Imperial Knights army rules, detachment abilities, stratagems and lore for Warhammer 40k, with links to the full unit datasheet table.
The Imperial Knights, or Questor Imperialis in High Gothic, are piloted robotic combat walkers of small to medium size in the service of the Imperium and sometimes the Adeptus Mechanicus.
Each Knight is piloted by a single Human warrior drawn from an ancient feudal aristocratic culture that stretches across the galaxy.
However, a Knight is smaller and less capable in combat than even the smallest class of true Titan utilised by the Collegia Titanica, the Warhound-class Scout Titan. Knights normally deploy in squadrons comprised of several of these war machines.
These ancient battlesuits stand thirty to forty Terran feet (9 to 12 metres) tall, are protected by nearly impenetrable Ion Shields and armed with a devastating array of heavy weapons.
Imperial Knights are colossal war machines that tower over the battlefield. They are propelled into battle by powerful servos and have the power to kick over tanks and crush soldiers into red paste.
Vulnerable limbs and joints are protected by sweeping armour plates of adamantium and supported by an incorporated Ion Shield which responds to the thought-commands of its Noble pilot. The presence of just one of these towering engines of destruction is enough to change the course of a battle, and only the Titans of the Adeptus Mechanicus are more feared by the enemies of Mankind.
Knights are not mere war machines, but relics from a lost age, armoured giants from a forgotten era. One does not drive such an heirloom -- it must be bonded with. Only a Noble from an ancestral knightly house may have such an honour.
During a strange and terrible rite known as the Ritual of Becoming, the Noble fuses their mind with the Machine Spirit of the Knight -- a union of flesh and metal. Only then can the Noble truly occupy the Throne Mechanicum -- the seat of control from which they use his mind to command the towering Knight.
Thousands of standard years before the rise of the Imperium, Mankind reached out to the stars and settled many far away worlds. Among the apparatus of colonisation were formidable war machines known as "Knights," which existed to protect the settlers from any threat.
The strongholds constructed from the remains of ancient Terran colony starships are ruled by the descendants of the first Human settlers of those far-flung worlds, mighty fighters who go to war in their towering armoured battlesuits and who are sworn to protect and guard the Imperial citizens who now inhabit their worlds.
These proud and haughty warriors can trace their bloodlines back to Terra itself and are colloquially known as "Nobles" or "Scions" in Imperial society and as the Questoris Familia in formal High Gothic.
Over the millennia, the pilots of these massive war suits have established a rich culture, Noble houses each sworn to the defence of their homeworld, bound by oaths of fealty to the Golden Throne of Terra and the Adeptus Mechanicus of Mars.
Knight armour comes in a wide variety of forms, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. The two most commonly seen types are the Knight Paladin and the Knight Errant. These both use the same basic body form, but are fitted with different weapon arrays. Each is well-liked for its balanced and deadly combination of manoeuvrability, protection and firepower.
All Imperial Knights are protected by thick adamantium armour and are fitted with powerful weapon systems. Usually, this entails two primary weapons, one attached to each of its "arms," which will be supplemented by a number of secondary weapon systems fitted to its body and shoulders.
The hand-forged armour that protects each Knight was crafted long ago, and elements such as the individual armour plates, helm or crests can therefore vary considerably depending on the skill of the artisan who made them.
Long before the rise of the Emperor and the birth of the Imperium, during the Age of Technology Humanity reached out to the stars, eager to occupy new worlds and expand its burgeoning interstellar empire.
Vast colonisation starships carried eager Human settlers, along with all the resources they might require, and landed on far-flung, often isolated worlds.
The first Knight Worlds were founded at the very start of the Age of Technology, when scouts from Terra travelled far through the galaxy seeking planets to use as agricultural worlds to provide food for Mankind's burgeoning population, or as mining colonies to provide the materials needed to fuel their expansion across the stars.
Indeed, the Knight Worlds had already been established for thousands of standard years when the Imperium was first founded in the 30th Millennium.
When those first Human scout ships discovered a suitable planet for colonisation, gigantic spacecraft were dispatched to settle them. These ships were part of Terra's Long March fleets, named after the duration of their voyage and their destination among the stars.
The name was apt; each of the Long March colony starships carried thousands of settlers on a solar decades-long journey to a far distant planet. Upon arrival, the colony ship would land and be immediately cannibalised by the colonists to provide the raw materials needed for their first settlements; there was no hope of return to Mankind's distant homeworld.
The struggle for survival on many of these worlds was grim. On some, the settlers found themselves the prey of vicious predators or were attacked by native alien races, which saw the Human settlers as invaders. On other worlds, extreme weather conditions or an unbreathable atmosphere made travel outside of domed habitat-zones next to impossible.
However, problems like these had been anticipated, and in order to deal with them, the settlers were supplied with Standard Template Construct (STC) databases and fabrication facilities that allowed them to build powered suits of exoarmour.
The pilots of these bipedal walking machines were protected by a hard shell of plasteel and armed with an array of military-grade heavy weapons. The suits proved invaluable: few, if any, natural predators or hostile alien warriors could stand against them, and they could travel through even the most dangerous environment with ease.
The towering armoured figures soon became a common sight on the colonies, where they were known as "Knights" by the settlers, after the legendary armoured warriors and protectors of ancient Terran history.
Compelled by the mind-altering effects instilled by the Thrones Mechanicum (a control platform that allows a pilot to interface with their Knight battlesuit), over the course of a few generations, these elite warriors gradually developed a society that evolved into the knightly houses.
The plasteel plates of the original exo-skeleton suits were slowly replaced with more ornate armour made from adamantium, providing better protection as well as a panoply befitting the wearer's prestige and rank in his society.
The more mundane duties that the Knights had once taken part in on the colony worlds -- logging with their mighty Reaper Chainswords, for example, or blasting apart rock ore with their rapid-fire Battle Cannons -- were delegated to those of lesser ranks, allowing the Knights to focus on the arts of war and governorship.
Dwelling in tall strongholds, the Nobles strove to protect the lives of their subjects (as they now saw the settlers they protected) and to bring order to the primeval maelstrom on the planets that were their homes.
Three types of Knights were introduced by Games Workshop in the 1990s: the Warden, Paladin and Lancer. The Wardens were defensive; armed with long-range heavy weapons and well-protected with thick armour. The Paladin was fitted with a ranged weapon and a close combat weapon. The Lancer had only a single major ranged weapon but was faster and more mobile than the other types. This range of Knights was later reworked in appearance and rules to "Paladin", "Errant" and "Lancer" types with the "Baron" as a superior command unit.
A number of Knights were included in the Titan Legions box set (Epic 40,000 2nd Edition) and also feature as a hidden extra in the Final Liberation game. With the advent of the Horus Heresy source books released by Forge World, the canon for the Imperial Knights, as well as the various classes that now comprise them, have been thoroughly rewritten and expanded upon.
Lore excerpt from Warhammer 40k Wiki on Fandom, available under CC BY-SA 3.0.
19 Imperial Knights datasheets on the current roster, each with its points, model statistics, keywords and abilities.
9 Imperial Knights datasheets that are no longer part of the current army roster. They are kept for reference and for players whose collections still contain the models.