Jaghatai Khan
The Khan shot him a heavy-lidded stare. "I heard you do strange things to your warriors."
- Jaghatai giving Fulgrim a burn so intense that Vulkan would be proud
Jaghatai Khan is the missing Primarch of the White Scars Space Marines Chapter. He went missing with the entire First Brotherhood of the White Scars while chasing after a Kabal of Dark Eldar near the Warp rift called the Maelstrom.
Youth
It is said that after being mysteriously transported from Terra through the Warp by the Ruinous Powers of Chaos, Khan landed on a planet in the Segmentum Pacificus named by the Imperium, Mundus Planus, or as the native population called it, Chogoris. It is a fertile world with wide, open, green plains and tall, white mountains and blue seas. At the time of the Great Crusade, the Chogoran or Planan people had managed to restore their technological level to one similar to the pike-and-shot level of the late Renaissance on ancient Terra. The dominant empire was a well organized feudal aristocracy which had conquered most of the planet with well equipped and highly disciplined armies, maintaining armored horsemen and tight blocks of pike and arquebus-armed infantry. Their leader was the Palatine, and he won all of his battles with this great army.
To the west of the Palatine's empire was the Empty Quarter, a barren grassland with few resources, and as such it was never invaded by the Palatine's armies. It was home to wandering tribes of vicious horsemen who fought each other for their ancestral lands. The Palatine would sometimes lead forces into the Empty Quarter to capture slaves or merely to hunt the tribesmen for fun. Khan's legacy began here. He was found by Ong Khan, leader of a small tribe called the Talaskars, who saw the young Primarch as a gift from the gods. It is said he had a fire in his eyes, the sign of a great warrior. He was hated by the other tribes because of his ability to see beyond the constant warfare on the steppes to a vision of unity for all the downtrodden peoples of the Empty Quarter.
It is said the most influential moment in Jaghatai's life was the slaying of his adopted father by the rival Kurayed tribe. Khan, even as a young child, was the greatest warrior of the tribe and gathered Talaskar troops to avenge the death of his father. They moved on the Kurayed tribe and razed it to the ground, killing every man, woman and child in a killing frenzy. Khan took the head of the enemy tribe leader and mounted it on his tent. This is what shaped him into a man of fierce honor, loyalty and ruthlessness. From then on, he swore to end the fighting, unite all the people of the steppes and bring an end to their practice of brother fighting brother.
Khan fought hundreds of battles against other tribes and defeated hunting packs sent by the Palatine. Each tribe the Talaskars conquered was absorbed into the Talaskar confederacy and Jaghatai made military service mandatory while splitting tribes up and merging them with others to remove and ameliorate tribal differences and long-standing feuds. His warriors were fiercely loyal and Khan promoted from the ranks based on merit and ability. Ten summers after his arrival on the world, as the tribe moved to their winter settlements, the Primarch was traveling on a mountainside with a group of his followers. A vast avalanche pushed him and his group back down the mountain, killing the normal men. Jaghatai survived, but could not get back up the mountain in time before the tribe moved on. Khan was caught by one of the Palatine's hunting bands, led by the son of that ruler. All that returned of that band was one mutilated rider with the head of the son of Palatine and a note saying that the people of the steppes were no longer his toys.
When the snows cleared, an enraged Palatine gathered a massive army and determined to march west to wipe the tribes from the face of the planet. He had, however, underestimated the power and ability of Khan and brought his highly-disciplined army of heavily armored warriors and arquebusiers. This proved to be his downfall as they could not catch the lightly armored Talaskar tribesmen. The constant rain of arrows from the tribesmen took their toll on the tight ranks of the Palatine's warriors. Eventually the tribesmen defeated the army of the Palatine, who escaped back to his capital with a select few bodyguards. The rest of the army was slaughtered, almost to the last man. After the battle, the tribal elders gathered and announced that Jaghatai Khan was now Great Khan of the Empty Quarter .
Khan now began the long process of conquering the rest of the planet, which possessed only a single continent. He gave those cities he besieged two choices, to surrender or be wiped out. Most surrendered, but many were destroyed, utterly wiped from the face of the planet. Eventually they came to the Palace of the Palatine, where he demanded the head of the Palatine on a spike. His request was obliged by the capital city's population, which turned on its own ruler to save their own lives from the fierce tribesmen. Jaghatai Khan adorned his tent with his greatest conquest's head, just as he had with his first enemy two decades before.
In only twenty years he had conquered the largest empire in his world's history. He now had the problems of ruling that empire, not something he had originally expected. His nomadic people had no wish to rule these new, settled lands, only to carry on living in their old ways. The Talaskar people dispersed back to a tribal existence and Khan ruled over them all with his generals by his side.
During this time the Khan revealed his fear to one of his generals, to be trapped in what he called the greatest lie, the notion of: You are the strongest, there is nobody left to oppose you all you can do now is build bigger walls.
Six months later, the Emperor of Mankind arrived on the world as part of the Great Crusade and Khan knew at once that this man could fulfill his dream, to unite all of the stars above them and all of humanity in one mighty empire. In front of all of his generals, he dropped to one knee and pledged his service to the Emperor. He was given command of the V Legion of the Space Marines, the White Scars, who had been created from his own genetic material. Khan eventually grew close to Lion El'Jonson, the Primarch of the Dark Angels (presumably bonding over a shared fetish for jet bikes and being mysterious) and his Marines would work in conjunction with the Dark Angels on many occasions.
Great Crusade
Jaghatai Khan like so many of his fellow Primarchs, shaped his legion into adopting the same strategy as the people of his home world (because GW are a firm believe in the Planet Of Hats trope, and didn't think hard enough to realize that the greatest generals in man kinds history would understand the need for flexibility). So the White Scars became a legion that favoured speed above all and their strategy would usually involve lightning fast mobile assault. As such the legion was renown for favouring and being second to none in the use of Jetbikes which was often used in their campaigns. Jaghatai was also not content with the usual kind of ships the rest of the legions would use, and ordered the Mechanicus of Mars to remodel the White Scars ships to be some of the fastest ships among his fellow brother´s legions. As all of the Primarchs Jaghatai would form a close friendship with some of his brothers while avoiding others, however unlike many of the Primarchs, the Khan always felt like an outsider and would keep mostly to himself. Some have suspected he had Aspergers Syndrome or never learned anything else than his native language.
As such the Khan had few friends amongst his fellow Primarchs, and since he had few friends the same went for his legion. Amongst the friends he had where Horus and the Lunar wolves (everyone loved Horus so it would have been more a surprise if he didn´t like him) with whom he shared shared a love of the rapid assault, as well as feeling understood and accepted by Horus. He also counted Magnus The Red and his Thousand Sons amongst his closets friends. Magnus like the Khan had also always felt like an outsider mostly due to his nature and the nature of his legion both also shared a love for knowledge and the enjoyment in the subtleties of the universe
Alongside Magnus and Sanguinius, the Khan would form the Librarian program. Its purpose was to learn to exploit the connections to the Warp that many Astartes seemed to have. It was rumored that the Khan himself also was in possession of psychic powers of some sort.
Though The Khan shared a close friendship with Magnus, he would often share his concern that Magnus and his legion was drinking too deep of the chalice of power that the warp offered. The Khan had always been more in favour of only taking as much as you absolutely needed, to only sip from the cup and never drink it in full as to do so would be to invite disaster. Magnus and his legion however chose to ignore this and continue as they always had (If Magnus had listened to Jaghatai he would perhaps not have been duped by Tzeentch......or perhaps nothing would have changed, you can never know with Tzeentch).
As The Khan shared a close brotherhood with some of his fellow primarchs there was also some he most certainly DID NOT get along with. Chief amongst them where Mortarion and his Death Guard. Mortarion had a huge distrust for all things warp related and would often openly speak out against the Librarian program seeing it as nothing but foul sorcery. Later Mortarion would be amongst those who pressured the Emperor into calling The Council of Nikaea, or as it would later be known the trial of Magnus. Leman Russ and his Space Wolves were also amongst the people the Khan had no wish to get close to, mostly because he didn´t want his legion to be seen as savages. The White Scars constantly strove to achieve the most noble of human pursuits. In addition, the comparison added salt to the wound of the V Legion's entrenched estrangement from the Imperium, suggesting how little effort others took to understand the Chogorians. Though the White Scars were not "executioners" like the Space Wolves or "world eaters" like Angron's berserk XII Legion warriors or "the perfect" Astartes like Fulgrim's Emperor's Children, the White Scars were what they were. They never demanded respect from anyone, and if the other Legions knew nothing of them, then that was their loss, because the White Scars knew about them. The V Legion was faster -- they moved faster and they killed faster. Secretly, Khan and the White Scars resented the outsiders' disregard greatly, and yet they refused to change their ways or Legion culture.
Alongside Horus the Khan had the honor of fighting in the Ullanor Crusade and being present at the event that saw Horus promoted to the Warmaster and The Emperor announcing that he would step down as the leader of the crusade and return to Terra to work on secret project (a webway gate that Magnus would later thoroughly destroy in an attempt to warn the Emperor of Horus´s treachery).
As the legions departed from Ullanor the Khan prepared to continue the crusade however, just before the White Scars were sent on another campaign to continue prosecuting the Great Crusade, a great Imperial conclave was called upon the world of Nikaea. This grand council, known to history as the Council of Nikaea was called by the Emperor of Mankind Himself, and was intended to determine whether or not the use of psychic powers represented a boon or a grave danger to both Mankind and the nascent Imperium of Man.
The Khan had intended to be there to argue for the chase of the Librarian chapter alongside Magnus and Sanguinius, however Horus ordered the Khan to journey to the Chondax System to rid the system of an Ork infestation. The Khan chose to obey Horus (a decision he would later come to regret) and chose to send a representative in his place instead.
The outcome of the Council of Nikaea is well known. The Emperor disbanded the Librarian program and banned all further use of warp related powers. Malcador would later confess to Dorn that although he fully agreed with the Emperor´s decision, he wished there would have been more time to explain the reason behind the decision. In the same conversation he also mentioned that he had advised the Emperor against making the Primarchs brothers and he should have made them sisters instead (insert hentai fan art here), but the Emperor had thought Malcador was joking.
The Heresy
Having operated mostly as an independent force for most of the Great Crusade, no one knew what the fuck the Khan and White Scars were up to. The traitors had no idea where he was or what he was doing (except the Alpha Legion just because). On the loyalist side, Dorn took it as read that since Jaghtai and Horus had been close friends, he could very well have sided with them.
Equally, the Khan had no idea about the murder kegger Horus had thrown in the Istvaan system or anything that had happened afterwards. After the dust had cleared up, the legion received a series of conflicting messages; both sides were making a grab for one of the last legions to pick a side. Jaghtai's immediate response was the grimdark equivalent of "Fuck y'all, I do what I want". Cue an extended road-trip to Prospero, where he found out that Leman Russ had in-fact defeated his best friend Magnus and burned the planet (the cyclops wasn't too upset about it though, since he eventually realised he had it coming and told the Khan as much) but then kicked the crap out of Mortarion for just "assuming" that his Legion was to side with Horus, before finally getting his shit together and heading home to Terra.
During the siege of the Imperial Palace by the traitorous forces of Chaos, the White Scars recaptured one of the major space ports of Terra from Chaos so that Loyalist reinforcements could land on the planet. It is said that the Khan was leading his warriors from the top of a Land Raider, a sight which became a tale that has been told in awe ever since, across ten millennia.
Post-Heresy
After the Heresy, Khan went on a crusade to rescue Imperial warriors captured by the Dark Eldar. During one battle, it was reported that Khan finally got bored with his old life and decided to start a Dark Eldar harem was sucked into a Webway Gate, with no sign of him discovered since then. The White Scars believe that he's still alive within the Webway somewhere, and given the weird effects the Webway has on time this may actually be the case. Of course, it's not like GW would be willing to resolve this either way.
| The Primarchs of the Space Marine Legions |
|---|
 Loyalist Corvus Corax - Ferrus Manus - Jaghatai Khan Leman Russ - Lion El'Jonson - Roboute Guilliman Rogal Dorn - Sanguinius - Vulkan |
 Traitor Alpharius/Omegon - Angron - Fulgrim Horus - Konrad Curze/Night Haunter - Lorgar Magnus the Red - Mortarion - Perturabo |