Is This The Face Of Someone Who Is Happy About How Things Turned Out? (Grimdark Fantasy WIP) (Patreon)

Hello!

Fantasy Month has started!  And I'm starting with Mortarion because he's the Grimdark Reaper and I know way more stuff about him than the other characters.

So Mortarion is one of those primarchs with a lot of titles.  He's known as the Death Lord, the Pale King, the Reaper of Men...you get the idea.  And while he's feared for his legendary constitution, Mortarion has a very (and I mean very) big inferiority complex stemming from his upbringing and the consequences of his actions.  Mortarion also has to deal with his own version of Starscream which definitely didn't help.  As an aside, this is a common theme among the traitor Legions.  Chaos Space Marines are always trying to stab their Primarchs in the back so they can run things.  Maybe Perturabo actually had the right idea all along.

So things were off to a great start when Mortarion's birth pod landed on the Death World of Barbarus, a planet so poisonous, an Average Joe would liquify in minutes due to the poisons in the atmosphere.  Barbarus was ruled by a Xenos Tyrant called Necare who discovered the 14th Legion Primarch.  Impressed with the child's unnatural resilience to poisons, Necare decided to take the child in, give him his name and make him his heir.  To condense a huge backstory, Mortorian learned the ropes of war from the Tyrant but defected to the humans who were under the thumb of the Xenos Overlords and Necare (because he realized he had a lot more in common with humans and the Overlords were all tyrants using sorcery to oppress his own kind).  Mortarion forms a human rebellion and even manages to kill a few Overlords but Necare was always out of his reach because the Tyrant's fortress was at the highest mountain on Barbarus and the poisons there were so strong even his Primarch constitution couldn't resist it.

Eventually the Emperor shows up and gives Mortarion a deal.  If Mortarion can kill Necare on his own, Big E would leave.  If he couldn't, Morty would join Big E on the super fun Crusade all his brothers were running.  Taking the bet, Mortarion tried to climb to the peak and deal with his foster father.  But at the highest summit, Mortarion collapses choking on the poisonous atmosphere.  Tyrant Xenos father shows up to finish him off but Big E jumps in at the last moment to one shots the Tyrant.  True to his word, Mortarion swore fealty to the Emperor but this was the beginning of a long simmering resentment as the 14th Primarch never forgave his true father for stealing his thunder.

So Mortarion brought his unique brand of warfare to the Great Crusade.  Basically it was a remorseless march of Death Guard, absorbing all the punishment the enemy could throw at them while firing a barrage of nasty stuff back at them.  We're talking about chemical, phosphex and radiation based weaponry, basically every war crime you can think of and quite a few that haven't even been invented yet.  The 14th Legion will turn ever battlefield into no man's land and grind the enemy into the muck, choking and gagging until they're the last ones standing. While undeniably effective, this really didn't help the Death Guard's reputation and Mortarion gets called out by Guilliman and Dorn quite a few times.

One thing Mortarion really pushed for during the Great Crusade was the banishment of the Librarius in the Legions.  Due to his upbringing, he absolutely hated anything warp/sorcery related and he viewed Librarians little more than ticking time bombs.  Long story short, some Primarchs really wanted them gone (Mortarion, Leman Russ) while others (Magnus, Khan) pushed for it to remain.  This debate got really heated and it was finally decided by Big E at the Council of Nikaea that Librarians would be banned with huge restrictions for psykers in the Imperium.  So Big E actually sided with Mortarion on this debate but that wasn't good enough for the Death Lord.  At the back of his mind, he still viewed Big E as a tyrant and being the most powerful psyker in existence definitely didn't help.  So when the Horus Heresy broke out, Mortarion basically saw this as the perfect opportunity to take down the greatest tyrant of them all.

Mortorian does his part during the Dropsite Massacre at Isstvan V but his main storyline is trying to recruit the Primarch of the V Legion, Jaghatai Khan who at this point was still a wild card and hadn't really picked a side.  He finds the Khan at Prospero after it's been destroyed and tries convince his brother to join team traitor.

It's here that we get one of the sickest burns in the Horus Hersey.  Khan dumps on Mortarion, calling him a fool and a hypocrite.  Because while Mortarion had handicapped the Loyalists at the Council of Nikaea, the Death Lord had joined the side that let sorcerers run rampant, opening the door his own corruption.  Basically the Khan says Mortarion sealed his own doom and he wasn't going to join him in it.  Mortarion is pissed because he knows deep down that the Khan was right on the money.  So after an inconclusive fight, he hightails it out of Prospero to stew on his brother's words.

For the sake of not writing a book, I'm going to skip a lot of stuff, but basically Mortarion starts delving into sorcery rationalizing that he can somehow use this knowledge to fight against the corruption.  Y'know that fighting fire with fire technique.  But since he has no idea what the hell he's doing, Mortarion just corrupts himself even more.

When it's time to head to Terra, Mortarion's first captain Typhon has the great idea to kill all the Legion's navigators because they were disloyal.  But this is just a ruse to get the entire Death Guard stranded in the warp.  Typhon pulls a Starscream and hands Mortarion and the entire Legion to Nurgle on a platter, making them suffer so hard, not even their legendary constitution can save them.  Mortarion realizes he's truly screwed this time and that the Khan was right all along.  Only now, Big E isn't there to bail him out.  So in to order save himself and his sons, Mortarion pledges the 14th Legion to the Great Grandfather, making them the disgusting walking vectors of plague the fans know and love.  Mortarion gets to become a Daemon Prince of Nurgle, a being made of pure sorcery which is the very thing he always hated.  But 30K/40K is full of these kind of ironies.

So yeah, Mortarion is one of those Primarchs that really played himself.  He has to keep rationalizing his decisions even as they drag himself and the 14th Legion deeper and deeper into the hole.  The amount of Doublethink Mortarion displays throughout the Horus Heresy is actually quite impressive and tragic.

Visually, I stuck close to Daemon Primarch Mortarion's aesthetic and gave him a unhealthy dose of Nurgle's blessings.  I really like Blight Drone wings, so I gave Morty a pair.  For this release, I think I'll also include his Pre Heresy version as Mortarion's original armour is plain enough.

Career Highlights

• During the Siege of Terra, Mortarion comes across his wayward son, Battle Captain Garro.  The Death Lord offers him a chance to rejoin the Legion but gets rejected with Libertas getting shoved into his throat.  An angry Mortarion kills the best son he ever had but makes Garro a Martyr in the Imperial Cult.  Big E even shows up at the end to go yoink! so Garro gets to hang out with the Cheese Legion.
• Daemon Primarch Mortarion gets a rematch with the Khan during the Siege of Terra.  With all the cheat codes on, Morty is slapping the Khan around like he owes him money.  But the Khan is delivering more burns per sentence than the most talented rap artist.  The Khan tops all his previous burns by saying since he resisted corruption better, his constitution is superior to Mortarion's!  Morty gets super pissed and reckless leaving an opening which allows the Khan the slice off his head and banish him from the Siege of Terra.
• Mortarion has the misfortune of going up against Kaldor Draigo's plot armour.  I know I give Abaddon constant grief for his ridiculous plot armor, but Draigo's is just on a whole other level.  Basically the newly minted Supreme Grand Master uses Power Word Stun on the Death Lord and cuts out his heart to banish him for awhile.  It's as embarrassing as it sounds.  You can listen to a song about it.
• In modern 40K Mortarion is busy spreading Nurgle's blessing across the galaxy and even destroys a T'au Expansion Sphere in the process.  He tries to kill his brother Guilliman with Nurgle's latest concoction, but Big E decides to hand out his own cheat codes for a bit and Guilliman does that thing Living Saints are famous for.  Then Big E gives Mortarion a psychic spanking and sends him on a timeout back in Nurgle's Garden which He just burned.  I'm pretty sure Nurgle is going to do more than give Mortarion a timeout after this.
• Ironically, the best portrayals I've seen of Mortarion are in the White Scars novels.  Even if you don't traditionally read 40K stuff, I strongly recommend Scars, Path of Heaven and Warhawk.  Three of the gems from the Horus Heresy and Siege of Terra series with some of the best prose I've read in any 30K/40K novels.  I also recommend The Lords of Silence for more Death Guard awesomeness! 👍

Okay, next up is MTG Serra and Ghazkull.  Stay tuned!