Araghast the Pillager

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Give me a challenge.

"Blood Ravens, hear me! I am Araghast the Pillager!"

– Araghast to the Blood Ravens

Araghast the Pillager of a thousand worlds, Master of Hounds, the Lash of the Black Legion, Champion of the Chaos Gods (also known as Lord Araghast or simply Araghast) was the Chaos Lord (Or more specifically, a Chaos Terminator Lord) leading a Black Legion War-band on Aurelia. Arrogant, bloodthirsty, manly, awesome and very boastful and prone to taunt. Feared far and wide for his terrible savagery, and among the greatest warriors of the Black Legion. He wields a great many weapons, including a power/daemon sword, a combi-bolter, a combi-flamer, lightning claws (of an older design than loyalist variations, meaning that rather than giving you wolverine type claws while leaving your fingers free, the actual claw part is placed over your fingers. So basically he's Lady Deathstrike, pretty appropriate if you bring Cyrus along).

He is also notable as one of only three two three badasses the Black Legion has ever produced (the other two one being Horus and Eliphas he was a Word Bearer, duh - and that says a lot about how awesome Araghast is), and being one of the only three people who have ever lived up to the awesomeness of their Legion's paintjob. A revived Araghast may end up Sindri'ing Abaddon and thus replace the Warmaster with someone who is actually halfway competent (Nah I'd say "halfway competent" describes Araghast pretty well. Lacking a functional Sindri detector is a problem for Chaos Lords it seems), which is a major step up from Abaddon who can't even manage to be a quarterwit.

The wet dream of every Chaos fan is for Eliphas, Araghast, Nemeroth and Sindri Myr to form an unstoppable dream team and lead the forces of Chaos to GLORY.

Chaos Rising

He invades Aurelia. Inciting rebellions and incursions and sending out various strike forces to attack Imperial worlds on Aurelia. On one of the missions,he is seen, along with Eliphas, watching as the blood ravens escape. Araghast states that he allowed them to escape because killing them now will lose the value of the traitor within their ranks (A rather rare and sneaky feat for one who serves A Gigantic Bloodthirsty Maniac who has a fetish for Skulls). He later challenges the Blood Ravens to a battle (Which he soon learns is a mistake he will not live to learn from). Nearing death, he calls for Eliphas to open a portal. But Eliphas, being the awesomest Chaos Lord ever shat out by Relic (but also a motherfucking bastard), leaves him to his fate. He still manages to wound the Blood Ravens rather nicely. Slaughtering many of their followers, destroying their worlds as they did nothing, and managed to put up a much better fight than the Tyranid Hive Tyrant Alpha at the end of the first game. Unless you used Davian Thule. Or Cyrus. Or Tarkus. Or all three of them.

Though the poor Hive Tyrant was mobbed by all five squads of blood ravens, Davian Thule, and Gabriel Angelos all at the same time while Araghast only had to fight four of the seven Blood Raven characters/squads at once, although these four were most likely shitting cheese everywhere with the new upgrades and their possible Heresy rating. While he had more health (about 25,000 hit points more or so) than the Tyrant Alpha, he had the same Goddamn DPS as the Hive Tyrant Alpha, which is to say, if you had the same fucking OP gear, NONE AT FUCKING ALL BECAUSE HE CAN'T PIERCE TERMINATOR ARMOR OR DAVIAN THULE'S SHELL. Sadly, due to this faggotry, he proves to be a lesser challenge than freaking Ulkair, Eliphas, or Martellus' Predator of HAX, who were just painful unless you had Chaos Powers. Oh, sweet, sweet Chaos Powers... But Araghast is and always will be more fun to fight, hitting just the right balance of fun and challenge. Even so, he can one-shot three Terminators with a fireball and at least does some more damage than the friggin Tyrant Alpha. He also seems to get his MOTHERFUCKING game on at his last quarter of health and beats the shit outta everything. Khorne knows why he didn't do that at the beginning, but I digress. And even so, a single Chaos Lord putting up such a fight against 11 Blood Raven Terminators, three scouts, a librarian and a (most likely Venerable) Dreadnought is an act of complete badassery.

He was also both outdamaged and outhealthed by Martellus and Eliphas. Martellus was just pure utter bullshit to fight, his DPS was ungodly, which is made worse by his long range, he called in ungodly large hordes of minions to help him, his armor type is difficult to pierce with most weapons, and he has a fuckton of health. Eliphas somehow has more health than Araghast despite wearing neither terminator armor nor a helmet (and Martellus' tank, don't question it), and can summon giant shrines to Khorne that let FUCKLOADS of Bloodletters fight alongside him and Tzeentch Shrine doombolt spewers are just pure utter bullshit. And bullshit high melee damage. Seriously, Araghast (and any of the traitors other than Martellus) was the only fun major boss to fight.

About Araghast

Apparently someone found him waifu material. Damn bastard.

He died too fucking early in the franchise, THAT IS WHAT WE KNOW OF HIM. BRING BACK ARAGHAST!!! He is an Exalted Champion of Khorne with warp powers...GG relic (Just like Carron and Crull. However, unlike them, he's not JUST a raging maniac, he's a raging maniac who's feared and respected for his phenomenal fighting ability. Something Khorne expects unconditionally from his Champions.Black Legion, and therefore Undivided. He just leans more heavily towards Khorne.)So it is important to note that he is not exclusively devoted to Khorne as he made extensive usage of sorcerers within his Grand Company (the Legiones Astartes version of a chapter) and he himself relied on sorcery in his last battle, teleporting away to catch his breath every now and then and quite clearly intended to flee the scene when he asked Eliphas to open a portal after being reduced to having naught but a small sliver of health.

As stated above, he is very boastful and among his many exploits is the ravaging of a thousand worlds (Which is totally badass. Again, as is stated above, he is prone to excessive taunting. He constantly mocks the Blood Ravens by calling them "Lowly Lick-Spittles", "Dead and Useless as the Empra",and insulted trolled them further by calling them "Brothers", a fad that seems to be growing amongst Chaos Space Marines since Eliphas, it seems. He seems to treat Eliphas quite well. Though like all Chaos Lords,he still treats him (rightly) as a lowly, defenseless, dependent, lickspittle coward. Which Eliphas was until Retribution. Still, he was in Chaos Rising.

He may have sent said incompetent sorcerer to Calderis to attack the Blood Raven initiates with the full knowledge that the sorcerer would probably not make it out alive in order to dispose of his potential threat to his leadership and thus avoid being Sindri'd. He may have also done the same to his Plague champion on Typhon for the same reason. But alas, he still ended up getting Sindri'd, by Eliphas.

Apart from his personality, he's also very powerful. And to prove this point, here's something that will make it perfectly clear: HE'S WEARING FUCKING TERMINATOR ARMOR and unlike some other incompetent fuckwad of the Black Legion instead of staying in the back coordinating what, where, and when shit happens, he's out in the front lines putting that heavy clunky hunk of armor to good use (and admittedly he's rather great at it).

Araghast showing off he's the most Heavy Metal bro in the 41st Millennium

Trivia

• Many fans, at first, thought of him as Eliphas, as he is voiced by Paul Dobson Fred Tatasciore, who did an impersonation of Paul Dobson. (Who was the original voice of Eliphas during Dark Crusade). In skirmish mode, he is voiced by Steve Blum (That guy who does Cyrus' sexy voice) and he does a FUCKAWESOME job of it!! The voice is gonna become lower and angrier in the Retribution. To the delight of some, and the anguish of others. Fuckin' unpleasable fanbases.
• Of all the other previous Chaos Lords (Bale, Crull, Carron) he almost approaches Eliphas' badassery, The only thing negative about him is his habit of making fatal mistakes. Like challenging the Force Commander Hairgel and his squad which resulted in getting his ass whooped. Another is trusting Eliphas to oversee the teleportations which resulted in Eliphas SINDRIII'ing him. Despite this, he actually put up a pretty good fight, and even when he was on death's door, when Eliphas refused to open a portal to take him home, he managed to use his last ounce of strength to RAGE at Eliphas as if he wasn't horribly injured (which he was) and make his last (but somewhat futile) stand against the Blood Ravens. To be fair, as stated above, he does get his game on and goddammit, is it awesome.
• He cannot say anything without a MASSIVE amount of ham and makes up for the lack of hammy lines in Dawn of War 2 on his own. He is then promptly outhammed by Ulkair.
• Some compare him to Christopher Walken's "chaos." Because they are so stupid and so stupid. However, unlike Christopher Walken, Mount Aragats suddenly does not tend to utter strange and irrational phrases (jelly donuts, jelly donuts, etc.) and surprises the viewer without knowing where they are. What he said made them sad. Like the story of Avitus. And that's how clean the player is.
• Araghast has seen Ultramarines:The Movie and was disappointed by its low production values, storyline, inaccurate portrayal of Loyalist and Chaos Space Marines, but praised its music and voice acting. He hopes that fan film The Lord Inquisitor will be better.... which will never happen though as the original programmer decided to trash the project and work on a robot movie instead noone cares about. But fear not. This was not the Death of Hope (pun intended) for an actually good wh40k movie.
• He resurrects the old Warriors of Chaos style in his armour. No seriously, check him out!

Memes

ELIPHAS OPEN THE PORTAL! ELIPHAS OPEN THE PORTAL! ELIPHAS OPEN THE PORTAL! ELIPHAS OPEN THE-

No, I think not.

ELIPHAS!! NOOOOOOOO!!!! YOU TREASONOUS DOG!!!!

Oh yeah, and the rant below possibly counts.

See Also

• Blood Ravens, hear me! I am Araghast The Pillager! Master of Hounds, the Lash of the Black Legion! You, and ALL your kind are COWARDS! LOWLY LICKSPITTLES! You must be emulating that pathetic pile of bones you call your Emperor! You are as dead and as useless as him! I am destroying your worlds, Blood Ravens, yet you do nothing! I see your precious craft, hanging in orbit above Aurelia! I AM HERE! FACE ME, IF YOU DARE!!!
• BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!
• The Blood Ravens thank the Black Legion for this generous gift.