Brotherhood of Half-Life

Brotherhood of Half-Life armorial

Quester the Malignant, Plague marine of the Brotherhood of Half-Life warband.

### **Specialty**

Void Warfare, War of Attrition, Siege Actions, Planet Killing, Biological and Chemical Weapons, Gardening, Bioengineering.

### **Warband Size**

1,2k Marines, Millions of Morphlings, Unknown numbers of daemon allies.

## Pre-Heresy

### **Colours**

Dirty white, green, bronze.

The **Brotherhood of Half-Life** was born on a dead world as the Imperium entered the Age of Apostasy, in M36. Amid the atomic stench and the fading glow of detonated missiles, Korughar, one of the lesser lords of the Seventh Plague Company, took command of the last surviving warriors of his septic cohort. Standing on the defeated daemon of the Deceiving God, he shouted unholy oaths, promising the Great Grandfather a true manifestation of faith and service. Since then, the worlds of the Imperium have been overwhelmed by new misfortunes, for the strength of the Brotherhood grows in proportion to it's offerings to the Gardens, and their gifts are very, very numerous.

Awarded with the Mantle of Corruption, Korughar combined the best features of his Legion's knowledge - the monstrous Gifts of the otherworldly kingdom, savage rituals, the immoral possibilities of necromystery and alchemy, as well as the natural law of nature into the basis of the Brotherhood's martial doctrines. Their specialization is the recreation of that shaky border between life and death on each of the visited worlds, in order to generate as many and as many different life forms as possible. The worlds of mortals for them are nothing more than seeds, and the enemies, trying in vain to stop them, are only fertilizers, a consumable for their holy duty. Because of this approach, the Brotherhood of Half-Life spends much longer time in Imperial space, reaping a rich harvest for their research.

The consequences of their experiments are such that the armor of each of the brothers resembles a completely rotten corpse with its external texture, and their bodies are filled not only with pathogens, but also with parasitic fungi, cysts full of larvae, clots of semi-intelligent abscesses and other things. They are human gardeners, perverted terraformers and breeders whose field of action is anyone who has the misfortune of being alive.

## Warband History

The history of the new warband began after an incident on the mining moon of Phobaras in the Segmentum Tempestus, when, after the battle of four armies, only a handful of warriors of the Death Guard and the newly-minted Chaos Lord remained among the ruins. They returned to Eliathad, from where, later, having collected esoteric supplies, they began their small war in the Eye - one of the multitudes boiling in the house of the once defeated Legions. Suffice it to say that time is relative in the true realm of the Gods, and it is impossible to date the moment when a strong and organized warband grew from a handful of sons of Mortarion, which began to carry out deep raids into the decrepit Imperium. But it is known that already by that time Korughar had received the Tree of Life, and the monstrous bulk of the Galgofinian, a gigantic bio-ship, identical to the general appearance of the great Plague Fleets of the Fourteenth, became its flagship.

Taking the path of nomads rather than pirates, the Brotherhood followed like a cancer cell the long-trodden routes of Mankind, bringing a true abundance of life to those worlds that were mistaken by the Imperials for a rich storehouse of natural gifts. It would be immodest to note that the Brotherhood proved to be real demigods, creating and changing agrarian worlds important in the life of the Imperium and planets that were special for their flora and fauna, from where the numerous sons of Terra drew nourishment for the ever-hungry hives and forge worlds of Mars.

Centuries passed before the Brotherhood exceeded the standards of a Space Marine chapter in numbers, but their strategies did not change, only their methods. Human flesh is malleable and plentiful enough not to notice this fact for too long, and Korughar did not miss the opportunity to fill the gap in the species diversity of human genera. The worlds that had been illuminated by his attention, reflections of the True Garden, now received at their disposal post-human offspring, the result of carefully cultivated mutations with faces of many vectors of changes. Semi-intelligent and resistant to the new orders of their worlds, these creatures filled all kinds of niches, partly atoning for the sins of their ancestors in the destruction of the original fauna of their homes. Of course, the vast majority of such worlds were burned in fits of vengeance and false thoughts of purity by the forces of the Imperial Navy and the Inquisition, but for every six known worlds there was always one too remote and inaccessible that continued its necrotic existence as the altar of Nurgle in real space.

Such methods also had their disadvantages - only a tiny handful of people in the service of the Brotherhood itself did not share the fate of changing into a half-animal, which is why the phenomenon in the form of cultists, which is usual for Chaos adepts, should not have followed. However, Nurgle teaches us to accept reality as it is, and to find a delightful edge of balance that restores an empty niche. The daemons were also not very willing to help the Brotherhood - there is no better material for forbidden alchemy and rituals than the ethereal emanation of the flesh of the Unborn, which is why only Grandfather's children sometimes dare to appear at the door so carefully opened by Korughar. Perhaps only daemon-beasts and Lesser Masters take pleasure in keeping company with the half-immortal adepts of Half-Life - the former delight in being recognized as pets, while the latter are as ubiquitous as dust among Nurgle-worshippers.

And then a new era began. The Brotherhood responded to the call of the Despoiler and attended the great gathering before the 13th Black Crusade, meeting with their relatives after many years of searching and glorifying the common faith. However, when the Gate finally opened, there was no Pestbearer or his host in the Death Guard front. The whims of the warp and the resonant disturbance that split the Imperium and the Galaxy sucked the Brotherhood's ships into them, taking them too far into the darkness of the new reality. A decade passed in settling in new lands and learning the augmented rules of the Materium, before the will of chance helped determine their exact location.

Cases and wars in the Albero sub-sector, where forced necessity led to an absurd alliance in the name of eliminating Grandfather's enemies. Thus, the Brotherhood entered into an aliance with the intemperate sons of Fulgrim among the Florian Angels, where each warband received a certain opportunity to overcome the shortcomings of its own nature. Their further path lay at the will of their own gods...

## Notable Campaigns

* **Unknown date.M36 "Beginning of Half-Life"**- In what was a typical local battle in the Eye of Terror, a unit of the Death Guard clashed in battle with another warband of worshipers of the God of Lies. Nothing new for that corner of space. Super-heavy weapons, genocide, sacrifices, myriad corpses of innocents, soldiers on both sides and the destruction of a third party that tried to influence the outcome of the battle in their favor, but was swept away so quickly that it was not even noticed. It was a battle between two deities, with the help of their pieces on a chessboard. The pawn rose, became an important piece in the game, and its assistants arranged their gambit, in the name of punishment for their brothers and servants. This gambit was effective, even over the top. For the sake of killing the Lord of Change, they destroyed his entire cult, destroyed every tent of those who worshiped him, killed the world itself. And even then they did not stop, for the sons of the Deceiver fled from the punishment of the great-grandchildren of the Father of Pestilence. World upon world of Tzeentch worshipers were destroyed by a destructive miasma out of fear of the nonentities who previously dared to burn the manifestation of the True Garden in the real world. For about two years the chase went on, until at last the demon and his dogs were caught in a trap. That nameless world once belonged to people, but they died out or changed into disgusting creatures, under the influence of the birth of the Prince of Pleasure, at the end of the Golden Age of mankind. And this world also fell, in a massive battle. But it re-emerged as the first Garden of Half-Life, as a symbol of their birth, and as a symbol of the beginning of Nurgle's reign.

## Warband Organisation

### Warband Structure

Unlike the parent Legion, Half-life is no longer in need of a clear construction of the ranks of its warriors, having developed the qualities and methods of the times of the Great Crusade era. Warriors know enough of their brethren to understand their strengths and weaknesses, intuitively reacting to the nature of the battlefield without relying on superfluous ranks. This makes it easier for champions, lesser lords, and specialists in the difficult task of enlightening the infidels by removing the need for complex communications systems. However, this knowledge was not lost by them, in contrast to the maintenance of the usual mechanisms - it was only replaced by diluted instruments that replaced vox system. However, the same can be said about any aspect of the technological support of the Fourteenth, with the only difference being that the Brotherhood is accustomed to more living and understanding counterparts than a crude mixture of living and inanimate matter.

### Flock Reborn

When your very presence deprives the instrument of the necessary functions, you create a new one. There are no cultists in the Brotherhood, and near the sons of Mortarion the technology of human soldiers does not rumble. And if the issue of machines is decided by the Astartes themselves, sending the material to the biofurnaces of the shapers, then the issue of manpower was meticulously resolved by breeding other breeds from the human and demonic. The Fourteenth never harbored the weakness of the more refined followers of Chaos in matters of names, despite their father's special attitude towards them, and therefore they called the creations morphlings. They are intelligent enough to use weapons and revere a god, but the whimsical ways of the Brotherhood's chirurgeons have stripped them of unnecessary functions in higher matters, placing them on the verge between underhive mutants and half-mad hordes of fanatics of all the various currents of faith of both the Eye and the outer realm.

At first glance, however, it will be impossible for the inexperienced to see in the Flock more than a horde of degenerates with a damaged brain - the physiology of morphlings hardly lends itself to any official Medicae classification, and the augmented capabilities reveal themselves only when looking at their owners. The distorted bodies of the Flock are a cheap working tool, a massive help in the work of specialized machines and masters of the forbidden arts. In battle, they serve as a human shield and the first vector of spreading the extensive works of the Brotherhood's rot-makers, being at the forefront of changes in the state of the enemies of Pestbearer.

They are hardy enough and unpretentious enough to survive in the hostile conditions of various habitats, and are not devoid of bestial cunning and instincts, although such traits are not found among Grandfather's Gifts - only a parody of insectoids. There is an opinion that they owe their creation to the Tenebris cult - distorted offspring of extragalactic predators that parasitize humanity through a specialized bioform. Their bodies are lean to the point of emaciation and predominantly hybrid with plant-fungal strains of the Brotherhood's creations.

### Technical Question

All Half-Life Techniques follow the new paths of faith, and are therefore neither equivalent to the Imperial, nor do they follow the practices of the Dark Mechanicus. The demon is not the basis of the machine's control, but an integral part of the symbiotic appendage and its innards, cultivated under close supervision. This approach guarantees sufficient obedience to the machines and removes the need for rituals and separate groups of overseers and trainers. The family relations of Grandfather's adherents are also instilled in these creations, however, reliance on the living kingdom requires a special approach to solving the issue of satisfying hunger.

However, this does not apply to equipment that belonged to the Legion before joining the ranks of the Brotherhood, and it works in more familiar ways, partially inferior to its more highly organized counterparts, but not requiring more monitoring of their condition. Sooner or later, the first is replaced by the second, but the opposite cases are also possible - another example of the embodiment of the forces of the Father of Pestilence.

## Notable Chaos Space Marines

* **Lord of Poxes Korughar the Pestbearer.** Leader of the Warband, (TBA)

* **Berek the Tamer of the Dead.** The leader of a conclave of warband plague-sorcerers, a master of plague spells and necromancy, as well as just a strange personality. Berek is a fairly experienced and beloved Plague God caster, however, he does not throw this statement without the right reason. Being one of the key figures of the warband, he is kept in the shadow of the other six, due to the fact that he is a sorcerer, cursed with a "gift", like the nonentities that worship the God of Deception. His influence on the course of the battle is undeniable and unpredictable, because Berek listens only to his God and the Lord of Warband.

## Warband Plague Fleet

* 1 Despoiler-class battleship "Galgofinian"
* 1 Desolator-class battleship
* 1 Repulsive-class Grand Cruiser
* 2 Styx-class heavy cruisers
* 1 Hades-class heavy cruiser
* 2 Murder-class cruisers
* 1 Slaughter-class cruiser
* 8 Iconoclast-class frigates
* 2 Apostate-class frigates
* 2 Idolator-class frigates

## Warband Appearance

Most of the Unbroken in the Brotherhood, descended from Barbarus, are old and so saturated with their deeds on the soil of the Path of Frost that they can be singled out even among their own kind. The biomechanical nature of their diseased bodies is much more pronounced, and the taint of unlife smooths out any color other than the gray rot of necrosis and humus. Compared to other servants of the Plague God of the Fourteenth, the followers of Lord of Poxes rarely boast of their swollen with pus and miasma bellies, but a huge amount of vile, squelching, leaking festering blood and splashing pimple renewed, by the grace of their God and the genius of warband bioengineers, parts of flesh and armor at the same time, which consisted of muscle tissue, chitin, tumors, bubbling skin, bones and cartilage, with an admixture of indecipherable biomass, which would perhaps puzzle some creature from the All-Consuming Swarm if they had their own individual mind.

However, despite all the individuality of the Brotherhood, the style of the desecrated sons of Mortarion is calmly traced in them, unlike their personally invented daemonic engines, which are more organic creatures than a mechanism, like their Father and Great-grandfather mechanisms which they modernized to suit their own way. Sometimes their machines resemble forcibly transformed slaves from among the unreasonable xenos, resembling wormy, parasitoid, insectoid and arachnid creatures that simply exist, sometimes annoying and procrastinating to a person.
An example of such a creation is the “Giver of Pacification” - a living altar and vehicle for its masters, bred under the control of the plaguecaster Berek. This creature, consisting of skin, chitin, flesh and bones, resembling a huge woodlice, with four long antennae in front and behind, while having obvious human parts in itself, like a ridge, an ugly pattern on the muzzle, which subconsciously makes think of a face, with unnumbered holes and eyes that peep out of some of them. It carries a platform of moving bones and insect paws that hide and reveal a coffin-like, rough, many-bumped, slimy construction of a single holey vertebrae protruding from its shell, from whose holes hordes of insectoid creatures and children of Nurgle emerge, which decisively help warband in gardening, as in the destruction of weeds and parasites that prevent the planting of the first seeds and the flowering of germinated ones, as well as simple pollination and the spread of beneficent plague.

Another example of warband creativity is the altered bilecists, known as Blight Drones. Unlike their counterparts, they do not have their purulent belly and look more like silverfish, having the advantage of hundreds of small paws and dexterity, with the ability to roll into a ball, in case of great danger. They sacrificed the amount of their “ammunition”, and instead of an endless amount of pus, which constantly accumulates in their belly, they have only glands created from the stomachs and lungs of different races of creatures that produce toxins that resemble in their properties the pus that the original has. Sacrificing lethality, they compensated for this with mobility, adding to the ability to fly on turbine blades stretching from a ceramite-chitin shell, crawl on their paws.

Worth mentioning are the so-called "drones", especially favored by the Lesser Hosts, whom they use sometimes as a mount, which are insect-like creatures, a little larger than a human baby, running on four legs and having long and sharp, despite the careless appearance, mandibles, as well as an area on the back of the abdomen, covered with near-human flesh, which constantly grows purulent and pimples on itself, which they squeeze out by muscle manipulation, directing a small stream or dried pus towards the opponents of the Brotherhood.

### Warband Colours

Their colors, among an infinite number of shades of green, yellow, white, black and other colors, so zealously used among their brothers in faith and legion, are knocked out of the general palette of pus, choosing the path of rot. It is brown, but not like the earth or the feces of some animal, but like a warm color for many months of a cold corpse, the necrosis of which has already begun to pass to the bones, while the flesh and remnants of the skin, meanwhile, have a dirty tint mixed with a dark green, almost invisible from transparency, liquid that replaces insect blood and excrement, as well as coagulated blood that has managed to change its color from scarlet many times already. This color is perfectly emphasized by oxidized bronze, with smudges of rotten blood and other impurities, thus symbolizing the boundless love for the Plague Great-Grandfather, although not wearing his favorite color.

### Warband Badge

Their symbol is an endless number of interpretations of the icon of the plague god, even down to the old symbol of their legion. The only feature of these symbols is that they are inflicted with blackened blood, or bronze if that was part of the engraving of the armor.

## Warband Relics

* ***The One Lantern*** – a small, rusted lantern with murky glass windows around the middle, worn by Korughar's trusted daemonic advisor and familiar Gnurle. A gift from the Father of Pestilence, it grants its wearer full control over hosts of nurglings who seem to be attracted to its soothing greenish light like meat flies to a fresh corpse.

* ***Unholy Flute*** - a staff from a branch, which has multiple holes in it that go into impenetrable darkness, made of one of the trees of the garden, given to the plague caster Barek by his daemonic patron. At the will of the caster, releasing music that cuts the ears of the unenlightened and makes the servant of the grandfather feel peaceful, winds from the gardens come out of the holes, forcibly compels various parasites, beetles, worms, rodents and arachnids to fulfill the will of the great-grandfather, bestowing them as weapons of the will of the Plague God, pious miasmas.

* ***The Bell of Lost Souls*** - relic that was previously cast by one of the scholars of Sebastian Thor himself for his services. It is known that only pure holiness can fully reveal itself in darkness, and this is what makes this ancient bell so effective. Cracked and tongueless, but still ringing, resonating with True Garden. The sound of its mournful toll strikes minds and souls far more terribly than the lesser bells of malefactors, especially those gifted with psychic powers, and inspires the warriors of the Brotherhood that walk under its shadow, as powerful warp waves hasten their unholy regeneration and allow their bodies to move with much more energy. Due to its size, the Bell was built into the greatest of Korughar's movable altars, on the back of a biomechanical creature known as the Armagura.

* ***Tear of the Second Chance*** - behind this romantic name, which was obtained from the translation of the language of star wanderers, there is an unremarkable cobblestone the size of a small melon. A rune from the now-dead language of unknown xenos survived on a single flat face, but its power can terrify anyone. As part of something larger, the dead are reborn hundreds of meters away from the psyker who wields it. But it is not the gift of new life that moves them, and not the Zombie Plague that despised by Korughar, cellular reconstruction creates something ugly, dangerous, but still dead - a minus that only a true servant of Nurgle can see. Possession of a stone allows you to control its creations.

* ***Mercy*** - the blade once wielded by one of the ghostly warriors of a dying race of void nomads. Its former ascetic beauty has given way to the suffocating grip of entropy, leaving the cracked blade surrounded by a heat-like haze that prevents the light from revealing the sword to the world as it should. The spirit of one of the warriors of the Fourteenth Legion is imprisoned inside the blade - doomed to be an intermediary between the realms, for the souls of the slain are sent to the True Garden. For the owner, the blade grants endurance worthy of great demons, for only incredible power can give him Final Death.

* ***The Key of Agg'harath*** - this ancient foliate, made from the skin of the Unborn and the bone metals of warp creatures, contains numerological dweomers, allowing the chosen accountant to unlock vaults with the most destructive strains and types of weapons in the hands of the Brotherhood. However, the Key also has another, much more sinister property - the construction of its formulas on mortal and immortal calculus is unbearable for the hearing of anyone who has not yet been endowed with the grace of Grandfather. Father Pestilence is multifaceted in its manifestations, and ailments of a mental nature, to which the wrong ears are doomed, are no exception.

* ***The Tree of Life*** - a unique feature of Half-life is a special bioconstruction that parodies all known forms of living tissue at once. It is a true treasure, the perfect altar of Grandfather, in whose ethereal being there is a direct channel to the True Gardens. According to the darkest rumors that roam among the groves of Eliathad, Korugar created the Tree from a tiny fragment of the Gardens and his own soul, gaining power, but having lost the ability to gain demonhood. So far, no one has been able to justify or refute the rumor, but everyone agrees with another fact - there is a Tree on every world where there was a Half-life, combining its necrotic surface into a surreal controlled superorganism, attracted by its incomprehensible interests and paying attention to the pricks of retribution and the purifying fire of attention not more than a void leviathan on a lone stone.

## Relations

### Enemies

 Thousand Sons |      | "Knowledge is power" - an ironic cry, according to the Brotherhood. Many of Magnus's children are too foolish, or naive, or all together, as if torturing themselves, their brothers and their father, but there is also a quality in them that is more contemptible. They tirelessly weave intrigues against each other and their allies, which makes it impossible to trust them in principle, not to mention the conclusion of alliances. Typical servants of the Liar God.

*Feel free to add your own*
## Notable Quotes

### By:

"*You are afraid. You fight in hysterics, trying to save your life, even forgetting about your faith in the so-called God-Emperor. But you are mistaken. You will not die, that call in your soul does not want you to spend your already short life dying for false ideals. Listen to this call, hear it and open yourself to it.*"
—Champion of Nurgle Harks addressing to seventh captured civillian of an Imperial world.
### About:

*Feel free to add your own*

 Tzeentch Warbands
 Nurgle Warbands
 Slaanesh Warbands
 Chaos Undivided Warbands
 Malice Warbands
 Minor Chaos God-Aligned Warbands

[Source]