Codex: Chaos Space Marines (2007), p10 — Nurgle

"In the embrace of great Nurgle, I am no longer afraid, for with His pestilential favour I have become that which I once most feared: Death."
— Kulvain Hestarius of the Death Guard

Nurgle is the great Lord of Decay who presides over physical corruption and morbidity. Disease and putrefaction, the inevitable entropic decline of all things, are the wonders he bestows upon the universe. The god's immense body is bloated with corruption and exudes a sickly, diseased stench. His skin is greenish, leathery and necrotic, its surface pock-marked with boils, running sores and infestations. From his exposed guts spill tiny Daemons, the Nurglings, who sup upon the filthy juices that pour from Nurgle's festering wounds.

It is to free themselves from despair - the mortal dread of illness, starvation and death - that men turn to Grandfather Nurgle. He is a warm, welcoming god, who prides himself on the achievements of his followers, gifting them with hideous diseases even as he protects them from pain and the ravages of death. The fear of death can be found in the hearts of all sentient creatures, and so there is no shortage of mortals willing to sacrifice their immmortal souls in return for the corrupted preservation of their physical bodies.