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Whirlwind - Notable Deployments of the Whirlwind: Third War for Armageddon - During the Third War for Armageddon several Space Marine Chapters, such as the Black Templars and the Salamanders, used Whirlwinds against the invading Orks.Siege of Vraks - During the 17-year-long Siege of Vraks, the Space Marine Chapters of the Dark Angels, Red Scorpions, the Red Hunters, and possibly more used Whirlwinds against the Traitor forces.Badab War - During the Badab War Loyalist Space Marines Chapters such as the Red Scorpions, the Minotaurs, the Fire Hawks, the Salamanders, the Exorcists, and the Fire Angels used Whirlwinds against the Secessionist forces of the Tyrant of Badab, Lufgt Huron.Great Crusade and Horus Heresy - The Whirlwind was used by nearly all of the Space Marine Legions during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy. The Whirlwind, alongside the Basilisk and Medusa, made up the majority of the Legion's mobile artillery. |
Whirlwind - Adeptus Mechanicus Technical Specifications: Whirlwind Helios Mobile Artillery TankVehicle Name:Whirlwind HeliosMain Armament:Whirlwind Multiple Missile LauncherForge World of Origin:Mars / HeliosSecondary Armament:N/AKnown Patterns:IIb - XXITraverse:360 degreesCrew:1 Driver, 1 CommanderElevation:0 to 65 degreesPowerplant:Quad MkII Adaptable Thermic Combustor ReactorMain Ammunition:24 Surface-to-surface MissilesWeight:33 TonnesSecondary Ammunition:N/ALength:6.6 metresArmour:Width:4.5 metresHeight:5.2 metresSuperstructure:60 millimetresGround Clearance:0.44 metresHull:60 millimetresMax Speed On-Road:68 kilometres per hourGun Mantlet:N/AMax Speed Off-Road:50 kilometres per hourVehicle Designation:0120-766-0724-PR 145Transport Capacity:N/AFiring Ports:N/AAccess Points:N/ATurret:30 millimetres |
Whirlwind - Also See: Imperial Vehicles |
Whirlwind - Sources: White Dwarf 117 (UK)White Dwarf 185 (UK)Epic Armageddon Rulebook, pg. 81Codex Adeptus Astartes - Space Marines (8th Edition), pp. 88-89, 176Codex Adeptus Astartes - Space Marines (7th Edition) (Digital Edition), "Battle Tanks", "Whirlwinds"Codex: Space Marines (8th Edition) (Revised Codex), pp. 84, 154Codex: Space Marines (6th Edition), pp. 100-101, 176Codex: Space Marines (5th Edition), pg. 79Codex: Blood Angels (5th Edition), pg. 35Codex: Space Wolves (5th Edition), pg. 42Codex: Dark Angels (4th Edition), pg. 33Codex: Dark Angels (6th Edition), pp. 39, 103Codex Adeptus Astartes - Dark Angels (7th Edition) (Digital Edition), "Battle Tanks", "Whirlwinds (Datasheet)", "The Hammer of Caliban (Formation)"Codex Adeptus Astartes - Dark Angels (8th Edition), pp. 58-59, 118Codex: Space Marines (6th Edition), pp. 100-101, 121-122, 176Deliverance Lost (Novel) by Gav ThorpeKnow No Fear (Novel) by Dan Abnett, pg. 299Angel Exterminatus (Novel) by Graham McNeill, pg. 382Imperial Armour Volume Two - Space Marines and Forces of the Inquisition, pp. 57-66Imperial Armour Voume Two - Second Edition - Warmachines of the Adeptus Astartes, pp. 84-92Imperial Armour Volume Three - The Taros Campaign, pp. 54, 153Imperial Armour Volume Five - The Siege of Vraks - Part One, pp. 57, 65, 146Imperial Armour Volume Seven - The Siege of Vraks - Part Three, pp. 38, 72Imperial Armour Volume Nine - The Badab War - Part One, pp. 71, 96Imperial Armour Volume Ten - The Badab War - Part Two, pp. 26, 111, 129, 157-163Imperial Armour Volume Eleven - The Doom of Mymeara, pg. 55Imperial Armour Aeronautica, pg. 33Imperial Armour - The Horus Heresy - Book One: Betrayal, pg. 220Imperial Armour - The Horus Heresy - Book Two: Massacre, Part One (Upcoming)The Horus Heresy: Collected Visions (Background Book), pp. 161, 342Dawn of War - Dark Crusade (PC Game)Dawn of War - Soulstorm (PC Game)Forge World - Legion Deimos Pattern Whirlwind ScorpiusForge World - Relic Whirlwind Scorpius |
Whirlwind Hyperios - Whirlwind Hyperios: The Whirlwind Hyperios is a mobile anti-air tank and variant of the Whirlwind Artillery Tank that serves as the Adeptus Astartes' most potent surface-to-air combat unit. The Whirlwind Hyperios is the newest variant of the Whirlwind to be deployed into the armouries of the Space Marines and was designed to replace the Hunter and Stalker variants as the Astartes' only anti-air combat platforms.The Whirlwind Hyperios replaces its missile turret with a battery of anti-aircraft surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) and a linked fire-control targeting Cogitator that is intended to lock on approaching enemy aircraft or other flyer and bring it down. The Whirlwind Hyperios is most commonly deployed by Space Marine forces when their various gunships are not available to provide close air support. The Whirlwind Hyperios' missiles are able to target enemy ground targets during emergencies, and although they are not effective against heavy armour, they can still cause heavy damage to enemy light and medium vehicles. |
Whirlwind Hyperios - Armament: The Whirlwind Hyperios is an anti-air variant of the standard Astartes Whirlwind Artillery Tank. The Whirlwind Hyperios replaces the Whirlwind's Whirlwind Multiple Missile Launcher with a Hyperios Missile Launcher. The Hyperios Missile Launcher carries up to forty Hyperios Missiles that can be used to bring down enemy aircraft with ease.The weapon is highly efficient against low-flying aircraft making strafing runs. Like the standard Whirlwind, the Whirlwind Hyperios can also be outfitted with a Dozer Blade, Extra Armour Plating, a Hunter-Killer Missile Launcher, improved communications equipment, a Pintle-mounted Storm Bolter, a Searchlight, and Smoke Launchers. |
Whirlwind Hyperios - Unit Composition: 1 Whirlwind Hyperios |
Whirlwind Hyperios - Wargear: A standard Whirlwind Hyperios is armed and equipped with:Hyperios Missile LauncherA SearchlightSmoke LaunchersThe Whirlwind Hyperios can be armed with the following pintle-mounted weaponry:A pintle-mounted Storm BolterAny Whirlwind Hyperios could be outfitted with the following vehicle equipment:Dozer BladeExtra Armour PlatingHunter-Killer Missile Launcher (hull mounted) |
Whirlwind Hyperios - Adeptus Mechanicus Technical Specifications: Whirlwind Hyperios Mobile Anti-Air TankVehicle Name:Whirlwind HyperiosMain Armament:Dorsal Turret-mounted Hyperios Missile LauncherForge World of Origin:PhaetonSecondary Armament:N/AKnown Patterns:I - IVTraverse:360 degreesCrew:1 Driver, 1 GunnerElevation:0 to 55 degreesPowerplant:Quad MkII Adaptable Thermic Combustor ReactorMain Ammunition:40 Surface-to-Air MissilesWeight:33 TonnesSecondary Ammunition:N/ALength:6.6 metresArmour:Width:4.5 metresHeight:5.2 metresSuperstructure:60 millimetresGround Clearance:0.44 metresHull:60 millimetresMax Speed On-Road:68 kilometres per hourGun Mantlet:N/AMax Speed Off-Road:50 kilometres per hourVehicle Designation:0120-766-0812-WW 161Transport Capacity:N/AFiring Ports:N/AAccess Points:N/ATurret:30 millimetres |
Whirlwind Hyperios - Sources: Imperial Armour Volume Two - Space Marines and Forces of the Inquisition, pp. 57-66Imperial Armour Volume Three - The Taros Campaign, pg. 54Imperial Armour Volume Nine - The Badab War - Part One, pp. 72, 96Imperial Armour Index: Forces of the Adeptus Astartes (8th Edition), pg. 42 |
Whirlwind Multiple Missile Launcher - Whirlwind Multiple Missile Launcher: The Whirlwind Multiple Missile Launcher, also known as the Whirlwind Missile Launcher or simply Whirlwind Launcher, is the dorsal-mounted primary weapons system of both the Adeptus Astartes' Whirlwind artillery tank and the Land Raider Helios heavy tank. The Whirlwind Launcher is also capable of being used by the Deathstorm Drop Pod variant of the Astartes Drop Pod. This weapon system was also used by the Deimos Whirlwind during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy era of the of the late 30th and early 31st Millennia. Housing cadaverous telemetric-Servitors, the Whirlwind Multiple Missile Launcher is a superlative fire suppression weapon. Inscribed with scrolling text invoking the Emperor's judgement, the Whirlwind Launcher's warheads are death to infantry and light vehicles alike.The number of missiles carried by the Whirlwind varies by pattern. The Helios Pattern, which is the most common, carries six missiles in total, while the older Thalia Pattern carries a total of twelve smaller missiles. The Mark II Mars Pattern carries ten missiles, in two clusters of five each.A Whirlwind Multiple Missile Launcher, like an Earthshaker Cannon, possesses a short minimum range that it is unable to fire within. However, this is offset by the long range of its missiles and their wide blast radius. A Whirlwind Multiple Missile Launcher will normally be armed with two different types of missiles to fire in artillery salvos, and are able to switch between these two during the course of battle. Vengeance Missiles are geared towards destroying light vehicles and medium-armoured infantry, whilst Incendiary Castellan Missiles are able to flush enemies out of cover with their fiery blasts. |
Whirlwind Multiple Missile Launcher - Ammunition Types: The Whirlwind Missile Launcher is capable of firing multiple types of missiles, many of which are arcane and can only be found within the quantum-sealed stasis chambers of the Deathwatch and other secretive bodies within the upper echelons of the Imperial war machine. The following is a list of known types, including:Vengeance Missiles - Vengeance Missiles represent the standard high-explosive missile warhead used by the Adeptus Astartes.Castellan Missiles - Castellan Missiles are tipped with a special warhead that can be set to explode at specific times and altitudes to scatter small, mine-like bomblets across a designated target area. Castellan Missiles can establish makeshift mine fields quickly and without exposing Imperial forces to unnecessary dangers while laying mines.Incendiary Castellan Missiles - An Incendiary Castellan Missile's warhead has been further modified to scatter burning Promethium over a designated target area rather than bomblets. These horrific weapons are used to burn to death lightly-armoured enemy infantry and light vehicle formations.Hyperios Air-Defence Missiles - The Whirlwind is capable of firing Hyperios Anti-Air Missiles that are guided to strike enemy aircraft. The Whirlwind Hyperios uses similar missiles, although the anti-air weapons used by the Whirlwind Hyperios and Hunter Patterns of the Whirlwind are much more effective at the anti-aircraft role. Whirlwinds armed with Hyperios Anti-Air Missiles are rarely deployed on the battlefield, due to the existence of the aforementioned more effective alternatives.Frag Missile - Frag Missiles are designed to explode on impact with any surface, raking the immediate area with lethal shrapnel composed of aerodynamic metallic shards. Though Frag Missiles are primarily intended to be used as anti-infantry weapons, they can also be deployed effectively against light vehicles. Frag Missiles are often ineffective against heavily armoured infantry.Krak Missile - Krak Missiles are primarily intended to serve as anti-vehicle weapons, and contain a high-strength shaped charge with a relatively small blast radius, but they cause massive damage to anything they hit with minimal collateral damage. Krak Missiles are also very effective against heavily armoured infantry, bunkers and other armoured or fortified static targets where their concentrated explosives will often punch holes straight through armour. However, a Krak Missile's small blast radius makes them impractical for use against most infantry and moving targets.Plasma Missiles - A very rare type of missile used by the Whirlwind, Plasma Missiles are mentioned within various archives, but are hardly ever used in combat in the present day.Super-Krak Missiles - A very rare type of missile used by the Whirlwind, Super-Krak Missiles are mentioned within various archives, but are hardly ever used in combat in the present day.Vortex Missiles - An incredibly rare type of missile that used smaller versions of the Vortex Warhead.Special Missiles - A wide variety of uncommon missile types including those with gas, Anti-plant, Heywire, and Tanglefoot warheads. |
Whirlwind Multiple Missile Launcher - Sources: Codex: Space Marines (6th Edition), pg. 122Codex: Space Marines (5th Edition), pg. 79Imperial Armour Volume 2 - Space Marines & Forces of the Inquisition, pp. 143, 146-147, 149, 152-153, 253Imperial Armour Volume 2, Second Edition - War Machines of the Adeptus Astartes, pp. 25, 158, 161The Horus Heresy: Book One - Betrayal by Alan Bligh (Forge World Series), pg. 220Imperial Armour Volume 12, Fall of Orpheus, pp. 153Imperial Armour - Apocalypse, pg. 27Imperial Armour - Apocalypse II, pp. 28, 35 |
Whispercutter - Whispercutter: The Whispercutter was a type of light transport aircraft once used solely by the Raven Guard Legion during the latter days of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy in the late 30th and early 31st Millennia. Constructed on Kiavahr, the Whispercutter is an open-topped air-frame flyer that uses gravitic impellers for propulsion and was capable of dropping up to ten Astartes into a war zone in utter silence and with practically no chance of detection. |
Whispercutter - History: By the time the Primarch Corvus Corax took command of his Space Marine Legion, the Great Crusade was over a standard century old. Corax was quick to impose the style of war he had perfected in the dungeons of Lycaeus over that which had come to define the XIX Legion, melding stealth and guile with vigilance and swiftness. During the restructuring of the Legion, they commissioned several innovations from the forges of Mars, all of them cunningly wrought to further its mastery in the arts of stealth and speed. It was during this time that the Whispercutter, along with other craft such as the Shadowhawk variant of the Thunderhawk, were first deployed by the XIX Legion. Such technology was created not by the Martian Mechanicum nor any of their Forge Worlds, but by those master artificers of Kiavahr who formerly served that world's Tech Guilds. Utilising strands of machine canon unknown to the mainstream of the Mechanicum, the Kiavahran guild artificers created all manner of systems at the behest of the Raven Guard, and in time the Legion's Techmarines were inducted into these mysteries. It has been speculated that the Kiavahrans might have been declared outcast by the jealous lords of Mars, were it not for the patronage of so august a body as the Legiones Astartes and the Primarch Corax. |
Whispercutter - Notable Campaigns: The Day of Vengeance (ca. 008.M31) - The Raven Guard Legion infiltrated the prison-world on Carandiru with Whispercutters that brought elite infiltration squads of Mor Deythan covertly into the planet's capital. The Raven Guard Astartes seized the local plasma generators and overloaded the city's power grid, disabling its anti-air defences and shrouding the city in darkness. This campaign became known as one of Corax's closest brushes with defeat, following the creation by the Traitor Legions of a type of Astartes sometimes referred to as "New Men" or Legiones Superior in the ancient records. Equipped with experimental technologies of unknown and esoteric designs, these monstrosities, who were created by the Emperor's Children Apothecary Fabius Bile, successfully overcame Lord Corax himself, who was their captive until a taskforce of Raven Guard Astartes under former Commander Gherith Arendi disobeyed the Primarch's orders and arrived in the nick of time to save his life. |
Whispercutter - Role: The Whispercutter was used by the Raven Guard Legion to deploy its elite infiltration troops, such as the Dark Fury Assault Squads and the Mor Deythan. The Dark Fury squads leapt from great heights to descend upon the silenced retro thrusters of their Jump Packs directly onto the heads of their unsuspecting targets. Due to the open-topped nature of the Whispercutter, it was unable to drop from orbit like other assault craft, and so the vehicle was delivered to a planet's surface via other means. |
Whispercutter - Adeptus Mechanicus Technical Specifications: WhispercutterTypeStealth Skimmer/Transport SkimmerOperational CeilingUnknownVehicle NameWhispercutterMax SpeedUnknownForge World of OriginKiavahrRangeUnknownKnown PatternsUnknownMain ArmamentUnknownCrewUnknownSecondary ArmamentUnknownPowerplantUnknownMain AmmunitionUnknownWeightUnknownSecondary AmmunitionUnknownLengthUnknownArmourWingspanUnknownSuperstructureUnknownHeightUnknownHullUnknownVehicle DesignationUnknown |
White Consuls - White Consuls: The White Consuls are a Loyalist Second Founding Successor Chapter of the Ultramarines. Unlike other Astartes Chapters, it is unusual in that it maintains two Chapter Masters at the same time.The White Consuls value wise governance and vision as much as martial skill. In order to advance to a higher rank, the Chapter's battle-brothers must therefore act as local consulate rulers of Imperial worlds.During the 13th Black Crusade, after the fall of Cadia and the birth of the Great Rift in ca. 999.M41, the White Consuls' Chapter homeworld of Sabatine was overrun by the Lords of Silence and Weeping Veil warbands of Heretic Astartes, but the Chapter itself managed to survive.The effect this had upon its unusual Chapter hierarchy remains unknown, though the identity of only one of its twin Chapter Masters is currently available. The White Consuls now seek a new world from which to rebuild their greatness. |
White Consuls - Chapter History: The White Consuls are listed in the Apocrypha of Davio as having derived from the Ultramarines' gene-seed, and would thus be direct-line descendants of Primarch Roboute Guilliman.According to the Mythos Angelica Mortis they are one of the Astartes Praeses, the twenty Chapters of Space Marines created specifically to defend the Imperium of Man from the threat presented by the Eye of Terror, despite the distance of their homeworld from the Segmentum Obscurus.The White Consuls' current Chapter Master is Ridian Artemanis, though unlike other Adeptus Astartes Chapters, the White Consuls normally maintain two Chapter Masters at the same time. The other Chapter Master office remains vacant at this time. |
White Consuls - Notable Campaigns: Fateweaver Denied (798.M37) - The White Consuls prevailed against the daemonic legions of the infamous Greater Daemon Kairos Fateweaver.Liberation of the Ophidian Sub-sector (Unknown Date.M41) - During the Liberation of the Ophidian sub-sector, the White Consuls helped capture 33 rogue psykers. However, the White Consuls Astartes present at the subsequent Victory Triumph where the psykers were being paraded as the spoils of war took heavy casualties when the psykers managed to escape once more from the Imperium's clutches.Gothic War (139.M41 - 160.M41) - The White Consuls was one of many Space Marine Chapters deployed to the Gothic Sector to protect it against the vile Archtraitor Abaddon the Despoiler and his Chaos forces during the Gothic War (12th Black Crusade).Achilus Crusade (777.M41) - The White Consuls contributed a large contingent to the Achilus Crusade to retake the Jericho Reach for the Imperium, contributing approximately two companies and their support units. The largest action seen by the White Consuls during the crusade was the extraction of a Deathwatch Kill-team on the Death World of Polyphemnos against Ogryn mutants. It concluded with the successful rescue of the Kill-team, at the cost of a White Consuls squad which was consumed by the mutants. As a consequence, the White Consuls demanded that the Deathwatch help recover the slain squad's wargear and hunt down the Ogryn leader responsible for their deaths.Siege of the Boros Gate (Unknown Date.M41) - Five companies of the White Consuls Chapter were fielded to repel the Word Bearers Traitor Marines and later the Necrons under the Necron Lord called the Undying One. The Traitor forces, led by the Grand Apostle Ekodas of the Word Bearers' Inner Circle, would throw more than ten thousand Traitor Astartes, an entire demi-company of Chaos Titans and a fleet of more than 15 capital class vessels at the Boros System, which he intended to use as a stepping stone for a future Chaos invasion of the Segmentum Solar during the 13th Black Crusade. The Word Bearers used an ancient Necron artefact, known as the Nexus Arrangement, to cut off Imperial reinforcements to the Boros System. The Nexus Arrangement was an orb capable of creating a stasis field around an undetermined area of space-time, presumably blanketing an entire world. This stasis field only repelled Warp travel to the area of affect, preventing outside aid from reaching the target and allowing the wielder of the artefact to wreak havoc on the planet below free of harassment. As a result, the White Consuls were only able to deploy five companies and a portion of their Chapter fleet to defend the system before the activation of the Necron artefact prevented any further reinforcements. Nearly two-hundred Consuls perished in the opening solar hours of the campaign as the outnumbered Imperial fleet was savaged by Ekodas' armada. The rest retreated to Boros Prime where they fought a grueling war of attrition over the next few solar months against the forces of the Archenemy with the aid of the planet's Astra Militarum regiments. Strike teams of Imperial Guardsmen, led by Space Marine officers, retook captured Defence Lasers and turned them upon the bulk landers of the invaders, while vast tank columns overwhelmed and destroyed Traitor Titans. The ancient Star Fort Kronos waited in orbit, keeping the enemy from attaining orbital supremacy. Crucial to the planet's defence was the presence of Coadjutor Gaius Aquilius who became known as the "White Angel" to many of the Imperial defenders because he inspired the men and women served in the world's Imperial Guard regiments to keep fighting against the Word Bearers and their daemonic allies despite being cut off from the rest of the Imperium. Near the end of the conflict, less than seven thousand Word Bearers remained alive. But their stubborn defence also cost the Imperials dearly. Losses were counted in the millions amongst the Astra Militarum and the White Consuls themselves soon numbered less than a hundred surviving Astartes. Worse, Boros Prime, once a shining beacon of order and prosperity that the White Consuls had spent many standard years developing as one of their protectorates, lay in ruins; its population decimated and its cities gutted wrecks, infested by screaming daemons and savage Chaos Cultists. The Imperials' salvation would come from an unlikely source as a Necron Tomb Ship arrived at Boros Prime, its master, the Undying One, eager to reclaim the Nexus Arrangement for himself. Destroying the Star Fort Kronos and making planetfall with his legions, the cybernetic xenos began to massacre Traitors and Loyalists alike in their quest to regain their artefact. Desperate to escape the wrath of the undying Necrons, Dark Apostle Marduk destroyed the Nexus Arrangement with a Vortex Grenade. With their prize gone, the Necrons left the system and Imperial reinforcements began to stream in at last, their passage no longer blocked by the xenos technology. Ekodas was killed by the arrival of a contingent of the Grey Knights and much of his fleet was destroyed by the vengeful guns of the Imperial Navy. The remainder of the Word Bearers, including Dark Apostle Marduk, escaped to the Word Bearers' Daemon World of Sicarus. Only three White Consuls of the five full companies deployed by the Chapter would survive this campaign. The dead included one of the Consuls' Chapter Masters, Titus Valens.13th Black Crusade (999.M41) - The White Consuls deployed ten companies to the Cadian Sector to defend it against Abaddon the Despoiler and his forces of Chaos during the 13th Black Crusade. They successfully reconquered many worlds tainted by Chaos. Unfortunately, after the fall of Cadia and the birth of the Great Rift that cut the Imperium in half, the White Consuls, like so many Space Marine Chapters, found themselves cut off from Imperial reinforcements. Eventually their homeworld of Sabatine was overrun by the surging tide of the Archenemy and it was destroyed by the Chaos forces led by the Lords of Silence, a warband of Death Guard Heretic Astartes and the Weeping Veil, a warband of Word Bearers. Luckily, the bulk of the White Consuls were off-world when Sabatine was lost, unlike many of their fellow Astartes Chapters in similar circumstances.Indomitus Crusade (Unknown Date.M42) - A contingent of White Consuls served with the crusade's Fleet Quintus. During the fall of Phomidya Prime Lieutenant Satorian of the 4th Company stood alone against overwhelming xenos forces and prevailed. |
White Consuls - Chapter Organisation: Unlike all other known Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes, the White Consuls have two Chapter Masters: one who leads the Chapter in its duties guarding the Eye of Terror as its battlemaster, and one who resides on the Chapter's homeworld of Sabatine and governs it. The White Consuls also administer several star systems in their region as protectorates.Among their number was the Boros System, which the Chapter governed from the Star Fort Kronos, the largest void station in the Segmentum Obscurus, until the entire system was corrupted by Chaos and the Kronos destroyed by the Dark Crusade unleashed by the Word Bearers Traitor Legion and the subsequent invasion of Necrons under the Necron Overlord known as the Undying One.Proconsul Cassius Ostorius and Coadjutor Gaius Aquilius were the White Consuls tasked with governing Boros and a proconsul and his subordinate coadjutor were chosen by the Chapter to govern each of the worlds contained within their protectorate. Every White Consuls battle-brother was required to serve as a coadjutor in the years after rising from the rank of neophyte, while a selection of Veterans were expected to serve as planetary proconsuls on the White Consuls' protectorate worlds. A White Consul had to first serve as a planetary proconsul before he could be promoted to serve as one of the Chapter's squad sergeants or company captains. |
White Consuls - Chapter Combat Doctrine: The White Consuls are said to be highly proficient at Drop Pod strikes and are capable of unleashing devastating yet cunning urban assaults. |
White Consuls - Chapter Beliefs: The White Consuls are pious, zealous and uncompromising Space Marines that have a deep and abiding faith in the Emperor of Mankind. The Chapter seems to worship the Emperor as a god and appears to consider itself a part of the Imperial Cult, unlike most other Astartes Chapters, who revere the Emperor as an extraordinary Human being and the rightful leader of Mankind, but not as a deity.The White Consuls are known to follow the dictates of the Codex Astartes almost fanatically, like most of the Successor Chapters of the Ultramarines. |
White Consuls - Chapter Homeworld: The White Consuls' homeworld was the planet Sabatine in the Segmentum Pacificus far to the galactic south of the Eye of Terror. After the assault of the forces of Chaos following the 13th Black Crusade, Sabatine was overrrun by the Chaos warbands and is now considered a Daemon World under the sole control of the Lords of Silence warband of Heretic Astartes, who have transformed it into a nightmare place dedicated to the Chaos God Nurgle very similar to the Death Guard's Plague Planet in the Eye of Terror.In addition to their homeworld of Sabatine, the White Consuls also maintain sovereignty over several nearby star systems which they hold as protectorates, such as the Boros System and its central world of Boros Prime, site of a massive incursion by the Word Bearers Traitor Legion in the 41st Millennium (see above). |
White Consuls - Notable White Consuls: Chapter Master Ridian Artemanis - Ridian Artemanis is one of the two current Chapter Masters of the White Consuls, leading the Chapter as its battlemaster. Artemanis is the successor of Titus Valens, who fell on Boros Prime fighting the forces of the Word Bearers Traitor Legion. It was Artemanis' duty to answer the call from the Fortress World of Cadia, when the forces of Abaddon the Despoiler launched their 13th Black Crusade. Ridian Artemanis took ten companies of the Chapter with him, leaving much of its complement on Sabatine as a skeleton force.Chapter Master Titus Valens (KIA) - Titus Valens was one of the two Chapter Masters of the White Consuls who once led the Chapter as its battlemaster and the predecessor of Ridian Artemanis. He was a thick-necked warrior, his massive frame encased in an exoskeleton of Terminator Armour that made his bulk even greater. This Chapter Master possessed an innate understanding of warfare and its psychology. Valens always seemed to know the exact moment to press the assault in order to demoralise the enemy, the exact moment when a line was close to breaking and needed bolstering. He led the Chapter from the fore, an inspiring and prominent figure capable of turning defeat into a resounding victory with one well-timed charge. He excelled in leading his battle-brothers against the enemies of Mankind. During the Boros Gate campaign Titus fought valiantly. Leading the assault on the world of Boros Prime, the first planet in the system that the Word Bearers Traitor Legion had recently invaded, Chapter Master Valens was instrumental in turning the tide of battle against the hated forces of Chaos. Standing his ground the Chapter Master held off the attacks from the Chaos Space Marines whilst some of the citizens of Boros Prime, along with a handful of his battle-brothers and Astra Militarum soldiers could escape off-planet. Titus was killed in singular combat with Burias Drak'Shal, a daemon-possessed Word Bearers Icon Bearer of that Traitor Legion's 34th Host.Chapter Master Cymar Xydias (KIA) - Cymar Xydias was one of the two Chapter Masters of the White Consuls, who had reigned as Chapter Master for almost twelve hundred standard years, leading the Chapter as the Proconsul of Sabatine and its vassal systems. He oversaw the defence of the Chapter's homeworld and commanded a standing force ready at a moment's notice to respond to Chaos incursions through the Cadian Gate. Cymar Xydias was the cunning and capable leader who handled all strategic command and planetary diplomacy for the Chapter. In addition to the Chapter's homeworld of Sabatine, he was also responsible for maintaining sovereignty over several nearby protectorate systems such as the Boros System, placing some of the Chapter's officers in temporary positions to oversee the administration of each world prior to their advancement to a higher rank. Xydias had won countless wars for the White Consuls over the centuries, glorious victories that had been forever documented in the annals of the Chapter. His perfectly-executed stratagems were studied by White Consuls Neophytes and Initiates, and he was renowned for his ability to out-think the enemy, always remaining a dozen moves ahead. Weaving an intricate and often bewildering web of attack and counterattack, of feint and rapid redeployment, his strategic ploys had achieved an unlikely victory time and time again. Unfortunately, Xydias was killed by the Death Guard Lord Vorx of the Lords of Silence, who, together with his allies in the Word Bearers' Weeping Veil warband, led the Chaos invasion of Sabatine, conquering Vigilia Carceris, the fortress-monastery of the White Consuls Chapter.Captain Menmon - Menmon is the Captain of the White Consuls 4th Company.Master of the Fleet Landion - Landion is the current Master of the Fleet of the White Consuls Chapter.Lieutenant Sartorian - During the fall of Phomidya Prime Lieutenant Satorian of the White Consuls 4th Company who was serving with the Indomitus Crusade's Fleet Quintus stood alone against overwhelming xenos forces and prevailed.Coadjutor Gaius Aquilius - Known as the "White Angel" by the people of Boros Prime, Gaius Aquilius is the Coadjutor of the Boros System, one of the White Consuls' protectorates, and served alongside the governing Proconsul Cassius Ostorius. Already more involved with the mortals on the planet than any other White Consul, even before the Word Bearers invasion, Aquilius became central to the morale of every Imperial citizen on Boros. His daring strikes against the invaders and his willingness to lead the men and women of the Astra Militarum regiments as if they were his own battle-brothers quickly made him the spiritual lynchpin of the defenders. He was such a thorn in the side of the Word Bearers that Dark Apostle Marduk sent his Champion Burias Drak'Shal to assassinate the White Consul knowing that it would break the spirit of the remaining Imperials and deliver the planet to their Legion. The assassin would fail due to the intervention of Chapter Master Titus Valens who, knowing how valuable Gaius was to their war effort, sacrificed his life to give the White Angel time to escape. He would later fight against the Necrons who arrived to take back the Nexus Arrangement artefact and, along with two of his battle-brothers, was one of the only three Astartes survivors of the Siege of the Boros Gate.Epistolary Axineton - Epistolary Axineton is a Librarian of the White Consuls who has only recently come to serve in the Jericho Reach to perform a Vigil with the Deathwatch at Watch Fortress Erioch. Lean-featured, dark-haired, and possessing a grimly superior demeanour, Axineton is caustic and blunt to his peers. He never allows a flaw that he perceives to rest unmentioned, nor a failing go unpunished, and his manner has created a reputation for sneering arrogance and pedantry amongst some of his Deathwatch brethren. Despite this, he is a warrior of unquestionable ability and a psyker of great power; a power that he can wield with the subtlety of a torturer's razor or the brute force of an executioner's axe. As a past veteran of war against the Tyranid menace, he has already provided valuable insight for his peers. Axineton has been fascinated by the secret nature of the Deathwatch's mission in the Jericho Reach since learning of it, and his hungry mind has devoured all he can of the lore and history of Erioch's Omega Vault. He is a constant, but often silent, presence during gatherings of the Chamber of Vigilance, sometimes speaking only to condemn.Librarian Atramo - Atramo is a Librarian of the White Consuls Chapter.Chaplain Kandred - Kandred is a Chaplain of the White Consuls 4th Company.Master of the Fleet Malagar Eringrasp - A former notable Master of the Fleet of the White Consuls, he saw many engagements over four centuries of service to the Chapter. This all came to an end when his forces were overcome by the Black Legion in the vicinity of Cadia in the fourth century of M41. He surrendered to the Traitors and swore fealty to Abaddon the Despoiler and subsequently went on to become the admiral of the Despoiler's fleet. Now known as Malagar Irongrasp, he served without fail until the Fourth Battle of the Sunward Gap, where he was killed by the Dark Angels Chapter in 959.M41. |
White Consuls - Chapter Fleet: Divine Splendour (Battle Barge)Righteous Fury (Battle Barge)Sword of Deliverance (Battle Barge) - A White Consuls' Chapter Battle Barge that was severely damaged when a Word Bearers fleet attacked it; it was the flagship of the White Consuls' former Chapter Master Titus Valens.Sword of Truth (Battle Barge) - A White Consuls' Chapter Battle Barge that was captured by the Word Bearers Chaos Space Marines after saving the Sword of Deliverance from destruction; it was filled with atomic warheads and crashed into the Star Fort Kronos.Eternal Faith (Strike Cruiser)Hermes (Strike Cruiser) |
White Consuls - Chapter Relics: Gauntlet of Sabatine - The Gauntlet of Sabatine is a master-crafted Astartes Power Fist. This potent weapon is not currently possessed by either the Chapter that forged it or the Deathwatch. It was brought to the Jericho Reach during the Achilus Crusade by a Veteran Astartes of the White Consuls, only to be lost on the world of Polyphemnos when his squad was overrun by tribes of mutated, cannibal Ogryn. The White Consuls have promised the Deathwatch custody of the relic if it could be recovered. Recently, reports have come into Watch Fortress Erioch that the Gauntlet may have already made its way off of Polyphemnos, but not in the hands of the agents of the crusade or the Deathwatch. |
White Consuls - Chapter Colours: The White Consuls' power armour is intended to be the inverse of their parent Chapter, the Ultramarines, in this case painted white with a yellow Aquila or Imperialis on the chest guard while all other Chapter symbology is in blue. White Consul Librarians wear the traditional blue power armour of the Librarius.The blue squad tactical specialty symbol -- battleline, close support, fire support, Veteran or command -- is indicated on the right shoulder guard. No squad number is displayed.Company designation is indicated by the colour of the shoulder plate trim in accordance with the Codex Astartes -- i.e. white (1st Company), yellow (2nd Company), red (3rd Company), green (4th Company), etc.The Chapter serfs of the White Consuls on Sabatine were described as wearing grey carapace armour with blue tabards. |
White Consuls - Chapter Badge: The White Consuls' Chapter badge is the profile of a blue, left-facing eagle's head on a white field. This symbol is of the same style as that used by the Black Consuls, with a completely separate colour scheme. |
White Consuls - Sources: Battlefleet Gothic, "To Cleanse the Stars" by Andy Chambers and Matt KeefeCodex: Eye of Terror (3rd Edition)Codex: Space Marines (9th Edition), pg. 46Codex: Space Marines (8th Edition) (Revised Codex), pg. 26Codex: Space Marines (6th Edition) (Digital Edition), pp. 8, 18, 141Codex: Space Marines (4th Edition), pg. 73Codex: Ultramarines (3rd Edition), pg. 42Deathwatch: Core Rulebook (RPG), pg. 336Deathwatch: Honour the Chapter (RPG), pg. 128Deathwatch: Rites of Battle (RPG), pg. 56How To Paint Space Marines (2004)Insignium Astartes, pg. 60Warhammer 40,000: Rulebook (5th Edition)Warhammer 40,000: Rulebook (8th Edition), pg. 51Dark Creed (Novel) by Anthony Reynolds, pp. 26-37, 75-81, 202, 402Pandorax (Novel) by C.Z. DunnThe Lords of Silence (Novel) by Chris WraightWhite Dwarf 39 (November 2019), "Dawn of the Era Indomitus," pg. 49 |
White Dwarf Magazine - White Dwarf Magazine: White Dwarf is a magazine published by British games manufacturer Games Workshop since 1977 that has become deeply influential in the miniature war gaming and role-playing game communities. Its artwork and ideas have also influenced a generation of writers, artists and video game programmers in the fantasy and science fiction genres.Initially intended to showcase a variety of role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, the magazine is now dedicated exclusively to the miniature war game lines produced by Games Workshop, mainly the company's core systems of Warhammer Age of Sigmar (formerly Warhammer Fantasy), Warhammer 40,000 and The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. |
White Dwarf Magazine - History: Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone initially produced a magazine called Owl and Weasel which ran for approximately twenty-five issues before it evolved into White Dwarf.First published in 1977 and focused on wargaming and role-playing games (RPGs), the magazine received a strong boost when the first edition of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, published in the UK by Games Workshop, referred to White Dwarf on its back page. This allowed people who had bought this game to order the magazine directly from Games Workshop, establishing its circulation.The magazine was hugely influential in the 1980's when it helped to popularise RPGs in Great Britain and much of the English-speaking world, including those American RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons for which Games Workshop had purchased the UK license to distribute. In addition to this, a generation of talented fantasy writers passed through its offices and onto other RPG projects in the next decade, such as Phil Masters and Marcus L. Rowland.The magazine changed over the years, making a move from being a general magazine focusing on all aspects of roleplaying, tabletop wargames and board games to one that focused almost exclusively on Games Workshop's own products and publications - the changeover being obvious by the publication of Issue 100 in April 1988. In this respect it took over some of the aspects of the Citadel Journal, an intermittent publication that supported the Warhammer Fantasy Battle game. The magazine has always been a means for Games Workshop to publish new rules and ideas for their games as well as a means to showcase new Games Workshop products. It often includes articles on rules updates, scenarios, campaigns, hobby news, photos of recently released miniatures and tips on building terrain and constructing or converting miniatures.Today the magazine focuses exclusively on miniature war games and thoroughly covers the models, miniatures and hobby material created by Games Workshop. White Dwarf has carried the tag line "Games Workshop's monthly gaming supplement & Citadel miniatures catalogue" for a long period.Grombrindal the White Dwarf is also a special character for the Dwarf faction in Warhammer Fantasy, whose rules are published only in certain issues of White Dwarf (being revamped for the most recent, 8th Edition of the rules). It is never stated who exactly the White Dwarf is, but it is implied that he is the spirit of Snorri Whitebeard, the last king of the Dwarfs to receive respect from an Elf in the Warhammer World. The image of the White Dwarf has graced the covers of many issues of the magazine, and is regularly featured in the interior artwork as well. The image was also used on the character sheet for the Dwarf character in Hero Quest. |
White Dwarf Magazine - White Dwarf Today: In December 2004, White Dwarf published its 300th issue in the United Kingdom and North America. Each issue contained much special free content as well as articles on the history of the magazine and the founding of Games Workshop. The magazine's content is divided between the three core miniatures war games of Games Workshop, including Warhammer Fantasy Battle, Warhammer 40,000 and The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game, with roughly equal amounts of page space devoted to each. Older issues of the magazine (in the 1980's) included features such as the satirical comic strip Thrud the Barbarian and Dave Langford's "Critical Mass" book review column, as well as a more rough and informal editorial style.The monthly battle reports have arguably been White Dwarf's most popular feature for many years, as acknowledged in various White Dwarf editorials. Battle reports used to be blow-by-blow accounts of a battle between two or more forces, usually with their own specific victory conditions. The reports followed the gamers through their army selection, tactics and deployment, through the battle to its respective conclusion. The format has gone through several changes in recent years - ranging from a simplified, generalized style in the 2006-7 editions, to a return to a more detailed and visual style in October 2007.Since the extremely popular Battle Games in Middle Earth magazine finished its series, two members of its team (Mark Latham and Glenn More) have joined the White Dwarf team; Mark Latham later became the editor of White Dwarf in July 2007, starting with Issue 331. It was hoped that White Dwarf's future articles would be improved to the Battle Games in Middle-earth standard, as the then-moderator of the Games Workshop official forum, Steve Hammatt, said: "Hopefully this will mean good things for future LOTR content in White Dwarf." On the 26th of May 2007 White Dwarf celebrated its 30th birthday with celebrations in Games Workshop retail stores around the world. |
White Dwarf Magazine - Spinoffs: There is also a biweekly online supplemental free e-zine Black Gobbo that is produced by Games Workshop's US studio. It includes two regular columns, "Rules of Engagement" and "Ask the Scenery Guy," to help answer gamers' questions. Similar to its printed counterpart, it is devoted to the games and hobbies created by Games Workshop. Just like its printed counterpart, Black Gobbo also has its own character, published on the web with its own article, rules, and modelling tips. The name is a pun. Gobbo stands for Goblin, which is hated by the Dwarfs. Dwarfs are, likewise, hated by Goblins. Black is also the opposite of white, hence Black Gobbo is the exact opposite of White Dwarf; one being free, electronic, short, weekly, black and a Goblin while the other one is a retail magazine, is printed on paper, is comparatively longer, comes monthly, is white, and a Dwarf. In the late 1980's, mail-order subscriber copies of White Dwarf also received a small companion magazine called Black Sun, written, illustrated and produced by Tim Pollard (with occasional contributions from other Games Workshop authors such as Andy Chambers). It contained very informal "insider" information from the Citadel Mail Order Department, news, game reviews, articles and competitions as well as a short-lived cartoon serial. Some new rules for then-current Games Workshop products also debuted in Black Sun. |
White Dwarf Magazine - White Dwarf (UK) Editors: Ian Livingstone: Issue 1 (June/July 1977) - 74 (February 1986)Ian Marsh: Issue 75 (March 1986) - 77 (May 1986)Paul Cockburn: Issue 78 (June 1986; contents page erroneously headed "April 1986") - 83 (November 1986)Mike Brunton: Issues 84 (December 1986) - 93 (September 1987)Sean Masterson: Issues 94 (October 1987) - 107 (November 1988)Phil Gallagher: Issues 109 (January 1989; there is no Editor credited in issue 108) - 116 (August 1989)Simon Forrest: Issues 117 (September 1989) - 139 (July 1991)Robin Dews: Issues 140 (August 1991) - 189 (September 1995); third longest-serving EditorJake Thornton: Issues 190 (October 1995) - 214 ("Orktober": October 1997); the card section in the magazine comes and goesPaul Sawyer: Issues 215 (December 1997) - 301 (January 2005); occasionally called "Fat Bloke"Guy Haley (UK editor from issues 302 to 310, international editor to 331): Issues 302 (February 2005) - 330 (June 2007)Owen Rees (UK editor): Issue 311 (November 2005) - 333 (September 2007)Mark Latham: Issue 331 (July 2007) - issue 364 (May 2010)Andrew Kenrick: issue 365 (June 2010) - present |
White Dwarf Magazine - External links: The Improved and Expanded Exodite's White Dwarf and Fanatic Press Index - searchable and browsable (by game), covers #1-322 (mixture of UK and US editions).Index to White Dwarf Weekly - browsable updated index about the new White Dwarf, started Feb2014. |
White Minotaurs - White Minotaurs: The White Minotaurs is a Loyalist Codex Astartes-compliant Space Marine Chapter of unknown origin and Founding. Almost nothing else is known about it in current Imperial records. |
White Minotaurs - Chapter Colours: The White Minotaurs primarily wear golden bronze Power Armour with red shoulder plates. The white squad specialty symbol -- Tactical, Devastator, Assault or Veteran -- is located on the right shoulder plate. A black Gothic numeral is stenciled in the centre of the squad specialty symbol, indicating squad number. |
White Minotaurs - Chapter Badge: The White Minotaurs' Chapter badge is a white bull's head centred on a field of red. |
White Panthers - White Panthers: White PanthersCodex AstartesChapterSpace MarinesFounding |
White Panthers - Notable Campaigns: Kethra Secession (332.M39) - In the year 332.M39 the White Panthers responded to a transmission made by an Inquisitor named Bastalek Grim, who had uncovered the plans of the planetary government of Kethra to secede from the Imperium. A White Panthers strike force proceeded to completely destroy Kethra's military capabilities, devastate its Planetary Defence Forces, storm the Imperial Governor's palace, and execute the world's traitorous leaders and nobility. Inquisitor Grim saw this as needlessly rendering an Imperial world essentially defenceless.Thagra IV Rebellion (Date Unknown.M41) - When the planet Thagra IV was invaded by the Chaos Space Marines of the Alpha Legion, the White Panthers were sent to liberate the planet. The planet had a large mutant population who served as the slave workforce in the planet's manufactoria. During the rebellion, many of the mutants joined the Alpha Legion's defence, while some remained loyal and resisted the invasion through guerrilla warfare. The White Panthers eventually drove the Alpha Legionaries off the surface of Thagra IV. The Chapter then proceeded to round up most of the mutants. This included even those mutants who had fought against the invading Alpha Legion, for the White Panthers considered all mutants to be Traitors to the Emperor. Though they intended to execute the entirety of the mutant population, the Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn forced the White Panthers to spare the lives of the Loyalist mutants.Dyathi Cluster Rebellion (998.M41) - In the year 998.M41 the White Panthers crushed a systematic rebellion against the Imperium in the Dyathi Cluster. Chapter Master Jorus Shadowmaw was killed in this action. |
White Panthers - Notable White Panthers: Chapter Master Jorus Shadowmaw - Recently killed in action in the Dyathi Cluster while crushing a rebellion. His replacement is not currently listed in Imperial records. |
White Panthers - Chapter Colours: The White Panthers wear black and white Power Armour. The outer helm, inset of the shoulder plates, thighs, gauntlets, and boots are black. The top of the power pack, faceplate, torso, groin, forearms, knee guards and greaves are white. The main part of the power pack is silver. The Aquila or Imperialis on the chest guard is golden yellow. The white squad specialty symbol on the right shoulder guard designates operational specialty -- Tactical, Devastator, Assault or Veteran. A black Roman numeral is stenciled in the centre of it, indicating squad number. The colour of the shoulder plate trim indicates company number in accordance with the dictates of the Codex Astartes -- i.e. White (1st Company), Yellow (2nd Company), Red (3rd Company), Green (4th Company), etc. |
White Panthers - Chapter Badge: The White Panthers' Chapter badge is the profile of a white panther's head, with its mouth ajar, centred on a field of black. |
White Panthers - Sources: Adeptus Astartes: Successor Chapters (Limited Release Booklet) (7th Edition)Codex: Space Marines (5th Edition), pg. 29Codex: Space Marines (3rd Edition), pg. 3Codex: Ultramarines (2nd Edition), pg. 41How To Paint Space Marines (2004), pg. 88 |
White Scars - White Scars: The White Scars, who call themselves the "Horde of Jaghatai" and were originally called the Star Hunters during the early Great Crusade, are a Loyalist Space Marine Chapter and one of the First Founding Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes.Known and feared throughout the Imperium of Man for their highly mobile way of war, the White Scars are considered the masters of the lightning strike and hit-and-run attack and are particularly adapted to the use of the Astartes Assault Bike as their mechanical steeds and their forces contain an unusually large number of Bike Squads compared to other Chapters.Bearing the ritual scars of bravery, these fierce warriors fight with all the tribal savagery that define the fierce steppe nomads of their homeworld Mundus Planus, known to them as Chogoris, bringing swift death to all of the enemies of the Imperium.The fierce, honour-scarred battle-brothers of the White Scars Chapter are the inheritors of the Vth Space Marine Legion. Recruited from the most savage nomad tribes of the Feral World of Chogoris, the White Scars fight in the manner of the nomad warriors of the steppes.Mounting lightning assaults utilising the fastest of vehicles, the White Scars descend upon their foes in an unstoppable torrent, their hearts filled with savage joy and the battle cry "For the Emperor and the Khan!" on their lips.The primarch of the White Scars was the mighty Jaghatai Khan, the first and only warrior to have risen to such power that he could unite every one of the wild tribes of the Chogorian steppes into a single body. He achieved all this before the time when the Great Crusade reached Chogoris and the Primarch was re-united with his father.The young Jaghatai rose quickly to command the tribe that had adopted him, and by the strength of his rhetoric as well as his arm, he united the clans against their murderous city-dwelling oppressors of the Palatine empire. The steppes are said to have run red with blood as warriors united under Jaghatai's black horsehair banner and avenged every wrong ever done to them.The cities were destroyed and their armies set to the sword, until finally, all of Chogoris belonged to the tribes of the steppes. Mere solar months later, the Great Crusade reached Jaghatai's new-won kingdom, and upon setting eyes upon his father he knew that here was a man who shared his vision of human unity. Jaghatai understood that a far greater prize than any he could have imagined lay before him -- the reunification of the entirety of Mankind.The ranks of the Vth Legion were swelled by the intake of warriors inducted from Jaghatai Khan's fierce army, the Legion inheriting the traditions of the Chogorian steppes nomads. Soon, the savagery of the tribes had bred itself into the Legion's gene-seed too, but it was tempered by the fierce sense of honour and justice embodied so perfectly by the Legion's Primarch.The White Scars fought with valour and determination throughout the Great Crusade, though the years immediately preceding the Horus Heresy were spent mired in a campaign against an Ork Empire centred on the Chondax System.It was at the climax of this gruelling war that word arrived of the Warmaster Horus' treachery, and Rogal Dorn bade his brother Jaghatai to join with the Space Wolves of Leman Russ and return to Terra in preparation for the Traitors' assault.Anticipating such a move, the Warmaster despatched the Alpha Legion to engage the Space Wolves. Jaghatai was faced with the dilemma of aiding his brother Russ or answering Dorn's request.Forced to choose between his duty to his brother and duty to the Imperium, Jaghatai chose the latter, though the choice was far from easily made.The White Scars arrived at Terra in time to stand before the Traitors, though countless of their number gave their lives to thwart he who would undo the great work of the Master of Mankind.History recorded little of the Great Khan's actions during the Siege of Terra, but it is known that his Legion ranged the once-proud thoroughfares of Terra engaging the Traitors in punishing hit-and-run strikes, and that when the end finally came, the White Scars emerged from the fires of the galactic civil war bloodied, but alive.They must surely have been at the forefront of the Legions that pursued the defeated Traitors to the Eye of Terror during the Great Scouring that followed the Heresy, for to this day the White Scars rarely allow a defeated foe to slip away once their blood is up. |
White Scars - Chapter History: In the wake of the Long Night of the Age of Strife and the Unification Wars of Terra in the late 30th Millennium, the Emperor of Mankind sought to unite all of humanity under one banner and end inter-human conflict.The Emperor hoped to ensure human domination of the Milky Way Galaxy, a conquest He judged necessary if Mankind was to survive the never-ending threats to its existence embodied by Chaos, the myriad hostile xenos races and its own fragile human nature.In time, when the Emperor's eye first began to fall beyond Terra, He began to raise new armies to fight His Great Crusade. He drew these new troops in part from the forces that had already unified Terra during the Unification Wars of the late 30th Millennium.To carry out the Great Crusade and reunite all the scattered colony worlds of Mankind beneath the single banner of the Imperium of Man, the Emperor created the genetically-enhanced superhuman warriors of the Space Marine Legions.These forces would serve as the speartip of His Great Crusade that began in ca. 798.M30, bringing the light of the Imperial Truth and enforcing Imperial Compliance with the new regime on every human world encountered. |
White Scars - Lords of War: To each of His Legions, the Emperor bestowed a genetic legacy that would mould them into a set role, making each a matchless tool for the prosecution of that role.The Vth Legion were the pathfinders of the Great Crusade, ever in uncharted territory and far from the borders of the expanding Imperium, and oft-forgotten by the chroniclers that followed in conquest's wake.Organised into small, mobile units, the Vth Legion ran before the armies of the Emperor during the final conquests on Terra, and then across the stars, sowing confusion and death in their wake.They were the swift blade that probed for weakness before a sudden and deadly strike, not the sledgehammer that some of their brother Legions had become. A subtle and deadly weapon in the hands of a master strategist, the Great Khan, Jaghatai, would come to forge these outcasts of the Legiones Astartes into a force that would overturn the scales of destiny itself.As the dark days of the Horus Heresy unfolded, these unpredictable warriors were doubted by many, their loyalty questioned by those who should have been allies and assumed by those who would become enemies. Often the first Legion into the wilds at the edge of those few star charts to survive the Long Night of the Age of Strife, the White Scars had ever operated without the support of their brethren and rarely acted in concert with the other Legions.Where their brother Legions built legacies of trust and accumulated interlinked webs of treaties and oaths of support between them, the White Scars remained separate. What had at first been a matter of strategy soon became a tradition, one that saw the Vth Legion become a solitary and reclusive force, renowned for their independence and wilful nature even among the Astartes.Such was their reputation at the outset of the Horus Heresy, that those who sought to rule the Imperium, be they emperor or tyrant, eyed the Legion as a prize to be won and leashed to their ambitions, a fulcrum upon which to lever Mankind's civil war in their favour. |
White Scars - Terra's Forgotten Sons: As with much of the old lore regarding the Vth Legion, their earliest days and first campaigns are overlooked by many, obscured by time, blood and the reticence of the Legion itself. Yet in these beginnings can be seen the shadow of the Legion's future. Even from their inception, the Vth Legion were held apart from their brothers, rarely found in massed ranks among the assembled hosts of the Unification Wars, yet they were one of the first Legions to draw blood in the name of the Emperor.Taken first from the technomadic tribes of the Thulean Basin, whose hardy stock had traversed those icy wastes in vast mechanised crawlers throughout the long years of the Age of Strife, and later from the wider stock of Terran recruits drawn from all racial and geographic origins, these would account for the minority of members by the time of the Ullanor Crusade on the cusp of the 31st Millennium.The warriors of the Vth Legion were the Unification's eyes and ears. While some of the earliest Legions, such as the XVIth Legion, were committed to the frontlines of the initial conquest alongside the Emperor's Thunder Warriors, the Vth Legion was granted the solitary duty of seeking out the hidden fastnesses of the many gene-wrought demagogues and warlords that ruled the war-ravaged face of Old Earth.In those earliest days, the Legion numbered only a few hundred warriors, and often operated in small cadres of less than a dozen. The operations to which they were assigned put the posthuman physique of the Emperor's Space Marines to test in a way quite unlike the battlefield hell that awaited their fellows.Ever on the move, and far beyond the borders of the Emperor's ever-growing dominion, the Vth Legion endured the worst of the destruction wrought on Old Earth during the ravages of the Age of Strife, braving a landscape so twisted and broken by rad-phage, war and psy-plagues that mere humans could not have survived its touch.Roving far and wide, it was these warriors of the Vth Legion who charted the course of the Emperor's rise, surviving where few others could have, running ahead of the massed armies of Unification and seeking out the enemies in its path.Where they encountered mighty warlords and decadent empires that had stood against Old Night, they prowled the borders seeking the opportunity to strike, and where they encountered weakness, they left behind only corpses. By the time the main Legions of proto-Astartes and Thunder Warriors arrived, their foes were weakened and distracted by the work of the Vth Legion, made easy prey for the armies of Unification.It was a task to which its early recruits were well-suited. The clansmen of the Thulean Basin had survived in the frozen salt-wastes of the north for centuries, fiercely independent and stoic but with a deep well of inventive cunning. Passing through the terror of Old Night by cutting themselves off amid the sub-zero wastelands of Thule in the far north, they well-understood the cruel dictates of survival. These were far more than superb killers, as their heritage as machine-smiths and expert survivors was carried across to the earliest Legion cadres.Once bent to the Emperor's will, they proved fine stock for His pathfinders, though many noted their wilful nature, their commanders prone to ignoring any orders save those of the Emperor or another commander who had earned their respect. This is likely another example of the Emperor's grand plan in action, some element of His foresight identifying some need for that very trait, despite the protest it raised among certain of His generals and advisers.Despite the ire caused by their insular nature, few could doubt the ability of these warriors, who soon gathered a measure of acceptance within the grand armies of Unification for their fortitude and shrewd intelligence.Yet it was a task without glory. They operated for Terran years at a time far from the centre of the conflict. Once the Vth had finished their bloody work in drawing out the enemies of the Emperor, charting their strongholds and leaving them weak, the other Legions marched forth to bring them to battle and defeat while the Vth moved on.Few battle honours from the wars of Unification record the sacrifice of the Vth Legion, and few now living know of the "Star Hunters," as the first of these companies was known, and the daring raid they launched on the Albian fortress of Dubris, paving the way for the initial invasions of that land, or the 83-day battle in the black catacombs of Kadiru, a key fortress in the Yndonesic domain of Ursh.Such hidden heroics were forgotten in the face of the public conquests carried out by the other Legions. Few within the Vth Legion showed any sense of outrage at this subtle slight, even taking a quiet pride in the silent role they played, but it served to isolate them among the ranks of the Legiones Astartes. They became, by circumstance and by choice, outsiders among the Emperor's elite, more at home in the wilds, where they followed no dictate but their own than at the heart of battle, subject to the whims of generals for whom they felt little kinship.As the Emperor consolidated His hold on Terra and the surrounding worlds, the Vth Legion was among the first of His hosts to depart the Sol System, shattered into a hundred companies, each a tiny Legion of its own. These Pioneer Companies were each dispatched to follow those Warp currents that flowed strongly in the aether about Sol, seeking out the lost worlds of Mankind and charting the strongholds of alien empires.It was the Pioneer Company of Captain Kornelius Dure, following one of the few Warp currents known to the infrequent travellers that ventured out from Terra, that surveyed the Mining World of Cthonia, with his now infamous report that the world was "...a nest of serpents coiling in the dark that we would be better to destroy."Horus was known to have later remarked upon this report on his homeworld with some humour, and indeed favoured Captain Dure and his company, often requesting their assignment as pathfinders for his fleet. Indeed, as with a number of other orphaned Legions, Horus, alone among the great generals of that age, made a particular point of recognising the Pioneer Companies of the Vth Legion and in return the Terran veterans of the Vth Legion treated Horus with a respect that they granted few others.For over half a Terran century, the Vth Legion fought a lonely piecemeal crusade, each of its companies separated by such a distance that each fleet slowly began to lose any sense of unity with its brethren. Once again, their heroics beyond the borders of the Emperor's ever-expanding domain garnered little praise or attention amongst the lords of the Imperium.Here, in these largely forgotten years, was the basis of the White Scars' mastery of hit and run warfare established by the necessity of their mission. They were rarely more than one thousand against the dark empires beyond the edge of the maps, the brave few standing against the terrors of the outer dark far from aid and succour.They struck without warning, raiding and killing, drawing out the foe and testing its defences and tactics, always watching and learning -- broadcasting the knowledge won with the blood of their brothers so that the Expeditionary Fleets could bring the Emperor's wrath down upon the enemies of Mankind.In those early days, the Legion lived by one credo: each new day is a victory. Survival against impossible odds was the challenge they faced, one they defeated with a cold pragmatism and willingness to sacrifice everything in the name of victory. Each battle cost them a little more, one more brother dead or one more war machine damaged beyond repair, and as they fought further into the outer reaches of the galaxy, they found fewer and fewer chances to recoup theirlosses.Slowly and surely the Vth Legion was being eroded by the pressures of war and their own stubborn dedication to prosecuting it in their own way. To the warriors of the Vth, who had always been forced to struggle in the shadow of their brother Legions, the idea of asking for aid tasted worse than the ashes of their own demise.To live and die in a manner of their own choosing seemed the better choice. Were it not for the sudden discovery of the lost Primarch of the Vth Legion, an event unlooked for after fifty Terran years of searching, the Legion might have fought on to extinction. Instead, they were transformed. |
White Scars - Khan of Khans: Scattered across the galaxy through the Warp from the Emperor of Mankind's secret gene-laboratory beneath the Himalazian (Himalayan) Mountains of Terra along with the 19 other primarchs by the machinations of the Ruinous Powers of Chaos, the gestation capsule of the special child later known as Jaghatai Khan was deposited on the vast steppe-lands of the fertile Feudal World sometimes listed on older Imperial star charts as Mundus Planus.The inhabitants of Mundus Planus, who knew the world as "Chogoris" rather than by its official (and overly literal) High Gothic name, had managed to struggle back from the terrible destruction of the Age of Strife to a pre-industrial level of technology.The dominant Chogorian culture was technologically analogous to that of the Renaissance period of the 2nd Millennium in ancient Terran history by the time of the Great Crusade in the late 30th Millennium, having just rediscovered how to incorporate gunpowder into the weapon systems of its armies. Most of Mundus Planus was under the rule of an organized feudal aristocracy, led by a monarch known as the Palatine.Jaghatai was discovered just after his arrival on the world as an infant by Ong Khan, the chieftain or khan of a small Chogorian nomadic tribe called the Talskars, who adopted the extraordinarily beautiful infant into his family, foreseeing that he would one day become a great warrior unlike any other the steppe-lands had ever known.Jaghatai's adoptive father and his Keshig was later killed by another of the tribes inhabiting the Chogorian steppes, most often identified as the Kurayed. This was an act which in the nomad culture of Chogoris demanded retaliation. Already the greatest warrior in the Talskar tribe, despite his young age, Jaghatai led many Talskar warriors in vengeance against the Kurayed.In years gone past, the son of a fallen khan would have set out on his own murder-raid, slain some few of the rival clan's own warriors or driven off their prize horses, perpetuating the endless cycle of the feud. Jaghatai chose a different path and in a single night of blood and slaughter he put an end to both the feud and the Kurayed, leaving not one of that kindred alive. He razed the enemy village to the ground, killed every inhabitant, and took the Kurayed chieftain's head to mount above his own tent.His reputation as a warrior of surpassing cruelty and skill, but little mercy, was born from this act, spreadingacross the "Empty Quarter," as the rugged and sparsely inhabited western plains were known.Following this victory, Jaghatai was elected as the Khan of the Talskars, in the process swearing to unite the tribes of the steppes and bring an end to the internecine tribal warfare that dominated their lives.The young khan pursued a campaign of subjugation among his own people, attacking each tribe in turn and offering them a simple choice: death or life under his rule. Having heard of the ruin he had made of the Kurayed, there were few who chose to oppose him and, in his wisdom, Jaghatai treated those who submitted freely with honour, raising many up to his Keshig to fight at his side.Each tribe Jaghatai and his warriors defeated had protions of its population integrated into the Talskar tribe. Jaghatai utilised his military talents and the sheer force of his superhumanly charismatic personality to win himself many followers. He made military service with his army mandatory among the Chogorian steppe tribes, and combined warriors of various tribes into mixed units, to break up previous associations and to create a common loyalty among them based in the foundation of their allegiance to him rather than their tribe.In a similar fashion, the tribes themselves were consolidated, merged together or split apart in order to foster unity and end the feuds that had kept them at each other's throats for Terran centuries. Jaghatai's own Keshig and Talskar tribe he filled with men and women of talent from across the plains, promoting ability and loyalty to the whole over bloodlines and old rivalries, and within the span of a few short solar decades, the nomadic tribes were unified under his control, naming him the Khan of Khans or "Khagan."Jaghatai's abilities enabled him to weld together a coalition of the steppe tribes to battle a Chaos Cult whose foul power was spreading throughout the main continent of Chogoris. In the final battle, he led 10,000 steppe warriors on horseback in a gallant charge against the cultists and their crude black powder cannons. Despite horrendous losses, the Chogorian tribes' charge smashed the enemy. The tribesmen pursued the cultists, butchering every one of them as they tried to flee.Since before any elder of the nomadic tribes could remember, one empire had ruled much of Chogoris, an empire of tall cities and proud princes that lay far to the east of the Empty Quarter. The lands of the horse nomads, barren and inhospitable as they were, had always been beneath its notice, save as a hunting ground for bored nobles seeking to slake their bloodlust.Ten Terran years later after uniting all the tribes of the Empty Quarter, Jaghatai was caught in an avalanche. He was discovered by the son of the Palatine, the ruling emperor of the eastern empire's nobility, who like many Chogorian nobles had taken to the sport of capturing an Empty Quarter tribesman and hunting him through the mountains. The exact course of events is unknown, but it was said that only a single man of the hunting party returned, bearing the head of the Palatine's son along with a message for that ruler. "The people of the steppes are yours no longer."The enraged Palatine gathered his army and marched west with his disciplined heavy infantry and armoured lancers, to engage the wild horse tribes of the Empty Quarter in combat, but was soundly defeated in a battle that lasted a local day and a night.Heavily armoured in mail and plate armour, and accustomed to engaging in decisive melee combat with other heavy cavalry and heavy infantry forces supported by light infantry arquebusiers, the Palatine's pike-and-shot army was no match for the light cavalry and relentless bow fire of Jaghatai's forces. The Khan of Khans met the Palatine with the full muster of the tribes of the Empty Quarter and destroyed his army, making full use of the mobile tactics and speed he would later use to mould the White Scars.The Palatine barely escaped capture, but was eventually killed as Jaghatai's army flowed into the lands once held by the Palatine's aristocracy, either conquering or destroying everything in their path. The victory over the Palatine was the first step along a path of conquest that would see Jaghatai crowned ruler of the entire world of Chogoris.He prosecuted the same strategy that he had employed among the horse tribes, but on a grander scale. To each city and nation his undefeated armies encountered he offered his choice, to serve or to die, and with each victory and submission his power grew. With cruelty in one hand and generosity in the other, both held in plain sight for all his subjects to see, the Khagan overtook the world and bent it to his whims.Jaghatai's power eventually encompassed the planet's lone continent, a global empire forged across the breadth of Chogoris in less than twenty standard years. As the ruler of his world, Jaghatai ended the wars that had wracked Chogoris, keeping the peace with the threat of utter ruin for those who transgressed his simple laws.What the Khagan might have created in isolation from the embers of civilisation on Chogoris will never be known, for it was but a short while after his ascension to the throne that the Emperor of Mankind arrived to change his destiny forever. |
White Scars - Coming of the Emperor: Jaghatai's campaign of global conquest ended less than six solar months before the Emperor of Mankind came to Chogoris in 865.M30 as part of His Great Crusade. Ironically, despite their role as pathfinders and discoverers, it was not a Pioneer Company of the Vth Legion that would discover lost Chogoris, but instead a fleet of the XVIth Legion accompanied by both Horus Lupercal and the Emperor.On that long-isolated world, Jaghatai had prospered, binding together the fractured tribes of the hinterlands to conquer empires and subjugate the entire world to his will. It was an achievement to rival any of those of his brother-primarchs in their foundling years, and the Emperor hailed him as a true son and inheritor of the legacy He had prepared for him.The Great Khan, himself a builder of empires, was handed a destiny that saw him resigned to the role of servant and not master, bound to the ambitions of the Emperor. Such abasement did not come easily to such a conqueror as he, one who had slain kings and tyrants across the breadth of Chogoris, but still the Great Khan knelt before this Emperor.Most historical accounts indicate that Jaghatai was overawed by the Emperor of Mankind and submitted without question, but his own journals and writings show a more pragmatic reasoning behind the submission. Jaghatai, who had struggled long with the disunity of his adopted people, saw clearly the benefits of the Imperium and the Emperor's secular doctrine of the Imperial Truth, and in the ranks of the assembled Luna Wolves he saw the dire cost of opposition.It was the same choice he himself had once offered to the tribes and cities of Chogoris, and even when it was cloaked in pomp and ceremony, the Khan of Khans understood what the Emperor's offer meant: to live as His vassal or perish as His rival. So the Khagan bargained for his loyalty and that of those he ruled, taking from the Emperor those guarantees he deemed fair regarding the treatment of the people of Chogoris and of his role in the future empire. He would fight once again for unity and in secret revelled in the new challenge before him, at last able to slip the bonds of duty that had kept him busy with the mundane realities of governorship on Chogoris.Despite having already mastered the strategies of conquest in his own war against the petty empires of Chogoris, Jaghatai Khan was unfamiliar with the advanced weapons and war engines of the Imperium. With fighting across the galaxy reaching a fevered intensity, the forces of the Emperor could ill spare any Primarch for lengthy training in the etiquette of the Terran Court or the intricacies of Imperial history.All were needed upon the front lines as the expanding Imperium began to encounter more and more powerful xenos realms and fallen kingdoms of Mankind hidden in the dark void. The conquest of Chogoris was, in the eyes of the Emperor and many of the Primarchs, more than proof of Jaghatai's skill at war.Indeed, of all of his new brother Primarchs, only Roboute Guilliman and Rogal Dorn objected to the all too brief period of induction that Jaghatai received. Both felt that to leave the new Primarch bereft of a true understanding of the Imperium's foundation and culture would leave him ill-prepared to integrate properly with its factions and politics.Despite these objections, whose foresight was to prove unfortunate, the full authority of Legion Master of the Vth Legion was invested in Jaghatai, known among his brothers as "the Khan" and among his own as the Khagan, the Khan of Khans. |
White Scars - Star Hunters to White Scars: Such a title, Master of the Vth Legion, held little meaning at that time in history, for the Vth was scattered to the far corners of the galaxy, absorbed in a thousand separate wars. He was master of a Legion of vagabonds, a situation that might have sat less well with others of his brethren, but was a challenge well-suited to the Great Khan's talents and history.Just as he had on the vast plains of Chogoris, the Great Khan sought to build a conquering army from insular nomadic bands, and he began in the same fashion. Recruiting from among those of his Chogorian comrades that were of an age to undergo the arduous transformative surgery and be reborn as Space Marines, the Great Khan formed a new core of warriors for his Legion.At the same time, he dispatched a grand summons, calling upon all of the disparate bands of the Vth Legion, the scattered Pioneer Companies that warred across the galaxy, to attend him.Proclaimed by astropathic signal and courier ship, Jaghatai's call would take many years to reach the furthest of his warriors. After his discovery in 865.M30, the Khagan would wait for nearly a solar decade for the majority of the Pioneer Companies to assemble at Chogoris, the most isolated or heavily engaged still out of contact even as late as the start of the 31st Millennium.The force that finally assembled in the skies above Chogoris in those early years of Jaghatai's command was not a unified Legion. Each company kept to their own, looking on those who should have been their brothers with suspicion and no little disdain, a gathering of strangers in a strange land.When the Khagan brought them all together on the wide plains of the Empty Quarter, he beheld a thousand different heraldries on warriors of a hundred different worlds bound together only by the tenuous strands of their shared genetic legacy. The Khan of Khans wedded those genetic ties to the culture of Chogoris, making this the glueto unify his Legion. Through the rituals and traditions of the Chogorian hill tribes, they became the White Scars that day, their loyalty to the Khagan and each other secured by the trials of blood and pain they had undergone and the oaths they had sworn.The gathering on Chogoris saw the first occurrence of a ritual that would grant the Vth Legion its new title, the White Scars, and seal its bond as a unified host. Adapted from the traditions of the Chogorian steppe tribes, "the Blooding," also known as "the Ascension," is a simple ritual, dispensing with much of the shamanistic pageantry of the original. It comprises but two parts, a cut and a name.On the open fields of the Empty Quarter that day, more than 50,000 warriors took up blades in forms beyond count and cut a mark upon the flesh of their own faces, each gauging the depth and pattern of the wound to mark their loyalty. The scars inflicted as part of the ritual vary in size, shape and placement, and among the original tribesmen of Chogoris, this would serve to mark out different tribes and bloodlines, though among those not born of Chogoris, the significance was less important.Among later generations of the Legion, certain patterns of scarring began to identify separate brotherhoods within the Legion, but such patterns did not begin to emerge until the last few decades of the 30th Millennium.The second part of the ritual, conducted on that first day with the blood of the scarring still bright on the first White Scars' skin, was to choose new names to represent their new lives as part of the Ordu of Jaghatai, as warriors of the White Scars, discarding the lives that had gone before. Such symbolism was fairly common among the various warrior societies that made up much of the early Imperium's vast armies, with many of the Space Marine Legions employing similar trials for their recruits.Such ceremonies have been employed for centuries as tools to enforce solidarity and loyalty among the most brutal of warrior societies, those tasked with the most onerous of duties and the harshest of sacrifices. On Chogoris, such rituals had held the tribes together through centuries of murder-raids and slave hunts, and Jaghatai knew well its power to harden the soul and bind warriors together.The names themselves were symbolic, and no strict pattern has ever been enforced on newly marked White Scars. That first generation on the fields of Chogoris named themselves for their deeds, while later levies of the Legion chose names from the world of Chogoris in honour of their Primarch.The Khan of Khans gave them more than scars, encouraging the study of the "Noble Pursuits," as they were known on Chogoris -- such things as calligraphy, hunting and the telling of ancient tales. He made the ways of Chogoris the Truth of his Legion, a strange blend of practicality and superstition that was ill at ease with the strict tenets of the Imperial Truth which denied any and all brands of religion.Jaghatai's refusal in later years to amend the practises of his Legion to more closely fit the Imperial Truth were yet another source of conflict between the Great Khan and some of his brothers, notably Lorgar and Roboute Guilliman. |
White Scars - Invasion of the Kolarne Circle: This was but the first part of the Khagan's strategy, for tradition alone would not suffice. In the wake of the games and ceremonies conducted on Chogoris, he led the combined ranks of the newly christened White Scars on campaign, the first battles they had fought as a unified host since leaving Terra.The Khagan chose the lawless worlds of the Kolarne Circle for his initiation campaign. This region of space had been scouted several solar decades before by the 103rd Pioneer Company, the Soul Hunters, and was found to be teeming with wild outposts of renegade strains of Mankind and roaming xenos hosts.On each of the dozens of feral and hellish worlds that made up the Circle, a long and vicious struggle awaited the White Scars, with few obvious gains in terms of strategic resource or value. However, the Khagan had chosen this battleground and his strategy with care.He set his Legion against enemies that could not be overcome by any one company alone. Only by working as one Legion would they prevail. He dispersed the Keshig he had raised from Chogoris, the core of his new White Scars throughout the various companies, warriors whose names would only grow with the passing of years: Qin Xa, Targutai Yesugei, Hasik Noyan-Khan and others besides. These warriors he trusted to spread his teaching and to lead by example, to stand as his champions among the Vth Legion as it went to war in his name.Of the 80,000 warriors that they led into the fighting, one in ten would perish in the five Terran years of struggle to cleanse the Circle, a baptism of fire and blood that sealed the bonds between the survivors stronger than any simple oath. The Orkish hordes of Sengr Mar and Vorgheist were cut to pieces in a series of hit and run campaigns that bore the tell-tale hallmarks of the Chogorian plains tribes' tactics.Severely outnumbered by their foe, these tactics, intimately familiar to the Chogorian initiates of Jaghatai's inner circle, were best suited to make the most of the White Scars' native ferocity and war-honed skills.Those companies assigned to the deepest systems of the Circle fought alone and unsupported for almost three Terran years before the remainder of the Legion secured the outer regions. Here the long-honed survival skills of the Pioneer Companies were put to the test, wedded to the Chogorian recruits' savagery and talent with a blade.Where other Legions might have faltered or fallen back to regroup, losing the momentum of victory, these rugged warriors thrived, taking heart from the presence of their new lord.In every battle in which he fought, Jaghatai led the assault. At first, the Legion simply followed him into the maelstrom but as tales of the Primarch's wild valour and consummate skill spread among the warriors of the Vth Legion, they soon began to compete to fight by his side.It was his example that stood as their banner throughout the conflict and it was to the Khagan and each other whom they were bound, not to the distant dream of the Imperium or any one of its worlds, but only to the Khan of Khans and the savage joy he took in war and in life.In those turbulent times, such things were considered of little note, for none would countenance the idea that a Primarch sworn to the Emperor would or could ever forsake his vows and, as such, absolute loyalty to the Khan was considered the same as absolute loyalty to the Imperium.With the final battle for the Kolarne Circle fought and won upon the desolate ash-fields of Kolarne itself, the many inhabited worlds fell into the Great Khan's hands. Those worlds had served to bind his Legion together in blood and war, and now they would serve to rebuild it. From the wide plains of Chogoris, the rugged wastes of Kolarne and Old Earth's many recruitment camps, the Khagan replenished the ranks of the Legion and the White Scars emerged from the Kolarne Circle campaign a Legion reborn.No longer were they a shadow that haunted the fringes of the Great Crusade -- the Great Khan had brought them into the light and he intended The First Blooding to stand at the forefront of the Emperor's Great Crusade, shoulder to shoulder with the other Legions. |
White Scars - The Laughing Killers: The Vth Legion returned to the Great Crusade not as the Pioneer Companies of old, but as the White Scars, united as a true Legion. This was the Great Crusade's apex of glory, the last century of the 30th Millennium. The nascent Imperium had pushed its borders to the very edges of the galaxy and thrown down the dragons that lurked at the margins of its ancient star charts. Now it grappled with those who would challenge its supremacy.Many terrible hosts and fel empires sought to lay claim to what was the rightful domain of Mankind and the Emperor, and it fell to the Legiones Astartes to break them utterly. The White Scars were to number among the heroes of this age, spreading across the stars to bring war and death in the name of their new master. Though they lacked the numbers of some of their brother Legions, they were unmatched in the sheer impetuous fervour with which they made war.These were heady days full of fire and conquest, the wild rush of unceasing war against enemies too numerous to count. Where other Legions sought to prosecute a war of stern discipline and careful planning, conquering with implacable might and securing those domains they seized, the White Scars descended upon the foe like a storm from clear skies.Where the enemy was weak or exposed, they enveloped and overran its positions without mercy, using speed and fury to overwhelm any defence. Where it was strong or well-emplaced they harried the enemy where it was weak, leaving it vulnerable to the Legions that followed the trail of destruction they wrought. Many tales of their exploits speak equally of their ferocious skill-at-arms and the strategic insight of their commanders, different in style to that of other Legions, wilder and more direct, but no less effective.Some considered them little more than barbaric reavers, akin to the wild butchers of Angron's World Eaters Legion or the executioners of Leman Russ' Space Wolves, but the records of their campaigns suggest otherwise. They were pathfinders in both a tactical and strategic sense, amongst the keenest and most proficient breed of the Legiones Astartes created by the Emperor. Exhaustive plans and interminable preparations were not their ways, often leaving them at odds with more deliberate warriors like the sons of Rogal Dorn or Roboute Guilliman.Yet they valued learning and knowledge highly, many among them skilled as artificers, philosophers and artists. They gathered wisdom as other Legions gathered weapons, to be kept at the ready until the time came to unleash them upon the foe. They were the wind, everywhere and nowhere, insubstantial and yet forceful, and they took to the duty they were given with a passion, taking joy from the thrill of battle and the hunt across the stars. As Sanguiniusis recorded to have once said of the reborn Vth Legion, "...they smile often and they laugh when they kill."Unlike the brutal sons of Angron or the wild wolves of Fenris, the White Scars did not lack in discipline, and though they wore the cloak of the savage, they were not the same wild killers as those more infamous of their kin. Their nature was untamed, but still bound by the chains of duty and honour as defined by the Chogorian code. They were merciless and sometimes cruel on the attack and often seen as insolent or fractious, but such rumours were founded on misunderstanding.When the White Scars granted no mercy to their foe, they did so not for the joy of simple slaughter, but in honour of the valour shown them, they held back nothing just as had a worthy foe. When they failed to respect the policies and plans of others, it was because their own ways served them better, rarely did they make counter-accusations of their own, allowing the results they garnered to speak for the rightness of their actions.They valued courtesy and forthright honesty over protocol and rigid adherence to rules ill-suited for the battlefield, but did not fail to punish those who transgressed the rules they set themselves.Yet, despite these qualities they were often seen as the least among their kin, followers and not lords, a fact that sat ill with warriors of such skill and dedication. For much of the Great Crusade they remained outsiders to most of their brethren, few among the other Primarchs sought the company of Jaghatai Khan and his sons, and Jaghatai did little to encourage them.Some found the strategies by which his Legion fought to be flawed, especially the inflexible sons of Dorn and Guilliman, while others looked down upon the trapping of Chogorian tradition that bound the Legion together. The Khan of Khans did little to dispel his reputation as a crude barbarian and wanton killer, keeping his own counsel and the company of those who cared to see past the veil of rumour that hid the true character of his Legion.Of all of his brothers, the Khagan found common cause with but a handful. Of these the closest was Magnus the Red of Prospero, for he was also an outcast in the small society of their peers and a man of integrity and brusque honesty. Those few records of the two often note this friendship between two otherwise isolated Primarchs. Horus, who appreciated talent above appearances, also showed some favour to the Khagan, as did Sanguinius who had ever been a statesman and diplomat among his often quarrelsome brothers.Of the others there is little recorded, possibly as there were few occasions where the Primarchs gathered in numbers and fewer still where the Khagan was present.Jaghatai Khan was ever to be found on the move, always where he was least expected and always at that critical locus that would decide the fate of battles and empires. Yet, as the Great Crusade moved into its final throes in the first years of the 31st Millennium, the White Scars found themselves called upon less and less. The Emperor's Great Crusade had eclipsed its major rivals and charted most of the fractured and changed galaxy. Where, at the beginning of the long war the maps had been blank and the enemies unknown and terrifying, they were now replete and Mankind's enemies largely known and cowed.In these final years of the conquest there were fewer wild spaces for the White Scars to make war as they liked. They were becoming obsolete, unnecessary to the empire that was to be; the Khan of Khans knew it and it made him restless. The chance to run ahead of the storm, to exult in the unknown and the sheer joy of the destruction that follows was fading, leaving only the dull work of governance.Things were becoming ordered and known -- the Imperium was winning, and in a final victory the White Scars would be undone. The Khan could sense that a choice was coming, a grand choice. They would be given the chance to be again what they had once been -- but in doing so they would need to betray all that they had fought for. The other choice, no less invidious, was to remain true to their oaths and bound to a slow diminishment. |
White Scars - Emancipation of Drune: By the latter years of the 800s.M30, the Vth Legion had earned itself a reputation for the types of operation for which it would later become most well-known, but not all of its wars were fought in isolation. At Tarel III, Jakor-Tal and Terlaken B3, the Legion fought noted campaigns as part of combined Legiones Astartes Expeditionary forces, and at Arco took its place in the line with the Blood Angels, Ultramarines, Salamanders and Emperor's Children Legions. Indeed, the battle honour "Arco" would be borne on the banners of all five Legions, including the treacherous sons of Fulgrim, throughout the Horus Heresy and well into the latter age of the Great Scouring.Another battle honour borne with pride long after the outbreak of the Horus Heresy by Loyalist and Traitor alike was that won at Drune in 881.M30, a lonely, arid world spinward of the Morpheus Rift. At Drune, the greater part of three entire Legions stood together, each headed by their Primarch.The Imperial Compliance of a world that had once been a beacon of civilisation was to be a crowning glory to an otherwise fruitless expedition, and so the Primarchs of all three Legions present -- the Luna Wolves, the Death Guard and the White Scars -- determined to deliver the Imperial Truth in person. Three entire Legions made planetfall as one, but what transpired when they came to stand before the gates of the world's capital was quite unprecedented in the decades of the Great Crusade.Those gates remained barred, and no reaction to the massing of three Legions before them was forthcoming. His choler rising, Horus raised his mace as to strike the mighty gates, but before he could do so, a word of caution rung out from the throng of counsellors and attendants. The warning had been voiced by Kulek Senn, a senior Stormseer of the Vth Legion."The shadow hangs over this place. The shadow of domination. Only death will sever the strings."Mortarion counselled Horus to press onwards, discounting the Stormseer's warning, and press onwards Horus did, striking the gates such a resounding blow with his mace that it caused them to buckle inwards and collapse with a billowing cloud of dust. Advancing within the city, a great mass of humanity pressed in from every quarter. The eyes of the occupants were unfocused and vacant, every mouth slack and drooling. Every body was unwashed and stinking and clad in shredded rags, as if the wearer had given no thought to their own bodily well-being for many solar months, perhaps even years.Once more, Kulek Senn offered his master his warning as the party moved through the streets, this time with increasingly strident concern. Once more, Mortarion heard and sneered his derision of the psyker's arts, but this time the Great Khan interjected, insisting that his brother Horus heed the Stormseer's words.This time, Horus did so. Whatever it was that the Stormseer had detected an echo of before the gates was now evident for all to see. In the heavens above, a churning vortex of unnatural energies was forming, its eye directly above the centre of the city. Aetheric gusts caught the Primarchs' personal banners and the massed bodies finally stirred, a deep, sonorous groan voiced simultaneously from 100,000 throats.Fighting their way clear, the Primarchs reunited with their gene-sons outside of the city, and in council with the Great Khan's Stormseers they determined that the entire world was under some manner of xenos domination, one born not of physical reality, but of the other-realm of the Warp. Worse still, they counselled that this domination was being exerted upon the human population of Drune via a series of extradimensional portals, each centred upon oneof the major mesa-top cities. Only by closing these portals, the Stormseers claimed, would the enslavement of Drune be ended.And so the war to deliver Drune from the yoke of alien domination began. Jaghatai Khan was nominated by Horus as campaign commander. Such a thing was rare indeed, for even though the Emperor's gene-sons fought beneath the same banner and the sundering of their ranks was still many solar decades away, there existed a deep-seated rivalry between many.The wisdom of the Lupercal's decision was plain to see, but the Primarch of the Death Guard Legion protested it nonetheless, for Mortarion detested the employment of psykers in any form, for any reason and against any foe. Thus the Death Guard served in the Drune campaign only nominally under the Great Khan's leadership, Mortarion ensuring they remained apart from the other two Legions.The war for Drune would rage for almost six Terran months, the Great Khan utilizing each element of his command as best suited its nature. Jaghatai's own Legion ranged far and wide across the wastes of Drune, striking at concentrations of xenos power identified by his Stormseers. They encountered a range of horrifying creatures of barely definable form, though all had in common bloated bodies that floated on invisible aetheric tides, multiple eyes, thrashing tendrils and the ability to unleash fearsome blasts of Warp energy even as they directed wave after wave of sub-human mind-slaves at the Legionaries.The Stormseers proved crucial not just in locating these abominable foes, but in combating them on the field of battle too, for they were able to deaden the psychic domination effect and thus allow their brother Legionaries to engage the xenos puppet-masters and defeat them, albeit not without loss.At the last, the campaign reached its climax where it had began -- at the mesa-top city where the three Primarchs had first encountered the xenos dominators. The closer to the heart of the city the Primarchs advanced, the more potent the psionic waves assaulting them grew, and the more massive and hideous the xenos abominations they encountered.Though a potent force indeed, none can say what harm might have befallen the Primarchs had the White Scars Stormseers not been close at hand to repel the worst of the aliens' psychic counterassaults. The air itself screamed in tortureas the very stuff of reality was stretched to breaking point, the un-light of the Warp glimmering through a million cracks and rents.Jaghatai, Horus and Mortarion knew that they had reached the centre of the xenos incursion when even they could proceed no further, so powerful were the psionic tides flooding out from the hideously pulsating wound in reality at the very centre of the city.Overhead loomed an archway of the quivering, still-living flesh of what must surely have once been a man. Beneath the archway was a void pulsing with the raw power of the Warp, and from it was emerging a vast and bloated form, a distended central sac replete with thrashing pseudopods and dozens of too-knowing eyes.Voicing an ancient Chogorian curse, the Great Khan swore the behemoth would not establish dominion in his gene-father's realm, and in answer, his brothers took their place on either side while what remained of his depleted Stormseer council formed a loose ring all about, every last iota of their power bent to the task of warding off the behemoth's vile kin.Scholars of war might ponder what force might test the powers not just of one, but of three of the Emperor's gene-sons, and in the contest that ensued they might find one such possible answer. The behemoth brought to bear an array of weaponry, from whipping, diamond-sharp tentacles to the unrelenting power of its utterly alien will -- 10 Stormseers lay dead upon the ground in as many seconds, their minds torn apart by the behemoth's battering ram ofpsionic domination.The Primarchs were sorely tested, for while such as they could scarcely know fear, each soon bore a dozen and more hurts. Even the mighty Horus felt the behemoth's mental whip, and though he repelled its will, the effort left blood gushing from his eyes in crimson rivers.Mortarion too struggled against this vile foe, and while his scythe cut through its thrashing tentacles by the dozen, it strove to gain dominion over his mind and to become master of his flesh. As with Horus, the behemoth was unable to batter down Mortarion's defences, but resisting it drove the Death Lord to his very knees.It was Jaghatai Khan who at the last put an end to the xenos beast. By the combined efforts of his last remaining Stormseers, the Great Khan was rendered unseen to the behemoth, so that even as it concentrated its assault upon Horus and Mortarion, Jaghatai was able to work his way around the creature's vast, bloated form and thereby locate a weak point upon its underside.Many Imperial savants now wonder how different later ages might be had only Jaghatai stayed his final strike or but delayed it long enough for the behemoth to press its assault upon his brothers. Such ponderings are of course futile, and they ignore his essential nature. Jaghatai thrust upwards, spearing some essential node or organ in the behemoth's central mass. It died upon his blade, but the explosion of aetheric force unleashed was very nearly his end too.It was Horus who saved Jaghatai from being sucked into the now collapsing vortex, Lupercal hauling his brother clear. And thus was the Emancipation of Drune achieved -- though not a single one of the world's populace would benefit from the defeat of their alien masters.With the behemoth slain, and the Warp portals through which the aliens had exerted their domination sealed, hundreds of millions of meat-puppets collapsed wherever they were standing, never to rise again.In truth, such a fate was a mercy for the people of Drune and for the Imperium, for one way or another, they could not have been allowed to live. |
White Scars - The Pale Emperor: The tale of the Pale Emperor is known to very few. No Remembrancers have spun its events into epic stanzas or captured it in lurid pict record, but many among the White Scars speak of it when outsiders make light of the Great Khan's prowess in battle or of the cruel streak that hides behind his smile. Its exact details are lost to the casual embellishment and adaption by the White Scars who still spin the tale, but a truth can be learned from the core of it, which remains a constant no matter which of the brotherhoods recalls the story.In the late years of the Great Crusade, most likely around 980.M30, a force consisting of approximately five brotherhoods ventured into the wild space at the edges of the Mandragoran Sector. The exact brotherhoods involved change with each telling, and the nature of the White Scars' record-keeping makes it difficult to establish which accounting is correct, but the one fact that never changes is that the Great Khan himself was at their head.There, at the very edge of known space, where xenos threats lurked in the dark between the stars, the White Scars encountered a handful of worlds sparsely inhabited by a people of ancient Terran descent, though in the tales of the White Scars they are never named. The first of these worlds they encountered played host to several small cities, and unlike many other human colonies that had weathered the terrors of the Age of Strife, these appeared to have prospered at the edge of space.It was a rare find, a realm of unsullied human genestock whose advanced technology was well-matched to that of the Imperium, but whose small size precluded any extended resistance to the Imperium's authority. Despite the offers of unity and peaceful integration transmitted by the Great Khan, he and his warriors were greeted not as long-lost kin or saviours, but as invaders, and their fleet came under swift attack.Though Jaghatai, a statesman and empire-builder as much as a warrior, had hoped for a peaceful Compliance campaign, he was equally pleased to test his warriors against a worthy foe in honest battle.The voidcraft that rose from low orbit to meet the sleek White Scars cruisers were sturdy vessels, no doubt hardened from centuries of warring against xenos raiders and corsairs, but they were too few to stand against the dozen Imperium warships that awaited them. Within the space of a few short exchanges of weapons fire they were left aflame and crippled, though in recognition of their bravery, the Great Khan gave orders to allow them to withdraw.Having secured orbital space, Jaghatai proceeded with a combat drop, with several squadrons of gunships and landing craft descending onto the boreal plains that marked the edge of the world's inhabited zone. Here, several thousand White Scars engaged the enclave's defenders, several hundred warriors clad in huge and ponderous battle-plate, studded with heavybore cannon and beam arrays, each more like a small tank than a normal warrior.Almost as if by silent mutual agreement, the two sides mustered outside of the clustered towers of the city, neither wishing to see it broken as they fought and, with but a brief pause, gave voice to the deep roar of cannon and the cacophony of clashing blades.The cumbersome plate of his foes was proof against much of the White Scars' lighter weaponry, no doubt a relic of some lost technology of the by-gone Dark Age, but these forgotten cousins of Terra could not match the White Scars' speed. Where other Legions might have met them head-on, the White Scars vanguard, mounted on Scimitar Pattern Jetbikes, outflanked and harried their foe, marking weak points in armour joints and power transfer cables as they raced to and fro across the battlefield.By contrast, their enemy advanced in lockstep, trying to maintain a tight formation while their cannon tracked the fleet Legiones Astartes warriors, blasting great craters into the ground in their wake. Manoeuvring in patterns that seemed almost random, the White Scars sought to disrupt their foes' formation and isolate them from the protection of their brethren. Following on the heels of the Jetbike-mounted vanguard, the remaining White Scars warriors deployed heavy weapons and armoured vehicles to cripple individual enemy war engines as they were isolatedfrom the main body.As their casualties began to mount, gaps opened up in the protective formation adopted by the hulking battle armour of the foe and the circling White Scars Jetbike squadrons were quick to pounce, switching suddenly from a whirling skirmish line to a concentrated wedge aimed at the heart of the enemy formation.At the head of this assault was the Great Khan, the Primarch a match in size and power for these towering war machines and his blade far quicker than the sensor-augurs that guided their weapons. Spurred on by the example of their lord, the White Scars redoubled their efforts and, one by one, the enemy's war machines were isolated and cut down.In the wake of his victory, the Khagan showed mercy to his foes and left their cities untouched. From among those of his warriors who had acquitted themselves well in the battle, Jaghatai Khan chose three to act as his ambassadors to the enclave's ruler, exemplars of the Primarch's Legion and fitting to carry his words, a symbol of both his respect for a worthy foe and of the strength which backed his pledge.Through these champions he would make the offer he had made so many times before: serve the Emperor and prosper, oppose him and find only ruin. This was war waged as the Great Khan preferred it, the clash of warriors in open and fair battle quickly followed by an honourable surrender, not the prolonged slaughter and utter destruction advocated by some of his brothers. He had ever been more than a simple butcher and general, more a builder of empires than some among his kin.Within a short span of time, the Great Khan's emissaries were returned to his camp in pieces, slaughtered by the guards of the Pale Emperor who ruled this small realm. His largesse had been repaid with scorn and blood, despite the obvious advantage held by the Legion, who had already proven themselves more than a match for the foe's warriors.Such a callous gesture of foolish and doomed defiance set the Great Khan into a quiet rage, both for the deaths of his warriors and for the brutal acts he was now forced to undertake. That same night, his Legion razed the unnamed city to ruin. They burned and blasted its towers, and hunted down every last inhabitant and put them to the sword. They went from world to world and brought only death and destruction, scorching a path of ashes to the Pale Emperor's throneworld.There, the White Scars took the field of battle against the finest warriors and war engines he could assemble and tore them apart. They smashed down the gilded gates of his palace and killed all within. All except one.Cornered on the throne he had valued more than the lives of his subjects, the Pale Emperor was the only man left alive in the wake of the White Scars' vengeful assault. Jaghatai Khan confronted him there, armour slick with the blood of the slain and coated in the ashes of his empire.He spoke but a few words to the fallen Emperor, "You chose this doom. You forced my hand for the sake of your own petty pride. I would like to kill you, to have your blood join that of all the others you have forced me to kill, but I will not. You will remain here and let others know of the price of pride, that we shall not have to sully our blades again."There ends the tale as told by the White Scars, who see it as a testament to the dedication of their Legion and a warning to those who would underestimate their lord or his gene-sons. However, an alternative version is also known of, told only rarely and by those brotherhoods whose ranks comprise the oldest Chogorian recruits.These veterans recite a different end to the tale, a different declaration by Jaghatai Khan to his enemy, one that speaks of a wound long left untended in the Legion and its Primarch."You have chosen the doom I could not. You have chosen pride over servitude. I would like to kill you, for you remind me of my own choices, but I will not. You will remain here so that I will remember the price of pride and why we sully our blades with the slaughter of small emperors." |
White Scars - Relations with other Legions: Jaghatai's closest relationships with his brother Primarchs were with Horus Lupercal of the vaunted Luna Wolves Legion and Magnus the Red of the Thousand Sons. With Horus, the Khan shared a love of the rapid assault, as well as feeling understood and accepted by Horus.This understanding was also only truly shared by Magnus, who, like the Khan, was as much an outsider to the other Primarchs as Jaghatai. The close relationship of the White Scars Primarch to these two brothers was matched, somewhat, by the relationships between their respective Legions.Several White Scars brotherhoods (companies) would often be seconded to fight alongside their cousins from the Luna Wolves. These brotherhoods would utilise a mix of both Vth and XVIth Legion tactics, including the latter's more consolidatory approach to rapid warfare and the more standardised manner of the Luna Wolves' military hierarchy.However, for some Chogorians these tactics could be difficult to understand. Similarly, the Thousand Sons were also known to be close to the Vth Legion for many reasons. The love of knowledge of the sons of Prospero, their enjoyment in the subtleties of the universe and each Legion's detachment from the rest of the Imperium would render a fruitful relationship between these two forces of Astartes.In stark contrast, the Vth Legion seemed to have a very poor relationship with many of the other Space Marine Legions, most of all with the Death Guard and their equally mysterious Primarch Mortarion. It was also known that the White Scars did not get along well with the Space Wolves Legion. All Legions had reputations, and some of these overlapped. The Space Wolves were known to boast of theirs as the Emperor's executioners. When the White Scars fought alongside other Imperial forces they were often unfairly judged, due to their use of ritual tribal marks and scars.People automatically assumed that they were savages, and were no better than the barbarous warriors of Leman Russ that hailed from the Death World of Fenris. The White Scars did not wish to be seen as savages, for they constantly strove to achieve the most noble of human pursuits. In addition, the comparison added salt to the wound of the Vth Legion's entrenched estrangement from the Imperium, suggesting how little others took to understand the Chogorians. Though the White Scars were not "executioners" like the Space Wolves or "world eaters" like Angron's berserk XIIth Legion's warriors or "the perfect" Astartes like Fulgrim's Emperor's Children, the White Scars were what they were.They never demanded respect from anyone, and if the other Legions knew nothing of them, then that was their loss, because the White Scars knew about them. The Vth Legion was faster -- they moved faster and they killed faster. Secretly, the White Scars resented the outsiders' disregard greatly, and yet they refused to change their ways or Legion culture.Many Space Marine Chapters have existed for millennia, with those of the First Founding having their roots in the original Legions created to prosecute the conquests of the Emperor's Great Crusade. With histories stretching back into the dawn of the Age of the Imperium, it is perhaps inevitable that Chapters should come to blows, both metaphorically and at times literally.There are many instances of rivalries, and some of outright hostilities. The deep-rooted and mutual antagonism between the Space Wolves and the Dark Angels is well-known, but there are many more examples. One example of such rivalry can be found in the case of the Raven Guard and the White Scars, who have harboured a mutual mistrust dating back centuries.In truth, there may be no single cause of the bad blood between the two present-day Chapters, but the mere mentioning of several battles are sure to raise the ire of Raven Guard and White Scar alike. The Assault on Hive Lin-Mei is one such conflict, as is the Last March on the Sapphire Worlds.Most acrimonious of all is Operation Chronos, in which a venerated Raven Guard Chaplain fell to Enslaver domination in circumstances where a nearby White Scars force might have been able to intervene. The ill will created by these and numerous other incidents has led to the two Chapters even in the late 41st Millennium regarding one another with barely-contained loathing, a situation that none can see an end to any time soon. |
White Scars - Ullanor: A bolt of lightning in clear skies, a sudden gale from an unexpected quarter -- the White Scars Legion was war's sudden and merciless slaughter. Swift action and a joy for the rush of combat and clash of blades were the hallmarks of its battles, tempered by a quiet and hidden wisdom that few took the time to uncover.The White Scars thrived in the chaotic heart of battle, anticipating its vicissitudes and flowing with them, always to be found where the foe was weakest, where they were least expected, and leaving only cold corpses in their wake.They were the Great Crusade's pathfinders, the bleak wind that ran ahead of its serried armies culling the weak and harrying the strong that they might fall more easily to those who followed. There were many victories claimed by the Great Crusade that would not have been possible without the depredations caused by these warriors.The lightning-fast style of mobile warfare that had served Jaghatai Khan so well on the steppes of his homeworld proved to be equally effective on the many different battlefields of the Great Crusade. The White Scars soon became involved in some of the bloodiest battles of the time after the rediscovery of their Primarch.The White Scars most famously took part in the historic Ullanor Crusade, the vast Imperial assault on the Ork empire of the Overlord Urrlak Urruk. The White Scars and Ultramarines Space Marine Legions, supported by the Imperial Army, the forces of the Mechanicum and the Collegia Titanica, took part in the massive Imperial campaign against the largest concentration of Orks yet encountered by the burgeoning Imperium of Man.In the aftermath of this monumental victory, the Great Khan watched with approval as Horus Lupercal, greatest of the Primarchs and most favoured son of the Emperor, took up his new office as Warmaster of all the Imperium's military forces. The two of them, Horus and the Khan, liked one another. Of all his brothers, the Khan had only ever been close to two, and Horus was the first. Then they had parted.The grand gathering of Primarchs and commanders and Battleships and officials at the Triumph of Ullanor dispersed, setting course for a thousand destinations and making the Warp light up with the trails of their passage. The Great Crusade commenced again, though this time with a Warmaster at its apex, not an Emperor. |
White Scars - Council of Nikaea: Just before the White Scars were sent on another campaign to continue prosecuting the Great Crusade, a great Imperial conclave was called upon the world of Nikaea. This grand convocation, known to history as the Council of Nikaea, was called by the Emperor of Mankind Himself, and was intended to determine whether or not the use of psychic powers represented a boon or a grave danger to both Mankind and the nascent Imperium of Man.There were three Primarchs who were primarily responsible for the creation of the Legiones Astartes Librarius. Two were quite well known within the official historical records; Magnus of the Thousand Sons and the angelic Sanguinius of the Blood Angels. Though Magnus was the figurehead, the most powerful and the most vocal in support of the use of psychic abilities, he was not the only voice. His brother Sanguinius was more subtle in his support.On this, though, Jhagatai always argued the same way. The Khagan had drawn up most of the rules for and formalised the structure of the Legions' Librarius, even though his name was never entered into the official datacores. Jaghatai's contribution to the development of the Space Marines psychic arts was never known by the other Legions or the rest of the Imperium.The citizens of the Imperium at large were taught that humanity had moved beyond religion and superstition. They believed this inherent Imperial Truth, just as they were meant to. There were no gods, they were told, and what looked like magic was just the growing power of the human mind. The Chogorians, on the other hand, never stopped believing. They understood, perhaps better than anyone, that the Warp could corrupt the finest -- the greater the strength, the greater the corruption.On Chogoris, the ability to wield the power of the psyker was called the "Test of Heaven." The Chogorians had always known of the existence of the Warp and the dangerous entities of Chaos that lurked within. It was how their Stormseers had become so powerful.Their cousins amongst the Space Wolves, the Rune Priests of Fenris, worked the same source for their elemental powers, though they would never openly admit it. The masses never learned about the Warp, and the vast majority did not even know of its existence.The Emperor preferred to keep those truths hidden from the people of the Imperium, and for all anyone knew He had tried to stamp out those who still understood them. The Khan never agreed with this obfuscation of the truth, especially the Emperor's refusal to explain to His people the dangers of Chaos, and father and son had often argued over the matter.This was the great question, the one they fell out over -- can you rest an empire on a lie? The Warp was not what the masses of humanity thought it was. It was alive and dangerous, and could be used. The Imperium was willfully blind, deliberately so. It had never wished to look at what held it together.In the beginning, Magnus had not wanted the Librarius integrated into the Legions. He wanted every human psyker to unlock their full potential, to explore all they were safely capable of -- with no restraint, and no guidance. But his two brother Primarchs disagreed, for they felt that such potentially dangerous abilities needed to be curbed. So the Khan and the Angel agreed to create a strict structure for the use of psychic powers, a structure intended to limit what psykers were allowed to do.As already noted, on Chogoris the use of such esoteric abilities was known as walking the Path of Heaven. Psykers, the zadyin arga, were taught that if they strayed from this path, the Warp would eat away at their very souls. The Chogorians had always known that utilising the powers of the Warp was inherently dangerous.As the argument over the use of such abilities came to a head in the Imperium, there were those who understood that the survival of the Space Marine Legions' Librarius was balanced on a narrow ledge. But there were those who thought that Librarians were witches, ripe for burning, and those who thought they were still-forming gods. Neither side could be allowed to win their arguments if the Imperium was to prosper. But in the end, the witch-hunters largely carried the day.When the Crimson King spoke in favour of the use of psykers and even psychic sorcery at the Council of Nikaea, as many proponents feared, he went too far. He never understood how much fear he caused. If he had managed to rein himself in, and acknowledge that his Legion needed to reform and that they understood that they needed to be more careful in their use of the Warp, then the outcome of the Council might have been very different.But instead he preached about knowledge and power and gave the impression that he was some kind of prophet. Finally, at the end of the conclave, Stormseer Targutai Yesugei, at the time a junior Librarian of the White Scars Legion, presented the Council of Nikaea a third option in regards to the use of psychic abilities and the maintenance or abolition of the established Legions' Librarius.He explained that there was nothing inherently evil about a psyker. If such a gifted individual was properly trained in order to obtain the greatest results, like any weapon, he or she could still be used, but with respect and not indiscriminately. Yesugei argued that human psykers should be trained rigorously to take advantage of their innate abilities in order to assist the Imperium in completing its galaxy-spanning conquest.With such an elite cadre of trained psychic specialists utterly loyal to the Emperor, the galaxy could be brought into the Imperial fold with ease. Yesugei also argued that psychic sorcery should be strictly forbidden, since in dealing and bargaining with the entities of the Warp, the ever-present risk of corruption was simply too great to be avoided.The Emperor's judgement at the Council of Nikaea proved severe, largely as a result of His anger at Magnus for delving into forbidden sorcery in contravention of the Emperor's explicit warnings to him decades before. The Emperor rejected the White Scars Librarians' compromise. With the exceptions of Navigators and Astropaths who were properly trained, controlled and sanctioned by the Imperium and were necessary to its continued existence, the Space Marine Legions were no longer to employ psykers within their ranks.He commanded that the Primarchs were to close their Legions' Librarius departments forthwith and not to indulge the undoubted psychic talents of those Legionaries who possessed the gift. All existing Space Marine Librarians were likewise forbidden to make use of their abilities.The Council's rulings also created a new position amongst the Space Marine Legions, the Space Marine Chaplain, to uphold the Imperial Truth and help maintain the purity of an Astartes Legion's dedication and fidelity to the Emperor's commands.Afterwards, Jaghatai came to believe that the outcome of the Council of Nikaea should have never been left in the Crimson King's hands. The Khan should have been there, side-by-side with his two brothers, standing with the Angel and Magnus. No one could have accused him of being a sorcerer. It would have calmed the others, to see a warrior-Primarch making his case in support of the Librarius.He did not attend because he was sent away to the Chondax System, just as the Council was preparing to meet at Nikaea. He spoke to Stormseer Yesugei and considered rejecting the Warmaster Horus' command to leave for Chondax, for he could have done so, but both White Scars warriors believed that the campaign on Chondax would be over in a matter of solar weeks. The enemy infesting that system were only Greenskins, remnants of the Ork empire destroyed on Ullanor, the last slivers of the Warlord Urrlak Urruk's horde.Perhaps some of the Primarchs would have balked at being ordered to hunt down the xenos -- it was not prestigious work -- but the Khan was happy enough. It was hunting, and in a way that he understood: cavalry charges across open spaces, going up against prey that had no concept of capitulation or self-pity. He had never complained. Nearly all of his Legion went with him, ranked in their various brotherhoods, eager for the hunt. Scores of white starships cut the void, each crammed with warriors of the ordu, all desperate to get back in the chase. |
White Scars - Horus Heresy: The Vth Legion's legend was to grow with the events of the Horus Heresy, when the White Scars fought on hundreds of worlds for over 7 Terran years against the Traitor Legions and the other forces of Chaos. Unlike many of the other Primarchs, Jaghatai never even considered betraying the Emperor for the service of the Ruinous Powers.Such a course would have been dishonourable in the extreme since the Emperor had done no wrong to His sons and also because Jaghatai so deeply believed in the Emperor's goal of reunifying the entire human race under a single ruler so that it might claim final dominance over the Milky Way Galaxy.The White Scars Legion had already been engaged for several standard years on the orders of the Warmaster Horus in a surprisingly punishing campaign against the Orks of the Chondax System where Jaghatai had recalled his entire Legion when the Heresy began. It was at Chondax that they first received the news of the Space Wolves Legion's actions during the Burning of Prospero.These reports said Russ had turned rebel, and driven by his hatred for Magnus, his Legion had utterly decimated the Thousand Sons Legion and their Primarch Magnus had died at the Wolf King's own hand. But due to the effects of the Ruinstorm, a monstrous Warp Storm unleashed by the Word Bearers during the Battle of Calth, astropathic communication was unreliable and vast tracts of the Imperium were made all but impassable. Furthermore, the White Scars' fleet Astropaths continued to interpret the astropathic messages they received in a contradictory manner. |
White Scars - Delay and Deception at Chondax: It had begun in the Chondax System, right towards the end of the long and brutal Chondax Campaign against the Greenskins -- the first inkling that all was not well in the wider Imperium. There had been no detail then, no authentication, just stray astropathic messages of dubious provenance. It should have been easy to dismiss, to put down to the warping power of the Empyrean.But it had worn on the Khan, unravelling his sleep. He felt that Imperium was standing upon a precipice. There were also conflicting reports received from the Imperial Fists Legion's Primarch Rogal Dorn that urged the White Scars to return to Terra to help defend the Throneworld alongside Dorn and Leman Russ, supposedly now a Traitor, as soon as possible.Everything had changed so quickly, garbled in a flurry of contradictory astropathy and secure comm-bursts: Russ of the Space Wolves had gone rogue; or the Warmaster had, taking several Legions with him; the White Scars were ordered to reinforce the Alpha Legion at the Alaxxes Nebula; Ferrus Manus had killed the peacock Fulgrim; Mars and the Mechanicum was in open revolt against the Emperor. Some of the Warp-translated messages bore chrono-marks from many solar months previously; some had been sent, it seemed, only solar hours previously.Though the Warmaster had ordered the White Scars to bring judgement upon the Space Wolves, the Khan would not unleash his vengeance upon Leman Russ and his get until he had more detailed information. The Khan had the strength of the Vth Legion arrayed before him, his ordu assembled and ready to strike, yet none could tell the Primarch who was the true enemy of the Imperium and all he held dear.Jaghatai was next contacted by Leman Russ himself, who had just returned from the Burning of Prospero and the assault against the Space Wolves' old rivals, the Thousand Sons Legion. The VIth Legion's fleet had mustered at the Alaxxes Nebula to lick its wounds after the recent campaign, when it was beset by the forces of the Alpha Legion. Horus had deployed the XXth Legion to launch a massive assault on Russ' battered and outnumbered Space Wolves.The Alpha Legion and its twin Primarchs, Alpharius Omegon, had long harboured deep grudges against the Space Wolves, and Leman Russ in particular, for his criticism of their reliance upon trickery, manipulation and subterfuge to win battles rather than engaging in what the Space Wolves Primarch saw as honourable, open combat. The Alpha Legion relished the chance to prove their superiority against the arrogant Space Wolves of Fenris by delaying them long enough to keep them from contributing to the Imperial defence of Terra.Although the Khan sympathised with the Space Wolves' predicament, he refused to get involved until he was able to sort out the conflicting and often contradictory astropathic messages he had received. Until he knew, beyond a shadow of doubt, who was ally and who was an enemy, who had truly betrayed the Emperor and who was still loyal, he refused to choose sides. Wishing his brother the best of luck, Jaghatai decided to seek his answers elsewhere.As the White Scars fleet made preparations to depart the Chondax System, they encountered a massive Alpha Legion flotilla. The Alpha Legion were an unknown quantity to the White Scars. They did not respond to communication requests and had hung back on the edge of the system, quietly accumulating more warships across a wide sweep of local space.There was no response from the XXth Legion's command despite all queries. All White Scars vessels were ordered not to escalate the situation and not to fire upon the interlopers unless fired upon. The warriors of the Vth Legion were to maintain perimeter integrity and not to permit Alpha Legion spacecraft to penetrate within range of the core White Scars fleet.As the Khagan decided on his Legion's next move, the Alpha Legion cordon remained intact, its smooth unity broken only by minor adjustments to the twin defensive lines. Every move that the White Scars made was reflected by Alpha Legion warships in what had become a bizarre game of mirrors. Though the Alpha Legion had presented no threat, these were not the actions of a friend. This could not be denied, but despite that, the Khan still resisted giving the order to attack. Mere hours earlier, the shape of the reported rebellion within the Imperium had been simple: Russ and his savages had defied orders once more. Now it had become complex, far more complex.Things were further complicated when the White Scars Astropathic Choir received official messages directly from Terra, from Rogal Dorn himself -- the White Scars were commanded to make the swiftest possible passage to the Throneworld where further instructions and further explanations would be given. The meaning was clear, its origin unambiguous.The Vth Legion had been ordered to ignore all other claims on their fealty, in particular those of the Warmaster Horus, who had been declared Traitor to the Emperor along with any other Legion answering his summons. But the Khan was not moved by these demands.He felt the old stirrings of resentment again, the chill anger of the unregarded son and the man who had bent the knee to avoid having domination forced upon him. A price always had to be paid for his inclination to freedom, for skirting along the edges of Imperial communication. The reality was that the White Scars were always the last to know what was happening in the wider galaxy.The Khan now saw the larger strategic picture -- the Alpha Legion did not wish to fight the White Scars, nor did they want to join them. They wanted to cause doubt, keeping the White Scars in the Chondax System to tie them up in questions, because they knew the veil was slowly lifting and that messages were only now getting through the aether of the Warp.The Sons of Alpharius were manipulators -- they wanted the White Scars to hear from Dorn. They had purposely kept the Vth Legion's fleet at Chondax until they could be sure the White Scars had picked up Dorn's message and call for aid.The Alpha Legion, for some unknown reason, wanted the White Scars to return to Terra and aid in its defence from whomever the real Traitors were. But the Khan would not take direction from anyone, not even from a Throneworld that only now that its Legions were tearing one another to pieces, deigned to remember that it had his warriors at its service.His White Scars were nobody's slaves. They were the ordu of Jaghatai Khan and they took orders from no one else. They would take no one's word for the truth, for they were on their own, just as they had always been, and if there was truth to be found in this, then they would find it for themselves before acting. |
White Scars - The Chisel: Jaghatai ordered his fleet to prepare for immediate departure from Chondax. All across the vast battlefront, White Scars Escort craft moved as one, sweeping towards the encircling Alpha Legion forces in a unified screen. Inter-fleet communications were shut down and incoming bursts blocked -- the enemy had had their chance to make themselves understood.Anything that they said now would be disregarded. The White Scars coordinated to perform a standard zao (known in Low Gothic as "The Chisel") manoeuvre -- full-fleet, enacted on a single command from the Vth Legion's flagship Swordstorm.Every starship in the service of the Imperium was different. The secrets hidden within their reactor hearts were jealously guarded by the lords of the Red Planet and shared with no one outside the privileged circles of the elect. Every Primarch asserted various preferences during construction: Corax had worked obsessively to make his vessels as stealthy as possible, Vulkan to make them durable and Fulgrim to make them beautiful.Primarchs had ways of circumventing standard Imperial command structures -- they could bend rules, uncover hidden data-cores and suborn Mechanicum Magi to their desires. So it was, as the Great Crusade progressed, that each Legion fleet slowly took on the character of its master through an endless programme of refits, retrofits and base modifications. In the case of the White Scars, only one change had ever been requested of the Tech-priests and only one metric was ever improved upon -- speed.The Vth Legion's Techmarines spent solar decades boosting reactor power-feeds and finding ways to hone manoeuvrability far beyond the tolerances that each standard starship class had been designed for. The endless pursuit of velocity came with its costs: gunnery captains had been heard to complain of reduced Lance range, and it was well known that a White Scars warship would not carry as many troops or dropships as the equivalent vessel in a standard fleet, but such factors carried little weight in a Legion drenched in the wild-riding tradition of the Chogorian plains.Under standing orders from the Khagan, the Legion had never shown off its drives' modified capabilities outside of active warzones. Since so few of the other Legions had ever fought alongside the White Scars, this specialisation had not become widely known, except for a few speculative reports here and there of strangely elongated engine-housings, extravagant thruster formations and oversized fuel lines. It all made for a ferociously fast set of warships, from the largest behemoths to the most slender of system-runners.As the White Scars' vessels began to move, the Alpha Legion reacted. They maintained the integrity of the cordon, warding the routes to the nearest suitable Mandeville jump-points and keeping the White Scars corralled within the vicinity of Chondax. As they had done ever since arriving, each ship of the blockade matched the movements of its White Scars counterpart, maintaining a gigantic mirror-image across space.The gap between the fleets slowly closed. The Alpha Legion formation reacted just as a blockade ought to react, maintaining a rigid web across the widest area of space, each node backed up by a second rank of warships held in reserve. Their movements remained cagey, as if they wished to do nothing more than hold the impasse for as long as possible. As the two vanguards closed to within Lance-range, for the first time the White Scars noticed incoming Vox-requests from the enemy on the sensorium array, and ignored them. The Alpha Legion had already been given every chance to explain themselves.It was then that the Alpha Legion opened fire on its former brothers. All along the front, White Scars ships probed the line and Alpha Legion ships resisted them. It was a classic containment pattern, designed to hem the Vth Legion formation in and prevent isolated warships from running the cordon.The standard breakout response was a full-scale assault on the containment net, aiming to drive it back through a massed volume of concentrated ship-to-ship fire. Such an order was not taken lightly -- the result would be ruinous for both sides, and only hotheads like Leman Russ or Angron enjoyed taking such risks. The Alpha Legion clearly judged that the Khan was not so cavalier. In this, of course, they were entirely correct.The White Scars' vanguard began to drift spinwards, pulling clear of their jump-point trajectory and dragging the centre of the engagement back towards Chondax's gravity well. It looked almost careless, as if aimless commanders had launched a half-hearted breakout without the commitment to see it through.The drift became more pronounced as the intensity of the las-fire picked up. For all that, the individual engagements were muted, probing, restrained. No torpedoes were launched, no gunship wings were unleashed. The two walls of minor warships grappled in a bizarre half-embrace of limited ferocity.All across the engagement zone, Vth Legion positions began to collapse, withering in the face of steady, professional pressure from the enemy. White Scars vessels dropped formation, protecting their own flanks and leaving holes in the offensive wall. As if fighting a strong headwind out on the Altak back on Chogoris, the vanguard's momentum faltered.When the chronograph reached 0, the White Scars vessels moved, every one of them, all at the same time, into full attack speed. Everything quickly changed as the Vth Legion's fleet formation morphed in an instant, suddenly switching from an aimless drift-pattern into an arrowhead shock assault of astonishing precision. The White Scars vessels took on new trajectories and moved in perfect concert, suddenly leaping from semi-committed holding patterns into a single attack vector. The Alpha Legion most likely had never witnessed such ship mastery.The best Imperial naval officers could not have performed such a manoeuvre in less than five solar minutes, and it would have required hundreds of course-correction warnings and solar hours of preparation to bring off. The White Scars had done it, as one -– with no extraneous prompting -- in five seconds. The White Scars' deployment was now a single spearhead. Escorts shot out, pulling together into a single mass and punching a hole through the enemy cordon. Their sudden burst of speed and concentrated Lance-strikes wrong-footed the Alpha Legion vessels in their path, and three bronze-prowed Destroyers were overwhelmed almost immediately, lost amidst a whirlwind of plasma and exploding torpedo trails.More White Scars Destroyers screamed through the wreckage, corkscrewing and diving like plunging pods of cetaceans. Everything was aimed at a single point: the flanks were discarded, surrendered to the enemy as every Vth Legion asset in the battlesphere shot into close formation and boomed up to top velocity.The encircling Alpha Legion cordon was now compromised and fractured, its constituents struggling to respond to the lone column of ships that burned its way through their heart. Their capital ships were even slower, unable to take advantage of modified engines or the White Scars' almost preternaturally-skilled ship crews. The Swordstorm pulled up to the forefront of the Chisel formation, propelled by its monstrous, raging plasma engines and surrounded by a swarm of racing Escorts. Bulky vessels of the Alpha Legion's second rank tried to bar its path, sliding into a hurried defensive formation with what now looked like ponderous clumsiness.All around their Legion flagship, other White Scars warships launched forward-facing barrages, vomiting las-beams and plasma bolts and torpedo salvoes in a vast, intense column of pure destruction. The Chisel had hammered its way through the Alpha Legion cordon, breaking it open at its weakest point. The entire formation -- tightly-knit, long and slender like a throwing javelin -- raced out into open space. The Alpha Legion struggled to regroup in its wake, pulling warships from the far-flung cordon formation like an octopus clutching its many limbs back to itself.They had not lost critical numbers of ships, but the sudden attack run had blown their formation wide open and destroyed the cohesion that they had so painstakingly built. The White Scars' run did not slow. If anything, free of the need to maintain a barrage of las-fire, it accelerated.As the orb of Chondax fell rapidly away aft, it was mediated by the glowing corpses of a dozen burned-out Alpha Legion warships. The starships of the White Scars fleet soon reached their Mandeville Points and translated without delay into Warpspace, their destination unknown. |
White Scars - Seeking Answers: The White Scars understood that fate was against them. Somehow the Warp Storms around Chondax had been orchestrated by some mysterious outside force. Though it took enormous power, or devices of ancient and unknown origins, it could be done.To seek out the answers they sought, the Khagan ordered his Legion to head for the source, to find the architect of the chaos engulfing the Imperium. Yet, only one soul could see the Warp as it truly was, and that was Magnus the Red, the only one of his brothers that Jaghatai had ever truly trusted.If Magnus yet lived then everything could be salvaged. If he was dead, then the Imperium was finished. The White Scars set course for Prospero. As the Swordstorm broke free of the Warp on the Prospero System's outer limits, the warship's systems were brought online and began to run forward Augur sweeps. The results were not encouraging -- no Vox signals were detected and there were no transports nor energy-trails. A major star system like Prospero ought to have had thousands of ship-spores hanging in the void, the chemical residue of void engine release, but the routes inbound from the Mandeville Warp point were sterile.Soon the Thousand Sons' homeworld swam into extreme forward sensor range. Blurry pict-feeds flickered into life, clarifying rapidly as Servitors adjusted the image gain logic engines. The planet was entirely dark. Prospero had once been a jewel of a world, a pale-orb the colour of a Terran dawn, banded with lilac and under-lit by glistening ice caps. From space it had been pristine, untouched by the industrial hyper-sprawl that had turned the throneworld of Terra into a grey-tinged ball of rockcrete and iron.Now it was mottled the colour of burned charcoal. Swirls of drifting cloud, as thick and dark as those that swept across Ullanor, covered the ravaged planet. As the White Scars fleet moved into orbit, the Khagan instructed the fleet to blockade, then prepare for planetfall. If his ships detected anything with a Fenrisian marker, they were ordered to kill it.By the time Swordstorm reached geostationary orbit over the world's capital city of Tizca, there was no longer room for doubt. Atmospheric readings streamed in, adding to the visual evidence. There was substantial tectonic activity, atmospheric pollution levels were far in excess of mortal tolerances. These markers were indicators of a heavy bombardment consistent with mass drivers from orbit, followed by a secondary trauma. Toxins across a wide spectrum were present in lethal quantities, and extensive volcanism scarred the equatorial zone.Something in the upper atmosphere -- an aetheric field, a truly massive one -- was preventing the White Scars from sending landers or Drop Pods. The world was rapidly dying and the phenomenon was still growing, perhaps as a result of what had happened there. One did not kill an entire planet without aftershocks.Undeterred, the Khan opted to teleport to the surface. But it was made clear that the topographic interference might make it impossible for the flagship to extract the Primarch, or even make Vox-contact. Jaghatai and twelve of his Terminator-armoured bodyguard, the keshig, teleported down to the unstable surface of Prospero.As the Primarch and his warriors explored the ruined capital city, they observed the scene of devastation stretching away under the darkened sky. The whole city reeked of burning metal. The Khan's armour sensors told him the surfaces around him were still warm from the afterglow of whatever apocalypse had overtaken Prospero.Everything was simply gone -- all the libraries, the repositories, the arcana. If the Space Wolves had truly done this, then perhaps their power did match their boasts. The Khan instructed his warriors to search for the caves that he knew were under the city. They would begin their search for the Crimson King there. |
White Scars - Enemy Within: Some amongst the Khan's command were a part of the Warrior Lodges, a closed fraternity of warriors that existed outside of the Space Marine Legions' formal structure. It was common knowledge that the Emperor frowned on such institutions, claiming they were dangerously close to the cults of ancient superstition. Despite this, the proliferation of these Warrior Lodges quickly spread amongst the other Legions -- even into the White Scars Legion.Many of the Terran warriors of the Vth Legion as well as some of their erstwhile Chogorian brethren took part in the clandestine activities of the lodges. They felt that the Khagan was too slow in deciding which side the White Scars should choose in the coming conflict that had only begun to rage amongst the Legiones Astartes.These lodges had already made their choice. The moment had finally come, and so, they moved as one, silently and efficiently. Led by the esteemed Hasik Noyan-Khan, the Warrior Lodge members declared their allegiance to Horus. They had remained secretly in contact with Horus' partisans through arcane means at least since the campaign at Chondax.In the absence of the Khagan on the surface of Prospero, Hasik Noyan-Khan was in command of the flagship and, by extension, the Vth Legion's fleet. Personnel began to move between the warships as the lodge members began to move themselves into position for their coup d'etat. Discovering the clandestine activities of Hasik and his co-conspirators, Shiban Khan, commander of the Brotherhood of the Storm, attempted to bring to the attention of Jemulan Noyan-Khan, that his ordu commander Hasik was a part of this cancer at the heart of their Legion, and informed him of their intended plans.Unable or unwilling to assist, Jemulan dismissed these accusations out of hand and ordered Shiban to return back to his ship until he had received further orders. It had been a slim hope -- Jemulan did not have quite the same reputation as Hasik and had not been with the Legion from the start.As a result, he was not as close to the Primarch. Perhaps it had been too much to expect. Back aboard his ship, the Kaljian, Shiban Khan was unable to sit idly by. He ordered the entirety of his brotherhood to muster and prepare for action. They would seize the initiative and oppose this madness before it could seize hold of their entire Legion. |
White Scars - A New Threat: On Prospero, it was difficult to witness what had become of Magnus' iridescent city of glass and crystal. The Khan made his way through the layers of grey-silver dust, watching heavy skies scud across the blackened shells of old structures. The lightning never ceased, flickering away on the northern horizon. The Khan's keshig of Terminators fanned out around him. They went as warily as he, and their bone-white armour made them look like ghosts in the dark. Jhagatai had not wanted to believe it, not truly.His feelings about Leman Russ had always been mixed -- respect for the warrior; exasperation at the boasts, the self-appointed exceptionalism. It was another thing, though, to witness what he had done, to see the truth of the White Scars star-speakers' (astropaths) testimony.The Khan found that the truth, now that it was before him, was a bitter draught indeed. As the small landing party of warriors made their way deeper into the ruins of the city, they found themselves near the cult temples. As the Khan investigated the immediate area he heard an unmistakable buzzing noise, like the drone of massed insect wings. Though there were no life signs detected, the Khan could not shake the feeling that he heard a distinct buzzing sound.The Khan ordered his warriors to disable their auto-senses and to use their own eyes. Blink-dismissing the lattice of targeting reticules and environmental compensators hovering in their field of vision within their helmets, only then did the White Scars see them: shimmering in spectral blue-white, arthropodic, winged and massive. There were dozens, sliding up out of the ground like unquiet shades rising from the grave.They were ruined things, twisted and hunched, though still twice the size of the Terminators before them. Once free of the broken earth they swayed through the air jerkily, lurching as though blind and famished. The Khan recognised the vile creatures immediately -- Psychneuein -- vile Warp entities drawn to the mental emanations of unprotected, badly-injured or nascent psykers whose minds they attack for the obscene purpose of gestating their progeny.These creatures had been a blight on the otherwise benign world of Prospero for centuries, consuming the minds of mortals. The Thousand Sons had hunted them, driving them into the wilds and far from the glittering spires. Now, like everything else, they had been reduced to ghosts -- remnants of the living horrors they had been. Only, unlike all the other destroyed fauna, they had retained some vestige of their old wills.The White Scars quickly found that their physical weapons had no effect on the spectral insects, their blades passing through their arthropedal forms harmlessly. Their only advantage was that the creatures were blind, yet they could still sense their prey. When the Psychneunin struck, they angled their swollen abdomens to sting. The glowing tips of their long proboscis passed through the Terminators' Ceramite with ease.Howls of agony filled the air as lumpy matter was sucked up the creatures' translucent proboscis. Unable to fight such fell creatures, the Khagan ordered his warriors to fall back. As Jaghatai fought the hideous creatures, the ground beneath his feet gave way, the flagstones damaged by the Space Wolves' relentless orbital bombardment.Falling for a long distance, the Primarch came to a sudden halt. Buried up to his chest in the fallen debris, the Khan attempted to contact his Keshig on the surface. He received nothing but static for his trouble. Pulling himself free from the pile of rubble, Jaghatai found himself in a strange underground world of sink-holes and chasms that might open up into something bigger. He had come looking for caves. And he had found them. |
White Scars - Sole Survivor: The Keshig master Qin Xa ordered his warriors to withdraw, for they could not fight this new threat. Staggering away from the creatures, the other warriors did not respond immediately. Despite their fearsome levels of discipline, leaving the site of the Khagan's fall was anathema. They surged back across the heaving terrain, lumbering away from the Psychneuein attacks as best they could, trying to reach the crumbling maw of the fissure that had swallowed their Primarch. It was a doomed attempt.The Keshig pulled together and retreated towards a bombed-out terrace. The Psychneuein came after them. Soon the surviving Keshig found themselves trapped, and so they formed a broken line, determined to face the enemy. Then suddenly, they all felt the static build-up of enormous power. A second later the entire chamber was filled with light as flames leapt up from underneath the Psychneuein. Caught up in the maelstrom of blazing, purple-tinged fire, the creatures simply burst apart.Turning to investigate the source of the flames, Qin Xa felt a fresh surge of power just behind him. His arms went rigid, locked by some mysterious force. A huge weight pressed against his twin heart, slowing him down and deadening his movements. A Bolter was pressed against his chest and a figure stood before him in crimson armour.His faceplate was that of a suit of gold-crested Mark III Power Armour, archaic and festooned with Thousand Sons iconography. He introduced himself as Revuel Arvida, a Sergeant of the Thousand Sons Legion's 4th Fellowship and a member of its Corvidae Cult. He was the last surviving member of his squad. He led the Keshig away from the danger of the ravenous Warp-spawned insects.Arvida led the surviving Keshig far through the empty city, until they found themselves within the ruins of a grand audience chamber. The White Scars inquired as to how the Thousand Sons Sergeant had come to be on Prospero and how long he had been there. Arvida informed them that he had arrived on Prospero after its destruction, and that he could give them no answers as to what had previously occurred. As for how long he had been there, he did not know, for his Power Armour's internal chronometre had been blown in battle.He understood that the White Scars were trying to find their missing Primarch, but their efforts were futile. Their gene-sire could fight the Psychneuein, for he was made to fight them. They needed to get away from the benighted planet, and that when they did, to take him with them. Qin Xa explained that they would make one more final attempt to find their Primarch. Arvida acquiesced to their wishes, but requested that they wait for a short time until he had fully recovered from his last encounter with the vile Warp-entities. They would need his psychic abilities if they wanted to survive the coming conflict. |
White Scars - The Warhawk and the Crimson King: Jaghatai Khan made his way through the newly discovered tunnels. He had only been able to go down, despite several attempts to find a route back to the surface. The Psychneuein had not followed him down, but the absence of any movement beyond his own was chilling. Eventually he made his way to a large chamber. The space was immense, and the upper reaches soared away into the darkness.The walls curved upwards steeply, terraced like an auditorium and striated with bands of metallic ore. Brass instruments lay about it, each one smashed or warped. There were bodies buried beneath the ash and metal: human bodies, mortal in stature. The keshig master had been right -- there was nothing left on Prospero. The Khan had been a fool to come, and a greater fool to come down to the surface in person.As he stared grimly at the macabre surroundings around him, he suddenly felt a restless, gentle movement in the dust. A ghostly outline of a figure flickered, burning coldly. He stood a little taller than the Khan, just as he had done in life. His face was the same, though the expression was infinitely weary, and a little distracted. His lone eye did not focus -- in the past, its focus had been remorseless.Holding his ground, the Khan stood speechless, still gripping his blade. His defensive posture was unnecessary. When the figure spoke, the voice dispelled any trace of doubt. It was an apparition of his missing brother, Magnus the Red, the Crimson King. At first the Khan did not believe the evidence of his senses for a long time. The shade explained that it was merely a remnant or psychic fragment of Magnus -- a dream of something destroyed. Though the Khan had doubts that it truly was his brother, the Magnus fragment explained that it was not the Crimson King -- at least not entirely -- but they did share a soul.The shade explained to the Khan what had occurred recently on the devastated world, that it was their father's vengeance for his hubris, for daring to break the Emperor's edicts. Magnus confessed that Jaghatai had been right -- he should have restrained his sons in their explorations of the power of sorcery. However, Magnus added that the Khan had never had to make the bargains he had subscribed to, and the Vth Legion had never been compromised by the Warp as the Thousand Sons had been to ensure their survival against the threat of constant mutation.But the truth of the matter was that everyone in the Imperium had been deceived. The Great Ocean was never benign, and it was conspiring against Mankind even as they stepped into its shallows. The greater the soul, the greater the jeopardy. Horus was the greatest soul of them all, and so his was the furthest fall. Horus had been eaten by the Warp. His body was bursting with it, corroding him, gnawing at him from the inside. There were others -- First Chaplain Erebus, their brother Lorgar of the Word Bearers -- but it was always every mortal's decision in the end whether to reject or embrace the corrupt promises of the Empyrean.Magnus had tried to warn the Emperor. That was his crime, and the destruction of his Legion and his homeworld was his punishment. It was pride, that was all. Pride that had swallowed Horus, as well. The Ruinous Powers waited and they watched, and they realised what the Primarchs had not -- that only the Primarchs could destroy the Primarchs. Only they could bring down the eternal Imperium, because everything else had been annihilated.That's what Lorgar called the Chaos Gods -- the Primordial Annihilator. Most of the Primarchs, without realising it, had already cast their lots in the great drama about to unfold, and only a few remained. They were being lined up, one by one, to tear at each other's throats. The Khan was one of the last. The Chaos Gods did not know which way the White Scars would go. None of them did, and that was why the White Scars had the eyes of the galaxy on them at last. Jaghatai Khan had never taken sides.He would take everyone on if he had to. But the shade of Magnus explained that there were but two paths to chose from -- he could hunker down in what remained of their father's Imperium and try to keep Horus from beating down the door, or he could choose to remember how Horus had once been, and stand at his side as he brought terror to the complacent. The first would be the more loyal course, but the other had its merits.When Jaghatai pressed Magnus for where his allegiances lay, the shade explained that his choices were constrained. He now knew more than anyone what awaited those on the other side. It turned out to be the ruin the Crimson King had worked for centuries to avoid, but their father was not the forgiving sort. Magnus had burned his bridges with the Emperor. They were burned when he had broke the wards over the Emperor's secret Webway project after he had projected his astral form into the dungeons of the Imperial Palace to bring his father the dire warning of the corruption of Horus and his intentions for insurrection.Khan did not quite believe that the apparition that now stood before him was truly his brother. The Khagan had come to Proserpo to find a friend. Whatever else had happened, he thought he could come to Magnus for his counsel. Despite all this, Magnus still wanted to know whose side Jaghatai would choose. Jaghatai was ambiguous about his choice, for he believed that Horus was corrupted and that the Emperor was a tyrant. The Khan informed him that he could choose neither. But Magnus explained it did not work like this. Sooner or later, the Khan would have to choose between the two sides, and that the next time they met they would either be allies or enemies. Jaghatai still had a choice, and Magnus implored his brother to make the right one.Jaghatai expressed his regret at not being there at the Council of Nikaea besides both Magnus and Sanguinius. The Khan explained that their brother Horus had purposely sent him away, for there were no accidents. But Magnus dismissed his misgiving, telling him instead to focus on the future. Jaghatai snapped at the aether-shade that there was no future. Khan and his brothers had all been working for something better than... this. Magnus countered that this was certainly true of Roboute Guilliman and perhaps Lorgar as well, in his own warped way.But Jaghatai had not -- he had only been a part of the Great Crusade for the hunt. Jaghatai countered that the hunt had kept his Legion pure. Magnus argued that it had kept his brother away. He had been so easy to keep out of the conversation. The Crimson King had been there the whole time -- he just did not hear the words being sibilantly whispered by the powers of the Warp. The Magnus-apparition explained that it was glad that the Khan had come to see him -- they had always seen eye-to-eye.Though he thought Jaghatai brittle, at least he always spoke the truth. When they finally concluded their conversation, the Khan informed Magnus that he had got what he had come for. He told Magnus that he had always been his friend. Magnus understood, and looked at the Khan for a moment. Jaghatai knew what he had to do. With a final parting word, Jaghatai swung his great bladed dao and struck Magnus' outline, and the ghost shell shattered, spilling a thousand pieces like broken glass.The Khan remained still. He felt as though moving, even by a fraction, might break what remained. Around him, the Reflecting Caves sighed with emptiness, their majesty in tatters. The Khan bowed his head. At least, amidst all the numbness, the truth was now known. The choice could be made, for the Traitor had been unmasked. Duty could now be done, the call to war could be given. But, for all that, still he could not stir. The dream had died. |
White Scars - A Legion Divided: As Shiban Khan secretly prepared his brotherhood to storm the Vth Legion's flagship, the Terran commander Torghun Khan warned Hasik Noyan-Khan that their plan to suborn Shiban's loyalty to their cause had failed. Torghun informed him that the Brotherhood of the Storm's khan had been to see Jemulan Noyan-Khan. Things were now moving very quickly. Hasik had the Swordstorm and Torghun Khan would take the Tchin-Zar.As long as the Warrior Lodge brothers held onto the capital ships, the others would fall into line. When the Khagan returned he would see the wisdom of the actions of the lodge brothers. Horus and Jaghatai had always seen things the same way. What could the Khan do if his fleet was of one mind? He would recognise what they had done and see the justice in it.Torghun, like many of his erstwhile lodge brothers, had made their choice a long time ago, years back when the first stirrings of the lodges had come to their ears. It was the chance to mould the White Scars Legion into what it should have been -- a shock-attack force to rival the vaunted speartip of the Sons of Horus, only shackled to a greater, more generous mind than that of the mighty Khan.This was the destiny of the Vth Legion. All the lodges had done was help the process along. Suddenly, every Warrior Lodge member within the Vth Legion received a relayed Augur-reading from the Swordstorm. They rejoiced, for they had called, and Horus had answered. Looking at the signals, still on the edge of the system but already moving in close -- three, then four vessels allied to Horus were moving towards the Prospero System.Meanwhile, Shiban Khan had his ship, the Kalijan, slide close to his Legion's flagship. When they were in position, he led his brotherhood in a daring orbital assault by launching specially modified Sojutsu Pattern voidbikes. They were more like one-man fighters than Jetbikes, and an armour-sealed White Scars Legionary could use them for short bursts in the void just as other Legions used their Land Speeders for atmospheric work.As Shiban and his men launched a lightning assault upon the massive flagship, the Swordstorm's weapon batteries buffeted them in a flurry of las-fire. As they pushed their bikes close to the flagship, scanning for an entry point, the Khan finally saw a single docking port, un-shielded and unbarred.Leading the way, Shiban and his warriors tore through the oncoming las-fire, jerking and ducking to avoid the beams, sweeping past a whole row of angled torpedo launchers and streaking towards the signalled port. Kicking the retros at the last moment, the voidbikes skidded around in zero-gravity then powered into the Swordstorm's inertia bubble. Their bike's grav-plates whined instantly, adjusting to the rapidly moving environment, before locking on the docking bay floor and righting themselves.The Brotherhood of the Storm followed their commander into the corridors beyond. Hasik Noyan-Khan and his co-conspirators had been blindsided by Shiban Khan's daring assault. Reports streamed in -- there was disorder on many vessels now as both factions vied for control of their respective vessels. Hasik ordered a Vox-link to be opened with the flotilla, and to prevent any of their vessels from opening fire on them.This was their moment -- they would hold their position. Turning to the dozens of White Scars around him there were khans, captains, senior ship-officers and mortal commanders -- just a few of those who had been persuaded and who were now working to free the Legion from the hand of tyranny in service to Horus. They would remain resolute. They had no choice.Suddenly, the bridge detected signs of a boarding party making their way towards the bridge. Hasik gave the order to repel boarders. A lone White Scars brotherhood posed no real risk -- they had run the calculations. But still, he had hoped to avoid full-scale combat with his battle-brothers in persuading others to the honourable course. Perhaps that had always been a foolish hope. The Noyan-Khan did not understand why the flotilla of newly arrived Traitor vessels did not make contact. Why the silence? He assured his warriors that this was the test. This is what they had been working towards. It could not be halted now. For the sake of the Imperium, no backward step.As Shiban led his brotherhood further into the interior of the White Scars' flagship he encountered resistance from a rival brotherhood commanded by his former comrade, the Terran commander Torghun Khan. Halfway up a staircase, on a colonnaded landing area, a line of White Scars waited. The Brotherhood of the Moon was well-established, already crouched in fire-positions and able to shelter behind the curve of the pillars around them. Beyond lay the approaches to the strategium and bridge.Torghun attempted to reason with his erstwhile brothers. He informed Shiban and his men that the bridge was sealed. Shiban inquired as to the whereabouts of the Khagan. Torghun calmly replied that Hasik Noyan-Khan spoke for the Khagan. Shiban felt his blood run hot. No one, not even the Emperor Himself, spoke for the Great Khan. Undeterred, the Brotherhood of the Storm burst out of cover and surged up the stairway, charging into the incoming torrent of bolt-shells as the hall exploded with light, sound and fury.The Loyalist Brotherhood of the Storm surged up against the hammering deluge, sprinting in loose formation. For every one knocked back, ten more gained ground. Brother locked blades with brother, and the echoing din of Bolter-fire was joined by the acrid snarl of energy weapons. The Loyalist White Scars fought in a flurry of vicious strokes, wrenching their blades deep into the flesh of their enemies.If the enemy had been Greenskins, they would have kept going -- carving into the organs, making sure -- but these were their brothers. They had no wish to kill if it could be avoided -- they immobilized, shattered bones, throttled and bludgeoned, then moved on, sprinting further up through the throng of warriors. The fighting was bizarre -- close-packed, confused and brutal, but strangely detached. No fighters whooped or cried out in battle-cant. They fought with cold-discipline, going through the movements with consummate skill but taking no joy in it.It was poor fighting, cramped and bitter. None of them let loose with the flamboyance that they were used to. Shiban urged his brothers onwards, trying to instill the virtues of greater speed, greater power. Torghun did the same -- exhorting those about him into a typically dogged defence. Neither side relished the carnage. Shiban's forces pushed up through the narrowing space, gaining ground with every surge. Many fell to the concentrated volleys of covering fire, their armour pulverised in the withering barrage, but their momentum was not halted.Torghun's forces had lost too many warriors to hold the ground, and soon struggled to keep them back. Just as the arch of the observation deck soared away ahead of Shiban and his forces, Torghun had his forces fall back en masse. They all went quickly, decisively, as if the move had been long planned. Shiban's instinct was to charge after them, cutting them down as they broke. All around him his brothers did the same, sprinting ahead to run the enemy down. That was when Shiban realised they had been drawn into a trap.Skidding to a halt, Shiban crouched down, just as the hurricane hit. From high up on the terraces on either side of the bridge, many metres up between the pillars and suspended platforms, massed Bolter-fire tore up the floor in a cloud of debris. Many of Shiban's warriors were caught in the conflagration and were ripped apart by the hail of Bolter-fire. The rest of them retreated to what cover they could.Just as they did so, the wave of Bolter-fire ceased. Scanning ahead, Shiban observed that Torghun's warriors had hunkered down in a long line across the Servitor pits bisecting the hall. Dozens of sharp-shooters were stationed above them on the terraces, holding fire for now but still primed. Beyond that, he saw more heavy infantry holding position around the epicentre of the bridge itself -- the command throne. Hasik's own keshig were amongst them, hulking in Terminator battle-plate. Other defending White Scars occupied strategic points in the observation deck beyond. The bridge was covered, locked down, utterly secure.Hasik Noyan-Khan stood stoically, addressing the crouching intruders, trying to get them to stand down. Meanwhile, the four incoming Traitor warships drifted closer, utterly incautious, prowling through local space as though they owned it. Up close, their fleet-markings were now easily identifiable -- they were XIVth Legion, the Death Guard, not warships from the Sons of Horus.More Traitor starships soon entered the system. Two of them burned through the outer system at high speed. No markers, no idents marked them, just sub-Warp signatures and the telltale flicker of Void Shield activation. The White Scars fleet was paralysed. Their ships were not moving to counter either threat closing in on them.The Legion had turned upon itself, as the hidden divisions were suddenly exposed everywhere at once. Hasik explained that the Khagan would return. He and his men were not Traitors -- it would all be resolved. The stakes were too high to leave things hanging unresolved -- the invaders were going to charge again. This time it would not stop, not until only one faction remained on the bridge, Traitor or Loyalist, whichever was which.As Shiban ordered his men to prepare to engage the enemy, a deafening roar suddenly boomed through the entire bridge. The blinding iridescence of a teleportation beam burned brightly for a few moments. When it finally cleared, the scene on the bridge looked entirely different. Now a hundred more White Scars Legionaries stood arrayed in ranks across the outer circle of the bridge, all aiming their Bolters at the command throne.Jemulan Noyan-Khan stood at the forefront in his master-crafted Terminator battle-plate, with his retinue of Veterans at his back. He ordered Hasik to stand down, as the attempt to alter the Vth Legion's path had failed. The tension hung heavily, like a thunderhead about to break.A command was given, issued from the Vox-grill of one of the commanders. Shiban's elation at Jemulan's entrance had been short-lived. The forces were even now, each carrying devastating amounts of firepower. Every stage of the escalation had brought the ruin of the Vth Legion closer -- weapons that had been made to turn upon enemies were now opening up at one another.Shiban leapt from cover and beckoned his warriors into the fray. Legionary fought Legionary, full-blooded and committed. The mortal crew of the flagship, unable to do anything in the face of such unleashed fury, cowered behind what defences they could find. All but one -- a grey-haired woman wearing a rumpled and torn Imperial Army general's uniform.She ran straight towards Shiban as he charged the Servitor pits, her arms waving frantically. Something in her eyes stopped him -- she was not desperate to survive but to get his attention. She informed Shiban that she had the Khagan's locus. She ordered Shiban to get her to the teleport platform. The frail woman explained to him that it was she that had opened the docking bay doors. She had a positive lock on the missing Primarch, and if Shiban did not want to watch his Legion destroy itself, then he would get her to the teleporter controls. |
White Scars - The Death Lord: Qin Xa and the surviving Keshig made their way back towards the central part of the ruined city of Tizca where their Primarch had been swallowed up by the massive hole in the centre of a ruined square. As they approached their designated goal they could hear the first trace of buzzing. Psychneuein materialised over the Legionaries, coalescing instantly as if sucked from the atmosphere itself. The Keshig prepared to face the ghostly insects, knowing full well their weapons were useless against the Warp-spawned creatures.Then the Thousand Sons Sergeant Arvida cried out, as he conjured lightning that slammed into the insectoid bodies of the creatures. The glowing exoskeleton of one of the creatures hardened, solidifying like freezing ice, allowing Qin Xa to strike the vile creature with his Power Sword. Positioned in the centre of the Keshig, Arvida continued to unleash bolts of Warp-fire into the foul insectoids. When the bolts hit, the half-corporeal creatures crystallised into physicality. Once in this state, the White Scars could take them on.Soon more of the creatures materialised; first a few, then dozens. Ever stranger creatures emerged among them: giant scarabs, towering mantids and Vespid-like beasts. Arvida worked hard, throwing bolt after bolt at the emerging horrors. The White Scars kept fighting, hacking their way towards their intended goal. But the numbers began to tell. The spectres kept materialising, bursting into ghoulish life from all directions, spilling out of the air. Arvida worked frantically, lighting up the skies with his sorcery, but it was not quick enough. Still there was no signal -- no location reading for the Khan.As the creatures began to overwhelm the Legionaries, pressing in from all sides, Qin Xa roared the Khan's name defiantly as he prepared to meet his death with both eyes open. Suddenly, one of the creatures blasted apart, spinning into a thousand fragments that sailed high across the ruins. A tall figure stood on the far side of the annihilated phantasms. His sword glowed with aetheric residue, as though dipped in molten iron.For a second, lost in shock, Qin Xa just stared at the newcomer, breathing heavily. Then the armoured figure spoke, and all became clear. It was the Khagan! The Primarch of the White Scars strode forth after the retreating horrors, his long dao power blade shimmering. Killing the creatures was straightforward enough.It was a matter of belief, as much as anything: attuning himself to the potential that existed within him, just as it did in all of his Primarch brothers. They were, every one of them, creatures of the Warp, whatever Malcador the Sigillite told the masses. The Warp ran through the minds of the Primarchs like blood in a vein.Qin Xa and his surviving Keshig warriors gathered around the Khagan. He inquired whether they had a fix on the Swordstorm. The Keshig master replied that unfortunately they did not. The Khan turned back, and caught sight of the Thousand Sons Legionary among the others.For a terrible moment he thought it was Ahriman -- for he wore the same crimson armour and bore the same arcane sigils. After Arvida introduced himself, the Khan regarded him closely. He could see the vigour of the psychic soul glowing inside the Thousand Son Astartes like a candle-flame.His warriors inquired of their gene-sire whether or not he had found the answers he was looking for. Jaghatai thought for a moment on that, for he did not know what to say. He replied that he now knew more than he had before they came to Prospero, and that everything they had been told was the truth.Prospero did indeed bear the kill-mark of Leman Russ, just as they had been told, but Magnus had already fallen, just as they were also told. Behind them all stood Horus, the Lord of Primarchs. They were all to blame -- there was no single Traitor -- there was only a web, stretching back in time, clutching at them all. And now it came for them.As the clouds above them began to glow, a vibrant shard of light speared down from the smog, crackling as it hit the stone below. The Terminators turned to face it, powering up their weapons. Qin Xa stepped in front of the Khan. Jaghatai told his warriors he had felt this new arrival's presence following them for a long time. He had been on the Khan's heels since Ullanor. At long last he had finally caught up.The Keshig moved into a loose semicircle, poised to strike. None of them would move before the order was given, though; they were the extension of the Khan's will. The Khan ordered his warriors to stand down, for the stranger was beyond all of them. How could he not be? For it was his brother -- Mortarion, the Death Lord, Primarch of the Death Guard Legion.Watching the ash settle and the residual snags of aether-burn ripple into nothing, seven figures within the maelstrom emerged. Six of them were Legionaries. They were clad in pale, thick-slabbed Terminator Armour and carried huge Power Scythes known as Manreapers. Their pauldrons were olive-green and the links between the plates were cold iron. They were massive, heavier-set than Qin Xa's retinue, hunched at the shoulder and leaking pale green vapour from the last of the teleportation beams. These were members of Mortarion's elite bodyguard, the Deathshroud.The seventh figure occupied a different order of power. He towered over his fellows, clad in battle plate of bare brass and corpse-white Ceramite. A long cloak of dark green hung down from high-rimmed shoulder guards. Skulls dangled from chains around his belt, some human, some xenos. A long pistol nestled among them -- drum-barrelled, and studded with bronze kill-markers. His eyes were amber, glinting from under the deep shadow of a tattered cowl.An ornate rebreather covered the lower half of his face. Coils of oily gas spilled from the lining of his battle plate, dribbling down the skull-painted surfaces and hissing on contact with Prospero's death-dry soil. Mortarion planted the heel of his enormous scythe into the dust. The Khan looked up at the blade. It was known as Silence, the greatest of the XIVth Legion's infamous Manreapers.Mortarion proceeded to explain the reason for his recent arrival; he told Jaghatai that he had sought him out, for things had changed. Jaghatai realised that his brother had come to persuade him to join the Traitors' cause. The Khan observed him guardedly, for Mortarion had always been hard to read. He left his blade unsheathed, holding it loosely at his side. Observing the physical changes in his brother, he noticed that Mortarion's power seemed to have grown.Something burned in him, dark like old embers. His flesh was somehow bleaker, his stance a little more crabbed, and yet the aura of intimidation around him had been augmented. Back on Ullanor, even at the height of triumph, he had not possessed quite the same heft. Jaghatai commanded his brother to say what he had come to the ruins of Prospero to say. The Khan correctly surmised that Horus had not sent Mortarion, he had come of his own accord, with his own agenda.Mortarion brushed off the Khan's reasoning, but Jaghatai pressed him. The Death Guard Primarch attempted to sway the Khan to Horus' cause, to imagine for himself a galaxy of warriors, of hunters, where the strong were given their freedom to act as they would, unbound by the Emperor's demands.The Khan was no fool, and of course this new galaxy would be led by Horus. Mortarion merely shrugged -- Horus would be the start of the new order. He was the champion, the sacrificial king. He might burn himself out to get to Terra, he might not. Either way, there would be room for others to rise to power over the galaxy to come.Mortarion told his brother that he should not have thrown in his lot with the Sanguinius, let alone Magnus. He hated to see the three of them getting dragged in deeper by the Emperor's hypocrisy. Their father had tried to pretend that it was not there, the Warp, as if He were not already up to his elbows in its soul-sucking filth. In Mortarion's opinion it should have been cordoned off, put away, forgotten about. But the Khan was not fooled by his brother's sincerity. He had seen what had happened.The Death Lord had never hidden what he wanted. Jaghatai could see how his brother thought it would all play out; first hobble the sorcerers. Silence the witches. Drive them out, and rule would pass to the uncorrupted, the healthy. This was Mortarion's great project. He had even told the Khan on Ullanor. The Khan had thought back then that they were empty threats, but he should have known better. Mortarion did not make empty threats.But it had all gone wrong. Though Mortarion had completed his great mission and the Emperor had handed down the Edicts of Nikaea forbidding the use of sorcery and the disbandment of the Legions' Librarius, there were now more sorcerers than ever amongst the ranks of the Traitors. Horus had sponsored them, and Lorgar had shown them new tricks. If Magnus had not already made up his mind on which side of the conflict he would be on, then he soon would, and then Mortarion would be surrounded. He had destroyed the Librarius of the Legions only to find witches were now untrammelled amongst the Traitors.The Khan had seen the overall picture perfectly. Magnus had shown him. Jaghatai warned his brother that though his Legion might be free of the Warp's corruption for now, the change would come, for Mortarion had made his pacts with the masters of the Empyrean, and now they would come to collect.But the Death Lord explained that this was why Mortarion had come to find Jaghatai. Mortarion had run out of friends. Who would stand with him against the aether-weavers now? Most assuredly not their brother Angron, nor the half-mad Konrad Curze.The Khan gazed at Mortarion disdainfully as he made his complaints. His brother had tasted the fruits of treachery and found them bitter. The Khan did not wish to be dragged into his brother's ruin -- Mortarion was on his own.Struggling to contain his anger at this response, Mortarion warned the Khan that he had come to give his brother a choice -- half of the White Scars Legion had already declared for Horus, and the others would follow wherever the Khagan ordered them. Their father's time was over -- the Khan could either be a part of the new order that replaced him or be swept aside in its wake.The Khan merely smiled in retort -- a cold smile, imperious in its contempt. He would not countenance a new Emperor -- neither himself or his brother. Jaghatai explained that the reason neither one of them would ever rule the galaxy is that both of them were never the empire-builders. They were the outriders. Mortarion had chafed at this role, while the Khan had embraced it.Enraged, Mortarion backed away, Silence crackled into life, sparking with green-tinged energy. The Deathshroud lowered their scythes in a combat posture. Behind the Khan, the Keshig readied their blades. The Khan prepared to settle their argument once and for all.The two Primarchs circled one another, prepared to finally engage in a deadly duel that would decide one another's fate -- speed against implacability. An interesting contest. Though the Khan was blindingly fast, Mortarion's raw strength was phenomenal. Facing it full-on, Jaghatai doubted that any of his brothers, save perhaps Ferrus Manus, could have matched it.The Death Lord absorbed every strike that connected, sucking the power out of the Khan's blows like a leech, taking the hits and coming back for more. The tenacity of the Death Guard was legendary, as was their ability to absorb punishment and just keep coming. The silent Deathshroud were just as implacable as their master, as they fought the White Scars Keshig amidst the wreckage.Warriors of both sides had already fallen, their bodies caked in the drifting dust, but the fighting continued around them, bitter and unyielding. As the Primarchs continued to fight, the Khan actually felt himself begin to tire. Never in uncounted years of combat had he felt more than trivial stirrings of fatigue. He had never felt the bone-deep drag that Mortarion inspired. But the Khan knew that his brother suffered as well -- blood flecked his sallow cheeks and forehead, and his rebreather rattled as he hauled in thick breaths.Mortarion barrelled into the Khan, using his scythe like a halberd and smashing the hilt into the Khan's midriff. The Khan lurched away, stumbling, and Mortarion lumbered after him. More blows came in -- hard, heavy, earth-shaking blows. The Khan was driven further, only barely able to weather the explosion of fury directed at him. When they slammed together again the impact was bone-jarring. They tore into one another, each strike powered by raw defiance.Fragments of armour flew like shrapnel. Gas exploded from Mortarion's store of vials as the glass shattered, nearly blinding them both. Blood flew in straggling splatters, trailing across both combatants and staining their armour. As they hacked and countered, neither giving up so much as a centimetre of ground, it mingled upon the blades' edges, as rich and dark as wine.Summoning up one last burst of energy, the Khan held position, panting hard, trying to drag up energy for the final clash. He held his dao poised, waiting for his enemy to move. One thrust, one perfect thrust, angled precisely -- he had the strength for that. But Mortarion did not move. He stood, rigid, as though suddenly listening for something. His scythe fell into guard. A thin coughing broke from his mask, which the Khan realised was an exhausted kind of chortle. "So the choice has been made."Mortarion informed Jaghatai that their respective starships were at war. This was not what they had been promised by the White Scars Warrior Lodge brothers, but the Death Lord refused to lose a fleet for this fight. Feeling the dust stir around his feet, coils of marsh-green teleportation energy rippled down. He saluted the Khan mockingly, and spears of hard-edged light suddenly lanced down from above, bursting through the cloud cover and crashing through the heart of the ruined Tizca pyramid they had been fighting within.The Khan sprang forward, seeing too late what was happening. In an instant, the Death Lord and his retinue were snatched away, sucked into the vortex of the Warp. The world's wind howled in their empty wake, the ash stirred, the lightning forked. Jaghatai, carried by the momentum of his final thrust, staggered though the empty space where his enemy had been.Qin Xa faced him, unblooded but for his blades. The Thousand Sons Legionary was still there, as were five of his Keshig. The Khan was enraged -- the hunt had not been concluded, the kill had been ripped away. Qin Xa lowered his weapons. For a moment he said nothing, but faint clicks from his helm gave away the attempts he was making to contact the White Scars warships in orbit. The Khan turned to Arvida and ordered him to get him off of Prospero.Arvida warned them that it would be difficult. He could only manage the use of his powers for a short while, and hoped that someone would be watching carefully. Collecting himself, Arvida summoned silvery witch-light from his hands, the light blazing so intently that it was hard to look at. Then he extended his hands heavenwards, and released a column of coruscating luminescence, electric-white and searing hot. It shot out vertically, leaping up and bursting into the skies above. The Khan looked upwards, over to where Arvida's released energy still shot into the turbulent skies, and hoped someone saw their signal. |
White Scars - A Primarch's Wrath: Caught up in the maelstrom of the two opposing factions of White Scars aboard the bridge of their Legion's flagship, Shiban Khan had to make a decision -- fight and most likely die alongside his brothers or listen to the pleas of a mortal woman. The young Khan's first reaction was to shove her aside and get to the enemy. But the desperation in her eyes stopped him. Shiban glanced at the teleportation platform, and then looked back at the pleading grey-haired woman in the tattered Imperial Army uniform.Coming to a decision, he quickly scooped her up in his arms and sprinted towards the teleportation mechanism as fast as he could. As he ran across the bridge he was shot multiple times by stray bolt rounds. He kept going, gritting his teeth through the agony. As the platform's columns rose above them, he pushed the mortal clear before his falling body could crush her. The woman crawled free, darting into the relative safety of the chamber's inner mechanisms. As more bolts exploded against the circlet of columns, she frantically punched in a series of codes, and the apparatus began to hum with building power.A second later, the space between Shiban and the mortal woman exploded with light. A hard bang shot out, radiating across the entire bridge. For a moment no one could see anything within the seething mass of energy. Then figures clarified within it -- White Scars in Terminator Armour, and a Space Marine Legionary in red armour on his knees from exhaustion. Before them stood a greater silhouette, massive in ornate armour, his cloak shredded to ribbons, his face an armoured mask of burns and heavy cuts. Jaghatai strode out of the failing storm of light and cast a baleful gaze across the bridge.The hall was still in torment, with battle-brothers at each other's throats, lost in a maddened world of battle-cries and muzzle-flares. The Khan strode down from the platform, his Keshig following him closely. Ahead of him, the command hall remained swamped in combat. Many of those close enough to the teleportation flare to hear it over the clamour of the fighting broke off in sudden confusion, but others remained committed, locked in the storm of bolt-shells that crisscrossed the entire space.Witnessing in that terrible moment warriors of his own Legion at each other's throats, Mortarion's words rang in his head, as mocking as his final salute -- "Half your Legion has already declared for Horus." He scanned over to the command throne, where the fighting was heaviest. With a lurch of recognition, he saw Hasik Noyan-Khan occupying the dais, fighting hard to repel a surge from Jemulan's warriors. The Khan's battered body carried him to the heart of the storm. His dao felt heavy in his grasp, still slick with Mortarion's blood.The Keshig came with him, forming a protective cordon around their Primarch. As he swept through the heart of it, some of the fighting broke down. Warriors looked up from their duels, seeing the ravaged armour of their Primarch again as he strode up to the throne, as if realising only then the depths to which they had sunk in his absence. The echoing cacophony of Bolter-fire abated.Hasik was waiting for him. The bridge fell silent. Warriors remained in position, their weapons still poised. Every eye was fixed upon the command dais. The Khan asked the Noyan-Khan what madness he had unleashed. Hasik replied that what he had done was for the good of the White Scars Legion. The Khan coldly noted that Hasik had been aware that he would return when he launched his coup. Or did he also plan to keep the Khagan away until the fleet was secure in his hands? The Noyan-Khan replied that he had only wished for his Primarch and Horus to be reunited once more. That was his only hope. That the whispers of the faithless could not be allowed to prevail.The Khan was incredulous at this statement. How could Hasik call those who opposed him faithless, when it was he who had caused such madness and betrayed his Primarch? Hasik admitted that mistakes had been made, but nonetheless he and his Warrior Lodge brothers saw the truth. The Warmaster had called, and the White Scars must follow, for that had always been the way. The Khan informed Hasik that they had all been lied to by Horus.As the Noyan-Khan tried to explain the reasons for his actions the Khan roared in anger at his commander's treachery. As he did so, he raised his blade. Perhaps unconsciously, perhaps without meaning to, or perhaps through some misguided belief that his cause lent him the power to do so, Hasik lifted his own in response.The Khan pounced, sweeping his dao hard and locking edges with Hasik's tulwar. With a twist, he wrenched the sword from the Noyan-Khan's gauntlet, then switched back and plunged the dao's point deep into Hasik's midriff. The strike was aimed with perfect precision, lancing through the Terminator battle-plate with a hard crack of disruptor field discharge. Hasik went rigid, impaled just below his hearts, unable to respond as searing energies rippled across his body and locked him in paralysis.Slowly, grindingly, Jaghatai Khan hefted Hasik off the ground one-handed, pulling him upwards until their faces were level. His blade kept Hasik in position, bearing his full weight and preventing him from responding. With every ounce of his posthuman strength, the Khan reached for Hasik's helm with his free hand and wrenched it from his head, casting it to the ground in contempt. For a moment they stared into one another's eyes -- one face white with shock, the other rigid with anger.The Khan told Hasik that he knew nothing of the truth. If he had done as commanded, Jaghatai would be telling him of it now. Instead he would only tell him this -- the Vth Legion was the ordu of Jaghatai, and none bore their blades in it save by his word. Thus it had been since they first fought together on the Altak, and no power of the universe, be it Horus or the Emperor, would ever change that.The Noyan-Khan had been given freedom that no other lord of a Space Marine Legion would countenance. But this was how Hasik repaid the Khan, with betrayal and fire, and so the impertinent warrior would be struck down for his hubris. The Khan flung Hasik's body aside. It flew free of the great power blade and crashed into the warship's command throne, cracking it lengthways, before rolling down the steps of the dais. Qin Xa strode over to him, his own weapons drawn, but Hasik did not get up.Turning away, rage still pulsed through the Khan's veins, laced with the heavy grief of betrayal. For an instant his mind was filled with visions of lashing out further, of bringing punishment down on the entirety of his errant gene-progeny like some vengeful god of the forgotten past. But in the end, his eyes were drawn up to the observation arch, out through the enormous real-view portals towards Prospero's orbital space.Far out into the void, silent bursts of light flashed out. Mortarion had spoken the truth about that, at least -- warships had engaged, Lances were being fired, shields were buckling. There was no time. A reckoning would come, the Khan cried, addressing the hundreds who waited for guidance. But for now, battle called.He ordered the crew to Vox the rest of the White Scars' fleet. They would engage the Death Guard, guang-cha formation, full burn. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Death Guard formation quickly fell back into a defensive cordon. The White Scars went after them, harrying, strafing, hurling all their pent-up fury in a maelstrom of Lance-energy. |
White Scars - Second Battle of Prospero: The Second Battle of Prospero did not match the horror of the first, for the Death Guard had come to hopefully oversee the incorporation of an ally, not embark upon a protracted void conflict. The two fleets grappled together as they pulled away from Prospero, locked in a web of broadsides and attack runs.Under Mortarion's leadership, the smaller XIVth Legion forces rallied enough to withdraw from the system intact, but they could match neither the speed nor the firepower of the reunited White Scars. The battle moved steadily out of the system until Mortarion finally gave the order to disengage and make for the Mandeville jump-points.Leaving a trail of fire and plasma in their wake, the Death Guard entered the Warp, abandoning local space to the control of Jaghatai Khan. With the enemy driven from Prospero, the Vth Legion halted its pursuit. The fleet mustered once more, holding position in loose formation, just as it had done at Chondax. Some ships still ran with dissension, and the process of restoring order was neither quick nor without violence. The Khan visited every Battleship in person, stamping out the last traces of rebellion where he found them.Blood had been shed on many vessels, and some had been commandeered entirely by White Scars Warrior Lodge members still hoping to sway the Legion to the cause of Horus. Some took their own lives rather than endure the shame of surrender, though most recognised the authority of the Khagan and offered up their blades in contrition.A few smaller vessels never made it to the muster, either destroyed by the Death Guard during the engagement or disappearing quietly, presumed unwilling to accept the rejection of their planned accord with the Traitors. The seeds planted by the lodge were set deep, and not all of their growths were capable of being removed.The wounded Hasik Noyan-Khan remained on the Swordstorm throughout the engagement. Only when Mortarion had been banished did Qin Xa come for him, removing his weapons and armour and escorting him to the confinement chambers. Hasik did not resist.His face gave away the soul of a man destroyed. Others went with him into confinement, among them Goghal, Hibou and Torghun Khan. There they awaited judgement, guarded by the Khagan's own retinue. No precedent existed in the Vth Legion for their actions, though under the old law of the Altak steppes on Chogoris, the crime of treachery and betrayal had only one punishment -- death.The Thousand Sons Astartes Arvida remained with the White Scars Legion and was given quarters on board the Swordstorm. His health had been ravaged by the long sojourn on a dying world, and it took solar days for him to recover enough to speak of what he had seen. The Stormseer, Yesugei Targetei, had fought his way halfway across the galaxy aboard the frigate Sickle Moon in order to reunite with the Khan, and both the zadyin arga and Arvida spent many hours together after that, though what they discussed was not revealed to any but the Khan.It was known Yesugei asked after the fate of his friend Ahzek Ahriman, whom he had hoped to see again, but Arvida could give him no guidance. The Stormseer was forced to conclude that either Ahriman had been killed by the Space Wolves or had escaped into the Warp along with his master Magnus. In either case it seemed most likely that they would never meet again. Of the many links that had once existed between the White Scars and the Thousand Sons, only Arvida remained.As for the Khan himself, once the violence of restoration had ebbed, he retreated to his chambers on the flagship and took counsel on the Legion's next move. Only Qin Xa and Yesugei stayed with him during that time, though it was known that a kurultai -- a summit of the Legion's khans -- would be convened to purge any remaining bad blood. It became quickly evident that the Warrior Lodge faction of the Vth Legion had not truly understood what they had been working towards, for the Horus they venerated no longer existed.The knowledge gleaned from Magnus needed to be propagated swiftly, ending the long period of uncertainty that had blighted the White Scars Legion. Such was the way of the old plains: grievances would be heard, penance would be meted, bonds restored. No time was set for the gathering, but all the brotherhood khans knew it would be soon.Now that the true shape of the treachery against the Imperium was known, it would not be long before the brotherhoods were ordered to war, unified once more and thirsting for vengeance. Until then, there was nothing to do but prepare, restore, and hope that the wounds of the Legion would heal before they faced the Traitors once more. |
White Scars - Flight from the Traitors: As Arvida spent his time recovering from his ordeal on Prospero, he befriended the Stormseer Targutai Yesugei. As the Thousand Son slowly regained his strength and precognitive powers, Yesugei repeatedly attempted to convince Arvida to become a member of the V Legion, since the Thousand Sons were now considered Excommunicate Traitoris by the Imperium.He even went so far as to commission his Legion's Artificers to created a hybrid pauldron, incorporating the iconography of both Legions, to replace the one of Arvida's that had been severely damaged during the fighting against the Death Guard.Though Arvida seriously contemplated becoming a part of a Legion once more, he eventually refused -- he would would remain, always and forever, a Son of Magnus and a loyal servant of the Emperor.Arvida was determined to follow his fate, for he believed that his destiny was somehow connected to the image of the raven associated with the Corvidae Cult's sigil that he had foreseen while he was stranded on Prospero. During this time, Arvida had also begun to experience the mutational effects of his Legion's gene-curse, known as the "Flesh-Change." |
White Scars - The Path of Heaven: Nearly four Terran years later, the White Scars had successfully waged a guerrilla war of hit-and-run attrition attacks against the Traitors' supply lines deep in the void. Though their attacks were devastating initially, over time, the Traitors adapted to blunt the effectiveness of this campaign.At the same time, the White Scars' numbers were slowly being whittled down to near-critical levels, and 20 percent of the Legion had already been lost in the fighting even as the Traitors continued to close on the routes to Terra.Following a particularly devastating ambush by the Iron Warriors at Iluvuin, the Khagan was determined to make his way to the Imperial Throneworld, to stand by the Emperor's side when the Warmaster and the Traitors would inevitably invade the Sol System and lay siege to Terra.But they were hindered at every turn -- trapped by the Ruinstorm, the massive Warp Storm conjured by the Word Bearers Traitor Legion during the Calth Atrocity, that blocked off large portions of the Milky Way Galaxy to both interstellar travel and communications.They were also constantly being stalked and harangued by Traitor warships from a combined Traitor taskforce comprised of both the Death Guard and the Emperor's Children, led by Lord Commander Eidolon himself.An opportunity soon presented itself when the White Scars discovered the Kalium Gate, an ancient Warp Gate that dated back to the Dark Age of Technology and had long been abandoned since the Age of Strife. Unfortunately, the White Scars were not able to make use of this Warp Gate, as their tactics and patterns had become predictable to the Traitors, and Lord Commander Eidolon correctly deduced that the White Scars would attempt to utilise the Kalium Gate to reach Terra.By the time the White Scars arrived, they found the Warp Gate was in ruins and that it was teeming with the forces of the enemy. A vicious battle ensued between the two opposing forces. In the ensuing conflict, it appeared that the Khagan had been mortally wounded when he faced the much-changed Lord Commander in battle. But this was merely a feint, as it was actually Keshig Master Qin Xa, wearing the Khagan's armour. Fleeing their attackers aboard the White Scars' flagship Lance of Heaven, Qin Xa would eventually succumb to his wounds.During this time, Arvida could barely hold back back the ravages of the Thousand Sons' mutational Flesh-Change, and each time he utilised his innate psychic abilities, his genetic curse threatened to overwhelm him completely. But before his friend Qin Xa died, he told Arvida to do everything in his power to find a cure for the Flesh-Change. Arvida vowed that he would.It was later revealed that the White Scars presence at the Kalium Gate was merely another diversion, as they had no intention of utilising the Warp Gate, for the Khagan's true purpose was to find the notorious senior Navigator, Novator Pieter Achelieux. Once Novator Achelieux had been found, he led the White Scars to the Catallus Warp rift, where hidden amongst its turbulent Warp eddies was a long, crystalline void station.Within its edifice was an ancient and powerful device known as the Dark Glass, a relic archeotech device from the Age of Technology. Discovered early on by Rogue Traders during the Great Crusade as they opened up new regions of the galaxy for the Imperium, this device was believed to have been used in ancient times to test the technology that would later result in the construction of the Golden Throne. The Dark Glass, like its counterpart on Terra, could access the Webway through the use of a central throne controlled by a psyker of enormous power to operate.Still pursued by the forces of the Death Guard and the Emperor's Children, the White Scars discovered the location of the Dark Glass and intended to use it to instantaneously travel to the Sol System. However, a rogue agent of the Navis Nobilite named Veil, who had accompanied the White Scars, was secretly tasked with the destruction of this archaic device, for it could spell the end of the Navis Nobilite if the technology was widely disseminated across the Imperium.Targutai Yesugai led a small strike force onto the crystalline space station, desperate to make use of the Dark Glass. With the enemy closing in, and the station collapsing all around him due to explosions of Vortex Charges set by Veil, Stormseer Yesugai sacrificed himself by inserting himself into the Dark Glass' command throne and then opened a portal through the Webway to Terra, which allowed the White Scars fleet to swiftly flee through and escape the Traitors' clutches.Before he died, Yesugai's astral form imparted a final message for his friend Arvida -- he asked him to utilise his vast psychic abilities to guide the White Scars' fleet to the Throneworld. As the White Scars' fleet passed through the Immaterium, it was assaulted by hordes of daemons.After he managed to guide the White Scars' fleet closer to Terra, Arvida finally succumbed to the effects of the Flesh-Change and was rendered unconscious. Khalid Hassan, Captain of the Imperial Army's 4th Clandestine Orta and an agent of Malcador the Sigillite, the Regent of Terra, arrived aboard the Lance of Heaven. He promised the White Scars that his master would do everything in his power to treat Arvida's condition, for the Sigillite had long been awaiting his arrival at Terra.In an attempt to save Arvida's life, he was transformed in an arcane ritual conducted by Malcador the Sigillite into an amalgam of Arvida's own psyche and a psychic fragment of the personality of the Primarch Magnus the Red which had been left on the Throneworld after his ritual incursion into the Imperial extension of the Webway. The new hybrid being chose to call himself Ianius, later known to history as Janus, who would go on after the Heresy to become the first Supreme Grand Master of the Grey Knights. |
White Scars - Siege of Terra: Once they had finally reached the Throneworld of the Imperium, the White Scars added a vital tactical and strategic dimension to Rogal Dorn's defence of Terra. Their hit-and-run style of warfare complemented the Imperial Fists' renowned capabilities in holding ground.Meanwhile, Jaghatai Khan's relatively close relationship with Sanguinius would help ensure a strong union between the White Scars and the Blood Angels who had also arrived in time to aid the defence.It is known in Imperial records that much of the White Scars Legion defended the Imperial Palace during the climactic Siege of Terra alongside the Blood Angels and Imperial Fists Legions.Such was the ferocity of the attack by the forces of Chaos that the besiegers forced the Imperial defenders back to the walls of the Imperial Palace, where thousands died slowing the assault.The White Scars brotherhoods' desire and ability to strike hard and fast before slipping away at speed allowed them to harass and frustrate enemy forces and constantly threaten their flanksWhen the beleaguered forces faced a breach in the Palace's walls and a potential collapse of the Imperial defences, Jaghatai decided on a change of plan. Rather than assaulting the almost-invincible flanks of the Chaos army, he redirected his highly mobile ordu and the surviving Loyalist tank divisions of the Imperial Army to the Lion's Gate Spaceport. At dawn, Jaghatai's lightning raid caught the Traitor garrison at the spaceport completely by surprise, and reclaimed the spaceport for the Emperor.The Khan ordered his troops to reactivate the spaceport's Defence Lasers to prevent the Traitor fleet from bringing down any more troops and equipment and form a defensive perimeter to hold their newly reconquered territory. Khan's troops repelled several frenzied counterattacks from the Traitors, and began firing on Horus' unprotected dropships.The Khan's plan worked perfectly: the flow of the Traitors' men and machines to the Imperial Palace had been cut in half at a single stroke. Inspired by this success, the Loyalists also tried to seize the Eternity Wall Spaceport, but were driven back by the Chaos forces without difficulty, as they had reinforced their garrison following the loss of the Lion's Gate.History recorded little else of the Great Khan's actions during the Siege of Terra, but it is known that his Legion ranged the once-proud thoroughfares of Terra during the campaign, engaging the Traitors in punishing hit-and-run strikes. When the end finally came, when Horus died at the hands of the Emperor aboard his Battle Barge Vengeful Spirit in orbit above Mankind's homeworld, the White Scars emerged from the fires of galactic civil war bloodied, but alive.It was said that Jaghatai and his warriors fought many of the Chaos Space Marines that tried to retreat to Terra's spaceports and flee. The White Scars launched several highly-successful hit-and-run assaults against the Traitor forces and together with remnants of the Imperial Army's 1st Terran Tank Division and several infantry regiments they successfully harassed the enemy supply lines as the Chaos armies fled to the Eternity Wall Spaceport to get off-world and escape Imperial vengeance.The White Scars Legion must surely have been at the forefront of the Legions that pursued the defeated Traitors to the Eye of Terror during the Great Scouring, for the White Scars rarely allowed a defeated foe to slip away once their blood was up. |
White Scars - Disappearance of Jaghatai Khan: Though Jaghatai Khan survived the tumultuous battles of the Horus Heresy, like so many of his brother Primarchs he was cruelly taken from the service of Mankind in the years that followed.An event ten thousand years past, the disappearance of Jaghatai Khan is shrouded in countless legends, many embellished beyond all credibility. The White Scars retain their own accounts, considered by some apocryphal, others historical. One thing is certain: the sons of the Warhawk believe that their gene-sire hunts still, and one day will rejoin them on Chogoris.In order to contain the outlaws, Renegades and aliens that dwelled within the Maelstrom Warp rift and had taken advantage of the disruptions caused by the Heresy to run amok in the Ultima Segmentum, Roboute Guilliman, now the Lord Commander of the Imperium, ordered the surrounding star systems to be reinforced. The White Scars were tasked with the main responsibility for securing the area from their homeworld.Following the calamitous events of the Horus Heresy, Jaghatai Khan led the White Scars for seventy more Terran years, cleansing the Imperium of Traitors and those aliens who sought to take advantage of Humanity's time of weakness.Many worlds once peaceful and loyal had either fallen or were contested, and the Great Khan took to reclaiming them during the Great Scouring with the same zeal he demonstrated whilst prosecuting the Great Crusade.The Imperium had been torn in two by Horus' rebellion, and no part of Imperial space had escaped its ravages. The Yasan Sector was no exception. It was there that the White Scars' homeworld of Chogoris lay, but when the Great Khan returned to rebuild his Legion's strength after the devastating Siege of Terra, he found only misery.Not all of the Yasan Sector's scores of worlds had remained loyal, and in the anarchy of rebellion, the insidious Drukhari, the so-called "Dark Eldar," had seized the opportunity to raid and take slaves with wanton abandon. Thousands were cut down, and thousands more enslaved, carried off through the secret passages of the Webway to meet a fate no mortal human can imagine.Many of those Imperial citizens still loyal to Terra were on the verge of despair.It was only thanks to the garrison left by Jaghatai that Chogoris and some of its key production and recruitment worlds had fared better than the rest of the sector, but these forces had not been entirely adequate. The Drukhari had been able to seize Chogorian tribespeople as slaves.Some of the Great Khan's senior officers argued that had the garrison stayed on Chogoris, and not sent detachments to defend some of the worlds of the Yasan Sector, the Chogorians would not have been lost.Jaghatai waved away these claims, applauding the garrison's warlike and independent spirit. But hatred for those who had taken his people burned in his heart. Replenishing his ranks, the Great Khan took the fight to the enemy, his campaign now one of vengeance.With the Khagan at its head, the effort to reclaim the Yasan Sector met with early successes. Thanks to the foresight of Chogoris' garrison, the Yasan Campaign's momentum was maintained with a steady supply of munitions, vehicles and fresh warriors.It was at this point that the White Scars learned of the Codex Astartes, in which Roboute Guilliman stated that all of the Space Marine Legions should break their forces into 1,000-warrior Chapters. Jaghatai, who had long allowed his khans to operate semi-independently, was in favour of the reforms.The Codex would, for the most part, simply formalise the way in which the White Scars had operated since their inception, and the Khan of Khans saw only virtue in extending even greater freedom to his sons.After the Codex reforms were implemented, Jaghatai asked only one thing from his successors: that they fight the Yasan Campaign to the end. He trusted them to do so without further supervision, and in whatever fashion best suited their strengths. They agreed unanimously.Though it saddened him to see so many of his sons' armour no longer painted in his colours, the Khagan knew that this was only for the better.Their movements would be harder to track and predict, and a completely decentralised structure would allow the Great Khan to pursue his own agenda more fully.The Yasan Campaign was a time of renewed vigour for the Khagan, or so it is said. His hunting grounds of old were filled with the remnants of those who had turned against the Imperium during the Horus Heresy, and he was once again able to indulge in the visceral thrill of new conquests and glorious victories, albeit tainted by the knowledge of the damage done by Horus' treachery.He led the White Scars on battlefield after battlefield, sweeping Ceobos clear of depraved Emperor's Children, uprooting the [[DarkMechanicum]] clinging to Aenope and quelling the mutant uprising on Eoclite. But the Drukhari remained elusive, their attacks impossible for even the Chapter's Stormseers to predict.After much deliberation, Jaghatai discovered a pattern, so elaborate that only a Primarch's genius, and the Great Khan's skill at the hunt, could find it. Calling for reinforcements from the Destroyers, Rampagers and Storm Lords, Jaghatai set his fleet on course for the world of Corusil V in 084.M31.The Drukhari, like all Aeldari, are a species of great and ancient intellect, and it appears that it was their intention that the Khan discovertheir plans as a part of a wider scheme to capture and subject Jaghatai and his sons to twisted experimentation.The tales of the Stormseers say that Jaghatai saw this for what it was and led the assault nonetheless, determined to attack with such speed and ferocity that no manner of preparation would withstand it.The source of the Drukhari raids was a large Webway portal located in the depths of a dark, foreboding forest, too dense for the White Scars and their allies to fight from their metal steeds. This did not phase Jaghatai. Revenge would be had -- honour demanded it.The Khagan and his 1st Brotherhood held the centre of his battle line, driving straight towards the portal. The rest of his forces secured the flanks, wary forpotential ambush and ready to encircle the Drukhari's eldritch device. The White Scars and their allies were as a stick to a nest of stinging insects, and their attack's ferocity was met by a deadly ambush of dozens of bands of warriors, pain engines and all manner of hideous Drukhari creations.Many poured from hideaways concealed by eldritch energy, and the Space Marines were beset on all sides. Scores of the Great Khan's sons died horrific, painful deaths. Others were captured, doomed to a worse fate in the arenas of the Dark City of Commorragh. But the Warhawk kept on, determined to reach his quarry.The Drukhari Archon stood before the portal itself, directing his warriors with flicks of his sword. He was laughing, savouring every ounce of pain being inflicted and suffered across the battlefield. The smile did not leave his face even as he observed the Khagan racing towards him. Without any loss of composure, he simply directed more of his forces in Jaghatai's direction, slowing Jaghatai down and driving him to even greater anger.The Great Khan could not be halted, however. He pushed onwards, his 1st Brotherhood at his side, cutting down foe after foe with his sword. It is said that with his forces failing, the Archon moved to flee into the Webway portal.It cannot be known whether or not the xenos desired to close it before Jaghatai Khan raced through with the entirety of his brotherhood. All that can be known is that as soon as the last White Scar crossed the threshold, the shimmering gateway collapsed.The battle raged on for solar hours after, the remaining White Scars slaughtering without mercy those Drukhari abandoned by their lord, even as they were filled with horror at the apparent loss of their Primarch.For solar days they scoured the battlefield, for solar weeks the rest of the system. The Stormseers searched the Warp for any clue to the Great Khan's whereabouts, but none was ever found.It has been said by some White Scars that perhaps pursuit was not Jaghatai's only goal in following the Drukhari overlord into whatever lay beyond the portal,that perhaps there the Khagan saw an opportunity for freedom without limit and an endless plain to explore and make war in.Those few who express this view can find themselves shunned by their brothers, but the seed of doubt now is long planted. Only the Khan of Khans knows the truth, and the White Scars continue to live in the belief that he will some day return to take his rightful place at their head.Thus it is that the White Scars harbour a special hatred for the Drukhari, even their legendary discipline and judgement slipping occasionally when facing these vile foes in battle. None can say what befell the Primarch, or if he still hunts his prey through the labyrinthine tunnels of the Webway of the Aeldari and the nightmare sub-realities in which their dark kin lurk.The White Scars thus continue to fight in Jaghatai's name, destroying the enemies of the Emperor in preparation for the day when the Great Khan completes his consummate hunt and returns to once again lead his chosen warriors and begin the next Great Crusade to unify the galaxy.Ever since the Great Khan's final hunt, it has passed into Chapter tradition that one battle-brother should be declared "Master of the Hunt," and charged with tracking down those enemies of the Chapter who have somehow escaped its retribution. Every quarter century, the Chaplains preside over the Rites of Howling, where the names and deeds of each nemesis of the White Scars are recounted.The Chapter Master then announces which of these foes shall be punished next. The Master of the Hunt may be the captain of a brotherhood, and in addition to his normal tasks he must make every effort to bring the object of the hunt to heel, to claim his head, and to return it to Chogoris.There, the skull is flensed and masked in silver. Accompanied by much feasting, the grim trophy is set upon a stake along the road that leads through the Khum Karta mountains towards the Palace of Quan Zhou, the mighty, marble-walled fortress-monastery of the proud and savage White Scars Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. |
White Scars - Hunt for the Shatterling Prince: From their first days as tribal huntsmen upon the plains of Chogoris, the warriors destined to become White Scars learn the art of the hunt. Those skills are only enhanced by a tribesman's advancement into the ranks of the White Scars Chapter.Natural hunting ability is wedded to transhuman reflexes and senses, and to the accumulated strategic psycho-indoctrinal inloads and relentless training that is every White Scar's inheritance.No wonder, then, that the sons of the Great Khan are considered some of the Imperium's foremost hunters and trackers.Even those outside of the Chapter's ranks know of the Master of the Hunt, and his quests across the stars to run down the Great Khan's chosen quarry. Yet while these hunts are perhaps the most storied and celebrated of the White Scars' venatorial exploits, the Master of the Hunt is but one warrior in a Chapter of over a thousand.Even as Kor'sarro Khan and his predecessors have discharged the ritual duties of their office, across the millennia the White Scars as a whole have tracked down and slain countless enemies of the Imperium. The elusive, the bestial and the unforgivable, all have fallen beneath the White Scars' blades, their lastmoments filled with the roar of engines and the guttural howl of Korchin war cries.Such a campaign was the hunt for the foul Drukhari torturer known as the Shatterling Prince.It was during the early 41st Millennium that a full two brotherhoods of the White Scars -- the 3rd and the 5th Brotherhoods, supported by elements of both the 8th and the 9th -- engaged in a system-wide hunt for the Drukhari Haemonculus who named himself the Shatterling Prince.This vile creature had secreted himself like an unseen parasite into the Asmari System. His ghoulish raiding parties preyed upon the vital breadbasket of Asmari's Agri-worlds, seeding biomutagenic phages into food supplies bound for multiple Imperial war fronts and snatching up local garrisons as slaves for the barter-pits of Commorragh.Khajaten Khan, then Captain of the 3rd Brotherhood and overall Force Commander of the White Scars forces, was a canny huntsman. Rather than storming in and offering his quarry a chance to ambush his warriors or -- worse still -- slip away into the Webway and escape vengeance, he concealedthe majority of his forces in deep space beyond the system's Mandeville Point.The khan then sent out small bands of warriors, travelling aboard commandeered civilian bulk haulers and charged to observe and assess the Drukhari threat. Once his own scouts were well positioned across the system, Khajaten Khan feigned heedless aggression and led a portion of his brethren to the aid of the worst beset world, Asmari Tertius.Khajaten's strike force made planetfall directly into the midst of the fierce fighting that raged through the world'sprimary agriplex. Multiple Haemonculus Covenite raiding bands had sundered the Imperial fortifications and were making sport of pursuing and tormenting the surviving defence garrison regiments when the White Scars struck like a thunderbolt.Roused to wrath by the horrors that had been inflicted upon the planet's people, Khajaten Khan drove the panicked Drukhari before him and scattered theminto the volcanic swamplands beyond the agriplex. The xenos response was not long in coming, and was precisely as the khan had hoped.Driven, the White Scars assumed, by arrogant outrage, the Shatterling Prince hurled a sizeable army through hidden webway portals onto the surface of Asmari Tertius. They swirled down like a dark storm upon Khajaten Khan and his brave warriors, the skies welling with barb-hulled raiders and whip-fast combat skimmers as the Haemonculus Covenites came to claim the White Scars leader as a plaything for their master.At the same time, no doubt assuming that the Imperial response was limited to Asmari Tertius, smaller raiding parties crept like bloated spiders from the Webway to fall upon the population centres of Asmari Secundus, Quartus and Sextus. The moment the foe revealed themselves, the White Scars struck.Summoned by the psychic cry of several Stormseers, the main White Scars fleet roared into the system with its drives at full burn. Flights of gunships and waves of Drop Pods thundered down upon every world, reinforcements guided in by the runic beacons of their comrades' armour. In some locations, strike forces arrived too late to relieve their battle-brothers, the brave scouting parties giving their lives to the last in order to keep the Drukhari engaged and out in the open.In others, including upon Asmari Tertius, the white-armoured reinforcements arrived in the nick of time. They sustained brutal losses in their own right as their deadly prey fought back with eldritch weaponry, but ultimately they cut off the Drukhari war parties from their Webway portals and crushed them as if they were within a vast ceramite fist.The portals themselves could be neither damaged nor sealed by any artifice that the White Scars possessed; instead, a standing garrison of Chogorian warriors was left in the Asmari System, charged with patrolling from one world to the next and keeping watch lest the Covenites return to exact revenge.The only true fault in Khajaten Khan's plan was his failure to locate and eliminate the Shatterling Prince himself. The Haemonculus never emerged from the labyrinth dimension, and -- mindful of the tales of his Primarch's disappearance -- the khan refused his warriors permission to enter the portals and hunt down their quarry in his lair.The decision likely preserved many White Scars lives, but it was to cost Khajaten himself dearly. Less than a standard year later, the khan was found dead in his meditation cell in the White Scars fortress-monastery of Quan Zhou, expression twisted in horror, throat slit ear-to-ear and blood frozen in a macabre waterfall down his chest.No assailant was ever detected, but every mirror and window within three levels of the Khajaten's chamber shattered upon the moment of his death. The message was clear, and a fresh hunt has since been launched to at last bring the foul Shatterling Prince to justice. The White Scars will not rest until their murdered khan has been avenged. |
White Scars - Against the Hydra: The White Scars are proud, but rarely are they arrogant. The sons of the Great Khan recognise the galaxy always has another lesson to teach, and they have adapted and refined their hunting techniques over the millennia in response to defeats and new threats.Never has there been a more deadly or unpredictable quarry than the Tyranid hive fleets; the White Scars have been forced to learn and adapt faster than ever before in the face of this onrushing xenos threat, often at a cost in blood.Upon the world of Haadekh in the late 41st Millennium, a strike force of 2nd Brotherhood warriors under the command of Chaplain Subdakhar lost this contest of hunter and prey when the swarms of Hive Fleet Hydra overran them utterly. The defeat was costly and gruesome, and could not go unavenged.Yet Khajog, the khan of the 2nd Brotherhood, recognised that new hunting tactics would be required if this deadly prey were to be defeated and another massacre prevented. Drawing upon the wealth of strategic lore he had amassed in the libraries of Quan Zhou, and consulting for long solar days with the Chapter's Stormseers, Khajog Khan at last settled upon a stratagem.The White Scars met the Hydra once again upon the unstable volcanic world of Horatian Utukh, a planet Khajog Khan believed the perfect hunting ground. Drawn by the biomass within the planet's bore hives, the Tyranids were already attacking when the White Scars arrived; chitinous bodies piled against the cities' walls like living ramparts.Khajog Khan sent in a strike force armed with every Flamer weapon that could be amassed, from man-portable firearms to Incendium Cannons. Deploying to the Tyranids' rear at Hive Lakhvor, the 2nd Brotherhood unleashed a firestorm that ravaged the massed broods and burned away xenos flesh quicker than it could regenerate.The Tyranids turned upon this fresh prey, their psychic screams through the Hive Mind drawing down waves of brood-spores from orbit. Immediately the White Scars fell back, plunging into the unstable lavafields and drawing the Tyranids after them.Battle-brothers were lost as racing transports were overtaken by the surging tidal wave of Tyranids. Yet the White Scars knew that victory could not come without cost, and plunged on, deeper into the shuddering landscape of cracked basalt plates and roiling lava. Still they fired into the Tyranid masses, their aircraft crisscrossing in savage attack runs that slew ever-more leader beasts.In their death throes, these monsters summoned yet more bio-spawn into the lava fields until at last, the critical mass of living organisms was too much for the fragile ground. Upon Khajog Khan's signal, gunships and tank transporters executed screaming dives into the rupturing lava fields, swooping up the surviving White Scars even as the ground shattered and molten rock surged hungrily upwards. Hundreds of thousands of Tyranid bioforms were annihilated in a matter of solar minutes.Khajog Khan and his warriors soared like Chogorian berkut back to their waiting Strike Cruisers to re-arm, reinforce, and repeat their cunning ruse. It was only the first victory of a long and gruelling campaign against the Hydra, but it was the beginnings of vengeance. |
White Scars - Third War for Armageddon: When the Ork Warlord Ghazghkull Thraka launched his second WAAAGH! against the ash-choked Hive World of Armageddon, over twenty Space Marine Chapters answered the call for aid. The White Scars were among them, with the strength of three brotherhoods to drive the Orkoid menace from the invaluable world.Millions of greenskins swept across the planet, burning, destroying, killing and looting. But their attacks were not random. The Kults of Speed assaulted the Deadlands in Armageddon's south, a frozen wasteland but nevertheless the site of vital infrastructure that the Imperium could not afford to lose.Chapter Master Jubal Khan's White Scars were deployed entirely to the Deadlands as part of the wider Imperial war effort. Suboden Khan, Jubal's second, commanded a separate strike force and was responsible for securing the promethium and water processing stations.Jubal took his remaining forces to the northern coast, where orbital reconnaissance had detected Orks at work building huge structures. The greenskins could not be allowed to continue unimpeded.By the time Jubal Khan and his forces arrived, the Orks had built up a sprawling complex of factories along the coastline. His Scout Marines reported a maze of debris-strewn yards and vast numbers of Orks. Most importantly, they discovered that this ever-growing facility was a shipyard, and that dozens of huge, ramshackle vessels were being prepared. For what purpose, none could say.All knew, however, that the submersibles could cause terrible damage and could not be allowed to be brought to completion. Jubal Khan had no choice but to attack.Initially, his strategy was to draw out the Orks, tempting them with battle and luring them away from their labours. With the Orks distracted, White Scars Kill-teams raided the shipyard, destroying as many structures as possible before the greenskins could respond.Despite these efforts, construction continued apace. The Orks were building faster than the White Scars raids could destroy, and hulking Ork Nobz bullied their charges into maintaining production even when the prospect of battle was so near. Jubal decided it was time to take the fight to them.Amidst the shipyard's confines, the White Scars made slow progress. They fought from rusted building to rusted building, in savage close-quarters combat. They met Orkish roars with Korchin battle cries.Each day they pressed further, fighting amidst burning metal, treading over the corpses of Orks and dead brothers alike. Their Vox grilles and Bolters were choked with ash and grime, and still they fought. But it was not enough.When the White Scars saw flotillas of massive submersibles and Ork ships akin to floating shanty-towns lurching out into the Tempest Ocean, they knew they had failed. Determined to make up for this, Jubal made it his crusade to destroy the remaining facilities and stop the Orks from building fresh waves of invasion craft. |
White Scars - Dante's Canyon: Elsewhere, from the outset of the conflict, Suboden Khan was aware that his forces lacked the numbers to secure much of the Deadlands' vital infrastructure. With this in mind, he sought to deny the foe their prize, draw them into a single concentration and then comprehensively crush them.He ordered the Valdez Gamma and Yarrick Point pumping stations destroyed. This high-risk strategy would inevitably result in the Orks focusing on Dante's Canyon, the only remaining promethium drilling station for leagues around.Bordered by sheer cliffs of ice and packed snow, Dante's Canyon was the perfect place to channel the Orks into kill zones. Suboden Khan's Scouts laid explosives capable of causing avalanches and weakening the ice. Only a small detachment of battle-brothers guarded the station itself, making it appear tempting to the Orks.A second, larger detachment of the khan's forces would ride out, goad the greenskins and lead them into the explosive-rigged terrain. Suboden would lead the final detachment, comprised of Assault Marines. Their aim was to engage the leader of the Ork horde and claim his head.The squads defending the station were attacked from above by waves of Stormboyz. Thanks to deadly-accurate Bolter fire, many of the Orks were shot out mof the sky, their bodies landing all over the station's rigging with fleshy crunches. Those who successfully landed were met with tulwars and combat blades, though the Stormboyz' superior numbers began to show. The fighting grew desperate.Meanwhile, the second detachment of White Scars whooped and laughed as they engaged the Orks in a chaotic, swirling melee. The air was filled with the roars ofengines and the stench of smoke, spilled fuel and charred corpses. Having gained the greenskins' attention, the White Scars withdrew.Leaving the bodies of lost brothers behind, they sped on to Dante's Canyon, the greenskins chasing them. They led their pursuers exactly where intended, and the rigged explosives detonated on cue, sending torrents of snow and broken ice onto the Orks below. Thousands were crushed by the avalanches while othersplunged through holes in the weakened ice, drowning in the freezing depths. More than one White Scar perished in the onslaught, but the bulk of the greenskins were slain.Still the Ork Warboss and his elites ploughed on toward the hardpressed drilling station. Now, Suboden's detachment struck.In the ensuing fighting, the Ork chieftain cut down many White Scars, roaring like a wounded beast as he fought. Suboden darted around the Warboss like a bloodwasp, stinging with his blade beforeretreating, driving the beast to rage.As the vicious duel escalated, the Orks' leader grabbed Suboden Khan's Jump Pack and crushed it in his Power Klaw; even as it looked like the wounded khan would be crushed in turn, he managed to land a last, killing blow and struck off the Warboss' head.With casualties spiralling and their leader slain, the remaining Orks fled and were run down. It had been a costly victory, yet it was victory nonetheless, and one achieved against overwhelming numbers. |
White Scars - White Scars Air Operations: During the fierce fighting around the Ork shipyards, the White Scars' aerial forces came into their own. Hordes of greenskins continually charged Jubal Khan's warriors. Artillery pounded them from afar. Many buildings had to be cleared time and again. Corridors and passageways were only made inaccessible to the Orks when they were completely choked by the corpses of the greenskins' own dead.In the face of this overwhelming tide of enemies, Jubal resorted to desperate tactics. He ordered that his strike force's entire aircraft contingent be deployed to his war zone, and called in air strikes practically on top of his own warriors' positions in order to stymie the Orks' onslaught.With deadly accurate missile fire, Stormtalons and Stormhawk Interceptors destroyed Ork artillery, the guns erupting in flame and incinerating their crews. White-armoured gunships strafed the artillery until their ammunition ran dry and their weapons' barrels glowed white-hot. Transports delivered much needed supplies and evacuated the wounded.Ork vehicles, ships and buildings were reduced to slag by laser and Multi-Melta fire, their occupants cooked alive. Finally, Jubal Khan's ground forces were able to reclaim the initiative.Stormtalon Squadron Arashei had been fighting with Jubal since before his call for reinforcements, pushing their aircraft beyond their limits in every sortie to bring death to the foe. They intercepted Ork Warbikes attempting to outflank White Scars positions. They duelled greenskin fighters, bringing down many with torrents of fire as they performed great feats of aerobatics.They destroyed an Ork sea vessel whilst it was being loaded with warriors and weapons, the huge detonation incinerating thousands of greenskins and sending dozens of smaller, nearby craft into the Tempest Ocean's freezing depths. When they finally received reinforcements, the pilots of Squadron Arashei fought with even greater vigour, determined to not let up their attacks until total victory was theirs.This time of aerial dominance ended when Ork air forces were brought to bear against the White Scars en masse. Crudely built jets and bombers swarmed the skies like insects over a swamp. The White Scars pilots were eager to fight them wherever they appeared, hungry for the true dogfighting battles they had largely been denied up to this point.Working in perfect unison, Arashei's pilots engaged enemy formations many times their own number. When a brother squadron was badly mauled, the pilots of Arashei plunged into skies thick with foes to buy the survivors time to break free. They successfully intercepted greenskin aircraft on a suicide run headed directly to Jubal Khan's position, and they launched such a furious hail of firepower at Zarbog's infamous Blitza-Bommer squadron that they detonated the Orks' bombs, blowing apart the craft in midair.By the end of the Third Armageddon Campaign, the name Arashei had become legend, and was used to inspire all of the White Scars who had fought there to great feats of heroism. |
White Scars - Battle of Chogoris: It was during the dread time immediately preceding the emergence of the Great Rift in ca. 999.M41 that the Yasan Sector came under renewed attack by Huron Blackheart, Chaos Space Marine warlord and pirate king.With Jubal Khan leading the fighting in War Zone Armageddon, it fell to Barutai Khan, Captain of the 2nd Brotherhood, to marshal the defence of Chogoris.Huron Blackheart's fleet of Red Corsairs burst from the Maelstrom in a three-pronged formation. It was a barbed trident aimed at the heart of the Yasan Sector, and it drove home with speed and ferocity.Desolator and Repulsive-class capital ships thundered through scattered Imperial defence frigates with all guns blazing.Wave upon wave of Heretic fighter craft and flocks of Heldrakes spiralled through the void, while Space Hulks bore down upon defence platforms like malevolent moons.The worlds of Gartuli and Thaxis fell to the invading Chaos forces, their defenders butchered in bloody campaigns and their frantic refugees streaming through the void towards Chogoris.Precious few ships made it into Chogoris' orbit, for the Warp roiled and churned. The fickle tides of the empyrean pitched Imperial voidcraft into fanged whirlpools of madness even as they hastened the Traitor warships on their way; by the time out-system Servitor probes warned of Traitor forces translating into Chogoris' local space, Barutai Khan already knew that this conflict would not be won in space.He stood upon the ramparts of Quan Zhou and watched as fire lit the skies, and pronounced that this conflict would be settled blade-to-blade upon the soil of Chogoris itself.Much of the White Scars Chapter was abroad amongst the stars when Huron Blackheart attacked. At the first dark omens of danger, Astropaths had hurled distress cries into the Warp commanding that all sons of the Warhawk be recalled to defend the Chapter planet.Yet Barutai Khan could not count on such reinforcements arriving in time, or indeed at all; his forces were vastly outnumbered by the heretical drop-ships now descending on the world, and would have to fight with all their hunters' cunning if they were to prevail.The White Scars had two advantages. Firstly, they knew their home intimately, and could read its ferocious weather patterns and navigate its every hidden canyon.Where the enemy foundered amidst salt marshes or fell foul of devastating storm fronts, the White Scars used these to their advantage. Many were the Heretic Astartes warbands ambushed from within raging tempests, caught by swift-striking White Scars bikers while navigating treacherous defiles or mauled by super-predators lured into their midst by squads of Infiltrators.Secondly, the White Scars fought as a unified force, while their foes broke into dozens of raiding parties whose Chaos Champions vied for the favour of the Dark Gods. The invaders wasted precious solar weeks hunting the steppe tribes of the Empty Quarter, who themselves fought back with every weapon at their disposal.Yet for all this, the battle was a desperate one. The White Scars harried and harassed, hit-and-ran time and again, but still the vastly superior Chaos forces pushed onwards. One nomad camp after another burned. White Scars fortifications toppled in blazing ruin. Strike forces were whittled down in battle with the Traitor forces, and wherever Huron Blackheart bestrode the battlefield, the invaders were unstoppable.Even when Jubal Khan returned from Armageddon with the survivors of his strike force, their onslaught did little but slow the Heretic tide. Worse followed when the skies darkened then tore, and a wave of madness and terror swept the planet; the Cicatrix Maledictum yawned wide and the Maelstrom expanded to consume the fringes of the Yasan Sector whole. Upon Chogoris, legions of foul daemons spilled forth to march at Blackheart's side.The Chogorian tribes fled these new assailants in terror, hundreds of thousands of the planet's populace exterminated in a matter of solar days. Seeing that the tribes from which the White Scars recruited were at risk of wholesale annihilation, Jubal Khan had his warriors strike recklessly at the Chaos forces, goading as many as possible into following them back to the fortress-monastery of Quan Zhou itself.So it was that, solar months after the first Heretic forces made planetfall, the final fate of the White Scars was decided in a bloody siege of the Khum Karta mountain range, and of the White Scars fortress-monastery in its midst.It was at this desperate hour that Kor'sarro Khan, the Master of the Hunt, and his 3rd Brotherhood finally reached Chogoris. They had braved storms of insanity and the terrifying darkness of the Noctis Aeterna to reach their homeworld, and the journey had cost them dearly.Still they wasted no time in marshalling White Scars forces scattered throughout the Empty Quarter, along with a great militia of all those tribes still possessed of the will to fight. At the head of this mighty hunting party, Kor'sarro Khan launched a spear-thrust into the rear lines of the besieging Chaos forces.His Stormseers harnessed a great Chogorian tempest to veil the attack, and by the time Huron Blackheart realised his peril, his forces were assailed from the front and from behind. After three solar days of bloody battle, Kor'sarro's warriors broke through to Quan Zhou and forced Blackheart into a calculated withdrawal.Still the Traitor forces might have carried the day, for their reserves poured in from all across Chogoris in answer to this fresh challenge. Yet it was in this darkest hour that the Noctis Aeterna lifted over Chogoris, and with it the energies of the Warp temporarily receded. Many of Blackheart's daemonic allies flickered and faded and, seeing that he faced a far less certain battle than he had expected, the Tyrant of Badab elected to withdraw.Leaving Renegade warbands rampaging across Chogoris, Blackheart and his elite Red Corsairs fell back to conquered strongholds elsewhere in the Yasan Sector; the galaxy was rent, the age of Chaos was nigh, and Huron Blackheart knew he had ample time to draw out the conquest of the Great Khan's homeworld. The White Scars, meanwhile, were left to win back their burned and bloodied world, and to gather themselves for whatever horrors were sure to follow.However, they would do so buoyed by reinforcements. Not long after the Red Corsairs' retreat, Battle Group Delphi II of the Indomitus Crusade's Fleet Tertius managed to navigate the Warp Storms tearing at the galaxy to arrive in the Chogoris System, delivering the White Scars' Primaris Marine brethren to join the fight.With the Chapter's brotherhoods reinforced, the fightback began in earnest, while recruitment started from Chogoris' surviving vengeful tribes for new Neophytes to be transformed into Primaris Astartes. |
White Scars - Notable Campaigns: Since the days of the First Founding, when they were still known as the Vth Legion, the White Scars have amassed a lengthy roll call of triumphs across the galaxy. Few enemies can escape their wrath -- the spiked walls of the Quan Zhou fortress monastery are lined with the silver-dipped skulls of those champions of disorder who have earned the ire of the White Scars huntmasters. |
White Scars - Dawn of the Imperium, M30-M31: X173 Plural Xenocide (Unknown Date.M30) - This was an Imperial Compliance campaign of the Great Crusade that was carried out jointly between the White Scars Legion and the 40th Expeditionary Fleet's Imperial Army component made up of the genetically-enhanced soldiers of the G9K Division Kill upon the world designated X173 Plural. This campaign against unknown xenos was fought over a period of six solar months, in which the troops of the G9K came to admire the focus, dedication and mercilessness of the White Scars.Destruction of WAAAGH Mashogg (ca. Mid-800s.M30) - This was a joint Imperial Compliance campaign against the massive Ork empire of WAAAGH! Mashogg conducted by multiple Legiones Astartes, including the White Scars, Iron Warriors and Space Wolves alongside regiments of the Imperialis Auxilia and various Mechanicum assets. Legends record that it was the Primarchs Jaghatai Khan and Leman Russ who routed the Orks of Overdog Mashogg's WAAAGH!, while Perturabo was featured only as the "comrade" who calculated the optimum way to bypass Mashogg's low orbit defences.Compliance of the Araaki Spiral (ca. Mid-800s.M30) - This was a joint Imperial Compliance campaign conducted by multiple Legiones Astartes, including the White Scars, Dark Angels, Iron Warriors and Imperial Fists in a region of space known as the Araaki Spiral. The Araakites were well-versed in the art of building fortresses, and their strongholds were dug deep around narrow passes, remote hilltops and natural barriers in the landscape. Once again, the Iron Warriors were sent to a resistant star system to conduct brutal siege-warfare against formidable fortress-builders. The Araakites knew their craft well and the campaign to take their world for the Imperium proved both bitter and hostile.Compliance of Molech (869.M30) - The White Scars took part in the massive Imperial Compliance campaign on the newly discovered Knight World of Molech, which was led by the Emperor Himself, and included multiple Legiones Astartes, including the Luna Wolves, Dark Angels and the Emperor's Children, as well as thousands of troops of the Imperialis Auxilia and assets from the Mechanicum and Legio Titanicus. After achieving victory, Cyprian Devine of House Devine was named Planetary Governor of Molech. In the presence of several of His Primarch sons, the Emperor led them to a Warp portal hidden underground, where He proceeded to enter into the Realm of Chaos to parley with the Ruinous Powers. When He finally returned, the Emperor appeared aged, but much more powerful. He then suppressed His sons' memories of Molech and stationed a large garrison force comprised of nearly 100 Imperialis Auxilia regiments, three Legio Titanicus cohorts, and detachments from two Space Marine Legions to protect the secrets of the Warp portal on Molech.Tyrade System Compliance (998.M30) - A White Scars detachment served alongside the Luna Wolves Legion during the Imperial Compliance action in the Tyrade System. This action occurred seven standard years before the Battle of Istvaan III and the start of the Horus Heresy.Ullanor Crusade (999.M30-000.M31) - The Ullanor Crusade marked the high point of the Great Crusade's vast effort to reunite the scattered colony worlds of humanity. This vast Imperial campaign took place within the Ork empire of the notorious Ork Overlord Urrlak Urruk during the Great Crusade in the first year of the 31st Millennium. Ullanor, the capital world of this empire, and the site of the final assault, lay in the Ullanor System of the galaxy's Ullanor Sector. Horus employed the use of the now famous "Speartip" tactic to destroy the Ork Empire by removing its head. The White Scars and Ultramarines Space Marine Legions, supported by the Imperial Army and other forces such as the Titans of the Mechanicum, attacked the outer planets of the Ullanor System. This offensive was a decoy, though it proved quite effective. Many of the Orks' starships rushed to prevent the attacks on the outer planets, leaving the central world dangerously vulnerable and exposed to the waiting main body of the Imperial forces, led by the Astartes of the Luna Wolves Legion. The Luna Wolves' Legion fleet headed straight for this central world and more specifically for Urlakk's fortress-palace. At the height of the campaign, Horus and his Terminator-armoured elite Justaerin successfully confronted the Overlord and his retinue of Nobz. With the death of its leader, the Ork forces collapsed into infighting as was their wont and the battle for Ullanor soon became a massacre. The remainder of the Ullanor Sector was subdued by the forces of the Crusade and returned to Imperial rule within the year, as the Ork empire had completely fragmented upon hearing of its master's death once the various Nobz declared themselves the new Warlords and fought each other for control. With Urg's termination, the nascent Ork empire self-destructed, and the xenos that were not hounded into the mud of Ullanor's vast battlegrounds would be hunted down across hundreds of star systems, all the way to Chondax, the Kayvas Belt and beyond. Following this monumental victory, the Triumph of Ullanor was held, a massive Imperial gathering that payed homage to the monumental victory achieved by its commander Horus Lupercal. Here the favoured son of the Emperor was invested with the newly created title of Imperial Warmaster, supreme commander of all the Imperium's military forces. The Emperor also announced that He would be stepping down as the Great Crusade's direct military commander and returning to Terra to undertake an important project. He passed on the mantle of leadership of His military forces to the newly invested Warmaster. When the Great Crusade commenced again, it now had a Warmaster at its apex, not an Emperor.Chondax Campaign (000-007.M31) - Shortly after the Triumph of Ullanor, Jaghatai Khan and his Vth Legion were next sent to the worlds of the Chondax System. The system was comprised of the planets Epihelikon, Teras, Honderal, Laerteax and Phemus IV, the furthest of the outlying worlds. The culmination of this campaign took place upon the world of Chondax, labeled Chondax Primus EX5, 776 NC-X-S by Imperial cartographers, but named "The White World" by the White Scars due to its salt-like earth. The White World was the crucible of the whole campaign, the heart of those Greenskin forces that had chosen to go to ground in the system. The Khan was ordered by the newly-promoted Warmaster Horus to hunt the remnants of the Ork empire destroyed on Ullanor, the last slivers of the Warlord Urlakk Urruk's Greenskins. Perhaps some would have balked at such a campaign, for it was not prestigious work, but the Khan was happy enough. It was hunting, and in a way that he understood: cavalry charges across open spaces, going up against prey that had no concept of capitulation or self-pity. He had never complained. Nearly all of his Legion went with him, ranked in their various brotherhoods, eager for the hunt. Scores of white starships cut the void, each crammed with warriors of the ordu, all desperate to get back in the chase. The brutal campaign lasted six long standard years as the White Scars hunted the remaining Greenskin forces to extinction. It was at Chondax that the White Scars would first learn of the outbreak of the Horus Heresy and the betrayal of Horus Lupercal. Delayed by the arrival of the fleet of the Alpha Legion, the White Scars would break-out from the Traitors' cordon and begin the long journey back to Terra in search of answers -- leaving multiple Alpha Legion warships as flaming wreckage in the bargain. The White Scars soon learned of the Warmaster's heresy when they established contact with Leman Russ in the aftermath of the Space Wolves' destruction of Prospero. Faced with the dilemma of aiding the weakened Space Wolves against a powerful force of Alpha Legion attackers, or returning to Terra as ordered by Rogal Dorn, Jaghatai Khan choose to go to Prospero to seek out the truth of the Heresy for himself. Satisfied, he eventually did his duty and returns to Terra.Second Battle of Paramar (008 or 011.M31) - Ground assault units of the White Scars participate in the failed Loyalist attempt to retake the strategically vital world of Paramar V from Horus' Traitors.Siege of Terra (014.M31) - The White Scars were one of only three Loyalist Space Marine Legions present at the Battle of Terra during the defence of the Emperor's Imperial Palace, alongside the Blood Angels and the Imperial Fists. Before the final defence of the Imperial Palace began, the White Scars launched a counterattack to break through the encircling siege of the Traitor Legions of Horus. As part of this counteroffensive, the White Scars undertook a daring lightning raid to seize the Lion's Gate Spaceport from the enemy's hands. This enabled the Loyalists defending the Palace to receive fresh troops and supplies from orbit and boosted the morale of the Palace's defenders. A similar Loyalist assault on the second major starport near the Palace failed, largely due to the lack of the White Scars' expertise in mobile warfare. However, the White Scars did not participate in the Emperor of Mankind's final teleport assault upon Horus' flagship, the battle barge Vengeful Spirit. |
White Scars - Age of Renewal, M31-M33: Great Scouring (ca. 014-021.M31) - During the battles of the Great Scouring, the White Scars are tasked with securing the Yasan Sector -- the star systems that surround their homeworld of Chogoris. Many of the populated planets in the sector had rebelled against the Emperor during the Horus Heresy, and all -- Loyalist and Traitor alike -- had been subjected to xenos attacks, especially by Drukhari raiders. It is during these campaigns that the White Scars Legion is broken into Chapters.Disappearance of Jaghatai Khan (ca. 084.M31) - The White Scars' Primarch Jaghatai Khan disappeared whilst fighting several Kabals of the Drukhari on the world of Corusil V, near the Warp rift called the Maelstrom. Presumably, Jaghatai pursued a Drukhari Archon through an alien portal that led into a portion of the Aeldari Webway occupied by the Drukhari, perhaps even reaching their Dark City of Commorragh itself. His fate is unknown. When Jaghatai Khan does not re-emerge into realspace, a Great Hunt is declared. The White Scars and their Successor Chapters scour the Yasan Sector and beyond for signs of their Primarch, attacking all Aeldari of any faction without warning or mercy. No signs are found. |
White Scars - The Time of Two Emperors, M34-M35: Battles of the Scorched System (Unknown Date.M34 or M35) - With so many forces of the Imperium depleted during the fighting of the Nova Terra Interregnum, it falls on the White Scars to lead the assault on the Dhanhabb System. Also known as the Scorched System, due to the unusual number of its suns, the Dhanhabb is an Ork infested, deadly cauldron threatening to boil over. Across the sun-baked deserts of the system’s vast planets -- each one many dozens of times the size of Chogoris -- the White Scars take full advantage of their exceptional mobility, leading the vastly superior foe in circles. Although the Battlewagon convoys and Kults of Speed rival the White Scars in speed, they are easily led into ambushes, or tricked into expending their fuel and ammunition foolishly. The entire Chapter is deployed for a dozen Terran years before the Orks are finally destroyed. The final battles -- the Death Ride through the Valley of Gargants and the Slalom around the Rain of Roks -- live on as tales that will be told and retold around the tribal fires of White Scars rituals for as long as there are warriors to tell them.Sabbat Worlds Crusades (35th Millennium) and (754-775.M41) - The White Scars fought in both Imperial Crusades unleashed in the Sabbat Worlds Sector, first at the side of Saint Sabbat who led the Crusade that brought the sector into the Imperium of Man in the 35th Millennium, and later with the forces of the Imperial Warmasters Slaydo and Macaroth to retake the Sabbat Worlds from control by the Forces of Chaos. The White Scars also fought alongside four fellow Astartes Chapters which included the Iron Snakes, the Raven Guard, and the Silver Guard. The White Scars were present on many of the battlefields of both Sabbat Worlds Crusades. During the first Crusade when they fought alongside Saint Sabbat, an honour guard of 8 White Scars Space Marines were the ones who carried Saint Sabbat's fallen body back to her homeworld of Hagia and her final resting place. The Shrine of Saint Sabbat contains 8 ritual niches each filled with a life sized holographic projection of a White Scars Astartes in memory of the Chapter's service. Around the year 600.M41, the Sabbat Worlds Sector began to suffer once more from such large, sustained incursions of Chaotic forces that by the year 740.M41 the situation had become untenable, with the entire sector essentially having been lost to Imperial rule. The Imperium could not suffer the existence of such a large expanse of openly Chaotic space existing within its territory, acting as a staging ground from which to spread Chaotic corruption to the surrounding Imperial sectors. As such, the Administratum ordered the start of the second Sabbat Worlds Crusade to retake the sector for the Emperor. Overall operational command was given to Warmaster Slaydo who was charged with the liberation of the Sabbat Worlds. Slaydo developed an intense passion for the cause of Saint Sabbat, the original liberator of the Sabbat Worlds. He personally believed it to be a crime against the Imperium that her hard-won territories could be so callously discarded and left in the blasphemous hands of the servants of the Ruinous Powers. |
White Scars - The Age of Redemption, M37-M40: The Cursed Year (Unknown Date) - With its brotherhoods spread across the Ultima Segmentum, the White Scars suffer a series of disasters, beginning with the loss of three Khans -- each new successor dying in his inaugural campaign. Taking the misfortune as a sign that they have displeased the venerable spirit of their primarch, the Stormseers recall the entire Chapter to Chogoris, where the brotherhoods meet for a solar month of feasting and fierce competitions, each battle-brother rededicating himself through rituals of blood. In the solar decades that follow, the White Scars accumulate more victories and successful hunts than in any period since the Great Crusade. |
White Scars - The Time of Ending and Era Indomitus, M41-M42: Macharian Crusade (392-399.M41) - Although only one brotherhood joins the Macharian Crusade, their deeds and skill at reconnaissance reaffirms to the wider Imperium that the White Scars are peerless in such endeavours.Lycanthos Drift Campaign (780.M41) - In the aftermath of the long-running and infamous Fourth Quadrant Rebellion, the White Scars answered a general call to arms among the Astartes of the region and despatched a powerful force in 780.M41, to undertake the Lycanthos Drift Campaign against one of the last major stronghold systems of the revolt located to the galactic south of the Maelstrom Zone. Astral Claws Chapter Master Lufgt Huron was elected battle leader of a number of Astartes contingents by common consent, comprising companies from the Astral Claws, Fire Hawks, Celestial Guard and White Scars Chapters, backed by the Death Korps of Krieg and Cal-Sec Imperial Guard regiments and the Titans of Legio Venator. The Fire Hawks' Chapter Master Stibor Lazaerek was noticeably bitter that he was not given command of the campaign, and is known to have born a grudge against the Astral Claws from this time forward. Under Huron's inspired command, the taskforce ruthlessly purged the heavily fortified star system of Traitor and Chaos forces in under a year, cementing his reputation as a masterful strategist amongst Space Marine commanders.Escape from Cano'var (813.M41) - At Nemesor Zahndrekh's instruction, the Necron armies of the Tomb World of Gidrim invade the Tau world of Cano'var, routing the planetary defenders after two standard weeks of campaigning. The Necron victory was short-lived however. A demi-company of White Scars, led by Kor'sarro Khan, arrived on Cano'var, pursuing a now-obsolete punitive mission against the previous T'au inhabitants. Overwhelming volley of Gauss fire destroyed the White Scars' Thunderhawks moments after their landing, leaving Kor'sarro and his battle-brothers to fight a bold, but doomed, series of hit-and-run battles. Almost all of the White Scars were slain on Uzme Plateau, but Zahndrekh commandws that Kor'sarro Khan be spared and imprisoned. So did Kor'sarro begin a peculiar period of captivity beneath the surface of Cano'var. Zahndrekh treated him with honour, though few of the other Necron Lords even acknowledged his presence. At a bizarre feast, where food was placed before Zahndrekh and his court but went uneaten, Kor'sarro learned that he was but one of a dozen prisoners. With the desire for freedom outweighing any ranklement or rivalry, Kor'sarro and the other captives conspired to escape. The Necrons were slow to react and so the breakout went well at first. Only when Vargard Obyron took command did things go badly for the escapees. Several of the fugitives were slain by Obyron's Warscythe, leaving only Kor'sarro and an Eldar Ranger by the name of Illic Nightspear to fight on, and the latter swiftly received a blow that send him sprawling from the fight. Thus did the battle devolve into a duel atop bleeding bodies and broken machines. Kor'sarro's sword was quicker and guided by a desperate fury, but Obyron's undying machine body repaired any damage within only moments. Little by little, Kor'sarro tired, and the sweeping Warscythe came closer to connecting with each swing. Finally, one of the Vargard's blows was too swift for Kor'sarro to evade -- the Warscythe sliced through his armour and deep into his flesh. Before Obyron could finish his foe, there was an intervention from an unexpected source. Unknown to either combatants, Zahndrekh had been watching the fight from afar and, impressed by Kor'sarro's skill and bravery, ordered Obyron to stand aside and let him leave. Dragging the crippled Nightspear behind, Kor'sarro finally escaped to the surface, found a still-functioning Tau spacecraft and left Cano'var far behind. Kor'sarro and Nightspear parted ways shortly after, the Eldar to his Craftworld and the White Scar to Chogoris. Shortly after Kor'sarro's return to his Chapter Planet, Nemesor Zahndrekh and Vargard Obyron were added to the Scrolls of Venegance, their names to be put forward as possible quarry for the next Great Hunt of the White Scars Chapter.The Diata Purge (858.M41) - Great Khan (Chapter Master) Kyublai Khan leads the combined might of the White Scars and the Marauders Chapters against a fell host of Chaos Space Marine Renegades.Assault on Zoran (859.M41) - The forces of the insidious Alpha Legion incited an uprising against the Imperium on the Ice World of Zoran. The Blood Angels' Captain Metraen led elements from that Chapter's 3rd and 8th Companies to that frigid planet to eliminate the rebellion and drive the Traitor Legion from the world. Metraen's bold tactical choice at first seemed to drive the enemy back but the assault stalls when the Alpha Legion's base of operations on the world was determined to be an ancient and long-lost Imperator-class Battle Titan left from the days of the Horus Heresy. Though still half-buried in the ice of Zoran, the monstrous war engine's Void Shield generators and weapons batteries proved to be operational with devastating consequences for the servants of the Emperor. Many Blood Angels Astartes fell in the first assault against the Titan and Captain Metraen feared that the only course open to him to end the threat would be an outright Exterminatus order against Zoran and its people. Fortunately for the innocents of that Ice World, aid arrived in the form of Kor'sarro Khan and the 3rd Brotherhood of the White Scars Chapter. Sent to claim the head of the Alpha Legion's infamous Daemon Prince Voldorius, the khan joined his forces to the remains of the Blood Angels Astartes on the planet. As the White Scars launched their own attack on the Alpha Legion's bastion from below, the Blood Angels used their Stormravens to initiate a series of drop assaults against the secondary plasma reactors that powered the Titan's weapons. Metraen's Astartes neutralised the Titan's defences and the White Scars swarmed into the massive war machine's lower levels. Though Voldorius ultimately escaped once more, his followers were exterminated to the last Chaos Cultist and Alpha Legionary. Though Kor'sarro Khan was obliged to continue his hunt for the Daemon Prince, Zoran had been restored to the Emperor's light and the recovery of a battered but fully repairable Imperator Titan is no mean feat. Metraen eventually brought the Titan back to Baal, from which it was sent on to Mars, where Lord Commander Dante hoped that such a priceless gift might finally smooth over the conflicts between the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Blood Angels.Hunt for Voldorius (855-865.M41) - The Hunt for Voldorius was the search by Kor'sarro Khan, Captain of the 3rd Brotherhood of the White Scars, for the Daemon Prince Kernax Voldorius, the warleader of a particularly insidious Alpha Legion Chaos Space Marines warband. In 865.M41 Kor'sarro Khan drove Voldorius from his foremost stronghold on the Hive World of Modanna. By 871.M41, Kor'sarro Khan tracked Kernax Voldorius to the planet Quintus. The White Scars discovered no mere warband, but a whole planet of Traitors and Renegades ready to stand against them, but Kor'sarro was not deterred. Upon making planetfall, Kor'sarro Khan found unexpected allies in the form of Shadow Captain Kayvaan Shrike and the Raven Guard's 3rd Company. Despite the millennia-old rivalry that exists between their two Chapters, the White Scars and Raven Guard put aside their differences and joined forces to defeat Voldorius' armies; Shrike and Kor'sarro slew the Daemon Prince in the streets of the planetary-capital of Mankarra. With the defeat of the Chaos forces and Voldorius dead by his hands, Kor'sarro Khan announced his sixteenth Great Hunt to be at an end. Claiming Voldorius' head as a gloried prize, Kor'sarro Khan left Quintus and returned to a hero's welcome at the White Scars' Fortress-Monastery on Chogoris where it was set on a pike on the road to the White Scars' fortress, so that all might know that no foe of the Chapter ever truly escapes the Emperor's justice.Battle for Grase Mesa (869.M41) - The Eldar Windrider Host of Yme-Loc Craftworld is all but annihilated at Grase Mesa when White Scars Bike and Land Speeder squadrons encircle their xenos foe and launch a devastating enfilade on their flanks.The Blackfist Scalping (882.M41) - The White Scars join forces with two of their Successor Chapters -- the Storm Lords and Solar Hawks -- to combat WAAAGH! Blackfist on the Agri-World of Lycelle. Competition between the three Chapters was fierce, with each trying to outdo the battlefield deeds of the others in the name of Jaghatai Khan.Quan Zhou's Wrath (890.M41) - A Necron Cairn-class Tombship enters orbit over Chogoris and begins the focussed bombardment of an unpopulated area on the planet's surface. The Battle Barge Jaghatai's Pride pierced the ship's shields even as the White Scars' Fortress-Monastery fired its massive Defence Laser, the Khan's Fury, destroying the Tombship in a single Lance strike.Battle for Fyre (898.M41) - Great Khan Kyublai joins forces with six other Space Marine Chapters to purge the Daemon World of Fyre of the daemonic legions of Mal'laf'mak the Bloodbringer. The daemon warlord was banished when Kyublai led a bold Drop Pod assault against Gorespire and Mal'laf'mak was caught between Kyublai's Honour Guard and the Chapter's Sternguard Veterans in a merciless cross-fire. The White Scars took heavy casualties escaping Gorespire before it, and all within, were dragged back into the Warp.Battle for Cardrim (926.M41) - Whilst combating the Ork WAAAGH! Skullkrumpa on the world of Cardrim, Joghaten Khan and the White Scars' 4th Brotherhood awaken the Necron forces of Overlord Tarekh. Isolated from reinforcements, the White Scars prosecuted a gruelling hit-and-run campaign lasting several standard years. Their lightning raids hamstrung much of the enemy's forces, and the last xenos were finally slain during the attack on Fellstorm Airfield.The Bloodswarm Crusade (936.M41) - The Bloodswarm Crusade is brought to a successful conclusion by the White Scars and Iron Hawks Chapters.A Lost Hero (943.M41) - The Kabal of the Bloodied Talon prey upon the people of Chogoris. Great Khan Kyublai immediately set off after the attackers, but mysteriously vanished soon after and was presumed slain by the Drukhari. Jubal Khan was appointed as Great Khan of the White Scars following a lengthy ritual and immediately declared a Great Hunt to avenge his predecessor. In 945.M41, Kor'sarro Khan returned to Chogoris not only with the head of Archon Kirareq of the Kabal of the Bloodied Talon, but also those of one thousand of his Dark Eldar warriors.The Bloodskar Hunt (964.M41) - The White Scars' 5th Brotherhood reinforces the Imperial Guard's Cadian Shock Troops regiments in their ongoing struggle against the Ork WAAAGH! Bloodskar in the Lonnas System.Third War for Armageddon (998.M41) - During the Third War for Armageddon against the largest Ork WAAAGH! seen since the War of the Beast, the White Scars despatched several brotherhoods alongside warriors from twenty other Chapters. The White Scars forces deployed onto the freezing wastes of the Hive World of Armageddon known as the Deadlands. Their highly mobile style of warfare proved perfect for lightning fast responses to attacks launched by the Ork Speed Kults in that region. The Battle of Dante's Canyon in the Deadlands region, fought in the opening days of the war, excellently displayed the power and style of combat favoured by the White Scars. The White Lightning Speed Kult, having learnt from its previous debacle, attacked again, this time using "kustomised" Warbikes and Wartrakks on skis. However, the Astartes defenders were ready for the Greenskins. The White Scars Tulwar Brotherhood, led by Suboden Khan, launched a counterattack on the Orks. Lightly armoured Bike Squadrons and Attack Bikes surged from a local drilling station being used as a forward command post and met the Orks halfway. A swirling, mounted melee of speeding vehicles skidding around the ice raged for many solar hours into the night. The following morning Ork Stormboyz dropped from the cliffs above the drilling station, only to be met by the determined and disciplined fire of White Scar Tactical Squads. Charges laid on the ice during the night were detonated, plunging yet more Orks under the frigid surface. At the same time, Orks attempting to cut the cables securing the drilling station to the canyon walls were attacked in the rear by Assault Squads led by Suboden Khan. The leader of this group of Orks was beheaded by Suboden and his broken body thrown from the cliffs. The remaining Orks were driven over the cliffs and their bodies swept below the freezing waters of the Tempest Ocean. The White Scars did not suffer a single casualty during the engagement.13th Black Crusade (999.M41) - During the 13th Black Crusade the first of the White Scars Brotherhoods to reach the Cadian Gate was the brotherhood of Khajog Khan, a hero of Armageddon and many other campaigns. Khajog set about launching a series of devastatingly successful hit-and-run attacks across the bleak moors of Cadia. The attacks were so successful that the White Scars soon became a significant threat to Abaddon the Despoiler's plans and the sieges of Kasr Myrak, Soliq and Rantik were lifted as the Chaotic forces of the Great Despoiler redeployed to hunt down the elusive White Scars. Khajog's brotherhood proved literally too effective, as their actions earned the direct attention of Abaddon, who ordered the brotherhood immediately hunted down and exterminated by a full force deployment of the Chaos Space Marines under his command. Dispatching no less than the elite 1st Company of the Black Legion along with massive hordes of Chaos Cultists and slaves, Abaddon began the hunt through the bleak moors. Unknown to Khajog, Abaddon's chief Chaos Sorcerer Zaraphiston located the White Scars through his divinations, and Khajog's forces were ambushed as they attempted to assault a slave train west of Lake Terror. The first 4 White Scars Bike Squads that hit the slave train found themselves charging directly into the guns of Abaddon's Chosen. Realising that they were beaten, the White Scars continued their charge nonetheless, selling their lives as dearly as possible to give their brethren in the rest of the White Scars force time to break away. Reluctantly, Khajog retreated with the rest of his brotherhood to regroup, swearing to return and wreak vengeance on Abaddon's forces. However, that was not to be. Khajog did not get an opportunity to return in the manner of his choosing, for every exit was blocked by the uncountable hordes of the Chaotic forces. Instead of trying to retreat further, Khajog determined to make his last stand at the base of a Cadian Pylon on the shores of the Caducades Sea. The White Scars crashed into the innumerable ranks of the Traitor forces, dragged from their Assault Bikes one by one until at last only Khajog remained. Khajog Khan was the last of the White Scars to fall that day, finally dragged down by the sheer weight of numbers arrayed against him. The Stormseers of the Chapter say that to this day, Khajog's spirit still roams the bleak moors of Cadia, unwilling to return until vengeance is meted out to those who slew him.The Maelstrom Threat (999.M41) - A vast Chaos Space Marine fleet under the command of Huron Blackheart emerges from the Maelstrom and besieges the Chogoris, Kaelas and Sessec Systems in the Yasan Sector. Rumours report Huron's force is as large as the Space Marine Legions of old, and several Chapters are tasked with its destruction. Splitting into reaving fleets, borne swiftly upon unnatural Warp currents that aid the invaders even as they confound the Loyalist ships hastening to intercept, the invasion fleets fall upon the worlds of the Yasan Sector with gleeful ferocity. Recognising the scale of the peril, and with his Stormseers reading dire prophecies in every omen, Chapter Master Jubal Khan ordered the recall of all White Scars forces to Chogoris. On Armageddon and across a dozen other war fronts, Astropaths vomit forth the distress cries of the White Scars' Chapter planet, and the Great Khan's sons among their successors answer. Yet with new Warp Storms boiling into being across the galaxy, their arrival becomes ever-more doubtful. The White Scars withdraw from their operations on Armageddon to meet this dire threat to their homeworld. They summon brotherhoods from as far away as the Damocles Gulf in order to meet this dire threat.Battle of Chogoris (Unknown Date.M42) - The opening of the Great Rift and the coming of the Noctis Aeterna occurs while the White Scars defend Chogoris from attack. The entire Yasan Sector falls to Huron Blackheart's attack, and when daemons manifest from the growing darkness, it seems the sons of Jaghatai Khan will be making their last stand. But one more fleet arrives before the stars go black. Arriving late from their war against the T'au in the Eastern Fringe, Kor'sarro Khan leads his brotherhood and reinforcements from the White Scars' successors in an unexpected charge that breaks the blockade of the Khum Karta mountain range that surrounds Quan Zhou, the fortress-monastery of the White Scars, even as its ramparts are burning. With the return of the Master of the Hunt, the planet's defenders fight back with renewed hope, and the combined efforts of the Chapter's Stormseers drives back the malefic energies surrounding Chogoris, causing Huron Blackheart's daemonic allies to lose their physical form. The Heretics withdraw, falling back to strongholds elsewhere in the Yasan Sector and leaving Chogoris broken but unbowed.Indomitus (Unknown Date.M42) - With the brotherhoods depleted and the Yasan Sub-sector overrun by foes, the White Scars begin to regroup and plan their counterattacks. It is then that Battle Group Delphi II of the Indomitus Crusade's Fleet Tertius arrives in the system, delivering the White Scars' Primaris Marine brethren to join the fight. With the brotherhoods reinforced, the fightback begins in earnest, while recruitment begins from Chogoris' vengeful tribes for new Neophytes to be elevated into Primaris battle-brothers.Fall of the Great Khan (Unknown Date.M42) - Seeking revenge for the severe damage inflicted on Chogoris, the Great Khan, Jubal, leads a daring attack upon Seethnar -- the vast space station seized by Huron Blackheart as a main dockyard for his piratical war fleets. In a swift naval attack, Seethnar is boarded from multiple locations, each war party racing into the station and planting Melta Bomb charges. After brutal fighting, Jubal Khan and his Honour Guard reach Seethnar 's heart and cause catastrophic damage to its Plasma Reactors, but become trapped by collapsing corridors. The fate of the Great Khan is unknown for some time.A Bleak Return (Unknown Date.M42) - Solar weeks after the White Scars' attack on Seethnar, the White Scars ambush the warship on which Jubal Khan is imprisoned. They liberate their lord but find him tortured close to death. Jubal Khan is returned to Chogoris and installed into a life-preserving Apothecarion cradle in his inner sanctum. Jubal Khan lives, and thanks to his indomitable spirit remains capable of serving as his Chapter's lord and grand strategist; prognoses for his physical recovery are dire, however, and many whisper that it might have been kinder for their Great Khan to die in battle than to face a future trammelled within his strategium, unable to lift a blade or sit a saddle.Third War for Damnos (Unknown Date.M42) - The Third War for Damnos began when an invasion force of the Necron Szarekhan Dynasty descended upon Damnos during the Era Indomitus. The world sent out a plea for aid once more to the Ultramarines, who at that time were engaged in a number of major conflicts of the era, including the Indomitus Crusade, the Plague Wars and the War of Beasts. With most of their strength utilised elsewhere, the Chapter had few Astartes to spare to help the besieged world. Nonetheless, the Chapter had given too much previously in Damnos' defence to abandon it and a small strike force of Ultramarines and several regiments of the Ultramar Auxilia were sent to aid it. The Chapter knew that the forces that had been deployed to Damnos would be insufficient to defeat the Necrons and so requested aid from their allies in different Chapters. Their requests were answered and when the Ultramarines arrived at Damnos they were joined by contingents from several Successor Chapters, including the Iron Hounds, Brazen Consuls and Libators. The combined might of these Adeptus Astartes, however, was not enough to defeat the invading Szarekhan Dynasty, whose forces were numberless. This was due to the undying xenos arriving in their thousands by Tomb Ships and through a Dolmen Gate to ensure they reconquered Damnos. When the Mandeville Point for the Damnos System once again flared as it opened to the Warp, the Ultramarines feared that another foe was about to join conflict, but instead it marked the arrival of reinforcements sent by the Salamanders and White Scars Chapters. They had received the Ultramarines' request for aid and proceeded to join the battle to retake Damnos once more for the Emperor from the Szarekhan Dynasty.Talledus War (Unknown Date.M42) - During the Talledus War in the Talledus System of the Veritus Sub-sector, Jodagha Khan, captain of the 10th Brotherhood, led 3 Vanguard Space Marine strike forces in battle against the fleet of the Night Lords commanded by the Chaos Lord Yharas Kine that was preying upon Imperial shipping in the asteroid field known as the Tears of the Emperor. |
White Scars - Legion Organisation: As has been noted, the Vth Legion has never adhered closely to the strictures of the Principia Belicosa, that great military treatise written by the Emperor that informed the basis of most of the early Space Marine Legions' organisation and structure. Lacking in the numbers that allowed many of the other Legions to operate as fully-fledged war hosts, the Vth Legion was originally organised into small Pioneer Companies, each operating as a separate and independent force.This independence of operation and command was both a necessity due to the size and mission of the early Vth Legion and a legacy of the fierce spirit of its original recruits. Each Pioneer Company operated as an augmented line company, comprising perhaps 1,000 Legionaries and a varying array of specialist detachments, with each unique in its exact configuration and total fighting strength.Over the first century of the Great Crusade, these companies continued to deviate from the standard organisational pattern of the Principia Belicosa, in part due to the increasing difficulty of resupplying them. The rediscovery of Jaghatai Khan on Chogoris brought an end to this era of independent operations and saw the Legion go through a complete re-organisation.By 865.M30, there were approximately 70,000 warriors in the Vth Legion, which would later increase to around 95,000 at the peak of the Legion's strength shortly before 007.M31. The Great Khan reformed these warriors into a number of "hordes," a formation that stood above the brotherhood in the Legion's structure.In creating his new Legion, the Great Khan was careful to split up the old Pioneer Companies, mixing warriors of differing origins together with new recruits from his homeworld of Chogoris to constitute the new hordes. Most documents dating to that time place the number of original hordes at five, although some accounts place the number as high as seven.The exact number is difficult to ascertain due to the irregular size of these formations, as both the original hordes and those that would follow varied wildly in size, with the smallest numbering little more than 5,000 warriors and the largest as many as 20,000. The difference in size did not appear to indicate any tactical or strategic speciality, but rather was tied to the will of the horde's commander, known in the newly re-organised White Scars as a "noyan-khan."Indeed, the various hordes often fluctuated wildly in size during the transition from one noyan-khan to another, with warriors transferring between hordes, or even splitting off to form new hordes at the whims of either the noyan-khan or Jaghatai himself.This process seems to have been intended to allow each individual commander to operate efficiently within the bounds of their ability and strategic preferences, rather than enforcing a strict organisational system upon them.Whether this is the spectre of the old Pioneer Companies and their independent spirit, or part of the Great Khan's Chogorian heritage is unknown, but its effectiveness when combined with the free-spirited nature of the Vth Legion has been demonstrated in battles beyond count. It did, however, cause a number of difficulties with both their brother Legions and with the logistics and command echelons of the Divisio Militaris.A number of Great Crusade operations encountered problems properly classifying White Scars detachments, both for purposes of resupply and of properly gauging the threat level of opposing forces. On Algeron VII, where two hordes of White Scars were deployed for harrowing operations against Renegade human enclaves, Great Crusade Divisio Logisticus supplied munitions and supplies for two standard Legiones Astartes units of Chapter-strength, only to find this insufficient for the two over-sized hordes sent by the White Scars.On Therona Secundus, an Ultramarines grand task force besieging a Fra'al stronghold requested reinforcement by a similar-sized force of the Legiones Astartes, only for Divisio Strategists to mistakenly assign a nearby White Scars horde to the conflict. The horde, numbering only half the strength of the Ultramarines force, fought bravely as a part of the assault force, but its relatively low strength forced the Ultramarines to endure higher casualties than their strict protocols would allow.The warriors of Ultramar, always dubious of those who chose to disregard the logic of the Principia Bellicosa, saw this as a failure of the White Scars, one among a number of one-sided grudges -- for the White Scars marked the Therona conflict as a great victory against adversity, and spoke highly of the Ultramarines' fortitude.The only other main organisational unit within the White Scars was the brotherhood, a unit roughly equivalent to the standard company. Just like the larger hordes, each brotherhood varied in size quite widely, with some being formed of less than a few hundred warriors and others up to several thousand. Again, this disparity was rarely directly linked to the tactical role of the brotherhood but rather the preferences and charisma of the khan, as the White Scars called the officer known in other Legions as a Captain, who led it.That being true, many brotherhoods also tended to favour a specific mode of engagement, with the majority being outfitted and trained to operate as skirmish forces and rapid strike units. These most typical brotherhoods were almost always mechanised units, in that the entire force of the brotherhood was either mounted on Jet Bikes or supplied with other forms of rapid transport.Brotherhoods specialising in either long range combat or siege work were in a distinct minority and often among the smallest of these formations. This left the White Scars at something of a disadvantage in some combat theatres, forcing them to either rely on their own innate versatility to make do or to draft auxillia units into their line of battle to cope with specialised combat situations.Within each brotherhood the exact roster of units varied considerably and rarely adhered to standard company structures seen within the other Legions. Though each brotherhood was a unique formation, most were formed of a core of Jetbike-mounted troops, although these were sometimes known to fight dismounted in the style of more standard tactical units.In addition to this core of highly mobile strike troops was a number of more specialised units, of which the exact nature is highly variable. Most common among the various brotherhoods were reconnaissance cadres or close assault specialists, roles which held particular value within the Chogorian traditions that sat at the heart of the White Scars doctrines.The inclusion of units that fall outside of these preferences, most especially static heavy weapons support units, was rarer but farfrom unknown. Indeed, some brotherhoods were composed almost entirely of such units. Such specialised brotherhoods were not pariahs among their swifter brethren, but often honoured for their role in the Legion's victories and their willingness to sacrifice the thrill of the hunt for victory.Most brotherhoods also included what the White Scars referred to as a "Keshig," which indicated a body of troops somewhere between an honour guard for the khan and an elite reserve of veterans intended to bolster both the fighting spirit and tactical firepower of line troops. Given the aggressive nature of most White Scars tactics, these units often formed the forefront of any assault, and most often contained the most skilled and experienced warriors withinthe brotherhood.Among the more extreme deviations from standard practise within the White Scars Legion were their so-called "weather-witches." These were the Librarian-adepts fielded by the Legion during the earliest days of the Librarius experiment, their training and role dictated as much by the superstitions of the Chogorian tribesmen as by the standardised training coda of the fledgling Astartes Librarius.They quickly came to fill the role of mystics and advisers to the khans, more akin to primitive shamans to outside eyes than to the ideal of the warrior-scholar of the more orthodox Legions.Yet beneath the veneer of their shamanistic heritage lay a surprisingly complex position, serving their brethren as counsellors and mediators as well as shields against aetheric menace, and with a deep understanding of the Warp rooted in both Chogorian mysticism and the scientific studies of the Imperium's greatest scholars.In many ways, the studied respect these early adepts displayed for Warp phenomena showed a wiser approach than that of more secular scholars whose approach was rooted in science and often dismissive of the real threat concealed within the aether. In battle, these "Stormseers" stirred the Warp to aid their brethren, preferring more subtle applications of psychic power than crude bolts of energy.They obscured the advance of the White Scars with fog, wind and rain, and impeded the foe with relentless flurries of hail or foul monsoons. Many of the Vth Legion's victories were founded on the cunning application of both the Stormseers' psychic power and their sage advice. Despite their abilities, the Stormseers were most often judged on their appearance, which to the more stringent adherents of the Imperial Truth harkened back to the dark days of Old Night on Terra and superstitions of religion which the Emperor Himself had condemned.Among their most vocal opponents was Mortarion, whose innate hatred of the psyker was only exacerbated by the positions of influence the Stormseers held within their Legion, but he was not alone in questioning their loyalty to the core tenants of the Imperial Truth and the Great Crusade itself.Among the various specialised units common within Legiones Astartes ranks, there were some rarely seen among the White Scars. Most prominent amongst these were the assault troops known as Destroyers, dedicated to the deployment of proscribed weaponry and the utter annihilation of the foe. The tactics employed by these cadres in other Legions were considered anathema by the White Scars, whose joy in open combat and reverence for the unspoiled wilderness of many Frontier Worlds was ill at ease with such wanton destruction.Destroyer cadres did exist within the Legion, but in limited numbers. Known as the Karaoghlanlar, or the "Dark Sons of Death," their armour was painted a dull black and festooned with Chogorian shamanic charms to ward off the evil spirits that followed in their wake. These grim warriors, often considered deranged and as omens of evil tidings by their fellows, did not serve with any single brotherhood but were instead placed under the direct supervision of the Stormseer Council, only deployed when both khan and seer agreed they be set loose.This apparently pagan superstition appeared to serve simply as a tool to vilify the use of the extreme measures represented by the Destroyers, a choice known to have originated with the Great Khan himself, who held little respect for those who resorted to such extreme measures too frequently.Another notable exception within the ranks of the White Scars was the almost complete lack of any kind of position dedicated to the enforcement of military law. The White Scars never operated any kind of disciplinary corps, the officers known as consul-opsequiri in the Principia Belicosa.Despite this, they also recorded one of the lowest rates of internal dispute and other infractions under the Imperium's Divisio Militaris military law. Some claim that this record is due to the White Scars' insular nature and unwillingness to properly report their activities, while others note that the White Scars maintain a complex code of honour, with several units that might be described as penal units by outsiders.Of these, the most well-known was the Kharash, a temporary body of warriors filled by volunteers whenever the need for diversionary or shock assault tactics occurred. Though assigned duties considered near-suicidal by many observers, the Kharash never lacked for volunteers, with those seeking to expunge some perceived sin equally matched by those seeking advancement through the honour attached to serving with the Kharash and surviving. |
White Scars - Command Hierarchy: Of all of the Legions, the White Scars maintained the most decentralised command structure, rivalled only by that of the Alpha Legion. While Jaghatai Khan remained the ultimate authority, the various noyan-khans, the commanders of the large units called "hordes" that made up the bulk of the Legion, exercised a remarkable amount of personal authority and most often operated independently of the Great Khan.Unlike many Legions of the Great Crusade, it was rare for the White Scars to assemble in forces numbering more than one or two hordes -- indeed, it was far more common for forces as small as one or more brotherhoods to operate alone within any given war zone. Far more common was the attachment of smaller White Scars forces to the fleets of other Legions, though even in these situations the khans of those gathered brotherhoods retained independent command of their forces.As a consequence of this style of leadership, the White Scars Legion had relatively few formal titles of rank in use. Authority flowed from the Great Khan, whose official title in the Legion was "Khagan" or "Khan of Khans," to the noyan-khans that commanded the hordes and from there to the individual khans of each brotherhood, with these three ranks forming the core of the Legion's command structure on the battlefield.In actuality, each khan, regardless of his rank, was surrounded by a web of advisers and lieutenants to whom a measure of authority was invested, for the officers retained their posts due to the respect held for them by their followers as much as due to any official appointment.Among this circle of advisers, the chief position was often taken by one of the infamous Stormseers, upon whose prognostication much weight was placed by both the khan and his warriors.Most khans also nominated one among their brotherhood as first officer, and heir to command should he fall. A position technically titled "Kavkhan," though this was only rarely used in the field, the counsel of this first officer also weighed heavily in the command of the brotherhood.Other officers of more specialised nature, such as the "Tenrikhan" that captained many of the voidcraft of the White Scars fleet or the "Gan-khan" that presided over the Legion's armouries, as well as veterans of established skill and honour, also held much sway with a wise khan, and when included as a part of his brotherhood or larger force, would be key to shaping his decisions. |
White Scars - Legion Size: The White Scars were never considered to be among the larger of the Legiones Astartes, partly due to the tendency of its separate detachments to operate individually and the relatively low level of recruitment conducted by the Legion. In its early years, before the rediscovery of Jaghatai Khan, the Legion numbered around 80,000 warriors. By the later years of the Great Crusade, after the return of Jaghatai Khan, this number had risen to around 95,000 warriors.This left the Legion as one of the smallest of the Legiones Astartes, although slightly larger than Corax's Raven Guard and Vulkan's Salamanders, as well as one of the most widely spread on a strategic level. Of all of the Legions, only the Iron Warriors had more of its number attached to fleets and garrison posts thanthe White Scars.During the Great Crusade, and for much of the Horus Heresy, the exact size of the Vth Legion was often difficult to ascertain, due to the lax attitude many of its commanders held towards the filing of accurate and regular reports with the Divisio Militaris.Those numbers available in these latter years are mainly drawn from the personal journals of various khans and other officers of the Legion, and were not generally known in those last few years before Horus declared war on his father.As such, many of the Imperium's commanders often believed the White Scars to be a much larger force than it actually was, a fiction mostly attributed to the tendency of the Legion's various detachments to move from war zone to war zone as they willed, and the often confusing heraldry used by many of the brotherhoods.During the final stages of the Great Crusade, in the years just before the Istvaan massacres, the White Scars were spread across the galaxy in several dozen war zones, often in detachments of only a few brotherhoods. During the Ullanor Crusade, Horus called upon the Great Khan and his warriors, gathering several full hordes of the Vth Legion and their Primarch to his side -- the largest concentration of the Legion at a single war zone since the Kolarne Circle campaign.Following the fighting at Ullanor, those hordes that had been present, along with several others previously assigned to fighting in the southern fringes of the Great Crusade, were committed to the Chondax Campaign and were later involved in the Alpha Legion's treacherous assault against the White Scars. This left at least three hordes unaccounted for in the first years of the Horus Heresy, most assigned to fleets along the northeastern edge of the Great Crusade and far removed from contact with their Primarch.It appears that most of the Traitor detachments in this region were under orders to avoid engaging remnant White Scars forces, and in at least one incident, a Legiones Astartes force in White Scars colours is known to have fought alongside a Sons of Horus battle force in campaigns targeting Blood Angels' and Ultramarines' holdouts along the Eastern Fringe.Following the Chondax Engagement, there are few concrete facts regarding the main body of the White Scars and theirmovements are little known to Imperial savants in the years that preceded the Battle of Terra save as recorded above. |
White Scars - Pioneer Companies: In its earliest incarnation, the Vth Legion was not the singular body that many of the other proto-Legions formed. It was a Space Marine Legion in name only. Instead, it was organised into autonomous companies, each of which had few links to any of their brethren and operated entirely independently.Indeed, prior to the recall that was sent after the discovery of Jaghatai Khan, many of the Pioneer Companies had no contact with any other body of the Vth Legion and developed a set of traditions and rituals unique to that company. This was especially true as the Great Crusade progressed, with each company often forced to pursue recruitment as they travelled because supply and reinforcement convoys were rarely able to keep up with their rate of advance.Oddly, this brought several of the Pioneer Companies closer to the other Legions, especially where they fought in close proximity, as the Vth Legion warriors, still lacking a Primarch to rally around, began to adoptelements of the other Legions' practises.These distinct sub-cultures would endure beyond the integration of Jaghatai's new order, with many of them being subsumed into the pre-existing Chogorian obsession with small superstitions and others among the Warrior Lodges that permeated the Terran branches of the White Scars.These Pioneer Companies were composed of as few as 500 and as many as 3,000 Legionaries; with records listing perhaps 800 known companies by the year 800.M30. The sum total of the entire Vth Legion is estimated to have been around 80,000 at this point in the Great Crusade, but is rarely known to have gathered in strengths of greater than a few thousand, barring such exceptional incidents as the Battle for Thapsus in late 744.M30.Though spread thin, the Vth Legion remained a sizable force, mostly due to the opportunistic recruitment patterns practised by many of the companies of the Legion to offset the relative scarcity of reinforcements received from Terra. This practise caused no little friction between the Legions, as the warriors of the Vth had on a number of occasions encroached upon territory ceded to the moreestablished Legions.In particular, both Ferrus Manus and Leman Russ are known to have made issue of the Legion recruiting from worlds whose populations were pledged to them, and only the direct intervention of Horus Lupercal is known to have prevented the censure of the Vth's errant warriors.Within each Pioneer Company there was to be found a tremendous diversity of sub-divisions and heraldry, the most common being the old Terran standard of the Unification Wars armies which sub-divided the larger company into groups of 100 warriors, each commanded by a Captain and one among that number acting as overall commander, a First Captain.Heraldry among the early Vth Legion was just as varied. Most Pioneer Companies maintained the numeral that marked the Legion designation granted them by the Emperor, but also adopted a number of unofficial insignia of their own, marking the various titles granted them by both the Imperial forces they served and the enemies they hunted.A sample of these titles and heraldic devices, displayed above as found in the Liber Armorum Terranicus edition of 756.M30, shows a growing lack of unity between the Legion's far flung sons in the years just before the discovery of their Primarch. |
White Scars - 731st Pioneer Company: An example of a Pioneer Company was the the 731st Pioneer Company, known informally as the "Grey Ghosts." The 731st primarily saw service as outriders and forward scout elements for the 98th Expeditionary Fleet, alongside the warriors of Primarch Rogal Dorn's Imperial Fists Legion. They were tasked with identifying potential targets ahead of the fleet's main advance and assessing the threat of each, either withdrawing in the face of overwhelming opposition or staging a campaign of disruption and subtle murder where they discovered weakness.They served to arrange the grand battles and campaigns which the Imperial Fists prosecuted, moving on when the warriors of Dorn arrived in orbit to secure the victory with pomp and fanfare. The Cold Shroud and Sorrow Vector, the two cruisers attached to the 731st Pioneer Company, were ever on the move, perpetually steered from one desolate war zone to another by the advance of the Great Crusade.Legionary Alekh Daumas illustrated above fought as one of the so-called "Stalker" cadres for which the Grey Ghosts were renowned. Armed with old pattern anti-materiel rifles converted for use as sniper weapons and a sophisticated catalogue of camouflage techniques, theseStalkers marked priority targets for the invasion force that followed on their heels and perpetrated pinpoint strikes on those deemed vulnerable by the Pioneer Company's commanders.Legionary Daumas rose to prominence during the initial foray on Altus-coriola, where he and his cadre were responsible for destroying 34 grounded fighter craft, ensuring minimal losses in the later Imperial Fists drop assault. Later fully initiated into the reborn White Scars Legion, Daumas took the name Munokhoi to show his loyalty to the Great Khan. |
White Scars - Pre-Heresy Hordes and Brotherhoods: It was common in the pre-Heresy White Scars Legion for both its hordes and constituent brotherhoods to carry names rather than numbers.The notable named hordes of the V Legion during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy era included:Horde of the Stone - Commanded by Hasik Noyan-Khan.Horde of the Earth - Commanded by Jemulan Noyan-Khan.The notable named brotherhoods of the White Scars Legion during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy era included:Brotherhood of the Blue HawkBrotherhood of the Storm - Commanded by Shiban Khan.Brotherhood of the Moon - Commanded by Torghun Khan.Brotherhood of the Night's Star - Commanded by Ainbataar Khan.Brotherhood of the Golden Star - Commanded by Tsolmon Khan.Brotherhood of the Sable WolfBrotherhood of the Broken Shield - Commanded by Bujir Khan.Brotherhood of the Great Eye - Commanded by Nayaga Khan.Brotherhood of the Golden Path - Commanded by Khulan Khan.Brotherhood of the Pennant Spear - Commanded by Algu Khan.Brotherhood of the Hunter's Star - Commanded by Xo Hutan.Brotherhood of the Dawn Sky - Commanded by Hibou Khan.Brotherhood of the Black Axe - Commanded by Sengur Khan.Brotherhood of the Summer Lightning - Commanded by Jubal Khan. |
White Scars - Uhaan Solban: Many outsiders have made the claim that the White Scars of the Great Crusade era did not use Dreadnoughts. This is not true. Those they maintained were rarely seen in battle and were few in number, but they did exist and held a strange position within the Legion.As a warrior society uniquely bound to the fierce joys of battle and the simple pleasures of a physical existence, the eternity of silence and separation endured by those incarcerated within a Dreadnought chassis held a particular horror for the White Scars. Despite this revulsion, to be assigned to live on in a Dreadnought shell is seen as neither punishment, nor as an honour, but rather somewhere in between.Dreadnoughts among the White Scars were known as the Uhaan Solban, the "Guardians of the Morning and Evening Stars" in the Chogorian tongue. This poetic title is typical of the Legion's tendencies, and hid a rather more practical purpose. The Uhaan Solban served as guardians of the Legion's gene-seed repositories on Chogoris and Terra, eternal wardens that served in place of their lesser brethren.They shouldered the burden of an endless watch so that their brothers that still walked fully in the realm of the living might hunt the stars alongside the Great Khan, a sacrifice that saw them treated with equal parts awe and fear by the rest of the Legion. They remained a cruel reminder of the true cost of duty, avoided by most who had reason to enter the silent repository halls where they rest, and were honoured from afar with propitiatory rites.It is only the Akoghlanlar, the Apothecaries, and the "Iron Khans" (Techmarines) of the armoury who sought them out, both to perform maintenance and for ritual reasons tied to their own obscure creeds.On rare occasions, one of the Uhaan Solban would take to the field of battle alongside the rest of the Legion, drawn to battle by the fragmented memories and urges that still lived in their half-dreams. They made such demands only rarely, and only where they felt that their presence was required by those omens observed in the feverish dreams of the near-death they endured during their watch, interpreted for them by Stormseers, and there were few khans who would deny the request of one of these ill-omened heroes to stalk the battlefield once more.Those battles to which the Uhaan Solban felt drawn were almost always bound to live in infamy, dire challenges that saw the Legion pitted against near-insurmountable odds or hidden tragedy. Here the Uhaan Solban sought their final demise, to stand as a bulwark against defeat and to laugh bitterly in death's face one last time.The Chondax Campaign was to see an unprecedented number of the Uhaan Solban return to the field of battle, an ill-omen that would not be realised until the end of the fighting and the arrival of the Alpha Legion. |
White Scars - Auxiliary Orders: Several bodies of White Scars warriors existed outside of the brotherhood structure into which the vast majority of the Legion was organised. Some of these orders reported directly to the Great Khan, while others were truly independent and operated according to the whims of their commanders in support of other brotherhoods or hordes.Given the decentralised nature of the White Scars' military organisation and the emphasis they placed on individual initiative, many of these orders operated without direct oversight by the Great Khan, and were to an extent laws unto themselves. A brief list of the more prominent of these organisations is presented here.Karaoghlanlar - The "Dark Sons of Death," these warriors fulfilled the role of Destroyers within the White Scars and answered directly to the Council of Seers. They were deployed in combat when the utter annihilation of the enemy was required, as well as for certain ritual roles in the wake of key campaigns.Burgediin Sarhvu - The "Falcon's Claws" in the Chogorian tongue, this small order was composed of veteran warriors who had undergone certain initiatory rites on Chogoris. On the battlefield, they served as hunters and forward scouts, experts in survival and the quiet elimination of enemy commanders, while outside of combat they acted as the keepers of those servo-raptors maintained by many brotherhoods as both symbols of their ancient heritage and battlefield reconnaissance assets.Kharash - Less a formal order and more a temporary assembly, the Kharash was assembled whenever the need for a diversionary or shock assault force rose. Formed only on volunteers, these units were both a punishment and an honour, as those who survived assignment to the Kharash were often considered to be both lucky and skilled by their comrades. The Kharash were also one of the few White Scars units to make routine use of Tactical Dreadnought Armour.Uhaan Solban - This order comprised almost every one of the limited number of Dreadnoughts of any pattern in service with the White Scars. Concerned primarily with guarding the gene-seed repositories of the Legion on Chogoris and Terra, these dour, half-dead warriors were rarely seen on the field of battle with the Legion.Akoghlanlar (Apothecaries) - Composed entirely of those personnel inducted into the medicae corps of the Vth Legion, the Akoghlanlar were the ritual opposites of the Legion's Destroyers, dedicated to the preservation of their brothers and the legacy of Jaghatai. Unlike most of the other orders represented above, these warriors were spread across the various brotherhoods, serving individually rather than as a single entity. It was only on rare occasions that the entire Order gathered, often in service of one of Chogoris' obscure rituals. |
White Scars - Chapter Organisation: The predominant unit of social organisation among the nomadic people of the steppes of Chogoris is the tribe, a fact reflected in the organisation of the present-day, post-Heresy White Scars Chapter. Once a young warrior is selected from the feuding tribes of the steppes, loyalty to his tribe is replaced by loyalty to the Chapter and the Emperor of Mankind.As their Primarch did during his campaign to unite the steppes, recruits from different tribes are mixed together in the White Scars' squads. Each squad of White Scars Astartes becomes part of a "brotherhood," a type of unit that is roughly equivalent to a standard, 100-Astartes company.Each brotherhood is led by an officer known as a "khan," who is essentially the White Scars' version of a standard Space Marine company captain.At the time of the Great Crusade in the late 30th Millennium, the White Scars did not make use of standard Astartes rank designations, or ordered companies, and instead differentiated their companies as "brotherhoods", such as the "Brotherhood of the Hawk" or "Brotherhood of the Spear." However, those White Scars Space Marines who were Terran-born often had a tendency to utilise the more common standard company designations.For example, the 64th Company (made up of Terran White Scars Legionaries) was also known by its Chogorian designation -- the Brotherhood of the Moon. The White Scars still utilise these Chogorian designations for their companies in the late 41st Millennium, though they always refer to their companies as brotherhoods.The White Scars have a propensity to maintain a disproportionate number of Bike Squads and Land Speeder squadrons within their order of battle. This highly mobile lightning-attack fighting style means the White Scars do not make use of as many heavy weapons as other Chapters.Due to their reliance on fast-moving fire support, most of the tanks used by the Chapter have had their armour stripped down so that they are able to keep up with the majority of the fast-moving White Scars forces.Dreadnoughts are also rarely employed by the present-day White Scars just like their ancient Legionary brethren, as the cold, metal sarcophagi of these mighty cyborgs evoke a horror of eternal confinement and induce a feeling of extreme claustrophobia that is a result of the White Scars' cultural foundation as nomads who wander the open plains of Chogoris' steppelands. |
White Scars - Chapter Command: The White Scars are led by an assemblage of the greatest individuals from amongst the Chapter's ranks, including many specialist groupings whose unique talents are deployed according to the will of the Great Khan himself.The "Great Khan" is the Chapter Master of the White Scars, the ultimate commander of its military might. The current Great Khan, Jubal, rules from Quan Zhou, served by countless equerries, advisors, serfs and logisticators as he determines the disposition of the sons of Jaghatai Khan.He is regularly attended upon by the khans of the brotherhoods, most often when a kurultai is called -- a gathering of the khans. Also present will be representatives of the Chapter's Reclusiam, who provide spiritual guidance. This order is led by the Voice of the Storm, the formidable Jaghorin, and includes the Chaplains attached to each of the brotherhoods.Members of the Apothecarion are afforded great respect at such gatherings. Known as emchi, these medicae have a weighty duty, for in preserving and controlling the White Scars' gene-seed stocks, they safeguardthe very future of the Chapter itself.The current Chief Apothecary, Ogholei, is a dour figure amongst the White Scars' usually boisterous ranks; given the challenge he faces in keeping the Chapter at fighting strength despite the relentless attrition of the war against the Red Corsairs, his grim aspect is understandable.The Great Khan commands his own Honour Guard of supremely skilled warriors, the Keshig. Each is personally selected from amongst the Chapter's finest warriors, and they serve as bodyguards, military advisors and executors of the Great Khan's orders. Every one of these champions has proven himself in battle a thousand times over, and they protect their liege with total devotion.At the kurultai, their elaborately worked armour and weaponry stands out even amongst the masterwork wargear of the other champions present.The final element of the Chapter's command structure are its Librarians, the Stormseers. Their leadership reside at Quan Zhou in the Khum Kharta Mountains, cloistered within a lightning-wreathed tower set apart from the bulk of the fortress-monastery.Here they train initiates to the zadyin arga, as the Stormseers are known in Korchin, the language of Chogoris, and maintain the scrolls that detail the White Scars' noble history. The Librarius has a unique authority, for when an incumbent Great Khan dies, the Stormseers gather in the deepest caves of the Valley of the Khans to decide upon his successor. Each khan of the White Scars who believes himself worthy must present himself before the zadyin arga and prove himself to them.The horrors the Stormseers subject each claimant to are a mystery. When the former Great Khan Kyublai vanished fighting the Drukhari, four hopefuls entered the Valley of the Khans. Only Jubal Khan survived the Stormseers' ordeals and returned to Quan Zhou, where he was anointed as the new Great Khan. |
White Scars - Chapter Armoury: Occupying several levels of the rugged peak below Quan Zhou, the White Scars Armoury supports the Great Khan's missions by maintaining the Chapter's vast array of battle tanks and lightning-fast reconnaissance vehicles. Its custodians ensure that Jaghatai's sons have the weapons and wargear they need to prosecute their hunts across the stars.Below the lowest halls of Quan Zhou, carved deep into Chogoris' Khum Karta mountains, the Chapter Armoury is an enormous network of interlinked workshops and repair bays. Kilometres of grav-cradles and furnaces spar for space through the curving tunnels with shielded ammunition stores.Nests of articulated armatures, bearing sigils to appease those in their embrace, crouch in shadowed alcoves. Within its firepit-lit avenues and echoing chambers are corralled the Chapter's fighting vehicles, from swift Land Speeders to hulking Repulsor grav-tanks.Galleries of titanic cranes and grapple claws crown each domed work-bay, while mag-levs delivering crates of bolt shells and volatile plasma canisters weave through clouds of ruby sparks.Around the mountain's circumference, the Armoury is open to biting winds that cut through the mountains like keening blades of ice. Dozens of cavernous openings in the sheer rock walls allow atmospheric strike craft and heavy drop-ships to make safe harbour without the need for vulnerable and exposed landing aprons.Cunningly wrought macro-tunnels bearing arcing subterranean speedways make it possible for the Chapter to manoeuvre its ground forces directly from the Armoury along unexpected attack angles, enabling them to encircle any foe foolish enough to attack their fortress-monastery.Within the Armoury, the Chapter's Techmarines hold sway as officers and master craftsmen, commanding an army of Servitors, Chapter Serfs and logicengines. The Master of the Forge sweeps through his domain of wind, fire and steel like a pseudo-mechanical tribal lord. He booms out commands over the clang and hiss of industry and intones Korchin blessings to the mechanical steeds of theChapter.The Armoury as an organisation sits outside the hierarchy of the White Scars' Chapter command structure, and the Master of the Forge's fealty is sworn directly to the Great Khan in a ceremony of binding geas and bloodletting.Fluttering strips of parchment hang from graven arches that snap back and forth in the bone-dry winds. Beneath them, the Techmarines and their workforce respond to the khans' requests, working tirelessly to arm and equip the White Scars' brotherhoods before and after each punishing mission.Waxy-skinned Servitors, bound to their routines, rivet slabs of ceramite armour into place and replace ruptured fuel lines. The Techmarines, aided by cyber-cherubim tugging tiny braziers of smoking resin, oversee the mantras spoken to Cogitator banks, wrestle miracles from recalcitrantreactor cores and craft the masterwork tulwars and Bolt Rifles that are bestowed upon the Chapter's greatest champions.The current Master of the Forge is Khamkar, having served in the highly demanding position for nearly ninety Terran years. When parameters dictate, MasterKhamkar enters battle mounted in his personal transport, the Razorback Süirsen.Chosen for the ferocity of its Machine Spirit, Süirsen allows Khamkar to bring part of his fiefdom to the foe, communing with its systems via his scalp lock of data ports. |
White Scars - Order of Battle, 999.M41: Though the White Scars maintain a different order of battle than most Codex Astartes-compliant Chapters, due to the style of warfare favoured by the Chapter which deemphasises the use of heavy armour in favour of light, fast-moving mechanised and airborne infantry formations.The following represents the order of battle of the White Scars Chapter as it stood in 999.M41 before the introduction of the Primaris Marines during the Indomitus Crusade:Chapter Command <a href="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/5/51/Khan_Icon.png/revision/latest?cb=20160903000011" class="image"><img alt="Khan Icon" src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/5/51/Khan_Icon.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/90?cb=20160903000011" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="90" height="90" class="thumbimage" data-image-name="Khan Icon.png" data-image-key="Khan_Icon.png" data-relevant="1" data-src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/5/51/Khan_Icon.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/90?cb=20160903000011" /></a> Great Khan Jubal Khan, Chapter Master of the White ScarsHonour GuardChapter EquerriesSerfs & ServitorsArmouryReclusiumApothecarionZadyin Arga (Librarius) <a href="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/8/8c/Armoury_Icons.png/revision/latest?cb=20160903041653" class="image"><img alt="Armoury Icons" src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/8/8c/Armoury_Icons.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/110?cb=20160903041653" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="110" height="104" class="thumbimage" data-image-name="Armoury Icons.png" data-image-key="Armoury_Icons.png" data-relevant="1" data-src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/8/8c/Armoury_Icons.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/110?cb=20160903041653" /></a> Master of the ForgeTechmarinesServitorsBattle TanksLand RaidersGunshipsCenturion Warsuits <a href="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/c/c9/Reclusium_Icon2.png/revision/latest?cb=20160903041730" class="image"><img alt="Reclusium Icon2" src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/c/c9/Reclusium_Icon2.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/110?cb=20160903041730" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="110" height="110" class="thumbimage" data-image-name="Reclusium Icon2.png" data-image-key="Reclusium_Icon2.png" data-relevant="1" data-src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/c/c9/Reclusium_Icon2.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/110?cb=20160903041730" /></a> Voice of the StormChaplainsChief ApothecaryEmchi (Apothecaries) <a href="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/b/b1/Librarian_Icon.png/revision/latest?cb=20160903041817" class="image"><img alt="Librarian Icon" src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/b/b1/Librarian_Icon.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/110?cb=20160903041817" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="110" height="100" class="thumbimage" data-image-name="Librarian Icon.png" data-image-key="Librarian_Icon.png" data-relevant="1" data-src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/b/b1/Librarian_Icon.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/110?cb=20160903041817" /></a> Chief StormseerEpistolariesCodiciersLexicaniums(Collectively known as Stormseers)AcolytumThe Brotherhoods <a href="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/4/47/White_Scars_Lightning_Icon2.png/revision/latest?cb=20160903001727" class="image"><img alt="White Scars Lightning Icon2" src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/4/47/White_Scars_Lightning_Icon2.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/90?cb=20160903001727" decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="90" height="102" class="thumbimage" data-image-name="White Scars Lightning Icon2.png" data-image-key="White_Scars_Lightning_Icon2.png" data-relevant="1" data-src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/4/47/White_Scars_Lightning_Icon2.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/90?cb=20160903001727" /></a> Veteran CompanyBattle Companies1st Company2nd Company3rd Company4th Company5th Company"The Spearpoint Brotherhood"Veteran CompanyJurga Khan, Master of the War CouncilVeteransDreadnoughts"The Firefist Brotherhood"Battle CompanyKhajog Khan, Master of Lore6 Tactical Squads2 Assault Squads2 Devastator SquadsDreadnoughts"The Eagle Brotherhood"Battle CompanyKor'sarro Khan, Master of the Hunt6 Tactical Squads2 Assault Squads2 Devastator SquadsDreadnoughts"The Tulwar Brotherhood"Battle CompanyJoghaten Khan, Master of Blades6 Tactical Squads2 Assault Squads2 Devastator SquadsDreadnoughts"The Stormwrath Brotherhood"Battle CompanySuboden Khan, Master of Spirits6 Tactical Squads2 Assault Squads2 Devastator SquadsDreadnoughtsReserve CompaniesScout Company6st Company7nd Company8rd Company9th Company10th Company"The Hawkeye Brotherhood"Reserve Tactical CompanySeglei Khan, Master of the Shields10 Tactical SquadsDreadnoughts"The Plainstalker Brotherhood"Reserve Tactical CompanyDorghai Khan, Master of the Watch10 Tactical SquadsDreadnoughts"The Bloodrider Brotherhood"Reserve Assault CompanyVorgha Khan, Master of Steeds10 Assault Squads"The Stormbolt Brotherhood"Reserve Devastator CompanyKhadajei Khan, Master of Bows10 Devastator SquadsDreadnoughts"The Windspeaker Brotherhood"Scout CompanyJodagha Khan, Master of Braves10 Scout Squads |
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