Kybanor

Kybanor commanded one of the great shield-companies of the Hykanatoi, and among a Legio of matchless warriors he was reckoned a master of the defensive art, a Custodian who had never yielded a threshold he had sworn to hold. He was a warrior of few words and fewer illusions, his judgement so trusted that Valdor set him where the fighting would be hardest and the ground most sacred. In the long vigil of the Great Crusade he had guarded reliquaries and gateways within the Palace that most of the Imperium did not know existed, and he had killed quietly and often to keep them inviolate.

When the traitors came to Terra, Kybanor held a bastion of the inner Palace against assault after assault, his shield-company thinning by the hour and never once giving way. He fought as the Legio was meant to fight (without haste, without waste, and without any thought of retreat), trading the lives of irreplaceable brothers only for hours the defence could not otherwise buy. Where Kybanor set his spear, the line did not move, and the enemy learned to break against him as waves break upon stone.