Death Guard - Death Guard: The Death Guard are one of the Traitor Legions of Chaos Space Marines. They worship and devote themselves exclusively to the Chaos God Nurgle and as a result of his mutational "gifts" they have become Plague Marines; Heretic Astartes who are eternally rotting away within their power armour and infected with every known form of disease and decay but who are immune to all pain or minor injury.When the XIVth Legion was first raised on Terra by the Emperor during the First Founding, its Astartes were known as the Dusk Raiders. After the XIVth Legion was reunited with its Primarch Mortarion on the world of Barbarus, he renamed the Legion the Death Guard.The Death Guard are a Traitor Legion entirely steeped in the power of Nurgle, the Chaos God of death, disease and despair, their very essence the epitome of all that vile Chaos God stands for. Their bodies are hives of filth and decay, their ﬂesh eternally rotting away even as it is renewed by the ceaseless process of death and rebirth.Once, however, the Death Guard were the strongest and most resilient of all of the Emperor's Space Marine Legions, the inheritors of Primarch Mortarion in whose genetic image they were created. Mortarion grew to maturity on the world of Barbarus, a planet steeped in a toxic miasma where the Human population cowered in the dark lowlands, fearful of the overlords that preyed upon them from their mountaintop keeps deep within the fog.History does not record who or what these beings truly were, but it is certain they were more than, or at least other than, Human. For one, they were able to breathe the deadly gases that made up the atmosphere of Barbarus, getting ever more deadly the higher the altitude, but they are said to have displayed other abilities too. The abominable masters of Barbarus were somehow able to enslave or dominate the ﬂesh of the dead, and they preyed upon the cringing natives in the valleys below, ever needful of raw material to fuel the endless wars they fought against one another.The infant primarch was raised by one such overlord, Necare, the greatest of them all, who taught him the ways of war, yet would not answer his questions regarding the people who dwelled in the lowlands. When Mortarion defied his master and descended through the fog, which as a superhuman primarch he could breathe, he found people, like himself, if weaker and existing in perpetual terror of the overlords who preyed upon them each night.Though they were initially suspicious of him, Mortarion proved himself one of their kind, and moulded them into an army that at first defied the hunting parties of the overlords, and then turned the tables upon them. At length, the only one left was he who had been Mortarion's master, the High Overlord Necare, residing so high in the toxic strata that not even Mortarion could pursue him.When the Emperor came to Barbarus, the people greeted Him as their saviour, yet Mortarion was jealous and resentful of the adulation heaped upon this perfect stranger. Though his people could see that the Emperor was the primarch's sire, he himself saw only the differences. Where the stranger was noble of form and tanned of skin, Mortarion was pale and gaunt. When Mortarion refused to join Him, the Master of Mankind issued Mortarion a challenge -- if the primarch could defeat the last overlord of Barbarus, the Emperor would depart. If he could not, Mortarion must accept his fate and join the Great Crusade.Mortarion accepted the Emperor's challenge and ascended into the toxic clouds, higher than he had ever travelled before. At length, he reached the grim keep of Necare and raged for the high overlord to face him. Yet, even the primarch's superhumanly enhanced body could not withstand the toxic concentration of the atmosphere at that altitude, but as he succumbed with Necare about to slay him, he saw the golden figure of the Emperor step between him and the high overlord, entirely unaffected by the poisonous air. With a single stroke of His mighty, flaming blade, the Emperor felled the last overlord of Barbarus, and Mortarion acceded to his fate. Yet the primarch found himself riddled with anger and resentment at his gene-father for stealing away what he believed to be his rightful vengeance.Once the primarch was united with his Legion, it was found that the Death Guard, as they were renamed by their new master in memory of the army of the same name he had led against the overlords on Barbarus, were amongst the most resolute and resilient of all the Legions. Mortarion's warriors were ever to be found at the centre of the battle line, their strength and determination the inheritance of their primarch, making them the unbreakable core of any army of galactic conquest.When the Horus Heresy plunged the galaxy into civil war and Mortarion joined himself and his Legion to the rebellion of the Warmaster Horus out of his unresolved anger at the Emperor, the warriors of the Death Guard found themselves becalmed in the Warp on their way to the Siege of Terra and assailed by Warp-born plagues so virulent that not even their legendary resilience could withstand them. Soon, the entire Legion was beset by a sickness that bloated their bellies with corpse gas, caused ﬂesh to slough from their bodies and made these strongest and toughest of warriors into crippled wretches assailed by delirium.Though none can say exactly what forces acted upon the soul of the primarch of the Death Guard, whether he was already damned or whether he made his pact in some state of fever, he called out for deliverance, and his call must have been answered. When finally the Death Guard Legion's ﬂeet emerged from the Warp, its vessels and its warriors were entirely changed.Their once-gleaming white and grey armour was stained with filth, and the noble warriors were transformed into walking hives of death and abomination. Worse still, the "Plague Marines" of the Death Guard were now hosts for the most virulent afﬂictions that their new patron, the Plague God Nurgle, could concoct. Condemned to a deathless state of eternal decay, the Death Guard would spread their pestilent diseases the length and breadth of the galaxy for the greater glory of Chaos.With the end of the Horus Heresy, Mortarion led his Legion into the Eye of Terror, and while others had splintered into countless warbands, the Death Guard remained largely whole, thanks in no small part to their legendary strength and resilience. Mortarion brought them to a world that would become known simply as the Plague Planet, which he moulded into a new and despicable form, making it a virtual copy of lost Barbarus.To this day, Mortarion's Death Guard launch their assaults through the Cadian Gate and into the galaxy beyond, sometimes in large bodies and at others lending strength to allied Chaos forces. Wherever they travel they spread the joyful, exuberant poxes of Nurgle, gifting those who would know eternal life with the choicest of the Plague God's blessings. There have been numerous occasions when previously unknown plagues have swept the defence lines of otherwise static Imperial fronts, followed solar hours later by an overwhelming enemy advance. Many amongst the Imperial high command ascribe such instances to the Death Guard, and are fearful of what vile diseases they might concoct next.