Grandfather Nurgle

Overview

Nurgle is the Chaos God of disease, decay and despair, and one of the four great Ruinous Powers of the Warp. Among his many titles are the Plague Father, the Fly Lord, the Lord of Decay and the Master of Pestilence, and his followers call him Grandfather, Father or Papa Nurgle. His mortal and daemonic servants are famously cheerful. They treat each plague as a gift and the cries of the sick as thanks, which makes him perhaps the most unsettling of the four gods.

The great joke of Nurgle is that his worship begins with love. Mortals who face incurable sickness, famine or hopeless decay can despair, or they can embrace the rot and find a strange peace in it, and that acceptance is what feeds him. His Plague Legions reflect this. The Plaguebearers, his "Tallymen", try forever to count every disease in existence. Each Great Unclean One is a facsimile of the god himself, a jovial mountain of putrescence. Nurgling swarms cluster like cheerful children. Nurgle's sacred number is seven, and his legions are traditionally counted as seven: Fecundus, Infecticus, Pathogenus, Epidemic, Rot, Morbidus and Necroticus.

Origins

Like every Chaos God, Nurgle formed in the Warp from the emotions of mortal beings. His power springs from the fear of sickness and death, and from the stubborn will to go on living in the face of both. Older background says he was the third of the four gods to wake fully, during Terra's Middle Ages, and that plagues swept whole continents in the wake of his birth. He lives in the Garden of Nurgle, a vast, rotting paradise in the Warp. At its heart stands a crumbling mansion where he stirs a cauldron large enough to hold every ocean in the galaxy.

Key events

1. Took the Death Guard Legion during the Horus Heresy. Typhus deliberately stranded the fleet in the Warp, where Nurgle's Destroyer Plague ravaged the Legion until Mortarion pledged himself to Nurgle to end its suffering.
2. Elevated Mortarion to daemonhood and gave him the Plague Planet in the Eye of Terror as his domain.
3. Made Typhus his favoured mortal champion and the host of the Destroyer Hive, sending him to spread the Plague Zombie curse across the galaxy as the Traveller.
4. Captured the Aeldari goddess Isha and keeps her caged in his mansion, where he tests each new plague on her. Because she can cure herself, he uses her recovery to judge his work.
5. Fuelled the Plague Wars of the Era Indomitus, when Mortarion's Death Guard and daemon legions invaded Ultramar to claim Guilliman's realm as a new garden for the Plague God.
6. Fights an endless Great Game with the other Chaos Gods, above all Tzeentch, whose hope and ambition are the opposite of Nurgle's despair.

Battles & campaigns

• The Destroyer Plague: The Death Guard were becalmed in the Warp until Mortarion pledged the Legion to him.
• The Plague Wars: His Death Guard and daemons invaded Ultramar in the Era Indomitus.
• Iyanden and the Plague Fleets: Nurgle's fleets assailed the craftworld, where Prince Yriel fell.
• The Great Game: An endless war against Tzeentch, the god of hope he despises.

Personality

Nurgle is portrayed as paternal, jovial and generous: a doting grandfather who loves his children and wants to share his gifts with everyone. That kindness is real on its own terms, which is the horror of it. He offers the suffering an end to pain, but only by teaching them to accept rot as the natural state of all things. He is patient, because everything decays in the end, and stubborn, rarely letting go of anything he has claimed.

His servants include Mortarion, Typhus, Ku'gath the Plaguefather, the Great Unclean Ones Scabeiathrax and Rotigus, the Herald Epidemius, and the fallen Blood Ravens Chapter Master Ulkair. His rival Tzeentch represents everything Nurgle opposes: change, hope and ambition. The more hope Tzeentch stirs, the more despair Nurgle has to harvest when it fails.

Weapons & Vehicles

Plague Knife & BaleswordMelee Weapon

The corroded, pus-dripping combat blades of the Death Guard Plague Marines, so saturated with Nurgle's supernatural contagions that a s…

Silence (Plague Scythe)Relic Weapon

The colossal, rust-pitted two-handed battle scythe of Daemon Primarch Mortarion, forged on Barbarus and steeped in the soul-rotting pla…

PlaguebearersMonsters & Daemons · Unit

The one-eyed, rotting lesser daemons of Nurgle, endlessly counting their god's diseases.

NurglingsMonsters & Daemons · Unit

Tiny, mischievous daemons of Nurgle that swarm over the battlefield, biting, tripping and smothering their foes.

Deathshroud TerminatorsElites · Unit

The mute, scythe-wielding Terminator bodyguards and executioner-emissaries of Mortarion, sworn never to stray more than forty-nine pace…

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Connections

Characters (5)

• 
  Roboute Guilliman enemy · Ultramarines

  During the Plague Wars Nurgle's forces tried to turn Guilliman's Ultramar into a garden for the Plague God.

• 
  Ku'gath Plaguefather creator · Chaos Daemons

  Ku'gath is one of Nurgle's Great Unclean Ones, endlessly brewing plagues in the hope of pleasing his grandfather.

• 
  Mortarion patron · Death Guard

  Nurgle claimed Mortarion when the Destroyer Plague ravaged the Death Guard in the Warp, and later raised him to daemonhood on the Plague Planet.

• 
  Typhus patron · Death Guard

  Typhus betrayed his Legion to Nurgle and became his favoured mortal champion, host of the Destroyer Hive.

• 
  Tzeentch rival · Chaos Daemons

  Nurgle's despair is the opposite of Tzeentch's hope, and the two are the bitterest rivals in the Great Game. Tzeentch's hosts struck at Nurgle's armies during the Plague Wars.

Factions

• Chaos Daemons primary faction
• Death Guard patron The Death Guard Legion is pledged entirely to Nurgle.
• Ultramarines enemy Nurgle's Plague Wars targeted Ultramar.

Related units (4)

NurglingsPlaguebearersPoxwalkersDeathshroud Terminators

Also in this faction

Be'lakorKairos FateweaverKhorneSkarbrandSlaanesh

Some links are thematic parallels (marked "parallel") rather than recorded meetings. See the connections web.

Legacy

Grandfather Nurgle is the most loving of the Chaos Gods, and that is precisely what makes him so terrible.

Appearances & sources

• Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned (1990)
• Codex: Chaos Daemons (4th Edition onward)
• Codex: Death Guard; Plague Wars campaign books