Just as expected.
Lin En had been wondering when Mortarion would finally appear.
Nurgle had set this whole thing up for him from the start.
The stage was ready, but the star of the show still hadn't come out.
Lin En leaned against the command console on the Night Goddess's bridge, watching the Daemon Prince emerge step by step from the green mist beyond the viewport.
People joked that whenever GW made anything Nurgle-related, it went wild, poured its heart into it, found sudden inspiration, and became possessed by a god. But Nurgle's daemons and followers were anything but appealing.
Away from game pieces and figurines, real followers of Nurgle were nauseating.
A scythe hung at his side, green slime dripping from its tip. Green light and flies swarmed over him. Everywhere there was rot, a suffocating stench, and maggots.
In the High Gothic dialect of Barbarus, Mortarion meant "Death's Child."
The name his adoptive father had given him was ill-omened from the start.
Mortarion was a naturally mute man, socially anxious and merciful. Raised by a warlord, he had somehow grown a heart that ached for the people.
The Death's Child raised as a war machine needed no one to teach him that the people his warlord father conquered and enslaved were his own.
Mortarion led the people of Barbarus in revolt, fighting one battle after another.
At last, only one enemy remained, in Barbarus's highest fortress, where the poisonous mist was thickest: the greatest of the warlords, N'Kari, the adoptive father who had raised Mortarion.
Then the Emperor came.
The Emperor killed N'Kari for Mortarion and completed his revenge for him.
Mortarion kept his word. Once he had recovered enough, he knelt before the Emperor and swore fealty.
But Mortarion was far from well.
His failed struggle on