Karanak

Karanak, the Hound of Vengeance, is a three-headed Flesh Hound of Khorne loosed by the Blood God upon a single chosen quarry. He is a greater instance of the breed of daemons that runs at the head of Khorne’s hunting packs, but where an ordinary Flesh Hound is bound to a champion or a battlefield, Karanak is bound only to a name. Each of his three heads follows a separate thread of the hunt: one tracks spilled blood, one tracks fear, and one tracks the specific transgression that provoked the pursuit. Once Khorne has set him loose, Karanak does not tire, does not negotiate, and does not turn aside until the quarry is run to ground.

The offences that summon Karanak are consistent across the accounts that describe him: a champion who withdraws from a fight he could have won, a sorcerer who tries to hide behind wards, riddles, or distance, and any follower who sheds blood without offering it to Khorne. Mortal oaths sworn in Khorne’s name carry the same weight — breaking one is treated as an offence against the god himself, and Karanak is the instrument by which that offence is answered. His collar, wrought as a relic of the Blood God’s own authority, is described as marking him apart from the rest of his kind, and his jaws are said to close on cowardice and broken faith as readily as on flesh.

Within Khorne’s retinue, Karanak stands apart from figures such as Skulltaker, the champion who collects the skulls of the mighty as trophies of a fair kill, and from the Bloodthirsters who lead Khorne’s armies in open war. Karanak’s function is narrower and, in its way, more personal: he is sent after those who believed the battle was already over, whether they fled a duel, escaped a siege, or slipped away into the warp itself. Because his hunts are not bound to any single campaign, front, or era, Karanak is recorded as active wherever Khorne’s followers have fought — from the wars of the past into the present age — pursuing individual quarry rather than contesting territory or rank.

Karanak’s standing among Khorne’s daemons rests entirely on the certainty of his hunts rather than on any territory, throne, or army of his own. He is not recorded as holding a domain within the Blood God’s realm, and unlike Skulltaker he keeps no hoard of trophies; his only measure of standing is that no quarry he has been set against is known to have evaded him. This makes him, in the accounts that describe him, less a warlord than a verdict given shape and teeth — proof to Khorne’s followers that distance, cunning, and flight are not escapes but merely delays.