With outlawed knowledge of the deeper mysteries of the machine, Warpsmiths maintain their warband’s arsenal of armoured vehicles, empowering engines with utterances of corrupted code. Fused with a writhing nest of semi-sentient mechatendrils, they seek not only to employ technology for their diabolical ends, but to subjugate it entirely.
War Dog-class Knights act as hunting packs for their Dread Household. Armed with an eclectic array of weaponry, these nimble combat walkers range ahead of the terrible shadow cast by larger Knights, picking off enemy outriders and guarding the flanks of their colossal masters. Among these vicious engines, War Dog Karnivores revel in causing bloody confusion and despair, and eschew more potent ranged weapons to seek the visceral thrill that only close-quarters slaughter provides.
A Lord Discordant is a machine-obsessed heretic who scuttles across the battlefield atop a Helstalker mount, all the while exuding a palpable aura of anarchy. His mere presence short-circuits machinery not already riddled with daemonic entities – actuators and servos whir erratically, and targeting augurs simply cease to function. The Lord Discordant siphons off the pained spirit of dying vehicles, using the harvested energy to reinvigorate other Daemon Engines or releasing it as a screaming beam to infect the systems of other enemy vehicles. The most famous among the Lords Discordant, Vex Machinator, brought anarchy to the hivesprawls of Vigilus during the War of Nightmares.
Vashtorr is the Soul Forge King, a daemonic demigod of unrestrained invention and abominable artifice. When the Arkifane takes physical form, it is as a horror of pallid flesh stretched over infernal mechanisms, soaring to battle amidst a cloud of lightning and smog. Vashtorr deals destruction with every whirring step, unleashing techno gheist curses upon his foes even as he fashions enhancements for his indentured daemon engines from the raw stuff of realspace.
The Typhon is named for the ‘Great Beast’ of Terran myth, and lives up to its namesake in sheer brutal strength. Sharing a basic chassis with the Spartan Assault Tank, this heavy tank serves as a mobile gun-platform with enough power to operate a single massive piece of siege artillery – the dreadhammer cannon. The Typhon was created to meet the demands of the Primarch Perturabo of the Iron Warriors, who sought a war engine that could rapidly deploy such fortress-breaking firepower to the battle line alongside his Legionaries. Though unsubtle in design, its overwhelming effectiveness is beyond question.
Stepping out from the fog of war come the Rubricae. Many of these undying warriors were psykers in their own right, before an ancient curse damned them to an eternity as living husks – their baroque power armour now contains nothing but sparkling dust.
The air screams as Magnus the Red descends from the skies, and stone runs molten beneath his shadow. Cyclopean son of the Emperor of Mankind, his very presence is anathema to logic.
Scarab Occult Terminators were once the finest psykers in the Thousand Sons Legion, bodyguards to Magnus the Red himself. Reduced to dust along with their brethren, they now possess only an echo of their previous intellect.
Twisted arcanists, wicked of intent and strange of form, Exalted Sorcerers have an encyclopædic knowledge of spells and are able to bend reality to their desires.
For ten thousand years Mortarion, Lord of the Death Guard, has crushed his enemies upon the field of battle.
Lord Invocatus is a master of swift raids, devastating counter-attacks, and relentless hit-and-run strategies. Also known as Khorne's Thunderbolt, this born marauder thunders through the air as if riding across solid ground, mounted on his massive juggernaut, Khal’guruth. Devoted above all to the Blood God's service, Lord Invocatus leads his warbands from one battlefield to the next with supernatural speed, seeking always to spill as much blood as he can.
Seen as especially blessed by the Dark Gods, the Knights Abominant are suffused with the power of the warp. They unleash this eldritch force in deadly waves, corrupting and mutating those nearby, and incinerating distant foes with blasts of volkite energy. In combat they thrash coiling, warp-wrought appendages, crushing anything that remains untainted.