Warhammer 40K: The Great Unclean Ones – Avatars of Nurgle
All four chaos gods have their own Greater Daemons. Today we’re going to learn about Nurgle’s Great Unclean Ones!
Great Unclean Ones are the Greater Daemons of Nurgle. In form they are massive and bloated with disease and decay, and their necrotic and boil-covered flesh is rent, where their organs spill out, hanging across their huge girth. Great Unclean Ones can endure tremendous amounts of damage before being felled. Many opponents cannot stomach to look at a Great Unclean One, let alone fight one.
Great Unclean Ones – Avatars Of Nurgle
Great Unclean Ones typically take the form of gargantuan, immensely fat humanoids, hot intestines dribbling out of huge tears in their enormous bellies. Their horrific girth is supported by two impossibly small and atrophied-looking legs, their swollen heads are crowned by enormous stag-like antlers. Their suppurating, sore-covered bodies are host to every disease ever catalogued by man or daemon, and their stench can be detected from miles away.
In combat, Great Unclean Ones wield enormous blades and maces of iron, crude, corroded cleavers and immense plague flails — each one dripping with pestilence. Frequently they carry a blade known as a Plague Sword – these massive, rusted blades are said to be dipped in the foul pus and contagion at the base of Nurgle’s throne.
The Jovial Disease Vectors
Despite their completely bloated and putrid appearance, Great Unclean Ones are neither deathlike or morbid in character. In fact the opposite is true. These daemons are motivated by all the trivial human enthusiasms which drive the living. They are gregarious and even sentimental in nature. They even hold their followers dear. Referring to them as their “Children” and taking an obvious pride in their appearance. Even surrounded by the pitiful moaning of the sick and dying, they smile with pure-hearted benevolence. Their long, pus-coated tongues dangle from toothy, face-splitting grins.
Great Unclean Ones go into battle with a variety of foul weapons such as Bileswords, Bileblades, Doomsday Bells, and Plague Flails.
Great Unclean Ones are always accompanied by – and infested with – thousands of gibbering, diminutive Nurglings, pint-sized daemons of mischief and malice who caper about madly, tongues lolling, their fat bodies supported by improbably spindly legs. They dote on these scabrous sprites, bouncing them on their knees and scratching behind their malformed ears. Even the rotting hulks of their bodies are colonized by Nurglings. These tiny creatures dwell in the burst carbuncles and rank wounds that cover a Great Unclean One. They particularly love to nest within its great, rent belly. Nurgling burrowing deep inside the teaming intestines that hang in long, gore-slicked loops from its body.
A Great Unclean One looks upon this cackling horde with munificence and paternal love. These Nurglings are quick to defend their “father” when he is threatened. Unwary foes are often dragged down by the murderous wave of shrieking, biting daemons that billows forth from the body of a Great Unclean One the instant it is attacked.
Learn more about Nurgle at the Lexicanum
