The cavalcade was in high spirits; even the miserable plaguebearers had a lightness in their shuffling as they descended over the ragged-edged wounds of their landing craft. Dilapidated carts were heaved out and down onto the pristine grasslands, rattling with their contents, their brightly coloured sides smirched with every manner of filth.

The second ship passed through the gap. Like the first, it lost its ability to fly as soon as it was free of the strange non-physics of the empyrean, and it slipped from the air with obese grandeur to skid across the poisoned swamp. It came to rest by the first. Hundreds of daemons perished under the bulk of this second carcass ship, but once its sides split, it replenished the horde with thousands more. The soil was rapidly turned to a stinking quagmire by the admixture of putrescent liquids and the tread of soft daemon feet.

The third meatship came down with the elegance of a decrepit palace collapsing, followed by the fourth, and then the fifth. When the sixth ship came down, the marsh was full of daemons, and the land bordering it already turning into a diseased quagmire.

It was then that the first of the daemonic lords emerged, those who would lead Nurgle’s efforts upon the mortal world of Iax.

A daemonic herald emerged in the vast dome of a dead void whale’s eye socket and stood upon the stinking lip. It was a daemon, but it might once have been a man. It lacked the sour countenance of the plaguebearers and their single eyes. It had two, and mirth glinted in them so brightly that the layers of rheum caking the lids could not hide it.

The herald cleared its throat with some considerable effort, scowled, and then waved behind it. A plaguebearer carrying a rusting horn shuffled to its side and blew into the mouthpiece. Its effort was a wheezing raspberry, but from the gaping funnel a mighty blast sounded, and ten thousand diseased faces turned to the whale-ship’s empty eye.

Pleased to have the horde’s attention, the herald puffed out its distended belly, straining filthy silks across its body and adding to their stains with leakage from its sores. It pushed down the goitre at its neck so that it might speak, giggling merrily and shouting out as loudly as the horn.

‘Septicus, Septicus! Seventh Lord of the Seventh Manse!’ wailed the herald. Greening bells clonked dully in response. The daemons shrugged and turned away to continue their muttering, droning, buzzing egress from the Realm of Chaos.

‘Septicus comes! Lord of the Seven Hosts! Keeper of the Seven Codes of Life! Untwister of skeins, straightener of mortal coils! Septicus the Mighty! Septicus Seven of the Many Plagues! He comes, he comes, he comes!’ bellowed the herald.