Khârn the Betrayer

Overview

Khârn the Betrayer, once Angron's equerry, is the greatest mortal champion of Khorne. He is a berserker who would slay friend or foe alike to feed the Blood God.

He wields Gorechild, his notorious chainaxe, and still bears the Butcher's Nails, the cortical implants that flood his brain with rage. Khârn has cut down champions of every faction across ten millennia. Even traitors avoid fighting alongside him, because he does not care whose blood he spills once battle begins. Khârn was once a Captain of the World Eaters and Angron's equerry, the closest thing the primarch had to a confidant. He was among the most skilled warriors in the Legion before the Butcher's Nails and Khorne took the rest. Since the Heresy he has become an almost unstoppable avatar of Khorne, without loyalty to any warband. He fights wherever there is blood, and he wields the chainaxe Gorechild.

Origins

He served in the War Hounds before Angron was found. Khârn pulled the despairing primarch out of his grief after the Legion rescued him, and Angron raised him to equerry and captain of the 8th Assault Company.

Before the Nails consumed him, Khârn was seen as the most level-headed of the World Eaters, one of the few who could reason with Angron. He fought at Isstvan III and through the Siege of Terra. His transformation from a thoughtful officer into an incarnation of Khorne's wrath is one of the darkest arcs of the Heresy.

He was born on Terra and was one of the earliest recruits to the War Hounds. He trained on their vassal world of Bodt under Centurion Gruner, a Jermanic veteran of the Unification Wars with a tattoo of a predator tearing into its prey across his chest. Khârn's skill at close assault made him stand out even in that Legion. When Angron was brought aboard the flagship Adamant Resolve, the Primarch was locked in a cargo hold, furious at being 'rescued' and seeing it as a betrayal of his fellow gladiators. Khârn later became captain of the 8th Assault Company and Angron's equerry, meant to be the calm head who tempered his Primarch's rages. Even then he was known as brilliant but unstable.

Key events

1. Fought at Isstvan III and the Drop Site Massacre on Isstvan V.
2. Took part in the Shadow Crusade against Ultramar and the Siege of Terra, where he duelled Sigismund.
3. On Skalathrax, burned the World Eaters' own shelters so that both sides perished in the cold night, shattering the Legion and earning the name Betrayer.
4. Has fought in many of Abaddon's Black Crusades.
5. Still rampages through the Era Indomitus, a figure of awe even to other followers of Khorne.

Six months after the burning of Prospero, the Thousand Sons captain Menes Kalliston went back to search the ruins and was captured by World Eaters. His interrogator stood in shadow, and Kalliston at first mistook his grey armour for a Space Wolf's before he saw the iron studs of the Butcher's Nails on his scalp. It was Khârn. He had come for the Moon Wolf, a pendant from Horus's armour that Magnus had used in a ritual to reach the Warmaster, but Kalliston sensed that he was also simply looking for someone to kill. On the war world Armatura, during the Shadow Crusade, the Ultramarines buried Angron and many World Eaters under collapsing buildings. Khârn recovered Gorechild from the rubble and ordered the Legion's Dark Mechanicum to restore it. The excavation for its Mica Dragon teeth was never completed before the planet burned, so he probably took more from the trophies in the Conqueror's Museum of Conquest.

Battles & campaigns

• Horus Heresy: He fought alongside Angron through the war.
• Skalathrax: The burning that splintered the World Eaters.
• Countless raids: He appears wherever there is slaughter, from the Eye of Terror to Imperial worlds.

Personality

Single-minded and almost serene in his savagery, aside from a lingering grim humour.

Khârn is not mindless. Accounts often describe him as lucid and articulate, with a dry, bleak humour. Yet his clarity only serves the slaughter, and once battle starts he makes no distinction between friend and foe. That makes him an object of awe and dread among the Khornate warbands that follow him.

Weapons & Vehicles

GorechildRelic Weapon

The legendary mica-dragon-toothed chainaxe forged for Primarch Angron and rebuilt for Khârn the Betrayer, tearing through ceramite and …

ChainaxeMelee Weapon

The screaming, blood-drenched motorised war-axe of the World Eaters and Khorne Berzerkers, trading all defensive finesse for bone-shatt…

Plasma Gun & Plasma IncineratorRanged Weapon

A volatile directed-energy rifle that hurls bolts of miniature sun-hot plasma capable of vaporising Terminator plate and tank armour—at…

Khorne BerzerkersElites · Unit

Frenzied melee warriors of Khorne, driven to murderous rage by the Butcher's Nails implanted in their brains.

BloodlettersMonsters & Daemons · Unit

The lesser daemons of Khorne, red-skinned horned warriors who hack down their foes with burning hellblades.

MaulerfiendVehicles · Unit

A fast, close-assault daemon engine that tears through vehicles and fortifications with power fists, magma cutters and lasher tendrils.

Explore all 48 entries in the Weapons & Vehicles armoury.

Connections

Characters (5)

• 
  Sigismund enemy · Black Templars

  Oath-brothers before the Heresy, they fought on Terra and Sigismund killed Kharn.

• 
  Abaddon the Despoiler uneasy ally · Black Legion

  Abaddon has used Kharn's bloodlust more than once to lure him into his armies.

• 
  Angron commander · World Eaters

  Kharn served as Angron's equerry and remains the most infamous World Eater.

• 
  Erebus enemy · Word Bearers

  Erebus manipulated Kharn's friends and nearly died when Kharn discovered his schemes.

• 
  Khorne patron · Chaos Daemons

  Khârn is Khorne's most infamous mortal champion and the butcher of Skalathrax.

Factions

• World Eaters primary faction

Related units (3)

BloodthirstersEightboundKhorne Berzerkers

Some links are thematic parallels (marked "parallel") rather than recorded meetings. See the connections web.

Legacy

Khârn is the most infamous of the World Eaters, a berserker who embodies Khorne's indiscriminate bloodlust. His burning of Skalathrax, which shattered his own Legion, made his name a curse even among traitors. Some World Eaters see his return to the battlefield as a sign of Khorne's favour, others as an omen of slaughter without purpose. Khârn's greatest wound to the Imperium may have been the one he dealt his own Legion.

Appearances & sources

• Codex: Chaos Space Marines / World Eaters
• Betrayer (Aaron Dembski-Bowden)
• Khârn: Eater of Worlds (Anthony Reynolds)