Sentinel Guard

The Sentinel Guard carried the sentinel blade and the praesidium shield, and were most often entrusted with the defence of a fixed and sacred place: a threshold, a reliquary, or the person of a commander they had sworn to protect. Their long blades could loose a hail of shots or open a warrior from gorget to groin, while their shields turned aside blows that would fell a Dreadnought. In the close and desperate corridor-fighting that defined the Siege of Terra, the Sentinel Guard came into their own, holding chokepoints and stairways where numbers meant little and only skill and armour decided who lived. To pass them, an enemy had first to kill them, and few living things had ever managed that feat. They were the wall behind the wall, the last patient line before whatever they had been set to guard.