Editing Nobledark Imperium Notable People (section)

== Kharn the Oathsworn ==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">''''' The World Eater '''''

As a champion pit fighter, Angron was often given his pick of the slave pens for concubines or servants. However, he would find the most downtrodden child slaves and claim them, raising them as his own children. Even after his Thunder Warrior augments and the ensuing madness and instability, he never raised his voice or lifted a hand at any of them. 
Kharn was the first and eldest of Angron's adopted children, and against his father's wishes he bullied his way into receiving the Mk III MP Astartes augments. They would continue to butt heads even as Kharn rose through the legion, but Angron was privately fiercely proud of him. One of Kharn's most treasured memories was when his father surveyed the order and control Kharn brought to the savage legion, and turned to him and said simply "You've done well. In this, and everything else."

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Most historians agree, Kharn the Oathsworn was a pretty magnanimous guy. Whereas Angron commanded the War Hounds through his charisma and willingness to be first in, last out, Kharn led the War Hounds by being a father to his men. He would do anything for them, no matter the cost, and they knew it. When Kharn first joined the War Hounds, he essentially started out as the beleaguered assistant to Angron, albeit one with a lot more proficiency with a chainsword. Whereas Angron was the face of the legion and kept morale high, Kharn was often the one who dealt with actual logistics and kept the wheels greased from day to day. As Angron’s health gradually deteriorated, Kharn found himself increasingly taking on more and more of the responsibilities of running the War Hounds, until he was essentially the leader of the legion in all but name. 

This is not to say Angron was stupid, or Kharn was not a ferocious warrior. Indeed, the two men were more similar than they were different. It is just that the two men tended to play to their strengths when Angron was in command of the legion. Indeed, Angron could actually be rather insightful, it’s just that he tended to be rather straightforward; no need to plan some grand, circuitous strategy when it is possible for you to just go straight from point A to B. In fact, in one instance Guilliman is said to have said of Angron “it was a true pity that the galaxy had wasted such a mind on such a simpleton”.

But there is another name used to describe Kharn, one that is spoken in whispered in hushed tones. The Berserker. The World Eater. Although he never lived it down until the end of his days, the tale of Kharn’s secret shame is a story of how easy it is for men to become monsters, and monsters to become men.

The world was a recently pacified one, one that had seemingly welcomed the Imperium with open arms. Kharn had been dispatched to the world alongside ten other members of what were at that time the most advanced model of Astartes developed. It was supposed to be a simple training exercise between the new Astartes and the local PDF, to see how well marines could operate alongside conventional forces. It turned into a disaster. After setting up camp, Kharn was invited to drink and party with the other members of the Astartes unit. Kharn politely turned them down, preferring to keep his mind clear for the task at hand the next morning. He awoke to a tragedy. His men were all dead, having been poisoned in the night by a technorganic venom specifically designed to work in spite of Astartes physiology.

Kharn went apeshit.

For the next few days, PDF forces were terrorized by an incredibly angry space marine, armed with just a chainsword, a bolter with two rounds in it, and a single-minded desire to know who did this to his men and where to mail their body parts to their next of kin.

The planet had been secretly manufacturing illegal techno-organic monstrosities, and believed the arrival of the contingent of space marines represented the beginnings of an Imperial investigation, rather than an exercise in friendship. Kharn found this out the hard way, when he was led into a trap surrounded by an army of these creations, an accompaniment of traitorous PDF, and the military commander who had overseen the poisoning of his men. The soldiers demanded Kharn’s unconditional surrender. Kharn simply raised his chainsword, and flicked the switch.

It is not clear what happened in the aftermath of that battle, as there were few survivors. The only person capable of walking off the battlefield was Kharn himself, yet given his mental state his testimony is probably not the most accurate. According to the War Hounds, who claim to have heard this story from Kharn himself, Kharn stayed on the battlefield in a daze, muttering the names of his lost men to himself over and over again. According to Kharn, he only snapped out of his trance when he noticed there was a child on the battlefield, a girl who could not have been more than twelve. Seeing the girl made the gears in Kharn’s head start moving again, and slowly he pulled himself out of his daze.
He approached the young girl, taking off his helmet when he realized its visage frightened her, and asked where her parents were. She said she was lost, she had wandered through the woods curious about the noises coming from the battlefield, but she couldn’t find her way back. “Well,” Kharn supposedly said, “let’s see if we can do something about that”, and the two of them walked off the battlefield.

The planet at first tried to claim Kharn had gone AWOL, but Kharn only had to point at the bodies of the technorganic monstrosities and the bodies of his dead comrades and let the evidence speak for itself. Having single-handedly brought an entire army to its knees, the planet threw itself upon the mercy of the Imperium. Kharn had in effect conquered an entire planet in a single day. Thus, the World Eater. Kharn was not proud of the nickname, as it was a reminder of how easily his control had slipped his leash, and he had almost lost himself. The War Hounds existed as a unit longer than most Space Marine legions, but eventually it came time for them, too, to break apart into chapters, most naming themselves after some famous appellation or event in their legion. When that happened, Kharn had one simple request.

“In the years since the incident had taken place, some of the more impressionable members of our legion have taken the wrong message from my story, using the term ‘World Eater’ as a badge of pride. That is not what I intended. As warriors, we must be passionate, yes, but we must also be well-trained and disciplined, or else we risk becoming the very thing we fight. We are War Hounds. Not World Eaters.”

Despite being Terran-born, Kharn only visited his old homeworld a few times after the beginning of the Great Crusade. Like all Old Earthers he and his fellow soldiers held Old Earth in reverence. When they left it a new golden age was starting. Earth had never been so lovely as when he left it. The next time he saw his home was when he returned to defend it during the War of the Beast. It broke his hearts. Shortly after that Kharn had to return to bury his foster father Angron. At that time Perturabo was rebuilding and although it was at the midpoint of the project Earth was starting to know beauty again. But it wasn't the same.

Kharn the Oathsworn never came to Earth again in life, although his body was buried beneath the orchard that now stands where the village he grew up in once was.

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