Corpse Grinders: Khorne vs Nurgle

[DuskRaider]

I think a lot of people are still getting hung up on Nurgle = disease and rot. That's a portion of his realm or power. As I've said before, Nurgle is first and foremost the God of Despair. He feeds on helplessness, sadness, the feeling of mortality and the futility of life. He himself is a parody of this and despite seeming paternal is quite the opposite.

 

I support GW going more in depth with the Gods (I certainly wish they would do so more in the rules), but I still find the dedication of a guild whose profession is finding the dead of the world... often times in squallor, having to collect the lifeless bodies of women and children, many of which may have suffered from disease which they are directly exposed to on a daily basis. They have to hack up the bodies of their friends, neighbors and loved ones knowing that at some point they may well be feasting upon their repurposed flesh. This doesn't lead to me the path of Khorne, this would lead me to Nurgle's embrace.

 

In the end I guess any individual or group could fall to any God if given the chance. On the millions of Hive Planets throughout the Imperium there may be a Corpse Guild dedicated to Slaanesh or a Water Guild whose found themselves enraptured with Tzeentch. It just seems mighty odd to me that they would choose the representatives of the Guild in model form to be of all things Khorne.

[Beren]

But one can react to such a situation in a multitude of ways. They might find that they gradually grow callous, uncaring of first the dead and then later the living. They may throw themselves into their work all the harder, seeking to drown out their emotions in endless toil and the sound of hacking flesh. Necromunda has never been a particularly caring place.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Or maybe it started after there were some shortfalls in supply, so to meet their quotas they had to "locate alternative suppliers".

 

Sure, Nurgle is the God of Despair, but it's equally reductionist to assume that all Khornate cults have to come from warrior societies or some such. These guys aren't the ones who seek out the dead bodies, those are the Pale Consorts. Corpse Grinders are associated with the Corpse Guild, sure, but aren't actual members of the Guild themselves (the Book of Peril states that the Corpse Grinders organization "stands as the principle beneficiary of the Merchant Guild's efforts.") They're the ones who spend their whole lives working with a blade, dismembering the bodies of their fellow Hivers.

I could definitely see the Corpse Guild itself, the Pale Consorts and Bone Scriveners, turning to Nurgle for the reasons you've said. Corpse Grinders though? They're just the butchers. You're right in that the act of simple butchery gives more strength to Nurgle than to Khorne, but that's only if we assume that they turned first to full-fledged Chaos cultists. My own interpretation would be that they started off as butchers, got steadily driven mad by the work, started their "alternative sourcing" above, and that's when it turned from being Nurgle into being Khorne.

 

Remember, Khorne definitely has elements of taking the strength of defeated enemies for your own, and that definitely fits the Corpse Grinder Cults.

[DuskRaider]

THERE WE GO. Caerolion, I could kiss you! See, I didn't know this. I thought these guys went out and collected the bodies and whatnot, not just rendered them down. This makes a bit more sense now.

[Lord_Caerolion]

I mean, it's a little murky. Two Corpse Grinders are included as part of the Corpse Harvesting Party that can side with you if you're allied with them and they decide you need help. It does, however, explicitly state that the actual Guild members, the Pale Consort and Bone Scrivener, are the actual "corpse prospectors, continually scouring the hives looking for new and plentiful veins of dead meat", but goes on to state that "when they find a likely specimen, they are not the ones to mine it", and that that duty falls to the Corpse Grinders. It then mentions that the Grinders "either haul the corpses whole into their body carts or hack away the best pieces for the ration factories to refine".

 

So they do go out, but they're just the muscle, no pun intended. They don't actually search for them themselves, they just carry and cut.

[Cadius]

 Corpse Guild dedicated to Slaanesh 

 

hmmm now that is a disturbing thought. Slaanesh chaos god of excessive pleasure and then hand corpses to his/her/it's perverted cultists, that also belong to the Corpse Grinder Guild.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Slaanesh doesn't have to be all about sex. For a Slaaneshi Corpse-Grinder Cult, I'd imagine that they'd be more like twisted gourmands, perhaps the initial seed of corruption starting after they disposed of a shipment of plagued corpses, unwilling to taint their produce. From there, the desire for perfection grows, and they start experimenting in exactly what corpses they use, with some elements of the Cult interested in "dry-aged meat", others thinking that the younger the flesh, the less pollutants from the hive taint the meal, or even more twisted criteria. Perhaps the endorphins released by terror make the meat taste sweeter? Soon, you've got a Corpse Grinder Cult that's depopulating entire townships in their experimentations towards perfecting the taste of their product, rather than the crude excuse for food that the other refineries put out.

[Cadius]

Slaanesh doesn't have to be all about sex. For a Slaaneshi Corpse-Grinder Cult, I'd imagine that they'd be more like twisted gourmands, perhaps the initial seed of corruption starting after they disposed of a shipment of plagued corpses, unwilling to taint their produce. From there, the desire for perfection grows, and they start experimenting in exactly what corpses they use, with some elements of the Cult interested in "dry-aged meat", others thinking that the younger the flesh, the less pollutants from the hive taint the meal, or even more twisted criteria. Perhaps the endorphins released by terror make the meat taste sweeter? Soon, you've got a Corpse Grinder Cult that's depopulating entire townships in their experimentations towards perfecting the taste of their product, rather than the crude excuse for food that the other refineries put out.

 

Hmmm food for thought

[Bryan Blaire]

Caerolion, awesome information, thank you! Yes, based on what you said, it makes much more sense for the actual Corpse Guild or Pale Consorts and Bone Scriveners (if they are involved more in the rendering/food source development/feed delivery) to turn to Nurgle (or at least be more Nurgle-aligned. It does still seem very lacking in subtlety to have the butchers be Khorne-worshippers, but yes, it's very understandable why it would be that way. Khorne is definitely the most lacking in subtlety overall.

[Lord_Caerolion]

To explain a bit more fully, the way the Merchants Guild is structured is that they're just the traders, they very rarely actually get their hands dirty in the day-to-day tradescraft. In the Water Guild, the Guilders are just the merchants (and occasional reclaimators), it's the Subnautican following them that does the hands-on repairs. When it comes to the Corpse Guild, the term repeatedly used is that the Guilders are "prospectors", and that they only "regulate" the corpse-starch trade. They're akin to miners, in that sense. They find the raw materials, and then send it off to the smelteries for refining, only in this case they find dead bodies, and hand them over to the Corpse Grinders.

 

The Corpse Guild itself is much more Nurgle-aligned, literally trading in dead bodies, but they don't do much more than assess their value and sell them on. Stat-wise, they're definitely not fighters. The Grinders are the beneficiaries of the Corpse Guild, buying the bodies but not actually part of the Corpse Guild itself, only overseen by it.

[Soldier of Dorn]

This is actually somewhat relevant to some reading I've been doing recently on how religions develop, specifically on how polytheistic faiths developed in the ancient era, but I think it has some application here.

 

Suppose that your Corpse-Grinders start out as relatively ordinary Imperial citizens, with no knowledge of the Dark Gods of the Warp to preconceive a theology of Chaos. They do not work forwards from a theory of the divine, but like the ancients, they base their faith on practical knowledge and work backwards, filling in the blanks. They have no idea that their despair feeds Nurgle, or their pleasure in the excess of the feast of flesh feeds Tzeentch, or that their bloodletting feeds into Khorne. They know nothing of the Chaos Gods.

 

But, suppose: a man, driven by hunger and desperation, strikes out against a fellow man and satisfies his cannibal hunger, and does so again, and again. Now, this act in itself is not an act of worship. Not yet. But it is the beginning of the fall.

As time goes on, he finds the act of bloodletting his prey prior to feasting makes the meat taste richer. He doesn't know why -- he has no knowledge of any science behind it -- he just knows it works, so he continues to do it, and in so doing, he consecrates this act to a new god: the God of Feast and Flesh, a Lord of Skin and Sinew.

 

As time goes by, the ritual becomes more and more esoteric and contrived: fountains of blood showering high into the sky, strands of gore arrayed like gruesome banners along reddened banquet halls playing host to ever greater numbers of his cult brethren, clad in masks that once simply protected eyes from the crimson feast but now are inherently part of the ritual.

 

This is worship consecrated to Khorne, not in theology, but in deed. It awakens his attentions and in so doing the Blood God is able to secure a grasp on these worshipers and through vision and prophecy work them further unto his grasp. Or at least, it's probably something like that.

 

These are deeds that become religion, practical deeds becoming something more -- something supernatural. They understand something works, but not why it works, so it becomes ritual and in time sacrament. With sacrament, they are rewarded with fresher tasting flesh, without it: it tastes like .

 

The Cannibal Corpse Grinders worship Khorne because they are practically rewarded for their worship, or at least, in this supposition they are. So far as I can confabulate, I... can't see a path where a Nurglitch worship would practically benefit them. But that's just me, I'm sure there are plenty of brilliantly creative people on this forum who could.

 

Anyways, my two cents over.

[ZaelART]

I've always thought of Khorne as being about martial prowess and honour as much as ruthless brutality. Most of GW releases don't really get along with this concept. I never considered oldhammer chaos warriors to be cartoonishly barbaric and I'm sure there were a lot of stories about bretonnian knights getting into Khorne.

 

I agree that cannibals are more Nurgle-esque, a corpse is a haven for all manner of diseases to fester in and the act of cannibalism certainly spreads the rot even further.

 

The only way that cannibals work under Khorne is if the cannibals specifically target and kill the strongest and most skilled warriors they can find. Killing muscle atrophied civvies is too pathetic for Khorne.

[Son of Carnelian]

Killing muscle atrophied civvies is too pathetic for Khorne.

Counterpoint: "Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows, only that it does."

[Jareddm]

While some aspect of Khorne, somewhere in the galaxy cares about an individual's martial prowess, this particular aspect, in the form of the Lord of Skin and Sinew, does not.  All of the chaos gods have wildly contradictory aspects to themselves.  It's how you you can end up with factions with such conflicting dogmas, because each has evidence that THEIR aspect agrees with their beliefs.  Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows?  Industrial butchers are going to be spilling a lot of blood.

 

That said, I'm of the firm belief that any action, any occupation, can fall to at least 2, if not 3 gods without issue.  It is how the act is portrayed, how those doing it feel about it, if a particular warp entity happens to be watching at that moment, and plenty of other factors that will determine which god wins out in the end.  In the case of the Corpse Grinders, it was Khorne, but among other corpse butchers, on other worlds, it could be Nurgle, or Slaanesh, or even Tzeentch if you bring in his fish/ocean aspects and symbolize the act as chumming the water.  It's all about the specific context for those involved.

 

 

[Bryan Blaire]

If you haven't read it, the parts about the King-Priest of Maulland Sen in Master of Mankind is great, the Emperor specifically relaying how Chaos gets in with the best intentions even with just a little bit of religion/faith, and subtlety twists it, very similar to what Soldier of Dorn laid out. It isn't a long scene, but it's so laden with the metaphysics of the 40K universe and Chaos, I almost feel like it should be one of the first points in a primer on understanding the 40K universe.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Cannibals are Nurglitch if they leave the corpse for a while, or are scavengers. They can be Khornate/Tzeentchian equally for the whole "consume dead opponents to take their strength/wisdom for your own", or even Slaaneshi for the whole "forbidden delicacies", etc. Sure, killing muscle-atrophied civilians doesn't get you that much strength, but that's why you do it in bulk.

 

This is why I love the fluff for Warcry so much, they're really opening Chaos up from being the exact same portrayals of the 4 gods that we always get. Even when we get shown planets/tribes that call Nurgle "Onogal", for example, it's still the exact same Nurgle, just with a different name. We need more of these "Aspects" of the Chaos Gods that differ from the main portrayal. 

[DuskRaider]

Or the desperation to survive is so high that one would resort to cannibalism to avoid death. I... don't get why the corpse would have to be rotting.

[Lord_Caerolion]

True enough, had been very busy while writing that post. 

[Lord_Caerolion]

Apologies for the double-post, but thought I'd mention, now that I've actually had a chance to read through the book, that there does actually appear to be a Nurgle Corpse Guild character, Queen Lorsha. She's not explicitly mentioned as being a Nurgle follower, but they've taken the (imo better) approach in this book of heavily siding with the idea that very few Cults would actually know their deity as Khorne/Nurgle/Slaanesh/Tzeentch, instead knowing them by localized names. 

Basically, Lorsha was a Pale Consort, whose family was infected with the "neuron plague" (zombie virus). She couldn't bring herself to kill them, so she took them into the Underhive, took over a town by offering every inhabitant the choice of being infected themselves or feeding her family, and then started hearing the voice of "something else, communing with her from the beyond", telling her that she needs to spread the disease to everyone. So yeah, Nurgle, but never actually stated to even know what Nurgle is.

[Interrogator-Chaplain Ezra]

Corpse Guild, sure. Corpse Grinder, no.

[Zephaniah Adriyen]

This is such an interesting discussion, I love it. I don't even play Necromunda.

[DuskRaider]

Apologies for the double-post, but thought I'd mention, now that I've actually had a chance to read through the book, that there does actually appear to be a Nurgle Corpse Guild character, Queen Lorsha. She's not explicitly mentioned as being a Nurgle follower, but they've taken the (imo better) approach in this book of heavily siding with the idea that very few Cults would actually know their deity as Khorne/Nurgle/Slaanesh/Tzeentch, instead knowing them by localized names.

Basically, Lorsha was a Pale Consort, whose family was infected with the "neuron plague" (zombie virus). She couldn't bring herself to kill them, so she took them into the Underhive, took over a town by offering every inhabitant the choice of being infected themselves or feeding her family, and then started hearing the voice of "something else, communing with her from the beyond", telling her that she needs to spread the disease to everyone. So yeah, Nurgle, but never actually stated to even know what Nurgle is.

I actually really like this. It would help explain the Plague Zombie outbreak on Necromunda as well.

 

I can see members of the Corpse Guild worshipping or revering an aspect of Nurgle (probably unwittingly) to protect them from plagues and diseases as they collect the dead throughout the Hive. I picture something like the miners in Bolivia that have altars to a deity named El Tio. They leave offerings for protection and I can see something similar when it comes to the Corpse Guild (at least the lower rungs). I can also picture some, maybe on a different planet, where the House knows who they are in service to and have built power around it. Especially in the current setting where Chaos is rubbing rampant throughout the Imperium.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Hell, the Emperor's worshiped as a Death God on many, many worlds, it wouldn't surprise me if that's an aspect common to the Corpse Guild worship. A particular branch worships the Emperor as Imperator Morte, the eternal, undying king on Terra, who takes the souls of the dead with him into paradise, and leaves the bodies of the revered fallen to be harvested by his faithful, so that even in death new life can spring anew. Give it time for that to turn from "respect the fallen, and praise the Emperor" to "worshiping the holy cycle from death to life", and you've got yourself some Nurgle cultists.