White Scars army rules, detachment abilities, stratagems and lore for Warhammer 40k, with links to the full unit datasheet table.
The White Scars, who call themselves the "Horde of Jaghatai" and were originally called the Star Hunters during the early Great Crusade, are a Loyalist Space Marine Chapter and one of the First Founding Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes.
Known and feared throughout the Imperium of Man for their highly mobile way of war, the White Scars are considered the masters of the lightning strike and hit-and-run attack and are particularly adapted to the use of the Astartes Assault Bike as their mechanical steeds and their forces contain an unusually large number of Bike Squads compared to other Chapters.
Bearing the ritual scars of bravery, these fierce warriors fight with all the tribal savagery that define the fierce steppe nomads of their homeworld Mundus Planus, known to them as Chogoris, bringing swift death to all of the enemies of the Imperium.
The fierce, honour-scarred battle-brothers of the White Scars Chapter are the inheritors of the V Space Marine Legion. Recruited from the most savage nomad tribes of the Feral World of Chogoris, the White Scars fight in the manner of the nomad warriors of the steppes.
Mounting lightning assaults utilising the fastest of vehicles, the White Scars descend upon their foes in an unstoppable torrent, their hearts filled with savage joy and the battle cry "For the Emperor and the Khan!" on their lips.
The primarch of the White Scars was the mighty Jaghatai Khan, the first and only warrior to have risen to such power that he could unite every one of the wild tribes of the Chogorian steppes into a single body. He achieved all this before the time when the Great Crusade reached Chogoris and the Primarch was re-united with his father.
The young Jaghatai rose quickly to command the tribe that had adopted him, and by the strength of his rhetoric as well as his arm, he united the clans against their murderous city-dwelling oppressors of the Palatine empire. The steppes are said to have run red with blood as warriors united under Jaghatai's black horsehair banner and avenged every wrong ever done to them.
The cities were destroyed and their armies set to the sword, until finally, all of Chogoris belonged to the tribes of the steppes. Mere solar months later, the Great Crusade reached Jaghatai's new-won kingdom, and upon setting eyes upon his father he knew that here was a man who shared his vision of human unity. Jaghatai understood that a far greater prize than any he could have imagined lay before him -- the reunification of the entirety of Mankind.
The ranks of the V Legion were swelled by the intake of warriors inducted from Jaghatai Khan's fierce army, the Legion inheriting the traditions of the Chogorian steppes nomads. Soon, the savagery of the tribes had bred itself into the Legion's gene-seed too, but it was tempered by the fierce sense of honour and justice embodied so perfectly by the Legion's Primarch.
The White Scars fought with valour and determination throughout the Great Crusade, though the years immediately preceding the Horus Heresy were spent mired in a campaign against an Ork Empire centred on the Chondax System.
It was at the climax of this gruelling war that word arrived of the Warmaster Horus' treachery, and Rogal Dorn bade his brother Jaghatai to join with the Space Wolves of Leman Russ and return to Terra in preparation for the Traitors' assault.
Anticipating such a move, the Warmaster despatched the Alpha Legion to engage the Space Wolves. Jaghatai was faced with the dilemma of aiding his brother Russ or answering Dorn's request.
Forced to choose between his duty to his brother and duty to the Imperium, Jaghatai chose the latter, though the choice was far from easily made.
In the wake of the Long Night of the Age of Strife and the Unification Wars of Terra in the late 30th Millennium, the Emperor of Mankind sought to unite all of Humanity under one banner and end inter-Human conflict.
The Emperor hoped to ensure Human domination of the Milky Way galaxy, a conquest He judged necessary if Mankind was to survive the never-ending threats to its existence embodied by Chaos, the myriad hostile xenos species and its own fragile Human nature.
In time, when the Emperor's eye first began to fall beyond Terra, He began to raise new armies to fight His Great Crusade. He drew these new troops in part from the forces that had already unified Terra during the Unification Wars of the late 30th Millennium. To carry out the Great Crusade and reunite all the scattered colony worlds of Mankind beneath the single banner of the Imperium of Man, the Emperor created the genetically-enhanced transhuman warriors of the Space Marine Legions.
These forces would serve as the speartip of His Great Crusade that began in ca. 798.M30, bringing the light of the Imperial Truth and enforcing Imperial Compliance with the new regime on every human world encountered.
To each of His Legions, the Emperor bestowed a genetic legacy that would mould them into a set role, making each a matchless tool for the prosecution of that role.
The Vth Legion were the pathfinders of the Great Crusade, ever in uncharted territory and far from the borders of the expanding Imperium, and oft-forgotten by the chroniclers that followed in conquest's wake.
Organised into small, mobile units, the Vth Legion ran before the armies of the Emperor during the final conquests on Terra, and then across the stars, sowing confusion and death in their wake.
They were the swift blade that probed for weakness before a sudden and deadly strike, not the sledgehammer that some of their brother Legions had become. A subtle and deadly weapon in the hands of a master strategist, the Great Khan, Jaghatai, would come to forge these outcasts of the Legiones Astartes into a force that would overturn the scales of destiny itself.
As the dark days of the Horus Heresy unfolded, these unpredictable warriors were doubted by many, their loyalty questioned by those who should have been allies and assumed by those who would become enemies. Often the first Legion into the wilds at the edge of those few star charts to survive the Long Night of the Age of Strife, the White Scars had ever operated without the support of their brethren and rarely acted in concert with the other Legions.
Where their brother Legions built legacies of trust and accumulated interlinked webs of treaties and oaths of support between them, the White Scars remained separate. What had at first been a matter of strategy soon became a tradition, one that saw the Vth Legion become a solitary and reclusive force, renowned for their independence and wilful nature even among the Astartes.
Such was their reputation at the outset of the Horus Heresy, that those who sought to rule the Imperium, be they emperor or tyrant, eyed the Legion as a prize to be won and leashed to their ambitions, a fulcrum upon which to lever Mankind's civil war in their favour.
As has been noted, the Vth Legion never adhered closely to the strictures of the Principia Belicosa, that great military treatise written by the Emperor that informed the basis of most of the early Space Marine Legions' organisation and structure. Lacking in the numbers that allowed many of the other Legions to operate as fully-fledged war hosts, the Vth Legion was originally organised into small "Pioneer Companies", each operating as a separate and independent force.
This independence of operation and command was both a necessity due to the size and mission of the early Vth Legion and a legacy of the fierce spirit of its original Terran recruits. Each Pioneer Company operated as an augmented line company, comprising perhaps 1,000 Legionaries and a varying array of specialist detachments, with each unique in its exact configuration and total fighting strength.
Over the first standard century of the Great Crusade, these Pioneer Companies continued to deviate from the standard organisational pattern of the Principia Belicosa, in part due to the increasing difficulty of resupplying them. The rediscovery of Primarch Jaghatai Khan on Chogoris brought an end to this era of independent operations and saw the Legion go through a complete re-organisation.
By 865.M30, there were approximately 70,000 warriors in the Vth Legion, which would later increase to around 95,000 at the peak of the Legion's strength shortly before 007.M31. The Great Khan reformed these warriors into a number of "hordes", a formation that stood above the "brotherhood" or company in the Legion's structure.
In creating his new Legion, the Great Khan was careful to split up the old Pioneer Companies, mixing warriors of differing origins together with new recruits from his homeworld of Chogoris to constitute the new hordes. Most documents dating to that time place the number of original hordes in the Legion at five, although some accounts place the number as high as seven.
The exact number is difficult to ascertain due to the irregular size of these formations, as both the original hordes and those that would follow varied wildly in size, with the smallest numbering little more than 5,000 warriors and the largest as many as 20,000. The difference in size did not appear to indicate any tactical or strategic speciality, but rather was tied to the will of the horde's commander, known in the newly re-organised White Scars as a "noyan-khan".
Indeed, the various hordes often fluctuated wildly in size during the transition from one noyan-khan to another, with warriors transferring between hordes, or even splitting off to form new hordes at the whims of either the noyan-khan or Jaghatai himself. This process seems to have been intended to allow each individual horde commander to operate efficiently within the bounds of their ability and strategic preferences, rather than enforcing a strict, uniform organisational system upon them.
Whether this is the spectre of the old Pioneer Companies and their independent spirit, or part of the Great Khan's Chogorian cultural heritage is unknown, but its effectiveness when combined with the free-spirited nature of the Vth Legion has been demonstrated in battles beyond count. It did, however, cause a number of difficulties with both their brother Legions and with the logistics and command echelons of the Divisio Militaris of the early Imperium.
A number of Great Crusade operations encountered problems properly classifying White Scars detachments, both for purposes of resupply and of properly gauging the threat level of opposing forces.
The predominant unit of social organisation among the nomadic people of the steppes of Chogoris is the tribe, a fact reflected in the organisation of the present-day, post-Heresy White Scars Chapter. Once a young warrior is selected from the feuding tribes of the steppes, loyalty to his tribe is replaced by loyalty to the Chapter and the Emperor of Mankind.
As their Primarch did during his campaign to unite the steppes, recruits from different tribes are mixed together in the White Scars' squads. Each squad of White Scars Astartes becomes part of a "brotherhood," a type of unit that is roughly equivalent to a standard, 100-Astartes company.
Each brotherhood is led by an officer known as a "khan," who is essentially the White Scars' version of a standard Space Marine company captain.
At the time of the Great Crusade in the late 30th Millennium, the White Scars did not make use of standard Astartes rank designations, or ordered companies, and instead differentiated their companies as "brotherhoods", such as the "Brotherhood of the Hawk" or "Brotherhood of the Spear." However, those White Scars Space Marines who were Terran-born often had a tendency to utilise the more common standard company designations.
For example, the 64th Company (made up of Terran White Scars Legionaries) was also known by its Chogorian designation -- the Brotherhood of the Moon. The White Scars still utilise these Chogorian designations for their companies in the late 41st Millennium, though they always refer to their companies as brotherhoods.
The White Scars have a propensity to maintain a disproportionate number of Bike Squads and Land Speeder squadrons within their order of battle. This highly mobile lightning-attack fighting style means the White Scars do not make use of as many heavy weapons as other Chapters.
Due to their reliance on fast-moving fire support, most of the tanks used by the Chapter have had their armour stripped down so that they are able to keep up with the majority of the fast-moving White Scars forces.
Dreadnoughts are also rarely employed by the present-day White Scars just like their ancient Legionary brethren, as the cold, metal sarcophagi of these mighty cyborgs evoke a horror of eternal confinement and induce a feeling of extreme claustrophobia that is a result of the White Scars' cultural foundation as nomads who wander the open plains of Chogoris' steppelands.
The White Scars are led by an assemblage of the greatest individuals from amongst the Chapter's ranks, including many specialist groupings whose unique talents are deployed according to the will of the Great Khan himself.
The "Great Khan" is the Chapter Master of the White Scars, the ultimate commander of its military might. The current Great Khan, Jubal, rules from Quan Zhou, served by countless equerries, advisors, serfs and logisticators as he determines the disposition of the sons of Jaghatai Khan.
He is regularly attended upon by the khans of the brotherhoods, most often when a kurultai is called -- a gathering of the khans. Also present will be representatives of the Chapter's Reclusiam, who provide spiritual guidance. This order is led by the Voice of the Storm, the formidable Jaghorin, and includes the Chaplains attached to each of the brotherhoods.
Members of the Apothecarion are afforded great respect at such gatherings. Known as emchi, these medicae have a weighty duty, for in preserving and controlling the White Scars' gene-seed stocks, they safeguard the very future of the Chapter itself.
According to ancient White Scars records, the Terrans who at first made up the Vth Legion, originally nicknamed the "Star Hunters," possessed diverse origins, with "some having flesh the colour of charred firewood, for others it was as pale as our armour."
By the time of the Great Crusade, Terran Aspirants for the Legion were brought to the training centres of Imamdo on Terra. Here they underwent the selection process, and if chosen, the physical conditioning necessary to determine whether or not they were fit to become Space Marine Legionaries.
Each cadre was chosen by a prospective Space Marine Legion. If an Aspirant showed extreme promise they were often selected by the vaunted XVIth Legion (the Luna Wolves), but more often than not they would be reassigned to a Space Marine Legion based on the individual Legion's needs because of the ongoing Great Crusade.
Those Aspirants who were reassigned would be transported to a training facility on Luna, where they would continue their training and study for another solar decade, until they were deemed worthy of becoming a fully-fledged battle-brother of their newly assigned Legion. Once transported to their new Legion, they would continue undergoing gene-therapy, psycho-conditioning, and then, finally, the gene-seed implants that would make them one with their new Legion.
Lore excerpt from Warhammer 40k Wiki on Fandom, available under CC BY-SA 3.0.