The origins of the Brazen Beasts lie in a betrayal of faith upon the world of Ghahalla, where a garrison of the Golden Blades Space Marines held the Fortress of Intolerance against a daemonic incursion. Overcome by a creeping madness, the defenders defaced their own war machines with blasphemous sigils and worked blood-rituals to bind their daemonic attackers into the tainted hulls, trading their souls for a bitter victory. From that damnation the first of the Daemonkin were born, and in time they became the Brazen Beasts, a warband that reveres the union of daemon and machine above all else.
No other Khornate host fields so vast a stable of infernal engines. Defilers scuttle at the head of their assaults, Forgefiends and Maulerfiends prowl among the ranks, and a coven of Warpsmiths tends the machines deep within the belly of the warband's space hulk, the Oblivion Shadow. Chief among these horrors is a colossal Lord of Skulls the Beasts worship as the Caged God, and it is the abomination's blood-soaked visions that steer them from one slaughter to the next. They reserve their deepest hatred for the followers of the other Ruinous Powers, and have shattered Tzeentchian sorcerer-covens and proud Knightly houses alike, crowning captured battlements with skulls and leaving nothing behind but wreckage and the glory of the Blood God.
World Eaters
Order of battle
The The Brazen Beasts field the units of the World Eaters — a detachment from the roster:
Kindred formations
Other World Eaters formations
The DevourersThe Devourers are among the largest and most infamous World Eaters hordes, a swollen war-host that gathers the scattered warbands of the Legion whenever Khorne's favour burns brightest. They fight as a single ravenous tide, drowning defended worlds beneath a wall of chainaxes and howling thralls, and are notorious for consuming their objectives so completely that nothing recognisable remains behind.
The Red ButchersThe Red Butchers are a brotherhood of the most far-gone World Eaters, warriors whose Butcher's Nails have been driven so deep that they can no longer be trusted to stop killing even between battles. Encased in heavy war-plate and often bound in chains until unleashed, they are living weapons kept sealed away until the moment of maximum carnage, then loosed to break the enemy's strongest line.
The Skull ReapersThe Skull Reapers are a smaller, harder warband distinguished by their obsessive collection of skulls, which they regard as the purest possible tribute to Khorne. Fast, disciplined by World Eaters standards, and led by veteran headsmen, they specialise in decapitation strikes against enemy leaders, seeking the most worthy skulls the battlefield can offer.
The SkulltakersThe Skulltakers are among the most feared World Eaters warbands still at large, a host of Khornate killers forged into a single instrument by the towering Chaos Lord Zhufor. Where lesser warbands scatter once the slaughter is done, the Skulltakers seek to conquer, raising altars to the Blood God upon the ashes of the worlds they break.