Hello everyone,
Here is our second Index Chaotica article, which this time focuses on our army project, the Apostles of Contagion. We have developed their lore, expanding upon the existing background, and commissioned two illustrations to accompany the project and bring this army to life. We hope you’ll enjoy this work and that it will immerse you in the pestilent horror of Nurgle.
The Apostles of Contagion are a warband (vectorium) drawn from the 4th Plague Company of the Death Guard. Whole-heartedly devoted to the god of pestilence Nurgle, they specialise in attritional warfare and large-scale viral contamination. Even before their enemies can properly engage them, they unleash a rain of viral bombardments and pestilential sorceries, obliterating all resistance in an ocean of disease and decay. Moving slowly but with relentless determination, the Apostles advance amid corrosive clouds and infectious vapours, transforming all who dare resist into masses of decomposing flesh.
Chaque pas qu’ils font souille la terre et engendre de nouvelles épidémies au nom de leur maître bienveillant, Grand-Père Nurgle. Leur histoire remonte à l’Hérésie d’Horus, lorsque la Death Guard sombra dans la corruption du Chaos. Nécrosius, autrefois apothicaire de la Légion, renonça à son serment de guérison pour se tourner vers les arts sombres de la nécromancie et de la démonologie. Fasciné par les promesses de vie éternelle, il devint l’un des plus fervents serviteurs de Nurgle. Sous sa direction, les Apostles of Contagion se séparèrent du reste de la Death Guard pour devenir une bande indépendante, ne répondant à aucun maître hormis Nurgle lui-même. Nécrosius, connu comme la Main de Nurgle, mène ses guerriers à travers la galaxie pour propager la Peste Zombie, une infection impie transformant les vivants en hordes de morts-vivants putrides.
Equipment:
The Apostles of Contagion form a small warband, yet one of terrifying power. Their strength does not lie in numbers, but in mastery of the impious arts and the biological devastation they unleash upon their foes. Under the direction of the sinister Nécrosius, their obsession with sorcery and corrupted science has led to the unusual presence of a large number of Malignant Plaguecasters within their ranks. These plague-sorcerers devote themselves to creating new viral and necrotic weapons, ever more deadly, true gifts of Grandfather Nurgle. On the battlefields, the Apostles perform necromantic rituals in the very heart of combat, raising the dead to turn them into staggering cadavers, bearers of pestilence, all bound to the will of Nécrosius. These undead armies bolster their lines and spread contamination deep into enemy ranks.
It is not uncommon for the Apostles also to undertake demonic invocations, calling forth the putrid entities of the Realm of Nurgle to swell their numbers during great military campaigns. These demons mingle with the living and the dead in a symphony of decay and morbid triumph. The symbol of the Apostles of Contagion is a scarlet carrion-fly, symbol of corruption, decay and the spread of disease.
Notable Campaigns:
The Siege of Vraks (813.M41):
The Siege of Vraks was one of the longest and bloodiest conflicts of the 41st Millennium. This imperial arms-world, vital for the logistics of the Astra Militarum, fell into chaos when the apostate Cardinal Xaphan entrenched himself there and proclaimed his rebellion against the Terra. The Imperium then launched an extermination crusade, but the siege quickly degenerated into a war of attrition of unprecedented brutality. It pitted millions of soldiers against the heretics holed up on the world. It was in the heart of this endless slaughter that Nécrosius, the sinister lord of the Apostles of Contagion, made his appearance. He and his warband arrived among the Chaos reinforcements seeking to break the Imperial encirclement, but their presence initially went unnoticed, by enemies and supposed allies alike. True to his unruly nature, Nécrosius refused any allegiance, whether to Xaphan, the religious figure of the rebellion, or to Zhufor, war-lord of the Death Guard and master of most of the Chaos Space Marines on Vraks. Operating completely independently, Nécrosius pursued his impious aims, using the battlefield of Vraks as a vast laboratory of pestilence and necromancy. The Apostles of Contagion spread among the heretics and cultists of the besieged world, sowing their morbid cult to Grand-Father Nurgle. They conducted dark necromantic rituals, exploiting the countless corpses left by years of war to offer them a “new” corrupted form of life. Under their invocations, even the earth seemed to twist and vomit its dead. Legions of zombies emerged from the trenches and charnel-pits, marching to the tolling bells of the plague and under the orders of the sinister Nécrosius. These undead assaulted indiscriminately, slaughtering both Imperial regiments and other Chaos forces who dared stand in their path. Once the Zombie Plague had spread across the world of Vraks, it was already too late to contain the infection. What had once been a strategic Imperial arsenal became a writhing cemetery of the living dead, a world where every breath of air carried the pestilent blessing of Nurgle. The intervention of the Apostles of Contagion thus transformed Vraks into a symbol of total decay, an admonition to the living that no siege, no fortress, no oath can stand against the corrupting will of the Lord of the Plague.
The Purge of Ghorst Prime (999 .M41):
When the Plague Stars Crusade reached the eastern fringes of the Segmentum Obscurus, the industrial world of Ghorst Prime became a prime target for the Apostles of Contagion. This manufacturing planet, heavily polluted and densely populated, produced millions of tons of war-materiel for the armies of the Astra Militarum, making it ideal to receive the blessings of Grand-Father Nurgle. The warband emerged in the upper atmosphere, materialising out of the warp-storm. Clouds of corrosive spores preceded the invasion, turning the sky into a pestilent green fog that suffocated millions of inhabitants even before ground troops saw their foe. Imperial forces, led by the 117th Elysian Regiment, descended from the skies to defend the hive-cities of the planet. But when they entered the ruins of Varlis Magna they discovered that death had been waiting for them: the corpses of comrades fallen the day before rose again, guided by the unseen hand of Nécrosius. The Malignant Plaguecasters intoned their pestilential prayers, turning winds into contagion vectors and rivers into boiling streams of pus. Every shot fired, every breath of air became an instrument of slow death. In a final desperate act, the Imperial commander ordered an orbital purge of the hive-city, but even the purifying fire could not eradicate the taint, Nurgle’s spores infiltrated the ventilation systems of Imperial vessels, condemning the entire fleet to a slow agony. In a few short weeks, Ghorst Prime was wholly submerged by disease. The smouldering ruins of its cities echoed with the gargling chants of the Apostles of Contagion, celebrating the world’s rebirth as a pestilential garden dedicated to Nurgle. It was a total victory for Nécrosius, and the irrevocable loss of an Imperial industrial bastion. Ghorst Prime is now a black-listed world, classified as a Damnation World by the Ordo Malleus.
Third Battle for Tarran’s Pass (M42):
When the Plague Stars emerged in the skies, many warbands of the Death Guard — including the feared Apostles of Contagion — launched a series of assaults on neighbouring worlds to prevent any enemy force from hindering Mortarion’s preparation for his invasion of Ultramar. On the industrial world of Daxar, the Apostles of Contagion encountered fierce resistance led by the 56th Cadian Heavy Infantry Regiment. Despite a determined defence, the Imperial troops were pushed back from the fortifications of the city of Haldyon, then pursued across the sulphur deserts beyond.
However, at the entrance to the Col de Tarran, the Imperial Guardsmen dug in in entrenched positions and repelled every conventional attack of the Plague Space Marines. Aware that the Cadians were gathering their reserves for a major counter-offensive, and determined to break the last resistance on Daxar, the Lord of the Plague Thelugh Poxmaw ordered the execution of a ritual of terrifying scope. As black clouds coiled above the battlefield and the moons seemed to recede in the sky, several hundred Beasts of Nurgle were summoned into the material realm. These grotesque creatures rushed with glee towards the Imperial lines. Dozens were cut down by the heavy fire of the Cadians or torn apart in close combat, but the survivors kept advancing relentlessly, indifferent to their wounds. In their pestilent wake, the warriors of the Death Guard surged forward, smashing the remaining defences. The barricades were pulverised, the pass flooded with the blood of Imperials, and Daxar fell shortly thereafter under the domination of Nurgle. It was a total victory for the forces of the Death Guard, securing the path for Mortarion’s Crusade against Ultramar.
Notable Character:
Necrosius the Undying:
Formerly an apothecary of the Death Guard, Necrosius was a physician and scientist renowned for his cold rationality and his devotion to the survival of his battle-brothers. But when the Legion of the Primarch Mortarion succumbed to the corrupting influence of the god of pestilence Nurgle, his life took a sinister turn. Confronted with the impotence of science in the face of the Warp’s corruption, Necrosius turned to the occult for the answers medicine could no longer provide. Gradually, he abandoned his old oaths to embrace Nurgle’s eternal plague, seeing in decay not an end, but a higher form of life. His rational mind transformed into fanatical devotion; he persuaded himself that death and rot were the means by which Nurgle offered immortality to humanity.
Having become a Sorcerer of the Plague of formidable power, Necrosius quickly distinguished himself within the Death Guard. However, his independence and his rivalry with Typhus, the Herald of Nurgle and First Captain of the Legion, led to a rupture. Refusing to submit to anyone save Grand‑father Nurgle himself, he gathered around him a cohort of faithful, apostles and sorcerers, to form his own warband, the Apostles of Contagion. Under his leadership, this fellowship became a major vector of Nurgle’s pestilential will in the galaxy. Necrosius is famed for his use of the Zombie Plague, a necromantic scourge which he spreads upon the battlefields where the Imperial and the Chaos forces clash. True to his preferred method, he waits for war to do its work, then he raises the dead and transforms them into hordes of rotting corpses, destined to sow contagion without distinction of allegiance. Nicknamed “the Undying”, Necrosius is said to have himself transcended death. Neither blade, nor fire, nor bolter have managed to end his unholy existence. It is told that when his body falls, the flies of Nurgle gather around his remains to reconstitute him, until he stands again, smiling, ready once more to spread Nurgle’s blessings.
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