Knights Excubitor

The Knights Excubitor wear mirrored white armor and red capes. Their visors are featureless, revealing no face beneath. When escorting individuals, they march with highmatter swords active and held in both hands before their faces, the blue-white light of the blades gleaming. In formal procession they move at a goosestep, boots ringing against the floor in time with the Peronine Palace's great clock. They stand in formation flanking the Solar Throne in the Sun King's Hall. They accompany the Emperor at all times and attend private audiences, retreating to the shadows beneath the pillars while the Emperor speaks but advancing with raised swords if the Emperor shows anger, stopping only when the Emperor raises a finger. They are prepared to kill anyone they escort who makes a sudden move.

The Excubitors are speculated to be homunculi bred for loyalty -- their minds hobbled so that disloyalty is never a possibility -- which would explain why the Emperor employs them rather than relying solely on the demonstrably human Martian Guard. A comparison has been drawn to the Jaddian mamluks, clone soldiers bred to serve. When Emperor William XXIII appears via parallelized entanglement holographic projection to the Emperor's Grand Council, he is depicted seated on the Solar Throne flanked by Knights Excubitor bearing flaming swords.

The Knights Excubitor stand guard at the Sun King's Hall on Forum, flanking the Solar Throne during formal Imperial audiences. They escort individuals granted private audiences with the Emperor through the Peronine Palace, marching with highmatter swords active.

When Hadrian Marlowe disrupts the sacred protocol of the throne room and is subsequently granted a private audience, twenty Knights Excubitor escort him from the Sun King's Hall to the Emperor's water garden in the Peronine Palace. During a later private audience granted by Emperor William XXIII following the events at the Grand Colosseum, four Knights Excubitor stand guard in the hall outside the water garden while Hadrian waits, and attend the Emperor inside the garden itself during the meeting.

At the Emperor's Grand Council -- convened to address the combined Cielcin and Lothrian threats and attended by delegates from all major human polities -- the Emperor participates via holographic projection from the provinces. He is depicted on the Solar Throne beneath its graven arch, flanked by Knights Excubitor bearing flaming swords.

No individual Knights Excubitor are named. The order's members do not speak to those they escort.