The last plague ark touched down. It rolled onto its side as it landed and its jaws flopped open on mushy sinew. Grumbling at the poorness of the landing, the seventh and final legion came out, their cymbals and bells merging with Septicus’ jig. Other daemons joined in with his tune, and soon his playing was swollen by an accompaniment of piercing flutes played by seven hundred lesser pipers.

Such a display was a sight to please Nurgle’s sore eyes, and a rare thing it was. The creatures mustering upon the garden world were among his very best: his most revolting, his most contagious, his finest warriors and his most skilled accountants of ailment. They were the Plague Guard, and they were the vanguard of the great invasion of Iax. A more dread legion could not be found anywhere in Nurgle’s Garden or beyond.

Cohorts of daemons marched out to the sound of Septicus’ pipes: plaguebearers, beasts of Nurgle, rot flies, maggoths and drooling daemons of every degree. Nurglings continued to tumble like rain from the holes and pores and orifices of the stinking whale-ships, flooding the land long after their larger kin had grumbled their way free.

There were other greater daemons there besides Lord Septicus. They were the leaders of this filthy host, fragments of Nurgle himself, each given will of their own to go out and do mischief. There were but seven of them in total, one for each of the plague legions arriving, for they were rare even in the Garden of Nurgle. One by one, they forced their way out from the plague arks. The whale-ships were already dissolving into putrid liquefaction, their fluids poisoning the world, and the greater daemons stepped onto Iax slicked in these juices, smiling widely.

They were the lords of the Plague Guard.

There was Bubondubon the Smiler, jolliest of all, who laughed and joked as he capered past Septicus, receiving a friendly wink in return. Then Pestus Throon emerged, chewing his way through the stomach wall of his whale-ship. He gobbled down slick strips of rotten meat as he joined the stream of daemons, belching loudly. He looked too fat to move, but he was mighty, very mighty. After all, it was Throon who had brought low the ancient empire of the Dravians so successfully that no mortal history now remembered them, an accomplishment he regaled his fellows with often.

After him came the Gangrel, who was tall and thin as the others were rotund and squat. He knuckle-walked on stilted arms, dragging useless legs through a trail of his own filth. Then came Squatumous, the Pestifex Maximus, and then the one called only Famine, who in keeping with Nurgle’s boundless sense of humour was fatter than all save Pestus. Septicus Seven, their lieutenant, made six.

Their general had yet to emerge.