Lugft Huron

"It is a blessing for a man to have a hand in determining his own fate."

– Blackbeard

"NO, I REFUSE TO PAY THE TITHE! I AM HURON BLACKHEART! I AM THE TYRANT OF BADAB! WARDEN OF THE MAELSTROM! THEY PRONOUNCE MY NAME WRONG ALL THE TIME!"

– Huron turning to Chaos to commit tax evasion.

Lugft Huron as the Chapter Master of the Astral Claws. Note that even his claw has a claw. This is before he got his heresy on...

...And here in full heresy

Lugft/Lufgt Huron (pronounce Lüg-ft Hú-ron) (a name which remains unpronounceable and inconsistently spelled to this day), also known as "Luthor Harkon", "Blackbeard", and other pirate-related names, was the Chapter Master of the Astral Claws Space Marine Chapter, and later the Pirate Lord of the Red Corsairs. He is also known as the "Blood Reaver" and by his more recent name: "Huron Blackheart".

If it's any consolation, the vidya gaem: Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 pronounces his original first name as "Luh-ft", so we can assume that the g is silent. Though that game also pronounces Lupercal as loo-PURR-cull, so take its pronunciations with a teaspoon of salt.

Fun fact; he's actually one of the oldest special characters that the Chaos Space Marines have; he debuted all the way back in the original "Codex: Chaos" for 40K 2nd edition, alongside Abaddon, Ahzek Ahriman, Fabius Bile and Kharn. That's right, Typhus and Lucius didn't show up until around 4th edition!

History

Before becoming a Space Marine, he was originally a cheery Hobbit named Lugfoot Hurkins on his home planet of Bree-VIII. A series of bureaucratic cockups led to his being inducted into the Astartes a few days before his eleventy-first birthday instead of being awarded an Imperial mushroom-farming concession (which was awarded to a confused Technobarbarian from Badab IV named Lurgt Hurkon).

Chapter Master

Lugft Huron is the textbook example of what happens when you let damned bureaucrats run things into the ground. When he became Chapter Master of the Astral Claws, he was an arrogant douchebag that had one job: defend the perimeter of the Maelstrom Warp storm and make sure nothing comes out of it to rape the shit out of the Imperium. But boy, did he ever do his job and did he do it well. After his predecessor got killed by an Ork Warboss, he led his whole Chapter on a merry dance of purging worlds close to the Maëlstrom and generally stabilizing both the region and the situation. Everyone in the general vicinity lauded him as a man of daring action and there was much rejoicing.

Then civilian unrest broke out on his Chapter's homeworld for the umpteenth time. Huron was really tired of that shit, so he decided to take control and put his Marines in charge of things. Thus, the Astral Claws became the de jure rulers of the Badab Sector, with Huron himself as the Tyrant of Badab. This worked out decently well, and while not always fair and just his methods made the Badab sector prosper under his rule. Spurred on by his success, he sent aforementioned fuck-ups a nice petition requesting more troops to decisively take care of the Maelstrom and getting rid of that thorn in the side of the Imperium for good... It was dismissed without even being read!

And that's where everything went wrong forever. When his requests to the High Lords of Terra for increased resources to consolidate his gains were denied, he decided that in the absence of help from the Imperium he would run things his own way. He refused to hand his gene-seed tithes to the Adeptus Mechanicus, and when the Imperium came calling he blocked trade to and from his Sector in order to keep the gathered resources for his military. Eventually, he attracted the attention of the Inquisition and when Huron blew them off, they decided that they needed to remind him who answered to whom in the subtlest, softest way possible. Thus, the Badab War was launched.

In the end, Huron's rebellion was crushed by the forces of the Imperium, as something like a dozen Space Marine Chapters responded. Of course, Huron wasn't just a rebel, he turned out to be a heretic too (although when exactly he turned to Chaos isn't entirely clear). In the final battle on Badab Primaris, Huron was horribly injured by a melta-blast from a dying Zhrukal Androcles (9th Captain of the Star Phantoms) while trying to escape his palace. Losing heart, the Astral Claws fled with their fallen Chapter Master. Lord Apothecary Garreon, Apothecary Secundus Variel, and Master of the Forge Armanneus Valthex (guys who had earned the charming nicknames of "the Corpse Master", "the Flayer", and "the Alchemancer", respectively) set to work trying to save the life of Huron and succeeded, after making him, functionally, Chaos' answer to this motherfucker. However, they had a little help. While comatose, Huron was visited by the Chaos Gods, who offered him the power he craved and vengeance against the Imperium which rejected him. Huron agreed, and with his remaining forces fled to the Maelstrom.

Chaos Lord

He is now known as Huron Blackheart, and those forces remaining under his command are called the Red Corsairs. After several years as a powerful space pirate, Huron would go on to gain control of a significant portion of the Maelstrom (the older, but smaller brother of the Eye of Terror) with his vast pirate fleet, made up of space marines who turned traitor, many other human reavers and some Xenos mercenaries.

One of his greatest achievements as a pirate lord was the capture of the Wolf of Fenris; a Strike Cruiser, where according to some sources (the very skubtastic 4th edition Chaos Codex), some of the defenders turned on their brethren and surrendered to the Red Corsairs.

By the end of M41, Huron is the second most powerful Chaos Lord in the galaxy after Abaddon himself; a fact that annoys Abby to no end, not least because Huron has not been subtle in hiding his ambition to take Abaddon's place as Warmaster. Not only this but Huron did it FAST, as in, in the space of several decades, since the Badab War only ended in 912.M41 so he's a relative newcomer in the grand scheme of things, but he's accumulated more power faster than many more well established warlords.

He's also powerful enough that he can just give away warriors as well by hosting the Skull Harvest in the Maelstrom, he awarded over 17,000 warriors to a sick fuck.

One thing fans tend to miss, while those that are new to the setting get right away is that Huron, being space pirate captain has cybernetics equivalents of a peg leg, hook, eye patch and even captain's parrot in a form of his daemon familiar.

Huron once lost to Typhus, who allowed him to live. In-universe, Typhus reasoned that the humiliation and resentment from such humbling might just open Huron's soul to Grandaddy's influence more. (And out-of-universe, it's evidently because named characters can't permakill one another, except rare circumstances.)

The Red Corsairs possess the second last remaining Blackstone Fortress given to them by Abaddon (why? He's openly planning to replace the guy, that doesn't exactly scream 'give me superweapons' it's surprisingly good tactics from Abby for once, post-Cadia having a Blackstone Fortress puts a target on Huron's back elevating him from pirate lord to potential conqueror of systems meaning the Imperium will divert resources to dealing with Huron that could have been used against Abby). The other one was discovered in M42 and was not in any records until then.

Supposedly he now has the power to be at two places at once.

Tabletop

There are two versions of Huron; before and after. One of which represents him as Chapter Master of the Astral Claws whilst the other is the Chaos Lord form.

Bizarrely, the two versions share virtually nothing in common. As Chapter Master; he has an extra wound & attack and terminator armour with a heavy flamer equipped. He also has the ability to get back up once per game if defeated, lets the entire army use his Leadership 10 and the normal Chapter Master bombardment ability becomes Ordnance 2, because it was Huron himself who said "Big Guns Never Tire". His relic is a pretty amazing AP2 lightning claw that forces re-rolls on invulnerable saves. So non-Chaos Huron is a bit of a monster and with an "as much as a Land Raider" price tag to go with it, not quite as good as some of the other big heavy characters, but by no means useless.

After he got hit by Androcles melta-blast and rebuilt he took a bit of a dive in power, losing that wound and attack, as well as his Terminator Armour. His claw got replaced with an S+2, AP3, Armourbane one, but the Heavy Flamer ended up getting built into it. He takes an Axe for his AP2 needs, but unfortunately he's nowhere near as good in melee as before. All of his army-buff and "living legend" abilities also got lost so he doesn't add as much to his army (but then again, few Chaos special characters do these days), but he gets the Hamadrya which grants him a random psychic power every turn. (Bit of Trivia -Hamadryas is a genus of several butterflies and babboons. The name Hanadrya comes from Greek [1] -a kind of wood nymph. It literally means "Together Tree". If the tree died, it would die. This is probably a reference to the fact that the Hamadryas familiar was spawned from the Maelstrom and Lugft couldn't venture far from the area without the creature weakening. Later he trapped the soul of a powerful sorcerer in a vessel to nourish the Hamadrya.)

For all of the nerfs, his price tag was also reduced considerably, so he makes for a pretty decent, cost effective, unmarked Chaos Lord who can pull a few tricks out of the bag.

There is an argument that the later chaos version really should have been better, especially since other characters who have received a cybernetic rebuild ended up with improved stat-lines, so why didn't Huron? One could wonder why his rules don't really transition from one to the other with similar expectations; (Other than the fact that the Chaos version came first) Probably due to the internal balance of the codex... and increase in stats could end up too much like Typhus who is meant to be the resilient one with psychic powers. Or if they just took the Chapter Master version and "added Chaos" he could end up too similar to Abaddon who is meant to be the top-dog. So essentially the rules differences allowed Huron to be played distinctly from the other character options available.

Gallery

• 

  Lugft when he was the Chapter Master of the Astral Claws.

• 

  Lost the cool flamer but got a weird pet out of it at least.

External Links

• Kitbashing your own Huron Blackheart by Pete the Wargamer.
• Source for the top quote.