Kor'sarro Khan

The Master of the Hunt

Kor'sarro Khan holds, by White Scars custom dating back to the Chapter's founding, the title Master of the Hunt — the office responsible for pursuing the Chapter's named enemies across the galaxy until those enemies are destroyed. The title is, by Chapter doctrine, the closest descent of Jaghatai Khan's personal honorific into the Astartes era. The man who holds it has primarch-derived authority to pursue any quarry he names, with the full backing of the Chapter's resources, for as long as the pursuit requires.

The office is not honorific. The Master of the Hunt is expected to take the field personally against the quarry he has named. The Chapter's record holds eleven Masters of the Hunt across the post-Heresy era. Six died completing a hunt. Three died before completing a hunt and the hunt was inherited by their successor. Two retired honourably, including the previous holder, Akbar Akagi, who relinquished the title to Kor'sarro in late M41 after completing the pursuit of the Drukhari raider-fleet Whisper-of-Wounds.

The Voldorius Hunt

Kor'sarro's defining engagement was the decade-long pursuit of Voldorius the Daemon Prince — a former Alpha Legion commander who had ascended to daemon-prince status during the late M41 and was conducting a series of slave-raids across the galactic east. The Inquisition had attempted to engage Voldorius three times. Each attempt had ended with the Inquisitorial force destroyed and Voldorius escaping into the warp. The Ordo Malleus had concluded, after the third attempt, that Voldorius was not catch-able by conventional means.

Kor'sarro named Voldorius as his hunt. The pursuit took ten Terran years. Kor'sarro tracked Voldorius across nineteen systems, engaged him in seven engagements, and lost in each — Voldorius escaped, every time, with the daemonic mobility that made conventional pursuit impossible. The eleventh engagement was different. Kor'sarro had spent the intervening months arranging the terrain — a void-engagement above the world of Quintus, with the White Scars' navy denying Voldorius the warp egress he had relied on previously. Voldorius could not escape. Kor'sarro took his head.

A hunter does not need to be faster than the prey. He needs only to be more patient.

— Kor'sarro, attributed post-Quintus

The Webway Question

Among the White Scars' Inner Circle — a smaller and less-formalised body than the Dark Angels' equivalent — Kor'sarro is treated as a primary candidate for the eventual role of intermediary should Jaghatai Khan ever return from his disappearance in the Webway. The Khan's status is, by White Scars theology, neither dead nor active — he is on a separate hunt of his own in the warp's pre-Imperial structures, and the Chapter's working assumption is that he will eventually emerge with knowledge the Chapter will need to translate.

Kor'sarro's preparation for that eventual return is not formal. The Inner Circle does not articulate it as a doctrine. What is observed is that Kor'sarro spends a disproportionate share of his between-engagement time in study of pre-Imperial Webway records, Aeldari liaison material the Chapter has acquired through various means, and what one Inner Circle Brother described as "the things the Khan would expect us to have learned by now." Whether Kor'sarro is preparing for the Khan's return or whether the Chapter is preparing him to greet the Khan when he returns is a distinction that may not matter.

M42 Engagements

Kor'sarro has been active throughout the Indomitus era. He led the White Scars' detachment at the Battle of the Falls of Kebria during the early Indomitus campaigns; he was personally present at the engagement that recovered the Star of Chogoris from a Black Legion warband attempting to use it for ritual purposes; he is currently — by late M42 White Scars dispatch logs — conducting a Hunt against an unnamed quarry the Chapter's communications discipline has not exposed.

The unnamed quarry is, by inference from Kor'sarro's deployment pattern, an Alpha Legion command figure operating in the Imperium Nihilus segment. The hunt has been underway for three Terran years. The Chapter's senior Wolf Lords — yes, the term is used informally within the White Scars, despite the obvious cultural conflict with their cousins of Fenris — have placed informal bets on the duration. The longest standing bet is for twelve years total. The hunt is still in motion.