Crysos Morturg

"I can rebuild him. I have the technology."

– Magos Calleb Decima, upon finding the broken remains of Lieutenant Morturg

"If you get hurt, hurt 'em back. If you get killed...walk it off."

– Steve Rogers

Crysos Morturg was a loyalist member of the Death Guard and one of the hardest sons of bitches the XIV Legion ever produced. He is also one of three known survivors of the Isstvan III Massacre, alongside Garviel Loken and the mad-scientist Mechanicum adept who brought him back. He was always at a disadvantage in his legion, for two reasons: first, he wasn't from Barbarus, having been recruited into the legion as part of an emergency intake, and second, he was a psyker in a legion that loathed psykers with a violent passion. In spite of all this, Morturg was a superb soldier and loyal to the Imperium, which saw him marked for death during the Battle of Isstvan III.

Biography

Great Crusade

Morturg was inducted into the Death Guard as part of an emergency intake of recruits during the Rangdan Xenocides, which had mauled the XIV Legion so badly that they had to bring in recruits from planets other than Mortarion's homeworld of Barbarus. As the Barbaran Astartes were already hilariously prejudiced against anyone who wasn't from the toxic, smoggy shithole they called home, Morturg faced an uphill battle for acceptance and glory within the legion's ranks, made even harder by his morbid and introspective personality. Nevertheless, he prospered and even reached the rank of lieutenant, at which point his latent psyker powers manifested themselves. The Death Guard, of course, was the one legion that despised psykers above everything else, so Morturg was promptly shunted out of his command and reassigned to the Destroyer corps, which was effectively a death sentence considering the toxicity of the rad and phosphex weapons that they used. Though this probably didn't improve his attitude any, he took it in stride, even when they handed him the worst recruits to work with and sent him into the heaviest fighting. He remained totally loyal to the Imperium and the Emperor, and so was sentenced to die on Isstvan III.

Horus Heresy

Morturg got righteously fucked up during the fighting on Isstvan to the point where his psychic abilities were the only thing keeping him alive. Magos Calleb Decima of the Ordo Reductor stumbled across his broken body in the wreckage and rebuilt him with cybernetic components, leaving only his head and a few other squishy bits. He was more machine now than man, a weird and unholy fusion of biomancy and technology, held together by improvised power armor and his own bloody-minded determination. Morturg officially became a Blackshield at this time, and proceeded to acquire a ship and put together a warband of other Astartes: loyalist Death Guard like himself, survivors of the Drop Site Massacre, and others with no clear allegiance, knocked loose from their legions by the shocks of galactic civil war. This warband ranged across the galaxy for part of the Heresy, running traitors down and killing them, until they encountered a renegade Deathshroud named Khorak, who had broken off from Mortarion after he used sorcery on Molech. Khorak and Morturg recognized each other as fellow sons of Mortarion, and had a brief chat about how much their dad sucked and why they wanted to kill him, which lasted right up until one of Khorak's fellow renegades tried to shoot Morturg, who deflected the bolt with his psychic powers. Khorak immediately tried to kill him, and Morturg's men put him down. Dispirited by this waste of a potential ally, Morturg opted to return to Terra to seek an audience with the Emperor, and at some point he testified to the Terran War Council as to what had happened on Isstvan III.

Post-Heresy

Morturg survived the Heresy and was made captain of the 108th Independent Company, suggesting that not all the loyalists from Horus' side were absorbed into the loyal legions. He and his men spent the remainder of their days on patrol near the Ghoul Stars.

Tabletop

Morturg is an HQ for a Death Guard legion list, though if you're playing after Isstvan he can only be included in a loyalist army. He has the stats of a Centurion but +1W and I, along with Stubborn, Infiltrate, a Power Sword, a Combi-Flamer (strangely enough without chem-munitions, though if you want to you can still give him those at no cost), Hardened Power Armour and RAD grenades, all for the price of a kitted-out Praetor. He is also a level 1 psyker with the Endurance Psychic power to boost your squads in combat (because of Psychic Focus he also has Smite. A little bit of extra firepower is always welcome). As such, he can give that 10 man Deathshroud unit Eternal Warrior (preventing Instant Death, their main weakness), FnP(4+), rad grenades (so they now wound on 2+) and Infiltrate (always try to make him the warlord, more on that later) to get a second turn charge with 10 shredding flamers vs a -1T enemy, on top of Smite allowing him to kill a fair bit of enemy terminators already. So, he's a very competitive Librarian (quite rare in 30k unless you play Word Bearers) and the best attached HQ the Deathshroud could get, since he doesn't prevent them from Sweep Advancing, unlike Typhon... Srsly Mortarion, why the fuck would you throw away one of your Legion's greatest assets?