History does not record who or what these beings truly were, but it is certain they were more than, or at least other than, human.

Mortarion grew to maturity on the world of Barbarus, a planet steeped in a toxic miasma where the human population cowered in the dark lowlands, fearful of the overlords that preyed upon them from their mountaintop keeps deep within the fog. Once, however, the Death Guard were the strongest and most resilient of all of the Emperor's Space Marine Legions, the inheritors of the Primarch Mortarion in whose genetic image they were created. Their bodies are hives of filth and decay, their ﬂesh eternally rotting away even as it is renewed by the ceaseless process of death and rebirth. The Death Guard are a Traitor Legion entirely steeped in the power of Nurgle, the god of death and plagues, their very essence the epitome of all that vile Chaos God stands for. After the XIV th Legion was reunited with its Primarch Mortarion on the world of Barbarus, he renamed the Legion the Death Guard. When the XIV th Legion was first raised on Terra by the Emperor during the First Founding, its Astartes were known as the Dusk Raiders. They worship and devote themselves exclusively to the Chaos God Nurgle and as a result of his mutational 'gifts' they have become Plague Marines Astartes who are eternally rotting away within their power armour and infected with every known form of disease and decay but who are immune to all pain or minor injury. The Death Guard are one of the Traitor Legions of Chaos Space Marines.

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