Skarbrand

The Exile

Skarbrand was once Khorne's greatest Bloodthirster, the senior of the Blood God's daemon legions and the foremost executor of Khorne's will. In a single moment of arrogance — variously described as a refusal to bow, a refusal to share credit, or a refusal to acknowledge the Blood God's supremacy — Skarbrand was struck from Khorne's presence and cast out into the wider realms.

The exile is, in Khornate theology, both punishment and resource. Skarbrand can no longer return to Khorne's realm; he wanders realspace and the warp instead, killing without distinction. The pre-exile Skarbrand could be tactical. The post-exile Skarbrand cannot.

The Rage

Skarbrand's defining trait is the combined rage. He carries the anger he held before the exile and the additional anger of being exiled at all. He carries the anger of every Khornate being he has slain, and of every being his combat-aura inspires to rage. He carries, by the long Imperial pathological reading, more total anger than any other entity in the galaxy.

In engagements he inflicts a rage-aura on every being within a kilometre. Even Imperial Guard regiments deployed against him have, in documented incidents, turned on each other before reaching melee range.

I was first among the chosen. I am still angry about this.

— Skarbrand, attributed first realspace appearance

The Twin Axes

Skarbrand carries Slaughter and Carnage — twin axes that name themselves through the kills they have committed. The axes ignore non-Daemonic armour saves entirely; their cuts cannot be parried by any mortal weapon save another Greater-Daemon-grade blade.

The axes have no scabbards. Skarbrand does not sheathe them between engagements. They are constantly drawn. They are constantly dripping.

M42

Skarbrand has appeared in the Era Indomitus on multiple occasions. He has been banished after each appearance — never permanently, since banishing a Greater Daemon merely sends him back to the warp — and has subsequently returned within decades. The Imperial War Office classifies his presence as an emergency-level engagement requiring Custodes, Sisters of Silence, or Grey Knights response.

He does not coordinate with mortal Khornate warlords. He fights past them when they are between him and his targets.

Before the Throne

Skarbrand had once been Khorne's most-favoured Bloodthirster — the captain of the host that held the Skull Throne's perimeter and the speaker who interpreted Khorne's silences for the lesser daemons. He was the only daemon Khorne had ever named publicly. He was also, by the consensus of every surviving Word Bearers theological account, the bloodthirster who came closest to understanding the difference between Khorne's rage and rage as a tactical instrument. He pursued that distinction past the line.

What Skarbrand finally said in Khorne's hall is recorded by the Imperium and the Aeldari and the Word Bearers' theological library in three different versions. All three begin with the same five words: "I am Khorne, you are not." The remainder differs by source. The result is identical across sources: Khorne struck him from the throne, twice — once with each axe — and exiled him into realspace permanently.

I am Khorne, you are not.

— Skarbrand's first recorded words, before the exile

Lieutenant of the Heresy

Skarbrand's most-documented Heresy-era appearance was at Signus Prime, where Sanguinius and the Blood Angels were lured into a Slaanesh-organised trap that the Greater Daemon Ka'Bandha disrupted by appearing alongside Skarbrand as a co-belligerent of inconvenient kind. The two Bloodthirsters fought each other and the Blood Angels simultaneously. Sanguinius killed Ka'Bandha; Skarbrand withdrew rather than face the Primarch alone, having taken Sanguinius's measure and decided the engagement was not yet ready.

The Black Library theological archive holds Skarbrand's retreat from Signus as the closest a Greater Daemon has come to strategic prudence in recorded post-Heresy history. The Word Bearers' commentary on the same incident is harsher — they hold that Skarbrand declined the engagement because he had already accepted Khorne's verdict that his rage was not infinite, and that the acceptance was the deepest wound the exile carried.

The Sound that Precedes

Skarbrand's physical presence is recorded by Imperial xenos-pathology files at twelve metres standing, eighteen-metre wingspan, body temperature high enough to cause flash-vaporisation of surrounding air within four metres. His arrival in realspace is preceded, every documented instance, by an audible roar that travels faster than its source's physical movement — survivors describe the roar arriving in advance of the wing-shadow by several seconds.

Imperial Astropaths near a Skarbrand-event suffer a specific psychic injury: they hear the roar as an internal voice that does not stop after the daemon departs. The injury is permanent. Astropath conclaves have refused to deploy assets to confirmed Skarbrand-active sectors since 887.M41 by standing institutional order. The order has not been countermanded.