Black Knights

Black Knights are the masters of the warriors who become Grave Guard: chieftains, champions, and petty kings of the Old World's deep past, buried mounted as they lived. Roused by the Counts' necromancy, they burst from their barrow-mounds in the panoply of forgotten courts, riding skeletal steeds that never tire, stumble, or slow. Their charge lands with the weight of old hatred behind ancient lance-points, and the mounds they leave empty are the truest map of Sylvania's strength.

The vampire aristocracy takes particular care with its Black Knights. Banners are restored, heraldries repainted, dead honors observed, for the wight lords answer pride as readily as magic, and a count who flatters their vanished grandeur commands a vanguard no living chivalry can match. When the Black Knights ride at the head of a Sylvanian host, the Empire's own knights understand they are being answered in their own language.