Bloodborn
| Bloodborn | ||
|---|---|---|
| Battle Cry | Unknown | |
| Origin | Skull Harvest tournament | |
| Warband Leader | Honsou | |
| Base of Operations | Medrengard | |
| Strength | Destroyed | |
| Allegiance | Chaos Undivided | |
Not to be confused with Bloodborne, the Dark Souls spinoff for the PS4.
The Bloodborn was a Chaos warband in Warhammer 40,000. It was led by the biggest sick fuck in the galaxy, the Iron Warriors Warsmith named Honsou. It has nothing to do with a video game of the almost-same name, though it's pretty gothic too.
History
The Bloodborn were started when Honsou engaged in a little science project to create new Space Marines by shoving preteen boys back into wombs of immensely obese women. Thankfully, Uriel Ventris turned up and wrecked all of these plans. This made Honsou just a little upset.
Honsou decided the best way to show how ticked off he was by killing every Ultrasmurf in the galaxy and then smashing their worlds apart for good measure. You can’t say Chaos doesn’t do things by half. To achieve this, he took part in Huron Blackheart's Skull Harvest, where Chaos warbands and mercenaries would compete and whoever won would gain the right to lead the assembled host. After a number of bouts of bitchslapping, Honsou won and led his delightful new band of scum and villainy off to trash the Ultramarines. On the way they hooked up with M'kar the Reborn, former Dark Apostle of the Word Bearers (who took part on the assault on Ultramar during the days of the Great Crusade, although he didn't accomplish much of anything), Daemon Prince of Chaos Undivided (although it's not clear how, given he didn't accomplish much. Its probably just the Chaos Gods doing it for the potential lulz, like what they did in Abaddon's case.), and all-around failure, who became the patron of the host. M'kar started calling the assembled warriors the "Bloodborn" to troll Honsou, who disliked the name.
Honsou's first act of masterful trolling was to virus bomb the world of Tarsis Ultra, where Ventris and his Company had recently gotten ship-whomped repelling the Tyranids so the Inquisition wouldn't virus bomb the planet in the first place. He then began his assault of Ultramar proper, but here things started to fall apart. Eventually, he lost a series of intense battles, and the Bloodborn ended up shattered; M'kar was banished back to the Warp (maybe permanently this time), and Honsou fled Imperial retribution, only pausing to shake his fist and scream that he'd be back like a Saturday morning cartoon villain. Of course, given he assaulted the one of the most-defended sectors in Imperial space on little more than a whim, he just might return...
(Keep in mind that Honsou's invasion killed just as many Smurfs as the Battle of Maccragge. The Smurfs really need those Primaris reinforcements)
Organisation
The Bloodborn was a highly mixed force, being centred on the remains of Honsou's great company and other allied Iron Warrior warbands. Other factions that took part in the Skull Harvest or joined up en route includes some Kroot mercenaries; a Loxatl warband; corsairs; blade dancers; and several bands of traitor marines from the Claws of Lorek, the Skulltakers, the Apostles of Minthras, and the Death Shadows.
Besides M'kar and Honsou, the major leaders of the Bloodborn were as follows:
- Cadaras Grendel, former Captain of Arms for Warsmith Berrosus and Honsou's chief lieutenant. Was only following Honsou for the prospect of a good fight, but actually not a Berzerker (indeed, he briefly defected from Honsou to a Champion of Khorne, but decided Honsou would be more likely to succeed without getting him needlessly killed). Ultimately, he was killed by former Raven Guard Captain Ardaric Vaanes.
- Ardaric Vaanes: A disgraced and exiled Raven Guard captain, who ended up throwing in with the Red Corsairs, fought at Uriel Ventris' side during his assault on Honsou's fortress, then had a falling out with him and. After Honsou got tired of fighting from fortresses (because his favorite fort got blown up), he threw in with Honsou and stayed until he got captured when the Bloodborn attacked Ultramar. Although he didn't start to worship Slaanesh directly, he started to fall under his/her sway, and started to have occasional flights of fancy involving dismembered body parts. Under Honsou, his main job was more guerilla actions, and using his skills and friends to teach the Newborn to fight like a real man. He and Grendel hated each other. (He killed Grendel. We mentioned that, right?)
- Kaarja Salombar, the Corsair Queen, who lead a group of Corsairs that joined Honsou during the Skull Harvest. Salombar was strongly hinted to be half-Eldar (and given that the Corsairs were dressed in bright and lurid costumes, implies that she's a Dark Eldar rape-baby). She spent the war rampaging across Espandor, before giving Cato Sicarius a run for his money, literally dancing around the Second Captain. Ultimately, she got stabbed by Sergeant Scipio Vorolanus with the Company Standard, and Sicarius cut her head off.
- Vortheer Tark, renegade Magos of the Dark Mechanicus. If any one could out fail Abaddon at tactics, it was Tark. What made him so dangerous is that he could take any mechanical device all the way down to a pair of nail clippers, and turn it into a death machine that could take out whole squads of Ultramarines. He nearly had two companies torn to shreds until Torias Telion blew up his forges with him in them.
- Notha Etassay, Master of the Blade dancers and Champion of Slaanesh. He (she? It's kinda hard to tell) was going along with Honsou for the thrills and LOLs (and because Honsou gave Etassay such a good beating at the Skull Harvest that he had to find a clean set of spandex afterward). Ultimately killed during the attempt to free M'kar, when he willingly took on an Eversor assassin. We've mentioned that followers of Chaos often lack basic common sense, right? But to be fair (and because it was mildly awesome), he fought almost well enough to win; but Etassay did something truly psychotic, and tried to fight clean. A psychotic perfectionist doesn't count a fight as a proper win unless it was won fair and square, I guess.