"The great host of Tamurkhan the Maggot Lord set forth with the baleful lights of the Realm of Chaos waxing above them, casting down their sickly and bavulous radiance on those below. Under this unhallowed light many were stricken with visions and others were blessed with the touch of insanity by the Dark Gods' revelations. Men and beast fell and were changed, their bodies contorting and mutating anew into shapes more pleasing to their masters, and those around them rejoiced, letting out great howls of triumph, for surely by this omen was their cause blessed."
- —The Saga of Tamurkhan, as told by Sayl the Faithless[1c]
Zanbaijin the Fallen City, its ruins littered by the bodies of fallen warriors.
Zanbaijin, called the "Fallen City," was a ruined city older than Mankind, and had long served as an arena where the Chaos Gods watched their mortal followers vie for their favour in violent conflict. Located on the blasted plateau of K'datha in the Eastern Steppes, when the Chaos Champions and their armies came to battle here, each one hoped to prove their worth and the superiority of their patron deity over all others.[1a]
A Chaos Champion who was a victor here would be marked for greatness, and by ancient tradition become master of those they vanquished. The fame of such a Chaos Lord would spread throughout the Northern Wastes, and many would flock to their banner in promise of the glories to come.[1a]
In recent times it was at Zanbaijin that the Champion of Nurgle Tamurkhan, the Maggot Lord, managed to defeat his rivals for the favour of the Dark Gods and forge an army of the Warriors of Chaos that would threaten the Old World.[1a]
History[]
Death at K'datha[]
The Arena of the Gods in Zanbaijin
Eventually the day came when three mighty armies came to make war in the shadow of the timeless, twisted pillars of Zanbaijin. First from the west came the brazen-armoured Norscan warriors of Hakka the Aesling, his axe-men drawn up in brutal column, each accompanied by packs of blood-crazed gore-spawn and flayed hounds snapping at their leashes.
From the east came Sargath the Vain, horse-lord of the Yurtsak, at whose bequest the paramours of Slaanesh had given themselves up to his service.[1a]
From the south came the witch-cabal of Urak Soulbane, arch-sorcerer and Daemon-priest, at whose beckoning the earth and rocks themselves spat forth twisted killing shapes, and above whose head vultures whirled on wings of flame. Although comparably few in number compared to the other greater forces, the witch-cult was deadly, and its fanatic acolytes and sorcerers could match many times their own numbers in combat.[1a]
Soon battle was joined and the slaughter was great. By spell and sword, fanged maw and burning talon, lives were claimed and blood was shed in profusion for the Chaos Gods' pleasure. The dead plazas of the fallen city echoed once more to the song of steel and the piteous cries of the dying. Hour after hour, day after day the forces clashed and parted in the heartbeat rhythm of war.[1a]
Of the three forces, none gained the upper hand, for while the fury of Hakka's berserkers was unsurpassed, it was countered by the numbers of Sargath's vast host, who spitted themselves on their foes' blades in unholy bliss and dragged them down, only to be beaten back from victory in turn by the scouring hellfire of Urak striking when triumph seemed assured.[1a]
Each force grew more desperate for victory as the bodies stacked deep in the cold dust and the moons passed overhead, and a great tumult of baleful light caught hold in the skies above K'datha, both as a sign of the Chaos Gods' pleasure and as a beacon to draw in others with the promise of glory like moths to a flame. The fighting ran on unabated, and soon where thousands had battled before, tens of thousands now flocked to join the conflict, swelling the armies of the mighty champions with scores of Chaos warlords, hungering monstrosities and Chaos warriors beyond number.[1a]
When the moon of Mannslieb died in the east, and the Black Moon, Morrslieb, rose in ascendancy, another host appeared on the horizon, carrying with it a great miasma of shadow and pestilence. It had begun as a flood of distorted, nightmarish things, dredged up from the depths of cold mires: hungering Bile Trolls, worm-men, and hideous nameless things dripping rot and slime. At the head of this monstrous horde was a rotted yet living cadaver astride a mighty Toad Dragon, a cadaver that called itself Tamurkhan the Maggot Lord, servant of the god of pestilence and father of all diseases: Nurgle.[1a]
Onslaught of the Maggot Lord[]
A Chaos Knight battling at the Arena of the Gods in Zanbaijin.
Like the other Chaos warlords, Tamurkhan had been drawn to the plateau of K'datha by the promises of power beyond mortal imagining. But from the beginning, he amongst the four warlords present for this contest had been marked for glory by his patron god.[1a]
As Tamurkhan had set out from his foetid lair, Nurgle himself had sent forth a dark and noxious storm that howled and screamed before the rancid column of beasts and half-men he commanded, carrying the certain promise of death and ruin to those who would stop them. Whilst the moon had dwindled in the night sky, the horde of Tamurkhan wound ever westward towards blasted K'datha where battle already raged. Drawn in his wake were many fierce warriors who owed fealty to the corrupt Father of Plagues, heedless of loyalty to tribe or warband, so highly blessed in Father Nurgle's favour Tamurkhan clearly was.[1a]
From all the domains of the northlands, champions of decay clamoured to the cavalcade of their new master and soon names already legend for the desolation they had wrought such as Kayzk the Befouled, master of an order of corrupt and rotted Chaos Knights, and the Dragon-rider, Orthbal Vipergut, came to pledge to Tamurkhan their filth-stained blades in allegiance.[1a]
With every great warrior of renown came also a host of lesser fighters, Northmen tribesmen, and sub-Human dregs in profusion. Such was the scale of this gathering that the northlands were nearly emptied of its inhabitants. Most of those who rallied to the ragged banners of Nurgle were already marked by the favors of their patron lord and some were so corrupted by disease and disfigurement they were barely recognizable as being even Human.[1a]
Tamurkhan's coming to blasted K'datha was heralded by dark signs and portents, and even as his mouldering host mounted the passes to the plateau, the bodies of the slain that littered fallen Zanbaijin started to shudder and seethe with unholy life. This phenomenon was not the workings of dark necromancy, but of huge, bloated carrion flies that had begun to breed and multiply within the organs of the dead and dying.[1a]
The juddering corpses now burst forth in a hateful, biting swarm to darken the skies in sickly clouds and fill the fallen city with their murmurous wing-beats. With this foul omen at hand, the witch-cult of Urak Soulbane, arcanist of Tzeentch, fled Zanbaijin, spitting burning curses as they left, their master having divined doom should they decide to stay and fight.[1a]
For the bitter rivals, Sargath the Vain and Hakka the Aesling, the arrival of this Nurglite horde did not persuade them to give up the fight, even when the swarms of biting flies began to devour the entire city. So it was that Tamurkkan's plague-ridden host fell upon the two greater Chaos armies as they were already engaged in bloody battle for the wide plaza at the centre of the dead city.[1a]
The slaughter was great and swiftly many of the minor warbands were crushed or driven from the field in disarray. Those not trapped between warring factions or blinded by bloodlust took to flight rather than risk overwhelming destruction. Only Sargath and Hakka's forces fought on unbowed.[1a]
At the height of the battle the skies were rent open and foul, caustic rain fell in great sheets. At the tainted rain's touch the flesh of the dead petrified and ran like melting wax, and open wounds festered as the vanguard of the three great Chaos warlords met in battle at the plaza's centre. The proud and vicious steeds of the Yurtsak marauders were soon mired as obscene tendrils of rancid liquid rose up to drown them in a horrific massacre as the horde of Tamurkhan smashed into their flank with shattering force. The embattled combatants turned and counter-attacked this new enemy.[1a]
Sargath the Vain's sworn sorcerers responded with twisting enchantments of their own, searing the oncoming plague-beasts with waves of coruscating energy, blinding and misleading its warriors with murderous illusions. But all was in vain as the disordered lines of Sargath's marauders and cavalry, caught in place and robbed of the advantage of mobility, crumbled before the implacable tide of rot and terror before them, while Sargath's most powerful troops, his mutant Forsaken, were caught between the onslaught of Kayzk the Befouled's Chaos Knights on one side and the frenzied flayed-hounds of Hakka's forces, who had been driven utterly insane by the corrosive rain and devouring flies, on the other.[1a]
Seeing the tide of battle turned against him, Sargath, his pride stung and his rage uncontrollable at the prospect of defeat, charged his own bodyguard of Chaos Knights at the heart of Tamurkhan's forces, calling for the head of the one who had so insulted him with the presumption of the attack on Slaanesh's favoured son. His white-enamelled Chaos Armour splattered with blood and unmentionable filth, Sargath, whose blade-skill was legend, hacked and slew his way to face his new enemy. With his narrow rune-blade slicing through rusted armour and decaying flesh alike, he carved his way to face Tamurkhan directly.[1a]
Arrogant and scorning the forces that surrounded him, Sargath, Prince of Chaos, poured insults upon the withered figure that slumped bonelessly atop the vast hulking beast before him. The Toad Dragon Bubebolos was the size of a tower house, its armoured bulk already shredded and scratched with dozens of wounds that had done nothing to stop its rampage. The rotted figure atop the monster spat back its own taunts in reply, and at the slightest gesture of command, Bubebolos reared up and opened its vast and reeking maw wide.[1a]
Triumph of Tamurkhan[]
"Father Nurgle! Favour me, ten thousand souls have I sent for your tally, a hundred wells I have poisoned with filth and the champions of those who would put themselves before you I have slain!"
The march of Tamurkhan's Host
But even as the Toad Dragon unleashed a blast of unspeakable foulness from its gaping mouth, the inhumanly lithe Sargath the Vain leapt from the back of his Chaos Steed and high into the air, as a mere instant later, his former mount was liquefied into screaming, necrotic ooze. Sargath's leap took him to the very head of the beast itself, landing upon one of its horns even as his once-white Chaos Armour became rusted with the backwash of Bubebolos' vile breath.[1a]
With a cry of triumph Sargath swung himself upwards at the Toad Dragon's rider, and with the speed of a striking serpent sunk his rune blade deep into Tamurkhan's heart. Tamurkhan merely laughed and Sargath's howl of triumph was cut short, as the withered cadaver before him squirmed, bulged and split open like a bloated fruit, and Tamurkhan's true form was revealed.[1a]
An infant-sized maggot, streaked with greyish slime, leaped into the throat of Sargath and ripped itself deep into his body. The maggot's fatted body writhed and twisted obscenely as it pushed its way behind Sargath's rib cage, which splintered and cracked, the maggot-thing devouring and boring ever deeper into the living organs within.[1a]
The Champion of Slaanesh's body fell limply into the foetid mire of the battlefield, and when it rose again, Bubebolos bellowed in deafening exaltation and the servants of decay gibbered and capered in bleak joy, as Tamurkhan, reborn into his latest host body, mounted again on his war beast.[1a]
The heart ripped from them by their master's defeat, Sargath's marauders fell into full and panicked retreat and hundreds were cut down, caught between the braying madmen of Tamurkhan's forces, freshly invigorated by their master's triumph, and the tireless blades of the Aesling's blood-worshippers at their backs.[1a]
Many hundreds more escaped, calling upon their god for deliverance, fleeing down the crazed and pillared paths of the fallen city and becoming swallowed up by the labyrinth. Hakka the Aesling himself, now vastly outnumbered and outmatched, committed his own soul and the souls of his followers to Khorne, and hurled himself and his bodyguard into the thick of Tamurkhan's bestial vanguard.[1a]
At this sundering charge of savage fury, the battle-line of Nurgle's children wavered but did not break, and as the weight of the forces against them pressed harder, Hakka the Aesling was swept away from his own warriors, and despite the whirlwind fury of his twin axes, he was soon torn apart by the grasping claws of Bile Trolls, his body so shredded and devoured that no part of him could be found for a trophy after the battle. With victory in Tamurkhan's grasp, the skies were rent with sickly green lightning and the foul rain fell in a great downpour, tainting the dead stones of Zanbaijin with filth, and the sound of the great storm's thunder carried with it the bleak echoes of Father Nurgle's laughter.[1a]
Tamurkhan proclaimed his victory to the gods from a mound of heaped and rotting dead as the banners of the vanquished were cast down at his feet. Before his assembled army, he cried out his name and lineage, claiming to be the twisted son of the Great Kurgan of old, now returning to claim his savage birthright to slay and conquer in the name of his god. He praised Father Nurgle who had brought him his blessings and declared his intention to claim the Throne of Chaos for his own. By right of conquest as was the custom at Zanbaijin, the surviving warband leaders and Chaos Champions now owed Tamurkhan their fealty.[1a]
Amongst these servants of Chaos were many who, until this moment, had considered themselves implacable enemies, rivals for mortal power and divine favour, bitter foes who would rather perish than make common cause. Yet even these degenerates swore to fight as one in the name of Tamurkhan the Maggot Lord, agreeing to lay their feuds aside so long as he brought them victories and plunder in the battles to come.[1a]
News of Tamurkhan's great victory spread, and soon the warriors of the Northmen tribes, wandering killers, unspeakable horrors, and power-hungry Chaos Cults began to flock to his banner as he departed from the charnel-clogged ruins of Zanbaijin and headed again northward. In this manner the horde of the Maggot Lord grew each day as it tramped across the Eastern Steppes towards the foothills of the snow-topped Altayan Hills and Tamurkhan's next goal. A new champion of the Dark Gods had been chosen by battle in the ruins of Zanbaijin, and now his armies would fall upon the civilised realms of the mortal world.[1a]