The Good Side of Nurgle

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Tue Jul 22, 2014 10:49 pm

According to the Eldar Lore stuff, Nurgle is "married" to the Eldar goddess of healing and fertility, Isha, who reveals to mortals how to cure Nurgle's plagues and protects people from disease. Since they're both warp entities, it's perfectly possible that Nurgle and Isha are just aspects of the same being with Nurgle, the negative half, becoming super powered due to the universe being awful.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Jul 22, 2014 11:32 pm

Might be.
But i enjoy the thought of Nurgle as the Husband going:"yes honey, i'll get to cooking right this instant, you stay on your couch and watch your soap opera ._."
and she's always nitpicking and complaining about the stuff he cooks up too.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Jul 23, 2014 12:37 am

FrankTrollman wrote:This would make way more sense, but the actual reason is because the Chaos gods were introduced in two books, and each chaos god is at war with the other chaos god in the book he stars in. So Khorne, the god who hates magic and has no sorcerers, doesn't fight the god of magic because he's from a different book. Nurgle, the god of decay opposes the god of magic because he's from the same book.

The primary Chaos god conflicts don't make any sense because they are based on book release schedules rather than any minimally coherent narrative.

Sorry, I forgot we were dealing with GW and tried to think sensibly about it. I really should have thought it'd be something like book schedules or "which minis look better locked in combat against one another" or similar stupidity.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Wed Jul 23, 2014 1:12 am

Where did Games Workshop get the visual imagery for nurgle?

I figure Khorne is a Tolkien Balrog.
Tzeentch is a Vrock
Slaanesh is Baphomet+Lobsters
Nurgle... ?

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Wed Jul 23, 2014 2:24 am

OgreBattle wrote:Where did Games Workshop get the visual imagery for nurgle?

2000 AD Magazine. A lot of those stories have gross-out art, but given the classic Nurgle shtick of throwing heads full of pus, I'm going to guess that the prime inspiration was the Lord Weird Slough Feg and his blight druid faction from Slaine.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Jul 23, 2014 9:59 am

That doesn't look much like Nurgle O.o

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Wed Jul 23, 2014 3:06 pm

It's true, that's from one of the prettier stories. I'll try to find a bloatier version. I just love his happy dance in that pic.

Found one.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Jul 23, 2014 5:28 pm

ok, yes, that is a more fitting image . . would be even better, if the guy said microbes not macrobes <.<

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Jul 23, 2014 6:05 pm

Stahlseele wrote:ok, yes, that is a more fitting image . . would be even better, if the guy said microbes not macrobes <.<

Using words imprecisely was kind of a 2000 AD thing. Kind of a Games Workshop thing too.

-Username17

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Wed Jul 23, 2014 6:17 pm

Hypothetically a macrobe could just be a stupid way of saying "a sort of human-sized animal." It wasn't what they meant but it could be taken to mean that.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Wed Jul 23, 2014 7:26 pm

It's an in-fiction term that gets used inconsistently. Sometimes they're beings which affect your spiritual health (as opposed to microbes that affect your physical health), sometimes they're beings from 'the Macroverse,' which is just the dimensions that aren't Earth's.

Mord · Post by **Mord** » Thu Jul 24, 2014 2:45 am

In an uncorrupted universe, I think Tzeentch would be associated with birth, while Nurgle would be the decay that permits rebirth.

Instead, in the Emprah's universe, Tzeentch is wild mutation while Nurgle is a spreading rot that just keeps feeding without actually going away.

You can think of the four Chaos Gods as parts of a generic life cycle - birth, reproduction, death, decomposition. All these things are connected and a little blurry, but they're supposed to work together in an unbroken wheel.

In their corrupted forms, each god has come to embody their specific function run amok, utterly unconnected to the others and disregarding the balance they had once struck. Birth/evolution becomes mutation/degeneration, reproduction becomes obscenity, death becomes murder, decomposition becomes corruption.

I think that explanation works passably well, but it's certainly not the only interpretation and far from comprehensive. I like how the Chaos Gods have enough conceptual baggage attached to them where it's possible to actually have variant interpretations that differ in interesting and justifiable ways.

Desdan_Mervolam · Post by **Desdan_Mervolam** » Thu Jul 24, 2014 5:22 am

Didn't Slaanesh come into existence at a recorded point in the setting's history, though? The Four Chaos Gods being a primal force in the universe (or at least all four of them being a primal force in the universe) is kinda undercut by that.

Count Arioch the 28th · Thu Jul 24, 2014 9:08 am

From my understanding, all of the chaos gods are eternal, but it took the Eldar fucking a hole in the universe for Slaanesh to enter it. Nurgle likewise has a (relatively) specific date that he came into being as well.

Ghremdal · Post by **Ghremdal** » Thu Jul 24, 2014 9:13 am

I always understood that:

Tzeench = hope, ie belief that things will change for the better
Nurgle = despair that things will stay the same
Slaneesh = depravity / decadence the pursuit of pleasure for pleasures sake
Khorne = rage, hate anger at the universe for not submitting to your will

With that the Nurgle/Tzeench rivarly makes sense. Hope that things change for the better and Despair when they don't.

Mord · Post by **Mord** » Thu Jul 24, 2014 1:29 pm

Desdan_Mervolam wrote:Didn't Slaanesh come into existence at a recorded point in the setting's history, though? The Four Chaos Gods being a primal force in the universe (or at least all four of them being a primal force in the universe) is kinda undercut by that.

Each of the 4 is eternal, but each gained sentience at a different point:

Khorne gained sentience as Genghis Khan took over the world as a result of the bloodshed during the Mongol conquests. After his death, Genghis became the first Bloodthirster (this detail may have since been retconned).

Nurgle gained sentience as a consequence of the Black Death.

Tzeentch became sentient during the Renaissance due to all the Hermeticism and art and crazy crap going on there.

And we all know Slaanesh.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Thu Jul 24, 2014 4:33 pm

From my understanding, time is meaningless in the warp, so they all simultaneously have definite origins and have always existed.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu Jul 24, 2014 5:01 pm

kinda silly that they all just came into existence because of things happening on eart/terra . . when the orks, the eldar and necron were all way older than humanity at all . .

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Thu Jul 24, 2014 5:12 pm

Mord wrote:Khorne gained sentience as Genghis Khan took over the world as a result of the bloodshed during the Mongol conquests. After his death, Genghis became the first Bloodthirster (this detail may have since been retconned).

Nurgle gained sentience as a consequence of the Black Death.

Tzeentch became sentient during the Renaissance due to all the Hermeticism and art and crazy crap going on there.

And we all know Slaanesh.

That's really stupid. The Eldar had to have a drug-fueled orgy spanning hundreds if not thousands of worlds and billions upon billions of Eldar to make Slaanesh, but you knock off a hundred times fewer people and you create Nurgle and Khorne. And Tzeentch is even stupider. The Renaissance is only a flowering of art compared to the Middle Ages. The amount of art being created has been on a steady upward slope since then. And art must necessarily become more common as the human population skyrockets during the Age of Technology. So where's Tzeentch 2: Electric Boogaloo?

I've heard the "Nurgle as despair" schtick before, and while that makes Nurgle an emotion and not a physical state which brings him in line with the other Chaos Powers a bit, there's still the problem that despair is just bad. The Nurgle as platonic and accepting love while Slaanesh is erotic and exceptional love is a good one, and I've got something I think works as an addition to it: Nurgle is being content with the way things are, and Slaanesh is striving for a more exceptional existence and experience. Nurgle is the honey badger god, his answer to all problems is overpowering apathy. His solution to disease is to learn to stop caring about disease and then stuff yourself with it. His solution to a hate-filled galaxy is to stop caring if people hate you and love them anyway (which is actually kind of awesome and zen). Taken in an extreme, you miss out on the chance to better yourself at all and associate with whoever happens to be around, no matter how awful they are, denying yourselves the gifts of Slaanesh.

Also, someone mentioned how the Chaos Gods are better without specific rivalries and instead just all four being philosophies that are incompatible with one another. Fundamentally, I agree. Chaos Gods should be like the four Caribbean powers in Sid Meier's pirates, with constantly shifting enmities and alliances, not two pairs of eternal enemies. Problem is, it's exponentially harder to figure out how each philosophy is inherently incompatible with the others in its extremes than to just do it for one other philosophy. Sure, every moment you spend killing dudes is a moment you're not spending perfecting you art during a cocaine orgy, but there's nothing that stops you from doing one of these things after the other the way that you can either kill your enemies or deceive them into destroying one another without firing a shot, but you can't really do both.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Thu Jul 24, 2014 7:20 pm

sure every moment you spend killing dudes is a moment you're not spending perfecting your art during a cocaine orgy. But there's nothing that stops you from doing one of those things after the other the way you can either kill your enemies or deceive them without firing a shot but you can't really do both

But you can do one after the other. They're exactly the same and Abaddon totally exists. Its possible to be so great at murder and sorcery and treachery and horror that every god loves you.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Thu Jul 24, 2014 7:27 pm

Dean wrote:
sure every moment you spend killing dudes is a moment you're not spending perfecting your art during a cocaine orgy. But there's nothing that stops you from doing one of those things after the other the way you can either kill your enemies or deceive them without firing a shot but you can't really do both
But you can do one after the other. They're exactly the same and Abaddon totally exists. Its possible to be so great at murder and sorcery and treachery and horror that every god loves you.

Don't forget not having any arms.

Who is the Chaos God of not having any arms?

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu Jul 24, 2014 7:30 pm

That's Khorne, actually.
You need arms to hug people, so Nurgle is out.
Tzentch just gives you more arms.
Slaanesh gives you arms for SM Sex.
Khorne likes ripping off limbs like Arms.
And he's even more impressed if you can still go on a killing spree without Arms of your own as well.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Fri Jul 25, 2014 4:06 pm

Dean wrote:But you can do one after the other. They're exactly the same and Abaddon totally exists. Its possible to be so great at murder and sorcery and treachery and horror that every god loves you.

Dudes like Abaddon is why I want the philosophies to be inherently opposed to one another. It's also why each philosophy being inherently opposed to all three others would be ideal even if it's too hard for me to actually try and make it happen. Chaos Undivided is a delicate balancing act of making lots of bitter enemies all decide they love you and having access to the gifts of all four by not going so far into the extremes of one that you rule out the others. You can't be a devoted magic-hating Khornate berserker and also a devoted Tzeentchian sorcerer who considers it a failure if you ever have to get your own hands dirty, but you can be someone who strikes a balance between the two and is so awesome at it that both Khorne and Tzeentch love you.

It'd be nice if each additional Chaos God you add to the balance makes things exponentially harder, rather than pleasing Slaanesh and Nurgle being basically the same as pleasing Khorne and Tzeentch, just striking a new balance between two philosophies opposed to one another but mostly orthogonal to the first two. But again: It's pretty hard to see how anything about Slaanesh's philosophy makes Slaanesh like you less for going around hacking up dudes, even if he'd like it more if you were snorting lines of coke off of naked hookers. And while I had the same problem with Nurgle/Slaanesh and was able to manage that, I'm not sure it's worth it to do that again with Nurgle/Khorne, Nurgle/Tzeentch, Slaanesh/Khorne, and Slaanesh/Tzeentch.

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Fri Jul 25, 2014 8:05 pm

Chamomile wrote:But again: It's pretty hard to see how anything about Slaanesh's philosophy makes Slaanesh like you less for going around hacking up dudes

Engaging in sordid physical combat, when you could instead be obliterating their minds with ultimate tantric symphony drugs? How trite.

[Slaanesh has unfriended you.]

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Fri Jul 25, 2014 8:38 pm

Occluded Sun wrote:
Chamomile wrote:But again: It's pretty hard to see how anything about Slaanesh's philosophy makes Slaanesh like you less for going around hacking up dudes
Engaging in sordid physical combat, when you could instead be obliterating their minds with ultimate tantric symphony drugs? How trite.

[Slaanesh has unfriended you.]

That reduces the conflict from fundamental philosophical differences about what each Power cares about down to a far less interesting culture war, where each Chaos God demands that you use his particular weapons because we're Slaaneshi and we wear purple and not red and our weapons are drugs and not swords and other bullshit that, while totally capable of sustaining a conflict, is not very interesting at all.

Slaanesh's fundamental philosophy is about personal excellence and hedonism and seeking out new and more incredible experience. None of that particularly cares how or if you murder people, and an obsession with the surface trappings of the philosophy - drugs and cakes and blowjobs - makes Slaanesh seem less like the embodiment of the concept and more like the fourth-generation descendant of the guy who invented the philosophy who's lost the actual tenets in a game of Chinese whispers but still carries on the philosophy's traditions without any comprehension of why they became traditions in the first place.