Editing Jaghatai Khan (section)

==The Heresy==
[[Image:KhanMini.jpg|frame|Mini in action...that is a damn good modeler...]]

Having operated mostly as an independent force for most of the Great Crusade, no one really knew what the fuck the Khan and White Scars were up to when the Heresy went down. The traitors had no idea where the Khan was or what he was doing (except the Alpha Legion, since information is their schtick). On the loyalist side, Dorn suspected that since Jaghatai and Horus had been close friends, he could very well have sided with them. Both Malcador and the Emperor had their doubts about him as well. One wonders if perhaps the Emperor knew about or suspected Cegorach's little switcheroo...

Equally, the Khan had no idea about the murder kegger Horus had thrown in the Istvaan system or anything that had happened afterwards. After the dust had cleared up, the legion received a series of conflicting messages; both sides were making a grab for one of the last legions to pick a team. Jaghatai's immediate response was to side with Horus, but then the Alpha Legion turned up to confuse his [[Just as planned|plans]]. After considering how little info he had, he opted in his typical fashion for the grimdark equivalent of "Fuck all y'all, I do what I want", and set off to do some detective work. Cue an extended road-trip to [[Prospero]], where he found out that [[Leman Russ]] had indeed seemingly killed his best friend [[Magnus]] and burned the planet ''(the fragment of his soul left behind there wasn't too upset about it though, since he eventually realised he had it coming and told the Khan as much)'' but that Horus and company had indeed turned traitor. The ultimate Tzeentchian [[Troll|trolling]] - None of It Makes Sense, and yet All of It Is True! Then [[Mortarion]] turned up and tried to recruit the Khan to the Heresy. After kicking the psykers out of the loyalist legions, Mortarion found himself surrounded by them among the traitors, and now [[What|sought the Khan as an ally in getting rid of them]] there. The Khan told the Death Lord he was an idiot and engaged in an epic duel with him.

The Khan managed to give significantly better than he got in terms of wounds, but the duel was not so one sided as it initially appeared. As the fight wore on, the Khan realized that not only were the few hits that Mortarion landed nothing to be spat at, but the Khan was, for the very first time in his life, actually getting ''tired''. Not only that, but Mortarion, despite having been significantly bloodied, showed no signs of actually going down. The Khan ultimately decided that he was going to have to go for one final, all out attack before he became too tired to continue fighting effectively. Before he could strike however, Mortarion decided to retreat, and this gave the Khan an opening to get back up to his fleet in orbit. There, he put down the warrior lodges among the Scars that had been fomenting pro-Horus sentiment before finally getting his shit together and heading home to Terra. The traitorous Noyan-Khan was impaled on a power sword by Jaghatai in a fit of rage, while the lower-ranking marines were given the chance to redeem themselves or willingly face death for not reneging on a warp-sworn vow (we know now that a few of them went off with some Iron Hands and treated Horus Aximand to a Chogorian facelift, while several others were employed in an attack against Mortarion). Senior figures in the legion noted that the high percentage of Terrans in the rebelling part of the legion meant that the Chogorian part would become more insular and ingrained in their traditional views (which is kind of what happened 10,000 years later on.) The contrast to what happened with the [[Fallen]] [[Dark Angels]] is interesting, as both Terran and "indigenous" elements both, in their own distinctive ways, contributed both in rather spectacular measure to the growth of heresy in that loyalist regiment, failure of both groups to integrate didn't help, but was less so in the way of being the direct problem in and of itself. It also spoke to an issue that the Khan had had ever since joining the wider Imperium; he'd been noted to venerate the Chogorian culture a bit too much. Many of his Terran marines had picked up on this and had felt, ironically, like the Khan did with his own brothers; like unwanted outsiders.
[[Image:Khan.jpeg|thumb|left|Jaghatai Khan kicking arse on Prospero. His helmet is <strike>goofy</strike> rad as hell. Kinda looks like a cross between some <strike>weeb-ass oni</strike> Hindu Raksaksa mask and an actual Cumanian (Tatar) warhelm]]

In the intervening years, the White Scars (and the guerrilla Sagyar Mazan units) played merry havoc with the traitor advance, being the only full-strength (roughly) legion fighting against the forces of the 5 main traitor legions and delaying the advance to Terra for several years. The Ultramarines, Blood Angels, and Dark Angels were more or less stuck behind the Ruinstorm, and the Iron Hands, Raven Guard, and Salamanders had been decimated at Istvaan V. The Iron Hands and Raven Guard would continue with sporadic raids, sabotage, and espionage, but ultimately could do little more due to their numbers. The Imperial Fists were hunkered down in the Sol System, and the Space Wolves had, after being ambushed and thrashed by the Alpha Legion after Prospero, had managed to regroup at Terra. The White Scars' hit and run style tactics proved to be a perfect form of warfare against the juggernaut of the Traitor forces, with the Scars being almost impossible to pin down in any one engagement. However, the Scars couldn't last forever in a war of attrition and Horus's forces ultimately started to box them in. The Khan reluctantly called all elements of the legion together (after launching numerous feints) and made a push to the one glimmer of hope they had left... the mysterious abandoned Dark Glass project hinted at by captured members of the Navigators. Unbeknownst to the rest of the Imperium, the Emperor hadn't staked everything on the nascent Terran entrance into the Webway - Dark Glass was a backup entrance to the galactic Webway network. After beating a retreat from the Emperor's Children and Death Guard (during which Khan strangled and then a [[Rip and tear|tore the heart out]] of a [[Keeper of Secrets]]), the White Scars FINALLY arrived at Terra only to be greeted by Leman Russ, who was still livid that the Scars hadn't taken his side immediately several books ago. The Khan's response was to throw down his broken sword (recently recovered from the insides of the aforementioned Keeper of Secrets) and bluntly tell the Wolf King that after the journey his legion had endured, NOTHING would keep them from the Throneworld and his father. Russ broke face for a bit and [[Awesome|applauded the Khan]] for his perseverance in the face of utter ruin. Thus the Scars finally took their stage on the walls of the Imperial Palace, while Russ decided to <s>shag off Emperor-knows where and get his own legion killed like a moron</s> try to assassinate Horus. He almost succeeded but hesitated out of love for the man Horus had been. For an executioner, Russ could be quite a softie at the most inopportune times.