Edgar Lorristan
Edgar Lorristan is a former knight-pilot of House Cadmus currently serving Explorator Sherax alongside the Vostroyan 103rd aboard the explorator's Ark Mechanicus vessel the Peregrinus.[1a]
History
Master Lorristan spent his noble-born youth engaging in glorious hunts though Raisa's mutant-infested wilderness. He fought in grand tournaments, in which his Knight Castigator's tempest warblade had dominated his peers' lesser machines. Bladequeen's scarlet honour pennant was presented to Edgar Lorristan by Baron Roland to commemorate his first independent command. Edgar had led three lances into the Angretus Crusade, and Bladequeen had taken the head of the renegade abomination in a duel he would remember until the end of his days.[1a]
A favored game of Edgar's is Regicide which he views as a test of skill for generals and statesmen. He was familiar with an assortment of other recreations, and several of the games of chance played by the serfs of Golem Keep, but he had never taken to them. He had no interest in the fall of dice or the luck of a draw.[1f]
Gryphonne IV
Aboard the carrack that had delivered Edgar and the Knights of House Cadmus to Gryphonne IV, he and his brothers had dined like the lords they were. The ship’s abattoir had kept their table piled high with grox and verdikine. Its wine casks had seemed bottomless, and the house’s sizeable caravan of bakers, pâtissiers, and courtesans had tended to their every concern.[1f]
Sir Edgar would fight on Gryphonne IV during it's murder by Hive Fleet Leviathan. While piloting Bladequeen, he'd be taken by surprise by a Carnifex thundering into his flank. Although the beast died with Bladequeen's warblade in its guts as its corpse leaked corrosive bile eating through the joints of her legs, held pinned beneath its bulk. Edgar would black out, succumbing to the phantom pain. Both his tibias would snap under psychostigmatic pressure, his mind’s way of making the Knight’s agony his own. Although he yearned for this honourable and well-earned death alongside his beloved steed, but it wouldn't be so.[1a] Banner Sergeant Belyev of the Blackbloods would pull Edgar from his throne.[1e]
The Vostroyan 103rd Firstborn regiment, the "Blackbloods" as they called themselves, found Edgar during their retreat and pulled him from his Throne Mechanicum. The neural shock of that disconnection alone should have been enough to kill him, but Edgar's luck had held. They had dragged him aboard the coffin ship of the Reaver Titan Atranis, huddling beneath the god-machine’s hunched, broken form as it escaped the hellscape that the forge world had become.[1a]
Once the coffin ship boarded the Peregrinus, Edgar would ask Explorator Talin Sherax not to relay the fact of his survival to Raisa out of shame and indignity of broken oaths from deserting Bladequeen in her final moments. Edgar had surrendered his honour and his title, and every casual reminder of his lost station cut the wound afresh. Even the ceremony had been a mockery, conducted in exile in a disused storage unit aboard the Peregrinus rather than the great hall of Golem Keep, under the judging eyes of his house. He couldn’t even subject himself to the proper rituals of defenestration, cut off from Raisa and the few Knights that had escaped the murder of Gryphonne IV.[1a]
Post Fall of Gryphonne IV
For 6 Terran years, or 3 Martian years, Edgar Lorristan would stay aboard the Peregrinus. Lorristan would continue to use his skills to pilot Vortigern, a Knight Armiger of House Cadmus that also escaped Gryphonne IV. Master Lorristan would look down on Vortigern in these years, describing it as a "bastard thing" that was "bellicose and jealous beast, seemingly unaware of its own inadequacy" and scorned her as a "peasant's steed". It was Edgar’s belief that the Armiger had been alone for too long, without the proper slave-link to a true knight to direct its actions and rein in its impulses. Even with his experience and noble-born instincts, Edgar struggled to bring Vortigern to heel, at times.[1a]
He would fight alongside the Vostroyans who also had no other options but to assist in Explorator Talin Sherax's vessel, the Peregrinus.[1a] Another member of House Cadmus stranded aboard the Peregrinus was Gregor Ormond, a man twice Edgar's age serving as Edgar and Vortigern's sacristan, as well as functionally Edgar's servant.[1b]
While piloting Vortigern, Edgar assist in the defence of the Explorator's staging post of the Mechanicus expedition into the ork infested space hulk known as Misery's Daughter.[1a] During Explorator Sherax's expedition to Ikaneos-Alpha, he would aid in the defense of against an ambush of Biel-tan Aeldari. Edgar and Vortigern would defeat 3 Wraith-Constructs assaulting the Vostroyan 103rd defending the expedition's landing ship.[1c] The battle's climax would consist of a duel between a Wraithknight, newly emerged from a Webway Gate, equipped with a Ghostglaive as long as the outmatched armiger's height. Edgar would defeat the large, black-clad Wraithknight at the expense of Vortigern's life and substantial psychstigmatic damage. Over the course of a few days Edgar would recover, regaining use of his limbs after suffering all the pain of Vortigern's death through their Helm Mechanicum.[1d][1e]
