Khaine is the Aeldari God of war, carnage, and murder... kind of sounds like Khorne the Chaos Blood God... but he's meant to be a God of Order. But he did murder the first Aeldari hero and captured and tortured two of the other Aeldari Gods... but hey - this is Warhammer 40,000!
Hello there, this is Zak Ludick from sunny Cape Town, South Africa. Here is another Warhammer 40,000 lore post.
Let's get into it!
The History
At this point in the story progression, the Aeldari pantheon is shattered and mostly dead. Caused by the Fall as I have discussed regarding the Drukhari (Dark Eldar) who over-dosed on drug, sex and rock and roll and created the Chaos God Slaanesh - The Prince of Excess.
This psychic emanation and coagulation of all the depraved sensory "perfection", tore billions of Aeldari souls from their bodies to be birthed and THEN proceeded to do battle and consume majority of the Aeldari Gods.
Some survived... very few. Khaine is one of them.
Slaanesh fought and beat Khaine in battle but as the pink princess of the Chaos Gods was about to feast on Khaine's essence, Khorne, the Chaos God of bloodshed, murder and mayhem stopped Slaanesh and claimed that Khaine should be his own prize. Since they do about the same sort of stuff, Khorne would have become a super blood God while Slaanesh would have also gained massive power.
Thankfully neither succeeded!
While they were fighting, Khaine's shattered body splintered into a thousand (probably not an exact number) shards and each part came to rest within an Aeldari Craftworld.
Now... I am not an expert here but I see that none of the Shards went to the Drukhari and this is likely due to their affiliation with their dark path and connection to Slaanesh (Sai'lanthresh if you will).
Thus, even though Khaine is a bit of an... trying to be kind here... asshat, he did somehow send his shards to rest in the craftworlds of the Aeldari who are known as Asuryani - those who follow the Path of Asuryan.
Asuryan, the Phoenix King was the King of the Aeldari Pantheon and brother of Khaine.
Though the relationship was not always nice...
There was a war among Aeldari Gods... the jist of it is that Asuryan wanted to teach a lesson to two of the Gods who had defied his orders and gave them to Khaine to torture (see? Not a nice guy.)
The Gods who were being tortured were Isha and Kuronous and their uncle Vaul bargained with Khaine to release them. Khaine agreed, requiring Vaul, the Aeldari God of Crafting and Smithing to create 100 swords for Khaine in one year.
But Vaul was one sword short and decided to trick Khaine with an ordinary sword, he got caught out and this resulted in a massive war amongst Gods. Possibly the worst instance of failing customer expectations as well as the worst temper tantrum by a Kyle (a he-Karen) about 1% of an otherwise God-level master-crafted sword.
Also, to make that story worse, Vaul completed the last sword in the 100 sword collection WHILE fighting a war against Khaine and made it BETTER than the other ones. He tried to use it to defeat Khaine, but Khaine smacked him down.
Then the first Aeldari hero, squints at the name Eldanesh... rolls eyes, took up that same super enchanted sword to take on Khaine, but Khaine smacked HIM down and brutally murdered the mortal.
THEN Asuryan, the boss, the King of the Aeldari Pantheon decided to finally do some management. He had, for some reason decided to remain neutral during this war between Gods, showing perhaps the greatest example of a "That's not my problem" attitude.
Seriously I am starting to think that this is why the Aeldari are a dying race.
Anyway, Asuryan cursed Khaine and now his hand is constantly flowing with blood to be a reminder to Khaine and all Aeldari of Khaine's crime...
Thus Khaine got the title: Kaela Mensha Khaine which means Khaine the Bloody Handed.
So that's the backstory.
Current Lore
In the current setting, each of the Craftworlds has its own shard of Khaine and they can wake this shard up for a brief amount of time by having an Aeldari Exarch - Which is an elite warrior - sacrifice himself or herself to the Shard and combine to form an Avatar of Khaine.
This is basically a kind of demonic Demi-God who than can lead the Aeldari into battle. Near this monster, the Aeldari fight harder and fiercer.
Tabletop
The Avatar is a playable unit of course. It used to look like this:
But now looks like this:
And can be purchased for $100 on the Games Workshop Webstore here.
This new model is a lot bigger than the old one (like most GW models) but comes with a lot more options. It looks amazing of course but my allegiance dictates that I make fun of it and despise it for being a foul Xenos daemon!
In any case, it is a big scary monster on the tabletop and since I last faced it... it's stats look a lot more impressive! We shall see! I will be sure to post about it should I encounter one on the battlefield!
Thank you for reading!
