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

They'll become useless piles of rotten flesh.

 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.

 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.

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

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.

 =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.