Jaghatai Khan

Jaghatai Khan, called the Great Khan, the Warhawk, and among the tribes of Chogoris the Khagan or Khan of Khans, was primarch of the White Scars, the Fifth Legion of the Space Marines. Cast as an infant onto the steppe world known to the Imperium as Mundus Planus and to its people as Chogoris, he was found by Ong Khan of the Talskar and raised among the nomad ordu of the Empty Quarter. After the Kurayed tribe slew his adoptive father he razed that people in reprisal, then spent years uniting the steppe tribes by conquest and merger, defeating the Palatine’s disciplined armies and taking the Palatine’s head. Within twenty years he had built the largest empire the world had known; six months later the Emperor of Mankind arrived, and Jaghatai knelt and accepted command of the Fifth Legion.

He remade that Legion, then still called the Star Hunters, in the image of Chogorian warfare: pure speed and manoeuvre, organised around kinship and a personal guard, the Keshig, rather than fixed garrisons. After the fighting against the Nephilim on Hoadh the Legion took the name White Scars. In the Great Crusade he kept largely to himself, though friendships with Horus Lupercal and Magnus the Red are recorded, and he is listed with Sanguinius and Magnus among those who had earlier proposed Librarius departments for the Legions. He is said to have gained a fierce reputation during the Ullanor Crusade, though his attendance at the Triumph that followed is not firmly attested.

When the Horus Heresy opened, the White Scars were pinned for years in the Chondax System against Orks and an Alpha Legion blockade designed to keep them from Terra. Breaking free by the fleet manoeuvre called the Chisel, Jaghatai rode to Prospero to learn the truth for himself. There he found ruins rather than Space Wolves, shattered a psychic projection of Magnus, refused Mortarion’s offer of allegiance, and fought him to a draw before Mortarion withdrew; meanwhile a pro-Horus lodge coup aboard the Swordstorm, led by Hasik Noyan-Khan and Torghun Khan, was broken by Shiban Khan. For four years thereafter the Scars waged hit-and-run war behind Traitor lines. At the Kalium Gate Qin Xa died leading a feint in the Khan’s armour while Jaghatai sought the Navigator Achelieux elsewhere; at the Catallus Rift Targutai Yesugei sacrificed himself to open the Dark Glass into the webway, and the Khan, choosing escape over a last duel with Mortarion, led the fleet through, slew the Keeper of Secrets Manushya-Rakshsasi aboard the Lance of Heaven, and emerged over Terra.

With Sanguinius he arrived late at Beta-Garmon, organised hit-and-run strikes, and agreed that Dorn’s gambit there had reached its limit. In the Solar War he posted White Scars above and below the orbital disc against flanking assaults. During the Siege of Terra he refused to remain wholly behind the walls, led jetbike charges from the Eternity Wall, held the Colossi Gate with Constantin Valdor, Raldoron and Marshal Aldana Agathe against Death Guard, Thousand Sons and daemons, and finally led the assault that retook the Lion’s Gate Spaceport. There he dueled Mortarion a second time, baited the Death Lord’s pride, and, though himself impaled on the Silence, decapitated Mortarion and banished him; the Khan’s near-dead body was recovered and restored by powers attributed variously to Malcador and to the Emperor.

Still badly wounded, he appeared at the Grand Council of Reconstruction and spoke a single line — ’Build later, hunt now’ — for immediate pursuit of the Traitors. He later led White Scars into the Yasan Sector against Traitors and Drukhari; at Corusil V, pursuing a Drukhari archon into the webway with much of the First Brotherhood, he vanished when the portal closed behind them. His sons decline to treat the absence as death. Chogoris continues to raise White Scars in his name.