Imperial Armour 7: The Siege of Vraks, part 3 (2009), p143 — Necrosius

The Hand of Nurgle
Master of the Apostles of Contagion

The bitter and twisted sorcerer known as Necrosius is an ancient foe of the Imperium. A sworn servant of Nurgle, the Chaos god of pestilence, despair and decay, Necrosius is the master of the plague god devoted warband known as the Apostles of Contagion and a powerful sorcerer whose dark arts can awaken the dead to a nightmarish half-life.

Once an Apothecary in the Death Guard Legion whose true name has long been purged from all records. When the Legion's fleet was becalmed in the Warp and invaded by the corruption of Nurgle, the man who would become Necrosius and his fellows turned their every art and skill against the plagues sweeping their ranks but it was to no avail. The decay and disease that ravaged the Death Guard was a thing of Chaos, no mortal science or cure could hope to counter and the whole legion had been betrayed to its damnation in suffering at Nurgle's hands. Necrosius would not stop trying however, and even as his fellow Astartes died around him, succumbing each in turn to despair and the macabre blessings of Nurgle's touch, he struggled on against all hope, obsessed with finding the answer, even though the halls of the strike cruiser on which he was stationed began to unnaturally twist and corrode around him, and in the shadows daemons capered and mocked his efforts. Though his dead comrades staggered back into unholy life and his own body had become a bloated and rotted husk, he continued past reason and past the bounds of sanity. It was only when he heard the voice of his new father in corruption chortling and whispering to him in the murmerous wings of carrion flies and the sibilant gurgling of rotted, decaying organs, that Necrosius embraced the full nightmare truth of what he and his fellows had been damned to become, and embraced the service of his vile god.

A true convert to Nurgle's cause, Necrosius cast aside his past learning and cherished role as a healer of his battle brothers and gave himself, blighted soul and rotted body to the lore of death and the pursuit of Daemoniac sorcery, excelling as a master of the dark arts. With the zealous conviction of a true convert, Necrosius quickly gathered a following among his fellows with this baleful oratory and vision of granting the gift of eternal 'life' through death to all mankind, and these first disciples among the corrupted Death Guard would become the first Apostles of Contagion. His bitter heart would allow him to bend the knee to no master save Father Nurgle, even his former lord Mortarion he obeyed only grudgingly and long has he harboured a resentment of Typhus, whose betrayal sent the Death Guard to its final damnation. It is a resentment that has festered into a hateful rivalry and open conflict down the years between his faction and that of the former Death Guard Captain and now Host of the Destroyer Hive.

Soon Necrosius' Apostles parted company from their fellows and went their own way, spreading disease and walking death wherever they went, heedless to whom they brought their blighted 'gifts' be they servant of the Emperor or follower of the Ruinous Powers. As a result he and his Apostles have made many enemies and participated in great atrocities down the long centuries since the days of the Heresy, from the horrors of the Dorisca Genocides to the blighting of the Eldar Maiden world of Cth'rawl. During these many years the power of Necrosius and his Apostles of Contagion has waxed and waned many times, and indeed dources both Imperial and within the forces of Chaos have believed him destroyed on numerous occasions, whether at the blades of Imperial Assassins or in the flames of Ahriman's sorcerous fires, but always he has returned, earning him the sobriquet "the Undying" among his devotees.

When Necrosius arrived on Vraks as part of the Chaos counter-assault, his presence was at first unsuspected and unlooked for by ally and foe alike, for once again his enemies had believed him dead, and he and the fruits of his occult arts had not been seen for more than a century. His 'new' Apostles of Contagion are a relatively small but powerful warband, among them are numbered rotting and corpulent Plague Marines, Nurgle devoted renegades of uncertain origin and many dark acolytes, apostate preachers and lesser sorcerers, each apprentice to Necrosius's own nceromantic craft. Although he would accept no master, least of all the heretic Cardinal Xaphan nor indeed the mighty Lord Zhufor who soon gathered the allegiance of the bulk of the Chaos Marines on Vraks, Necrosius and his followers soon busied themselves with their own nightmarish work. Like the viral infections they embraced to corrupt their own bodies, the Apostles of Contagion passed among the ranks of the renegades of Vraks like rotting spectres, spreading their poisoned words and infecting the degenerate and the despairing with their bleak and unholy creed. Meanwhile Necrosius and his sorcerers travelled the long fought-over battlefields of Vraks, conducting rites of the darkest sorcery over the killing grounds, mass graves and the unburied dead, preparing the way for the horror to come.

As the slaughter began again in earnest, from the relentless hammering of the artillery and the thunder of the Titan's stride, to the carnage of the Khornate Berserkers' onslaught and the poisoned fumes that accompanied the Purge's assaults, the corpses of the fallen began to stir in Vraks' blood-soaked earth. Nurgle's dance of the dead had come to Vraks and Necrosius was calling the tune.

	Pts	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Sv
Necrosius	160	5	5	4	5	3	5	3	10	3+

Wargear: Bolt pistol with plague bolts, Force Weapon, Frag grenades, Krak grenades, Blight grenades

Psychic Powers: Nurgle's Rot, Gift of Chaos

Special Rules

Independent Character, Fearless, Feel No Pain, Mark of Nurgle (already included above), Master of the Dead

Master of the Dead
Necrosius is a powerful sorcerer who has learned many terrible secrets from the suppurating lips of Papa Nurgle's daemon-kin. Whilst Necrosius is present on the battlefield, all Plague Zombie units gain the Furious Charge special rule.

Plague Bolts
Attacks from Necrosius' bolt pistol count as poisoned and always wound on a 4+ unless the weapon's normal strength would make the result needed lower.