Nurgle - Nurgle and the Death Guard: The Death Guard are a Traitor Legion entirely steeped in the power of Nurgle, the god of plagues, their very essence the epitome of all that vile Chaos God stands for. Their bodies are hives of filth and decay, their flesh eternally rotting away even as it is renewed by the ceaseless process of death and rebirth.Once, however, the Death Guard were the strongest and most resilient of all of the Emperor's Space Marine Legions, the inheritors of the Primarch Mortarion in whose genetic image they were created. They were once the XIVth Legion, known as the Dusk Raiders, Space Marines founded on Terra, created in the late 30th Millennium to reclaim the stars for Humanity. For some time, they fought with distinction and were nearly indistinguishable from the other Space Marine Legions.Operating in the role of heavy infantry, the Astartes of the XIVth Legion were experts at survival and endurance, and quickly gained a reputation among the other newly-forged Legions as relentless and disciplined fighters. Their grey and unadorned power armour began to carry the symbols of rank and decoration, now modified, that once formed the armorial imagery of the Ironsides of Old Albia, a nation of techno-barbarians on Old Earth before the Unification Wars, and most tellingly their right vambraces, gauntlets and shoulder plates were painted the deep crimson of drying blood, now symbolising the red right hand of the Emperor's justice.After the XIVth Legion was reunited with its Primarch Mortarion on the Feral World of Barbarus, he renamed the Legion the "Death Guard" after the force of mortal warriors he had used to cleanse his homeworld of the foul race of Chaos sorcerers who had long enslaved its people. Mortarion's warriors were ever to be found at the centre of the battle line during the Great Crusade, their strength and determination the inheritance of their primarch, making them the unbreakable core of any Imperial army of conquest.The XIVth Legion's Astartes had been primarily Terran-born before Mortarion joined the Legion; after that time almost all of the Legion's neophytes were drawn from Barbarus. This changed the culture and traditions of the Legion, so much so that by the last days of the Great Crusade in the early 31st Millennium, there were increasing tensions between the Barbarus-born Astartes and the Terran minority who remained in the Legion and who remembered the Dusk Raiders' earlier martial traditions brought out of Old Earth.These tensions became most clear in the period directly preceding the first battle of the Horus Heresy at Isstvan III, when approximately one-third of the Legion was judged by Mortarion to be likely to remain loyal to the Emperor when the Legion joined the Warmaster Horus in his rebellion against the Imperium. Many of these Loyalist Death Guard Astartes were Terran-born, former Dusk Raiders like Battle-Captain Nathaniel Garro of the Death Guard's 7th Great Company whose loyalty to the Emperor outweighed their devotion to their primarch.In the final days of the great civil war that was the Horus Heresy, the warriors of the Death Guard found themselves becalmed in the Warp and assailed by Warp-born plagues so virulent that not even their legendary resilience could withstand them. Soon, the entire Legion was beset by a sickness that bloated their bellies with corpse gas, caused flesh to slough from their bodies and made these strongest and toughest of warriors into crippled wretches assailed by delirium.Though none can say exactly what forces acted upon the soul of the primarch of the Death Guard, whether he was already damned or whether he made his pact in some state of fever, he must have called out for deliverance, and his call must have been answered. When finally the Death Guard Legion's fleet emerged from the Warp, its vessels and its warriors were entirely changed.The once-gleaming white and grey armour was stained with filth, and the noble warriors were transformed into walking hives of death and abomination. Worse still, the "Plague Marines" of the Death Guard were now hosts for the most virulent afflictions that their new patron, the Plague God Nurgle, could concoct. Condemned to a deathless state of decay, the Death Guard would spread their pestilent diseases the length and breadth of the galaxy for the greater glory of Chaos.With the ending of the Horus Heresy, the Primarch Mortarion led his Legion into the Eye of Terror, and while others of the Traitor Legions had splintered into countless warbands, each pursuing their own agenda, the Death Guard remained largely whole, thanks in no small part to their legendary strength and resilience. Mortarion led them to a world that would become known simply as the Plague Planet, which he moulded into a new and despicable form, making it a virtual copy of Barbarus.To this day, Mortarion's Death Guard launch their assaults through the Cadian Gate and into the galaxy beyond, sometimes in large bodies and at others lending strength to allied forces. Wherever they travel they spread the joyful, exuberant poxes of Nurgle, gifting those who would know eternal life with the choicest of the Plague God's blessings.