Grey Knights

I am the hammer! I am the hate! I am the woes of daemonkind!

Series by Ben Counter about the titular Grey Knights chapter of Space Marines. It follows the exploits of Justicar Alaric and his squad battling various daemonic and chaotic enemies of the Imperium.

The series currently encompasses three novels: Grey Knights, Dark Adeptus, and Hammer of Daemons, which have since been collected in an omnibus.

Please resist the urge to put examples on this page or link to this page on tropes unless you are citing from 40K novels in which the Grey Knights feature. Examples which are specific to rulebooks or other in-universe fluff should go on either the 40K page or in the Space Marines section of the Warhammer 40000 page.

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Tropes used in Grey Knights include:

• Badass Creed - The Canticle of Absolution is pretty long (666 words, to be precise), so different parts get quoted throughout the novels.

I am the Hammer! I am the Hate! I am the woes of Daemonkind!

• • The fandom has produced several approximations, though this one at least is a few words too short.
• Blade on a Stick: All Grey Knights are armed with Nemesis force weapons that are charged with their psychic energy. There are customised Nemeses, but the standard issue one is a force halberd with a built-in boltgun designed to complement the compact stormbolter worn on the other arm.
  • Older editions had the stormbolter built into the force-halbered itself.
• Bling Bling Bang: See below. Not only their armor is blingy, but their guns as well.
• Bling of War: While Grey Knights don't paint their armor at all, sporting a grey gleam of a polished ceramite (a rarity among Space Marines), they more than enough make for it with various purity seals, sacred engravings, votive chains, blessed skull ornaments, holy unguents and other bling to end as one of the more fabulous chapters. And the funniest thing here is that it all works.
• Church Militant: Not exactly church, as they are formally allied with Ordo Malleus of Inquisition, which is formally a secular organisation, but still the one of the most pious and religion-heavy chapters. In fact, they even view their piety as a weapon.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: They are called Grey Knights for a reason -- it's the color of unpainted ceramite of their armor, which they just polish to a high sheen to show off their pureness. And to drive the point home they use a lot of gold trimmings and snow-white cloaks as accessories.
• Demonic Possession: Averted. No Grey Knight has ever fallen to Chaos even though every one of them are psychics (and thus especially vulnerable to it).
• Demon Slaying: Exactly What It Says on the Tin -- it's their job description. They slay various Daemons of the Warp for The Emperor.
• Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: As they are specialist chapter geared to fighting Daemons, their armory fully reflects this and includes all the manners of anti-Daemonic weaponry, including literal Holy Water-charged bolter shells.
• Determinator: One of the premiere examples in the setting. Only Black Templars, Blood Angels (during the Black Rage) and Necrons might be consistently in the same league. It's also noted that Inquisitors, while not in the same league, are also much stronger-willed than most folks.
• Elite Mooks: You can hardly get more elite than that, after all said.
  • When your Primarch is possibly the Emperor himself...
  • This is even discussed in the codices and comes into play on the tabletop. It is entirely possible to end up fielding only fifteen models. This will not stop them from carving through several times that number, but if somebody gets lucky with his lasgun it's going to hurt you a lot more than it would with a different army.
• Everything's Better with Monkeys: Their new Codex allows you to field Jokaeros, super-intelligent (though strangely enough non-sapient, thereby circumventing the Imperium's anti-alien policies by being counted as livestock) orangutan-like aliens (bioengineered by the same Abusive Precursors who made the Orks and Eldar, incidentally) who wear special rings that shoot lasers, masers and fire. In fact it's possible to take nothing but laser apes if you have Inquisitor Coteaz as your commander.
• Forever War: Uncounted trillions have died since the Emperor ascended to his Golden Throne, but the Imperium has endured for ten thousand years.
• He Knows Too Much: The Grey Knights' existence is kept secret from most of the Imperium, and if they are ever forced to fight alongside other Imperial forces, they erase the evidence either through executions or Laser-Guided Amnesia.
• Hopeless War: They are 1000 super soldiers versus an infinite number of immortal Eldritch Abominations, the most powerful of which are Demi-Gods who can shape entire worlds to their will. Add human allies that number in the billions, and you can start to see the problem.
• Humans Are Warriors: Very few beings in the galaxy can go toe to toe with a Grey Knight.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Basically their whole schtick. They're so incorruptible that not one of them ever fell to Chaos. Of course, the way they achieved such honor was... Well, it's 40K after all.
  • This has been retconned in the fifth edition codex to where the Grey Knights are naturally immune to Chaos and they can casually get away with using chaotic texts and harbouring corrupt items without risk or retribution from the Inquisition. They will turn a blind eye to Inquisitors that turn up to battle with a dozen daemonhosts and carrying daemon weapons. They're also now known for freely making deals with aliens, and slaughtering loyal servants of the Emperor (resilient Sisters of Battle, to be precise) to smear their armour with their blood in order to defeat an artefact of the blood god Khorne.
    • The latter part was one of the most reviled by fans things ever done by Matt Ward ­- which says something, because there was nothing done by Matt Ward and not loudly reviled by at least some fans. So it was retconned away. Note that in the novels, quoth 1d4chan -

Seeing as this was written by a much more competent author, unlike the ambiguous piece of shite-fluff written by a certain "spiritual liege", both sides figure out that this was part of an elaborate case of JUST AS PLANNED, they stop fighting [...] and team up to take down the Big Baddy.

• Initiation Ceremony: Fairly standard for more pious chapters, but the preparations for it, and especially tests the aspirants get subjected to are such that hardly anything could be compared to it for sheer unpleasantness -- see The Spartan Way below.
• Magic Knight: They are the only Space Marines chapter to consist entirely of psykers. And in 40K that's basically bad, as it makes you much more prone to The Corruption. However they are so Badass, that it doesn't matter much to them, making them even more Cursed with Awesome than any other psyker.
• Mercy Kill: Their motive for killing civillians in daemon infestations. Given its 40k, their logic isn't that insane.
• Mini-Mecha: With the coming new army book, I give you the Nemesis Dreadknight!
• Number of the Beast: The Initiation Ceremony of a new aspirant include 666 Rites of Emperor -- psychic tests explicitly compared to Mind Rape, that most testees fail -- either by subjecting to Chaos, or simply going insane.
  • The Grey Knights are also Chapter Number 666, of (an estimated) 1,000..
• The Paladin
• Space Marine
• The Spartan Way: Grey Knights is one of the (if not the) chapter with the strictest selection procedure among the loyalist Marines -- and that's before any psychic tests begin -- see Number of the Beast entry. And after that the aspirants' memories are flushed to ensure that they don't have any attachments the Chaos could exploit as weak points, which also leads to a fairly high number of subjects going insane. In short, the rejection rate among the aspirants would make Fabius Bile proud.
• Story-Breaker Power - The entire chapter as of the fifth edition codex. Both terms of fluff and game rules.
• Superpowered Mooks: See Magic Knight entry. Psykers are common among Space marines, but no other chapter consists solely of them.
• Super Soldier: Rather self-evidently.
• Who You Gonna Call?: The first number you should remember when there's a Daemon in your backyard. Not that their arrival would make things much better, but at least you would have chance to Die As Yourself, instead of a terrible Chaos monstrosity.
  • Actually they're the last.
    • Given the Imperium's penchant for covering up their existence either by mind wiping or plain executing those who've encountered the Grey Knights, it's a safe bet that if somebody with the authority to call them in is involved, things have already gone horribly downhill.

Tropes connected with the Book trilogy are:

• Ancestral Weapon: Grand Master Mandulis's sword.
  • Interesting in that it turns out that the sword was needed to revive a daemon and was subsequently destroyed.
• Anyone Can Die: Even "veterans" like Haulvarn can get killed off.
• Arc Words: "Survival is not Enough."
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Duke Venalitor.
• Badass Creed: As Justicar Alaric said:

"We do not know what our chances of survival are, so we fight as if they were zero. We do not know what we are facing, so we fight as if it was the dark gods themselves. No one will remember us now and we may never be buried beneath Titan, so we will build our own memorial here. The Chapter might lose us and the Imperium might never know we existed, but the Enemy -- the Enemy will know. The Enemy will remember. We will hurt it so badly that it will never forget us until the stars burn out and the Emperor vanquishes it at the end of time. When Chaos is dying, its last thought will be of us. That is our memorial -- carved into the heart of Chaos. We cannot lose, Grey Knights. We have already won."

• BFS: Duke Venalitor has one of these.
• The Blacksmith: There's one of these in Hammer of Daemons, implied to be ex-Salamander.
• Bloody Murder: Duke Venalitor can weaponise shed blood as prehensile tendrils.
• Body Surf: Magos Antigonus manages to do this thanks to some Lost Technology.
• Breath Weapon: Lord Ebondrake, taking the form of a large dragon, can breathe black flame.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Averted in Dark Adeptus, where a villain holds Alaric a distance from an active fusion reactor, causing him to start toasting.
• Despair Event Horizon: Some Guardsmen are mentioned as having "finally lost the will" when they think Alaric has fallen to Chaos.
• Dodge the Bullet: Ligeia's death cultists do this.
• Drop the Hammer: Dvorn's Nemesis weapon.
• Dual-Wielding: Alaric briefly wields both an axe and a hammer simultaneously in Hammer of Daemons, though he's not the only one.
• Due to the Dead: Alaric insists on going to where Ligeia died to pray for her soul.
• Enemy Civil War: Alaric incites this between the Draakasi Chaos lords in Hammer of Daemons.
• Enemy Mine: The first novel briefly mentions the underhive gangs of Volcanis Ultor uniting to fight a gang of Chaos followers.
• Faceless Goons: Shows up sometimes, with the Mechanicus tech-guard in Dark Adeptus receiving a Lampshade Hanging.
• Feed the Mole
• Five Rounds Rapid: Alaric is aware that even bolter shells aren't much good against St. Evisser reanimated. Before him, there was Grand Master Mandulis, who recognised the futility of using his storm bolter against Ghargatuloth's physical body.
• Foe-Tossing Charge
• Genius Bruiser: Alaric is one, if only in comparison to his fellow Space Marines.
• Gladiator Games
• Gladiator Revolt
• Go Mad from the Revelation: The Balurians from the first novel don't take seeing the tomb of St. Evisser well.
• Guile Hero: Alaric ascends to this after his plan to defeat the Chaos Lords of Drakaasi succeeds.
• Healing Factor: The Grey Knights have better-than-human regeneration, though severe stuff still needs an apothecary. The Father of Titans from Dark Adeptus has a self-repair mechanism too.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Alaric expresses this concern to Nyxos after his escape from Drakaasi.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Valinov does this by killing Riggensen, who broke him, with the execution device meant for him originally.
• I Know Your True Name: Ligeia babbles Ghargatuloth's True Name, which is picked up and used by Alaric.
• Kick the Dog: Alaric spouts stolid Knight Templar dogmatisms from time to time to remind us that he's not a "pure white" hero.
• Kill'Em All
• Last Request
• Last Stand
• Let's You and Him Fight: The end result of Valinov's taking advantage of the Grey Knights' secrecy and unknown status in order to paint them as Chaos Marines.
• Licking the Blade: Mentioned in passing as done by some priests of Khorne.
• Lightning Bruiser: The Grey Knights, though they're far from the only ones.
• Losing Your Head: Happens to Thalassa.
• Lost Technology: How Magos Antigonus survives, as well as the Father of Titans.
• The Mole
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Various Techpriests in Dark Adeptus, Skarhaddoth and other Chaos beasties in Hammer of Daemons.
• Neck Lift: The Chaos Marine Urkrathos does this to Rear Admiral Horstgeld in Dark Adeptus. The former explicitly circles the latter's neck with his fingers. Duke Venalitor also does this.
• Never Found the Body: Defied in Grey Knights, where the Inquisition lands the GK redemptor force on Khorion IX specifically because they need eyes on the ground to see Ghargatuloth die.
• Not Quite Dead: Magos Antigonus in Dark Adeptus.
• Off with His Head: How Tancred kills St. Evisser reanimated.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Lord Ebondrake takes the form of one.
• Out of the Inferno: The Knights did this against burning fuel in the first novel, while Lord Ebondrake's Ophidian Guard do this thanks to their armour being proof against his Breath Weapon.
• Praetorian Guard: The Ophidian Guard.
• Pride
• Red Right Hand: Inverted in the first novel, where the Allking of Sophano Secundus and his retainers pass for normal at first and only reveal their Chaos taint after they are rumbled.
• Right Hand Versus Left Hand: The secrecy of the Grey Knights is used to rouse other Imperial troops against them by Valinov.
• Shrouded in Myth: The Grey Knights are secretive and unknown even by the standards of other Space Marines, which Valinov from the first novel uses against them.
• Taking the Bullet: One of Ligeia's death cultists takes a plasma blast for Valinov.
  • Earlier in the same book, another of them does this for Ligeia herself.
• Uncanny Valley: An eldar is described as falling into the valley. He did turn out to be a dark eldar mandrake, so perhaps this isn't so surprising.
• Voice of the Legion: Raezazel the Cunning has this.
• War for Fun and Profit: The Castigator claims that this is his motivation.
• Xanatos Roulette: Ligeia's Face Heel Turn was a painful risk to learn Ghargatuloth's true name and hope that Alaric would trust her enough to not discount the supposed gibberish she kept saying when she was questioned, and then to use that name to weaken the Daemon Prince enough to be able to kill him. You'll actually be able to guess that she never really turned on them if you remember how Ligeia described her death cultists' beliefs and devotions.