Ignatius Grulgor is a a minor antagonist in the Warhammer 40,000 franchise. He is the first of the Plague Marines, an Astartes (Space Marine) of the Death Guard Legion who fell to the corruption of Nurgle during the Horus Heresy, and was resurrected as a Daemon Prince.
Ignatius Grulgor was featured in the novel Flight of the Eisenstein, Vengeful Spirit, The Path of Heaven, and The Buried Dagger. Additionally, Grulgor was featured in the Fall of Medusa V worldwide campaign, and in the mobile game The Horus Heresy: Legions.
History[]
Barbarus[]
In the grim darkness of the far future, humanity was scattered across the stars in the wake of the cataclysmic Age of Strife, which shattered humanity's golden age. In the 31st millennium, Ignatius Grulgor was born on the world of Barbarus, a bleak and poisonous world that stood as the epitome of how far humanity had fallen. The human populace, now reduced to feral tribes, were ruled by tyrannical mutant overlords, with only the lowest pits of the planet being habitable to humans. Grulgor knew nothing but this grim existence, marked by the horrific oppression of the overlords and a daily struggle to survive. However, the Primarch Mortarion, one of twenty superhuman sons of the Emperor of Mankind, had landed on Barbarus after being cast through the Warp. With Mortarion in the lead, the humans of Barbarus led a successful rebellion against the overlords, and were then met with the Emperor of Mankind Himself.
Great Crusade[]
The Emperor, the sovereign of the Imperium of Man, had launched a Great Crusade across the galaxy to rebuild the divided, crumbling human race and return it to its lost golden age. To do this, the Emperor created many Space Marine Legions, each under command of a Primarch. The Dusk Raiders Legion, the XIVth Legion, was given to Mortarion, who renamed it the Death Guard. By the time the Emperor had arrived at Barbarus, the XIVth was mostly comprised of Astartes made from Terran humans, but upon the rediscovery of Mortarion, members of the Barbarus populace were brought into the Death Guard, including Grulgor, who was placed in the 2nd Great Company of the Death Guard.
Throughout the Great Crusade, Grulgor swiftly rose the ranks of the 2nd Great Company to become its captain. The 2nd Great Company held an especially esteemed rank for its captain, as while he was technically of equal rank as the other six Great Company captains, Grulgor, along with 7th Great Company Captain Nathaniel Garro, could carry the rank of commander if he so wished. Even with his rank, Grulgor was constantly arrogant, snarling, and judgmental, coming to despise the practices of remaining Terra-born Death Guard Astartes, who he thought were holding the Legion back from further accomplishments. Grulgor came to especially despise Garro, who Grulgor thought was unfit to be a Death Guard due to holding on to 'outdated' Terran traditions.
Horus Heresy[]
Near the end of the Great Crusade, Horus Lupercal, the most favored son of the Emperor, was corrupted by the power of Chaos. Other Primarchs had also fallen to the sway of Chaos, such as Lorgar Aurellian, Konrad Curze, Magnus the Red, Angron, Fulgrim, Perturabo, Alpharius Omegon, and Mortarion himself. Grulgor had always been more loyal to Mortarion than to the Emperor of Mankind, so when Mortarion agreed to join Horus' side in rebelling against the Emperor, Grulgor dutifully supported the traitor Primarch's decision.
The traitor Legions, their true colors still unknown to the Imperium, were then deployed to put down a rebellion in the Isstvan system. Horus decided to use the campaign on planet Isstvan III to purge the remaining Loyalists from the Death Guard, Fulgrim's Emperor's Children, Angron's World Eaters, and his own Luna Wolves, which he renamed the Sons of Horus. As such, the Loyalists from the four Legions were deployed to the surface, where they were to be bombarded with virus bombs. However, before the mission, Death Guard first captain Typhon pulled Grulgor aside and tried to get him to bring Garro to the side of the traitors, although Grulgor knew that Garro was too loyal to the Emperor. As such, Grulgor was tasked with killing Garro and any Loyalists with him, an opportunity that Grulgor relished.
During the deployment on Isstvan III, forever known as the Isstvan III Atrocity, Grulgor was stationed with Garro aboard the Death Guard frigate Eisenstein. However, before Grulgor could make a move, Garro was already notified of the incoming betrayal by Loyalist Emperor's Children captain Saul Tarvitz, making Garro organize a hundred-man force of Loyalist Astartes. Grulgor, not knowing of this, secretly brought in a shipment of virus bombs to the frigate, planning on using them to help in the bombardment of the Loyalists. Grulgor's actions were discovered by one of Garro's men, leading to Garro confronting Grulgor and his traitorous subordinates in the frigate's gun decks. A firefight erupted between the two forces, and in the battle, Grulgor accidentally shot one of the virus bombs, detonating it and releasing the Life-Eater virus, which quickly killed Grulgor and the rest of the traitors as the Loyalists fled.
Plague Marine[]
As Garro had the Eisenstein piloted out of the system en route to Terra, it was attacked by Typhon's battleship, forcing it into the Warp after taking heavy damage. The damage done to the Eisenstein allowed the energy of the Warp to bleed into the vessel during the jump, including the power of Nurgle itself. Nurgle, having chosen the Death Guard as its champion, resurrected Grulgor and his traitors as bloated, horrifically mutated Plague Marines, sending them to attack the Loyalists again. The renewed battle took the life of the ship's only Navigator, and Grulgor managed to infect young Loyalist Solan Decius with Nurgle's Rot, giving him an edge over Garro. However, before Grulgor could kill his hated rival, the Loyalists transitioned the vessel back into realspace. With the Warp connection severed, Grulgor and the first Plague Marines were immediately killed once again, their souls returned to the Warp.
Daemon Prince[]
Within the Warp, Grulgor was converted into a Daemon Prince of Nurgle. Sometime between the events of the Isstvan campaign and the Siege of Terra, the Death Guard and Sons of Horus invaded the Imperial Knight World of Molech, and Grulgor was summoned back to realspace by Mortarion. Now in his Daemon Prince form, Grulgor's body was infused with the very Life-Eater virus that had caused his first death, and was instrumental in destroying Molech's biosphere. However, Mortarion, not trusting an abomination like Grulgor, had him chained in the bowels of the Endurance, Mortarion's flagship. Grulgor remained restrained aboard the ship even during the subsequent invasion and destruction of planet Ynyx, even though he tried pleading with Mortarion to be part of the assault.
When the Death Guard set course for the Sol system, first captain Typhon proceeded to betray the Legion by revealing that his loyalty was to Nurgle more than his own Primarch, purposefully trapping the entire Legion in the Warp, where Nurgle's pestilence began to sicken and mutate the Astartes. Mortarion freed Grulgor during these events and ordered him to kill Typhon, which Grulgor did, only for Typhon to be resurrected by the Destroyer Plague. As such, Grulgor had technically completed his task, but Typhon was beyond death, making both of them laugh. Grulgor then declared that any loyalty he had to Mortarion was far eclipsed by his newfound loyalty to Nurgle, before Grulgor dissolved his material form and fused it with Typhon, turning Typhon into Typhus, Herald of Nurgle and Host of the Destroyer Hive. With that, Mortarion was driven to selling the souls of the Legion to Nurgle in exchange for deliverance from their living death, turning the whole Legion into Plague Marines.
41st millennium[]
In 999.M41, some 10,000 years later, Grulgor was summoned to realspace at the helm of a Chaos Space Marine invasion of Imperial mining world Medusa V. Leading bands of Plague Marines, Grulgor sieged the monastery of Madrigales to capture its astropathic databank, tearing apart Imperial tanks with his bare hands. A detachment of the Adepta Sororitas were sent in to cleanse the monastery, but were too late to stop Grulgor's forces from claiming the valuable databank. Grulgor was then chased through the surrounding landscape by the Sororitas, but somehow vanished off-world with his bounty, leaving only a festering pus-filled crevice in his wake before the planet was consumed by a Warp storm. As such, Grulgor is presumably still active somewhere in the Warp, and likely in realspace following the opening of the Great Rift.
