“ | In the embrace of great Nurgle, I am no longer afraid, for with His pestilential favour I have become that which I once feared: Death. | „ |
~ Plague Marine Kulvain Hestarius |
Plague Marines are are recurring antagonists in the Warhammer 40,000 franchise, appearing across various media. Chaos Space Marines of the Death Guard Legion, they are the most extreme followers of Nurgle and have become completely befouled and corrupted beyond saving. Unholy abominations of pestilence and rot, they are scarcely even living anymore, more akin to undead horrors that leave death and sickness in their wake. Their sole purpose in life is to spread the putrid gifts of Nurgle across the galaxy.
History[]
In the grim darkness of the far future, the Emperor of Mankind created the Imperium of Man to return humanity to its lost golden age. However, in the Great Crusade of the 31st Millennium, a devastating war known as the Horus Heresy ripped the galaxy apart. Horus Lupercal, one of the Emperor of Mankind's twenty transhuman sons, known as Primarchs, had fallen under the control of the Chaos Gods, bringing several of his brothers with him, including Mortarion of the XIVth Space Marine Legion, known as the Death Guard. The Death Guard began to fall to the sway of Chaos, save for a few Loyalists who remained in their ranks. As such, when Horus prepared to launch a great rebellion against the Emperor, these Loyalists were to be purged.
In the opening days of the rebellion, a galaxy-spanning civil war known as the Horus Heresy, the Death Guard, alongside the Luna Wolves of Horus, the Emperor's Children of Fulgrim, and the World Eaters of Angron, sent their Loyalists to die in the Isstvan III Atrocity, disguised as a campaign to quell a planetary uprising. However, Loyalist Saul Tarvitz of the Emperor's Children had unraveled the scheme, and as the Loyalists were deployed to the surface, Tarvitz contacted Loyalist Nathaniel Garro of the Death Guard, stationed aboard the Death Guard frigate Eisenstein, and told him of what was about to happen. Garro helped Tarvitz reach the surface, where Tarvitz would organize a proper defense against the incoming massacre, while Garro organized a company of other Loyalist Death Guard still aboard the ship. However, traitor Death Guard Captain Ignatius Grulgor, captain of the Legion's 2nd Grand Company, was tasked with killing Garro and his forces.
Confronting Garro in the ship's gun-decks, Grulgor was killed in the ensuing firefight, which detonated a virus bomb in the deck that rotted away the traitors. However, during the subsequent jump the ship made through the Warp, Grulgor was resurrected by Nurgle, becoming the first Plague Marine, as the foul Chaos God had chosen the Death Guard as his champions. Rising as an unrecognizable mutant in corroded power armor, Grulgor's traitor subordinates were also resurrected as Plague Marines, battling the Loyalists once more and killing the ship's only Navigator, with Grulgor managing to infect a young Loyalist with Nurgle's Rot, before the Loyalists transitioned the ship out of the Warp. With their Warp connection severed, these Plague Marines were all killed, their souls being sucked into the Warp, where Grulgor was converted into a Daemon Prince of Nurgle.
In the wake of Isstvan III and the Drop Site Massacre on Isstvan V, the Death Guard fleet, now free of Loyalists, set course for Terra. However, First Captain Typhus, more loyal to Nurgle than to Mortarion and the Death Guard, claimed that the Navigators were secretly Loyalists, and had them all killed, using his own psychic abilities to navigate the fleet through the Warp. Then, Typhus proceeded to purposefully trap them in the realm of Nurgle, where the Death Guard were afflicted with the Destroyer Plague and Nurgle's Rot, warping and mutating both the ships and the Space Marines alike. The enhanced Astartes physiology of the Death Guard denied them the release of death as they were further mutated in immense agony. Unable to die and in unimaginable pain, Mortarion offered his soul and the souls of the whole Legion to Nurgle in exchange for deliverance, and Nurgle agreed, converting the whole Legion into Plague Marines. They emerged from the Warp as bloated, undying, monstrous abominations who no longer felt the pain of their sickness, corrupted into walking pestilence carriers who dedicated themselves to Nurgle.
After their conversion, Plague Marines assaulted the Sol system in the Siege of Terra, with Mortarion now ascended into a Daemon Prince of Nurgle. However, the traitor Legions were all routed with the death of Horus Lupercal at the hands of the Emperor, which also rendered the Emperor mortally wounded and forced Him to be interred on the Golden Throne. While other traitor Legions broke up during the retreat, the Death Guard held together in an orderly withdrawal, all the Plague Marines retreating into the Eye of Terror, a massive tear into the Warp filled with Daemon Worlds. Within the Eye of Terror, Mortarion claimed a Daemon World known as the Plague Planet as the new homeworld of his Legion, morphing the planet into a sickening reflection of planet Barbarus, Mortarion's oppressive homeworld. The Plague Planet was a toxic, disease-ridden, Nurgle-infested world, where the Plague Marines erected great fortresses on the mountains to lord over masses of human slaves brought onto the world, ruling the slaves as tyrants mirroring the old overlords of Barbarus.
Post-Heresy[]
While many Plague Marines accepted their new life, some hated what they had become, or were driven mad from their mutations. Regardless, they became increasingly devoted to the service of Nurgle, in both body and soul. Over the next 10,000 years, Plague Marines would continue to be a blight on the Imperium, spreading toxins and diseases over planets before invading and slaughtering all who stood before them. Other Chaos Marines who dedicated themselves to Nurgle strove to join the "esteemed" ranks of the Death Guard, with those who succeeded being turned into Plague Marines. The Plague Marines preached their vile illnesses not as a curse, but as joyous gifts of the Plague God, giving eternal life to those who accepting their so-called blessing.
In the 41st millennium, Plague Marines also faced the forces of the T'au Empire, who were invading the Imperial Shrine World of Calendhula. The Plague Marines unleashed their Chaos-infused sickness across the planet, before utilizing the Death Guard 4th company, bolstered by Daemons, to utterly destroy both the Imperial and T'au forces, claiming the world for Nurgle. At some other point in the millennium, Plague Marines even breached Commorragh, the city of the Dark Eldar, killing many of the Drukhari before mysteriously vanishing. Plague Marines also came into conflict with the Noise Marines of the Emperor's Children during the Stay of Execution, a campaign invading the Imperial world of Vindor. On Vindor, Plague Marines allowed the diseased survivors of the Vindorian regiments to escape so that they could unwittingly spread Nurlge's pox with them. However, the Noise Marines wanted the humans to use as slaves, attempting to capture the Vindorians, only to be blocked by the Plague Marines, resulting in the two Chaos factions battling each other while the Vindorians fled.
At the end of the 41st millennium, the entire Death Guard Legion was active in the 13th Black Crusade of Abaddon the Despoiler, invading the Fortress World of Cadia. After a furious defense of the planet, Abaddon managed to destroy Cadia by ramming a Blackstone Fortress into the planet, unleashing a Warp rift of unimaginable proportions that tore the galaxy in two, known as the Great Rift. Typhus was also part of the Black Crusade, and secured his own plague-infested realm upon the conclusion of the unholy campaign. With the splitting of the Imperium, the Death Guard deployed their Plague Fleets across the Imperium to spread their misery and decay.
Plague Wars[]
After the opening of the Great Rift, Primarch Roboute Guilliman of the Ultramarines, the last hope of mankind, was resurrected on Macragge with the aid of the Eldar Ynnari. Now Lord Commander of the Imperium, Guilliman sought to lead humanity through the strife of what became known as the Era Indomitus, beginning by leading the great Indomitus Crusade. Mortarion, however, led the Plague Marines in a charge to capture Guilliman's home realm of Ultramar and bring it into the control of Nurgle, a conflict known as the Plague Wars.
The Plague Wars began during the Indomitus Crusade, capturing some Imperial worlds to the north of Ultramar, which became known as the Scourge Stars, where the Plague Marines turned much of the populace into cultists of Nurgle and killed the rest. Using the Scourge Stars as their staging ground, the Plague Marines invaded Ultramar and several surrounding worlds, the campaign stretching for a century as the Plague Marines slowly but surely advanced, destroying planets and wearing down the Ultramarines defense forces. However, In 111.M42, at the conclusion of the Indomitus Crusade, Roboute Guilliman returned to Ultarmar with enough reinforcements to shatter the Death Guard advance, personally battling Mortarion. While Mortarion seemingly inflicted a fatal blow to Guilliman, infecting him with Nurgle's Rot, the Emperor Himself empowered Guilliman, burning away the blight and driving Mortarion out of the realm. The Plague Marines retreating with their master, both due to the renewed Ultramarine defense and to Khorne invading Nurgle's realspace realm.