“ | Your death shall slake my axe's thirst! | „ |
~ Berzerker Avaras of the World Eaters. |
Khornate Berzerkers are recurring antagonists in the Warhammer 40,000 franchise, appearing across various media. They are Chaos Space Marines of the World Eaters traitor Legion, who turned to the service of Khorne, and now seek to give Khorne an endless supply of blood and skulls through their own feral bloodlust.
History[]
Horus Heresy[]
Khornate Berzerkers arose in the grim darkness of the far future, during the end of the 31st millennium's Great Crusade, where a devastating war known as the Horus Heresy ripped the galaxy apart. Horus Lupercal, one of the Emperor of Mankind's twenty transhuman sons, known as Primarchs, had fallen under the control of the Chaos Gods, bringing several of his brothers with him, including Angron of the XIIth Space Marine Legion. Even before the Horus Heresy, Angron, who had been sent to the unforgiving world of Nuceria and raised as a slave in the gladiator pits, had already sent the Legion down the path of Khorne. During Angron's time as a gladiator, the cruel slave masters of Nuceria augmented his brain with vile cortical implants known as Butcher's Nails, the products of long-lost pre-Imperium human technology. The Nails turned Angron into a bloody-handed butcher, and Angron used the same technology to augment each Space Marine of the XIIth, then known as the War Hounds. This increased the aggression and pain tolerance of the Legion's already-superhuman Astartes, also removing fear from their minds and giving them a pain tolerance that was incredible even for a Space Marine. This drove many of the War Hounds, now known as World Eaters, into becoming savages who had to be restrained between battles, a sign of what their whole Legion would eventually become.
It was in this state that the World Eaters entered the Horus Heresy, a great betrayal against the Imperium of Man, organized by none other than Horus himself. Alongside other traitor Primarchs, Angron rooted out any World Eaters who remained loyal to the Emperor, and purged the Loyalists in the Isstvan III Atrocity, alongside the Loyalists of Horus' Luna Wolves, Mortarion's Death Guard, and Fulgrim's Emperor's Children. After the following Isstvan V Drop Site Massacre, World Eaters Apothecaries arrived on Bodt, the training world for the World Eaters, in the company of Emperor's Children and Word Bearers, traitor Space Marines of Lorgar Aurellian. Taking control of the planet's induction facilities and aspirant populace, the World Eaters Apothecaries created a new generation of recruits for their Legion, with a gene-seed forged by the blood from the Astartes slain during the Drop Site Massacre, collected by the Word Bearers, prepared by the Emperor's Children, and finally administered by the World Eaters. The implementation of the gene-seed into the recruits was grotesque and deadly, many recruits dying in the bio-vats or mutating to the point of being purged, but those that survived rose as monstrous mockeries of the Astartes- the first of the Khornate Berzerkers.
The Legion had sworn itself to Blood God Khorne, and the Khornate Berzerkers embodied that in every aspect. Fresh out of the vats, they were fitted with Butcher's Nails and automatic stimulators, putting them in a permanent state of hyper-aggression. The gene-seed implementation and intense, fast-paced psycho-indoctrination that each Berzerker underwent gave false memories of thousands of campaigns, making each new Berzerker believe that he was a veteran of countless wars, and made them desire nothing more than bloodshed and the collection of skulls. As Khorne did not care from where the blood flowed or from who the skulls came from, the Berzerkers likewise did not care if the blood was from their enemies, their supposed allies, or even themselves. Clad in blood-red, defiled power armor, Khornate Berzerkers became the ultimate close-combat shock troops, preferring the carnage of the chainsword or unique chainaxe to the typical bolter, but even without a weapon, they would continue to fight with their bare hands, descending into madness if denied the chance to kill. This savage combat doctrine was witnessed throughout the galaxy as they slaughtered their way through more campaigns of the Horus Hersey, even fighting on Terra itself.
Aftermath[]
Over the course of the Horus Heresy and beyond, other Khorne-aligned Chaos Space Marines, including previous-generation World Eaters, also readily submitted themselves for conversion into a Khornate Berzerker, becoming one with the bloodlust of Khorne. The Horus Heresy ended with the Imperium broken, perpetually declining as it degraded into a theocratic authoritarian state. Horus himself was utterly destroyed by the Emperor, down to his very soul, but the Emperor was also mortally wounded in the duel with his son, and thus was placed on the Golden Throne, where he withered away in a state between life and death. Regardless, the Khornate Berzerkers continued to rampage across the galaxy, plunging into new depths of uncontrollable bloodlust and destruction, eventually entering the Eye of Terror Warp rift to search for a new homeworld. Before the end of the 31st millennium, the World Eaters turned on the Emperor's Children, and went to war against the Emperor's Children on the Daemon World of Skalathrax within the Eye of Terror. However, when the planet's conditions forced both Legions to take shelter for the night, Berzerker Khârn, a World Eaters captain, turned on several Khornate Berzerkers who he thought to be cowardly hiding in shelters, leading to Khârn simply slaying Space Marines of both traitor Legions, causing the World Eaters Legion to be shattered, surviving Khornate Berzerkers splitting off into separate warbands across the Eye of Terror.
41st millennium[]
Over the next 10,000 years, the Khornate Berzerker warbands would wander the galaxy in search of more bloodshed, bringing unrelenting death and destruction wherever they went. Some would join other Chaos Marine warbands simply for a chance to claim more skulls, and some were periodically reorganized by Angron, now a Daemon Prince of Khorne. Abaddon the Despoiler, successor of Horus, also recruited Khornate Berzerker surgeons into the ranks of his Black Crusades, as their skill was the closest there was to that of the former World Eater Apothecaries.