Abrax the Bloody

"All men of the North give praise to the Dark Gods of Chaos. Many offer worship sufficient enough to beg some crumbs of favour from their hungry deities. A chosen few, however, seek to actively catch the notices of the Ruinous Powers, courting their deadly attentions in hopes of a mighty reward. Of these driven individuals, none display such single minded devotion as the Champions of Khorne. These blood drenched murder-kings seek only war, and their mighty rivalries can leave millions dead in their wake"

- Anonymous

Abrax the Bloody, known also as the Bloody Wanderer, is a Norse Chaos Lord of Khorne renowned for his legendary bloodthirst. Once a warrior of the Norscan village of Heimhal, his savage legend would begin during the terrible hardships of the legendary Blackened Winter, where the winds of Chaos blew violently into Norsca, engulfing the land in roiling clouds of sorcerous corruption. During this time, the Norscans' few crops and livestock died en masse, driving the warlike tribes of the North to slaughter each other in order to control their bleak homelands' diminished resources.

It was during this time that Abrax, then but a young blood, took up arms to defend his village against the ruthless barbarian invaders. His bloody exploits in the long months of battle caught the eye of the Norse Blood God Khorne, who elevated Abrax into one of his greatest champions. Guided by instinct or the dark Will of his god, Abrax found wandering a random path to greater and greater glories, such as when he slew the Goreprince and claimed the mighty Daemon Blade Y'Khggan from his dead hands.

The Blackened Winter
Once a young Norscan of the village of Heimhal, Abrax's descent into eternal damnation began when the Chaos Wastes began to expand, engulfing the northern lands in the deepest shadows of Chaos. Though Norsca is a land firmly under the control of the Dark Gods, and the hurricane fury of the Winds of Chaos are well known to it, the sheer horror of the Wastes' expansion during this time was so great that the Norsemen dubbed these months "the Blackened Winter". Crops and livestock weathered and died in such numbers that the fractious clans of Norsca were plunged into a horrific civil war in order to attain enough resources to ensure their individual survival.

The menfolk of Heimhal, Abrax among them, prepared themselves to stand fast against the merciless assaults of their savage kinsmen. For hellishly long months, Abrax and his shield-brothers fought a seemingly endless war in order to defend their meagre wealth against the marauders. By the time the thaw had finally come, he was the last warrior standing, his mind so unhinged by the brutality he had witnessed that he could no longer keep himself from killing. Lost to the red fury of the berserkergang, the Norseman could no longer distinguish friend from foe, and fell upon his fellow tribesmen and slaughtered his own village down to the last man, woman and child. Khorne looked upon the slaughter from his Skull Throne pleased, the Bloodfather sent down his dark blessings upon Abrax and claimed him as a new champion. From then on out, the deranged Northman struck out from the carnage of his former home to carve a red legend throughout Norsca.

After Heimhal
His mind shattered from the horrors he had witnessed and his body overflowing with infernal might, Abrax wandered a random path guided by whim or instinct to yet greater glory. On the slopes of Splinter Rock he faced down with the Goreprince, wresting from the Daemon Lord his mighty blade Y'Khggan, binding it to his will, and using its unholy edge to spectacularly dismember its former wielder. Upon the fire-swept Steps of Oblivion, above the Howling Gorge, he fought the monstrous Dragon, Shurrek, striking the gargantuan head from the beast's scaly neck and claiming its mighty skull for the throne of his god. The sagas record him falling upon entire warbands with screams of hate and rage, exterminating the lesser warriors as easily as he did the villages that happened to lie in his path.

Over time, Abrax the Bloody became famed as an Avatar of Khorne himself - so completely did he embody the mindless wrath of his patron deity. An unstoppable engine of destruction followed for glory, wherever he strode did the followers of the Blood God flock, hoping to win the warlord's favour by pledging axe-oaths to his warlike banner.

Such was the champion's unholy magnetism that he was able to quickly rebuild his following after the events of the clash at the Shrine of a Thousand Eyes. The day after the battle, the Norse warrior hacked his way through the sentry picket of the far-famed Bloodwolf clan, prowling to their encampment and demanding their oaths. The savage Bloodwolves, seeing in Abrax a lord truly touched by Khorne's madness, pledged him their unquestioning allegiance; sealing their oath with the blood of their less faithful fellows in a frenzy of bloodletting before setting out into the frozen wastes alongside their new master.

Pressing southwards from their Norse homeland with all haste, Abrax and his barbarians crested a craggy ridge to find a great crater where a terrible battle between other Warriors of Khorne had taken place. Upon seeing Abrax in all his dark glory, the warriors ceased their combat and fell to their knees, hailing the insane Norseman as their new master with a single, deafening roar. From all across Norsca had they come, fighting like daemons for the chance to pledge themselves to the banner of the Bloody Wanderer - Abrax - Chosen of Khorne. So did the warrior's horde grow to massive proportions, and he named them the Slaughtermen of Khorne.

Pushing Further South
So it passed, and ever greater did Abrax's army grow. As his warhird passed the dreadful Bile Lands, a tribe of Dragon Ogres calling themselves the Sons of Krakanrok too pledged their allegiance with an offering of skulls for their new master. But north of the Gulf of Kislev, Abrax and his Slaughtermen came across the ruins of a Slaaneshi fane where Skullcrushers of Khorne and Chaos Knights were competing for the massacre of a shrieking tide of Slaaneshi cultists. As the last weak body fell, the mounted warriors pledged their victory to the glory of Abrax, and their lives to his murderous cause. By the time this horde of savages and berserk killers had reached the Eerie Downs, they had become an onrushing tide of murderous fury who blackened the earth with blood with their march.