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TYPHUS,
THE TRAVELLER, HERALD OF NURGLE

"Look upon me and know that I can slay you at will, you have no defence save one: to look into the darkness at the back of your own mind. There you will find Father Nurgle waiting to offer you life in return for your submission. Deny him and you are mine."

When Mortarion, Primarch of the Death Guard, allied his legion with the forces of Warmaster Horus against the Emperor of Mankind, he did not know the price that would be paid for his treachery. One amongst the Death Guard knew full well though; his name was Typhon and he had been recruited like so many others into Mortarion's forces on the feral world of Barbarus where the Primarch had grown up. Barbarus was home not only to men but to inhuman overlords that preyed upon them.

In his early days Mortarion had overthrown these monstrosities, however there were many crossbreeds resulting from their cruel dominion. The bloodlines were not easy to follow and Mortarion had more pressing concerns. Typhon was of such a bloodline. He possessed formidable psychic powers that allowed him to navigate the mist-shrouded world of Barbarus freely. These were merely latent powers at this time and would only develop with time and training.

When the Death Guard began to recruit on Barbarus it was Typhon's warrior skills that marked him out. In modern times the process is far more exacting -and should be - as much more is known about preserving the purity of the gene-seed, and a Space Marines chapter of a thousand men can be selective about its recruits. In the days of the Great Crusade the legions needed recruits with a good right arm and the courage to follow their Primarchs into battle. When it was realised that Typhon was also a Psyker he was welcomed even more as each legion was building up its strength in Librarians.

So it was that the Death Guard already harboured a tainted soul. Even as Mortarion led his legion on the Emperor's Great Crusade, Typhon communed with the Dark Powers. They already favoured him, and with their aid Typhon rose to the rank of Captain-Epistolary, commander of the battleship Terminus Est and a full company of the Death Guard. When the Death Guard joined Horus, it was Typhon who slew the Death Guard's Navigators claiming their loyalty was still to the Emperor. It was Typhon who promised Mortarion that his powers could lead the Death Guard through the Warp to Terra and it was Typhon who led them to damnation, becalmed in the Warp, adrift and helpless.

The Cadian System 2675999.M41

The teleportation chamber of the Terminus Est pulsed with unholy life. Walls that once contained banks of the most advanced circuitry now dripped with slime and writhed the contortions of the damned. Typhus stood at the centre of the room.

He was crouched, the single horn atop his helmet nodding in turn at each of five malformed green candles that burned at each corner of a pentagram, causing each to gutter before emitting thick, greasy smoke. As the smoke rose, the teeming cloud of flies that surrounded Typhus poured all over him, crawling back- into his armour through cracks and vents. At his feet a carpet of squealing Nurglings gathered closer to him. By now the smoke from the candles had formed a circle around him. each strand accelerating ever quicker.

Typhus tapped the haft of his great scythe once on the floor and the strands of smoke coalesced together. A second tap and the chamber was empty and the Herald of Nurgle was elsewhere.

The night was moonless. Rain impaired visibility further and the roar of artillery was deafening. Typhus stood in a well-built communications trench and to either side Cadian soldiers gaped at him in surprise and horror.

The plague stirred within him and poured out as a black cloud of Nurgle-marked flies which swarmed around the doomed Cadians. Some of them were dying of blight even before Typhus' bellow of rage immersed them and boiled their flesh into puddles of diseased matter. Typhus strode through the miasma, his dread scythe swinging before him in an unstoppable figure-of-eight that reaped men with terrifying ease. Capering ahead of him. his Nurglings chewed on the exposed faces of the fallen and dragged at the legs of those who were trying to escape.

The Cadians fought back as best they could but their lasgun fire pattered harmlessly from Typhus massive Terminator-armoured form and no bayonet could pierce the web of death from Manreaper. As he marched along the trench he harvested the souls of the Cadians. Their officers rushed at him, their finely-crafted power swords raised, but each was dismembered in turn. After a while there was only the rain, the flies, the shrieks of the daemons and the hulking, one-horned personification of death stalking though the trenches. Like a leviathan of legend, the Herald killed men by the dozen and then by the hundred. In his wake the dead and the wounded swelled with pustules before bursting to unleash more plague flies. This battlefield was now a place of death in more ways than one. The diseases that had taken root would spread so that this, which once had been a defensive strongpoint. would now be a festering wound.

He nodded his satisfaction. The Cadian soldiery were veterans, brave and tenacious. They could not blame this defeat on the numberless hordes of Chaos. They might try but they would know that one of Nurgle`s captains had slaughtered an entire company, and they would know terror. The knowledge would gnaw at them, the tale would be magnified, many would turn, others would falter. The fall of Cadia was one step nearer and with it the godhood Typhus craved.

The journey to Terra was the first time that the price of turning on the Emperor was truly paid by one of the Traitor Legions. It was a nightmare that would mark them in the most horrific way. Time flows differently in the Warp and the ordeal that Typhon led them into could have lasted days or centuries. By the end none of the warriors aboard the Death Guard battle barge Terminus Est could reckon how long they had been becalmed along with the rest of their fleet. By the time the full horror emerged there were none of them able to resist it even if they had wanted to.

One by one the Death Guard were afflicted with a plague so virulent that their Multi-lung and Oolitic Kidney failed to protect them. They remained conscious but were paralysed and helpless to do more than endure the burning pain that filled their bodies. Only their unquenchable instinct for survival preserved them.

That instinct was pushed to its very limit before the background hum of the warp shield generators died to be replaced by a distant vibration that grew steadily more intense. Suddenly it turned into the buzz of a million wings as countless black, bulbous, Warp-spawned flies poured through every bulkhead. This was the Destroyer, foulest of Nurgle's plagues. They swarmed over the paralysed Death Guard, feeding off their sweat, infecting their wounds and infesting every orifice. Throughout the vessel each body twitched uncontrollably as the plague flies laid their eggs within them. Flesh and armour swelled as the corruption filled them, bloating and distending until it burst leaving entrails and pus-filled lesions hanging from their wracked bodies.

On the bridge the ship's master, Typhon, was the first to stir, through a miasma of death he rose to his feet. From deep within him came a rattling, phlegm-laced roar.

"More."

All over the vessel the plague flies left their hosts and flew or crawled to him. The tide flowed into him ceaselessly until it was all gone. Impossibly the giant figure still stood, no longer Typhon, now he was host to the Destroyer Hive, the favoured son of Nurgle. Now he was Typhus.

Truly he had received his reward from his true master, Nurgle, Lord of Decay, and the god he had served even before the corruption of Mortarion. Whilst he remained subordinate to Mortarion, it was clear that Typhus considered that he need only call Nurgle 'Master'.

In the Eye of Terror Mortarion shaped his daemon world to resemble Barbarus. Typhus was sickened by the sentimentality. His loyalty was to Nurgle and Nurgle waxed strong when mortals feared death. Taking his ship and his followers Typhus returned again and again to the mortal realm and the legend of the traveller, the Herald of Nurgle was born. The rewards granted him by Nurgle are testament to a score of blighted worlds and countless damned souls.

TERMINUS EST
The Terminus Est was one of the first capital ships assigned to the Death Guard by the Emperor. It was of a unique design that predated the Great Crusade and which was copied in M36 as part of the Gareox Prerogative to create the Despoiler class. As might be expected the older vessel was considerably more powerful than the later copy.

Nothing definite is known of the pre-Heresy configuration of Terminus Est. References exist that suggest it was primarily employed as a planetary assault ship. This is not unusual as it conforms with the role assigned to the vessels of the Space Marines Legions. Many of the vessels used in the Great Crusade were however handicapped by system failures that the Imperium lacked the ability to repair. Often this would result in many systems being replaced with less efficient but more easily maintained alternatives.

The role of Terminus Est during the Heresy is better known. At Istvaann, the Terminus Est engaged and destroyed Shadow of the Emperor, the flagship of the Raven Guard. It is argued that this engagement was the earliest recorded conflict between battleships specialised to carry attack craft. The engagement was swift and deprived the loyalist forces of any air support in the massacre that followed.

When Terminus Est was sighted as part of the armada that followed Horus to Terra it had changed The Mark of Nurgle was upon it and all the other vessels of the Death Guard. When Mortarion led the assault on the Lion Gate starport. Typhus controlled the Plague Fleet and, it is suspected actually began the orbital bombardment of the Emperors palace.

Following Horus' death and the arrival of loyalist reinforcements, the Terminus Est`s formidable reserves of attack craft were expended as a rearguard while the Death Guard were evacuated back to their ships. Along with the rest of the Traitor Legions, the Death Guard fled to the Eye of Terror and disappeared from human knowledge for centuries.

In the Eye it is suspected that the Traitor Legions fought amongst themselves. It is the boast of the Death Guard that their Pnmarch-turncd-Dacmon Prince Mortarion conquered a mighty empire within the Eye and transformed it to his own tastes. Typhus and the Terminus Est were among the first of the Death Guard to be sighted again when they brought plague to the Agripinaa system in M35. The success of the Terminus Est in defeating the battlegroups sent against it had a major effect on the thinking of the Imperial Navy. In M36 an Adeptus Mcchanicus expeditionary force succeeded in finding schematics of its design on the perdita world of Barbaras and began building the Despoiler class. Little were they to know that the core architecture and design of the class' warp shields hid a fundamental corrupting flaw. Only when in the following centuries the vessels of this class were either lost in the Warp or turned renegade did the realisation strike home.

The Terminus Est and Typhus did not assume a central role in the Gothic War, a single sighting near Anvil 206 was the only evidence of their presence. However, considering the later incidents traced back to Anvil 206, it is clear that a particular mission was accomplished.

By M41 the Terminus Est is one of the oldest ships known to the Imperium, the power of Nurgle holds its ancient hull together and the most virulent plagues seethe through its dank corridors. The Terminus Est is a part of Nurgle s realm given license to travel the stars, spreading death at the behest of its damned captaia There will be no rest for the Imperial Navy until it is finally hunted down and cleansed for ever.

Typhus, the Herald of Nurgle, may be included in any Death Guard Chaos Space Marine army of at least 1,500 points as its Chaos Lord. He may be accompanied by a retinue of Chosen selected as normal but must otherwise be fielded exactly as specified.

Typhus, Herald of Nurgle
	Pts	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Sv
Typhus	230	5	5	4	4(5)	4	5	3	10	2/5+

Wargear: Mark of Nurgle, Sorcerer, Daemonic Essence (+1 W, included in profile), Daemonic Aspect, Nurgle's Rot, Nurgling Infestation, Terminator armour (+1 A, not shown above), Manreaper, Warp Talisman.

SPECIAL RULES

Psychic Abilities: Wind of Chaos, two minor powers - always has Affliction and Miasma of Pestilence.

Destroyer Hive: Typhus' armour and body are host to a horrific plague that manifests as a swarm of insects that pour from the cracks and vents in his armour. When he charges into combat he counts as using frag and blight grenades. When he is charged Typhus and his retinue (if any) count as being in cover. In addition units with models within 6" of Typhus contract Nurgle's Rot on a roll of 5+ instead of the normal 6.

Independent Character: Unless accompanied by a retinue Typhus is an independent character and all the rules regarding independent characters apply to him. See the Warhammer 40,00 rulebook for full details on independent characters.