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I know this is re-hashing an old post but I just found this and thought I'd share it with you. The 'Blood Swords' a Codex Astartes compliant Space Marines legion have a Dreadnought Chapter Master.
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Blood_Swords

Dreadnoughts have a bad case of Alzheimers.

Alot of fluff for dreads is that they get harder and harder to fully awaken the longer they have been interred in said dread. They don't really ever say why this is but like every here has said it just takes a toll on the mind.

I know from the Word Bearers books that the Warmonger is pretty sane for a chaos dread, but he also thinks he is still fighting in the great crusade.

But yeah Space Wolves have Bjorn the Fel Handed as an HQ option.

If you wanted to play an entire force of dreads, it would have to be unbound but background wise you could say that there was a massive campaign where like 3 chapters were brought in. They took massive losses and had to make a dreadnought spearhead to take down the enemy base or something like that.

Bjorn is a special case plus only woken up for extreme cases ie the months of shame, or his every few hundred year typo check om the sagas.

and he is said to feel a powerful cold disappointment and anger, being left behind by Russ so kind of keeps him grounded and able to survive so long in a good state of mind. his is also noted as one of the most advanced ever built, rare even when they understood the tech to a far greater level.

helping in maintaining his long watch over his chapter.

Being interred in a dreadnought does a couple of things to you.

For one, you loose all your human senses. If not for the fact that a space marines brain is already conditioned to neural interfacing (due to the black carapace), he would likely just go crazy once awakened. Everything you know about the world around you is gone. You cant smell, taste, hear, or feel anything. Sight might still be a thing but that could be gone as well. All your sense's are replaced with digital augmetics and cyberHUD.

This causes either massive confusion (to a weaker willed individual) or detachment from everything you experience.

Secondly, they are often placed into sleep mode for decades and centuries at a time. This is almost akin to a form of time travel (albeit only forward in time). If you were not completely mentally prepared when you were put to sleep, you would wake up in a daze and unsure about "when" you were awakened last assuming this had happened to you more than once or twice before.

Thirdly, your organic parts that remained would slowly degrade. It's a large life support system, not a stasis pod. Time effects the body slower, since there is less wear and tear, but even a space marines body ages and wont last forever.

 Eihnlazer wrote:
they are often placed into sleep mode for decades and centuries at a time. This is almost akin to a form of time travel (albeit only forward in time). If you were not completely mentally prepared when you were put to sleep, you would wake up in a daze and unsure about "when" you were awakened last assuming this had happened to you more than once or twice before.

You know, I could see our own medical technology progressing to the point that we could do this, taking the cream of our military and interring them for times of great need.