[File Fragment:: ‘Knights of the Scouring’//Date:: Unknown//Provenance:: Unknown] 

Vae Hostia, the destroyer knight, last scion of House Edelweiss

It is a disheartening fact that, in delving into the histories of the Great Crusade, the new reality of our mournful present, in which Terra still burns from the Warmaster’s spent wrath, unavoidably changes the glories of the past, and looking back we do not find the testament to the ages we sought to leave behind. Salutary lessons, and losses great and small abound. Take, for instance, the ‘Tragedy of House Edelweiss’ of the Imperial Questoris: All that may now remain of that once great house is the forlorn Cerastus Knight Castigator, and so-called ‘Freeblade’, known as Vae Hostia, ‘The Woe Waif’.

Anecdotal evidence recovered from the devastated and ash-caked archives of the Remembrancer orders on [Redacted], suggest that a machine bearing her Mechanicum ident may once have been gifted to a, now extinct, House of the Imperial Questoris, one of the first to participate in the early, catastrophic campaigns which would see their bloody and costly conclusion in the tumult of the Third Rangdan Xenocides and the fall of both [Redacted] and eventually [Redacted], long before the treachery of the Warmaster.

Corrupted heraldic ledgers painstakingly pieced together from the [Redacted] Legion’s order of battle, in particular, note the heraldry of a House Edelweiss as being, “an escutcheon à bouche featuring a single, stylised bloom of Leontopodium Nivale [cf.: Terran, Plantae, Order Asterales, Family Asteraceae – Extinct] on a field of Os, attended (Dexter) by Pica Pica [cf.: Terran, Animalia, Order Passeriformes, Family Corvidae – Extinct],  helmed by a Ceratus Knight Castigator. Plates are often ‘party per pale’ featuring the sable of the Imperial Questoris, however, the High Queen is given to include additional armorial embellishments in purpure.”

Fragmentary conveyance schedules, originally destined for the Martian Priesthood and recovered from the wreckage of Iapetus, suggest that at some point prior to 890.M30, the ill-fated Knight found herself orphaned at the siege of [Redacted] and cast aside by the forces of the Ist Legion as they pushed onwards towards the cataclysm which would see 50,000 of their number extinguished in one of the harshest campaigns of the Great Crusade. How she alone survived the disaster at [Redacted] which claimed her peers, and why she was not returned to [Redacted], the world of her birth and House Edelweiss itself (still extant at this time), remains a matter of some conjecture [cf.: Azure-Locus-CI-yAlpha – Status: Tallied].

Subsequent armorial analysis of what limited hololiths exist of the military engagements from the time of her apparent orphaning, appear to show a machine marked with the Leontopodium Nivale and other, archaic motifs, operating in the Ghoul Stars, but in livery bearing a striking similarity to that of infamous Destroyer cadres of the XIVth Legion, before their ill-fated reunion with their Primarch in 885.M30 and their taking up of the green of Barbarus.

Uncorroborated accounts, drawn from the later testimony of loyalist Black Shields claiming XIVth Legion provenance, do place her fighting alongside the Dusk Raiders in several engagements in the years prior to the rediscovery of the Primarch Mortarion, attended by two Moirax outriders referred to as ‘The Sorrow and The Joy’. Indeed, it was not an uncommon practice during the attrition of the Great Crusade for orphaned units to be bonded to their immediate Legion overlords rather than endure the bureaucratic processes necessary to reconstitute and return shattered elements to working order under the auspices of their world of origin, and this may go some way to explaining why a remnant of the Questor Imperialis is noted as being served by Armiger-class Knight Armours, usually reserved for houses aligned with the Martian Mechanicum.

What became of Vae Hostia later, when Mortarion took his legion to Istvaan, and where she lies now, are simply some of the many mysteries still being sifted from the ashes of the Warmaster’s treachery, but uncorroborated reports and strange sightings of a war machine bearing similar livery, attended by strange mortuary servitors and flanked by two lesser machines, continue to persist to this day.

Of House Edelweiss itself, it is well-documented that its scions continued fighting for the Loyalist cause throughout the Horus Heresy, often as attendants to Legio Crucius, right up until their fall at the doomed relief of [Redacted] – Indeed, so bitter was the fighting and so pivotal their role in ensuring the escape of Legio Crucius assets and their Secutarii guard, that in the aftermath of the battle, the Warmaster, in his anger, personally despatched a reprisal force to [Redacted], deploying the heretek abomination [Redacted] and utterly annihilating their homeworld.

[File Fragment Ends:: Transmit all materials to Prefecture Magisterium]