Every World Eater is a slave to the Nails, but the Red Butchers are those the implants have all but consumed. Their surviving reason has burned away, leaving warriors who exist in a permanent red haze, incapable of speech, strategy, or restraint. In the Legion's grim economy such creatures are too valuable to destroy and too dangerous to leave free, so they are entombed in the heaviest available plate and held in stasis or chains between engagements.
When a battle demands the breaking of an unbreakable foe, the Red Butchers are unleashed. They wade into the thickest fighting where the fire is heaviest, absorbing punishment that would fell lesser warriors and hewing through enemy elites with terrible strength. They cannot be recalled, redirected, or reasoned with once loosed; they simply kill until the field is empty or their bodies finally give out. Their brethren regard them with a mixture of reverence and dread, for the Red Butchers are what every World Eater fears becoming, and what the Blood God prizes most.
World Eaters
Order of battle
The The Red Butchers field the units of the World Eaters — a detachment from the roster:
Kindred formations
Other World Eaters formations
The Brazen BeastsThe Brazen Beasts are an infamous Khornate warband that wages war behind a wall of daemon engines, prizing the roar of corrupted machinery as highly as the screams of the dying. They fall upon the servants of the other Chaos Gods with particular relish, grinding fortress and follower alike beneath the tracks of their Defilers and Maulerfiends and the towering war-idol they revere as the Caged God.
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 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.