Bjorn the Fell-Handed

In the distant past, before his internment within a dreadnought, Bjorn fought alongside the Primarch Leman Russ during the Horus Heresy and saw the Emperor before he was interred in the Golden Throne. During the aftermath of the Horus Heresy, Bjorn sought to rebuild the Imperium with such conviction that Leman Russ elevated him to his personal retinue. He was the only member of Leman Russ's personal Wolf Guard that was left behind when Russ departed for the Eye of Terror, and he still harbors intense feelings of rejection and bitterness when he tells of this day.

After Russ's disappearance, he assumed the Primarch's leadership of the Space Wolves, becoming the Chapter's first Great Wolf. His heroic career at the head of the Space Wolves ended during a raid against a fortress in M31, when he was so severely wounded and crippled that he was beyond the aid of the chapter's Apothecaries, and his paralyzed body was transplanted within a Dreadnought. Over the following five hundred years he remained at the forefront of battle. Eventually however, the long years took their toll on the warrior, and he began spending longer and longer periods dormant in stasis sleep. Now he is only awakened once every thousand years, or when the chapter has the greatest need of his potent skills and wisdom. He is also awakened at the dawn of each new century to hold court at the Great Feast, where he recounts elements from his own saga to his battle-brothers. He represents the Chapter's link to the past, and is revered by the Space Wolves as a hero almost as much as Leman Russ.

Bjorn is thought to have gained the moniker "Fell Handed" partly because he used a lightning claw, but mostly because of what happened during the scouring of Prospero, which occurred in the beginning the Horus Heresy. There, his left hand was corrupted by psychic feedback from a sorcerer of the Thousand Sons he had just slain. As the corruption crept up along his arm, Chief Custodian Constantin Valdor cut it off, saving Bjorn.