World Eater codex lore

-It's speculated that each of the Primarchs was imbued with an aspect of the Emperor's personality. If that's true, Angron represents the Emperor's warlike nature and brutality making him a remorseless unstoppable warrior who, when turned to anger, can withstand great punishment and inflict it back tenfold.



-The War hounds who would later become the World Eaters were known for brutality and savagery. Their name was synonymous with terror and bloodshed. The scale of the butchery and destruction they committed horrified even the most hardened Imperial warriors. They were regularly deployed in wars of total annihilation and fulfilled their bloody work with no heed for their own terrible losses. For their uncompromising violence and tenacity, the Emperor bestowed on them the name of War Hounds. It should be noted that this was what the legion was like before meeting their Primarch. It seemed that the 12th legion was destined for the dark fate that befell them.



-The War Hounds recruited from the most aggressive, competitive, and hot-headed. Such volatile recruits required a harsh brand of discipline. Yet it was not enough to prevent bloodshed within the legion. There were even rumors of War Hounds slaying their Imperial peers. This unpredictable and grim reputation resulted in the War Hounds being distanced from the other Imperial forces, and their fleets became dumping grounds for the most murderous and dangerous elements of the Great Crusade. This proved to be a costly mistake for the Imperium.



-Angron, in his younger years as a slave developed a bond with his fellow gladiators. The doomed warriors' sense of dignity and honor was greatly admired by the young Primarch. Indeed, the gladiators did not resent being slain by each other in the arenas, for it was a fact of life for them. They afforded each other respect and decency. This humanity and understanding are what would make Angron embrace his fellow warrior-slaves as his true family.



-When the Emperor teleported Angron off-world, he gave no explanation, apology, or even mercy. The Emperor left Angron's slave army to die. It was an act that Angron would never forgive. Ever since that day, Angron was consumed by guilt and hatred for the Emperor for robbing him of the chance of dying free by his own choice alongside those he loved the most.



-For reasons unknown, Angron was not mentored by the Emperor like many of the other Primarchs. Nor was he sent to his brother Primarchs to bond with them. Instead, he was dumped on a legion he never asked for and could never respect or love.



Angron reshaped the 12th legion in his brutal image. Other than the implantation of the Burcher's Nails, the legion practices and customs underwent radical changes. Failures to achieve objectives were punished by decimations. Training would be done with live ammo and sharp blades. The death rate of recruits became so high it forced the legion to employ unstable technologies to recruit enough warriors to sustain itself. A cult of personal combat overtook the legion. Arguments were settled in the arena. And thanks to Angron's gladiatory teaching, the legion's impressive mastery of CQC was taken to new levels.



-The World Eaters since the opening of the Great Rift are undergoing a resurgence. They have never been this active. Images of their countless slaughters and conquests have driven entire choirs of astropaths to madness, ripping themselves apart with their own hands to escape the horror. With each conquest, the World Eaters gather more recruits to their ranks, and countless mortal followers flock to their bloodied, tattered banners. Now the World Eaters are stronger than ever, and the galaxy trembles.



-Angron reserves his greatest hatred for himself and what he has become. Angron ever yearns for freedom, yet he continues to endure perpetual slavery. He was a slave to the high riders, to the Emperor, and now he is a slave to his own rage and violence, which binds him to his eternal master, the Blood God Khorne. The only respite for Angron is the moments when he enters a state of truly mindless slaughter. In these fleeting and rare moments, he feels free and at peace. It is a horrible irony that while they empower him, they strengthen his bondage to Khorne with each kill. The rarity of these moments stems from the fact that Angron is ever aware that the peace of death is forever denied to him.



-Angron cares not for the weapons he wields. They are merely tools to be used as long as they are useful. The strength and brutality of Angron see his weapons not last long in his service. As such, Angron wielded many weapons across thousands of years. Presently, Angron wields the daemon sword Samni'arius the blade of the False Gladitor, and the chainaxe Spinegrinder also known as Persiax's folly.



-Samni'arius was a Slaaneshi daemon that ruled a daemon world in the Eye of Terror. His world was transformed into a twisted maze of gladiator arenas wherein he brought countless warrior-slaves to be tortured and driven mad throughout millennia of successive duels. Once they were broken in both mind and body, did the daemon behead them. Samni'arius boosted that no warrior, mortal or daemon, can beat him in the arena. The claim angered Angron, for he saw an echo of the High Riders in Samni'arius. Moreover. he was disgusted by the idea that any daemon of Slaaneshi was seen as a greater warrior than those of Khorne. Armed with nothing but an unworked bar of iron, Angron brutally pulped Samni'arius in a contest that lasted a few minutes. With Samni'arius' death, his essence flowed into the bar transforming it into a mighty daemon weapon. Moreover, the weapon's length bulged with the skulls of Samni'arius' victims, infusing the weapon with their collective skill and might.



-Spinegringer was created by the adepts of the Khorne worshiping Darkmech of Persiax. For decades they spent the lives of tens of thousands of slaves in its construction, and when it was complete, they offered it to whom they considered a god of murder, Angron. The weapon was greater than anything Angron could have possibly received in the mortal realm. It was a weapon capable of cleaving titans and carving up fortresses. Yet Angeon gave it nothing but scorn. Feeling disgusted at the adepts' meek attempts at appeasing him and the wasting of time that should have been spent on slaughter, Angron turned his new weapon on those that built it. In doing so, Angron ensured they had made a worthy offering to Khorne, their own blood.



-The Great Rift has saturated reality with the energies of the Warp. Now daemons possessing great willpower and an inextinguishable desire for carnage can conquer the laws of reality itself. Angron is one such daemon. Should Angron's physical body be destroyed, he can use his willpower to remake his form. Rising again and again, no matter how many times his enemies break and tear his body apart. Even should Angron be somehow cast back into the Warp, he inevitably and without fail returns to Real Space in eight weeks, eight days, and eight hours. His return is forewarned by eight Crimson Omens that manifest on sites that experienced apocalyptic scales of bloodshed in their history. Thus Angron cannot be banished, woe to the galaxy.



-Kharn is not always given to berserk rage. Kharn's voice is soft and measured when he isn't howling blood-mad. His calm face displays a nobility that contrasts his murderous nature. Despite everything that happened, Kharn's mind remains brilliant. He is capable of commanding legions of warriors and waging total war with skill and nuance. That will never happen, for like his gene-sire, he cares not for leading men.



-Kharn's soul is conflicted. On the one hand, Kharn believes that the World Eaters should embrace their nature as destroyers in the service of Khorne and not resist it. On the other hand, in rare moments, Kharn wonders if the existence of the World Eaters is nothing more than an endless nightmare from which they can never escape. It's speculated that Kharn's actions on Skalathrax were his attempt to save the legion from becoming something worse.



-Lord Invocatus, the warlord of the Fire Riders warband, is an enigma for the other World Eaters. Some say he was one of the original War Hounds. Others claim that he is some recent renegade of the marine chapters. Regardless of his origins, his peers are sure his path to daemonhood is assured should his successes continue.



-Thanks to the dark blessing of Khorne, the Fire Riders bestride the burning skies as they descend on their enemies with supernatural speed. Other World Eaters look down on Fire Riders hit and run attacks as cowardly, but they fail to see how they maximize the slaughter. While the other World Eaters warbands get bogged down on worlds and waste time pursuing total annihilation, the Fire Riders move from one world to the next, reaping skulls and spilling blood.



-The methods employed by the Fire Riders require coordination and discipline unheard of in the World Eaters. Somehow Lord Invocatus possesses an almost supernatural control over his warriors. He is able to use his warriors in timed and precise assaults, and he knows when to withdraw them. The careful maneuvering of the Fire Riders and repression of their killing fury ensures that when the attack happens, the enemy is subjected to the explosive unleashing of the World Eaters' rage, leaving whatever few survivors left in the Fire Riders' wake in a catatonic state.



-Lord Invocatus possesses a predatory instinct for detecting and outwitting enemy ambushes and a hatred for the cowards that employ them. Combined with his Bloodstorm helmet that allows him to perceive the beating of craven hearts and the treacherous thoughts of his hidden enemies, Lord Invocatus can detect even the most well-crafted of ambushes.



-Lord Invocatus method of dealing with these traps is charging straight toward them. This is how a Khornate warrior punishes cowardly treachery. Like a warrior punching his fist right into the mouth of a beast, the Fire Riders smash their way into the revealed enemy lines and overrun them. They turn those who thought themselves predators into prey. Inevitably such tactics result in massive casualties for the Fire Riders. However, Lord Invocatus knows that Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows.



-One of the greatest victories of Lord Invocatus was the sacking of the Deathwatch watch fortress Ebon Vale. Joined by the daemon engines of the renegade warband, the Brazen Beast, the Fire Riders poured from the burning sky. The Deathwatch's hidden and cleverly positioned defenses were unrooted and destroyed by Lord Invocatus. The World Eaters then slaughtered hundreds of loyalist marines before plundering the fortress for gear and relics.



- Lord Invocatus disregard for the lives of his men was displayed in full force in the attack on a Hrud migration fleet. The Fire Riders' casualties were horrific. Those World Eaters that weren't slain by the Hrud's weapons, were wasted away to dust by the Xenos strange time-distorting powers. Though the battle was a victory for Lord Invocatus, he was the sole survivor.



- Lord Invocatus was gifted the Juggernaut Khal'gurath after completing deeds collectively called the Road of the Eight Bloody Steps. Thanks to the essence of the Daemon G'kor within the Bloodstorm helmet, Lord Invocatus has mastery over his daemonic mount. Moreover, the helmet connects the minds of both rider and mount. Lord Invocatus can feel the bloodlust of his mount and it fuels him like a narcotic. It takes the whole of Lord Invocatus' mental strength not to succumb to mindless rage by the combined influence of both the Butcher's Nails and his mount's rage. Not once did Lord Invocatus lose his self-control in battle.



-Khal'gurath is the source of the Fire Riders flight. Through the daemonic mount the power of Khorne flows, bestowing Lord Invocatus the ability to race across the sky with his warriors following in his wake. Behind Lord Invocatus, sky bridges of fire, blood, and smoke bear his followers from the sky into the maelstrom of battle.





-Gladiator Cadre 331 are a unique warband of World Eaters. They still don the colors of the old Legion, albeit stained by the blood of their enemies. The teachings and traditions of arena combat taught to them by Angron resonate deeply with these warriors. As such, they seek to honor Khorne through their skill at arms and by becoming the best duelists. Many of their enemies were caught unaware when they expected frothing berserkers but instead fought against master swordsmen. By clinging to the old legion values, the warband prize organization and discipline. The values allow them to ward away the madness of the Butcher's Nail. The leader of the warband, Kestus Thrax, once thought the World Eaters might find unity in adopting the philosophy of his warband. This hope was dashed when he realized how far gone the rest of the legion was. Now the warband distances themselves from the other World Eaters.



-The Voidbutchers are a warband of World Eaters that excel in void warfare and boarding action. The savage momentum of their attacks affords their enemies little time to coordinate and mount a successful defense. The warband uses Ursus Claws extensively. Enarsing enemy ships and then dragging them closer so that their holds be plundered and their crews either captured or slaughtered. Because of this, the warband has earned the hatred of Aeldari Corsairs and the Leagues of Votann. The warband's tendency to capture enemy ships and turn them into the service of Khorne made them especially hated by the Black Templat and Rampagers loyalist chapters. The Ramapagers battle barge Myrmillo was captured by the warband and renamed the Rampager—an amusing, ironic insult to the loyalist chapter. From the Black Templar, the warband seized the frigate His indomitable Wrath. They didn't change its name.



-The Eight Sons are a warband made up of only eight World Eaters champions. All of them share the same birth mother. They were part of the Blood Crusade that swept the galaxy during the turmoil that followed the opening of the Great Rift. After weeks of fighting Orks and Tyranids in the Octarius sector, they were left behind as the Blood Crusade moved on. Desiring to catch up to the crusade, they resolved to shed so much blood it would attract the attention of Khorne himself. As the eight slaughtered xenos, they had their mortal slaves arrange the copious amount of reaped skulls and bones into a massive symbol of Khorne. The Eight Sons slaughtered so many xenos that the walls of reality thinned and then tore open. Sensing the eye of Khorne upon them, they turned their blades on their slaves to accelerate the opening of the Warp Rift. With each kill, the rift grew larger until it was large enough for the brothers to walk through. On the other side of the rift, they saw a great battle and charged to join it. Thus the Eight Sons traveled across the galaxy from Warp rift to Warp Rift. They slaughtered all before them and only left whenever a Warp Rift summoned them to a new battlefield.



-In many ways, the religion of Khorne is a cult of purity. The few devotees of Khorne with the ability for introspection realize that the worship of their bloody god is about surrendering to the grim truths that suffering and death are inevitable and that nothing truly matters. Peace can only be found through slaughter and violence. By embracing this fact, one can become one with the truest state of the universe, its primal savagery. When this state is reached, they believe, their suffering will cease. This belief puts the followers of Khorne in opposition to the followers of the other gods. While Khorne boils down the lives of his followers to the purity and simplicity of violence, Tzeentch complicates the lives of his followers with schemes and complex ambitions. There can be no peace in tracing and mapping the strands of fate. As for the followers of Slaanesh, they seek to enjoy life in all of its extremes. So the concept of escaping suffering to find peace is anathema to them. It's the opposite of what they seek. The creed of Khorne has the least conflict with that of Nurgle. However, the lack of violence in the cycle of decay and stagnation is intolerable for the followers of Khorne.



-The World Eaters worship Khorne because he is an honest god. Khorne is straightforward with his creed and demands, earning the appreciation of his followers.



-There exists those among the World Eaters who are called the Sages of Slaughter. These champions have attained the state of being one with violence and attained inner peace in this purity. Their hearts beat as one with the pulse of the Nails, and they glide through the flow of murder. They are called the Pure, the primal souls, and the Nihilans. These warriors care nothing for the material world. They care nothing for personal glory, leadership, or anything else outside the slaughter. They are as likely to fight by the side of their comrades as they are to murder them. Despite this, they gain a following of hundreds of World Eaters who seek to attain their state of peace or have missed the point of the Sages entirely and seek to use them as a means to earn glory.



-The Khorne beloved Gladiator Group 868 faced collapse as the Butcher's Nail drove them to mindless rage. They sought to face extinction through a final act of slaughter in the name of Khorne. Thus did they launch an attack on an Orkish world. The resulting war drew Orks and World Eaters like flies to carrion. The bloodshed drew the attention of Khorne, and he was pleased. The World Eaters' wounds were healed, and their limbs regrew. Khorne raised their fallen to fight again. It took eight long years before the last of the Gladiator Group was slain.



-A warlord of the World Eaters called Macer Krassek fused himself to the core of his flagship so that he could feel its kills as if it was by his own axe. Once his warband demanded to fight on the ground to enjoy the splash of blood on their forms, they earned their warlord's contempt. For seven campaigns he held his warriors back, bombing worlds from orbit. In the eighth campaign, he loosed his warband to the ground. When the last of his warriors made planetfall, he opened fire and obliterated his warband.



-The World Eater warlord known only as the Eater seeks out cries for aid as a method of locating worthy battles. After he picked up an Imperial distress signal, he took his men to a world beset by a GSC uprising. The World Eaters accomplished what the loyalist failed to do and slaughtered the Xeno-cultists. The world's population started to throw their lot with the World Eaters. Soon the world became a three-way war between the warriors of Khorne, the xenos-cultists, and the Imperials. The war still raged as Behemoth arrived in orbit.



-Oresk Torgoll was not originally of the World Eaters. He was an Iron Hand captured at Isstvan. He was thrown into the World Eater pits and then implanted with the Butcher's Nails. His hatred for his Primarch and the legion that abandoned him made him outshine many of his adoptive legion battle brothers. To the cheer of the World Eaters, Oresk rose to lead them in many legendary sieges. His bloody reputation was sealed when he destroyed a hundred Krieg regiments. His bitter hatred would see billions slain.



-A warband of World Eaters and their mortal followers chased a throng of Votann to their hold in the galactic core. The following siege saw more and more of the Kin drawn to the conflict. Ultimately, the World Eaters were wiped out but at a steep cost for the Kin. Nine in ten Kin were dead. And their hold was forever tainted by bloodshed and the screams of the souls of the dead.



-Roghrax Bloodhand the Xenobane, in his hunt of the Tyranids, encountered the Terror of Unathraxis. It was a Tyranid monstrosity with six heads each upon a serpentine neck. All heads were different and made for worthy offerings for Khorne when the Xenobane claimed them all for the Skull Throne.



-The World Eater champion Khorgedd the Headsman dueled the queen of the Knight House Bonivarl. He beheaded her knight, and in an act of supreme savagery, he tore her out from her throne, neural jacks still embedded in her skull, and cast her into the dirt. Her screams of agony were cut short by his following axe swing.



-The Changling creature called the Empuzah was among the most dangerous entities to ever exist in the galaxy. None knew its true form and lived to tell of it. Lord Davask Korr of the World Eaters dueled the creature. It's said that the Empuzah, during its duel with Korr, took the forms of a Tyranid monster, an avatar of Khaine, a keeper of secrets, and worse. Ultimately, Korr defeated the Empuzah and took its skull in its true form.



-The being called Nautilacknid belonged to a Xenos species that worshipped Khorne so fanatically they had butchered their entire species. Only Nautilacknid, the strongest and most savage among them, remained. This earned it the gift of daemonhood. It became a daemon prince with eight eyes and eight limbs, each carrying a different weapon. It had never known defeat until it encountered the World Eater Forgax Bloodhair. The World Eater blinded its eyes and severed its limbs one by one, claiming its weapons for himself. When the final strike fell, the Xenos Daemon Prince's visage was of shock and horror.



-When Haska Draxxigor tracked down the beast of a million eyes to its nest, he expected a beast with a single skull and millions of sockets. Instead, he found a million one-eyed monsters, each with the size and the strength of an Ork. The monsters shared a single mind. Undaunted, Draxxigor battled the beasts. He slew and slew until all his weapons broke, and he was forced to rely on his bloodied bare fists. When he finished his bloody task, he arranged the million skulls into the symbol of Khorne.