Editing Death Guard (section)

==History==
[[File:Dusk Raiders Colors.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The Dusk Raider's colors.]]
Not many neckbeards dare to paint them up. Back during the Unification Wars of Terra, before the coming of Mortarion, they were known as the Dusk Raiders due to their early-evening assaults, using the confusion of the afternoon twilight to catch their enemies off-guard, during dinner. Because Mortarion had been endowed by the Emperor with the aspect of humanity's Teenage Edginess, he renamed his legion the Death Guard instead, and <s>had them repaint their armor to the charming colors of algae-green and mudslick brown white </s> their armor was unpainted, save for a snot green trim and the legions heraldry. They got dirty after they started swimming in the drops.

Due to living in the utter shithole (in their case, somewhat literally) that was Barbarus, where the local air was equivalent to huffing the engine exhaust from a Chinese cab, the Death Guard soon grew proud of their 'ridiculously tough beyond humanly possible' bodies, which made them resistant to almost all forms of poisons and diseases (didn't stop them from succumbing to Nurgle's Gift, hur hur!). Due to their affinity to biological and chemical elements (likely programed into their geneseed as well), the Death Guard quickly became the Emperor's personal bio-chem experts. It wouldn't be a surprise if their main source of orbital bombardment was [[Exterminatus|Virus Bombs]]. In fact, they probably bathe in that shit on a daily basis. They also smoked A LOT of weed.

Before the Horus Heresy, the Death Guard differed from the other 17 known Legions in that they had only [[Nurgle|seven]] Great Companies, although these held far more men than those of other Legions such as the [[Ultramarines]] or [[Space Wolves]]. There were three privileged titles held by captains of the Death Guard. The captain of the First Company was known as the First Captain, the captain of the Second Company was known as Commander, and the captain of the Seventh Company was known as Battle-Captain.
[[File:Death Guard Pre-Heresy.jpg|200px|thumb|right|The Death Guard Legion proper.]]

The Death Guard tended to be organized into units of foot-slogging infantry, rather than mechanized squads (since the Death Guard themselves were already tough to the point they might as well have Hull Points). Mortarion ensured that his men were [[Ultramarines|well-equipped and highly-trained.]] He also ensured that they could fight in almost any kind of atmosphere, and placed little emphasis on specialized units using jump packs or bikes. The Death Guard did not have dedicated Assault and Tactical Squads. Every Marine was equipped with a bolter, bolt pistol and close combat weapon and told to fight with whatever weapon circumstance dictated. The Legion was also well known for its use of Terminator Armour. Possibly as a result of this, the Death Guard were highly successful at high-risk boarding and close-quarter operations such as [[space hulk]] clearance.

=== Horus Heresy ===
By the time of the Horus Heresy, the Death Guard was known to have had roughly 95,000 Space Marines. One of the most isolated Legions, they tended to take on the most inhospitable warzones of all. They developed a rivalry of sorts with the Iron Hands, priding themselves on their innate resistance whereas the Iron Tenth got theirs from intensive augmentation. Having found their Primarch relatively late, tensions persisted between the Barbaran "true" Death Guard and the old Terran Marines who remembered the Dusk Raider days. Barbarus brought other baggage, including a fanatical hatred of psykers which would lead to Mortarion calling for an end to the Space Marine Librarius.

During the [[Horus Heresy|Galaxy's Greatest Hangover since the]] [[Fall of the Eldar|Fall of the Eldar]], the Death Guard and Mortarion were one of the first traitor legions to rebel against [[Emperor|daddy]]. Within the Heresy, Mortarion's smaller fleet led a [[Fail|failed]] attempt on [[Prospero]] to convince [[Jaghatai Khan]] and the [[White Scars]] to join with them, only for <s>Genghis </s> Jaghatai to tell the psychic-hating bigot to fuck off and thus, the White Scars and Death Guard battled to a stalemate. Some fight scenes later, Mortarion meets up with Typhus (then Calas Typhon), who pulled a dick move and killed off the [[Navigator]]s, but convinced Mortarion that he could lead them to Terra. As you might expect, entering the [[Warp]] without a Navigator's help is just asking for something bad to happen. [[Rape|Then came the Destroyer Plague, and their fate was sealed.]] Their superhuman constitution and grim determination proved worthless against the Destroyer, and so they embraced Papa Nurgle to be freed from the plague and relieved of their suffering, at the cost of, well...

Mortarion also had a personal guard, the speechless and silent [[Deathshroud|Death Shroud]], who had to remain within 49 (Get it? Nurgle's holy number is seven and 49 is seven squared?) paces of their primarch at all times.
Oh, and they enjoyed drinking a cup of foul, poisonous bile to commemorate victory. Mortarion chugged the stuff like water, though his captains had trouble holding their guts inside after drinking.

Once the Heresy was properly underway Mortarion rose quickly in Horus' esteem by not going bugfuck insane and/or turning (his brothers) into a daemon. A few years into the war, Horus charged him to wipe out the White Scars. Mortarion duly pursued them to the Catullus Rift, only to be thwarted by a Webway portal he had no reason to expect and a heroic last stand by the Scars' Sagyar Mazan kill-squads.

The Death Guard were the first Traitor Legion to make landfall on Terra during the Siege and immediately set about turning the entire warzone into a large-scale recreation of Passchendaele circa 1917. True to their natures, old and new, they ground relentlessly forward, absorbing damage without turning aside or wavering. Every advance was heralded by a rancid stew of toxins, chemical weapons, psychic maladies, and warp-borne plagues that decimated the Imperial defenders facing them. They did not relent in the face of unrelenting artillery bombardments, counterattacks by the [[White Scars]] and [[Adeptus Custodes]], or the departures of the [[Emperor's Children]] and the [[Iron Warriors]]. Indeed, their reliability and durability had seen them supplanting the IV Legion as the Siege wore on; Perturabo took this as a monstrous insult and ordered his legion to abandon the battle, leading to the Death Guard taking command of the Lion's Gate Spaceport. Here they faced their greatest engagement of the siege, as the White Scars and the First Terran Armoured Corps stormed the spaceport under cover of the [[Orbital Plate|Skye orbital plate.]] Both sides inflicted and sustained heavy casualties, but the Death Guard did not break until Jaghatai Khan was able to decapitate and banish Mortarion, nearly at the cost of his own life. The resulting eruption of psychic energy staggered and disoriented the Death Guard, forcing them to fall back in the face of the newly enraged White Scars. The survivors regrouped outside the spaceport and rejoined Typhus, who had once again taken a significant portion of the Legion's forces and gone off on his own prior to the battle.

All in all, the Death Guard were stoic, poison-drinking, sour-faced martial warriors before [[Horus]] threw his [[Horus Heresy|surprise birthday bash]], and ended up rotting avatars of <s>[[AIDS]]</s>, Syphilis, and decay by the time the party was finished. Just like [[That Guy|that ONE GUY]] who always shows up.

=== Post-Heresy ===
[[File:Traitor Death Guard.jpg|thumb|left|200px|What Morty's kids looked like right before they shat their souls out for Nurgle.]]

{{Topquote|We are '''death'''... [wheeze] ...and '''decay'''...[rasping]|Some Plague Marine}}

So the Death Guard and the rest of the Traitor legions failed (what were they even trying to do again?) and were kicked to the [[Eye of Terror]] to do their daemonic stuff in private. The Death Guard, along with any non-[[Word Bearers]] or [[Black Legion]] factions, soon broke apart into splintering warbands. The split of the Death Guard can be attributed to [[Mortarion]] doing what's trendy when you become a Daemon-Primarch: do whatever the fuck you want and have nothing to do with your Legion FOR 10,000 YEARS. Typhus, who'd always been a dubiously loyal shit-nugget anyway, decided to take as much of the legion into his own hands as he could and go crazy with no intention of obeying Mortarion when he returns. What a douche. Though he did get some shit done.

Another Death Guard warleader by the name of Thagus Daravek got similar ideas, but on a bigger scale. Through sorcery he realized the destiny that Abaddon was on course for, and tried to claim it for himself. Rounding up massive warbands, he became the Lord of Hosts, doing everything he could to wipe out the nascent Black Legion. He even went so far as to bind the daemon that had been Iskandar Khayon's tutelary to him, giving him power over Khayon, and used this to follow the Black Legion into realspace. With Abaddon already mired in battle with the Black Templars he would have wiped them out, cleaned up the remaining Templars and sailed off into history. Only Khayon ordered the Black Legion fleet to do a runner, engaged Daravek aboard the '''Vengeful Spirit'', and chopped his head off. Good effort, at least.

In theory the Death Guard, like the Word Bearers, are one of the few Traitor Legions that still have some sort of cohesive centralized command structure. Mortarion commands seven Plague Companies, each consisting of multiple Sepsis Cohorts, which are divided into two Maladictums which in turn consist of seven Colonies. In practice, Mortarion rarely commands his minions (especially Typhus), and the forces of the Death Guard are so scattered that they are mainly divided into informal warbands called Vectoriums, mostly consisting of Colonies or Maladictums from the same Plague Company.

As of the 42nd Millennium, Mortarion decided to stop playing X-Box and puffin' his "Barbaran gas" to make up with his old homie Big Blue. Suffice to say, the Death Guard saw what [[Magnus the Red|Magnus]] [[Thousand Sons|and friends]] did with [[Sortiarius]] and decide to do something similar. They carved out their own mini-empire called the [[Scourge Stars]] right to the north of [[Ultramar]], so they can annoy and pester [[Roboute Guilliman|Big Blue Wonder]] for as much as Morty pleases. This act has cemented the Death Guard as Ultramar's [[That Guy|worst neighbor]] since the first Tyrannic War. Thus Mortarion and the Death Guard launched the '''Plague Wars''' after [[Roboute Guilliman|Grandpa Smurf's]] resurrection and the breakout of the Indomitus Crusade.

During the [[Fate of Konor]], Mortarion and his bros decided to launch an assault on the star system. Whilst he had lost three of the planets (unsurprising since Imperial players outnumbered Chaos players to an obscene level), through sheer grit and resistance, the Death Guard managed to take over the planet of Vanitor. Although even then, it was a pyrrhic victory at best since the Death Guard had to lob a lot of resources to finally turn the tide of the battle. They did manage to also take another planet called Drenthal, but ultimately they lost the final, decisive battle to the Ultramarines. This was due to Mortarion putting all of their hopes and resources in a former Eldar maiden-world turned into the Death Guard's very own gross-ass Death Star, strapping continent-sized Space Hulks to it and dumping whatever forces he had left in the system onto its surface. Much like the alluded super-space station, it got blown into smithereens during the loyalist assault when strike teams penetrated deep into its engine core and [[Awesome|manually detonated a cyclonic torpedo]]. After a few more battles things finally came to a head on Iax, where Guilliman and Mortarion duked it out amidst the ruins of the planet before Nurgle recalled Morty back to the Scourge Stars. Apparently the other Chaos Gods had gotten jealous and wanted to take the Plague God's recently acquired real estate for themselves. And so, amidst what is assumed to be the expletive-ridden ranting by Mortarion at the gods fucking him over again, the snide commentary of Typhus at yet another failure of his father and the hearty laughter of [[Ku'Gath]] at the irony of it all, the Death Guard left Ultramar.
[[File:Death Guard Assraping Tau.jpg|525px|right|thumb|After being repulsed by one kind of [[Ultramarines|Blueberries]], Mortarion and co decided to compensate the loss by [[Anal Circumference|venting]] [[rage|their frustration]] upon another pile of [[Tau|Blueberries.]]]]

After the fiasco of the Plague Wars, the Death Guard was forced to go back to their little turf to fend off Tzeentchian and Khornate shenanigans over the Scourge Stars. At the same time, Mortarion and his Death Guard also manage to meet face to face with the remnants of the Tau's Fourth Sphere forces. [[FATAL|That turned out to be a pretty great party crash.]] Post Great Rift, Mortarion and his Death Guards engaged Perturabo and his Iron Warriors over the planet Dysactis and won, gaining its temple secrets. Meanwhile, [[Typhus]] attempts to conquer the Charadon Sector for [[Abaddon]].