Death Guard

The Plague Planet — The Seven Plague Companies & Barbarus Dossier

Before Mortarion was found on the toxic, fog-shrouded world of Barbarus, the Terran XIV Legion was known as the 'Dusk Raiders'—recruited from the stubborn, grim Albia clans of Old Terra who wore storm-grey armour with a crimson right arm symbolizing the Emperor's red right hand, and struck enemy fortresses at sunset when shadows blinded defenders.

Renamed the Death Guard by Mortarion, the XIV Legion remains the most intact and organized of all Traitor Legions. When First Captain Calas Typhon (Typhus) murdered the fleet's Navigators and trapped the entire Legion inside Nurgle's Garden during the transit to Terra, the Destroyer Plague Liquefied their organs without letting a single warrior die until Mortarion broke and swore fealty to Nurgle. Today, from the Plague Planet in the Eye of Terror—carved to mimic Barbarus with Mortarion sitting atop the 'Black Manse' seven hundred cubits above Typhus's 'Terminus Est'—the Legion marches in seven huge Plague Companies ('Vectors'), each carrying its own strain of metaphysical disease.

Sub-Factions, Secret Orders & Classified Relics

• The Seven Plague Companies — 1st (Harbingers, led by Typhus), 2nd (Inexorable, biomechanical rust-plague), 3rd (Mortarion's Anvil), 4th (The Wretched, psychic daemon-summoners), 5th (The Poxmongers), 6th (The Ferrymen), and 7th (Mortarion's Chosen Sons, chemical alchemists).
• The Deathshroud & Blightlord Terminators — Mortarion's silent Manreaper-wielding bodyguards who stay within forty-nine paces of their Primarch at all times and are officially listed as KIA on Legion rolls.
• The Lords of Silence & Cleaved — Independent Vectoriums drifting through Imperium Nihilus aboard living, barnacle-crusted battleships like the 'Solace'.