Some biographies exist of the vile monsters and traitors that plague the Corvus Cluster—they can be found in the Catagories list in the right column under “People of Interest.”

Yet, after nearly nine years, it seems appropriate to provide an update on our greatest villains and, perhaps, offer some hints about what the future holds for them. —TheGM

Voloh Gudag

Voloh Gudag

Although his exploits have received little attention in recent battle reports, centuries of heretical acts have made Voloh Gudag perhaps the most villainous enemy in the Corvus Cluster.

His list of heinous crimes is legendary:

• He has incited rebellion on dozens of worlds.

• He lured to its doom the 4th Company of the Knights of Altair Space Marine Chapter. It was two centuries before the company was re-established.

• And, perhaps most damning, he introduced the dreaded Kassig Plague (a zombie plague) to the Segmentum Ultima.

Today, Gudag is working in partnership with the Death Guard warlord, Typhus, to spread the plague across the Corvus Cluster. At the end of 742.M41, the heretical sorcerer brought the plague to the world of Polarian (although, thanks to the efforts of the Inquisition and Knights of Altair, the plague was extinguished quickly).

Alas, Gudag continues to evade capture, and he remains at large. All that is known of his plans now is that he and Typhus are seeking to seize the world of Dozaria for reasons unknown, and Gudag’s efforts are focused on spreading the Kassig Plague.

His efforts already have caused widespread civil disorder and, if he is not stopped, Imperial leaders will be forced to divert needed military aid from Dozaria to put down this unrest—and that could give the Death Guard the opportunity to seize the planet.

For his crimes, the Ordo Hereticus has declared the highest Imperial sanction, Excommunicate Traitoris, against Gudag.

Kaptin’ Rumlar Grimrekkah

A rival for the greatest villain in the Corvus Cluster, Rumlar is an ork warlord who has nearly conquered the desert moon of Hegira in the Sculptor System.

Ten years ago, this warlord’s Rok crashed on the barren mining world and, over the years, the greenskin leader has conquered about 80 percent of the moon. Millions have died in the war, and the only major Imperial stronghold left is the Imperial capital, the heavily fortified Susa City.

It seemed for a while that Rumlar would easily drive Imperial forces off the moon. But, in late 741, after a massive assault on the city’s defenses, the ork invaders became strangely inactive. Although fighting continued, the ork attacks lost their intensity and focus.

For a time, military strategists assumed Rumlar was engaged in some ominous preparation for a final grand battle. But it never came. Instead, orbiting surveillance satellites and aerial drones sighted massive infighting among the orks.

It appears there is a power struggle at work. The interrogation of greenskin prisoners, which typically are a failure due to the ork’s stupidity and aggressive nature,  has revealed that Rumlar has become fascinated with the “pretty lights” of a Warp phenomenon that appeared in 738.M41 near the ork-held Barad Mine.

Strategists have speculated extensively about the value of this information: Has Rumlar been seduced by the Ruinous Powers? Do the ork gods (Gork and Mork) have plans for Rumlar? Or has the ork warlord’s mind been broken by Warp taint?

Such questions are important to answer. With the patronage of a Warp diety, Rumlar could quickly whip the vast ork hordes into a formidable threat to Imperial rule on Hegira—and, by extension, threaten Imperial rule throughout the Sculptor system.

 If he has gone mad, however, the ork military might is divided and being diminished by constant infighting among various ork tribes. This would create an opportunity for Imperial troops to launch a new offensive to take back territory.

It’s not clear what the future holds. But, among those psykers who have attempted to read the Emperor’s Tarot, it is widely believed that the cards of the Tarot indicate that Rumlr remains a powerful—and dangerous— influence on the future.

Ghaz Tak

This up-and-coming Death Guard warlord has plagued Imperial worlds throughout the segmentum for millennia.

His latest string of traitorous activities began In 738.M41, when Ghaz Tak joined his fellow traitors in the invasion of Dozaria, a prosperous industrial world in the northern-western quadrant of the Corvus Cluster.

Over the years, Ghaz Tak has attempted to draw warriors to his banner with mixed success. After a initially successful effort to invade the strategically important agricultural region known as the Lorca Basin, the traitor saw dozens of traitor Marines and hundreds of cultists flock to his banner.

But his eventual defeat by Imperial forces—and later a major repulse during the fight over the city of Diaspar—saw half his followers abandon him for more successful warlords.

To regain his reputation as a victorious leader, Ghaz Tak switched strategies last year and focused on smaller but highly provocative exploits. For example, in 6 875 742.M41, the warlord slipped through Imperial lines to commit what became known as the Slaughter of Redolence.

This was an attack on an agricultural manufactorum of about 10,000 Imperial citizens. His troops massacred 8,500 laborers in the tropical heartland to a Warp god called Nurgle. Of the 1,500 survivors of the attack, all were deemed so tainted by what they’d endured that Imperial reinforcements rushing to the scene were forced to offer them a merciful death.

The last reported sighting of Ghaz Tak was at the end of 742.M41, when Inquisitorial forces, supported by the Knights of Altair, broke up a Warp-tainted ritual on the world of Polarian, a planet that exists in the same stellar system as Dozaria.

Ghaz Tak had joined forces with Voloh Gudag to help spread the Kassig Plague on the planet, but with their efforts foiled, both heretics escaped to an orbital ship, and their current location is unknown.

+ That’s it for Part 1 of this report. When Part 2 is published, a link will be added here. +

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(Portrait by Nuttavut Baiphowangse was used to represent Voloh Gudag. (Copyrighted, art used under creative commons attribution-noncommerical-no derivative works license, (baizilla.deviantart.com).

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The Corvus Cluster is a Warhammer 40K blog documenting our gaming adventures in the fantastical sci-fi unvierse of Games Workshop.