User:Montonius/Sandbox - The Gellerpox Comes to Dontoria: Dontoria Hivesprawl was the largest of all Vigilus' inhabited regions. It was noted for one thing above all else -- its overpopulation. As a result, when one of Mankind's darkest and most ancient enemies decided to make Dontoria its playground, the consequences were devastating.The bustle and mayhem of Dontoria's streets was bewildering, even before the coming of the Cicatrix Maledictum. The black market barons and czars in control of that hivesprawl knew well enough that building tall was a waste of resources. Unlike many of their peers, who were too hidebound, unimaginative or afraid of bucking the rules to stop building upward, they had instead opted to spread as wide as possible -- even if that meant narrowing the streets to the point that entire regions became one vast contiguous hab-block.As a result of this land grab, the buildings were packed in close together, every available space capitalised upon so much so that people had to rub shoulders and share humid air if they wished to proceed above ground. To enter the subterranean levels brought its own risks. Down there, power cuts were common, and those stranded in the darkness did not always come back out.Such a rich, teeming source of human life attracted predators and other baleful influences, just as shoals of vexenkrill attract the leviathans of the ocean deeps. The Drukhari operating from the secret Webway portal found in the southern arctic region of Kaelac's Bane had taken to using the chaos to raid the hivesprawl more than once, taking a rich haul of slaves back to their base.The Cult of the Pauper Princes, seeing in the sprawl a great many converts-to-be, spread from Megaborealis to infest its lower levels and began the slow, insidious life cycle of their Patriarch all over again. But the false continent's doom was to come from another source entirely.In the year 2.230 post VCM.M41, Dontoria's principal spaceport -- Litmus Dock -- received reports of an unknown vessel inbound. It was a pattern of vessel that even the Tech-adepts seconded from Megaborealis considered ancient, encrusted with the filth of millennia and some manner of strange caulk that made its shape seem as much organic as mechanical. A rain of filth drizzled from its hatchways and airlocks as it came down, its crew ignoring the increasingly insistent calls for its animus codes.When the dock's garrison opened fire upon the vessel with their Icarus Autocannon emplacements, some manner of shield repelled the shots. Even Lascannons proved unable to pierce the unaccountably strong barrier. The ship docked, by now surrounded by Arbitrators and garrison troops. Its hatches clunked open, and stumbling outcame a crowd of distended, bloated mutants -- the ambulatory corpses known as Gellerpox Infected.Their assault on the garrison was easily put down by disciplined lasfire, but that which followed was all but impervious -- a detachment of Death Guard. Their bulbous and horned silhouettes identified them as the same Heretic Astartes that had assailed Ultramar not long before. A fierce close-range firefight broke out, but the Death Guard shrugged off all but the most direinjuries. They used the Infected as fleshy shields, quickly going toground via the underway dry docks of Litmus' lower levels.With coordination at an all-time low due to the effects of the Noctis Aeterna and the myriad other threats upon Vigilus, the hunt for the invaders was not reinforced. No armed force was keen on rooting out entrenched Heretic Astartes, but many of the elite Imperial Guardsmen and those Arbitrators with a keen sense of duty braced themselves and went into the depths. Most found nothing. Others found painful death.When Tempestor Naiod ordered the lower levels firebombed within a two-kilometre radius, the Imperial forces considered the matter closed. Naiod withdrew his 98th Lamdic Oxen Tempestus Scions from the operation, and the hunt slowly ground to a halt. Only when a strange plague started to manifest across the district did it become clear that the scions of Nurgle had been diligent indeed.Sickness and disease in Dontoria was commonplace, a natural by-product of having such a high population density. By and large the hivesprawl had become inured to it; even when hundreds of thousands of lives were claimed by affluenza, dry lung or red smog fever. However, rumours of a strange supernatural plague were emanating from the districts around Litmus Dock, a disease that melded flesh with metal to form hideous blends of man, machine and daemonic anatomy.With each solar day the reports became more prevalent until the entire area was on the verge of panic. Only the Rogue Trader Delarique du Languille, operating out of Litmus' highest spire on her quest to chart the Nachmund Gauntlet, recognised the disease for what it was -- the Gellerpox. It was a sickness contracted on long journeys through the Immaterium where the voidship's Geller Field had glitched long enough for baleful Warp energies to enter the vessel, and it mingled the paranormal maladies of the Plague God Nurgle with the flesh and metal cybernetic hybridisation so common to the ranks of the Imperium -- especially those of the Adeptus Mechanicus.Du Languille theorised that the disease had been deliberately carried to the hivesprawl by the Death Guard, who then released it amongst the population before going to ground. It spread like wildfire. The citizenry were soon up in arms, burning the infected wherever they were uncovered -- but in doing so, driving the rest into hiding. In the slums and shanty towns of Dontoria's Pravdus and Grodholev Subsprawls, the infected creatures known as Twisted Lords rose to prominence, each the monarch of his own ever-growing band of Gellerpox mutants and nightmarish, hulking terrors.The streets thronged with giant vermin, twisted beyond biological limits into monstrosities, gutters were thick with sludge-grubs, and eyestinger swarms flitted through the skies in search of fresh prey. The blessings of Father Nurgle were well and truly upon Dontoria, and it would take a herculean effort to banish them.Using her own ship and high Imperial status to travel from Litmus Dock to Saint's Haven, du Languille requested extensive quarantine measures from the ruling Aquilarian Council -- though privately, she feared her revelation was already too late.