Home › Units › Craftworld Aeldari › Avatar of Khaine
1 / 4 · Click to enlargeLore & origins
At the very heart of every Craftworld, sealed behind massive psycho-plastic doors in a volcanic sanctum upon the wraithbone core, sits a silent throne of blackened iron. Upon it rests a lifeless metal colossus: a shard of Kaela Mensha Khaine, the Bloody-Handed God of the Aeldari. When Slaanesh awoke during the Fall and fought Khorne for dominion over the Aeldari War God, Khaine's divine body was shattered into a thousand burning fragments and cast across the material universe, coming to rest at the cores of the surviving Craftworlds.
In times of peace the statue sits cold and dormant, waiting for the hour when its people face total war. When the Farseers and Autarchs decree that the Craftworld must march to battle, the Aspect Warriors gather around the sealed chamber in solemn chanting while their Exarchs choose one of their own to become the Young King. Stripped to ceremonial robes and painted in ritual runes of blood, the Young King enters the smoking bronze doors alone as the Craftworld's collective bloodlust rises to a fever pitch. What transpires within is never spoken of aloud, yet hours later the doors burst open in a wave of furnace heat: the Young King's spirit and flesh have been utterly consumed, and in his place strides the awakened Avatar of Khaine.
Towering over mortal warriors with a heart of liquid magma and eyes of white-hot flame, the Avatar is not merely a war machine but a living fragment of a wrathful god. Its mere presence stokes every Asuryani within sight into a fearless, merciless battle-frenzy, erasing all doubt and pain beneath the collective War Mask of their race until the enemy is drowned in blood and the Avatar returns to its sanctum to cool back into silent iron.
Appearance & wargear
An awakened Avatar of Khaine is a terrifying humanoid colossus of blackened, rune-scarred meteoric iron whose cracked plates glow from within like a blacksmith's forge, oozing molten brass and liquid lava from every joint. A towering bronze helm crowned with sweeping horns and a plume of dark smoke frames a face of pitiless divine fury, while its left hand — the infamous Bloody Hand of Khaine — perpetually drips boiling, incandescent gore. In its right hand it bears the Wailing Doom, a mythic god-weapon keyed to the Avatar's own essence that shifts form at its master's will into a greatsword, a roaring spear or a crescent-bladed axe capable of cleaving a Greater Daemon or Battle Titan in two.
Weapons & Vehicles
The psycho-crystalline force-blades and hurled Singing Spears of Craftworld Farseers and Warlocks, humming with resonant Warp-harmonics…
The flaming golden greatsword of the Emperor of Mankind, forged through lost science and psychic mastery, now wielded by resurrected Pr…
A short-ranged thermal sub-molecular agitation weapon that flash-melts battle tank armour, bunker doors and heavy walkers into bubbling…
A master-crafted blade sheathed in a crackling molecular disruption field that parts ceramite, bone and steel with effortless lethality…
Skull-masked heavy weapons Aspect Warriors founded by Maugan Ra who embody Khaine the Destroyer, raining inescapable missile salvos fro…
A towering wraithbone walker steered by two Asuryani twins, one living and one dead, who fight as a single mind.
Explore all 48 entries in the Weapons & Vehicles armoury.
Battlefield role & tactics
Marching at the epicentre of an Asuryani warhost, the Avatar of Khaine is an unstoppable juggernaut and the spiritual lynchpin of the entire army. Small-arms fire and even artillery shells vaporise harmlessly against its white-hot iron hide before they can strike home. With a scream of the Wailing Doom it hurls a beam of pure psychic and thermal annihilation that melts battle tanks from afar, then crashes into the thickest press of the enemy line to butcher Terminators, Carnifexes and Daemon Princes with sweeping blows while the Aspect Warriors around it fight with suicidal ferocity.
Notable battles & users
- The Abandonment on Craftworld Idharae — An Avatar of Khaine stood alone for days on a doomed Crone World against an unending tide of Tyranids, burying itself beneath a mountain of xenos chitin and still burning when relief forces arrived.
- Siege of Iyanden — Iyanden's Avatar of Khaine awakened to break the spearhead of Hive Fleet Kraken inside the Craftworld's shattered domes before being dragged down by a dozen Carnifexes.
- Duel on Orar's Sepulchre — The Avatar of Biel-Tan clashed with the Ultramarines and the forces of Chaos across the tomb-world campaigns of the 41st Millennium.
Related
Characters (4)
Eldrad Ulthran · High Farseer of Ulthwé
Jain Zar · Storm of Silence
Slaanesh · Chaos God of Excess, Pleasure and Perfection; the Dark Prince
Khorne · Chaos God of Blood, War and Martial Honour; the Blood God
