When a clone of the Clonelord, Fabius Bile, decided to visit his little domain to 'negotiate' for Panacea research, among other things, Ciaphas Cain had to drop everything non-urgent to meet with the infamous Astartes. At this early point in his disastrous career as wrangler of Chaos cultists, Cain hadn't met many Chaos Space Marines and took the hit of Transhuman Dread face first.
"Might I inquire why you have preferred Slaanesh over the other Dark Gods?" Bile asked mildly, striking up a conversation. "Oh, don't feed me the platitudes of your equality between the four factions in your kingdom, your patron is one of the Dark Prince's daemonettes. I am asking of your choices, not your holdings'."
Cain would be praying fervently to the Emperor that the superhuman before him didn't discover his true allegiance, but he was too busy trying to deflect and think up something to avoid a sudden and horrible death.
"... Did the Dark Prince not already won the Great Game?" Cain replied, knowing that Bile knows that the smile plastered on his face was stiff from nervousness. "From my, admittedly shallow view as I have only been doing this for mere years, Chaos outside of Slawkenberg always does things to Excess. More Blood. More schemes. More pleasures. More worshipers, more territories, more resources, more everything. For Chaos to be so driven to Excess in every facet, when Chaos is so much more than just that, surely that meant the Dark Prince has already won?"
Please buy this groxshit, please buy this groxshit.
Apparently the Emperor was listening that particular moment, because the Clonelord dropped that line of conversation shortly after. But if Ciaphas knew what his words would lead to, maybe he would have risked discovery and damnation and kept his mouth shut.
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Apparently the Dark Gods had shit tastes in humour. That was the conclusion Cain arrived at, when the freak accident that was Slawkenberg, what was meant to be a one-off miracle as things didn't fall to pieces bad enough that it couldn't be salvaged back into Imperial hands, began to be replicated across the galaxy. As if to spite Cain and to prove they were not mere puppets dancing to Slaanesh's will, Khorne and Tzeentch dialled back the craziness of their followers so that they didn't do things to Excess, or just not as much as before, and as a result Chaos uprisings didn't fall apart as much and became much more effective. The Imperium tried to install thriftiness measures, to combat Excess, but that lead to some idiotic planetary governors and nobles with more money than sense rebelling. Even some of the Ecclesiarchy's dioceses, the ones grown fat from their followers' 'donations', decided it was obviously a power grab by others and the Emperor would surely not take away their 'hard earned' rewards, and rebelled. Cain despaired at how it seemed the Imperium didn't need Chaos to do much, if anything, to fall apart at the seams by itself - by the Emperor's name, how did so many of the ones in charge seem to be so incompetent? It felt like there were so many rebellions and purges going on, not even the Panacea could hold everything together. Now the galaxy seems to burn, with fires needed to be put out everywhere, and it all felt like it was Cain's fault.
Nurgle cackled at Cain's sweet, sweet despair.
Then it felt like all those uprisings and Chaos decided to join up with Cain, who started this mess and thus must be some kind of mastermind. And imitated Cain's policies of removing Nurgle from power.
Nurgle stopped cackling.