"Brother three shall bring low the Empire of Man. It is they who will muster the plague-kissed in their master's name. It is they who will cast the curse of unbound life, a curse that will bring primal disorder to a world of hard-won progress. United, the lords of disease shall bring the Old World to the brink of ruin -- ruin from within and from without. All things clean and true shall sicken and fade. The gods of Man shall fade with them, until only death holds the key to salvation...These are the End Times."
- —Prophecy of the End Times
The Glottkin brothers -- Otto Glott, Ethrac Glott, and Ghurek Glott
The Glottkin, also known as the "Befouled Brothers of Nurgle" or simply the "Glottkin Brothers," are a trio of Chaos Champions dedicated to Nurgle who, alongside Gutrot Spume and Orghotts Daemonspew, led the followers of the Plague Lord in their horrific "Plague War" upon the Empire during the apocalyptic age known simply as the End Times. These three brothers were prophesied to bring about the fall of the Empire, and it is by their hands that both life and death were brought upon the lands of Sigmar's people.
The Glottkin brothers were all born as triplets. The first brother, Otto Glott, is a formidable warrior and Chaos Champion equipped with his father's former farming scythe, and the leader of the Glottkin brothers. His second brother, Ethrac Glott, is a highly schooled and powerful Sorcerer of Nurgle, radiating with the power and knowledge of Nurgle's many poxes and diseases. The third brother, Ghurek Glott, is a colossal Chaos Spawn of mutated muscle and decaying flesh, so large that he carries his brothers around on his back and lays waste to any that seeks to harm them.
Mutated beyond their mortal forms, the Glottkins rank as the mightiest champions Nurgle has ever chosen, laying a virulent wake of destruction in their paths as they seek to corrupt the very heart of the Empire, and turn its lands into a garden paradise of pus and disease. They combine the darkest sorcery, the most virulent plagues and the most monstrous strength to butcher any opponent that stands against the terrible might of their master Grandfather Nurgle and those of the Dark Gods.
History[]
The story of the Glottkin 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. After witnessing a bloody Norscan invasion, Olios and Ethra stowed away with the Empire armies that sailed across the Sea of Claws in search of retribution. However, where their comrades wrought bloody vengeance upon their Norscan foes, Olios and Ethra instead brought enlightenment. By teaching the crafts of the farmer and the healer to the savages of Norsca, they hoped not to perpetuate the cycle of violence, but to break it.[1a]
Deserting from the Empire's armies under cover of darkness, the two emissaries slowly carved out a new life in the north. Olios raised a humble house for his wife and tilled the stubborn ground around it; Ethra acted as a wise woman, influencing 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. But a jealous Norscan hag cut Ethra's finger with a rusted knife, and the shallow wound became badly infected.[1a]
Unable to heal herself from the gangrenous curse that flowed in her blood, the wizard cried out in the night, begging the gods to save her children from the lethal infection. Grandfather Nurgle was listening, and sent a daemonic 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 the Fjordling tribe. Each child bore a three-lobed birthmark, the sigil of the Lord of Decay, but their delighted father was ignorant of its significance, never knowing the doom his sons would one day visit upon his former homeland. He named his children Otto, Ethrac and Ghurek Glott, and counted himself among the luckiest of men alive.[1a]
The triplets that became known as the Glottkin grew tall and strong in the hardy north, and over time each showed great promise. Ethrac in particular was a quick study, drinking in the local occult lore his mother had mastered. Otto and Ghurek, meanwhile, were more physically inclined, wrestling each other often atop the treacherous fjords and seeking out the youths of the nearby Fjordling tribe to spar with.[1a]
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.[1a]
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 IC, 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.[1a]
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 Imperial champions alike with his fists. Still it was not enough, for the blackpowder 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 down into the crashing waves below.[1a]
The triplets soon became surrounded by the bloody confusion of melee. Through the crimson fray, the trio glimpsed their mother and father being cut down by Nordlander halberdiers. Their greatest tie to civilisation cut, all three enraged Glottkin cried out as one for vengeance. The seeds of mayhem, planted within their souls by Nurgle before their births, watered by the blood of battle, finally began to bear fruit.[1a]
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 his thick, mutated skin. Ethrac, meanwhile, found his magics became ever more destructive, reducing men to pools of black slime and causing writhing maggots of dark energy to gnaw his foes apart from inside out. Lastly, great Ghurek was filled with a daemonic strength, the warrior punching clean through torsos and guts, before finally heaving a great cannon up by its muzzle and, wielding it, clubbing his foes over the cliffs into the bloody sea. The Imperial army broke under the fury of the Glottkin's onslaught, and their legend began in earnest.[1a]
Since that fateful battle, Nurgle has bestowed gifts upon the orphaned triplets with every passing year, spoiling them as a generous grandfather would his grandchildren. Little by little, the Glotts would become very different men. Ghurek grew ever larger as his ravenous appetite for life turned into desperate gluttony. Eventually, man became monster as Ghurek's growing strength sapped his ability to reason. Known for growling a corrupted version of his own name, "Ghurk" was refashioned by his adoptive grandfather into an obese Chaos Spawn so large that his brothers took to riding him into battle. Great horns sprouted from his shoulders, fetid pustules carbuncled his back, and his arms mutated hideously, one into a gawping lamprey-like maw, the other into a muscular tentacle, the better to grasp his still wriggling victims and sate his terrible hunger. Ghurk could slay Giants and Ice Dragons alike, devouring their corpses and later defecating heaving mounds from which wondrously disgusting new forms of life would emerge into the light.[1a][1b]
Embittered by the loss of his mother and father, Ethrac's heart darkened. His spells became ever fouler, the types of life they propagated 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.[1b]
Of all the Glott triplets, Otto embraced his new destiny with the most fervour. He became a true devotee of Nurgle, intending to sow unbridled life across the Known 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. Of all the brothers, Otto is the most driven. His taste for carnage has seen the roaming Glottkin triumph against the worshipping warbands of Slaanesh, Tzeentch, and even mighty Khorne.[1b]
Yet, despite their growing favour in the eyes of their patron, it was only when Archaon approached them to lead his vanguard into the Empire that the triplets began their deadly journey in earnest...[1b]