Endurance - History: The Endurance is known to have transported the Death Guard contingent to the Triumph of Ullanor, where Horus was elevated to the esteemed rank of Warmaster by the Emperor Himself in recognition of his numerous great deeds and outstanding leadership throughout the Great Crusade. This flagship also transported the Death Guard to the historic Council of Nikaea, to determine once and for all whether the use of psychic abilities within the Space Marine Legions should be allowed.The Endurance was present during many of the notorious events that occurred during the Horus Heresy which included the Istvaan Campaigns. The Endurance was one of many ships of the Traitor Legions present in the Istvaan System that willfully turned upon their former brethren and virus-bombed the planet of Istvaan III on orders from the Warmaster during the Istvaan III Atrocity, in order to wipe out Loyalist elements of the various Legions under Horus' command.The Endurance was also present during the infamous Drop Site Massacre at Istvaan V that saw the Iron Hands, Raven Guard and Salamanders Legions nearly wiped out, and rendered ineffective as fighting forces during the rest of the Horus Heresy. It also faced the Loyalist White Scars Legion above the worlds of Prospero and Catallus.During the latter part of the Heresy the warriors of the Death Guard found themselves becalmed in the Warp and assailed by Warp-born plagues so virulent that not even their legendary resilience could withstand them. Soon, the entire XIV 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 transhuman 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 with Chaos in some state of fever, he must have called out for deliverance, and his call must have been answered.From the stygian depths of the Warp the great entity that was Nurgle, Lord of Decay, Father of Disease, opened his arms and embraced Mortarion and the Death Guard Legion, drawing them to his breast and making them his own. When finally the Death Guard Legion's fleet emerged from the Warp during the Battle of Terra, its vessels and its warriors were entirely changed.The once-gleaming white and grey armour's heraldry was stained with filth and a sickly pall of greenish hue. The once-noble warriors were transformed into walking hives of death and abomination. Condemned to a deathless state of decay, the Death Guard would spread their pestilent diseases the length and breadth of the galaxy for the greater glory of Chaos.With the ending of the Horus Heresy, the Primarch Mortarion led his Legion into the Eye of Terror, and while the other Traitor Legions had splintered into countless warbands, the Death Guard remained largely whole, thanks in no small part to their legendary strength and resilience. Mortarion led 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 the Legion's homeworld of 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.After the Plague Wars erupted following the birth of the Great Rift in 999.M41, the Endurance was sighted by Imperial forces during the Death Guard's invasion of Macragge, and it remains the flagship of the Daemon Primarch Mortarion. The millennia spent in the Immaterium have not been kind to the once-glorious Battleship, which is now a massive Plague Ship, an embodiment of Nurgle's corruption and decay, its halls infested with every imaginable form of fungus and disease-causing pathogen, essentially having become an extension of Nurgle's Garden in realspace.