Escharon

“When the Warmaster leaves for the Gate, we will fight for him. When the Warmaster strikes down planet after planet on his path to Terra we will fight for him. When the Warmaster lays siege to the imperial palace, we will fight for him. And all that with no expectation of thanks or gratitude in word, in action, or in object. But in the mean time, whilst Abbadon sends mewling pawns to beg for bread with nothing to offer but hollow words and empty promises; in the mean time, whilst he asks for my knights and my beasts and my weapons of war; in the mean time, whilst he wheedles and worms his way to power; he gets nothing from me he doesn’t pay for. Go back to your fell master and tell him that my price is not for negotiation.”
-King Escharon of the Tide of Blood

Name: Escharon “The Cthonian” “The King of Scars”

Rank: King

"Warband": Tide of Blood

Gear: Stolen Grey Knight Terminator Armor, Combi Melta, Soulthief (Daemon Halberd), Power Fist

Rules: Hasn’t been used this edition.

King Escharon was the son of one of the barbarian kings of Cthonis. He was one of the first to be inducted into Horus’s legion, for he knew power was that way. He fought strongly and valiantly to protect the freedoms of the imperial people during the crusades, and was very close with several members of the XVII legion. He also was one of the first to turn to the dark gods after the events of Davin’s Moon.

As he saw the uprising failing, he went into the Eye of Terror in the hopes of being flung back in time to a place where he could assure Horus’s victory. Unsurprisingly, he failed, but he has never stopped. The years have been long for him. The time he spends in the unstable portions of the warp mean he has spent 20,000 years traveling since the heresy, kept alive by the will of the four. He has outlasted many suits of power armour, and has recently hunted down Grey Knights to keep himself stocked with armour better able to survive the rigors of the Tzeentchian warpspace he often frequents.

His travels have taught him much. He has learned to tame a great number of warpspawn and other foul creatures, a massive possessed Land Raider called simply the Beast, has served as his mount on many an occasion. After falling out with the rest of the Black Legion due to their lack of honor for their forefather, he has attracted to himself a great many warlords with his philosophy of faith. “All death pleases the four, the spilt blood and sundered body please the lord of battle, the rotting corpse pleases the lord of decay, the pain and suffering inflicted please the lord of excess, and the transitions from life to death and those that occur in the tide of battle please the lord of change.”

Recently, Escharon has been looking for a way to open a portal back to the original siege of Terra. Ideally he would open it when the hordes of Abbadon’s thirteenth black crusade are once more at the gate. Escharon fights to find a way to undo the past and create a truly free empire of men, lead in the name of Horus. And of course, no man better understands his primarch than Escharon, the Cthonian.

Escharon’s gifts in dealing with beasts have lead him to amass an enormous host of daemon engines, some created from Titans. He seeks out the most difficult to control and offers to take them or tame them for a price. But many will only follow his will alone. Over time he has collected many like minded individuals and now has no need for ties with the dark mechanicus to keep his armies supplied. He does keep loose ties though, because the dark mechanicus are often a good source of recruits and inspiration for Escharon, and they seek to understand how he controls such creatures as it would make it much easier than the bindings they use, which while much more effective on a wide scale, are perhaps not quite as efficient in terms of sacrifices.

The Tide of Blood: Although nominally a force under the banner of the Black Legion, the Tide has much more in common, and perhaps better relations, with the warbands originally of the Word Bearers Legion. They make extensive use of daemons and daemonically possessed machines and have absorbed hundreds of warbands over the millennia. There name comes from a spell wrought by the sorcerous elite of any given detachment before battle. The skies fill with rains of blood over the Tide’s forces and the fields of battle are dyed red with it. (Note it has been suggested that the use of corrupted thunderhawk transporters or other technology to just physically dump large barrels of blood over the battlefield before battle may also occur.) After each battle, if possible, towers of arcane and foul design are set up over the battlefields and used to reabsorb the blood succored by the newly dead. WIP Pics: