An Ordo Malleus schematic displaying the Terminator Armour breastplate of the Chaos Lord Typhus, host of the dreaded Destroyer Hive, the vector for the Destroyer Plague.
The Destroyer Plague is said to be the most virulent and toxic of all of Nurgle's vile diseases.
The first known case of the Destroyer Plague occurred late in the Horus Heresy in the early 31st Millennium, when the Death Guard Space Marine Legion was tricked into being trapped in the Warp by First Captain Calas Typhon, a secret follower of the Lord of Decay since earlier in the Heresy.
As their warships lingered, directionless and without hope, the cloying influence of Grandfather Nurgle began to take hold. The Death Guard were subjected to the terrible infection of the Destroyer Plague and Nurgle's Rot, as Nurgle's power managed to infiltrate the vessels of the XIV Legion through the machinations of Typhon.
It polluted the substance of the vessels themselves as easily as it did the warriors within. Before long, fat devil-flies buzzed through the thickening miasma inside each warship.
Where they bit at the desperate warriors trapped within, flesh turned to suppurating jelly. The Daemon-venom of their stings caused flesh to mutate into hard new growths. Bellies distended and eyes ran like cracked eggs; even power armour melded and flowed into strange new shapes, often becoming one substance with its wearer.
Here, the superhuman resilience of the Death Guard against disease and toxins proved their enemy, for they could not simply die, or were not allowed to do so by the plague's hideous divine master. Instead, they were slowly, sickeningly transformed into Plague Marines, their souls claimed by Nurgle in exchange for a permanent release from the pain of the infection. Typhon, having orchestrated this grand corruption, was rewarded most of all for his loyalty.
Mortarion unsuccessfully sought to free Raheb Zurrieq, the first Death Guard to fall to the Destroyer Plague, from the disease. But even death brought no freedom from its pain.
Swelling in size, his skin and armour became one. Great funnels of pestilential bone burst from his body. Into these poured thousands of Nurgle's Daemon-flies, gnawing him from the inside out until his rotten shell of flesh teemed and heaved with squirming life.
Typhon became a great hollow colony of disease-carrying Daemonic insects. The bone funnels that sprouted from his back coughed black decay as Nurgle's servants regurgitated the psychic energies pulsing through what was left of his new mortal herald's body.
Calas Typhon had become Typhus, Chaos Lord, Death Guard Sorcerer and Host of the Destroyer Hive, the most blessed and most cursed of all his repugnant Plague Marine kin. Since that bygone era, Typhus has visited a hundred thousand diseases upon the Imperium of Man.
The Destroyer Plague is without doubt the most virulent of all, though fortunately its vector of daemonic insects means that it is of limited use when infecting entire star systems.
Sources[]
- Codex: Chaos Space Marines (6th Edition), pg. 61
- Codex: Chaos Space Marines (4th Edition), pg. 55
- Codex: Chaos Space Marines (3rd Edition, 2nd Codex), pg. 53
- Warhammer 40,000: Warlords of the Dark Millennium - Typhus, pp. 10, 24-25
- White Dwarf 282 (UK), "Heroes & Villains of the 41st Millennium - Typhus the Traveller"