Editing Mortarion (section)

===Great Crusade===

He was discovered 130 years into the Great Crusade and was taken to Terra, like all his other brothers were, to learn the ways of the Imperium. Unusually he was held for a bit longer on Terra than his brothers were on the reasoning that they would get the poisons and toxins out of his system, though this would obviously hit a snag since he got his armour customized to supply him with the Barbarus gases on demand (maybe he was dependent on them? Or maybe they just got him high?). Naturally all this waiting around got him a bit frustrated and annoyed.

Mortarion managed to sneak his way through the Imperial Palace and to the construction site of the future [[Golden Throne]] (yeah, despite being similar in size and smell to a small garbage truck, he was an excellent [[Ninja]], also evidenced by his rules below). When he asked [[Malcador the Sigillite|Malcador]] what it was he wouldn't accept the regent's excuses that it was nothing to concern himself over, since Mortarion knew [[Heresy|warp-tech]] when he saw it. He considered the Emperor and Malcador big giant hypocrites for ostensibly rejecting the Warp while experimenting with it on the sly. (He had the same attitude with his three brothers who set up the Librarius - and he didn't get on that well with any of the others. Apart from maybe the Khan, Mortarion had the least central role in the Crusade of all the Primarchs.)

To placate him, Malcador revealed him part the Emperor's greater plan, which was to remove the reliance on psykers and warp travel entirely; they were already planning the [[Council of Nikaea]] in advance and that Mortarion would be the one to make the case for reining it in. Mortarion took note and calmed down but this whole situation was another nail in his coffin, festering down his mind and fouling his relationships with basically everyone else. Apparently, being promised a political slam dunk while being shown a glimpse of the future he wanted wasn't enough for that spiteful cunt.

Nevertheless, Mortarion got his own legion and swore allegiance to the Big E. Weirdly, for all his dad and Malcador's worries about him, they didn't see fit to keep him fighting alongside the Emperor like (clearly sane and well-adjusted) Vulkan. Regardless, he wasted little time in transforming the Dusk Raiders into the Death Guard, and proved himself one of the Great Crusade's best frontline generals. Despite his skill and ambition, however, he found himself at the margins of the war. Combined with the genetic heritage of Barbarus, Mortarion's gene-seed produced insanely tough Astartes, which made them the obvious choice for pursuing campaigns in the most inhospitable climates.

As a result of their toughness and the hostile environments they found themselves in, the Death Guard also doubled down on their use of alchemical weapons - seriously nasty shit like Phosphex, vortex weaponry, and radioactive weapons, stuff that most Legions would only entrust to their Destroyer units, were all commonly used by their frontline troops. Consequently the Death Guard found themselves somewhat ostracized and ever further away from the centre of the action. Mortarion was certainly bothered by this lack of renown; the Khan even noted that they were both made to be outriders, but Jaghatai loved his role while Mortarion chafed at it. In fact, when Jaghatai claimed he craved such dominance and acclaim, Mortarion retorted that he ''deserved'' it. Unlike Perturabo, though, he wasn't as passive-aggressive-every-word-out-of-your-mouth-bitter about it; he generally just seethed, muttered a snide comment about soft weaklings, then went on to do his job.

This was probably because of a few different factors: pride in his own stoic endurance (like Pert's stage-managed 'dutiful man of iron' image), the fact that he earned an actual reputation as a ruthless asshole to be feared which he relished (as opposed to 'that unnamed comrade who pushes his troops into meat grinder sieges'), and perhaps even the fact that as bleak and pitiless as he was, even Mortarion had things to believe in which stiffened his resolve. He zealously believed every traitor, Xenos, and psyker-ridden planet on the periphery of the Crusade he turned into a toxic charnel heap deserved what they got, which probably gave him some job satisfaction. Plus, for all his faults, he legitimately valued his sons, and knew how to (grimly) honour their efforts and sacrifices, seeing as he made it a practice to share a cup ([[Space Wolves|of Astartes-crippling poisons]]) with the MVP of every battle. And of course, the fact that he was (mostly) content to be feared rather than loved might have helped make him (slightly) less salty by comparison. Perty wanted to be as beloved and esteemed as the likes of Horus, Fulgrim, and Sanguinius while doing absolutely nothing to warrant it; Morty, on the other hand, just wanted to be the toughest bastard on the block because [[Warboss|might makes right and the biggest guy gets to make the rules]]. The problem was that he already knew it, but the pitiful mortals and bureaucrats back home didn't and were running the show.

While you would think that wanting to be the toughest bastards in the galaxy would be good for a giant spacefaring warrior band, Mortation's attitude was actually somewhat detrimental to his legion. Where a legion like the Iron Hands or the Space Wolves might encourage healthy rivalries between various members of its command cadre, the Death Guard's seven senior captains actually grew to quite dislike each other as the Crusade progressed. With combat performance being the only thing that Mortarion valued, the Captains would go to significant extremes to improve the performance of their particular Great Company. This resulted in a lot of infighting and political jockeying within the legion, much of which could be subtly detrimental to its fighting effectiveness. For instance, one Great Company officer might "forget" to provide timely artillery fire to another Great Company formation upon request in order to make them look bad. However, for obvious reasons these acts of sabotage were always performed under the radar, and so it was only of marginal significance to the Death Guard's capabilities. The bigger problem was with regard to legion morale. Mortarion was not the most chivalrous of Primarchs, and he had taken over command of a legion that had prided itself on having certain "honorable" tendencies, such as accepting surrenders. When combined with the constant political maneuvering of various legion officers and Mortarion's clear preference for his Barbaran recruits over the Terrans, the Death Guard's legionaries quickly became downright fractious whenever out of Mortarion's earshot.

After a few years of raping and pillaging those filthy xenos, Morty became best buds with [[Horus]] and that [[Konrad Curze|creepy pseudo-batman]]. He wasn't that bad of a guy, but he resented pretty much everyone whose upbringing hadn't been as awful as his, except Horus. There's a flashback in the novel ''Scars'' where he bitches and moans at Sanguinius, Jaghatai and Fulgrim about how they had it easy before snapping at the Khan that he ''doesn't resent it''. Hmm. Though it might be more accurate to say that he looked down on those who had it easy rather than resenting them since he had, as mentioned earlier, a serious obsession with the concept of Darwinian fitness, but more on that later.

As such, he thought that his crappy upbringing had made him stronger than the more pampered of his brothers. He was also described by [[Alpharius]] as being "bleakness personified". He was also probably the strongest of the Primarchs in raw strength and endurance (beaten only by [[Ferrus Manus]] in raw strength, according to [[Jaghatai Khan]]); In a primarch-on-primarch duel he just absorbed damage, tiring his opponent out. This was in spite of the fact that Mortarion was an almost comically skinny bastard, appearing somewhat like a Primarch scarecrow when you combined his gangly appearance with how dirty and smelly he tended to be.