The Verminlords, specifically those Warp-spawned Greater Daemons of the Horned Rat, are the living incarnations of the Great Horned Rat's multifaceted malevolence. Each is a supreme master of its own horrific craft. Among their number, there stood one whom even Skrolk, despite his fanatical devotion to Nurglitch, had to acknowledge as a new object of supreme veneration.
A Blightlord Terminator of the Death Guard, captured alive, was bound in place by heavy chains of refined warpstone. This favored son of Nurgle, whose mere proximity was enough to liquefy a mortal's lungs with contagion, found his supernatural pestilence utterly disregarded by the festering ratmen surrounding him.
The Plague Priests watched with wide, worshipping eyes. Before them stood a towering, wiry, and terrifying Greater Daemon, a Verminlord Corruptor. He moved with the focused intensity of a scholar, the diligence of a researcher, and the terrifying dedication of a master chirurgeon. Wielding warpstone scalpels and chisels, the daemon peeled back the rusted layers of Cataphractii power armor that had fused with the Blightlord's rotting viscera and parchment-like skin—flesh that had marinated in the filth of a thousand sewers.
Nagdanon, the Verminlord Corruptor summoned through the horrific sacrifices and unshakeable faith of Clan Pestilens, was completely absorbed in the vivisection of the Chaos Space Marine. Deep within the putrid carcass of this champion of Nurgle, tens of billions of viral strains were being meticulously extracted, cultured, and genetically re-engineered by the Verminlord's claws.
"Nurgle... no, Nurgle is wrong-weak! The Horned Rat, YES-YES! It must belong to the Great Horned Rat!"
As Nagdanon worked, he muttered in a feverish, manic staccato. It was jarring to witness such a massive, monstrous entity performing work of such intricate and microscopic precision.
Beside the daemon, the Plague Priests, led by Skrolk, huddled together like eager acolytes. They maintained a respectful distance, terrified yet mesmerized, observing every twitch of the daemon's talons. Occasionally, they hissed technical questions; the Verminlord, in turn, provided exhaustive, twisted insights.
If not for the utter depravity and gore of the scene, it would have mirrored the perfect image of a mentor guiding his devoted disciples.
The work was grueling and complex. Despite possessing the collective foul knowledge of Clan Pestilens, Nagdanon's raw martial power was lesser than that of other Greater Daemons; consequently, the Clan had remained strictly on the defensive during his labors. The plague-rats had sealed the great bulkhead gates of their warrens, bogging down the Nurgle-aligned Astartes with sheer numbers. Their warpstone weaponry proved sufficiently lethal even against such resilient warriors, successfully stalling the assault of two Death Guard warbands.
The conflict on Vigilus had ground into a stalemate. Clan Rictus, holding the Stygian Spires, had integrated their nests into the hive's infrastructure. Dominating the planet's primary water reserves and commanding a massive legion of Stormvermin, the Skaven had gone uncharacteristically silent, lurking in the shadows.
With the arrival of the Vengeful Spirit signaling Abaddon's imminent descent, the Imperial defenders had no time to worry about the Skaven. The planet was already drowning in enemies.
Time passed, though in the Warp, time is a fractured vanity. Lucius allowed his consciousness to drift across the timelines, curious to see what his first bio-engineered Verminlord was orchestrating.
Finally, from among the billions of viral permutations, the Verminlord Corruptor successfully isolated a strain completely reshaped by the Ruinous power of the Horned Rat. It was an evolved variant of the Gellerpox, christened the Rust-Iron Plague.
Nagdanon triumphantly displayed a petri dish where the rust-red bacteria seethed and boiled like molten iron.
"The Great Horned Rat's tooth! See-look, how beautiful it is!"
"Squeak-squeak! The patterns of their breeding... the trails they leave... it is magnificent! Ahhhh!"
At the sight of this "perfect" creation, the Plague Priests wept and clutched their heads in ecstasy, as if the mere sight of the pathogen fulfilled their every dark desire.
"You... you cannot steal... the Grandfather's... power..." gasped the Blightlord. Even after two years of agonizing torment, his pride remained, though his soul was now cold with a new, rising dread.
In all the galaxy, he had never encountered a virologist of such terrifying skill, one capable of subverting a plague birthed from the divine will of Nurgle himself.
'If I can escape… if I can tell Father… these vermin... they cannot be allowed to live! They are the Great Enemy... the most dangerous of all!'
Naturally, the Skaven ignored the protests of their test subject. Stealing was second nature to the Under-Empire. Just as Clan Skryre and Clan Moulder stole and "improved" the technologies of other races, Clan Pestilens simply took what they found and made it more... rat-like.
Nagdanon's jaundiced, diseased orange eyes scanned the gathered ratmen. "Who wishes to taste the Horned Rat's blessing?"
Unlike other Skaven clans who would have fled in terror, the members of Clan Pestilens, the Plague Priests in particular, jostled and stood on their tiptoes, desperate for the "glory" of being infected. They fantasized about the rust-red bacteria swarming over their lesions and dissolving their organs, imagining how "beautiful" and conspicuous they would become.
However, Nagdanon ignored the priests. With a swift movement, he snatched a Plague Censer Bearer from the guard detail.
As fanatics among fanatics, the Censer Bearers were the elite, more deeply corrupted versions of the Plague Monks, swinging flails that exhaled clouds of lethal gas.
"This glory... I bestow upon you—"
Nagdanon's maw split into a wide grin, dripping yellow bile. With a sharp, sickly green claw, he flicked a writhing globule of the Rust-Iron Plague onto the Censer Bearer and tossed the rat into a pile of rusted iron scrap.
Instantly, the virus raced across the Skaven's body, causing the creature's flesh to fuse violently with the surrounding metal.
Unlike the Gellerpox, which merely inflicted agony, these metals integrated seamlessly into the Censer Bearer's biology. Every joint and inch of skin was encased in rusted, living iron. Even his Plague Censer was corrupted and reinforced by the transformation.
Moments later, a new monstrosity rose. Standing over two meters tall, its body was a nightmare of slime-slicked steel. Clutching a massive, iron-bound plague censer, the Iron-Censer Bearer stepped forward.
It raised its flail and brought it down on the Blightlord. With a sickening crunch of pulverized organs and shattering ceramite, the Death Guard's Terminator armor, and the warrior within, were flattened into the deck.
"The Horned Rat's gift will aid-assist you... YES-YES!"
Skrolk watched the display, his heart swelling with genuine joy and awe.
"Clan Pestilens," he hissed, "from this day... we ascend to a new... a new height!"
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