Here are some amazing examples of Contemptor dreadnought, found on the Internet. Please, mention the author in the comments below if you know that person.
A Contemptor Pattern Dreadnought is an ancient Imperial cybernetic combat walker used by the Space Marines in the days of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy, 10,000 Terran years before the present day. Like the current patterns of Dreadnoughts now in service, the Contemptor Pattern Dreadnought served as a cybernetic sarcophagus for an Astartes who had been so badly wounded in battle that his only chance for continued service to the Emperor lay in being interred within the cybernetic sarcophagus of a Dreadnought.
In the time of the Great Crusade, Dreadnought combat walkers primarily served as heavy assault units and highly mobile weapons support platforms for the Space Marine Legions. They were highly valued for their ability to endure under very heavy enemy fire and to operate in locations and theatres where traditional combat support vehicles would be impractical or downright impossible to use. The Contemptor-Mortis sub-pattern used the more advanced Contemptor chassis as a potent carrier of heavy weapons. It was able to target and destroy the foe at close range and was also outfitted with an advanced Helical Targeting Array that allowed it to provide a Space Marine spearhead force with close anti-air support when needed. During the last years of the Great Crusade, the Contemptor-Mortis sub-pattern was widely used by both the Dark Angels and Iron Warriors Legions, although it was used to some extent by all of the Astartes Legions during this era. Ten millennia later, there remain several Contemptor-Mortis Dreadnoughts that are still operational. They are revered both as potent relics of the Imperium's Golden Age and as powerful weapons by those few Space Marine Chapters lucky enough to still possess them. The Contemptor-Mortis differs from the standard pattern Contemptor Dreadnought only in being outfitted with 2 Twin-linked Heavy Bolters and Smoke Launchers as a standard weapon load-out and in the integration of a Helical Targeting Array that allows the Dreadnought to unleash its heavy weapons as dedicated anti-aircraft support.
The standard Contemptor Pattern Dreadnought is outfitted with a Twin-linked Heavy Bolter attached to one arm and a massive Dreadnought Close Combat Weapon on the other with a built-in Storm Bolter. Smoke Launchers complete the standard weapons load-out. A Contemptor's standard weapons complement can be replaced with a number of different weapons to suit different tactical needs, including a Multi-melta, a Twin-linked Heavy Flamer, a Twin-linked Autocannon, a Plasma Cannon, a Kheres Pattern Assault Cannon, a Twin-linked Lascannon, a power-leeching Heavy Conversion Beamer, and a Chainfist with a built-in Storm Bolter. A Contemptor can replace its built-in Storm Bolter with a Heavy Flamer, a compact, Dreadnought-sized Plasma Blaster or an ancient Graviton Gun. It can be outfitted with extra Ceramite Armour Plating, a Searchlight, a carapace-mounted Cyclone Missile Launcher and an advanced Targeting Augury cogitator system to increase the accuracy of its ranged weapons arrays. All Contemptor Dreadnoughts are protected by advanced Atomantic Shielding which generates a protective gravitic shield around the walker using an advanced Atomantic power core and which provides greater protection from both ranged and melee attacks for the walker. However, when damaged, the Atomantic power generator can overload and result in a devastating miniature atomic explosion which can badly damage nearby allied units.
Some rare examples of Contemptor Pattern Dreadnoughts have been known to carry strange and singular weapons that find their origins in the Dark Age of Technology such as the Kheres Pattern Assault Cannon, which is considered by some Imperial savants of the techno-arcane to be the forerunner of the Terminators' Assault Cannon, compact Plasma Blasters capable of being fitted to the carapace of a Dreadnought and Gravity Flux Weapons like the Graviton Gun whose secrets were ultimately lost during the civil war between the sects of the Adeptus Mechanicus known as the Schism of Mars at the outset of the Horus Heresy.
A more powerful combat walker than the current patterns of Dreadnought in service with the Adeptus Astartes in the late 41st Millennium, the Contemptor Pattern Dreadnought featured many technological systems that found a parallel in the combat robots of the ancient Legio Cybernetica, including such fabled techno-arcana as Atomantic Field Generator technology that would later be refined and incorporated into the Storm Shields used by Space Marine Terminators and other, now-lost, secrets from the Dark Age of Technology that were meshed with the Contemptor's basic systems. Another interesting aspect of the Contemptor Pattern was the design of the Dreadnought's head. The oversized metal helm possessed the precious cargo of sensor nodes and visual Auspex and pict-finders linked to the foetal corpse curled deeper within. The Contemptor was fashioned with the simulacrum of a head to focus its pilot's awareness forwards. It helped to create an impression within the corpse's neurological sensory input/output that it was still alive, for it saw the outside world just as it had seen it in life: from a human perspective, albeit from a much taller vantage point than in the wounded Astartes' previously organic form.
During the height of the Great Crusade, the Contemptor served alongside the standard Mars Pattern Mark IV and Mark V Dreadnoughts as a spearhead unit for the Legiones Astartes. During the Horus Heresy and the wars that followed in its wake like the Great Scouring, they bore the brunt of the fighting by Dreadnoughts in every theater and as a result suffered the heaviest losses. Like so many of the Imperium's most advanced and sophisticated war-fighting technologies, the ability to manufacture and maintain the Contemptor Dreadnought was essentially lost in the chaotic aftermath of the Heresy. The few of these relics that remain in service in the 41st Millennium are incredibly rare pieces of archeotech even in comparison to their fellow Dreadnoughts. But when they take to the field, it is as a living reminder of the Golden Age of the Imperium when the Emperor still walked amongst Mankind, and the foes of humanity tremble at the sight of its ancient glory.
The Contemptor Pattern Dreadnought has an uneasy reputation as a result of the dark and strange history of this walker within the ancient Space Wolves Legion which was woven into the sagas and legends of the present day Space Wolves Chapter. The Contemptor was never as numerous within the Space Wolves as it was in some of the other Space Marine Legions of the Great Crusade era as they favoured the Mars Pattern Mark IVs and Mark Vs due to their robust natures and ease of repair. The Space Wolves' Contemptor Dreadnoughts developed a reputation within the Legion for engaging in excess on the battlefield and unwarranted savagery that stained the character of those interred within the Dreadnought's armoured carapace. This infamy became a form of self-fulfilling prophecy in some cases as the superstitious Iron Priests of the Chapter began to inter only elite fallen Astartes who already possessed sagas relating deeds darker than most of their peers in pursuit of the foe. As a result, the few Contemptor Pattern chassis that survived the Fall of Prospero and the heavy losses the Chapter sustained during the Wars of Apostasy of the 36th Millennium still serve, but are always looked upon as troublesome and ill-omened allies at best by the Astartes of the Great Companies. They are valued for their great prowess in combat and always afforded the respect that all Dreadnoughts are due, but are never fully trusted as is normally the due of such living ancients amongst the Get of Russ.
Space Wolves Contemptor Pattern Dreadnoughts are essentially identical to the standard variant of this Dreadnought pattern save for the addition of Smoke Launchers and some morale-building wargear that is unique to the Astartes of the Space Wolves, such as Wolftail Talismans and Wolftooth Necklaces that are derived from the massive, semi-sentient Fenrisian Wolves. Additionally, unlike in other Chapters, the few Contemptor Pattern Dreadnoughts left to the Space Wolves are infamous war engines whose stories are filled with ill-omens, blood and death. As such, these Dreadnoughts are defined by three special sagas that shape the personalities of the warriors within these Ceramite behemoths
Contemptor Pattern Dreadnoughts were always held as a most precious resource by those Chaos Space Marine warbands fortunate enough to possess them. The nightmarish intellects of the warsmiths of the Traitor Legions fashioned daemonic replacements for those technological systems of the Contemptor Dreadnoughts that they no longer possessed the skills or the materiel to replicate. Unable to maintain the Contemptor's original arcane armaments in exile, the Dark Magos replaced them with occult weapons of diabolical design, forged in blood and suffused by daemonic force, such as the Soul Burner which unleashes explosive blasts of daemonic force that devours the souls of its victims, and the Butcher Cannon, a heavy calibre rotary gun whose shells are bound with daemonic runes of anathema and bloodletting to increase their penetrating power and murderous toll. Another notable piece of forbidden Chaotic technology incorporated within a Chaos Contemptor is the replacement of its standard Atomantic power generator with a Warp-infused Hellfire Reactor that charges its armoured carapace to provide a preternatural resilience and also serves as a hungry vortex for the soul-stuff of those it has killed. Enemy psykers are particularly vulnerable to its relentless hunger. The cost for this boon, however, is the lost of the advanced Atomantic Shielding used by the original Contemptor Pattern Dreadnought.
The Blood Angels Contemptor Dreadnought is largely identical to the standard Contemptor with only a few key differences. The Blood Angels variant is optimised for close assault combat and so replaces the standard Contemptor's weapons load-out with two Blood Fists (Blood Angels variants of the Power Fist) with built-in Storm Bolters and Smoke Launchers. It can replace its Blood Fists with Blood Talons (Blood Angels variants of Lightning Claws) and can also make use of a carapace-mounted Magna-Grapple. Unfortunately, like all Blood Angels Astartes, the Space Marine within this Dreadnought can still fall victim to the Chapter's Flaw known as the Black Rage.
