Kanak

Kanak is a volcanic feral world whose tattooed tribes supply the Imperial Guard’s Skull Takers, regiments that favour close combat. The Imperium recruits from the planet’s tribes, and its Skull Takers prefer blades, pistols and flamers to the formal firing line of conventional Guard infantry. Some of the tribes are closer in kind to Ogryn than to baseline humans.

In the late forty-first millennium (M41), Word Bearers led by the Dark Apostle Oriax took the planet. They converted part of the same tribal population into Traitor Guard, soldiers who serve the forces of Chaos rather than the Imperium.

Kanak therefore stands as a source of close-combat infantry claimed by two opposing powers. The planet also has a history of buried tombs associated with the Atun Dynasty, a history the tribes themselves did not seek.