Khorne, the Blood God

Of the four great powers that rule the warp, none is as brutally, honestly direct as Khorne. Where his rival gods whisper, seduce, and scheme, the Blood God demands one thing of all creation: that it bleed. He is war made divine, the roaring embodiment of wrath, courage, hatred, and slaughter, and every drop of blood spilled in anger across the galaxy swells his brazen power. To worship Khorne is not truly to bow at all, but to kill, and to keep killing until the killer himself is claimed.

The God of Wrath[edit]

Khorne is the oldest and arguably the strongest of the Chaos Gods, the first to stir when mortal creatures learned to raise a hand against one another. Known as the Lord of Skulls, the Lord of Rage, and Kharneth in the old tongue, he embodies every violent impulse: the soldier's fury, the murderer's cold intent, the berserker's ecstasy, and the grim resolve of the warrior who will not yield.

Crucially, the Blood God does not care whose blood is shed or in whose name. A tyrant's massacre and a defender's last stand feed him equally, for both are acts of war. He takes no interest in the reasons behind a killing, only its ferocity, and so his influence stains every battlefield in the galaxy whether the combatants revere him or not.

The Skull Throne[edit]

At the heart of Khorne's domain in the Realm of Chaos rises the Brass Citadel, a fortress of impossible scale wrought from blood-red iron and blackened bone. Rivers of gore wind between its ramparts, and its foundations are heaped with the wreckage of countless slaughtered armies.

Atop a vast mountain of skulls sits the Skull Throne itself, forged of brass and piled with the severed heads of the mightiest ever to fall. Champions and cowards, mortals and daemons, heroes of every race, all are represented in that grisly monument, for Khorne claims a skull from every worthy death regardless of who struck the killing blow. The famous cry of his followers, blood for the Blood God and skulls for the Skull Throne, is a literal accounting of the tribute he demands.

The Blood Legions[edit]

Khorne's sacred number is eight, and it governs the structure of his daemonic hosts down to the last cohort. These Blood Legions march to war in their untold thousands, an avalanche of red-skinned fury that seeks only to close the distance and butcher whatever stands before it.

At their forefront stride the Bloodthirsters, the Greater Daemons of Khorne, towering winged brutes of incandescent rage wielding lash and axe. Beneath them rank the Bloodletters, sword-bearing foot soldiers whose blades never dull; the Bloodcrushers, mounted upon iron-hided Juggernauts; and the baying Flesh Hounds, which run down the cowardly and the sorcerous alike. Together they form the most single-minded army in the ranks of the Chaos daemons.

Honour and the Hatred of Sorcery[edit]

For all his savagery, Khorne is bound by a crude and unbending code. He respects strength met with strength, the honest test of blade against blade, and despises anything he deems cowardice. Above all he loathes sorcery, which he regards as the weapon of those too weak or too craven to face their enemies in open battle.

This places him in eternal opposition to Tzeentch, the schemer and master of magic, whose every subtle plot is an affront to the Blood God's directness. His enmity extends to Slaanesh as well, for indulgence and refinement disgust a god who prizes only martial fury. In the endless struggle of the warp, Khorne's answer to every rival is the same: overwhelming, uncomplicated violence.

Servants of the Blood God[edit]

Countless mortals across the galaxy pledge themselves to Khorne, renegade soldiers, gladiators, murderers, and warlords who feel his rage kindle in their veins. His most infamous servants are the World Eaters, a Traitor Legion of Chaos Space Marines whose warriors have surrendered utterly to bloodlust.

Driven by the Butcher's Nails, cortical implants that flood their minds with pain and aggression, the World Eaters and their primarch became living instruments of slaughter, exchanging discipline and identity for an eternity of carnage in the Blood God's name. They are the truest expression of Khorne's promise: power, glory, and release, purchased with a soul and paid for one skull at a time.

The Endless Slaughter[edit]

Khorne offers no paradise and demands no faith, only the deed itself. His bargain is simple and terrible: kill, and be strong; falter, and be forgotten. There is no scheme to unravel, no pleasure to chase, only the next enemy and the one after that.

That simplicity is what makes him so enduring a threat. So long as living things make war upon one another, the Blood God grows, indifferent to victory or defeat, feeding on the very act of violence. He is the certainty that where there is life there will be killing, and where there is killing, he will be waiting to collect.