"There is no finer laboratory than the battlefield. Such a glut of test subjects, their flesh and vitae awaiting only the touch of Nurgle's gifts to flourish into new and magnificent fecundity. With every jab of the needle, every crisp shattering of the alembic, their blessed suffering brings my concoctions closer to perfection."
- — Fesmus Gulgroth, Biologus Putrifier
A Biologus Putrifier of the Death Guard Traitor Legion.
A Biologus Putrifier is a Chaos Space Marine specialist found exclusively within the ranks of the Death Guard Traitor Legion. These individuals are driven by an obsessive desire to test their concocted plague-batches to perfection, for it is the Death Guard's desire to spread Grandfather Nurgle's putrescent gifts to every corner of the galaxy.
Biologus Putrifiers take a very active role in spreading disease upon the field of battle, lobbing Blight Grenades or using their cursed Injector Pistols to spread their epidemics far and wide amongst the ranks of their foes as they receive the Plague God's virulent blessings.
Role[]
The great labour of the Death Guard is to spread Nurgle's bounteous gifts to every corner of realspace. The Biologus Putrifiers have a vital role to play in this process, for it is they who refine the batches of diseased slurry brewed by the Foul Blightspawn, and distil them to utmost potency.
Biologus Putrifiers bear a unique mutation: lidless, milky eyes that grow like cysts concealed beneath their flesh. Known as "occulobes," the gaze of these foul orbs can penetrate armour, flesh and bone to perceive every nuance of an infection's spread through a living body. Putrifiers croak out their observations to scurrying menials and capering daemonic scribes, filling tomes of mouldering parchment with forbidden lore.
Driven by an obsessive desire to test their plague-batches to perfection, Biologus Putrifiers take a very active role in spreading disease upon the field of battle. From their backs dangle racks of Blight Grenades, churning with the latest strains of noxious plagues to issue from the disease factories. Death's heads drip foetid slime. Brittleglass alembics seethe with bubbling fluids and potent gasses. With every movement these flasks and vessels rattle and clink together, threatening to shatter and spill their noxious contents. As the fury of battle rages around them, the Putrifiers urge their brother Plague Marines to pluck the Blight Grenades from their racks like spoiled fruit and fling them into the ranks of the foe.
With each volley of hurled ordnance the epidemic spreads, the Biologus Putrifiers watching every nuance as though in slow motion through their occulobes. Yet to simply observe is not their way; samples must be extracted, and tests must be run. This is when their Injector Pistols come into play. Striding into the midst of their reeling foe, the Putrifiers pick out the most intriguing entities to assail. Some look for the most resilient enemies upon the field of battle; others seek out the most easily infected, the bravest, the swiftest, or whatever other esoteric criteria they decide their test subjects must display.
With their victims selected, the Biologus Putrifiers strike. They fire their Injector Pistols into vulnerable spots such as exposed flesh, chinks in armour and eyelenses before squeezing a concentrated dose of foulness into the target's body. The results are rarely less than spectacular, with victims erupting in explosive boils, liquefying into screaming sludge, vomiting billowing clouds of flies, and countless other revolting -- and mercifully lethal -- symptoms. Those specimens whose deaths are especially fascinating are pierced with Injector Pistols once again, this time to extract whatever clotted foulness now passes for their blood, ready for later study.
Those enemies who understand the threat posed by Biologus Putrifiers do everything in their power to kill them swiftly. Yet even this may prove their undoing, for should a Putrifier be struck by sufficient firepower or a powerful enough blow, the attack is liable to rupture his racks of Blight Grenades, releasing their deadly contents in a billowing cloud that slaughters any nearby who lack Nurgle's blessings.
Disease Factories[]
The disease factories of the Plague Planet are as bloated and corrupted as the beings that wander their halls. They are sprawling abominations of gurgling pipes, bubbling vats, belching smokestacks and rusted cages crammed with test subjects and living ingredients. So vast are they that their masters, the Foul Blightspawn and Biologus Putrifiers, have divided them up into virtual nations, each ruled by the Blightspawn elders that fester at their hearts.
Millions-strong mortal Chaos Cults reside in these factories, scurrying to do the bidding of their foul masters and worshipping the Plague Marines as demigods of Nurgle, even as they slowly sicken and die. Devoted to brewing the plagues favoured by their ruling elders, these rag-clad lunatics regularly engage in sectarian warfare through the smog-wreathed passages and brewing chambers, much to the amusement of their Death Guard masters.
Notable Biologus Putrifiers[]
- Slert - Slert is a Biologus Putrifier of the Death Guard warband called the Lords of Silence. A twisted monstrosity like all of his kind, Slert is blind save for the dozens of mutant eyes that now exist across his body which can perceive disease and other organic abnormalities in others. He is in charge of all of the Lords of Silence's efforts at developing new diseases, toxins and plagues. Slert proudly maintains a collection of horribly mutated slaves and Plague Ogryns to test his latest ideas upon. Slert takes enormous pleasure in testing out his new contagions, often using them on the crew of the warband's warship, the Solace. He is not considered trustworthy either by his commanding Death Guard Lord Vorx or any of the other Plague Marines of the warband. It was Slert who, at the order of Vorx, assembled the arcane machinery needed on the captured former Space Marine Chapter Homeworld of Sabatine to transform its remaining populace into Plague Zombies and Poxwalkers. Sabatine had been conquered from the White Consuls by the Lords of Silence and the Word Bearers warband called the Weeping Veil. Slert's action spoiled the Weeping Veil's attempt to sacrifice the planet's people to the Chaos Gods in a ritual that would have summoned three Greater Daemons and their daemonic legions to Sabatine. Instead, Sabatine was transformed into a new Daemon World dedicated to Nurgle that became a mirror image of Mortarion's own Plague Planet in the Eye of Terror.
Wargear[]
- Corrupted Power Armour (Any pattern)
- Injector Pistol
- Plague Knife
- Hyper Blight Grenades
- Krak Grenades
Sources[]
- Codex Heretic Astartes - Death Guard (8th Edition), pp. 23, 34, 61, 79
- Lords of Silence (Novel) by Chris Wraight
Gallery[]
