Corpse Grinders: Khorne vs Nurgle

[DuskRaider]

I'm still trying to wrap my head around why the Corpse Guild of all things is tied to Khorne and not Nurgle...

[Beren]

Nurgle would be if the corpses were left to rot, fester, and come back to life. These guys don't really leave corpses in a state to get back up again, and take the corpses off the street. Given the fact that everyone in necromunda is still alive, the process also presumably sanitises the biomatter prior to consumption.

[DuskRaider]

They're still dealing with death, despair and disease on a daily basis. Those are the 3 D's that make Nurgle uh... Nurgle.

[Beren]

Death is just as much khorne's province as nurgle's, and it's only really nurgle's if the corpses stick around (Khorne kills things, Nurgle relies on the bodies as vectors of disease and troops) and they are actively involved in a process that gets rid of disease.

 

Their origins also help explain why they are melee focused, they are a groupnof people who are inherently used to chopping people into lots of little bits and shoving what's left into a processor. You don't need to shoot a corpse unless they're getting back up, in which case you're probably trying to get someone else to deal with the situation.

[Petitioner's City]

They're still dealing with death, despair and disease on a daily basis. Those are the 3 D's that make Nurgle uh... Nurgle.

That's reductive, and flat. All chaos is concerned with death, all with despair, etc. Really, think of chaos more as mutually intersecting oscillating interpretations of negative concepts in the human psyche. Also, think more nuanced about chaos divinities or personhoods, about how these are more than just boxes into which X is placed versus y in another box.

 

On the CGC, if you really want to be reductive, what liquid are those guys, butchers who cut up corpses with rough industrial machinery, going to be covered in? Blood. And what do we also call Khorne. But blood is part of all chaos and also holy imperial imagery. It's not easy to simplify

[DuskRaider]

Except Nurgle is literally the God of Despair. That's his main attribute. The disease, putrefaction, rot and ruin are merely catalysts to push an individual into his realm and ultimately his grasp. The Corpse Grinders' own fluff on Warhammer Community says they're driven to madness by the weight of having to do their job, the despair drives them to insanity.

 

It is what it is. You can try to spin it however you want but ultimately it just doesn't make sense. Thankfully this is only one sect of the Guild and not a model of it overall.

[Beren]

The exact quote is " But this is gruesome work - for those who carve up the carcasses and throw the parts into industrial grinders, madness is a constant risk."

 

You may interpret that as being related to despair if you wish, but I didn't. Madness takes many forms, and it could well be that some of them became so obsessed with finding corpses to process that they stopped caring about whether they'd been alive before hand.

[DuskRaider]

Sure, but I mean... why would they go mad? The monotony of it?

 

Whatever. I guess it doesn't matter in the end.

[Blindhamster]

Because plot* I guess.

 

*such as it is

[gideon stargreave]

You really need to ask why chopping bodies up to put into grinders might affect your mental health?

 

I agree it's a shame these are khorne cultists, it would have been nice for necromunda to have explored the worship of chaos from the point of view of some lower level worshippers. As an unnamed concept perhaps, like how feral worlds might worship the emperor of mankind as a bolt of lightning, or a giant thunderbird

[Antarius]

I personally think I'm going to interpret them as more of a general chaos cult in my own headcanon. But afaict, there are millions of cults that worship different aspects (and names) of the different gods. The Lord of Skin and Sinew is probably a slightly creepier, more death-obsessed take on Khorne worship than some of the others.

 

But I guess you could say that the reason anyone's driven to any chaos god depends on their own approach to things. These guys are probably the ones who deal with the mental strain of corpse-processing by enjoying their jobs TOO much, rather than despairing.

[Interrogator-Chaplain Ezra]

Sure, but I mean... why would they go mad?

I don't know, might be something to do with every day being a constant grind of breaking down corpses to make food, and knowing the stuff you're eating yourself was one of the shot-up dudes you threw in the machine yesterday, and he did sort of look like your younger brother who fell in with that gang, and didn't that old lady last week remind you of your mother and you guess you always wonders what people taste like and the buzzsawisstaringtotalktoyouandwhatwasthataboutskulls

[Dagoth Ur]

Sure, but I mean... why would they go mad? The monotony of it?

 

Whatever. I guess it doesn't matter in the end.

I worked a year in crime scene cleanup and that was already very mentally taxing with constant access to paid psychiatric help, I cannot imagine the psychological strain a job consisting of dismembering bodies on a daily basis would put on you - especially considering that they turn the bodies into food.

[DuskRaider]

Well that's kind of what I'm saying... I would assume the mental tax of doing such a job would be soul crushing. The monotony thing was sarcasm, I thought that was obvious but it's not easy to convey that via text I guess...

[Bryan Blaire]

I agree with DuskRaider though, the "death into life" thing really does seem to be more a Nurgle's thing than a Khorne thing, and that's really overall what the Corpse Grinders are feeding. Maybe that's why they are still low level cultists, and not a group gaining a lot of power - they devote their work to Khorne and seek his favor, and get a little because of the whole Blood God thing, but the majority of their labor actually feeds Nurgle, so Khorne isn't going to give them a ton of power.

 

The whole "who does this feed, why does X respond" concept if Chaos is really interesting in 40K, and now I'm really interested to know more of the story behind the Corpse Grinders - maybe they decide that when there aren't enough corpses lying around, they make some more on their own (and hence the Khorne side of worship).

[Marshal Rohr]

You could very easily just make Nurgle Corpse Grinders.

[Brother Casman]

+++ Housekeeping Note +++

 

I've split this off from the Corpse Grinders news thread, as it's an interesting discussion in it's own right, even if it isn't really news.

[Petitioner's City]

But why try to associate them, why feel the need to peg them or directly associate them. Those supposid 'bunny helmets' also look like metallic horns, which are quite generic.

 

But just let them be Lord of Skin and Sinew worshippers; they don't know what that means, that's what's exciting - they *are* a niche necromunda cult, following a local deity, not a generic bunch of chaos cultists dropped onto Necromunda (the way the helots are usually presented using the 40k models rather than models which genuinely look like moonlighting workers). They are a rather fun extension of world-building, based in who makes the dominant staplefood, and that's intriguing. Why go from "CGC" to Khorne - why need to make explicit what is implicit? Finally, an implication is also not defined, it's not a "truth statement" and thus possibly means - shock, horror - that the Lord of Sinew and Skin might not actually be in any way connected to what we tend to think of as "Khorne" or "Nurgle" or whatever else....

 

Overall, why reduce the setting to dull tick boxes or definitions that are flat, closed and artificial, rather than let it be complicated, multifarious and multifaceted? That is, why not make the world building be just like real religion, real spirituality, and real culture?

[apologist]

When thinking about Khorne cultists, it's easy to be one-dimensional. I like the fact that the existence of the Corpse Grinders implies at least some level of texture and subtlety to Khornate worship beyond the battlefield. Tagging the group onto the practise of butchery is an interesting step that – for me at least – feels like a welcome breath of fresh air in how Khornate societies could work, and (if you'll pardon the pun) fleshes out how worship of the Blood God can start in civilisation.

 

While Khorne is a god of war and conflict first and foremost, there are still more atavistic or refined aspects of him that deserve to be brought out of the shadows. The flow of blood and harvesting of skulls is very suited, and butchery is usually related to slaughtering the foodstuff. The step from using corpses to creating your own is all that is required for such a group to become very obviously associated with the more familiar aspects of Khorne as the god of conflict, murder and war. 

 

For the Corpse Grinders themselves, living as they do in a strained and rationed environment; where life is cheap and butchery gives them work, power and reward, the temptation to commit murder must be huge. 

 

So there's the case for Khorne. The counter-argument in favour of Nurgle as a patron is weaker, I feel. While the concept of the cycle of life and death very much fits with the Corpse Guilds role – taking dead bodies to feed the living, it doesn't fit so well with the egregious cannibal cults, which is what we're actually talking about. The Corpse Grinder gangs (as distinct from the Corpse Guild proper), go out of their way to avoid death; to triumph over others; and to enforce themselves over others through the most direct way – killing them and eating them.

 

The despair that feeds Nurgle is cyclical – he's as much a jolly god of hope as despair; not the nihilistic denial of death that Khorne feeds upon – and it's the latter that the Cannibal Cults display.

[Torbenos]

I'll agree with Apologist and some others here. I for one like the fact that this brings in more nuance to the worship of Khorne, even if this isn't even particularly different from the usual berzerkers. I want more variation in regards to Khorne in general so this is a good step to me.

[Bryan Blaire]

So you can't just "let them be worshippers of the Lord of Sinew and Bone" because GW specifically said that they are Khorne-worshipping cannibals. In another situation/different type of description, you could actually make arguments about who the "Lord of Sinew and Bone" even was.

 

So really there's little subtlety there regarding the situation. If there was actual subtlety to it all, I might agree, but in this situation it is GW that is being reductionist with regards to "blood, death, butchery, must be Khorne" rather than taking the opportunity to show a wider view of Chaos, something that is more subtle and possibly not specifically tied to any one Chaos God. There's no nuance to be found in this situation.

 

Subtlety would be what was done with the Priest-King of Maulland Sen - never saying what God the "pathway to Hell from good intentions" may have fed, but that these actions definitely fed Chaos in some fashion.

 

GW removed all subtlety from the Corpse Grinders cult.

[Beren]

A few more things to note:

 

The Corpse Grinders are not what I would call 'low level cultists'. They overran an entire hive, and even if their original labours served Nurgle more, their current actions are definitely skewed more towards Khorne. I'm not even convinced that their actions served Nurgle in the first place. Leave a corpse to rot, and it will be colonised by all manner of fungi and microorganisms, as well as being eaten by numerous other creatures. It is also a much greater vector for disease. When the Corpse Guild take a corpse, they turn it directly into corpse-starch (which is not, as far as I am aware, alive) which then goes directly to humans. Therefore the corpse guild actively limits disease and constrains the number of organisms that benefit from the corpse.

 

Another thing to note is that a Nurgle Corpse Grinder gang might be less survivable in Necromunda. The planet already has to deal with brainleaf zombies, so what would often provide nurglites with a steady ally loses its shock factor and may be in general better counted. Nurglite Corpse Grinders would also be more likely to let the bodies pile up rather than removing to them, leading to a drop in corpse-starch productivity and people noticing that corpses are piling up without being disposed of, whereas people disappearing or being not quite dead when they're ground up may be less so. Hell, in its earlier years the productivity of corpse guild team might seem to increase as it falls under the sway of the Corpse Grinders, which deflects more attention than the opposite.

 

Also:

 

The presenting of the Corpse Grinders reminds me a lot of the presentation of the Tzeentchist Menangerie cult within the Dark Heresy supplement, Disciples of the Dark Gods. They were a cult that worshipped a being known as 'the King in Rags and Tatters', explicitly mentioned to be an aspect of Tzeentch, but not the more commonly seen aspect nor one that was encountered elsewhere. Likewise, the cult was somewhat atypical, and lacked overt Tzeetch symbology or catchphrases whilst still holding to methodologies that were skewed towards the Tzeenchian aspect of Chaos. Howver, the book also contained murder/hatred orientated cults that worshipped greater daemons without any significant alignment or connection to any of the four Chaos Gods, and it is a book that I would recommend to Bryan and anyone else who is interested in such depictions of Chaos (though this is only one part of the book, as it also includes recidivist and xenos groups., if you haven't read it already.

[Shinros]

They're literally like the bloodbound from AOS who are also cannibals. The focus on melee, blood and bone, where does Nurgle come into the mix here? They don't even look diseased.

[Cadius]

I picture each chaos god as having their own aspect, this is mostly based on chaos marines though. 

Khorne = War and Blood Shed

Nurgle = Plague and Pestilence

Slaanesh = Famine and Drought

Tzeentch = Death

[Beren]

They're literally like the bloodbound from AOS who are also cannibals. The focus on melee, blood and bone, where does Nurgle come into the mix here? They don't even look diseased.

They're referring to their origins as workmen of the corpse guild rather than their current state i. e 'they should be nurgle influenced' based on their backgrounds and origins, rather than 'they are nurgle influenced'.