Colm Corbec

Colonel Colm Corbec was the second-in-command of the Tanith First and Only, an Astra Militarum regiment fighting in the Sabbat Worlds Crusade. A native of Tanith, he came to the regiment from the Tanith Magna militia and served under Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt from the regiment’s founding until his death on Herodor. He was a physically large man, and the troops he served with regarded him with affection. On the Sabbat Worlds map he is tied to the Tanith regiment’s wider Crusade service, and on the timeline to the Ghosts’ campaigns from their first deployment onwards.

As Gaunt’s deputy, Corbec commanded the regiment whenever Gaunt was absent, and he carried the practical burden of turning the colonel-commissar’s orders into action among the rank and file. His authority rested less on formality than on his standing with the soldiers, many of whom he counted as friends. That position had a cost: it meant ordering people he knew well into danger, a duty he is recorded as performing without losing the regiment’s regard. He kept up his friendships with the scout Larkin and the regimental physician Dorden, and he did not treat rank as a reason to end them. Dorden is recorded as having delivered him as an infant. Tanith itself was reduced to ash after the regiment had been raised, and within the surviving regiment Corbec was regarded as the man who kept its good humour alive. Gaunt described him as a brother.

Corbec is recorded as dying on Herodor, a shrine world of the Crusade, where Lijah Cuu, a fellow Tanith sharpshooter, murdered him. Fortis Binary, Menazoid Epsilon and Balhaut are also listed among the places connected with his service, though accounts differ on how closely each is tied to his own actions. His death left the Tanith First without its most popular colonel, and the regiment is recorded as continuing to serve with his example in mind. Among his contemporaries, Gaunt, Larkin, Dorden and Cuu are the figures most closely bound to his story, and the Herodor campaign is the clearest place-and-time anchor for its end.