Catachan Jungle Fighters

They're kind of like Vietnam War-esque Diet Space Marines that bench trees and sweat hammers.

This man's knife is as big as his thigh, and his arms are the size of your thigh. Clearly not a knife to be screwed with.

"War is in your blood. Don't fight it. You didn't kill for your country. You killed for yourself. The gods are never gonna make that go away. When you're pushed, killing's is easy as breathing."

– Rambo, Rambo IV

The Catachan Jungle Fighters (also known in the bodybuilding industry as the ABhumans and Diet Spess mehreens) are a Regiment of the Imperial Guard from the Death World of Death Worlds, Catachan (pronounced cata-can). They are mainly noted for having what are quite possibly the largest balls in the entire Imperium, as Catachan is basically Hell and pretty much everything can kill you, including the goddamn flowers. Every animal is carnivorous and/or poisonous, with all carnivores hunting and devouring their smaller counterparts. Basically the Imperial Guard's version of Rambo/Schwarzenegger/Chuck Norris hybrids, super-survivalists based on the US Green Berets/Marines of the Vietnam War and/or British Royal Marines Commandos. They are the toughest motherfuckers in town who are so ripped some believe they are a race of abhumans; they are in fact so muscled they can wear flimsy tanktops to show off their muscle and still get the same grade of protection as a Cadian Shock Trooper in full armor, and the most RIPPED of them can get the same degree of protection as Carapace armor from their ROCK HARD ABS.

Keep in mind that flak armor can stop lasers and carapace armor can block bolter shells from Space Marines. Wonder why the Emprah didn't create a Space Marine chapter out of these badasses... Oh yes, because Marines are forbidden to command armies of mortals, Chapter Worlds are freed from Imperial Tithe, AND Munitorium is sane enough not to lose the source of guys like Sly Marbo.

To make them even more badass, Catachans were later confirmed to be physically and mentally superior to ANY normal human; basically, generations of breeding only the strongest and most swole badasses has resulted in these guys getting a free genetic upgrade... truly mini-spess mehreens. The swoleness is so real, that Catachans are nicknamed "Baby Ogryns" by other guardsmen, although not usually to their faces, as they would then usually end up getting the beating of their lifetime or just outright killed. So, basically they’re an entire world of Hardened Veteran Guardsmen who themselves are probably the only Guardsmen the Catachan can actually respect. Though, amazingly, these ballbreakers don’t let their abilities go to their heads and are largely respected and liked in the Imperial Guard.

A Catachan's favorite weapon is his trusty, simple, utilitarian and old-fashioned knife. If you listen to a Catachan then you'd start to wonder why the Imperium bothers with power swords and nemesis force halberds if steel sharpened on a stone is so good. Some of the various lies told by Catachans include: these knives, which every man and woman and child on the planet has made themselves, are prized throughout the galaxy even more so than the "fancy" and overrated chainswords that take too much maintenance, break often, would probably jam in Catachan flora, and can't be used for hunting because the lubricant would soil the meat. Orks absolutely love these guys - any respectable Ork would trade a chainsword or chop off his own arm to trade for their knives. Especially so for their biggest, more a sword really than a knife - its renown among da Orks is known as "Da Cutta". In return, a Catachan would rather give up his knife arm than his knife. Other favoured weapons amongst Catachans are the Flamer/Heavy Flamer, Sniper Rifle, Shotgun, and Demolition Charge. Using a Heavy Flamer in dense foliage is regarded as both safe and manly by the Catachans, who are balls-out rock hard.

Catachans don't like Commissars that much, mostly considering them to be arrogant, dolled-up pussies. Usually most commissars end up "accidentally" walking into a Catachan trap (aka their knives and lasbolts) or "disappear" in different ways. The one individual to escape from this is Colonel Greiss, by merit of being such a balls-out hardcore motherfucker that the Catachans could not help to respect him. Along with the Cadians they're the last kind of Guardsmen who you can buy GW made plastic models for from the source; for everyone else you either go third party or buy from Forgeworld (if they're the Death Korps anyway. Though it's not too hard to use the Death Korps to stand in for the Steel Legion), and while this may sound great; it's worth remembering that Catachan's models are... pretty infamously ugly (although this has more to do with GW's atrocious studio painting back in 1989, compared to other models from that time they're actually quite detailed and dynamic). With Chenkov and Al'rahem's removal they're also the only source of non-Cadian or Commissariat special characters in the codex.

But its not just prissies that Catachans have been known to have issues with (They use the words "Cadian" and "Mordian" as insults, basically meaning uptight pussies. Though, probably more like “brainwashed toy soldiers” than actual cowards.), even tough n' gruff regiments like the Armageddon Ork Hunters have been known to have problems with them. This is due to the fact that 3 Catachan regiments were sent by badass Yarrick himself to help the Ork Hunters during the Third War of Armageddon, and ended up being better at killing Orks than the actual ORK HUNTERS. Apparently the night sky around the Ork Hunter's Cerberus Base was almost permanently lit with forest fires, and Orks could be heard screaming in every direction as the Catachans did their thaang. This obviously caused some jealousy with the Ork Hunters, and a bitter rivalry has existed ever since.

And, to top it all off, while everyone else was shitting their Munitorum-issued breeches when the Cicatrix Maledictum was expanding, the Catachans were busy kicking Chaos ass off their planet after it was exposed to a full scale invasion. Meanwhile other regiments like the Mordian Iron Guard ended up losing their worlds and getting raped by Tzeentchian Daemons needing Astartes and/or space elves to save their worlds. Upon reaching Catachan and discovering that the natives had already wiped out the invasion, the Indomitus Crusade simply made a pitstop to gain even more fuel units of awesome than they had when they left Terra to retake all the overrun precious space.

With how batshit insane and horrific everything was during the Age of Strife, it seems highly likely that the Catachan Jungle Fighters are a good example of the average human during the Great Crusade. Which would also explain why normies were able to do things like stalemate entire Space Marine Legions during the Horus Heresy and why hordes of daemons bum-rushing them didn't stop faze them. Remember that Space Marines were created due to the extremes of environment and combat on most worlds the Imperium liberated/conquered. That says a lot about the people there. And Holy Terra was basically a techno-horror equivalent of Catachan before unification was complete. Not as deadly (or just had a large enough starting population), but definitely an extreme in survival and filled with technological monstrosities from nightmares, mutants lurking in the shadows, and daemons doing their thing. Oh, and witches.

Catachan Devils

"If it bleeds, we can kill it."- Dutch, Predator

Yeah, yeah, we know that Catachan has a big scary monster called this, but the elite of the already elite Jungle Fighters are also known as Catachan Devils, and form into units known as Catachan Devil Squads. These are the Swole-Kings, the baddest of the bad, the best Rambos on a planet full of Rambos. These elite warriors are basically specialists, masters of virtually every style of warfare, sent into the most dangerous of situations to perform raids, sabotage enemy war efforts and generally fuck up whatever is unfortunate to come their way. Their esteemed ranks include a man who crushed a Tyranid Ravener's neck with his biceps, and a dude who can take on entire armies. Don't know who i'm talking about? Then read on! (also, what's wrong with you?)

These guys were also a unit in DOW 2's Retribution DLC, they quickly became renowned amongst players as "Anti-Everything Sqauds", as they were capable of fucking up virtually any infantry and light vehicle unit if used correctly. They also had a badass voice actor who spouted out a shit ton of 80's action movie quotes, whilst sounding as if he drank gasoline and ate matches every day of his life.

Catachan: A very, very, very, very, very shitty place to live

There are women with the Catachan Jungle Fighters, and they're even tougher than their male counterparts, since they have to raise the bastards!

"Out there beyond that fence every living thing that crawls, flies, or squats in the mud wants to kill you and eat your eyes for jujubes."

– Colonel Miles Quaritch

If you think it sucks where you live... well, you know absolutely nothing. Here are just a few reasons why Catachan is the last place in the entire galaxy outside the Warp or Comorragh you would (or should) visit. It is canonically stated as being the worst death world in the ENTIRE Imperium, nudging out even the likes of Fenris and Cretacia... pussies:

• Humanity is near the BOTTOM of the food chain.
• Half of the babies are eaten violently before they are three.
• Half of those survivors are then eaten before they are ten, so you have a 1/4 chance of survival to adulthood.
• You have to be a deadly fighter by the time most humans have learned to spell
• Every living thing on the planet is poisonous, carnivorous, or both. Even the plants, like the Brainleaf that takes over the minds of anyone that comes into contact with its leaves (which it can shoot several yards away), and the Spiker, which turns anyone who is pricked by one of its spines into another Spiker.
• Agriculture is impossible on Catachan's soil. As a result all your food either comes off-world or from whatever animals the hunting party managed to subdue. Do note that because every animal on Catachan is designed to kill, any non-venomous creature you meet will either be a powerful warrior hunter beyond reason or cunningly brutal predator, so dinner is more likely to be the diner when bringing them down.
• Most predators on Catachan aren't just giant monsters like you'd find on Fenris or Cretacia. That would just be too easy. Many of Catachan's most lethal killers are small and seemingly harmless, so they will almost certainly kill you before you even see them. An example of this are the Heretic Ants (named because they start by eating away at men's soles) and the Catachan Barking Toad, which explodes into a cloud of absurdly lethal poison when startled that kills everything within a one kilometer radius- including the toad itself. If that isn't enough, even Power Armour can't protect you. In fact, no known armour can prevent the toads explosion from reducing you and everything else to a pile of steaming goop.
• There is so much dense jungle and so many deadly animals that Catachan does not need a planetary defense system, as the wildlife scares off the Tyranids and the Orks(who actually live there, but try to escape this hellhole as fast as possible). Only Hardcore Khornate Chaos Space Marines were brave mad enough to attack Catachan some time after Great Rift opening, and if you asked them why, they would have said: "Why the fuck not? This planet is fucking amazing for us." Needless to say, all of them feed Catachan's analogue of worms now. The effectiveness of Catachan's ecosystem is so good that it and the Catachan Jungle Fighters on the planet managed to repel a full-fledged daemon invasion when they were caught directly in the middle of the Great Rift. Yes, not even the reality-bending bullshit of the Warp can stop Catachan and the Devils.
• Some of its wildlife is so deadly, that they have been released on worlds just to prevent invasion. (With hilariously predictable results; Ie: Infestations, killing the poor bastards who were already living there)
• You have to burn the jungle away from your village with a flamethrower at least once a day.
• The planet's major export is soldiers. No, wait. The planet's only export is soldiers.
• You live at several times Earth's gravity. But it's not THAT many times, or the Catachan people would be a good deal shorter, yet for some reason they are taller than most humans despite having no biological modifications or mechanical modifications. That we know of. Perhaps the original colonists (which was likely a crash landing or penal colony) had gene mods. Maybe even crafted from the fauna of Catachan itself...
• Or in other words: Living on Catachan is like living perpetually in the first stages of a Tyranid invasion. In fact, some Magos Biologi have theorized that some of the wildlife (such as the Catachan Devils- monstrous half-scorpion half-centipede horrors that are capable of tearing apart tanks on their own) may have actually been Tyranid bio-forms that were separated from the Hive Mind and went feral in the distant past. In an issue of White Dwarf, Games Workshop even had the Catachan Devil as a Tyranid unit.

Positive side

"When I joined the Corps, we didn't have any fancy-shmancy tanks. We had sticks! Two sticks, and a rock for the whole platoon - and we had to share the rock! Buck up, boy, you're one very lucky Marine!" - Sergeant Major Avery Johnson

There are, however, some positives that balance out all of the bad, bad things about being a guardsman from Catachan. Assuming you live long enough to enjoy them.

• Your muscles will be so thick that you count as having flak armor, even without a shirt on. If you wax your chest and liberally apply oil, it acts similarly to Space Marine armour. Only Catachan veterans know why this works. (it's because almost everything will slide off your abs up to and including battlecannon shells)
• Commissars seem about as intimidating as a grot compared to the horrors you've grown up with.
• You get to kill Commissars
• You are so badass that you use the terms "Cadian" and "Mordian" as an insult.
• You're able to kill Orks with your bare hands. If that doesn't work, you can use the FUCKHUEG knife you get make growing up.
• You might be led by Colonel "I ate a Miral landshark for breakfast" Straken.
• You might also be led by Gunnery Sergeant "I headlock Tyranid Raveners to death" Harker.
• You might get surprise help from Trooper "I killed twenty three Orks in one fight with a knife" Arden
• You can arm-wrestle a goddamn ork.
• After all you went through growing up on your homeworld, most of the hardships of being in the Imperial Guard will be a joke to you. To a point. There are some enemies even Catachan can’t prepare you for facing. Physically, but mentally you’ll be golden.
• You can make Hollywood Action Heroes look like Justin Bieber by comparison.
• You are better at killing Orks than soldiers who actually specialise in killing Orks.
• It's very easy to get laid(if you can beat the woman in a fight that is and manly tomboy muscle chicks that is); there'd have to be a lot of screwing to keep the human population up on a place like this (only drawback is the competition for a partner would be high and the 80% of the ladies are butter faced roid ragers). If you like muscles, you'll like this place. Normally you’d think they would keep the women safe because no shit. But Catachan is so dangerous even that isn’t really an option. Well, shit.
• Fuckhuge Sword-knife
• Sly Marbo

Also see

• Catachan Guardsmen dealing with pesky Eldar