White Scars - Invasion of the Kolarne Circle: This was but the first part of the Khagan's strategy, for tradition alone would not suffice. In the wake of the games and ceremonies conducted on Chogoris, he led the combined ranks of the newly christened White Scars on campaign, the first battles they had fought as a unified host since leaving Terra.The Khagan chose the lawless worlds of the Kolarne Circle for his initiation campaign. This region of space had been scouted several solar decades before by the 103rd Pioneer Company, the Soul Hunters, and was found to be teeming with wild outposts of renegade strains of Mankind and roaming xenos hosts.On each of the dozens of feral and hellish worlds that made up the Circle, a long and vicious struggle awaited the White Scars, with few obvious gains in terms of strategic resource or value. However, the Khagan had chosen this battleground and his strategy with care.He set his Legion against enemies that could not be overcome by any one company alone. Only by working as one Legion would they prevail. He dispersed the Keshig he had raised from Chogoris, the core of his new White Scars throughout the various companies, warriors whose names would only grow with the passing of years: Qin Xa, Targutai Yesugei, Hasik Noyan-Khan and others besides. These warriors he trusted to spread his teaching and to lead by example, to stand as his champions among the Vth Legion as it went to war in his name.Of the 80,000 warriors that they led into the fighting, one in ten would perish in the five Terran years of struggle to cleanse the Circle, a baptism of fire and blood that sealed the bonds between the survivors stronger than any simple oath. The Orkish hordes of Sengr Mar and Vorgheist were cut to pieces in a series of hit and run campaigns that bore the tell-tale hallmarks of the Chogorian plains tribes' tactics.Severely outnumbered by their foe, these tactics, intimately familiar to the Chogorian initiates of Jaghatai's inner circle, were best suited to make the most of the White Scars' native ferocity and war-honed skills.Those companies assigned to the deepest systems of the Circle fought alone and unsupported for almost three Terran years before the remainder of the Legion secured the outer regions. Here the long-honed survival skills of the Pioneer Companies were put to the test, wedded to the Chogorian recruits' savagery and talent with a blade.Where other Legions might have faltered or fallen back to regroup, losing the momentum of victory, these rugged warriors thrived, taking heart from the presence of their new lord.In every battle in which he fought, Jaghatai led the assault. At first, the Legion simply followed him into the maelstrom but as tales of the Primarch's wild valour and consummate skill spread among the warriors of the Vth Legion, they soon began to compete to fight by his side.It was his example that stood as their banner throughout the conflict and it was to the Khagan and each other whom they were bound, not to the distant dream of the Imperium or any one of its worlds, but only to the Khan of Khans and the savage joy he took in war and in life.In those turbulent times, such things were considered of little note, for none would countenance the idea that a Primarch sworn to the Emperor would or could ever forsake his vows and, as such, absolute loyalty to the Khan was considered the same as absolute loyalty to the Imperium.With the final battle for the Kolarne Circle fought and won upon the desolate ash-fields of Kolarne itself, the many inhabited worlds fell into the Great Khan's hands. Those worlds had served to bind his Legion together in blood and war, and now they would serve to rebuild it. From the wide plains of Chogoris, the rugged wastes of Kolarne and Old Earth's many recruitment camps, the Khagan replenished the ranks of the Legion and the White Scars emerged from the Kolarne Circle campaign a Legion reborn.No longer were they a shadow that haunted the fringes of the Great Crusade -- the Great Khan had brought them into the light and he intended The First Blooding to stand at the forefront of the Emperor's Great Crusade, shoulder to shoulder with the other Legions.