Khârn

Khârn, called the Betrayer, is a World Eaters Chaos Space Marine who served as captain of the 8th Assault Company and as equerry to Angron. He was born on Terra in the late 30th millennium and trained on Bodt, and he became the first World Eater to survive implantation of the Butcher’s Nails, the cortical implants that increased the Legion’s aggression. At the Ghenna Massacre, fought in the 30th millennium, he took part in the second landing and killed Centurion Mago in a duel. He is recorded as still active.

At the Isstvan III Atrocity, dated to about 005.M31, Khârn fought Garviel Loken and was impaled on the dozer blade of a vehicle; he was believed dead until Apothecary Kargos saved him. He took no part in the Burning of Prospero, but afterwards travelled there with a World Eaters squadron, recovered a sigil known as the Moon Wolf, and killed the Thousand Sons captain Menes Kalliston. During the Shadow Crusade he fought on Armatura in 007.M31, and in 008.M31 he was present at the purge of Nuceria alongside the Word Bearer Argel Tal; after Erebus killed Tal, Khârn came close to killing Erebus in turn. On Deluge, a battle dated to about 013.M31 in one account and to the 011–012.M31 period in a Heresy battle list, he stood on a mound of the dead and urged the primarch Perturabo to withdraw. He then accompanied Angron to a muster at Ullanor, distinct from the Ullanor Crusade and the Triumph at Ullanor, and from there to Terra.

During the Siege of Terra in 014.M31, Khârn fought at the Lion’s Gate spaceport and at the Eternity Wall spaceport, where he killed Jenetia Krole, also spelled Jenetta Krole, without recognising her. At the Lion’s Gate an attack he led from a Spartan faltered against the Emperor’s psychic shield; in the renewed assault he fought beside Abaddon, Kroeger, and Zardu Layak, duelled Sigismund, was struck aside by Rogal Dorn, and was rescued by Abaddon. He was killed on Terra by Sigismund of the Imperial Fists, and his body was carried to the ship Conqueror; it is not settled whether Khorne restored him or whether the return of battle roused him, and he remained comatose through the Great Scouring, kept aboard the ship Defiant by Captain Dreagher until he woke. At the Battle of Skalathrax, dated to M31, the Night of Madness broke the World Eaters as a single Legion, and he has been called the Betrayer since. He went on to lead a warband called the Butcherhorde, fighting on Amethal during the Diamor Campaign in 999.M41; he is not recorded on Cadia. After the opening of the Great Rift he travelled to the hive world Tsadrekha and killed Saint Celestine in a duel, and in M42, at the Battle of Malak, he led a boarding action against the battleship Honour of Terra and killed Fleetmaster Trincus Abconcis, also spelled Abcondis, though he is not recorded on the surface of Malakbael itself. He wields the chainaxe Gorechild, formerly Angron’s own weapon, recovered for repair at Armatura.

When Angron was first brought aboard a battle-barge of the Legion, then still called the War Hounds, and killed each officer sent to treat with him, Khârn, the next ranking officer, volunteered to enter the hold in which the primarch was confined. Angron nearly killed him, but Khârn did not fight back, assured him of the Legion’s obedience, and persuaded him that the Great Crusade offered enemies enough for his appetite for war; he then led Angron to the bridge to take command. As equerry he later persuaded the primarch to return to the Legion after an absence of nearly two years, and during the Crusade he often tempered Angron’s rages. The kill counter in the lens of his helmet is recorded as a gift from Horus. Through duelling and joint campaigns he formed friendships with Argel Tal, Garviel Loken, Sigismund, and Nassir Amit.

After Angron’s ascension on Nuceria, Khârn was the first to whom the daemon primarch spoke, and with Lotara Sarrin, the Conqueror’s shipmistress, he put down a mutiny of World Eaters and serfs aboard that ship. Before the assault on Terra, when Angron learned that the Death Guard would land first and began killing his way through the Conqueror, Khârn confronted him. Angron, who knew of Khârn’s destiny and wished to supplant him as Khorne’s chosen, overpowered him, but Khârn fixed a teleport homer to the primarch that sent him into the shifting maze aboard the Night Lords flagship Nightfall.

During the Seventh Black Crusade, which some accounts date to 811.M37, warriors under Khârn ravaged the Blood Angels strike cruiser Sanguine Tear. In the Thirteenth Black Crusade he and a few of the most frenzied Berzerkers were loosed against the Imperial forces gathering to defend Cadia, though no landing by him on the planet is recorded. Accounts of the same period record that Abaddon sought to bind him to the crusade and sent Captain Talomar Locq and the Hounds of Abaddon to bring him in. Khârn defeated a White Scars force on the mirror-surfaced world Haeleon and pursued its retreating khan across the planet, and he later led an invasion of the shrine world Salandraxis, where he confronted the Living Saint Lozepath in the High Temple of the Emperor and Abaddon descended to parley with him. Khorne’s favour is held to make Khârn immune to psychic powers; he carries a plasma pistol alongside Gorechild, and earlier fought with a chainaxe called the Cutter.