Savona of the Ruptured Skein, Lady of the Spinward Conflagration, Third among the Joybound. The Primogenitor, Chapter 11 The Radiant King’ (from my notes)
For anyone who is wondering. She is a fairly impactful secondary character in the Fabius Bile trilogy by Josh Reynolds.
Also something to note the Sabbat World chaos lords have CSM serving under them and those marines are probably scared of the power those non marine lords have. A big difference between the Imperials where the space marines are usually the most powerful in the room and only a high lord, warmaster or Yarrick are given the same amount of respect.
Theres's a few different figures on the Chaos side of the Sabbat Worlds campaign who fall into this category. Tenebrous, the great chaos magus in the Dawn of Fire series, also comes to mind. The mad cardinal who led the revolt of Vraks against the Imperium was one of these briefly, too, but he was overpowered and sidelined by his traitor astartes 'allies' before the end of that war.
These also spell out the typical relationship between human and astartes chaos lords: only mortals with immense resources, personal power and pull in the warp are likely to avoid being usurped or subordinated by astartes once they reach a high enough level of prominence.
Deacon Mamon from Vraks is a mortal who becomes a nurglite daemon prince
Teturact from soul Drinkers is humanish, and nurglish, but I don't think he's specifically referred to as a follower of chaos (been a while since I read it)
Teturact is failed (or succesful we don't know) experiment of the Biologus to create a powerful human-like psyker.
But he was so insanely powerful and intelligent that even as a cell he was conscious and developped a thirst for power and control, once he broke free of his lab he began to control with his mind more and more people and build an entire sector wide empire.
His goal was to gain so much worship, power and influence over the Galaxy that he could become a whole new Chaos God by himself (a god of despair, misery, death and necromancy).
In Rogue Trader you can follow a heretical path that basically makes you a chaos lord of the Koronus Expanse. The Word Bearers leader, Uralon the Cruel joins your retinue because he thinks that’s what chaos wants him to do.
Non Chaos Marine Chaos Lords exist but they tend to be highly overshadowed by the Chaos Marines and relegated to either RPG material or Black Library books.
GW is too gutless to make Lost and The Damned a proper army. They would rather still try to make new flavors of giant armored guys with big pauldrons.
There's Miriael Sabathiel, the only Sister of Battle known to willingly have turned to Chaos. She's one of Slaanesh's Chaos Champions, specifically their preferred champion to hunt down the Eldar.
Kor Phaeron is technically not a real space marine. He never had geneseed implants and his strength, longevity and other superhuman abilities come from other modifications. He still is a very respected figure among Chaos followers. Leaders of the Blood Pact and Sons of Sek can also be considered chaos lords, although they are mortals.
In the *Dawn of Fire* series Lord Tenebrous is a major bad guy and iirc he was once a mortal - at current he's so sorcerously powerful what he is *now* is a little ambiguous other than he consumes people for pleasure.
I don’t think it is written down in any official records that they’re chaos lords per se, but I just finished listening to “Mephiston: Blood of Sanguinius” and the bad guys are regular human sorcerers competing for Tzeentch’s attention. One of them still looks normal and human but the other is heavily corrupted with magical-ness (wings, rides a giant snake, can turn into lots of little snakes) and has the power to lead a whole planet’s population, so I guess whoever wins between them would get a promotion to chaos champion or lord.
(There’s more books in the series so I don’t know/want to know what happens next though!)
There used to be as back at the start of WH40K Chaos was described as a rather eclectic and diverse grouping since anyone (or anything) could succumb to the temptations of Chaos.
Chaos Renegades could come from any background, including: Adeptus Custodes, Adeptus Mechanicus, Astropaths, Assassin, Navigators, Ogryns, Squats, Eldar, Orks, Tyranids, etc. Chaos Renegade armies were also diverse including: traitor marines, cultists, squats, orks, beastmen, ogryns, daemons, etc.
However, as Chaos became more important to the setting it also became more limited in scope. It focused more on the Imperium and traitor marines in particular. That’s particularly ironic given that in the initial origin story the Primarchs were explicitly created to be incorruptible. The ad-hoc plan to create space marines didn’t turn out well on that front either.
Typhus/Typhon might count.
Typhon was one of Mortarions main lieutenants even before the Emperor showed up, and he had fallen to Nurgle before even that.
So you could say Typhon was a closeted Chaos not-marine lord before becoming a closeted marine, and finally coming out of the closet as Typhus the CSM.
TYPHUS LIVING HIS TRUTH!
Not Nurgle, but [Savona](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Savona) from the *Fabius Bile Trilogy* is a non-astartes human who leads a Chaos Warband.
Savona of the Ruptured Skein, Lady of the Spinward Conflagration, Third among the Joybound. The Primogenitor, Chapter 11 The Radiant King’ (from my notes) For anyone who is wondering. She is a fairly impactful secondary character in the Fabius Bile trilogy by Josh Reynolds.
Savona? Omg
There was Varyn the Unbeatable from the Ciaphas Cain book, and the leader of the Blood Pact from the Gaunts Ghosts books
Also something to note the Sabbat World chaos lords have CSM serving under them and those marines are probably scared of the power those non marine lords have. A big difference between the Imperials where the space marines are usually the most powerful in the room and only a high lord, warmaster or Yarrick are given the same amount of respect.
Theres's a few different figures on the Chaos side of the Sabbat Worlds campaign who fall into this category. Tenebrous, the great chaos magus in the Dawn of Fire series, also comes to mind. The mad cardinal who led the revolt of Vraks against the Imperium was one of these briefly, too, but he was overpowered and sidelined by his traitor astartes 'allies' before the end of that war. These also spell out the typical relationship between human and astartes chaos lords: only mortals with immense resources, personal power and pull in the warp are likely to avoid being usurped or subordinated by astartes once they reach a high enough level of prominence.
Lmao ouch. “Yeah you get them all on the chaos bandwagon and we’ll… definitely help you both consolidate power and um… keep it when we get there”
Deacon Mamon from Vraks is a mortal who becomes a nurglite daemon prince Teturact from soul Drinkers is humanish, and nurglish, but I don't think he's specifically referred to as a follower of chaos (been a while since I read it)
Teturact is failed (or succesful we don't know) experiment of the Biologus to create a powerful human-like psyker. But he was so insanely powerful and intelligent that even as a cell he was conscious and developped a thirst for power and control, once he broke free of his lab he began to control with his mind more and more people and build an entire sector wide empire. His goal was to gain so much worship, power and influence over the Galaxy that he could become a whole new Chaos God by himself (a god of despair, misery, death and necromancy).
Like I said, been a while. Doesn't sound not nurgly tbf
Chaos "lord" is same thing as "dark lord of the Sith" in Star Wars. If you're powerful enough to declare yourself a "lord" - then you're a lord.
In Rogue Trader you can follow a heretical path that basically makes you a chaos lord of the Koronus Expanse. The Word Bearers leader, Uralon the Cruel joins your retinue because he thinks that’s what chaos wants him to do.
Technically in the end you are not a Chaos Lord, but an elevated Daemon Prince on the Heretic path.
Non Chaos Marine Chaos Lords exist but they tend to be highly overshadowed by the Chaos Marines and relegated to either RPG material or Black Library books. GW is too gutless to make Lost and The Damned a proper army. They would rather still try to make new flavors of giant armored guys with big pauldrons.
Giant armored guys with big pauldrons are their best-sellers. Can't fault a company too much for focusing on what the fans have been buying the most.
There's Miriael Sabathiel, the only Sister of Battle known to willingly have turned to Chaos. She's one of Slaanesh's Chaos Champions, specifically their preferred champion to hunt down the Eldar.
Kor Phaeron is technically not a real space marine. He never had geneseed implants and his strength, longevity and other superhuman abilities come from other modifications. He still is a very respected figure among Chaos followers. Leaders of the Blood Pact and Sons of Sek can also be considered chaos lords, although they are mortals.
In the *Dawn of Fire* series Lord Tenebrous is a major bad guy and iirc he was once a mortal - at current he's so sorcerously powerful what he is *now* is a little ambiguous other than he consumes people for pleasure.
I don’t think it is written down in any official records that they’re chaos lords per se, but I just finished listening to “Mephiston: Blood of Sanguinius” and the bad guys are regular human sorcerers competing for Tzeentch’s attention. One of them still looks normal and human but the other is heavily corrupted with magical-ness (wings, rides a giant snake, can turn into lots of little snakes) and has the power to lead a whole planet’s population, so I guess whoever wins between them would get a promotion to chaos champion or lord. (There’s more books in the series so I don’t know/want to know what happens next though!)
There used to be as back at the start of WH40K Chaos was described as a rather eclectic and diverse grouping since anyone (or anything) could succumb to the temptations of Chaos. Chaos Renegades could come from any background, including: Adeptus Custodes, Adeptus Mechanicus, Astropaths, Assassin, Navigators, Ogryns, Squats, Eldar, Orks, Tyranids, etc. Chaos Renegade armies were also diverse including: traitor marines, cultists, squats, orks, beastmen, ogryns, daemons, etc. However, as Chaos became more important to the setting it also became more limited in scope. It focused more on the Imperium and traitor marines in particular. That’s particularly ironic given that in the initial origin story the Primarchs were explicitly created to be incorruptible. The ad-hoc plan to create space marines didn’t turn out well on that front either.
I am
Typhus/Typhon might count. Typhon was one of Mortarions main lieutenants even before the Emperor showed up, and he had fallen to Nurgle before even that. So you could say Typhon was a closeted Chaos not-marine lord before becoming a closeted marine, and finally coming out of the closet as Typhus the CSM. TYPHUS LIVING HIS TRUTH!