Gaunt was born on Manzipor, the son of an officer of the Jantine Patricians. His father was killed fighting Orks, betrayed by a superior who abandoned his post in fear, and the orphaned boy was sent to be raised and schooled at a Schola Progenium, where the Imperium turns the children of its fallen servants into instruments of its will.
He came of age in the harness of a commissar. Serving as a cadet under the veteran Commissar Oktar and attached to the Hyrkan regiments, he learned his trade in war zone after war zone, and was raised to full commissar at his mentor's deathbed. It was during the opening of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade that he caught the eye of Warmaster Slaydo himself. When Slaydo fell at the pivotal battle of Balhaut, he granted Gaunt a rare deathbed promotion to the unusual rank of Colonel-Commissar, uniting military command with the commissar's authority in a single man.
Gaunt was meant to lead three regiments raised from the forested frontier world of Tanith, but disaster struck during their very founding, and the world was lost with only enough survivors to form one battered regiment. He forged those ragtag, under-equipped men into the Tanith First-and-Only, a peerless force of scouts and marksmen who fight in distinctive camo-cloaks and carry the straight silver war-knives unique to their people. Masters of stealth, infiltration and the reconnaissance raid, they win the impossible missions that break other units.
What sets Gaunt apart from his grim brethren is his devotion to the men under him. Where most commissars rule by fear and the summary execution, he earns loyalty by spending it back, protecting his Ghosts and valuing their lives. That bond carried him and them through the length of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, and Gaunt would rise at last to the exalted rank of First Lord Executor, the right hand and acknowledged successor of the Warmaster Macaroth.
Heroes & legends
More Astra Militarum
Colonel “Iron Hand” StrakenIron HandA brawling, bionic-limbed titan of a man, Colonel “Iron Hand” Straken is the most storied officer the Catachan Jungle Fighters have ever produced. Having clawed his way up from common trooper to command of an entire regiment, he leads from the very front with reckless ferocity, his body a patchwork of gleaming augmetics earned across a lifetime of impossible battles.
Colour Sergeant Jarran KellCreed's Right HandColour Sergeant Jarran Kell is the loyal shadow of Lord Castellan Ursarkar E. Creed, a booming, indomitable warrior who has spent a lifetime keeping Cadia's greatest commander alive. Where Creed is silent and calculating, Kell is thunder and iron, his amplified war-cries carrying his general's orders over the shriek and din of battle.
Commissar YarrickThe Hero of ArmageddonCommissar Yarrick is the most celebrated political officer in the history of the Astra Militarum, an old and indomitable warrior whose name became synonymous with the defence of a beleaguered world against a green tide. Refusing to die despite grievous wounds and impossible odds, he became a living icon of Imperial resistance. To the soldiers he led he was proof that faith and will could overcome even the most monstrous enemy.
Gunnery Sergeant “Stonetooth” HarkerStonetoothGunnery Sergeant “Stonetooth” Harker is a giant even among the death-world killers of Catachan, a slab of muscle who hefts a heavy bolter as easily as another man shoulders a rifle. Leader of an elite Catachan Devil squad, he has mastered every discipline of war, but given the choice he answers every problem the same way: with his beloved heavy bolter, Payback.