| abstract | - Ignatius Grulgor was born on the bleak and poisonous world of Barbarus, the homeworld of the Primarch Mortarion and later the Death Guard Legion. He grew up on that harsh Feral World, living in the human settlements in the valleys below the foreboding mountainous crags, perpetually wrapped in poisonous fog. These mountains were the home to horrific warlords who possessed fantastic sorcerous powers and horrific appetites. Grulgor grew up amongst the human settlers eking out a bleak existence, for they lived lives of unrelenting terror. By day they lived beneath the dim sun which never burned completely through the fog, and cringing by the firelight after dark from the terrible creatures that moved unseen from above. When at last the Emperor came to Barbarus and discovered the gaunt warrior foundling named Mortarion who lead its oppressed people, he knew he had located the Primarch of the XIV Legion. On the day of Mortarion’s coronation as Primarch, a good majority of the XIV Legion had been of Terran stock, men born on Terra or within the confines of the Sol System, but slowly that number had dwindled, and as new recruits joined the Death Guard's fold they came only from Barbarus. Grulgor was one of those initiated into Mortarion’s Legion from Barbarus. By the last days of the Great Crusade in the early 31st Millennium, only a comparative handful of Terrans remained in the Legion. During the Great Crusade, Grulgor rose to command the XIV Legion's 2nd Great Company. The Death Guard differed from many of their brother Legions in the manner of their command structure and rank system. Tradition had it that the XIV Legion should never number more than 7 great companies, although those divisions held far more men than those of other Astartes cohorts like the Space Wolves or the Blood Angels; and whilst many Legions had the tradition of giving the honorific of "First-Captain" to the commanding officer of the elite 1st Great Company, the Death Guard also held two more privileged titles, to be bestowed upon the leaders of the 2nd and 7th Great Companies, respectively. Thus, although they held no actual seniority over one another, Captain Ignatius Grulgor of the 2nd Great Company could carry the rank of "Commander" if he so wished, just as Nathaniel Garro, as Captain of the 7th Great Company, was known as "Battle-Captain." Grulgor was forever on the edge of arrogance, snarling instead of speaking, judging others instead of considering the ramifications of his own behaviour. Grulgor detested the Terran-borne Battle-Captain of the 7th Great Company, Nathaniel Garro, as he felt that Garro was unfit to be a Death Guard. Garro's high-handed and superior attitude simply grated on Grulgor's nerves. Grulgor felt that Garro thought too much of himself and that he felt that he was better than the rest of the Legion because of his Terran birth, too proud and too good for the rest of them. He often referred to the staunch and reserved Battle-Captain as "Straight-Arrow Garro." Grulgor seemed to reserve his hatred only for Garro, as the other Terran-born Battle-Brothers did not choose to promote the Legion's old ways as if they were suffocating chains. Many of the newer Astartes in the Legion like Gulgor who had been recruited from Barbarus felt that before their Primarch had brought new blood into their Legion from his homeworld, there were many rituals and traditions within the ranks of the XIV Legion that had served only to hold the Death Guard back from further accomplishment. Garro had made it a habit to hold onto these outdated traditions, including his determination to maintain a housecarl to attend to his armour and weapons. This was even more of a joke to the Death Guard who thought like Grulgor because the normal human that attended him was a former Death Guard Aspirant who had failed the final trials to become an Astartes of the Legion. Grulgor boasted that if he had been made First Captain, the first thing he would do was to abolish outright these outmoded traditions. Like many of his fellow Barbarus-born Battle-Brothers, Grulgor's loyalty was to Mortarion first and the Emperor of Mankind second. When Horus proposed his great rebellion to his brother Primarchs, and Mortarion responded in the affirmative that he would support Horus' great betrayal, Grulgor would support his Primarch's course to the hilt. Towards the end of the Great Crusade relations amongst the various Expeditionary Fleets had become strained ever since Horus had been mortally injured at the moon of Davin and after he returned from his miraculous healing on that world at the hands of the sinister shamans of the Temple of the Serpent Lodge. Upon his return to the orbiting fleet of his own 63rd Expeditionary Fleet, Horus' fealty had changed, for he now secretly conspired to overthrow the Imperium of Man and usurp the Emperor’s throne, to become the new Master of Mankind. Renouncing his oath to the Emperor, Horus led his Legion, renamed the Sons of Horus, into worship of the myriad Chaos Gods in the form of Chaos Undivided. He then sought to turn many of his fellow Primarchs to the service of Chaos, and succeeded with Angron of the World Eaters, Fulgrim of the Emperor's Children and Mortarion of the Death Guard, who were the first of many to follow. Grulgor was a member of the secret warrior lodge within the Death Guard Legion, a custom that had spread through all of the Astartes Legions from the Luna Wolves over the course of the Great Crusade following the Luna Wolves' original conquest of Davin, a world whose people had long been worshippers of Chaos. There had been talk in the warrior lodges of many of the Legions of how far away the Emperor was and of growing discontent over his decision to place the administration of the Imperium in the hands of the civilians of the Council of Terra. Horus exploited these rumblings of discontent to propose a galaxy-wide insurrection against the Emperor on a scale that had never been seen before. He would launch the opening phase of this terrible conflict, later known as the Horus Heresy, on the rebellious Imperial world of Istvaan III.
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