Fluff questions concerning Death Guard Fanon

[Tarthor]

Like most people who play Warhammer 40k, I found out that the Death Guard are getting new models. I was becoming bored of the space marines, lore and game play wise so I thought "might as well go chaos for a bit". I did a bunch of personality quizzes to give me an idea of who to worship and all of them told me to worship Nurgle, so I grew accustomed to the lore and backstory and got super hypes about the new models. 

 

I'm one of those players who loves to develop and customize the fluff and paint jobs of my armies, and I just wanted to know; are Fanon Death Guard sub-factions a thing? Will I get called out for breaking the lore for my own twisted purposes? WILL I BECOME MY LOCAL MATT WARD?

 

In other words, can I make a custom sub-faction for Death Guard, and what would be the rules for writing it? Hope this makes sense.

Edited September 19, 2017 by Tarthor

[Sawtooth]

Nah, go nuts. The Death Guard are a huge legion with a ton of war bands with their own quirks. Many have different colored armor, different philosophies, etc.

[robofish7591]

If people are calling you out for being original, those are probably people you wouldn't want to play a game with anyway.  So yeah, make your own warband.  They are your models and if you are happy with them that is all that matters.

[Lord Marshal]

Yeah, if you read through the codex there's plenty of example Warbands/Vectorums given to inspire you to come up with your own. 

[MoGuy]

Yes as long as you don't try to rewrite canon fluff. Or make them some super special unique snowflakes. Give them a specialty, something they are known for to be especially good in. Once you know what that is you have a good starting point. From there on you can explain how they started out and came to develop their special traits.

[Tarthor]

Thanks for the comments, I will now proceed to fill an empty document with minutia and backstory.

[DuskRaider]

I have a complete backstory for my Death Guard that stretches back 10,000 years so yeah... it adds depth and gives me the motivation to paint and model. Develop as you please, create your own paint scheme, and have fun with it.

[Lord Marshal]

Something to consider is how positive (or not) their relationship is with the Death Guard's leadership. Are they Mortarion's loyal followers, or did they join up with Typhus' bunch? Maybe they're acting independent of both (the codex has a couple of examples of these too)?

[Warsmith Annüss]

I like my fluff to coincide with the official canon and the way the DG are structured makes that very easy for me.

[Cryptix]

Go ahead! My fluff is that they're the Dusk Raiders of the legion, and the vectorium split into two halves - one became a renegade warband raiding as far away from the Plague Planet as possible while searching for the wrecks of the Eisenstein, and the other became full on plague-marines trapped within their armor.

[Jarl Caldersson]

Haven't flushed out mine yet, but was going to go along the lines that they were separated, on a mission, during the Death Guard corruption. When they came back they were tortured to turn sides and refused until some brain parasite (or something) took control and made them mindless marines that simply obey Morti's commands. Since they are brain-dead they never repainted their armor and simply are used as canon fodder for Morti or anyone else he wishes.

 

Also for pure silliness the Sergeant tongue was taken out during torture, as such he was given a nurgling to call out his commands. The champion was killed, but being a brainless bunch simply kept following the nurgling as their champion.

 

...and thats how a nurgling became known to wear a helmet, and a PM champion.

Edited September 20, 2017 by Caldersson

[Tarthor]

I have one more lore question: would it be considered a sub-faction or vectorium, or, is there any difference?

 

Couldn't find an answer online, so thanks if you know.

[DuskRaider]

Even Pre-Heresy there were so many Battalions and Chapters within the Death Guard Legion that you could make your own unique heraldry and play style, background, etc and not break the fluff. Post Heresy, things are even more loosely constructed, their numbers have swelled well beyond what they were at the outbreak of Heresy, and they've stretched the length of the known universe (both real space and the warp) that there's really not much preventing you from doing what you'd like. You could make them 10,000+ year old Veterans of the Long War, old Terran veterans (what few would have been allowed to survive Isstvan III), those who hailed from Barbarus... hell, you could have recent recruits pulled from the tribes found on the Plague Planet in the Warp. Make them have another Legion / Chapter's geneseed and thus seen as mongrels by the pure blood Death Guard... let your imagination go wild.

[General Strike]

I don't really want to piggy back this thread, but it seems better than making a new thread for essentially the same thing. I am doing a alt-heresy scheme for my DG, and running them as Fallen Blood Angels. I was originally going to do Dornian Heresy angels, but decided to make lore up as I went. I'm thinking of doing a blue, rusted and rotted scheme to look like blood in the veins. I haven't decided if I want to use the new plague marines and blightlords or run MK3 and Cataphracti. Depends on how well the fleshshade will go over the macragge blue. Any advice on how to fit the slow moving DG with the former BA fast attack style, in fluff?

[Panzer]

I don't really want to piggy back this thread, but it seems better than making a new thread for essentially the same thing. I am doing a alt-heresy scheme for my DG, and running them as Fallen Blood Angels. I was originally going to do Dornian Heresy angels, but decided to make lore up as I went. I'm thinking of doing a blue, rusted and rotted scheme to look like blood in the veins. I haven't decided if I want to use the new plague marines and blightlords or run MK3 and Cataphracti. Depends on how well the fleshshade will go over the macragge blue. Any advice on how to fit the slow moving DG with the former BA fast attack style, in fluff?

Sounds awesome, would definitely go with the blue on the new DG models.

 

About fitting the fluff ... well you obviously can't make a fast DG list unless you use mostly Drones and Blight Hauler but I wouldn't go that route. So a fluff explanation why they are slow now. Well Mortarion did a 180° about using psychic powers so Nurgle BA could've been "convinced" by the slow approach to warfare over time as well I guess.

 

The more interesting question for me would be...what would make your army actually fallen BA instead of just blue Death Guard? Any ideas for conversions etc. already?

[General Strike]

For now, mostly due to my relative newbness, I plan to use FW and GW upgrade sprues and bits. A chalice on a champions power pack overflowing with rot and goopy blood, thin, gaunt vampiric faces, blood gems leaking actual blood onto the armor, and rotted and matted wings from former heraldry.

[Closet Skeleton]

I have one more lore question: would it be considered a sub-faction or vectorium, or, is there any difference?

 

Couldn't find an answer online, so thanks if you know.

 

Vectorums were introduced in the Dark Imperium boxset as alternate colour schemes but not fully explained.

 

The codex states that a Vectorum is just the Death Guard name for a warband. They're a kind of subfaction but not the only kind in the Death Guard Legion as there is also more formal organizational structure. You can treat a Vectorum as kind of like a successor chapter if you want.

 

Vectorums have their own colour schemes and like all Chaos Space Marine warbands are clustered around a single leader. Members of a Vectorum tend to all be from the same Plague Company  but are informal unlike that Plague Company's more formal subdivisions called Maledictums and Colonies (like how a loyalist army will usually have elements of multiple companies fighting together). Then it states that some Vectorums are "more disparate still" so if you don't care about formal structures at all you should have the freedom to make up your own Vectorum that are descended in some way from the Death Guard legion and use the Death Guard rules but have their own colour schemes, tactics and characters.

 

This is all on page 12 of the Death Guard codex.

[Marshal Loss]

Actually Vectoriums were introduced in the Traitor Legions book as the name for the DG Decurion equivalent.

 

I don't really want to piggy back this thread, but it seems better than making a new thread for essentially the same thing. I am doing a alt-heresy scheme for my DG, and running them as Fallen Blood Angels. I was originally going to do Dornian Heresy angels, but decided to make lore up as I went. I'm thinking of doing a blue, rusted and rotted scheme to look like blood in the veins. I haven't decided if I want to use the new plague marines and blightlords or run MK3 and Cataphracti. Depends on how well the fleshshade will go over the macragge blue. Any advice on how to fit the slow moving DG with the former BA fast attack style, in fluff?

 

Perhaps play on the 'Day of Sorrows' theme from 30k? When the BA had their backs to the wall they were intractable in defence, so perhaps a theme where they were grounded down over a long period of time, eventually falling to Nurgle and shaping their style around that could work nicely.

[Doctor Perils]

Hi there!

From my understanding, you can absolutely write up fluff about your own Vectorium of the Death Guard, or even another Legion's successor that turns towards the worship of Nurgle to meet Grandfather's warm embrace

 

If you want, may I also recommend the Liber Chaotica, a full section of the Bolter and Chainsword dedicated to the creation of chaos DIY forces (ie fanon armies), and if you have any additional questions about the fluff, you can ask them in the Liber Surgery, where you might get additional points of view to your ideas

 

Obviously, the Death Guard forum is always there for you too :)

Edited September 23, 2017 by Lord Thørn