Spoilers: Character background and the Tally of Pestilence. No campaign ending.
The Tallymen of Pestilence
Epidemius leads the Tallymen of Pestilence in Immortal Empires. He was a free Legendary Lord in patch 5.0, released beside Thrones of Decay and not sold inside it. SEGA’s promotion unlocks him through a CA Account tied to the store where you play. Buying Tamurkhan is a different purchase. The Tallyman does not require it.
His start in Immortal Empires is the Forest of Decay. The campaign grows when plagues spread among people who are not already Nurgle’s. Each spread adds to the Tally of Pestilence, and the tally is what raises his power. A plague that never leaves his own territory is a weaker offering than one that travels.
In battle he is a support lord on a palanquin of Nurglings. The patch account gives him blades, regeneration and a sharper melee when the enemy is already plagued, and it describes him as the centre of an army he blesses rather than a monster who wins the fight alone. Ku'gath shoots and brews. Epidemius counts and sustains.
One of the seven Proctors
The patch introduction calls him Nurgle’s chosen Tallyman, one of the seven Proctors of Pestilence, and the cataloguer of the Plaguelord’s diseases. He does not keep a court. He goes where the trail of pestilence goes, and the trail is unpredictable. He is busiest when Nurgle’s power is high, because that power moves with the rise and fall of disease.
Armies are a glut of work. Camps are dirty, and dirty camps are data. They also give him something rarer than a number: time to watch a mortal fail in body and in soul. The account is frank that the watching is usually over too soon. There are always more victims. The tally continues because the supply of sick armies continues.
That curiosity is the character. He is not Tamurkhan, who wants a host and a body big enough to lead it. He is not Ku'gath, who wants a recipe no one else has mixed. Epidemius wants the count, and the count wants the world to keep falling ill.
Three ways to serve the same god
Ku'gath’s Poxmakers are the base-game plague faction. Tamurkhan’s Maggot Host, from Thrones of Decay, recruits chieftains and begins in the Plains of Zanbaijin. Epidemius starts in the Forest of Decay and builds a scoreboard out of other people’s infections. A player who owns all three still has three campaigns, not one lord with three mechanics.
Festus tends plagues inside a Warriors of Chaos warband. The Glottkin are another Nurgle-devoted warband, not a herald on a palanquin. Update 9.0 lets Archaon subjugate Epidemius along with Ku'gath and Tamurkhan. Their regions pass to a Nurgle vassal. The tally, the cauldron, and the host stay different jobs even when the Everchosen is holding the leash in a campaign.
Epidemius: gameplay and availability · More character stories
Sources
- Patch 5.0: Introducing the Free Content — Total War — totalwar.com
- Patch 5.0 — Creative Assembly — community.creative-assembly.com
- Epidemius promotion — SEGA — support.sega.com
- Update 9.0 release notes — Total War — totalwar.com