Ibram Gaunt

The Loss of Tanith

Ibram Gaunt was a Hyrkan Commissar with a senior officer's commission — an unusual hybrid rank Slaydo had created for him — when he was assigned to oversee the founding of the Tanith Light Infantry. The Tanith were a freshly raised regiment from a forested world on the edge of the Sabbat Worlds. Their founding ceremony was interrupted by a Chaos invasion that destroyed Tanith entirely while the regiment watched from the embarkation orbit.

Gaunt took the regiment into the Sabbat Worlds Crusade as the First-and-Only — there would never be another Tanith Founding because there was no longer a Tanith. The regiment's nickname, the Ghosts, came from that wound and from their preferred deployment as stealth-scouts.

The Campaigns

The Sabbat Worlds Crusade ran for decades. Gaunt led the Ghosts through Necropolis (the Stalingrad-scale defence of Vervunhive), through Sabbat Martyr (where the cult of the resurrected Saint Sabbat finally proved itself), through Traitor General (the deep-cover infiltration that recovered an enemy command staff), through Only in Death and a dozen other engagements.

The regiment dwindled. Officers died. New officers were promoted from the survivors. The Ghosts became a family in the dysfunctional, irreplaceable way that long-serving military units become families.

Men of Tanith, do you want to live forever?

— Ibram Gaunt, attributed Necropolis

The Saint and the Anarch

The Saint — the reincarnated Sabbat, prophesied saviour of the crusade — singled Gaunt out repeatedly across the campaign for tasks that bordered on the impossible. He accepted each. He did not always succeed. He was never punished for the failures because the Saint understood the cost.

The Anarch, the final Chaos antagonist of the late crusade, was the closest Gaunt came to confronting his own grief weaponised against him. He survived. So did, narrowly, the regiment.

Legacy

Gaunt is still notionally on active duty in late M41. The crusade is winding down. The regiment is below half its original strength. He has been promoted, formally, into commands he refuses to accept because they would separate him from the Ghosts.

Dan Abnett's sixteen-novel record is the longest-running Imperial Guard series in Black Library. It is also the most-recommended entry point for readers who want 40K from a mortal perspective.