Vexilla of the Ten Thousand is the standard the Custodian Warden bears aloft, and the gang rallies on the sight of it. While friendly fighters are within 9" of the banner-bearer, they automatically pass Nerve tests, and once per battle each may re-roll a single failed Aegis guard made within that range. No son of the Emperor abandons the banner, and beneath it the line does not waver — the standard has flown over ten thousand years of unbroken war, steadying the demigods where a lesser force would break and turning aside a blow the Aegis alone would have let fall. The aura moves with the Warden, and the gang stands the firmer for the banner kept near the fighting; cut the Warden down and the standard falls with it, and the steadying quiet it lent the line goes silent.
Signatures4
The Aegis is the spine of the Talons of the Emperor — a master duellist's guard, carried by every Custodian and drawn from no pool. When this fighter is hit by an attack, once per round, the controlling player may make a Guard reaction: roll a D6, and on a 4 or higher the blow is turned aside and inflicts no Wound. The finest warrior alive parries the first stroke of every round as a matter of course.
The Aegis answers but a single blow each round. The second attack in the same round finds the gaps in the gold, and the third after it — one guard cannot cover a fighter beset from every side. A single demigod holds against a duel and a challenge, yet the way to fell a Custodian is to bury it under more attacks than one parry can turn: out-number the gold, and the blow the Aegis cannot answer is the blow that lands.
No Custodian fights alone. While two friendly Custodians are within 6" of one another, either may make an interpose reaction against an attack aimed at the other — stepping into the blow to take the hit in its brother's place, or throwing the attacker's aim off for -1 to the Hit roll. The same nearness steadies them: two Custodians within 6" re-roll failed Nerve tests, the line holding firm where a lone warrior might waver.
This is a matter of position, not a resource spent — no tokens, no pool, only the board read and the shield-brother kept close. The brotherhood of the Ten Thousand has never, in ten thousand years, left one of its own to fall unshielded, and a pair of demigods fighting back-to-back is worth more than the two of them counted apart.
The Silence is the null-maiden's gift and the sharpest edge the Talons carry against the witch. Every Sister of Silence is a Pariah — soulless, an absence in the warp that a psyker's sight cannot cross. While an enemy Psyker is within 9" of any Sister of Silence, that Psyker cannot use its Wyrd Powers, and should it strain to force one within the field, it suffers Perils of the Warp on any double.
The dead-zone walks. It moves with the Sister, costs nothing to hold, and needs no roll to maintain — a smothering quiet carried across the battlefield on a null-maiden's advance. Against a war-host that leans on its seers, its witch-cult or its brood-mind, the Silence simply switches the enemy's finest weapon off; against a force with no psyker to strangle, it hangs unused, a blade with nothing to cut.