The Daemon Primarch Mortarion wielding Silence.
Silence is a massive, two-handed, battle scythe that is the personal close combat weapon of the Primarch Mortarion of the Death Guard Legion. Silence possesses a blade span as long as most Human warriors are tall. This formidable weapon is accounted as one of the most fearsome blades wielded by any primarch.
Since Mortarion's finding by the Emperor during the Great Crusade, there have been dark whispers that the blade is of xenos-tainted origin, and some familiar with the legend of the Death Guard primarch's early life believe it to be none other than the weapon of the terrible charnel creature known as the High Overlord Necare that once named himself Mortarion's "father." Since that long ago era on Barbarus, Silence has mutated over the millennia of exposure to the energies of the Warp into a terrifying Daemon Weapon.
It is not just its wielder's raw power or the weapon's size that makes Silence such a fearsome weapon. A Daemon of Nurgle dwells within the censer that tops its haft. This entity's fell power renders the slightest nick from the blade lethally toxic.
The Daemon's power also infests the leprous smog that billows in trails behind each swing of the scythe, rendering it anathema. Metal rusts and flesh rots at its mere touch, reducing the enemy to putrid ruin in moments.
Sources[]
- The Horus Heresy Book One - Betrayal (Forge World Series) by Alan Bligh, pg. 265
- Dark Imperium (Novel) by Guy Haley, Ch. 19
- Codex Heretic Astartes - Death Guard (8th Edition), pg. 26