H O U S E · M A L I N A X
The command deck of the Merciless reeked of blood and promethium. Skane stood before the tactical display, his gauntlets still crusted with gore from the assault on Outpost Tertius-Seven. Three Xana installations broken in as many days. Three times the Nails had sung their glorious song. Three times he’d led his brothers into the red work and emerged victorious, painted in the enemy’s life. Now the screaming in his skull demanded more, always more, and standing still felt like dying by degrees.
Tactical Sergeant Vhorr approached with measured steps, his own armor scored by laser burns and impact craters. “Praetor,” he said, voice carefully neutral through his vox-grille. “Supplicants… have been found. I would bring them before you.” There was hesitation in that word, and Skane’s head snapped toward him with predatory speed. His hand twitched toward his plasma pistol. Supplicants. Not enemies. Not targets. Something else. Something that required words instead of axes. The Nails screamed their displeasure, biting deeper, turning thought into agony. “Speak,” Skane forced out, each word a battle against the fire in his brain. “What… supplicants?”
“Knight scions, Malinax household. They witnessed our… victories at the outposts. They wish to pledge themselves to the Warmaster.” Vhorr’s posture was rigid, ready. He’d served under Skane long enough to read the tremors in his Praetor’s frame, the way his fingers spasmed against his weapons. “Shall I send them away?”
No. Yes. Kill them. Break them. Make them scream. The Nails offered a thousand variations on violence, each more appealing than the last. Skane’s teeth ground together hard enough to crack enamel. “Bring… them.” The words tasted like ash. Diplomacy. He was a Praetor of the XII Legion, he’d commanded thousands over the years of the Great Crusade, he’d stood before primarchs and spoken with clarity. That man was long gone now, carved away by the Nails, leaving only a trembling shell of rage barely contained. But the Warmaster needed allies. The campaign needed the Knights. Duty demanded control.
The scions entered flanked by Vhorr’s squad, and Skane’s first thought was how fragile they looked. Baseline humans wrapped in ceremonial robes marked with the red and black of House Malinax, their faces pale beneath the ship’s harsh lighting. Three of them—two men and a woman, all bearing the distinctive interface scars of Knight pilots. They moved with the cautious grace of people entering a predator’s den, which showed more intelligence than most baseline humans possessed. The lead scion, a man with silver threading his dark hair, stepped forward and began to kneel.
The motion triggered something in Skane’s combat reflexes. Target. Vulnerable. Exposed throat. Strike. His hand was on his chainaxe before conscious thought engaged, the weapon’s teeth already revving to life. The scions froze. Vhorr’s bolter came up fractionally. The moment balanced on a knife’s edge, and Skane felt his control slipping, the red tide rising, the Nails screaming YES YES YES—
“Praetor Skane.” The voice cut through the chaos like a knife through silk. Calm. Measured. Wrong. Everything about it was wrong because nothing should be that calm aboard a World Eaters vessel during a campaign. Skane’s head jerked toward the source, chainaxe still revving, and found Esoterist Ashamon standing in the command deck’s entrance.
The Esoterist wore the white and blue of the XII Legion, but his armor was inscribed with Colchisian scripture that seemed to writhe in the light. His face was bare, unhelmed, and his eyes held a serenity that had no place in a son of Angron. A decade with the Word Bearers on sabbatical had changed Ashamon in ways the rest of the Legion found unsettling—he still bore the Nails, still fought with his brothers, but he’d found something in the old texts and dark prayers that let him ride the pain instead of drowning in it.
“Brother,” Ashamon continued, stepping forward with measured grace. “These mortals come to swear oaths. Blood oaths, in their way. Surely that deserves… acknowledgment.” His voice carried harmonics that didn’t quite belong to baseline human speech. Not sorcery—the XII Legion would never tolerate that—but something adjacent to it. Faith made manifest. The Word Bearers called it the Truth.
Skane’s chainaxe stuttered, the teeth slowing. “They… knelt,” he managed. “Like… submission. Like… prey.”
“Like supplicants offering service,” Ashamon corrected gently. He moved to stand between Skane and the scions, and his presence somehow dulled the Nails’ shrieking. “They pilot war engines, brother. Machines that can break fortifications and crush armor. They are weapons, and they wish to be wielded by the Warmaster’s hand.” He paused, then added with quiet emphasis, “Through yours.”
The red haze receded fractionally. Weapons. Yes. That made sense. The Nails could understand weapons. Skane forced his hand to release the chainaxe’s activation stud, forced the teeth to stop spinning. The silence that followed felt impossibly loud. He looked at the kneeling scions again, trying to see them as Ashamon described rather than as the targets his hindbrain demanded they be.
The silver-haired scion found his voice, though it trembled. “Praetor Skane. I am Scion-Princeps Aldric Malinax. We witnessed your assault on the Xana positions. Your… ferocity broke what we could not. House Malinax remembers loyalty.” He swallowed hard. “We offer our Knights to your command. Three lances. Eighteen war machines. We stand with the Warmaster until the walls of Terra fall.”
Eighteen war machines. Eighteen engines of destruction. Skane’s tactical mind, buried beneath the Nails’ noise, stirred. Knight support could crack positions that even Astartes struggled with. They could draw fire, create breaches, destroy armor. They were force multipliers. They were useful. He needed to accept. Needed to forge this alliance. Needed to not kill these people who were offering exactly what the campaign required.
“Praetor,” Ashamon said quietly, and there was something in his tone that felt like a lifeline. “The Warmaster trusts you to build the tools of victory. These are such tools. Speak the words. Bind them to your banner. The gods favor those who turn offerings into conquest.”
The gods. Ashamon and the seventeenth legion spoke often of gods now, of the powers in the warp that had been hidden from them. Skane didn’t understand it, didn’t care to understand it. But he understood that Ashamon was giving him a framework, a script to follow while the Nails screamed. Accept the offering. Forge the alliance. Return to killing later.
“Rise,” Skane ground out. The word came easier than he’d expected. The scions stood, though wariness never left their eyes. “Your… Knights. They will… fight under… XII Legion command. No hesitation. No… question. We advance… you advance. We kill… you kill.” His hands were shaking again, but he kept them at his sides. “Betray us… and I will tear… you… apart. Understood?”
“We understand, my lord,” Aldric said, and had the wisdom not to smile. “House Malinax keeps its oaths. We will not fail you.”
Vhorr stepped forward, presenting a data-slate. “Integration protocols, Praetor. Vox-frequencies, tactical doctrine, supply chain coordination. The Malinax representatives will need to—”
“You… handle it,” Skane interrupted. His control was fraying again, the momentary clarity Ashamon had provided burning away beneath the Nails’ renewed assault. “Dismissed. All… of you. Now.”
I’ve been a busy busy bee this month working on the next 500 points of my World Eaters force for The Long March. Arguably it’s more like the next 1000-1500 points as I’ve built some more jump infantry, more tanks than I actually need for 500pts and… well, a Knight I literally had lying around for years :)
I am not a big fan of algorithm-driven “Hey, human! You MIGHT LIKE THIS THING that is vaguely connected to something else you have previously purchased” because more often than not they are just way off the mark. But, a few years ago eBay managed to put a new-on-sprue basic Knight Questoris from the ‘Renegade’ box in front of my poor-impulse-controlled-brain and 55€ later I was the proud owner of it. It sat, in a bag, in the loft for a long time - and then I figured I’d just build it and maybe ally it in with the XII sometime this year! With the aid of some leg extensions I found on Cults I think Princeps Aldric looks pretty cool stood atop an XIX Legion Rhino he’s just shot and hacked to bits. I liked the idea of working in the Xana/Malinax angle from my previous short story and it helped introduce my very out-of-place WE Esoterist into the campaign too. One part of my next 500 points is actually some Daemons which I am really looking forward to trying out. I’m sure they’ll get zapped to bits by lascannons within a turn of being summoned though, just my luck 😂
A random link I have visited before that I think everyone should read once is this article on the Imperial Knight kits describing the history of the various Knights and how they’ve been presented by GW. Worth a look!