Ebon Keshig

The Ebon Keshig were the Khan's guard made manifest in Terminator war-plate, the dark counterpart to the golden riders and, by grim tradition, sworn to silence in the presence of their primarch. Clad in heavy Cataphractii armour lacquered black, they went where jetbikes could not, into the choking corridors of a boarding action, the breach of a fortress wall, the last defence of a failing line, and there they were all but unstoppable.

To earn a place among them a warrior surrendered his voice while under arms, letting his deeds speak in place of any boast. This vow lent the Ebon Keshig an eerie, funereal presence upon the battlefield, a wall of black ceramite that advanced without word or war-cry and left only the dead in its wake. During the Heresy they formed the immovable anchor of the Legion, the point around which the swift brotherhoods wheeled and struck.