storm bolters. Grey Knights could ride in Rhinos and Land Raiders and be interred in Dreadnoughts.
It wasn’t until fifth edition that we’d see the first official Codex: Grey Knights, turning the chapter into a real, standalone army that could run without Inquisitors and had its own special characters, introducing us to Draigo, Stern, Crowe, Mordrak, and Thawn and expanding the army’s model range with new units and vehicles. This book more or less established the “current” lore for the chapter, with updated stories of the chapter’s secret exploits and heroes that established them not just as a highly trained, stoic group of psychic warrior-monk daemonhunters but also revealed their common use of daemonic artefacts and sorceries to fight back against Chaos.
Note: The lore of the fifth edition Codex is pretty controversial, in part because a lot of it is written like bad fanfiction – the Grey Knights are written to be just completely incorruptible, flawless badasses who punk every other faction they come across without challenge. Later books would spend considerable time dialing back some of the excesses of that fifth edition lore.
The Current Lore
At the time of this writing the tenth edition Codex: Grey Knights has released, giving us updated rules and new lore for the faction. And while the Grey Knights may have started as a secret chapter of Daemon-hunting space marines, their current lore is much more complicated than that – as we’ll see. Strap in.
The Legendary Origin of the Grey Knights
Okay, let’s back up and dig a little deeper. The current chapter legend is that the Emperor ordered the creation of the Grey Knights during the final days of the Heresy, when he looked into the future and realized he couldn’t win the never-ending war against Chaos alone. The highly specialized chapter of Grey Knights were then created using the Emperor’s DNA – not that of any primarch – to create the chapter in order to wage war in his stead. This is why the Grey Knights are all Psykers, and why they’re all incredible badasses – they refer to this combination of genetics and wargear as “The Emperor’s Gift.”
Credit: Pendulin
The Real Story, Probably
During the final days of the Horus Heresy, the Emperor became more fixated on the danger posed by daemons and gods of Chaos. Maybe he should have worried a little more about them before the Heresy started, but either way by this point he was convinced of the danger they posed to mankind, seeking its corruption, subjugation, and torment. And so the Emperor asked his most trusted advisor, Malcador the Sigilite, to scour the Imperium to find individuals who would be up to the task of protecting mankind from the forces of Chaos.
Malcador came back with a group of twelve people (who were curated with the help of Nathaniel Garro, one of the surviving loyalist members of the Death Guard), which included eight Space Marines (one of whom may have been Garro – this isn’t clear), and four shadowy regular men and women of steely and enquiring nature who would go on to become the founders of the Inquisition. Among those eight Marines were several potent psykers, each dedicated to the Imperium and aware of the threat of the warp (though some were from traitor legions, they remained loyal). The Emperor personally approved them and they were taken by Malcador to Saturn’s moon, Titan. There Malcador introduced the eight Marines to their new fortress monastery home and the means to found a chapter with gene-seed from the Emperor himself. Malcador then appointed one of the Marines, Janus, to be the first Supreme Grand Master of the Grey Knights. The human lords and administrators were taken back to Terra to lay the groundwork for the Inquisition.
Malcador laid the groundwork for the founding of a new chapter of Space Marines, but he couldn’t stick around – Horus was about to reach Terra. So Malcador used his power to cast a massive enchantment on Titan, causing it to slip out of reality and into the Warp. There it would be safe from Horus’ forces and the eight Marines could work to train their new recruits (all held in cryo-pods), and build them into a chapter. The moon would reappear years later, home to the newly formed Grey Knights chapter. They came back into realspace during the Second Founding, at which point the Inquisition worked to bring them into the fold and keep their existence secret, establishing them as the 666th chapter.
The Even More Real, Even More Secret Origin of the Grey Knights
Being composed of psychically sensitive Marines from multiple Legions, the Grey Knights do not have a primarch genefather, at least in the traditional sense. But that does not mean that they don’t have a link to the Emperor’s sons. And that link runs through the very first Supreme Grand Master, Janus. To understand that connection, we will have to look back even further, beyond the gathering of the twelve founders, all the way to the fall of Prospero.
As any historian of the Heresy knows, when Leman Russ and the Space Wolves fell upon Prospero they razed it utterly, leaving scarcely any of the XVth Legion alive. Russ himself dueled with Magnus the Red and dealt him a mortal blow, breaking the Crimson King’s back over his knee. But before Russ could finish off the gravely wounded Magnus, the sire of the XVth cast a spell that stole him and his few remaining Sons far away.
Less well known is the aftermath of this effort: Magnus’s wounds and the spell he had cast shattered his soul into fragments. These “shards” were just psychic ghosts, but each one had its own individual personality, with its own thoughts and feelings and desires – parts of the whole. One shard, representing Magnus’s noblest and most virtuous aspect, languished on Terra, effectively a prisoner of Malcador.
So, back to Prospero. Not all of the Thousand Sons were on their homeworld when the Wolves came knocking. The Fourth Fellowship arrived at Prospero six months after the Razing to find their homeworld in ruins. Looking for answers, they made planetfall, only to encounter – and quickly be murdered by – a force of World Eaters. The Fourth’s lone survivor, the Corvidae sergeant Revuel Arvida, escaped the World Eaters, but he was in a bad way: trapped on a world full of hungry psychic predators, with no allies and no supplies.
Then opportunity arrived in the form of Jaghatai Khan and the White Scars. The Scars were cornered and under assault by Prospero’s ever-present Psychneuin, but Arvida drove them away. Departing the planet with the Vth Legion, Arvida grew close to the Stormseer Targutai Yesugai, but found himself struggling with his dual loyalty to both his Emperor and his father. He also struggled with a less metaphysical problem: the flesh-change, a mutational affliction that had cursed the Thousand Sons since their earliest days, was growing in strength, and only constant effort kept him from dissolving into a mindless horror.
Arvida was with the Scars when they found the Dark Glass and Yesugai sacrificed himself to deliver his Legion to the Throneworld. After Yesugai opened the way, Arvida used his own psychic abilities to steer the fleet to Terra. The effort was too much for him, however, and as they approached their destination he lapsed into a coma, on the verge of succumbing forever to the flesh-change.
Upon the Scars’ arrival to Terra, Malcador instantly recognized Arvida’s condition, and took him into custody, promising the Scars that he would do everything in his power to save Arvida’s life. Malcador did not exactly have Arvida’s best interests in mind, however: he tried to bind the shard of Magnus into Arvida’s body, hoping to create a psychic being strong enough to sit on the Golden Throne in the Emperor’s place.
It didn’t work, of course. The shard was too powerful for Arvida to contain. Malcador was on the verge of euthanizing the struggling, mutating Arvida when the Khan interfered. Declaring that Arvida “will have his chance,” the Khan smashed the psychic dampeners and channeling engines Malcador had used for his ritual. When the dust cleared, neither the shard nor Arvida remained. Instead, what was left was an amalgam of both: A Space Marine that looked a bit like the primarch, a bit like the man, and a bit like neither. The name it gave had once been the name of Arvida’s tutelary: Ianius.
If you’re suddenly going “oh hey Ianius sounds very similar to ‘Janus,’ what a coincidence” well, you’ve solved the mystery. Ianius would be one of Malcador’s twelve chosen agents and go on to lead the Grey Knights as their first supreme grand master, thus cementing the link between the Imperium’s greatest psychic warriors and its most powerful psychic primarch.
The Psychic Warriors
One unique aspect of the Grey Knights is their psychic ability: Every Grey Knights Marine is a Psyker, carefully selected, genetically modified, and trained to be absolutely incorruptible of soul and spirit. The result is an army of Marines with such command of the Warp that they can use its energies to execute fast strategic maneuvers, teleporting around the battlefield to wage war against the dark gods. Their silver armor is protected by The Aegis, a weave of enhanced psycho-active circuitry that channels a portion of their psychic might to clothe them in shimmering defensive energies that ward of heretical sorceries and daemonic energies.
In addition to these formidable technologies, the Grey Knights are not above using the weapons of their enemy – they’ve amassed a large vault of sorcerous and Daemonic lore over the centuries and use it to destroy their enemies on the battlefield, trusting their own strength of will to stave off corruption as they deploy powerful sorcery. It seems like some real “this is going to end poorly” type storytelling but it turns out that the Grey Knights are just Built Different and don’t have a problem with using daemon weapons and malign sorcery against Chaos. Skill issue for the rest of us, I guess.
Recruits
Grey Knights recruit potential Psykers from among a number of sources – the Black Ships were the primary among these – though the Great Rift has made this substantially more difficult. As a result, the chapter has had to resort to other means of finding recruits, including staging attacks on other Imperial institutions, including loyal Marine chapters, to take the recruits they’re looking for. These attacks are kept secret and covered up after the fact, with the evidence of the Grey Knights’ misdeeds covered up utterly following each attack.
Where Do They Get Those Wonderful Toys?
The specialized wargear and weapons wielded by the Grey Knights are manufactured on Deimos, a heavily industrialized forge world orbiting Titan. Yes, that Deimos, the former moon of Mars. Dark Age Technology went hard, man. The Mechanicus inhabitants of Deimos have sworn to create the the materiel required for the Grey Knights and their never-ending campaign, and the deal largely works out as neither group is particularly interested in asking the other too many questions about the other’s goings-on.
Credit: Pendulin
Top. Men.
The really cool stuff that the Grey Knights have access to is all kept in a massive arcane vault called the Sanctum Sanctorum – likely named after the chamber where the Ark of the Covenant was kept in the Tabernacle/Temple of Jerusalem and not so much the sick townhouse where Doctor Strange hangs out and practices sorcery. The Sanctum is home to all manner of crystals, scrolls, cursed artefacts, and infernal grimoires accumulated over millennia of war. Even deeper in the Sanctum is the Vault of Labyrinths, which houses a small reserve of tesseract labyrinths that can be used to trap Daemons permanently. Obviously this chamber is super dangerous and tightly controlled even to the chapter; you only get to go in there and touch the hellcubes if you’re very old, wise, or just so confident that people are generally like “yeah, he can probably handle it” when you ask.
Also hidden in the Grey Knight’s Citadel is the Warp Nexus, some kind of ancient drive that can actually push the entire moon out of phase with reality, and hide it within the warp. This has apparently been done once before (see the origins of the Grey Knights), but no one still alive knows the details or how it worked, and (unsurprisingly) no one wants to try or risk again.
One of the most important parts of the fortress monastery on Titan is the Augurium, a massive black spire with a silver pinnacle where the chapter’s Prognosticars see the future, viewing countless possible timelines in the Warp. They use this to track and predict daemonic activity, showing up where they’re needed most before something happens, rather than after it’s too late.
Then there’s the Chamber of Trials, where prospective Grey Knights train, and the Dead Fields, the torch-lit catacombs where dead Grey Knights are laid to rest. At some point, all of their dead bodies were stolen. No one knows why or how, and no one is really cool talking about it, either. It’s pretty creepy and bringing it up really harshes the vibe we’ve got going here, thanks.
The Terminus Decree
There’s a small, simple wooden box that only the Supreme Grand Master of the Grey Knights can open, containing the Terminus Decree: The Emperor’s final command to the Grey Knights chapter. This SUPER SECRET message should only be opened when all hope for the future of Humanity seems lost. It’s the ultimate sanction of the Grey Knights, a secret so vast it could bring the Imperium to its knees, or save it, possibly.
The exact nature of the document was unknown, because no one had ever opened it. The only clue to its contents was its golden seal, an exact match of another seal found on the Emperor’s Golden Throne.
At least, that was the case as late as ninth edition. With the tenth edition Codex: Grey Knights, we finally have clarity on the Terminus Decree: The Emperor is not allowed to leave the Golden Throne, whether it be returned to life, reborn in some other body, or ascended to being some kind of Warp Entity. If he does, the Grey Knights’ job is to go kick his ass and put him back in his chair. In fact, they were supposedly created with this possibility in mind, something no one else in the Imperium would be capable of doing. The Decree doesn’t say how to do this, just that they have to go do this, even if it means killing a lot of Adeptus Custodes in order to make it happen. No matter how rad having a new Emperor would be, they have to put him back on the Throne.
Note: This at least answers the question “what happens to the Astronomicon if the Emperor reincarnates?” The answer is, “The Grey Knights shut that shit down immediately so everyone can travel in warp space again.”
Chapter Organization
The bulk of the Grey Knights are organized into eight grand brotherhoods, each comprised of one hundred Grey Knights under the authority of a Grand Master and a Brother-Captain. These are supported by a Brotherhood Champion, an Ancient, and a few other officers. The squads within each brotherhood are pretty tactically flexible and the makeup of each brotherhood varies according to the preferences of its grand master. These brotherhoods are in turn governed by the Chapter Council, led by the Supreme Grand Master and the eight masters of the Brotherhoods. On top of this there are two other fighting groups, the Order of Purifiers and the Hall of Champions – home to the Paladins, the chapter’s most elite warriors.
When it comes to the individual leaders of the chapter, there are six major characters you have to know about, who have all had model representation at one point or another.
Kaldor Draigo
The current Supreme Grand Master of the Grey Knights, Kaldor Draigo is one of the biggest badasses in all of 40K lore, to the point that he’s fairly irritating to read about. Draigo started his days as a Grey Knight in the third Brotherhood and rose to the rank of Justicar after slaying the daemon M’kar, who cursed him with future damnation – that if he ever set foot on the world of Acralem again, he’d “walk with damnation” along with “all who followed him” for ten millennia. Draigo didn’t think much of this at the time, and then spent the next two hundred years killing daemons and rising through the ranks, eventually becoming Supreme Grand Master of the chapter.
Then as luck would have it, two hundred years after his first battle with M’kar, Draigo had to go back to Acralem to fight the daemon. Draigo fought with the daemon at the edge of a warp rift, eventually losing as the daemon shattered his Nemesis sword. But before he could strike the killing blow, Draigo stabbed M’kar in the heart with his broken sword and with its dying breaths, M’kar lobbed Draigo into the rift.
Since then Draigo has been trapped in the warp, unable to properly lead his chapter. Normally mortals get destroyed when they’re trapped in the Warp, but Draigo’s just that good. Since then it has been possible to summon him with rituals and strange conjunctions, granting him temporary freedom and allowing him to fight for the chapter on a limited basis before he has to return to the Warp.
Brother-Captain Arvann Stern
The first special character introduced for the Grey Knights, Brother-Captain Stern was first introduced properly in the third edition Codex: Daemonhunters in 2003. A well-respected and highly decorated member of his company, Stern’s most notable for being inextricably linked with the Lord of Change, M’kachen. Stern banished the daemon successfully in their first meeting when Stern shattered the heretic Cult of the Red Talon on Antraxes. Stern banished the Lord of Change for a period of one hundred years and a day – and ever since M’kachen has sworn vengeance on Stern, seeking to engineer his downfall. They’ve crossed paths/swords twice since that first encounter, and Stern is now in his four hundredth year of service. M’kachen’s modus operandi seems to be mostly focused on killing Stern’s battle brothers and then fleeing, giving Stern the reputation of being a “cursed” commander as all of his men die around him. Stern does not care for this particular game, and now seeks to trap M’kachen in a tesseract prison.
Stern is Brother-Captain of the third Brotherhood, serving beside Grand Master Aldrik Voldus.
Note: M’kachen first appeared in Codex: Chaos (second edition) as M’kachan, a Daemon Prince of Tzeentch that was originally a Lord of Change (never mortal), who disdains physical combat and relies on illusion and trickery to defeat foes and enjoys matching wits against cunning and worthy foes.
Aldrik Voldus
The most recent special character introduced for the Grey Knights, Grand Master Voldus made his debut in late seventh edition as part of the trio of Imperial characters in Gathering Storm Part III alongside Roboute Guilliman and Cypher, more or less guaranteeing that he’d be the least memorable part of his own release. At the time of the 13th Black Crusade, Voldus had only recently been promoted to leadership of the Grey Knights’ 3rd Brotherhood, a position that was believed to be cursed (see Stern, above), after M’kachen killed prior Grand Master Doriam Narathem. After Narathem was killed, Voldus dropped a major psychic attack on M’kachen, so powerful and pure that it pulled Kaldor Draigo out of the realm of Chaos and into battle with M’kachen. Immediately following, Draigo appointed Voldus to the rank of Grand Master before fading back into the warp.
Voldus is one of the most powerful psykers the Chapter has seen in centuries. In addition to leading the third brotherhood, he’s also Warden of the Librarius for the chapter.
Castellan Garran Crowe
Castellan Crowe first showed up in the fifth edition Codex: Grey Knights and is the head and Brotherhood Champion of the Purifier order. Crowe’s big claim to fame is being utterly pure and incorruptible, completely immune to the temptations of Chaos, so much so that he can wield the Black Blade of Antwyr. The blade is a daemon weapon of great power, and impervious to all attempts to destroy it by the Grey Knights. It’s so profoundly evil that even sealing it away in a chamber would likely lead to the corruption of its guardians. So instead they gave it to the Purifiers, who let their most incorruptible warrior use it. Eventually it passed to Garran Crowe. Crowe does constant psychic battle with the sword, even as he uses it to slay its daemonic rivals.
Grand Master Vorth Mordrak
Introduced in the fifth edition Codex: Grey Knights, Grand Master Vorth Mordrak was the only survivor of the Red Corsairs’ assault on the fortress world of Mortain. He was thereafter wracked with survivor’s guilt and visions of his fallen comrades, to the point that he believed himself corrupted. He submitted himself to the Rituals of Purity, but was judged clean of taint (men will do anything to avoid therapy).
Later, when Mordrak would find himself about to die, a group of ghostly warriors in silver armor would appear to defend him – the spirits of his brothers slain on Mortain. By his own psychic might, Mordrak had bound his fallen brothers’ spirits to him at the moment of their deaths. Pretty cool, but also not great, given their voices still whispered of betrayal and death. But not for Mordrak – at least, he doesn’t think so, anyways – but for Huron Blackheart, the traitor responsible for their deaths. So Mordrak’s goal is to kill Huron.
Mordrak is the Grand Master of the 2nd Brotherhood, the Blades of Victory, and has never had a model. As best we can tell, he hasn’t even had art.
Justicar Anval Thawn
Thawn was a knight whose deeds and accolades eventually earned him the rank of Justicar. Then he was killed, stabbed by the Daemon N’kari while scouring the Craftworld Malan’tai of daemons. His body was brought back to the Dead Fields, where he was heard making a clamor in his sarcophagus. When they cracked the casket’s seal, they found him inside, alive and unharmed.
As you might imagine, this wasn’t seen as a good thing by his battle-brothers, who were glad to have him back but suspicious of his return. Eventually they let him go back into battle. Since then he’s died several times, and each time returned within a few days, hours, or even minutes to do battle again. Most Grey Knights don’t even question it any more.
But for Thawn? Immortality is a curse. He gets to watch his battle-brothers die over and over as the Imperium gets worse and the days grow more desperate. The good news is that he still keeps fighting. Supposedly Thawn is the last perpetual, at least according to the Aeldari and some members of the Inquisition.
The Major Campaigns of the Grey Knights
The Grey Knights have been part of a number of major battles and campaigns in their history, protecting the Imperium from massive daemon threats. Of course, very few people actually know they did this – it’s all kept incredibly secret, and any survivors who witnessed it were most likely either mind-scrubbed or eliminated.
The First War for Armageddon
In the early parts of the 41st Millennium, war came to the strategically vital planet of Armageddon. What started as armed rebellions escalated into a greater threat as a horde of traitor Astartes of the World Eaters legion and warp-spawned daemons led by the daemon primarch Angron. The bloody hordes swept through Armageddon prime, the planet’s main continent before running into a mix of Imperial forces and a major force of Space Wolves. Their power was sustained by roiling warp storms until a lull in the storms gave the Grey Knights a chance to strike. They teleported into the battle and confronted Angron directly, felling him and his Bloodthirsters before successfully banishing Angron back to the warp. Although only a handful of those knight survived, many would go on to other great deeds, such as Stern, Mordrak, and Crowe.
Angron never got over losing Armageddon and in the aftermath the planet was deemed too valuable for a full Exterminatus. Instead, the planet’s population was scoured and replaced with replacement workers from off-world to eras all mention of the battle. Logan Grimnar personally never forgave the Grey Knights for what he perceived as a massive betrayal of the men and women who fought to save Armageddon.
The Black Planet
Khornate daemons attack the Black Planet and Castellan Crowe battles Skulltaker, herald of Khorne. This was a battle that was super important to Antwyr (the daemon trapped in Crowe’s sword), but no matter how hard the Daemon tried to convince Crowe to just let him talk to Skulltaker, just for a second, he just wants to talk to his hated rival, it’ll be cool, Crowe never did.
The Lion’s Gate Incursion
Following the revival of Primarch Roboute Guilliman and his arrival on Terra, the Cicatrix Maledictum split open the skies and with it, warp storms erupted around the Imperial palace, from which waves of Khornate daemons spilled forth. The Grey Knights’ support in this battle was critical, helping the Sisters of Silence and the Adeptus Custodes triumph over the daemons assaulting the palace.
Sanctus Reach
When Orks fell upon Sanctus Reach, the crazed machinations of the Big Mek Mogrok (and a dozen or so vortex rokkits) led to a rift being torn open in reality, through which a ton of khorne daemons popped out. Fortunately the Grey Knights were on hand to help, and had been working behind the scenes with Sanctus Reach to stop daemonic shenanigans from breaking out. After the battle the Inquisition showed up and killed most of the Cadians who helped save the planet, then scrubbed the minds of the officers who’d proven to be useful Commanders. They were then going to scour the planet before Grimnar and his ships intervened, telling them that the planet was under the protection of the Space Wolves, who wouldn’t let them do to Alaric Prime what they did to Armageddon. It saved Alaric Prime for the moment.
Pandorax
Abaddon’s Black Legion forces moved on the Death World of Pythos, in the Pandorax System, hellbent on finding the stable warp portal known as the Daemnation Cache buried deep beneath the planet’s surface. The portal had previously been used during the Heresy to fight against loyalist forces and it was sealed following Horus’ defeat. Abaddon broke the wards on the Damnation Cache and loosed a tide of warp-spawned horrors into realspace and across the planet. As the only group in the Imperium who knew about the Damnation Cache, the Grey Knights were on hand to stem the tide and defend the planet.
This whole story was covered in Apocalypse Warzone: Pandorax, which we’ll cover in a future Lore Explainer.
The Bloodtide
One of the more infamous stories of the Grey Knights concerns the Grey Knights being called to the world of Van Horne to stop the newly freed Bloodthirster, Ka’jagga’nath. Ka’jagga’nath was bathing the planet in a tide of gore that corrupted everything it touched. Sisters of Battle from the Order of the Ebon Chalice attempted to assault the basilica where the Bloodthirster was holed up; many died but the few who survived the battle were then killed by the Grey Knights and their blood mixed with oils and used to anoint and shield the Grey Knights’ armor before they waded into the gore flood to destroy Ka’jagga’nath.
This sucks for a number of reasons but makes even less sense when you consider that the Bloodtide was later rewritten to be a tide of nanomachines from the Dark Age of Technology.
Where to Read/Find More
There’s no shortage of additional lore for the Grey Knights, who have the benefit of being able to show up anywhere in the galaxy and fight against some of its most interesting threats. Dealing with Chaos means the Grey Knights can easily move between magic/sorcery and science fiction, moreso than other factions.
Books
You have a lot of options, but we’d generally recommend the following:
- The Grey Knights Omnibus by Ben Counter is a decent launch point into 40k lore generally, but note that as a book published in 2009, the lore in this one is significantly older, pre-dating things like Guilliman’s return and Primaris Marines.
- Emperor’s Gift by Aaron Dembski-Bowden follows two aspirants recruited into the Grey Knights and is widely regarded as excellent. In a similar fashion to the Omnibus, this one is also older (2012).
- Sanctus Reach: Maledictus by David Annandale is a novella covering the Grey Knights actions during Sanctus Reach. It’s pretty good.
- Angron: The Red Angel by David Guymer is a more modern story and very much a Grey Knights book as well, and showcases how the Grey Knights aren’t above using daemons against their enemies.
The origins of the Grey Knights are more or less revealed in a set of heresy books:
- The Path of Heaven, by Chris Wraight
- The Last Son of Prospero, by James Swallow
Video Games
The Grey Knights actually had their own video game – Chaos Gate was originally released back in 1998 with Ultramarines fighting Word Bearers but the game’s sequel in 2022, Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters, heavily featured the Grey Knights fighting Death Guard.We’d generally recommend playing the sequel, which offers some solid XCOM-style gameplay.
Final Thoughts
For a highly secretive chapter that most of the Imperium doesn’t know about, there sure is a ton of lore on these guys! That said, their whole “scrub every memory and kill all the people who helped” strategy also makes it hard to include them in a lot of broader works – what’s the point of reading about a heroic guardsman’s struggle against daemonic incursion if he’s just going to be murdered by the Grey Knights after they win? Similarly, the Grey Knights themselves are limited in scope, but they have the advantage of being good Imperial antagonists to a lot of the other chapters – most notably Logan Grimnar and the Space Wolves. Recent lore developments around them fighting other marine chapters for psychic recruits are particularly interesting, because they both help create interesting hooks for Imperium-vs-Imperium conflict (common on the tabletop), while moving the Grey Knights further away from the kind of “bad-ass, perfect in every way, Marvel comics tough” vibes they’ve had since their reintroduction in fifth edition lore.
Lore around the Grey Knights is similar to Custodes lore, in that it offers a chance to see behind the veil and learn more about the secrets of the Imperium. Of course, that’s always a double-edged sword, risking showing you too much and destroying the mystery. The recent uproar around the Terminus Decree is emblematic of that – while I think it’s overall, a good change in that the decree is interesting, it’s also taking away one key mystery from the lore and replacing it with the notion that the Emperor believed he might not be on the throne forever. And the question as to whether that’s a good trade-off is a fair one to ask.
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