Lugft Huron

Lugft Huron as the Chapter Master of the Astral Claws, before he got his heresy on...

...And here in full heresy

Lugft Huron (pronounce Lüg-ft Hú-ron) (a name which remains unpronounceable to this day), also known as "Captain Jack Sparrow", "Blackbeard", was the Chapter Master of the Astral Claws Space Marine Chapter, and later the Pirate Lord of the Red Corsairs. He is also known as the "Blood Reaver".

History

Chapter Master

He led the Astral Claws in the defense of the perimeter of the Maelstrom warp storm, but when rebellion festered in the systems he was defending, he decided to take control and put his Marines in charge of things. Thus, the Astral Claws became the rulers of the Badab Sector, with Huron himself as the Tyrant of Badab.

While he succeeded in maintaining order (grimdark though his methods were), his requests to the High Lords of Terra for increased resources to consolidate his gains were denied, and so he decided that, in the absence of help from the Imperium, he would secede and run things his own way. He refused to hand his gene-seed tithes to the Adeptus Mechanicus, and he blocked trade to and from his Sector in order to keep the gathered resources for his military. Eventually, he attracted the attention of the Inquisition, and when he blew them off, they decided that they needed to remind him who answered to whom. Thus, the Badab War was launched.

In the end, Huron's rebellion was crushed by the forces of the Imperium, as something like a dozen Space Marine Chapters responded. Of course, Huron wasn't just a rebel, he turned out to be a heretic. In the final battle on Badab Primaris, Huron was horribly injured by a melta-blast from a dying Zhrukal Androcles while trying to escape his palace. Losing heart, the Astral Claws fled with their fallen Chapter Master. Lord Apothecary Garreon, Apothecary Secundus Variel, and Master of the Forge Armanneus Valthex (guys who had earned the charming nicknames of "the Corpse Master", "the Flayer", and "the Alchemancer", respectively) set to work trying to save the life of Huron and succeeded, after making him, functionally, Chaos' answer to this motherfucker. However, they had a little help. While comatose, Huron was visited by the Chaos Gods, who offered him the power he craved and vengeance against the Imperium which rejected him. Huron agreed, and with his remaining forces fled to the Maelstrom.

Chaos Lord

He is now known as Huron Blackheart, and those forces remaining under his command are called the Red Corsairs. After several years as a powerful space pirate, Huron would go on to gain control of a significant portion of the Maelstrom (the little brother of the Eye of Terror) with his vast pirate fleet, made up of Space marines who turn traitor, many other human reavers and some Xenos mercenaries.

One of his greatest achievements as a pirate lord was the capture of the Wolf of Fenris; a Strike Cruiser, where according to some sources (the very skubtastic 4th edition Chaos Codex), some of the defenders turned on their brethren and surrendered to the Red Corsairs.

By the end of M41, Huron is the second most powerful Chaos Lord in the galaxy after Abaddon himself; a fact that annoys Abby to no end, not least because Huron has not been subtle in hiding his ambition to take Abbadon's place as Warmaster. Not only this but Huron did it FAST, as in, in the space of several decades, since the Badab War only ended in 912.M41 so he's a relative newcomer in the grand scheme of things, but he's accumulated more power faster than many more well established warlords.

He's also powerful enough that he can just give away warriors as well by hosting the Skull Harvest in the Maelstrom, he awarded over 17,000 warriors to Honsou.

One thing fans tend to miss, while new to setting get right away is that Huron, being space pirate captain have cybernetics equivalents of peg leg, hook, eye patch and even captain's parrot in a form of his daemon familiar.

Tabletop

There are two versions of Huron; before and after. On of which represents him as Chapter Master of the Astral Claws whilst the other is the Chaos Lord form.

Bizarrely, the two versions share virtually nothing in common. As Chapter Master; he has an extra wound & attack and terminator armour with a heavy flamer equipped. He also has the ability to get back up once per game if defeated, lets the entire army use his Leadership 10 and the normal Chapter Master bombardment ability becomes Ordnance 2, because it was Huron himself who said "Big Guns Never Tire". His relic is a pretty amazing AP2 lightning claw that forces re-rolls on invulnerable saves. So non-Chaos Huron is a bit of a monster and with an "as much as a Land Raider" price tag to go with it, not quite as good as some of the other big heavy characters, but by no means useless.

After he got hit by Androcles melta-blast and rebuilt he took a bit of a dive in power, losing that wound and attack, as well as his Terminator Armour. His claw got replaced with an S+2, AP3, Armourbane one, but the Heavy Flamer ended up getting built into it. He takes an Axe for his AP2 needs, but unfortunately he's nowhere near as good in melee as before. All of his army-buff and "living legend" abilities also got lost so he doesn't add as much to his army (but then again, few Chaos special characters do these days), but he gets the Hamadrya which grants him a random psychic power every turn.

For all of the nerfs, his price tag was also reduced considerably, so he makes for a pretty decent, cost effective, unmarked Chaos Lord who can pull a few tricks out of the bag.

There is an argument that the later chaos version really should have been better, especially since other characters who have received a cybernetic rebuild ended up with improved stat-lines, so why didn't Huron? One could wonder why his rules don't really transition from one to the other with similar expectations; (Other than the fact that the Chaos version came first) Probably due to the internal balance of the codex... and increase in stats could end up too much like Typhus who is meant to be the resilient one with psychic powers. Or if they just took the Chapter Master version and "added Chaos" he could end up too similar to Abaddon who is meant to be the top-dog. So essentially the rules differences allowed Huron to be played distinctly from the other character options available.