Jarran Kell is a Colour Sergeant of the Cadian Shock Troops and the right hand of the famed Lord Castellan Ursarkar E. Creed. The two met as boys serving in the Whiteshields, Cadia's cadet regiments, where the brooding, silent youth who would become Creed and the loud, expansive young soldier who would become Kell struck up an unlikely friendship that has endured across an entire lifetime of war.
They are opposites bound into a single instrument of command. Creed is quiet and calculating, forever three moves ahead; Kell is all roar and bluster, as only a colour sergeant can be. He long ago recognised that Creed is Cadia's best hope of survival, and he has made it his life's work to keep his general from harm, bearing a lifetime of scars and wounds as the price. He is seldom more than a pace from Creed's side, his booming, amplified voice cutting through the clamour of the enemy to ensure that every order is heard and obeyed.
He is no mere herald, but a formidable warrior in his own right, armed with laspistol, power sword and power fist, and as a colour sergeant he bears his regiment's standard into the thick of the fighting. To the disciplined soldiers of Cadia a banner held high amid the smoke is more than cloth and pole; it is proof that the line has not broken and the commander still lives, and Kell carries it with the same fierce devotion he gives to Creed himself.
His devotion was proven in the fires of the Thirteenth Black Crusade. When Abaddon the Despoiler teleported directly into Creed's command centre and fell upon those within, Kell threw himself into the breach, bodily shoving his general aboard a waiting Valkyrie to carry him to safety. Seized by the Despoiler, the dying Kell spat blood into the arch-heretic's face and passed with the words “Cadia Stands” upon his lips, a martyr's end that has come to embody the unyielding loyalty of his world.
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