Khârn

Khârn was, in the years of the Great Crusade, something the later ages would scarcely credit: a voice of reason within the World Eaters. Captain of the Eighth Assault Company and equerry to Angron, he served as the bridge between a primarch few could approach and a Legion that worshipped him, tempering Angron's fury where he could and channelling it where he could not. Of all the XII, Khârn came closest to loving his broken father, and he chose to share his suffering, accepting the Butcher's Nails into his own skull as an act of solidarity with the primarch he revered.

That choice set the course of his damnation. As the Nails did their work and the Heresy fed his rage, the reasoning captain receded and the killer rose, until Khârn became the truest reflection of what the World Eaters were: relentless, magnificent, and utterly enslaved to the joy of slaughter. He was already among the most feared warriors of the traitor host by the time the Legion reached Terra, his blade rarely still. The horrors for which later ages would know him best still lay ahead, but the road to them was already laid, nail by nail, in the years of the great betrayal.