The Good Side of Nurgle

[Nath]

The more I read, the more I think what you're looking for may be something that Humanity never ever conceived in the entire history of ideas.

Finding two opposing concepts is trivially easy (that's what antonyms are for). Finding four who would be exclusive in pair is not.

Only fantasy novels and RPG writers pretended to have polytheistic schools of ideas who were mutually exclusive. Past people would have looked at you funny if you ever suggested that they should worship say, Apollo rather than Artemis, because they'd do both. Such divide only made sense when and if patron gods were associated with specific areas (Athena in Athens for instance) or occupation (Ares for warriors, Demeter for farmers, to keep up with the Greek example...).

Maybe I'm wrong. But right now I don't see any satisfying answer.

Still, I've made a last try, and the best I could come up with was the difference on how to fulfill one's objective.
- Khorne is about achieving changes by yourself.
- Tzeentch is about getting other people to make the changes.
- Nurgle is about enduring the current situation, and waiting for it to change.
- Slaanesh is about experiencing the situation and doing nothing for it to change.
Say, your objective is to destroy the Imperium of Man. Khorne would require you to wage the war against the Imperium until done (or dead). Tzeentch would require you to make the Imperium destroy itself. Nurgle would require you to await for the Imperium to fall. And Slaanesh would require you to take pleasure from the Imperium of Man resistance against your will, and even make it last.
But the ice is wearing thin, especially if the followers of Nurgle are to do anything at all that get them out of the strict nihilistic approach ("Damn, I think I just killed an imperial guard. My own action weakened the Imperium I want destroyed, I'm doomed!"). That is, unless they make sure to only participate in military campaigns they are clearly convinced will not achieve any effective step toward the destruction of the Imperium ("Nuthin' special, just hangin' round, havin' a beer, killin' space marines..."). I guess you could also threaten them into action, since their god nonetheless requires them to do what it takes survive until the day the Imperium fall.

[Dean]

It does occur to me that no one is blessed by two chaos gods, its either one or all 4. I don't think this is because the gods are philosophically opposed but it does make them different than a pure pantheon. There isn't a character who's a crafty sorcerer who spreads disease who's a favored of both Tzeentch and Nurgle. I think you could make the Chaos Gods just respond to acts done in their name with favor, making them philosophical opponents but just people who like different things, but have them also be jealous and greedy about the souls of their followers. Doing services for the Chaos Gods should be a slippery slope where doing too much for one lets him pull your character down his path irreparably, and nce you've started falling down that hole the only way to gain more power is to go down as far as possible. Still it's theoretically possible to make an active effort to carefully balance the favor of all 4 Gods such that every tether pulls equally allowing you to stay unaligned. This allows rare characters like Huron Blackheart or Abaddon to have gone unaligned for millenia and gained incredible power with each god, though still no characters to simply be the favored of two or three gods. If characters make sure their favor with each god increases steadily and equally then they can gain massive power without having any one tether gain the force to snap the other lines and drag them down their own path.

[tussock]

Finding two opposing concepts is trivially easy (that's what antonyms are for). Finding four who would be exclusive in pair is not.

LG, LE, CG, CE: Four opposed alignments, where two opposite are even more opposed than the other four.

For the Chaos gods it's just Physical vs Magic, vs, Glory vs Decay. Too much Physical and you stop caring about Glory and Decay as well as Magic, so much that you're going to kill them all, and their little dog too.

As to the original question, Decay is good because it's inevitable. Everything is food for something else eventually, so be food for something awesome right now and make the most of it. If you can make everyone else bloated and pocked with awesome too, all the grander the world becomes.

[Chamomile]

So I've just reached the part of Lost and the Damned when that really stupid lore about Khorne being born from Genghis Khan and Nurgle from the Black Plague and such, and it is just stupid in the book as it was when it was repeated in this thread. However, it has got me thinking about what might be more better origins for the Chaos Powers. Slaanesh was born from the fall of the Eldar, and I thought it'd be cool if Khorne were born from the Orks' own fall, when their Brainboyz all get eaten by the Chaos God they created by filling the galaxy with biologically engineered murder machines. So then the Brainboyz run away to another galaxy, create the Tyranids, and begin launching them at both their home and other life-sustaining galaxies, using them as biological anti-warp artillery.

The old fluff also talks about the Slann a lot, but I'm pretty sure they've been officially written out in the new fluff, with their role as creators of the Webway consumed by other pre-Eldar civilizations. But considering their response to extinction has mostly been "meh," they'd fit as creators of my conception of Nurgle as honey badger god. Probably wiped out by an enormous disease.

I have no idea where Tzeentch might have come from. It'd probably help to read some more Necron fluff, since they're the only pre-Eldar civilization that's still around and actually gets new fluff written about them.

And the Emperor is obviously a gestating fifth Ruinous Power, whose coming shall rip open a warp storm so massive it shall spread across all the galaxy, plunging it into the Warp forever.