Glottkin

The story of the Glottkin, known as Befouled Brothers of Nurgle,began in the Empire, on the coast of the Sea of Claws. The father of the triplets was Olios Glott, a humble Nordland farmer, and their mother was Ethra Greenblood, a magic user schooled in the lore of Life. Having witnessed a bloody Norscan invasion, Olios and Ethra stowed away with the armies that sailed across the Sea of Claws in search of retribution. However, where their comrades brought bloody vengeance to their Norscan foes, they instead brought enlightenment. By teaching the crafts of the farmer and the healer to the savages of Norsca, they hoped not to prolong the cycle of violence, but to break it

After deserting from the Empire armies under cover of darkness, the two emissaries slowly carved out a new life. Olios raised a humble house for his wife and tilled the stubborn ground around it; Ethra acted as a wise woman who influenced many of the fjord clans. Over the course of the winter, Ethra’s belly swelled to prodigious size - that year her womb nourished not one child, but three. A jealous Norscan hag cut Ethra’s finger with a rusted knife, and the shallow wound became badly infected. Unable to heal herself from the gangrenous curse that flowed in her blood, the she-wizard cried out in the night, begging the gods to save her children from the lethal infection. Father Nurgle was listening, and sent a daemon fly to alight on the pregnant Ethra’s gravid belly. Instantly the infection’s deadly grip lessened, and less than a week later Olios delivered three strong triplets near the rugged cliffs of Fjordlingtribe. Each bore a three-lobed birthmark, the sigil of the Lord of Decay, but their delighted father was unaware of its significance. He named his children Otto, Ethrac and Ghurek, and counted himself amongst the luckiest men alive.

The triplets that became known as the Glottkin grew tall and strong, and over time each showed great promise. Ethrac in particular was a quick study, drinking in the occult lore his mother had mastered. Meanwhile Otto and Ghurek wrestled each other, clambered across the treacherous cliffs of the fjords, and even sparred with the local youths of nearby Fjordlingtribe. For a time, all seemed well, and the Glotts brought the arts of the civilised realms to their adopted people. Otto helped his father harvest his crops with a great scythe of his own making, Ethrac aided his mother in rituals of fecundity that coaxed verdant life from the Norscan ice fields. Only Ghurek proved wayward, more interested in brawling and chasing women than helping his family in more wholesome pursuits.

Though the Glottkin’s parents worked hard to promote peace, they could not dissuade the Norscans from the seaborne raids that were so deeply ingrained within their culture. In the autumn of 2506, the forces of Nordland came in search of retribution once more. Over a thousand state troops made landfall to bring war to the fjord tribes that had taken the Glotts into their culture.

This time the triplets were at the fore of the fight. Otto hacked away with the same scythe he had used to reap his father’s harvest, Ethrac used his darkest growth-magicks to turn his foes into obese boulders of flesh, and the brawler Ghurek flattened soldiers and champions alike with his fists.

Still it was not enough, for the black powder weapons of the Nordlanders could kill at fifty paces, and the great cannons winched up to the clifftops from the gun decks of their galleons took a gruesome toll. The Glottkin fought hard as their people were cut down around them, blood dribbling over the lips of the cliffs and into the crashing waves below.

The triplets soon became surrounded by the bloody confusion of melee. When they saw their mother and father cut down by Nordland halberdiers, all three of the Glottkin cried out as one for vengeance. The seeds of mayhem that had been planted within their souls, watered by the blood of battle, finally began to bear fruit. Otto cut men down like autumn corn as his scythe swung left and right. Handgunner bullets thudded into his chest and even his face, but they did not break the skin. Ethrac’s magics became ever more destructive, reducing men to pools of black slime and causing maggots of dark energy to eat his foes from the inside out. Ghurek was filled with a daemonic strength, the warrior punching clean through torsos and guts before picking up a great cannon by its muzzle and swinging it like a giant club to sweep his foes over the cliff. The Empire army broke under the fury of the Glottkin’s onslaught, and their legend began in earnest.

Since that fateful battle, Nurgle bestowed gifts upon the triplets with every passing year, spoiling them much in the manner a generous grandfather treats his grandchildren. Little by little, the Glotts become very different men. Ghurek grew larger and larger as his ravenous appetite for life turned into desperate gluttony. Eventually man became monster as Ghurek gained terrible strength, but lost the ability to reason. Known for growling a corrupted version of his own name, ’Ghurk’ was refashioned by his adoptive grandfather into an obese spawn-thing so large his brothers took to riding him to war. Great horns sprouted from his shoulders, popping boils covered his back, and his arms mutated hideously, one into a lamprey maw, the other into a muscular tentacle, the better to scoop up victims to sate his terrible hunger. Ghurk could slay giants and ice drakes alike, devouring their corpses and later defecating heaving mounds from which strange new forms of life emerged into the light.

Embittered by the loss of his mother and father, Ethrac became dark of heart. His spells turned ever fouler, and the types of life they propagated were vile and unwholesome. The sorcerer burnt his parents’ bodies on a brazier that he has borne ever since, the stinking scent of burnt offal drawing clouds of flies wherever he roams. The remains of his parents still smoulder there to this day, a cremated reminder of the vengeance their sorcerous son has yet to wreak.

Of all the triplets, Otto embraced his new destiny with the most fervour. He became a true devotee of Nurgle, intending to sow unbridled life across the world in every manner and form, no matter how stomach-churning. His scabrous body bloated and became as tough as bark. Though the wounds he suffered on his steady rise to glory often did not heal completely, the contagions that drizzled from his opened guts grew so virulent they were soon weapons in their own right. Otto took to coating the blade of his scythe with his own poisonous juices whenever he went into battle, cementing his reputation as a harbinger of plague. Amongst all the brothers it is Otto who is the most driven. His taste for carnage has seen the roaming Glottkin triumph against warbands that worshipped Slaanesh, Tzeentch, even mighty Khorne. Yet, despite their growing favour in the eyes of their patron, it was only when Archaon approached them to lead his vanguard that the triplets began their deadly journey in earnest...