White Scars - Disappearance of Jaghatai Khan: Though Jaghatai Khan survived the tumultuous battles of the Horus Heresy, like so many of his brother Primarchs he was cruelly taken from the service of Mankind in the years that followed.An event ten thousand years past, the disappearance of Jaghatai Khan is shrouded in countless legends, many embellished beyond all credibility. The White Scars retain their own accounts, considered by some apocryphal, others historical. One thing is certain: the sons of the Warhawk believe that their gene-sire hunts still, and one day will rejoin them on Chogoris.In order to contain the outlaws, Renegades and aliens that dwelled within the Maelstrom Warp rift and had taken advantage of the disruptions caused by the Heresy to run amok in the Ultima Segmentum, Roboute Guilliman, now the Lord Commander of the Imperium, ordered the surrounding star systems to be reinforced. The White Scars were tasked with the main responsibility for securing the area from their homeworld.Following the calamitous events of the Horus Heresy, Jaghatai Khan led the White Scars for seventy more Terran years, cleansing the Imperium of Traitors and those aliens who sought to take advantage of Humanity's time of weakness.Many worlds once peaceful and loyal had either fallen or were contested, and the Great Khan took to reclaiming them during the Great Scouring with the same zeal he demonstrated whilst prosecuting the Great Crusade.The Imperium had been torn in two by Horus' rebellion, and no part of Imperial space had escaped its ravages. The Yasan Sector was no exception. It was there that the White Scars' homeworld of Chogoris lay, but when the Great Khan returned to rebuild his Legion's strength after the devastating Siege of Terra, he found only misery.Not all of the Yasan Sector's scores of worlds had remained loyal, and in the anarchy of rebellion, the insidious Drukhari, the so-called "Dark Eldar," had seized the opportunity to raid and take slaves with wanton abandon. Thousands were cut down, and thousands more enslaved, carried off through the secret passages of the Webway to meet a fate no mortal human can imagine.Many of those Imperial citizens still loyal to Terra were on the verge of despair.It was only thanks to the garrison left by Jaghatai that Chogoris and some of its key production and recruitment worlds had fared better than the rest of the sector, but these forces had not been entirely adequate. The Drukhari had been able to seize Chogorian tribespeople as slaves.Some of the Great Khan's senior officers argued that had the garrison stayed on Chogoris, and not sent detachments to defend some of the worlds of the Yasan Sector, the Chogorians would not have been lost.Jaghatai waved away these claims, applauding the garrison's warlike and independent spirit. But hatred for those who had taken his people burned in his heart. Replenishing his ranks, the Great Khan took the fight to the enemy, his campaign now one of vengeance.With the Khagan at its head, the effort to reclaim the Yasan Sector met with early successes. Thanks to the foresight of Chogoris' garrison, the Yasan Campaign's momentum was maintained with a steady supply of munitions, vehicles and fresh warriors.It was at this point that the White Scars learned of the Codex Astartes, in which Roboute Guilliman stated that all of the Space Marine Legions should break their forces into 1,000-warrior Chapters. Jaghatai, who had long allowed his khans to operate semi-independently, was in favour of the reforms.The Codex would, for the most part, simply formalise the way in which the White Scars had operated since their inception, and the Khan of Khans saw only virtue in extending even greater freedom to his sons.After the Codex reforms were implemented, Jaghatai asked only one thing from his successors: that they fight the Yasan Campaign to the end. He trusted them to do so without further supervision, and in whatever fashion best suited their strengths. They agreed unanimously.Though it saddened him to see so many of his sons' armour no longer painted in his colours, the Khagan knew that this was only for the better.Their movements would be harder to track and predict, and a completely decentralised structure would allow the Great Khan to pursue his own agenda more fully.The Yasan Campaign was a time of renewed vigour for the Khagan, or so it is said. His hunting grounds of old were filled with the remnants of those who had turned against the Imperium during the Horus Heresy, and he was once again able to indulge in the visceral thrill of new conquests and glorious victories, albeit tainted by the knowledge of the damage done by Horus' treachery.He led the White Scars on battlefield after battlefield, sweeping Ceobos clear of depraved Emperor's Children, uprooting the [[DarkMechanicum]] clinging to Aenope and quelling the mutant uprising on Eoclite. But the Drukhari remained elusive, their attacks impossible for even the Chapter's Stormseers to predict.After much deliberation, Jaghatai discovered a pattern, so elaborate that only a Primarch's genius, and the Great Khan's skill at the hunt, could find it. Calling for reinforcements from the Destroyers, Rampagers and Storm Lords, Jaghatai set his fleet on course for the world of Corusil V in 084.M31.The Drukhari, like all Aeldari, are a species of great and ancient intellect, and it appears that it was their intention that the Khan discovertheir plans as a part of a wider scheme to capture and subject Jaghatai and his sons to twisted experimentation.The tales of the Stormseers say that Jaghatai saw this for what it was and led the assault nonetheless, determined to attack with such speed and ferocity that no manner of preparation would withstand it.The source of the Drukhari raids was a large Webway portal located in the depths of a dark, foreboding forest, too dense for the White Scars and their allies to fight from their metal steeds. This did not phase Jaghatai. Revenge would be had -- honour demanded it.The Khagan and his 1st Brotherhood held the centre of his battle line, driving straight towards the portal. The rest of his forces secured the flanks, wary forpotential ambush and ready to encircle the Drukhari's eldritch device. The White Scars and their allies were as a stick to a nest of stinging insects, and their attack's ferocity was met by a deadly ambush of dozens of bands of warriors, pain engines and all manner of hideous Drukhari creations.Many poured from hideaways concealed by eldritch energy, and the Space Marines were beset on all sides. Scores of the Great Khan's sons died horrific, painful deaths. Others were captured, doomed to a worse fate in the arenas of the Dark City of Commorragh. But the Warhawk kept on, determined to reach his quarry.The Drukhari Archon stood before the portal itself, directing his warriors with flicks of his sword. He was laughing, savouring every ounce of pain being inflicted and suffered across the battlefield. The smile did not leave his face even as he observed the Khagan racing towards him. Without any loss of composure, he simply directed more of his forces in Jaghatai's direction, slowing Jaghatai down and driving him to even greater anger.The Great Khan could not be halted, however. He pushed onwards, his 1st Brotherhood at his side, cutting down foe after foe with his sword. It is said that with his forces failing, the Archon moved to flee into the Webway portal.It cannot be known whether or not the xenos desired to close it before Jaghatai Khan raced through with the entirety of his brotherhood. All that can be known is that as soon as the last White Scar crossed the threshold, the shimmering gateway collapsed.The battle raged on for solar hours after, the remaining White Scars slaughtering without mercy those Drukhari abandoned by their lord, even as they were filled with horror at the apparent loss of their Primarch.For solar days they scoured the battlefield, for solar weeks the rest of the system. The Stormseers searched the Warp for any clue to the Great Khan's whereabouts, but none was ever found.It has been said by some White Scars that perhaps pursuit was not Jaghatai's only goal in following the Drukhari overlord into whatever lay beyond the portal,that perhaps there the Khagan saw an opportunity for freedom without limit and an endless plain to explore and make war in.Those few who express this view can find themselves shunned by their brothers, but the seed of doubt now is long planted. Only the Khan of Khans knows the truth, and the White Scars continue to live in the belief that he will some day return to take his rightful place at their head.Thus it is that the White Scars harbour a special hatred for the Drukhari, even their legendary discipline and judgement slipping occasionally when facing these vile foes in battle. None can say what befell the Primarch, or if he still hunts his prey through the labyrinthine tunnels of the Webway of the Aeldari and the nightmare sub-realities in which their dark kin lurk.The White Scars thus continue to fight in Jaghatai's name, destroying the enemies of the Emperor in preparation for the day when the Great Khan completes his consummate hunt and returns to once again lead his chosen warriors and begin the next Great Crusade to unify the galaxy.Ever since the Great Khan's final hunt, it has passed into Chapter tradition that one battle-brother should be declared "Master of the Hunt," and charged with tracking down those enemies of the Chapter who have somehow escaped its retribution. Every quarter century, the Chaplains preside over the Rites of Howling, where the names and deeds of each nemesis of the White Scars are recounted.The Chapter Master then announces which of these foes shall be punished next. The Master of the Hunt may be the captain of a brotherhood, and in addition to his normal tasks he must make every effort to bring the object of the hunt to heel, to claim his head, and to return it to Chogoris.There, the skull is flensed and masked in silver. Accompanied by much feasting, the grim trophy is set upon a stake along the road that leads through the Khum Karta mountains towards the Palace of Quan Zhou, the mighty, marble-walled fortress-monastery of the proud and savage White Scars Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes.