Greetings, everyone,
Today marks the beginning of our very first article in the Index Chaotica, a new series dedicated to the factions who, willingly or not, have struck dark bargains with the Chaos Gods. To kick things off, we’ll be diving into one of the most iconic legions of corruption: the Death Guard, devoted servants of Nurgle, the god of plague and decay. This choice is no coincidence, as the Death Guard share a direct connection with our own army, the Apostles of Contagion, whom you’ll get to know in greater detail in an upcoming article in this very series.
Prepare to descend into the toxic mists of the Warp…
The Death Guard is one of the most formidable Traitor Legions of the Chaos Space Marines, wholly devoted to the Chaos God Nurgle. Corrupted by the mutagenic “gifts” of this dark power, its members have become Plague Marines, Heretic Astartes riddled with decay, carriers of countless diseases, yet rendered impervious to pain and minor wounds by the pestilent grace of their master. Originally, this Legion bore the name Dusk Raiders, and was designated the XIV Legion founded by the Emperor during the Unification Wars.
Renowned for their relentless endurance and unwavering determination, the warriors of the Death Guard brought death with cold, methodical efficiency. Their power reached new heights when they were reunited with their Primarch, Mortarion, on the toxic world of Barbarus, after which they were renamed the Death Guard. Mortarion’s grim, austere, and bitter nature gradually shaped the Legion, forging silent, stubborn warriors, utterly immune to fear. Over time, they came to fully embody the values of Nurgle, death, decay, endurance, and despair. Their bodies are now little more than rotting vessels, in a state of constant decomposition, yet sustained by the will of the Plague God himself.
During the Horus Heresy, Mortarion chose to side with the rebellion. At the Isstvan III massacre, the Death Guard revealed their allegiance to Horus by exterminating the loyalist elements of their own Legion. This betrayal was followed by the bloody Drop Site Massacre on Isstvan V, where the Death Guard displayed the full extent of their brutality. Growing increasingly unfeeling, more cruel than ever before, the Legion caught the attention of Nurgle, the Chaos God of plague, rot, and entropy. It was at the end of the Heresy, as their fleet traveled through the Warp en route to Terra, that the Death Guard’s fate was sealed. Trapped in a Warp storm, the Legion became infected with supernatural diseases that even their legendary endurance could not withstand. As his sons writhed in agony, Mortarion finally broke, and struck a pact with Nurgle. When the Death Guard finally emerged from the Warp, they were no longer recognizable. Bloated, disfigured, and ravaged by sacred plagues, they resembled the undead—forever rotting, yet cursed to live on.
After Horus’s death and the failure of the Siege of Terra, the Death Guard retreated into the Eye of Terror, maintaining a remarkable cohesion even as other Traitor Legions fragmented. Mortarion established his Legion on a new homeworld known as the Plague Planet, a nightmarish echo of Barbarus, which had been destroyed shortly before by a Dark Angels Exterminatus. From this infernal stronghold, the Death Guard continues to wage war against the Imperium, spreading contagion and ruin wherever they strike. Their Plague Fleets, emerging suddenly from the Warp, unleash epidemics, terror, and death upon every world unfortunate enough to lie in their path.
With the emergence of the Cicatrix Maledictum, the massive Warp rift now splitting the galaxy, the Death Guard has become more active than ever. The Ultramar sector has become one of their primary targets. Under the direct command of Mortarion, now returned as a Daemon Prince, the Legion wages vast campaigns of corruption and annihilation. Every world they conquer becomes a breeding ground for pestilence; every victory, another step toward the collapse of the Imperium. For wherever the Death Guard marches, life withers, and only rot remains.
Equipment :
The Death Guard wields an arsenal as revolting as it is effective, crafted to spread disease, suffering, and devastation. Among their most iconic weapons is the Manreaper, a morbid, daemonic scythe directly tied to their Primarch, Mortarion. Imbued with unnatural poisons and terrifying power, it can reap through enemy ranks like a harvester in a field of corpses. Plague Marines deploy a wide variety of corrupted armaments: plague grenades, infected blades, toxic ammunition, all designed not just to kill, but to weaken, infect, and rot the enemy from within.
The Death Guard’s combat doctrine mirrors their brutal relentlessness and utter disregard for pain or loss. Even during their early days as the Dusk Raiders, the XIV Legion favored twilight assaults, sowing psychological terror before the battle had even begun. With Mortarion’s arrival, their approach became even more inhuman. Their strategy now revolves around absolute endurance and the systematic attrition of the enemy. The Death Guard does not pursue speed or maneuverability, they advance slowly and inexorably, absorbing enemy fire until their foes break, and then retaliate with terrifying, methodical violence. Among their most feared tactics is “the Harvest”, a slow, crushing armored assault formation designed for urban warfare or devastated battlefields. Like the scythe that symbolizes it, this maneuver leaves behind nothing but ruin and silence.
The Death Guard is also known for their ruthless use of chemical, alchemical, and radioactive weapons, such as burning Phosphex, toxic gas, and irradiated shells. Their immunity to poison and supernatural resilience allow them to operate in the most hostile environments, places no other human force could survive. For Mortarion, who embraces total toxic warfare, there is no honor, no restraint, only efficiency in destruction. Even today, Plague Marines favor close-quarters combat, where the corruption they embody can be fully unleashed. Their decaying bodies, numb to pain, march forward even when riddled with bullets, releasing clouds of pestilential spores and infectious miasma. Wherever they tread, life withers, worlds rot, and the Imperium falls back.
Notable Campaigns :
The Death of Seraphin III (301.M39):
In the wake of Abaddon’s 11th Black Crusade, a Plague Fleet under the command of Pulthrax the Suppurant set its course for the agri-world of Seraphin III. Caught off guard and poorly defended, the system’s orbital defenses were pulverized by the Death Guard’s naval artillery. After a relentless bombardment, Dreadclaws rained down, vomiting forth the diseased troops of the Plague God upon the surviving defenders. The forces of Chaos quickly seized the vast northern and eastern agricultural regions, fending off repeated Imperial counterattacks for several days. Then, unexpectedly, after seven weeks of occupation, the Death Guard abruptly withdrew, leaving Imperial commanders perplexed. Seraphin III soon resumed its food exports to neighboring worlds, seemingly unaffected. But within weeks, a strange plague began spreading among nearby populations, marked by horrific hallucinations and uncontrollable itching fits. Entire worlds were soon ravaged, and it took months of brutal purges to cleanse them of the emaciated civilians now reduced to little more than diseased husks. The Inquisition launched a full investigation, discovering that multiple sectors had been infected. As efforts to develop a stable cure began, the Imperium initiated a manhunt for Pulthrax, who, through his vile campaigns, had ascended to the rank of Daemon Prince.
The Sacrificed of Ilthan (139.M41):
During the chaos of Abaddon’s 12th Black Crusade, the Death Guard descended upon the hive world of Ilthan, coinciding with the rise of a nascent Ork Waaagh!. A brutal war of attrition ensued, with three factions locked in a savage battle for control. The swelling green tide and the Imperium’s heavy firepower inflicted grievous losses on the Death Guard, despite their unnatural resilience. Decomposing bodies clogged the hive corridors. Slowly but surely, both Ork and human forces began to succumb to Nurgle’s Rot, turning into shambling plague-zombies under Death Guard control. Former allies turned on one another as infection spread, allowing Nurgle’s forces to regain the upper hand. City after city fell, the living steadily replaced by writhing, convulsing cadavers. Swarms of plague flies darkened the skies, and Nurglings feasted gleefully on the fetid sludge that now covered the planet. The last pockets of resistance withered and died, and Ilthan was eventually transformed into a blighted garden of disease, a full-fledged daemon world claimed by the Death Guard.
The Ghost Hunt (503.M41):
For nine long years, a Plague Fleet led by Melthor Blackhand had been relentlessly pursued by an armada from the White Consuls Chapter. Though the two forces clashed multiple times, neither could claim a decisive victory. With his enemies refusing to relent, Melthor devised an ambush. He launched a raid on a Space Hulk occupied by the notorious Ork pirate Oak Freebootas, recently sighted in the Ulix system. Enraged by the attack, the Orks gave chase. Now pursued by both Orks and Loyalists, Blackhand altered his course and led them both toward a long-abandoned star system at the edge of Imperial space. There, he hid his ships behind a gas giant, lying in wait. When the White Consuls and the Orks arrived, mere moments apart, they immediately clashed, caught off-guard by each other’s presence. In the chaos of battle, Melthor Blackhand slipped away, leaving his pursuers to destroy each other. Freed from pursuit, he regrouped his forces, rebuilt his strength, and resumed his blighted conquest of the Imperium.
Notable Character :
Mortarion:
Mortarion, Primarch of the Death Guard, is the very embodiment of endured suffering, contempt for weakness, and the cold acceptance of death as a universal truth. A genetic son of the Emperor, he was cast through the Warp like his fellow Primarchs and landed on the cursed world of Barbarus, a poisoned planet shrouded in toxic mist where only the most monstrous could survive in the heights. Mortarion was not raised by men, but by one of the lords of death, an inhuman entity named Necare, who took him in as a curiosity and raised him as a weapon. A pale and sickly child, Mortarion learned war in darkness, hardening himself in a deadly environment where merely breathing could kill.
But despite the twisted love of his master, Mortarion felt early on that he was not like those necromantic lords. He was haunted by the cries of humans hiding in the valleys, the survivors he discovered one day while defying the forbidden fog. That day, he realized he was not a monster, but a man. He joined the oppressed, earned their trust, and led them in a bloody rebellion, hunting down the death lords of Barbarus one by one. Only Necare, his own “father,” still resisted, lurking in the deadliest heights of the atmosphere. Too toxic even for him, Mortarion failed to reach his ultimate goal. It was then that the Emperor arrived. Radiant with light and power, He defeated Necare with a single stroke of a flaming sword. Mortarion, humiliated for not having been able to accomplish his vengeance with his own hands, nevertheless accepted to follow the Emperor, but his heart remained filled with resentment, bitterness, and defiance.
Reunited with the XIV Legion, the Dusk Raiders, Mortarion gave them a new name: the Death Guard, in memory of the army he had led on Barbarus. He forged a Legion in his own image: tenacious, austere, silent, and unyielding. Under his command, the Space Marines became masters of war of attrition, experts in endurance, contamination, and combat in the most hostile environments. But Mortarion’s resentment towards the Emperor only grew over the course of the campaigns. He hated His light, His authority, and His claim to decide humanity’s destiny. When Horus rebelled, Mortarion saw it as liberation. He joined the cause of the Warmaster, convinced that the Emperor was a tyrant to be overthrown. This choice would doom his Legion to damnation.
The pact Mortarion made with Nurgle sealed the fate of the Legion. Mortarion became the Daemon Prince of Pestilence, and the Death Guard was transformed into a living instrument of corruption. In his image, they became immortal but rotting, insensitive to pain but slaves to a god of decay. Their souls no longer belonged to them. Since then, Mortarion reigns from the Plague Planet, the throne of pestilence at the heart of the Eye of Terror. He leads relentless campaigns against the Imperium, consumed by the hatred he still bears for the Emperor. But today, a new enemy stands in his way, his own brother Roboute Guilliman, returned from history to restore Order. The duel between the Emperor’s sons has resumed. But Mortarion is no longer a man, nor even an Astartes. He is Death walking, and he knows no remorse, no rest, no hope.
We’ll see you again in an upcoming Index Chaotica article, where we’ll explore more Chaos servants.
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