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In the novel Lords of Silence, one of the Death Guards mentions that over time, the muscles of Plague Marines slowly atrophy over time, and he uses his battles and day to day activities to try to stave this off. Of course, since all Space Marines are swole as feth, this decay takes a very, very long time. Also, it was stated that their minds also gradually rot, destroying their mental acuity. Still, since I don't think that Nurgle would allow arguably his most effective fighting force to rot into uselessness, what is the ultimate fate of the Death Guard and other PM? We know from the models that quite a few of the Death Guard barely have any human physical traits anymore, being more akin in appearance to bobbit worms in power armor than to men. Will the Death Guard become something akin to Greater Possessed, with daemon organs, tentacles and maws replacing all of their human parts? Will they become super Plaguebearers? Once again, I don't think that Nurgle is just going to toss out his Space Marines, so there has got to be some final use for them after their human muscles have rotten away.

Given Nurgle's portfolio and overall outlook (rot and new life from decay), he'd totally be on board with the plague marines rotting into uselessness.

The chaos gods are big into cause and effect or caring about 'effective fighting forces.' He has their souls, and his diseases bloom in their flesh, living or dead. Nurgle honestly has no reason to care. There will be new hosts for his lovelies in time, one way or another.

Turns out old Grandfather Nurgle doesn't really care about his subjects after all.

They'll become useless piles of rotten flesh.

 Ishagu wrote:
Turns out old Grandfather Nurgle doesn't really care about his subjects after all.

They'll become useless piles of rotten flesh.

If he doesn't care then why has he given them this beautiful gift of rot and decay? You need more crazy in thought processes to understand Chaos.

I think they'll eventually turn into a gross fungus pile that will churn out spores that grow into a new soldier. Or they'll just be decorations that future people seeking power through Chaos will ignore.

Nurgle's Rot creates Plaguebearers, with the longer the mortal hangs on the more powerful the Plaguebearer created in Nurgle's Garden. The Death Guard are the mulch in which Nurgle is growing a legion of Daemon Princes and Heralds.

At the moment there useful hardier soldiers to take his battles into real space and deliver his gifts. There more reliable than cultests and so.

There current is, they make a handy tool to spread his gifts to other worlds.

Future use, who knows but he not about to Abaddon such a effective tool to spread his domain into the real space galaxy and fight other chaos groups in the eye and beyond who want to attack his holdings. He had Desmons, plenty off but there's no reason not have a extra weapon handy too.

They are useful to him. deamons, outside the eye and warp are a pain the but to work with, require special rituals, like angtons war on Armageddon, take a but ton of effort to maintain and it's unreliable.

Marines on other hand, they exist, less special stuff needed, they get jobs done and there not all going poof the moment your warp storm of chaos battery goes flat.

Shadow of warp, they lose some but still effective. Of demand hit nids, deamons go poof. Marines not so. There weaker but there more reliable for actions beyond the eye.

It's also notable in The Lords of Silence where Vorx is contemplating how hard it is for him to breathe through all the fluid in his lungs, and noting that he disregarded the value of other Gifts until they worked out in his favour, and seeks forgiveness from a nearby Nurgling for his doubt. Besides, think of how much better it's gotten, and how much better it will be.

Looking over various non-DG plague marine warbands, it strikes me that this type of CSM can have very different manifestations. There's the rotting and torturous presence of the Emissaries of the Wasting Death, the gene-seed-polluting Germinatoris, and the completely desiccated Death Bringers. Also, given their origins, the Grey Death Marines might also fall into this category. I really wish GW would explore this further.

Rot is power. Could be the muscles rot away and the fungus takes it's place, acting as daemonic tissue while it, too, rots away in turn. The plague marine's path ends at spawndom or daemonhood, if death doesn't get him first.

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
In the novel Lords of Silence, one of the Death Guards mentions that over time, the muscles of Plague Marines slowly atrophy over time, and he uses his battles and day to day activities to try to stave this off. Of course, since all Space Marines are swole as feth, this decay takes a very, very long time. Also, it was stated that their minds also gradually rot, destroying their mental acuity. Still, since I don't think that Nurgle would allow arguably his most effective fighting force to rot into uselessness, what is the ultimate fate of the Death Guard and other PM? We know from the models that quite a few of the Death Guard barely have any human physical traits anymore, being more akin in appearance to bobbit worms in power armor than to men. Will the Death Guard become something akin to Greater Possessed, with daemon organs, tentacles and maws replacing all of their human parts? Will they become super Plaguebearers? Once again, I don't think that Nurgle is just going to toss out his Space Marines, so there has got to be some final use for them after their human muscles have rotten away.

Mush. Unless they get incinerated by the Imperium first, in which case, ash.

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
Looking over various non-DG plague marine warbands, it strikes me that this type of CSM can have very different manifestations. There's the rotting and torturous presence of the Emissaries of the Wasting Death, the gene-seed-polluting Germinatoris, and the completely desiccated Death Bringers. Also, given their origins, the Grey Death Marines might also fall into this category. I really wish GW would explore this further.

it'd be ahrd to explore it in depth and still be well.... tasteful I suspect

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
...what is the ultimate fate of the Death Guard and other PM?

Death is the fate of traitors.

Hacked apart in the eye by the legions of Khorne, taken apart piece by piece by Slaanesh's hosts or simply misdirected and led into traps by Tzeentchs covens.
When some escape the eye, they'll be crushed by the imperial guard's tanks- which mount weapons that aren't interested in how much tougher than an Astartes they are. And should any survive, the marines will hunt them down.

Assuming a deathguard marine hid in the eye long enough, and didn't turn into one of those trees, he'd probably become less and less human until he couldn't really function without the warp energies he inhabited. Trap him in a gellar field and he'd probably start seizing up because his lungs are fungus and his blood is foetid gloop that doesn't carry oxygen to his brain, which is now a mass of worms. This would limit them to fighting near the eye, maelstrom, great rift etc and daemonic incursions and other attacks that involve lots of warp energy.

This is similar to daemon princes and such.

Thousand sons are explicitly animated by an enduring spell though- become creatures of magic, so its not hard to imagine that Nurgle could work out some equivalent so his rotten mutants could operate in realspace for prolonged periods.

They are turning into ingredient for next Nurgle soup!

Nurglitch wrote:
It's also notable in The Lords of Silence where Vorx is contemplating how hard it is for him to breathe through all the fluid in his lungs, and noting that he disregarded the value of other Gifts until they worked out in his favour, and seeks forgiveness from a nearby Nurgling for his doubt. Besides, think of how much better it's gotten, and how much better it will be.

It's an absolutely cracking bit of writing, that bit.

I could be misremembering, but I think there's another bit somewhere, where they talk about how the ship they're on went from being sterile metal to being something organic that could heal itself and had "life". Reading across, I'd be inclined to think that yes, sometimes whatever their muscles etc are turning into might serve as a serviceable substitute in at least some cases.

And if not, hey ho, now you're goo. I forget which character pauses to meditate on what's left of somebody who's melded into a wall, but I don't recall the impression he found the possibility disturbing in any way.

Yeah, the ship was turning into an organism. That was also Vorx noting that a servitor was merging with the bulkhead, and it's kind of interesting that he's interested, but finds it's not something to really dwell on.

 =Angel= wrote:

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
...what is the ultimate fate of the Death Guard and other PM?

Death is the fate of traitors.

Hacked apart in the eye by the legions of Khorne, taken apart piece by piece by Slaanesh's hosts or simply misdirected and led into traps by Tzeentchs covens.
When some escape the eye, they'll be crushed by the imperial guard's tanks- which mount weapons that aren't interested in how much tougher than an Astartes they are. And should any survive, the marines will hunt them down.

Assuming a deathguard marine hid in the eye long enough, and didn't turn into one of those trees, he'd probably become less and less human until he couldn't really function without the warp energies he inhabited. Trap him in a gellar field and he'd probably start seizing up because his lungs are fungus and his blood is foetid gloop that doesn't carry oxygen to his brain, which is now a mass of worms. This would limit them to fighting near the eye, maelstrom, great rift etc and daemonic incursions and other attacks that involve lots of warp energy.

This is similar to daemon princes and such.

Thousand sons are explicitly animated by an enduring spell though- become creatures of magic, so its not hard to imagine that Nurgle could work out some equivalent so his rotten mutants could operate in realspace for prolonged periods.

Fanboyism aside. They are already out of the eye. Have already clapped Cadia (so much for those tanks) and are doing quite well overall as Nurgle has used them to take a series of imperial forgeworlds and transforming them into plague planets.

I just recently discovered that the Cleaved is a Nurgle warband. While this makes sense given their appearance, this fact is never stated in the codex, so I thought that they were Chaos Undivided. They aren't traditional PM in terms of appearance, but as they constantly bleed oil-like blood from between the kinks in their armor, who knows what's going on underneath? Maybe their bodies have transformed into a mass of dripping worms that can regenerate, giving them some degree of disgusting resilience.

More expensive per box?