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Mundus Planus is the formal Imperial High Gothic name for the Feudal World its inhabitants call Chogoris, the homeworld of the White Scars Space Marine Chapter. It lies in the Yasan Sector of the Ultima Segmentum of the galaxy.

It is from the savage horse nomads of Chogoris that the White Scars raise their neophytes, who are well-suited to the White Scars' highly mobile way of war.

The people of Chogoris speak a language known as Khorchin, which is also shared among the White Scars Astartes drawn from this world.

History[]

Birthworld of the Khan[]

The ancient text known as the Liber Historica Vangelia records that the Primarch Jaghatai Khan arrived at a world in the Ultima Segmentum originally designated by Imperial cartographers by the High Gothic name Mundus Planus, but known to its own inhabitants as Chogoris.

Chogoris is a fertile world characterised by lush greenery, soaring mountains and azure seas, which, at the time of the Great Crusade in the early 31st Millennium, had achieved a level of technology commensurate with the Late Medieval or early Renaissance periods during Old Earth's Age of Progress in which black powder weapons had only recently been introduced.

A Census Imperialis of the day records that the dominant Chogorian empire at this time was an organised feudal aristocracy that had conquered most of the planet with well-equipped and highly disciplined pre-industrial armies. Armoured horsemen wearing full plate and densely packed blocks of infantry had won every campaign their ruler, the Palatine, had ever fought.

To the west of the Palatine's empire was a vast, wind-blown steppe, known as the "Empty Quarter," home to nomadic tribes of savage horsemen who for centuries had roamed the vast grasslands. The tribes of the steppes lived in tents and followed a cycle of seasonal migration from summer pastures to protected winter valleys in Chogoris' Khum Karta Mountains.

Consummate horsemen and archers, these disparate tribes frequently fought one another for control of ancestral pastureland or -- as their own ballads would have it -- the sheer joy of battle. Chogorian armies had never invaded the Empty Quarter as the dry and desolate lands were of no value to the Palatine's people. However, the feudal nobles of the Palatine's state would often lead hunting bands into the steppes and take whole tribes east as slaves or capture a lone tribesmen to hunt through the mountains for sport.

Many passages in the sacred text of the White Scars Chapter known as The Great Khan are devoted to detailing the full extent of Chogorian atrocities by the servants of the Palatine. The blood rituals and sacrifices described within these passages have led many Imperial scholars to postulate that the Palatine's empire may have been dedicated to the worship of the Dark Gods in one of their many guises across the galaxy.

The Legend of Jaghatai Khan[]

JaghataiKhanPencil

An ancient Remembrancer's sketch of the Primarch Jaghatai Khan

Jaghatai Khan's legend began near the Quonon River when Ong Khan, the leader of a small tribe known as the Talskars, first encountered the Primarch, who had arrived on Chogoris in his gestation capsule after being flung through the Warp like the other Primarchs from Terra through the intervention of the Ruinous Powers.

Ong Khan believed that the glowing child was a gift from the gods and took him into his family and named him Jaghatai. It was said of Jaghatai that since his early childhood he had a "fire in his eyes," a Talskari term applied to a man who was expected to become a great warrior. It was also said about the young Jaghatai that rival steppe tribes hated the child because he had the wisdom to see beyond the constant warfare that dominated life on the steppes of the Empty Quarter.

Legends recount that the most influential moment in Jaghatai's life was the slaying of his adopted father by the rival Kurayed tribe. Jaghatai, even as a young child, was the greatest warrior of the tribe and gathered Talaskar troops to avenge the death of his father.

They moved on the Kurayed tribe and razed its yurts to the ground, slaying every man, woman and child in a murderous, revenge-driven frenzy. Khan took the head of the enemy tribe leader and mounted it on his tent. This is what shaped him into a man of fierce honour, loyalty and ruthlessness. From then on, he swore to end the constant tribal in-fighting, unite all the people of the Empty Quarter and bring an end to the practice of brother fighting brother.

Primarch Jhagatai Khan

An ancient illustration from Carpinus' Speculum Historiale showing Jaghatai Khan, Primarch of the White Scars Legion in all his lethal glory

Jaghatai fought hundreds of battles against other tribes and defeated hunting packs of nobles sent by the Palatine. Jaghatai's clear military talents and the sheer force of his personality won him many followers and soon his warriors were as numerous as the stars.

Jaghatai's army became known as the Mathuli, a Talskari word meaning "irresistible force." He made military service mandatory for all men within the Talskari confederacy and combined warriors of different tribes into the same units to break up their previous tribal associations and rivalries, fostering a fierce loyalty to the entirety of the Talskari people and ultimately to himself. He promoted men purely on the basis of ability and brought a feeling of shared purpose to everyone he came into contact with.

Ten summers after his arrival on Chogoris, as his tribe moved to their winter settlements, the Primarch was traveling on a mountainside with a group of his followers. A vast avalanche pushed him and his group back down the mountain, killing the normal men. Jaghatai survived, but could not get back up the mountain in time before the tribe moved on.

Khan was caught by one of the Palatine's aristocratic hunting bands led by the son of that emperor. All that returned of that band was one mutilated rider with the head of the son of the Palatine and a note saying that the people of the steppes were no longer his toys.

When the snows cleared that year, an enraged Palatine gathered a massive army and determined to march west to wipe the tribes of the Empty Quarter from the face of the planet. He had, however, underestimated the power and ability of Khan and brought his highly-disciplined army of heavily-armoured cavalry and arquebusiers. This proved to be his downfall as they could not catch the lightly armoured Talaskar tribesmen.

The constant rain of arrows from the tribesmen took their toll on the tight ranks of the Palatine's warriors. Eventually the tribesmen defeated the army of the Palatine, who escaped back to his capital with a select few bodyguards. The rest of his army was slaughtered, almost to the last man.

After the battle, all the tribal elders of the Empty Quarter gathered and announced that Jaghatai Khan was now the Khagan, the "Khan of Khans," of the Empty Quarter, the rightful ruler of all its people.

The Khagan now began the long process of conquering the rest of the planet, which possessed only a single continent. It was during this momentous time that Jaghatai would meet several lifelong comrades -- including Targutai Yesugei, Qin Xa and Hasik -- all of whom would fight alongside the Primarch during their conquest of Chogoris, and would eventually go on to serve the Khagan for many Terran centuries to come.

Jaghatai gave those cities of the Palatine he besieged two choices -- to surrender or die. Most surrendered, but many resisted and were destroyed, utterly wiped from the face of the planet. Eventually the armies of Jaghatai came to the Palace of the Palatine, where the Primarch demanded the head of the Palatine on a spike.

His request was obliged by the capital city's population, which turned on their ruler to save their own lives from the fierce tribesmen of the Empty Quarter. Jaghatai Khan adorned his tent with his greatest conquest's head, just as he had with his first enemy two solar decades before.

Brotherhood-of-the-storm

The Great Khan fighting against Orks on Chondax

The Khan's power eventually stretched from ocean to ocean, and became the largest empire the planet had ever known, conquered by a single man in less than twenty standard years. Though Jaghatai Khan dominated a vast area, he knew that his people had no desire to rule such a realm. His new empire had grown from his urge to unite the tribes of the Empty Quarter and exact vengeance upon their cruel enemies, not from any hunger to occupy or rule their lands.

Yet ultimate power had come to rest with the Khan and his generals. Although they were well organised militarily, the tribes had not developed the necessary political structures or cultural understandings required to rule settled populations.

As the ruler of his world, Jaghatai ended the wars that had wracked Chogoris, keeping the peace with the threat of utter ruin for those who transgressed his simple laws.

What the Khagan might have created in isolation from the embers of civilisation on Chogoris will never be known, for it was but a short while after his ascension to the throne that the Emperor of Mankind arrived to change his destiny forever.

Coming of the Emperor[]

Jaghatai's campaign of global conquest ended less than six solar months before the Emperor came to Chogoris in 865.M30 as part of His Great Crusade. Ironically, despite their role as pathfinders and discoverers, it was not a Pioneer Company of the Vth Legion that would discover lost Chogoris, but instead a fleet of the Luna Wolves Legion accompanied by both Horus and the Emperor.

On that long-isolated world, Jaghatai had prospered, binding together the fractured tribes of the hinterlands to conquer empires and subjugate the entire world to his will. It was an achievement to rival any of those of his brother-Primarchs in their foundling years, and the Emperor hailed him as a true son and inheritor of the legacy He had prepared for him.

The Great Khan, himself a builder of empires, was handed a destiny that saw him resigned to the role of servant and not master, bound to the ambitions of the Emperor. Such abasement did not come easily to such a conqueror as he, one who had slain kings and tyrants across the breadth of Chogoris, but still the Great Khan knelt before this Emperor.

Most historical accounts, such as that of the noted Imperial historian Carpinus, who compiled a detailed history of the Great Crusade in the so-called Speculum Historiale, indicate that Jaghatai was overawed by the Emperor of Mankind and submitted without question to his ideal of unity, but his own journals and writings show a more pragmatic reasoning behind the submission. Jaghatai, who had struggled long with the disunity of his adopted people, saw clearly the benefits of the Imperium and the Emperor's secular doctrine of the Imperial Truth, and in the ranks of the Luna Wolves he saw the dire cost of opposition.

It was the same choice he himself had once offered to the tribes and cities of Chogoris, and even when it was cloaked in pomp and ceremony, the Khan of Khans understood what the Emperor's offer meant: to live as His vassal or perish as His rival. So the Khagan bargained for his loyalty and that of those he ruled, taking from the Emperor those guarantees he deemed fair regarding the treatment of the people of Chogoris and of his role in the future empire.

He would fight once again for unity and in secret revelled in the new challenge before him, at last able to slip the bonds of duty that had kept him busy with the mundane realities of governorship on Chogoris.

Despite having already mastered the strategies of conquest in his own war against the petty empires of Chogoris, Jaghatai Khan was unfamiliar with the advanced weapons and war engines of the Imperium. With fighting across the galaxy reaching a fevered intensity, the forces of the Emperor could ill spare any Primarch for lengthy training in the etiquette of the Terran Court or the intricacies of Imperial history.

All were needed upon the front lines as the expanding Imperium began to encounter more and more powerful xenos realms and fallen kingdoms of Mankind hidden in the dark void. The conquest of Chogoris was, in the eyes of the Emperor and many of the Primarchs, more than proof of Jaghatai's skill at war.

Indeed, of all of his new brother Primarchs, only Roboute Guilliman and Rogal Dorn objected to the all too brief period of induction that Jaghatai received. Both felt that to leave the new Primarch bereft of a true understanding of the Imperium's foundation and culture would leave him ill-prepared to integrate properly with its factions and politics.

Despite these objections, whose foresight was to prove unfortunate, the full authority of Legion Master of the Vth Legion was invested in Jaghatai, known among his brothers as "the Khan" and among his own warriors as the Khagan, the Khan of Khans.

The Khan's Terran-born gene-sons adopted the practice of bearing the long facial scars of their Primarch's Talskar tribesmen that ran from forehead to chin to show that they were warriors, and renamed themselves the White Scars in honour of their Primarch's people.

The Great Khan ascended to the heavens with the Emperor, passing the Khanship of Chogoris and the Talskar to his general Ogedei. Many of Jaghatai's followers elected to join their Khan and became Space Marines within the Vth Legion. The White Scars' Legionary culture soon came to be dominated by the beliefs and practices of the nomadic tribes of Chogoris.

Necron Assault[]

In 890.M41, a Necron Cairn-class Tomb Ship entered orbit over Chogoris and began an orbital bombardment of an unpopulated area on the planet's surface for unknown reasons.

The White Scars Battle Barge Jaghatai's Pride pierced the Tomb Ship's defences as the great Defence Laser of the Quan Zhou fortress-monastery destroyed the Necron vessel with a single blast.

Drugh Infestation[]

An Imperial transmission dated 0435.991.M41 lists Chogoris as under full-scale infestation by a subterranean alien species, the Drugh.

Battle of Chogoris[]

Chogoris Map

Galactic location of Chogoris.

In 990.999.M41, Chogoris was among the star systems besieged by a Red Corsairs pirate fleet under the command of Huron Blackheart. The White Scars were forced to withdraw from their participation in the Third War for Armageddon and Second Agrellan Campaign to deal with the threat.

Following the fall of Cadia during the 13th Black Crusade in 999.M41, the permanent Warp Storm known as the Maelstrom's wrath grew greater by the solar day. Like a storm cloud that raced swiftly from the distant horizon to darken the skies above, the Warp rift billowed and swelled until it seemed to blot out the stars from the surface of Chogoris.

The world writhed at its touch. Grasslands burned. Beasts ran wild, mutated into monstrous, deformed things. From the heart of the Maelstrom came the Red Corsairs, marching beneath the banners of the Tyrant of Badab, Huron Blackheart. The tribes of the plains suffered beneath their tainted claws. The Red Corsairs built mountains of the dead, ritual ziggurats of corpse flesh dedicated to the Dark Gods.

The White Scars, under the command of Barutai Khan, Captain of the White Scars 2nd Brotherhood, did not know what goal they worked toward, but they were surely close to its completion, and the Astartes left on the world at their fortress-monastery remained too few to hunt them all. These White Scars sent astropathic transmissions across the galaxy to the scattered forces of the Chapter, calling for them to return to the homeworld and deal with the Renegades before whatever malefic ritual they had planned was completed.

The worlds of Gartuli and Thaxis in the Yasan Sector ultimately fell to the invading Chaos forces, their defenders butchered in bloody campaigns and their frantic refugees streaming through the void towards Chogoris.

Precious few ships made it into Chogoris' orbit, for the Warp roiled and churned. The fickle tides of the empyrean pitched Imperial voidcraft into fanged whirlpools of madness even as they hastened the Traitor warships on their way; by the time out-system Servitor probes warned of Traitor forces translating into Chogoris' local space, Barutai Khan already knew that this conflict would not be won in space.

He stood upon the ramparts of Quan Zhou and watched as fire lit the skies, and pronounced that this conflict would be settled blade-to-blade upon the soil of Chogoris itself.

Much of the White Scars Chapter was abroad amongst the stars when Huron Blackheart attacked. At the first dark omens of danger, Astropaths had hurled distress cries into the Warp commanding that all sons of the Warhawk be recalled to defend the Chapter planet.

Yet Barutai Khan could not count on such reinforcements arriving in time, or indeed at all; his forces were vastly outnumbered by the heretical drop-ships now descending on the world, and would have to fight with all their hunters' cunning if they were to prevail.

The White Scars had two advantages. Firstly, they knew their home intimately, and could read its ferocious weather patterns and navigate its every hidden canyon.

Where the enemy foundered amidst salt marshes or fell foul of devastating storm fronts, the White Scars used these to their advantage. Many were the Heretic Astartes warbands ambushed from within raging tempests, caught by swift-striking White Scars bikers while navigating treacherous defiles or mauled by super-predators lured into their midst by squads of Infiltrators.

Secondly, the White Scars fought as a unified force, while their foes broke into dozens of raiding parties whose Chaos Champions vied for the favour of the Dark Gods. The invaders wasted precious weeks hunting the steppe tribes of the Empty Quarter, who themselves fought back with every weapon at their disposal.

Yet for all this, the battle was a desperate one. The White Scars harried and harassed, hit-and-ran time and again, but still the vastly superior Chaos forces pushed onwards. One nomad camp after another burned. White Scars fortifications toppled in blazing ruin. Strike forces were whittled down in battle with the Traitor forces, and wherever Huron Blackheart bestrode the battlefield, the invaders were unstoppable.

Even when the Chapter Master Jubal Khan returned from Armageddon with the survivors of his strike force, their onslaught did little but slow the Heretic tide. Worse followed when the skies darkened then tore, and a wave of madness and terror swept the planet; the Cicatrix Maledictum yawned wide at its birth and the Maelstrom expanded to consume the fringes of the Yasan Sector whole. Upon Chogoris, legions of foul daemons spilled forth to march at Blackheart's side.

The Chogorian tribes fled these new assailants in terror, hundreds of thousands of the planet's populace exterminated in a matter of solar days. Seeing that the tribes from which the White Scars recruited were at risk of wholesale annihilation, Jubal Khan had his warriors struck recklessly at the Chaos forces, goading as many as possible into following them back to the fortress-monastery of Quan Zhou itself.

So it was that, solar months after the first Heretic forces made planetfall, the final fate of the White Scars was decided in a bloody siege of the Khum Karta mountain range, and of the White Scars fortress-monastery in its midst.

It was at this desperate hour that Kor'sarro Khan, the Master of the Hunt, and his 3rd Brotherhood finally reached Chogoris. They had braved storms of insanity and the terrifying darkness of the Noctis Aeterna to reach their homeworld, and the journey had cost them dearly.

Still they wasted no time in marshalling White Scars forces scattered throughout the Empty Quarter, along with a great militia of all those tribes still possessed of the will to fight. At the head of this mighty hunting party, Kor'sarro Khan launched a spear-thrust into the rear lines of the besieging Chaos forces.

His Stormseers harnessed a great Chogorian tempest to veil the attack, and by the time Huron Blackheart realised his peril, his forces were assailed from the front and from behind. After three solar days of bloody battle, Kor'sarro's warriors broke through to Quan Zhou and forced Blackheart into a calculated withdrawal.

Still the Traitor forces might have carried the day, for their reserves poured in from all across Chogoris in answer to this fresh challenge. Yet it was in this darkest hour that the Noctis Aeterna lifted over Chogoris, and with it the energies of the Warp temporarily receded. Many of Blackheart's daemonic allies flickered and faded and, seeing that he faced a far less certain battle than he had expected, the Tyrant of Badab elected to withdraw.

Leaving Renegade warbands rampaging across Chogoris, Blackheart and his elite Red Corsairs fell back to conquered strongholds elsewhere in the Yasan Sector; the galaxy was rent, the age of Chaos was nigh, and Huron Blackheart knew he had ample time to draw out the conquest of the Great Khan's homeworld. The White Scars, meanwhile, were left to win back their burned and bloodied world, and to gather themselves for whatever horrors were sure to follow.

However, they would do so buoyed by reinforcements. Not long after the Red Corsairs' retreat, Battle Group Delphi II of the Indomitus Crusade's Fleet Tertius managed to navigate the Warp Storms tearing at the galaxy to arrive in the system, delivering the White Scars' Primaris Space Marine brethren to join the fight.

With the Chapter's brotherhoods reinforced, the fightback began in earnest, while recruitment started from Chogoris' surviving vengeful tribes for new Neophytes to be transformed into Primaris Astartes.

Chogoris at Present[]

ChogorisSystemYasanSector

The Chogoris, Gartuli and Thaxis Systems of the Yasan Sector.

Chogoris is a fertile world with lush greenery, soaring mountains and azure seas, yet for the tribesmen from which the White Scars draw their recruits, it is no paradise; even before the coming of the forces of Chaos, Chogoris offered a harsh, unforgiving existence to its steppe tribes.

In comparison to many worlds within the Imperium, Chogoris is relatively undeveloped. While there are cities and spaceports scattered across the planet's surface, its society is semi-feudal, with much of its population inhabiting the wilderness of the Empty Quarter.

This is a steppe environment, characterised by vast plains stretching as far as the eye can see and bounded by towering mountain peaks and windswept deserts. Nomadic horse tribes roam across this landscape, driven by the planet's extreme climatic shifts, and these warrior societies provide the new blood for the White Scars' recruitment.

The tribes have little contact with the technology of the wider Imperium; they hunt using bows and the great raptors they call berkuts, and war against each other using their hunting implements and swords. Much of the equipment they require to survive on the steppe is made by processing elements of the hardy aduu and yat beasts they raise.

Nonetheless, they are far from being primitive -- they create singularly beautiful weapons and treasures of great artifice, and amongst their number are masters of calligraphy and poetry.

Some of Chogoris' tribes are populous, and bear dynastic names that can be traced back across the centuries; others are offshoots of the great tribes, or the progeny of outcasts. Many are bound to each other by blood or honour pacts, and yet for as long as the seers of the Empty Quarter can remember, the tribes have existed in a constant state of warfare amongst themselves.

With the departure of the Great Khan on the Great Crusade, Ogedei became the new leader of the Talskar tribes and, while he was a great warrior, he was no Jaghatai Khan. Without the Primarch, the tribes soon returned to their warring ways and within the space of a few Terran years, the unified empire of the tribes created by Jaghatai had ceased to exist.

The tribes went back to their homelands in the steppes and life on Chogoris carried on much as it had before the arrival of the Great Khan, with the tribes to never again know true unity. Some of the Primarch's biographers claim that the Khan must have known that this would happen and yet left anyway.

They suggest that perhaps he desired the restoration of the old inter-tribal warfare in order to keep his people strong enough to provide future recruits for his new Legion of Astartes. Indeed, in the millennia that followed, many men would rise to attempt to unite the tribes, but none would ever succeed as spectacularly as Jaghatai Khan.

The Malestrom[]

Chogoris lies close to the vast Warp rift of the Maelstrom, hanging amidst the worlds of the Yasan Sector, and has faced predation from Renegade Heretic Astartes warbands and xenos raiders alike. Since the Great Rift split the galaxy in two, the planet's situation has only become worse.

The Maelstrom has grown in size and power, and its malign influence has begun to affect Chogoris itself. Huron Blackheart's vast invasion of the Yasan Sector, though subsequently driven off, scarred the homeworld of the Warhawk's descendants.

The marks of Chaos can be seen everywhere, despite the White Scars' efforts to scour away the taint and truly reclaim their world. Ancient grasslands burn with multicoloured flame, and many of the beasts of the mountains have turned into monstrous, deformed things. The shells of Traitor drop-ships litter the plains, inhabited by packs of flesh-eating Chaos Cultists and rogue Daemon Engines.

Worse still, the White Scars have not been able to protect the world's population from the baleful curse of the Warp. The hardy tribespeople are quick to destroy any of their number who show signs of corruption or mutation, but no threat is more insidious.

The tribes' seers continue to administer ritual facial scars to those who are proved to be worthy warriors, and yet more and more often, those scars seem to reflect the shape of the Cicatrix Maledictum, which splits the skies at night.

What this means for the future of the White Scars is unclear, but the Stormseers scrutinise each of the Chapter's new Initiates even more closely than they have in the past.

Recovery[]

The White Scars' efforts to purge the servants of Chaos from Chogoris' surface have met with much success, but this is only the first step on a long road. The entire Yasan Sector has felt the wrath of the Red Corsairs. While some planets were battered and bloodied but remain in Imperial hands, Gartuli and Thaxis fell to the Traitors' assault.

From these strongholds, and from the Maelstrom itself, Heretic Astartes craft continue to attack Chogoris. Emboldened by the continued conflict, packs of mutants gather in the mountains, and insurrection is rife amongst the cities' multitudes. Even daemonic incursions are still commonplace, so thin has the veil around Chogoris become.

From his fastness in Quan Zhou, Chapter Master Jubal Khan sees some fiendish intelligence at work in the pattern of the ongoing attacks. He is determined to stamp it out and reclaim the sub-sector in the Khagan's name, but even with a full Chapter at his disposal his task is monumental.

Only the Stormseers understand just how important Jubal's efforts are. They know that Chogoris has shaped its sons in every aspect of their minds and souls. By its harshness, beauty and simplicity, the planet of their birth moulds each White Scars Initiate before they even know of the Chapter's existence.

Even the vast emptiness of the heavens grants the maturing warrior a perspective denied to those raised on a hive world or a fume-smogged factory planet. Should Chogoris be changed forever by the mark of Chaos, so will the White Scars too be changed, and not for the better.

Quan Zhou[]

Quan Zhou

Quan Zhou, the fortress-monastery of the White Scars.

The White Scars fortress-monastery of Quan Zhou sits atop the highest and most inaccessible peak in the Khum Karta mountain range. This city-sized palace is a magnificent sight, but few outsiders have ever glimpsed its interior. It is famed throughout the Ultima Segmentum and it is said that within its walls are forests running with game for the hunt, and that sparkling streams flow through its galleries.

The winding pass that leads up to its copper-clad gates is lined with the severed heads of countless defeated foes, and the chambers within its marbled walls are heavily hung with a great wealth of trophies taken by the White Scars' greatest heroes from innumerable battlefields.

Beneath its elaborate ornamentation, Quan Zhou boasts thick armour plate and layered Void Shields to equal the protection of any Space Marine fortress and withstand any siege or bombardment from land, air or space. Its every approach is protected by batteries of gilded defence guns and Icarus Pattern Lascannons. On its highest pinnacle stands the immense Macro-laser called Khan’s Fury. This weapon is forever raised to the skies, ready to slay any voidcraft that invade Chogoris' orbit.

The fortress-monastery's Librarius is a lightning-wracked spire where the Chapter's Librarians, often referred to as Stormseers within the Chapter, study lore and chronicle the deeds of the khans. They also preside over the Chapter's astropaths as they relay psychic messages throughout the void, communicating with the greater Imperium and those of the Chapter's Brotherhoods (companies) hunting the foes of the Emperor across the galaxy.

The Stormseers of the White Scars venture down into the steppes every ten local summers to observe the Chogorian tribes and their battles, picking the best and bravest warriors amongst them and returning with them to Quan Zhou where they will undergo the process to become Space Marines.

The pyre-tombs of fallen White Scars in the Khum Karta (which means "The Mountains that Scrape the Stars" in the native Chogorian dialect of the Talskars) are places of great pilgrimage for young tribal warriors, and those that survive a journey through one of these dangerous valleys are considered especially courageous and worthy of becoming Aspirants to join the White Scars.

The slopes around Quan Zhou play host to training facilities and important ritual sites. On the sides of Mount Kardunn, for example, stand row upon row of pyre shrines. When a White Scars warrior falls in battle, his Chapter will make every effort to return his body to Chogoris, and to Kardunn. Here the Chaplains perform the rites of kal damarg over their slain brothers, granting their souls passage to the Eternal Heaven as their bodies burn.

Sources[]

  • Gathering Storm - Part Three - Rise of the Primarch (7th Edition), pg. 41 (sidebar)
  • Codex Adeptus Astartes - Space Marines (8th Edition), pp. 21, 34
  • Codex: Space Marines (6th Edition), pp. 37, 38
  • Codex: Space Marines (5th Edition), pp. 30-49, 50 (Map)
  • Codex Supplement: White Scars (8th Edition), pp. 8-9
  • Deathwatch: First Founding (RPG), pp. 27-34
  • Index Astartes I, "Lightning Attack - The White Scars Space Marines Chapter," pp. 40-47
  • The Horus Heresy - Book Eight: Malevolence (Forge World Series) by Neil Wylie and Anuj Malhotra, pp. 139-142
  • Warhammer 40,000: Apocalypse (5th Edition) (Drugh Infestation)
  • White Dwarf 257 (UK), "Index Astartes I: Index Astartes - Lightning Attack - The White Scars Space Marine Chapter"
  • Brotherhood of the Storm (Novella) by Chris Wraight, "I, Shiban"
  • Scars (Novel) by Chris Wraight, Ch. 1
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