Zhufor the Impaler

From Loyal Servant to Damned Champion

Zhufor was not born to Chaos but broken into it. In his first life he was Balzach, a sergeant of the Storm Lords Chapter, until the sacking of the hive cities of Paramar saw him grievously wounded and dragged from the field a captive of the World Eaters. His new masters subjected him to drugs, torture, and psycho-corrective surgery, methodically unmaking the Imperial warrior he had been and rebuilding him as a slave to the Blood God. Where most such prisoners are simply butchered, Balzach proved worthy of a crueller purpose, and from his ruin rose Zhufor.

Lord of the Skulltakers

Blessed by Khorne and possessed of a strength remarkable even among the Adeptus Astartes, Zhufor climbed swiftly through the ranks of the Berzerkers, rising to Skull Champion and then Exalted Champion by dint of the sheer weight of his slaughter. His ambition would not be contained. Turning upon an allied World Eaters warband, the Skulltakers, he shattered their warriors in a bout of treacherous bloodletting and bound the survivors to his rule, forging them into a single terrible instrument of his will.

The Butcher of Vraks

It was the Siege of Vraks that made Zhufor's name a curse across the Imperium. Sanctioned by Abaddon the Despoiler, he led the Skulltakers to the defence of that doomed Armoury World and carved a red road through its besiegers. Seeking to claim the whole planet as a new Daemon World for Khorne, he united every Khornate warband upon it beneath his banner and struck at the heart of the enemy's power, storming the Apostate Cardinal's palace with his Terminator bodyguard, the Blood Cult, and taking the cardinal captive. In the fighting he slew a Commissar-General of the Death Korps of Krieg and mounted the hero's corpse upon his war-plate as a trophy.

Raider from the Eye

Though Vraks was ultimately denied him, Zhufor slipped away through a Warp portal, abandoning a rearguard of fanatics and daemons to cover his escape. He remains at large, reckoned one of Abaddon's mightiest lieutenants, and leads the Skulltakers on ceaseless raids from the Eye of Terror aboard his flagship, the Blood Dawn. Wherever he descends, he comes to harvest skulls for the Skull Throne, and few who face the Impaler live to speak of it.