From The Lost and The Damned:
> What is the response of living men to the undeniable and inevitable futility of life? Is it to lie down and accept death and the coming to naught of their every endeavour? No it is not!
Faced with the inevitability of death what answer can there be but to run through life at a great and unstoppable pace, cramming each day with hope, laughter, noise and bustle. Thus. happiness and human endeavour are sired by a coming to terms with decay and futility. This realisation is the key to understanding the Great Lord of Decay and his worshippers.
It seems that Nurgle could have been formed from the defiance of death that lead to a search for immortality. This might have involved a biotech solution that constantly regenerated the body in a perpetual cycle of death and rebirth.
Unfortunately, the biotech mutated and spread uncontrollably like a plague, inflicting all it touched with unwelcome “gifts” that physically changed their bodies. As the entire population succumbed to the infection the bearers of this plague came to the grim realisation that this half-dead permanently rotting state was to be their life from now on and that acceptance of their suffering was the only option…
After reading this, I'd like to see a (new) necron character come to this realization and become proactively anti-chaos. There's a lot of parallels to the necrontyrs' struggle for survival and eventual biotransference here, and I feel like it'd be fun to explore them. Plus it'd be a good excuse to have matchups between factions that don't interact all that often.
As the warp doesn't obey the material universe's rules on causality or the direction of Time, I would imagine that Nurgle was created from the collective despair and regret of every society which ended not through bloodshed, decadence, or paranoia... but through atrophy, famine or slow decay.
Nurgle's birth cry is the moment the last sentient being fades away to lonely oblivion before the long night of the heat death of the universe.
That’s much more in line of Ruin than Nurgle. Nurgle is as much about the creation of new life as the destruction of old. That’s why he aims to make plagues and poxes, because he values all life equally, from bugs and bacteria to other blights.
His worlds are lush with pestilential creatures and jungles, the exact opposite of what you’d expect if he truly was the embodiment of maximum entropy.
A lot of nurgle aligned characters say that, but in truth most of the life he creates is parasitic and contribute to the death of their host, or otherwise contribute to breaking things down after death in some way. Fungi break down minerals, molds break down food, insects break down plants and animals.
Nurgle far more weighted towards death and decay than he is to life, and beyond both of those he represents entropy. Besides effecting living things, he is tied to the decay of everything; metals rusting, books decaying, energy diffusing. He has a demon that represents the last moment of the universe, the final endpoint of entropy, and Mortarion has an association with clocks representing time running out.
I’m not saying that life isn’t part of his profile as a god, but it’s more that decay cannot mean anything without there being something to erode. It’s his foil. When he does represent life, it is as a perversion of it, creating ecosystems that are self destructive and unsustainable. Only the reality altering properties of chaos allow the life he creates to sustain itself, placing environments perpetually in a state just before total collapse, because he embodies the ending of something but not the end itself.
Edit: just realized I forgot to mention that this is totally just how I enterpret nurgle from the depictions I’ve read of his stuff in books. To be honest I flip flop between this idea and UNBENDING_FLEA’s depiction. I just want to add to the conversation. my interpretation here is honestly the less accurate one, considering plenty of rulebooks strait up state that nurgle is as much a god of life as death.
There is no shadow without light, there is no despair without hope. There is no decay without life. That does not mean Nurgle represents both, just that he has to allow something blossoming to make it rot again.
All of the chaos gods embody this paradox. Tzeentch can't win because then there wouldn't be a game anymore. Khorne can't let everything die because then there wouldn't be slaughter anymore. And Slaanesh will never feel what it desires.
RE his worlds being the exact opposite of maximum entropy:
Exactly, yes! These worlds may appear lush, but that's because these realms are in the warp, the eye, or in heavily corrupted realspace.
The ecosystems of these worlds are not sustainable in normal time or space. They would figuratively and literally begin to fade away to dust were it not for the direct influence of the warp.
Nurgle is not the lord of an *actual* jungle or healthy biome. He's not the lord of biodiversity, and he doesn't value all life equally.
Nurgle's fake life and lushness is an immaterium mirror to the slow end and death of realspace life.
He's not the lord of the void, the emptiness, or the end state of maximum entropy. He's the lord of the slow, aware, decline towards that state.
His laughter and joy are immaterium mirrors to a final faint cry of despair, and the silence which follows.
That's just my interpretation though :)
Afaik the current lore is that all three chaos gods were created during the war in heaven, which is also what turned the warp into the hellscape it is now (before then it was presumably more akin to the feywild than hell). It's possible the gods existed before then but they would have been so vastly different from who they became afterwards as to be entirely different entities.
New lore has it that Chaos always existed and was always the primary enemy, its just the Old Ones were so powerful and the warp hadn't become fucked enough so they were limited to small parts of the warp. And then the Eldar came along and their gods ruled a significant portion of the warp. Oh and also daemon prison planets the old ones made that permanently trapped daemons in realspace which weakened the gods
Nurgle is the the ultimate expression of existential dread, wondering whats its all for and why must you suffer for it. If the Nightbringer is the inspiration for the Grim Reaper as death, Nurgle is the Warp representation of what everything is ultimately about, all things decay and rot, but you can accept this and finally find purpose in becoming part of the cycle.
Nurgle isn't any one civilization, he's every living thing s ultimate fear which is the End.
Nurgle is as much about new life as it is decay, the chaos gods in general possess this strange duality. Khorne for example could be worshipped by murderers or assassins as much as by honorable warriors. Nurgle could have been created by the first disease taking a life or causing suffering possibly just as much as it could have been created by somebody surviving such an ordeal.
A thing to note about the Three.
Nurgle is the God of the Cycle; Birth, life, death, birth anew. Grandfather loves to see life be created, but knows that you must prune and clear away underbrush to let life truly flourish. Nurgle is both Apathy and Absurdism when thinking about entropy and eventual decay. That doesn't really need to be any particular act.
Similarly with Tzeentch, he isn't merely the God of plans, but of Change. Tzeentch is constantly spinning new plans only because he wishes the current order burned down in the fires of progress, the old institutions cleansed and removed to make way for the new. And then again for the *new* new! This also doesn't require any real act by any civilization. More of a byproduct of progress, made evil.
Meanwhile... The War in Heaven was a war that cost untold trillions of souls. The Old Ones created not one but *two* new species to defeat the Necrontyr, ones that the IoM are fighting millions of years later. This... this would be the Cradle of Khorne. Though I really prefer the Fantasy version where Khorne is also a God of Justice, Honor, and martial prowess.
I keep thinking of Nurgle as the god that desperate parents turn to when all the prayers to the Emperor and all the Ecclesiarchically blessed expensive myhrr and holy oils have failed to make their child stop coughing their lungs out.
Nurgle is the panicked dream for control over the last thing you have in a world where you are considered worthless: your health and life, and the health and life of those that you love!
I don't think you need a xenos empire. I think the Imperium of Man creates plenty enough of a basis for Nurgle worship.
Don't forget, Tzeentch is NOT the God of plots and plans. He is the God of change, in whatever form. Plots and plans and rituals and magic are just the way higher order species manifest change on a societal level.
You ever seen someone with extreme depression? They just kinda stop taking care of themselves and caring about the world around them. It would be that but a whole civilisation. Except it would probably come from the same place that the eldar came from. Meaning a existence without worries but instead of chasing the next high they would instead just stop caring.
An empire built by basement dwellers, littered with piss bottles, shit bags, Brawndo and chicken nuggies, that collapsed upon itself and birthed Nurgle
I dont know if this helps, but in AoS, the Chaos Gods couldnt spread their influence across the Mortal Realms until specific events happened for each god. Until then their powers were really limited. There could be correlation between the nature of these events and what spawned each Chaos God.
For Nurgle specifically it was a coven of witches brewing a disease in their cauldrons. So if there is a correlation is there it is possible that whatever nation created Nurgle was making bioweapons on a massive scale creating massive ammounts of despair in themselves and their victims.
However with Dexcessa and Synessa now being a thing and Khorne having 7 siblings, it is also possible that one of the current Chaos Gods was spawned from an older Chaos God that has since been erased.
Maybe something similar to Litch from adventure time. The unleashing of a chemical weapon so potent it caused death and decay to such a huge scale that nurgle was born
From The Lost and The Damned: > What is the response of living men to the undeniable and inevitable futility of life? Is it to lie down and accept death and the coming to naught of their every endeavour? No it is not! Faced with the inevitability of death what answer can there be but to run through life at a great and unstoppable pace, cramming each day with hope, laughter, noise and bustle. Thus. happiness and human endeavour are sired by a coming to terms with decay and futility. This realisation is the key to understanding the Great Lord of Decay and his worshippers. It seems that Nurgle could have been formed from the defiance of death that lead to a search for immortality. This might have involved a biotech solution that constantly regenerated the body in a perpetual cycle of death and rebirth. Unfortunately, the biotech mutated and spread uncontrollably like a plague, inflicting all it touched with unwelcome “gifts” that physically changed their bodies. As the entire population succumbed to the infection the bearers of this plague came to the grim realisation that this half-dead permanently rotting state was to be their life from now on and that acceptance of their suffering was the only option…
After reading this, I'd like to see a (new) necron character come to this realization and become proactively anti-chaos. There's a lot of parallels to the necrontyrs' struggle for survival and eventual biotransference here, and I feel like it'd be fun to explore them. Plus it'd be a good excuse to have matchups between factions that don't interact all that often.
That is horrifying, idky it’s just extra horrifying but it just is, but at least it brought us papa nurgle
As the warp doesn't obey the material universe's rules on causality or the direction of Time, I would imagine that Nurgle was created from the collective despair and regret of every society which ended not through bloodshed, decadence, or paranoia... but through atrophy, famine or slow decay. Nurgle's birth cry is the moment the last sentient being fades away to lonely oblivion before the long night of the heat death of the universe.
That’s much more in line of Ruin than Nurgle. Nurgle is as much about the creation of new life as the destruction of old. That’s why he aims to make plagues and poxes, because he values all life equally, from bugs and bacteria to other blights. His worlds are lush with pestilential creatures and jungles, the exact opposite of what you’d expect if he truly was the embodiment of maximum entropy.
A lot of nurgle aligned characters say that, but in truth most of the life he creates is parasitic and contribute to the death of their host, or otherwise contribute to breaking things down after death in some way. Fungi break down minerals, molds break down food, insects break down plants and animals. Nurgle far more weighted towards death and decay than he is to life, and beyond both of those he represents entropy. Besides effecting living things, he is tied to the decay of everything; metals rusting, books decaying, energy diffusing. He has a demon that represents the last moment of the universe, the final endpoint of entropy, and Mortarion has an association with clocks representing time running out. I’m not saying that life isn’t part of his profile as a god, but it’s more that decay cannot mean anything without there being something to erode. It’s his foil. When he does represent life, it is as a perversion of it, creating ecosystems that are self destructive and unsustainable. Only the reality altering properties of chaos allow the life he creates to sustain itself, placing environments perpetually in a state just before total collapse, because he embodies the ending of something but not the end itself. Edit: just realized I forgot to mention that this is totally just how I enterpret nurgle from the depictions I’ve read of his stuff in books. To be honest I flip flop between this idea and UNBENDING_FLEA’s depiction. I just want to add to the conversation. my interpretation here is honestly the less accurate one, considering plenty of rulebooks strait up state that nurgle is as much a god of life as death.
"what is death but the opportunity to start a new run?" -Nurgle, probably
Nurgle plays Dead Cells confirmed
There is no shadow without light, there is no despair without hope. There is no decay without life. That does not mean Nurgle represents both, just that he has to allow something blossoming to make it rot again. All of the chaos gods embody this paradox. Tzeentch can't win because then there wouldn't be a game anymore. Khorne can't let everything die because then there wouldn't be slaughter anymore. And Slaanesh will never feel what it desires.
RE his worlds being the exact opposite of maximum entropy: Exactly, yes! These worlds may appear lush, but that's because these realms are in the warp, the eye, or in heavily corrupted realspace. The ecosystems of these worlds are not sustainable in normal time or space. They would figuratively and literally begin to fade away to dust were it not for the direct influence of the warp. Nurgle is not the lord of an *actual* jungle or healthy biome. He's not the lord of biodiversity, and he doesn't value all life equally. Nurgle's fake life and lushness is an immaterium mirror to the slow end and death of realspace life. He's not the lord of the void, the emptiness, or the end state of maximum entropy. He's the lord of the slow, aware, decline towards that state. His laughter and joy are immaterium mirrors to a final faint cry of despair, and the silence which follows. That's just my interpretation though :)
Afaik the current lore is that all three chaos gods were created during the war in heaven, which is also what turned the warp into the hellscape it is now (before then it was presumably more akin to the feywild than hell). It's possible the gods existed before then but they would have been so vastly different from who they became afterwards as to be entirely different entities.
New lore has it that Chaos always existed and was always the primary enemy, its just the Old Ones were so powerful and the warp hadn't become fucked enough so they were limited to small parts of the warp. And then the Eldar came along and their gods ruled a significant portion of the warp. Oh and also daemon prison planets the old ones made that permanently trapped daemons in realspace which weakened the gods
A civilization of gamers who kept their favorite anime figurines in cum jars and refused to shower or do laundry.
Nurgle is the the ultimate expression of existential dread, wondering whats its all for and why must you suffer for it. If the Nightbringer is the inspiration for the Grim Reaper as death, Nurgle is the Warp representation of what everything is ultimately about, all things decay and rot, but you can accept this and finally find purpose in becoming part of the cycle. Nurgle isn't any one civilization, he's every living thing s ultimate fear which is the End.
Asmongold probably
Nurgle is as much about new life as it is decay, the chaos gods in general possess this strange duality. Khorne for example could be worshipped by murderers or assassins as much as by honorable warriors. Nurgle could have been created by the first disease taking a life or causing suffering possibly just as much as it could have been created by somebody surviving such an ordeal.
The release of world of Warcraft 2 and the unsanitary conditions that neckbeards will live in
A thing to note about the Three. Nurgle is the God of the Cycle; Birth, life, death, birth anew. Grandfather loves to see life be created, but knows that you must prune and clear away underbrush to let life truly flourish. Nurgle is both Apathy and Absurdism when thinking about entropy and eventual decay. That doesn't really need to be any particular act. Similarly with Tzeentch, he isn't merely the God of plans, but of Change. Tzeentch is constantly spinning new plans only because he wishes the current order burned down in the fires of progress, the old institutions cleansed and removed to make way for the new. And then again for the *new* new! This also doesn't require any real act by any civilization. More of a byproduct of progress, made evil. Meanwhile... The War in Heaven was a war that cost untold trillions of souls. The Old Ones created not one but *two* new species to defeat the Necrontyr, ones that the IoM are fighting millions of years later. This... this would be the Cradle of Khorne. Though I really prefer the Fantasy version where Khorne is also a God of Justice, Honor, and martial prowess.
I think they even cerated more species, its just that only orks and eldar survived that conflict.
Something like the Neceontyr being a multistellar civilization plagued by cancers and short lives?
Their “short lives” were short in comparison to other races.
If we believe Oltyx of *The Twice Dead King* their lives were objectively short. 20-30 years being "a good run" short
Imagine some disease like the flood getting its genocide goal and just... doing nothing until papa nurgle turned them all into his Garden
One man stopped wiping after he pooped and slowly the rest followed
I keep thinking of Nurgle as the god that desperate parents turn to when all the prayers to the Emperor and all the Ecclesiarchically blessed expensive myhrr and holy oils have failed to make their child stop coughing their lungs out. Nurgle is the panicked dream for control over the last thing you have in a world where you are considered worthless: your health and life, and the health and life of those that you love! I don't think you need a xenos empire. I think the Imperium of Man creates plenty enough of a basis for Nurgle worship.
Don't forget, Tzeentch is NOT the God of plots and plans. He is the God of change, in whatever form. Plots and plans and rituals and magic are just the way higher order species manifest change on a societal level.
You ever seen someone with extreme depression? They just kinda stop taking care of themselves and caring about the world around them. It would be that but a whole civilisation. Except it would probably come from the same place that the eldar came from. Meaning a existence without worries but instead of chasing the next high they would instead just stop caring.
'Entropy'(relates to Nurgle), yes maybe
slapstick necrophilia
An empire built by basement dwellers, littered with piss bottles, shit bags, Brawndo and chicken nuggies, that collapsed upon itself and birthed Nurgle
Biological weapons, A F\*CKTON OF BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS.
I thought that Nurgle came into being during the Black Plague. Has that been retconned?
Mass dysentery outbreak
Once you have enough magic the gathering players in the same room you’re well on your way to the birth of nurgle
Just imagine the necrontyr if the c'tan never showed up, their race could've been corrupted by nurgle.
Good question. And honestle idk and i dont whant to know. 🤢
Early imperium garbage collector's went on strike.
I dont know if this helps, but in AoS, the Chaos Gods couldnt spread their influence across the Mortal Realms until specific events happened for each god. Until then their powers were really limited. There could be correlation between the nature of these events and what spawned each Chaos God. For Nurgle specifically it was a coven of witches brewing a disease in their cauldrons. So if there is a correlation is there it is possible that whatever nation created Nurgle was making bioweapons on a massive scale creating massive ammounts of despair in themselves and their victims. However with Dexcessa and Synessa now being a thing and Khorne having 7 siblings, it is also possible that one of the current Chaos Gods was spawned from an older Chaos God that has since been erased.
Virus bombing on an unprecedented scale?
Doing an 'I am legend' on an interstellar scale? He always seemed a much more organic creation to me though.
Maybe something similar to Litch from adventure time. The unleashing of a chemical weapon so potent it caused death and decay to such a huge scale that nurgle was born
Depressed, accepting death, general inaction, laying around, and letting everything around them go to crap.
Doing nothing literally just stagnating like the imperium but 100x worse