I don't suppose anyone here has read Siege of Castellax? Or owns Tome of Blood and/or Codex: Chaos Space Marines? It seems very clear that it is in fact a chaos mutation brought about, like all things chaotic, by strong emotions and maddening focus, in this case with weaponry, combined with exposure to strong warp currents/energy. The term virus probably comes from the fact that it eventually comes to consume its victim entirely and he becomes a machine dedicated to killing everything in sight with whatever he touches. As a matter of fact, despite the fact that mutilators exist, obliterators are just as capable of absorbing melee weapons as they are ranged.

Look at the model itself; it is festooned with plenty of knives, hooks and chain/power weapons, and it counts as being equipped with powerfists in melee. In Siege of Castellax the obliterator is capable of manifesting multiple weapons at once, including melee and ranged ones. One of the secondary characters is in fact infected with the "virus", but has managed to keep it from swallowing anything but his hand, which is a mutatn thing of metal fused flesh. The fact that he can keep it at bay with his willpower alone suggests that it is no true disease, but progresses similar to one.

Tome of blood actually has mutilator stats in it, and any starting character with those would leave his companions far behind in terms of power. So I would reason the high pre-requisites mentioned in some of the earlier posts are probably quite appropriate.

Also on that note, as far as I have seen there are no human mutilators/obliterators: they are SM only. Makes sense, since BC itself mentions that humans don't handle their mutations well compared to SM. Implying that the transformation to fleshmetal is lethal/impossible to regular humans as their forms can't withstand that level of change.

Talos77 said:

1. For the virus theory they are not even sure because they lack evidence to back up those claims and the another theory its a demonic possession.

2. It is said that most of the Obliterators come from the Techmarines of the Empiror's Space Marines(taken fom the codex:Chaos Space Marine). Which mean that the others Obliterators were once Heretek or Tech-Priest. So humans can become Obliterator.

Second: Unaligned powers in the warp appear throughout the fluff. Its pretty much canon that the are there. To assume everyone who is not aligned to one of the four gods is that way for only one reason is silly and limiting (in my opinion, no offense intended). Also Warmaster abbadon, who bears the marks of all four gods and remains unaligned due to his alliance with all four of them might disagree with you. While many who remain unaligned might do so beacuse the do not want to worship one of the four, it is not unreasonable that others are unaligned because they worship something other than one of the four. It takes all kinds.

Third: Your statement here does not make sense to me. If you dont mind please explain furthur so I can understand, though I might disagree once I do.