Shadow of the Emperor

Shadow of the Emperor is a starship of the Raven Guard Legion that served as flagship of Corvus Corax during the Horus Heresy. As the command vessel of the Raven Guard fleet, it carried the Legion’s primarch and his senior officers through the opening campaigns of the galaxy-wide civil war that erupted following the primarch Horus’s turn to the Ruinstorm and the powers he came to serve.

The vessel is most closely associated with the aftermath of the Dropsite Massacre on Isstvan V, where the Raven Guard, together with the Salamanders and Iron Hands, were betrayed by erstwhile allies and suffered catastrophic losses. Shadow of the Emperor featured among the ships that succeeded in withdrawing survivors from the massacre, carrying Corvus Corax and the remnants of his shattered command away from the killing ground and beyond immediate pursuit by traitor forces.

In the period following the massacre, the ship served as a base of operations for the Raven Guard’s efforts to reconstitute their depleted ranks and continue resistance against the Warmaster’s forces, a phase of the Legion’s history most fully recounted in later fictionalised accounts of the era. It remained bound to Corvus Corax’s command for the duration of these operations, reflecting the primarch’s continued direction of the Legion from its decks.