Editing Knight Houses (Hektor Heresy) (section)

===History===

The Knights of Drăcul were one of many Knight Households seeded across the stars, though early on they distinguished themselves and showed the ambition they had. All Knight Households had ambitions, but most of those were internal, the struggle for supremacy within the Household. Drăcul however externalized that, making it into a struggle of the Household against the galaxy around them. The Knights of Drăcul were highly unified behind their Voivodes and Boyars and presented a united front against any foe, making them a dangerous enemy to face. From the Fortress Keep of Uhorsko on the mountainous planet of Olt-Argeş the Knights of Drăcul looked out enviously at the systems around them and harboured dreams of conquest. While that may have been as far as it would have gone, events soon fed that hunger and gave it life.

As the Age of Strife began to descend and planets began to fall out of communication with one another due to the rising tides of the Warp, the Knight Household seized the chance now offered to it. The nearby systems were shorn away from any defence and helpless before the Knights. Drăcul deliberately landed companies of Knights upon the neighbouring two systems of Debriesen and Molda under the pretence of ensuring they didn’t fall into anarchy. The power of the Knight Armours ensured that the worlds swiftly surrendered and let the representatives of Drăcul dictate terms to subsume those worlds to the rule of Olt-Argeş.

However though the conquests were almost entirely bloodless, the aftermath was far from it. The Knights did not make effective rulers, their neo-feudal system at odds with the political and cultural level of those newly annexed worlds and resistance soon developed, which drew ever increasing reprisals. Eventually the Knights of Drăcul began to impale those who resisted and displayed their bodies along the roadside of the roads leading into the capital cities as a warning. This finally broke resistance and Debriesen and Molda folded into the fray.

Thanks to the STC Machines the Knights had preserved and the influx of raw materials from the subjugated worlds, the Household expanded far beyond that of most Households existing at the time. Additional Holdfasts were established on each of the worlds ruled by Drăcul and Knights were drawn from the planetary nobles. This expansion fuelled the drive for conquest, and soon an entire army of Knights led by Voivode Radu assaulted the mining world of Bzura, routing the Planetary Militia and occupying the planet. This would be repeated multiple times as a cycle of conquest, consolidation and expansion overtook the Knight Household. The problems with Warp Navigation limited how far or fast the Household could move, but soon all the planets nearby feared the drop ships from beyond the stars and the armored engines of war they carried.

By the time of the Great Crusade the Empire of Olt-Argeş directly ruled nine planetary systems and indirectly a further five as tributaries, and House Drăcul could boast over six hundred line Knights, making it one of the largest Knight Households in the Galaxy. That empire was stable but subjugated, and harshly ruled. Death was the only penalty for any crime, regardless of class or station if a crime was committed the perpetrator was publically impaled for all to see. Resistance was crushed without mercy and entire towns would be razed if even a single member spoke out against the Knights.

Eventually the forces of the Great Crusade came into contact with this Empire and after discovering how the Knights ruled their worlds their continued dominance could not be tolerated, However the Household’s size and obvious martial prowess made it an attractive addition to the Imperium’s armed forces. So an envoy was dispatched to convince the Knights to join the Imperium, loosen the shackles of their Empire and join in the Great Crusade. However the ruling Voivode of Drăcul at the time, Voivode Laiotă would not countenance this. He would not see the Empire his ancestors had built be weakened or removed and he would not bow down before any warlord from the stars. He had the Imperial Envoy impaled and her body displayed on the highest peak of the Knight Fortress on Olt-Argeş. Retribution was swift as the Imperium dispatched an entire Legion Battlegroup to deal with the Knight Empire. Primarch Arelex of the War Scribes and over 40,000 of his Legion along with two dozen Titans of the Legios Osedax and Unceliga descended upon the realm of the Knights of Drăcul. Over half the Household, three hundred and seventy Knights were destroyed in battles on Bzura, Molda and Gardynia as the Empire was shorn away, the worlds freed from the rule of the Knights and incorporated into the Imperium. In the climactic battle on Debriesen Voivode Laiotă was killed by Arelex personally and the remaining Knights capitulated.

The Knights of Drăcul who once ruled an Empire of their own now found themselves subjugated to the Imperium. As penitence for their war with the Imperium, the entire  Household was dispatched out to the Great Crusade to earn the Imperium's forgiveness with the blood of its enemies. The STC Machines that had once allowed the Household to grow so large were removed and sent to Mars and their empire was stripped from them and made into free and independent worlds of the Imperium no longer subject to the harsh rule of Drăcul, though many of them still traded with Olt-Argeş for raw materials.

In the Crusade the Knights of Drăcul swiftly gained a reputation for coordinated assaults, unified teamwork and measured savagery. They were not as fractious as many other Knight Households, willing to work closely with allied forces and capable of executing highly complex battle plans with near perfect timing. However their methods were brutal. Many times on human worlds that resisted compliance Knights of Drăcul would impale enemy combatants onto the hulls of their Knights when they rode into battle to show the foe what the cost of defiance was. This brutality and their cold disdain for allies off the battlefield gave them a dread reputation, though few were ever willing to spurn the aid of the warriors of Drăcul and Warmaster Hektor in particular valued them and had an entire household detachment permanently seconded to his command.

However the Knights never gave up the dreams of their forefathers, of reclaiming their empire and gaining revenge for the wrongs the Imperium had heaped upon them. Most believed that they would regain their position with service to the Imperium and fought all the harder for it. But as the Crusade reached its finishing stages that dream began to fade. The worlds once claimed by Drăcul were now prosperous worlds of the Imperium and none would willingly subject themselves to the renewed rule of Olt-Argeş. At this time Voivode Vintilă was killed in action on Ullanor and his son Petru became Voivode. Petru had served alongside the Heralds of Hektor and was a known figure within the Legion, having been decorated by the Primarch Himself on several occasions. With Hektor recently made Warmaster, Petru planned to use his influence to raise the status of the Household and help regain much of what it had lost. Petru and a Household detachment of two dozen Knights rejoined the Heralds just before their visit to Cadia and when the Warmaster fell to the poison of Aubrey he offered the lords of Drăcul their empire back and the chance to regain their former glory if they joined him in rebelling against the Emperor. So the lords of Drăcul were the first Knights to fall, and time would give them a dark reputation unmatched among all the traitor Knight Households.