Assault Captain Khyron the Backstabber ("Counts-As"
Kharn the Betrayer)
- Captain of the
Iron Storm's 2nd Company ("
The Iron Fist")
Khyron has dedicated his millennia-long existence to unleashing bloody carnage upon anyone and anything within reach. He is drawn by the scent of war as a hungering hound is drawn by fresh meat, and it has become impossible to tally his slaying. Even during the Great Crusade, when he fought in the vanguard of the Iron Warriors Legion's assault companies, Khyron was known to be a brilliant yet unstable warrior. When the Heresy came, Khyron gladly led his warriors against his brother Space Marines, most notoriously in the Istvaan dropsite massacres.
During the siege of the Imperial Palace, Khyron was at the forefront of the assault. When Horus was defeated, Khyron already lay horribly mangled upon a mound of Imperial Fists Space Marine corpses. His fellow Iron Warriors Besieger-Brothers carried away his lifeless remains and fought their way back to their ships. Once aboard they discovered that by some dark miracle Khyron still lived. Whether Khorne had breathed life back into his Berzerker Champion or Khyron's own relentless spirit simply refused to leave, it is impossible to say.
Khyron is called the Backstabber because of an incident on the desert world of Tallarn, one that has made him nearly as feared as the World Eaters' mighty
Kharn the Betrayer. During the 30th Millennium, Imperial Guard forces excavated the "Cursus" a powerful Chaos relic of black stone, from beneath the sulphur sands. Disturbances within the Warp created by the exposure of this Chaos relic drew both a Grand Company of the Iron Warriors and an Eldar Warhost of the Biel-Tan Craftworld to the arid planet. Fighting against both the Imperial Guard's Tallarn Desert Raiders and the Biel-Tan Eldar's Warhost at the same time, the Iron Warriors needed just one more victory over their adversaries and their prize could be claimed in the name of Chaos. The battle had to be won before a powerful sandstorm closed in and killed victor and vanquished alike. Yet the Iron Warriors could gain no ground against their foes and were hurled back time after time by barrages of battle cannon shells and devestating lance weapons. Khyron cursed his fellow Besieger-Brothers for abandoning the attack, and, seizing a plasma cannon, he vaporized the nearest Rhinos in a gesture of contempt. He cut down those that tried to stop him and marched into the deepening gloom, the incandescent fireballs of his plasma cannon flashing out again and again to illuminate the darkening battlefield. Through the mayhem strode Khyron, slaughtering all that he found, friend or foe. Anarchy gripped the Iron Warriors as they fought each other, and the Grand Company was irretrievably split into dozens of warbands. Since that bloody day Khyron has been Khorne's most ardent Besieger-Brother within the Iron Warriors, who lives to slay in the name of the Lord of Skulls.
Khyron is equipped with power armor, a plasma pistol, frag & krak grenades, Gwarchylde, Personal Icon and the Mark of Khorne (this bonus is included in Khyron's profile).
Special Rules
Independent Character, Fearless, 5+ Invulnerable Save, Furious Charge.
Gwarchylde: Khyron's huge and ancient chainaxe is an artifact from the Great Crusade. Gwarchylde's jagged whirring teeth were torn from the jaws of mica-dragons on Luther Mcintyre, its haft is forged of adamantium, and its head is a full three spans across. Khyron's close combat attacks always hit on a roll of 2+. In addition, Gwarchylde is treated as a power weapon and, against vehicles, adds an extra D6 to Khyron's armor penetration rolls.
The Backstabber: Khyron may attack anyone nearby in his berzerk fury, friend and foe alike! Any of Khyron's to-hit rolls of 1 in close combat have hit his own side. Resolve the hits on a random friendly unit engaged in the same combat, as if they were hit by the enemy, using Khyron's weapons and profile. If there are no other units in the same combat as Khyron, these attacks simply miss.
Blessing of the Blood God: Khyron is immune to the effects of psychic powers, and force weapons count as normal power weapons against him.
Again inspired by Graham McNeill's excellent
Iron Warriors novel,
Storm of Iron (as well as by a couple of amazing
Kharn the Betrayer conversions that I recently saw on the internet), I decided to convert my own
Iron Warriors-styled "Counts-As"
Kharn the Betrayer figure to represent the War-Captain of the Assault Company within my
Iron Warriors Grand Company.
I very much liked the appearance (and pose) of the
Chaos Champion of Khorne from
Warhammer Fantasy Battles, and decided to use it as the basis of the conversion. I cut off the metal legs (at the edge of the leather "loincloth") and used Green Stuff to sculpt lower legs/shins/kneecaps, which would then be connected to Khorne Berzerker lower legs/armored boots. The mound of skulls that comes with the figure looks so good as a character base, I decided to simply mount it on top of a standard 28mm figure base.
I added a Khorne Berzerker Plasma Pistol and a Khorne Berzerker "bunny-ears" helmet, and then got to work on the piece de la resistance: my own version of
Gorechild! I always thought that the chainaxe on the actual Kharn figure was quite impressive, but I wanted the one for my
Iron Warriors-customized Kharn proxy figure to be even larger and more intimidating-looking (not to mention more "mechanized"). So, I used a Space Marine Terminator Thunder Hammer arm (with the hammerhead removed), combined with the business end of a
MechWarrior: Dark Age MiningMech miniature's "chainsaw-arm-of-choppy-death" to construct
Gorechild's even meaner-looking second cousin:
Gwarchylde!
Painted pics coming soon...
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD...er...I mean, IRON WITHIN! IRON WITHOUT!
