Ancient Rylanor

Ancient Rylanor is a Contemptor-pattern Dreadnought of the Emperor’s Children Legion, noted for his defence at Isstvan V during the Horus Heresy. The honorific “Ancient” denotes a Dreadnought pilot of long service and standing, interred within the war machine after grievous injury in earlier campaigns of the Great Crusade. By the time of the Heresy, Rylanor was among the oldest active members of his Legion, his record predating the wider galaxy-spanning compliance efforts of which the Emperor’s Children had been a part.

Following the Istvaan III Atrocity, in which loyalist elements of several Legions were gathered under pretence of suppressing a rebellion and then subjected to virus bombardment by forces loyal to Warmaster Horus, surviving loyalists were drawn onward to Isstvan V. There, in what came to be known as the Dropsite Massacre, traitor Legions turned upon the loyalist Legions that had answered the summons. Amid the collapse of the loyalist position, Rylanor is recorded as having held a defended position, most often described as an embarkation point or corridor aboard a departing vessel, against pursuing traitor forces, so as to delay them while other survivors withdrew.

Rylanor’s stand at Isstvan V is remembered in accounts of the battle as emblematic of the loyalist resistance mounted against overwhelming odds during the Dropsite Massacre, and as an illustration of the endurance associated with the Contemptor pattern of Dreadnought chassis. His ultimate fate following the engagement is variously recorded, and later tradition holds differing accounts of whether he was destroyed in the action or left inert amid the wreckage of the drop zone.