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.
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.
Haarken Worldclaimer takes a heinous joy in his role as the mouthpiece of Abaddon, for it is he who proclaims the death of worlds. He does so not with some quotidian threat or hollow boast, but by driving his weapon, the Daemon-touched Helspear deep into the heart of citizen and soldier alike. He is a dark omen given form, and the otherworldly destruction he heralds is the coming of the Warmaster himself.
Far more advanced than the other Imperial craft which it resembles, the Corvus Blackstar is truly worthy of ferrying a Deathwatch Kill Team to their brutal mission.
Secretive and mysterious, Watch Masters are revealed on the battlefield as incomparable leaders. With their innate understanding of tactics and strategy, they assess the unclean enemy hordes in an instant, picking out weaknesses and directing their Kill Teams with clipped, precise orders.
Organised into small, elite companies plucked from Space Marine Chapters that have pledged a tithe of their strength in the struggle against the xenos, the Deathwatch counts only heroes amongst its ranks.
The elite amongst the elite, carefully selected and recruited for their exceptional abilities, the Deathwatch are a thin black line, a sentinel that stands between the Imperium and alien threats unimaginable.
The Chaos Space Marines go to war armed with corrupted versions of the already-potent weapons and wargear they used as loyal warriors of the Imperium. They're accompanied by foul daemons, twisted war engines, and hordes of cultist thralls.
Dark Communes are the pooling evil at the head of any Chaos Cult, led by Cult Demagogues who preach insidious mantras cunningly laced with promises of power. These infernal priests command a retinue of devoted followers – the fanatical Blessed Blades, tasked with guarding against interlopers, the Iconarchs, who carry foul sigils infused with malefic influence, and Mindwitches, unsanctioned psykers whose powers comes at a terrible cost.
Chaos Cultists are the mortal devotees of the Dark Gods, ordinary men and women fallen to promises of temporal power who take to battle in huge numbers. Bearing a motley collection of improvised, stolen and makeshift weapons, they can overwhelm even determined enemies with sheer weight of numbers.
Warbands of the Chaos Space Marines are more often than not motley assortments of Heretic Astartes, grisly mutants, their cultist thralls. The pitiless masters callously spend the lives of the mortal warriors to buy time for the more valuable Heretic Astartes while simultaneously offering those very same Chaos Space Marines to host the Daemons of the warp.