Gutrot Spume
Gutrot Spume is the master of the plague fleets, a foul and fearsome warrior who serves the vile god Nurgle with intense devotion. Once merely a hunter of deadly sea creatures, Gutrot Spume met his match in a duel against a rot-kraken. Instead of death, however, he earned the favour of Nurgle, who blessed the fearsome warrior with bounteous mutations, creating a champion through whom he could sunder the mortal realm.
As a youth the Norscan known as Gutrot Spume earned his reputation hunting the predators that prowled the coast of his homeland. In time he was recognised for his great skill, rising to be not only the lord of his tribe, but the Master of the Plague Fleets. It is said by the northerners that there are as many ships in the plague fleets as there are ice trolls in the northern wastes, and if this is true then the soft realms of Men in the south
are doomed.
Spume’s flagship is the Rotten Beast, a gargantuan vessel which appears to be made from the carcass of a sea beast. Writhing tentacles lash nearby vessels with a sentience of their own, with the power to crush a greatship. When the plague fleet heads south, the Empire will burn.
The betentacled monster known as Gutrot Spume is a mighty Chaos Lord, blessed by Father Nurgle for his bravery and tenacity. Once thwarted by the
Emperor, Karl Franz, Spume has craved vengeance ever since. As the End Times approach, his hour draws nigh.
The plague fleet of Gutrot Spume
Gutrot Spume is the lord of the Dragonbone tribe, a clan of fierce Norscan raiders from around the Sea of Claws. Having gained the favour of Grandfather Nurgle for attempting to slay a mighty rot-kraken he has dedicated himself wholly to the lord of pestilence and decay. The plague fleets of the north have now converged around him into a vast rotten armada hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of men strong. Gutrot’s army has invaded the Empire once before, his plague-ridden ships landing on the Nordland coast to wreak havoc and destruction. It was the combined armies of the Empire and Kislev that finally turned him away, the Ice Queen herself freezing the sea around Gutrot’s men as they marched ashore. Though defeated, Gutrot Spume has now joined Archaon’s growing hordes and invaded the Empire once again at the head of a vast plague-ridden army.
Festus the Leechlord
Festus was an apothecary of great skill, a creator of herbs and tinctures whose skill was such that he became rich and famous. He cured ailments, repaired wounds and was renowned for his good works, until the gnashing fever evaded his every effort to find a cure. As bodies mounted up around him, each more pathetically ruined than the last, Festus was driven slowly mad. Desperate, he made his pact with Father Nurgle, the results of which plunged Festus into
stark insanity. Nurgle bestowed upon Festus the knowledge to understand the gnashing fever, but also every other disease and sickness in creation. This newfound knowledge was Festus’s rebirth. He became the Leechlord, determined to experiment with every disease, improving upon their design and documenting their effects.
In the long years since, he has gathered around himself an army of Nurgle, all the better to witness the effects of his experiments upon the waiting world. He has tested his potions on countless prisoners, soldiers captured in battle, for who better to prove his success upon than the hale and healthy? As the End Times approach, he is ascendant, empowered and preparing to unleash his greatest horrors so far.
He walked there, or so I thought. A many-chinned man who seemed as a priest or apothecary, merry in his work, but desperate also. He tended the garden with the fervour of a desperate man, yearning for the approbation of his master. The small gibbering creatures that swarmed the garden mewed and purred around his feet. Calling him favoured. They whispered of the plans his master has for him. Gardener of Nurgle, they whispered. But I knew him as Festus.
– From A Discourse with the Damned
Blightkings
The Blightkings were once Chaos Warriors, tall and powerful foot soldiers who have proven both their loyalty and value to the god of decay. Once chosen by their patron, these blessed few are marked out in a disturbing and obscene manner, infected by a single daemonfly with a festering daemon-kiss. Within days of that initial touch, the warrior’s body begins to change, muscular flesh altering until he resembles a suppurating, obscenely mutated creature, rather than the hale warrior he once was. His pock-marked flesh bulges and splits and his limbs become lumpen and malformed. These Putrid Blightkings are drawn together like moths to a guttering candle, forming tight-knit warrior bands of Nurgle’s most fearsome and devout. The names of these groups are legend among the legions of Chaos; the Repugnauts, the Fly-brothers and the Rotlords, to name but three. Every member of their fraternity is a hulking brute of flesh and muscle whose bulk overshadows a Chaos Warrior like a grown man might a child. The Blightkings rejoice in their calling – their bodies have become living shrines to Nurgle’s bounteous generosity and they revel in the strength and resilience it gives them. Their foul figures are all but impervious to injury, unfeeling to the sword strokes and arrows of their foes. As Blightkings, they exist only to lay low the mighty that the weak may feast upon their corpses. They are the bane of kings and priests and their grimy blades sunder monsters and men with equal disdain.