Hi fellow-gamers,

I'm preparing a new campaign, and I'm looking to combine my two all-time villains in one story: Nurgle and Necromancers (or vampires).

Are there any links between these two factions. I know that in ages past canon dictated that necromancy was a form of Chaos-sorcery, but this has been changed over the years. So are there any other possible links between Nurgle and Nagash-affiliates.

Thanks for allowing me to pick your brains...

Well... there is if you want it to be

But apart from that there's a huge difference between undead/necromancy and chaos powers. Necromancy is about static forces, things caught in a state forever, while chaos is about change, constant change.

I believe the lore also dictates that undead are pretty much impossible to effect with chaos, or atleast it takes a very long time to do so, because they're very opposite of how chaos works.

So anything goes in your own campaign, but chaos and undead are things that are not an easy match... but that said a necromancer might use Nurgle powers for his own benefit, because Nurgle often kills people, which opens up for necromancy. It's just a matter of comming up with a scheme. Your players are not likely to go after the campaign: "OMG, what a totally unbelievable plot!!!", and if they do, I would not play with them again.

Undead (either Necromancers & Undead; or Vampire armies) and Chaos are commonly enemies in the Warhammer.

And if you considere idea, that Nurgle (and disease) may corrupt people. But if corrupted die then they are from the reach of Father Nurgle (and free game for those with Necromantic powers).

The connection probably comes from the idea that both are Dhar - Dark Magic. This meaning forbidden magic. But as Spivo mentioned - It doesn't mean there couldn't be connection.

Thanks Spivo & Jackdays, you gave me the inspiration I needed: a necromancer dabbling with Nurgle in an effort to collect more dead bodies that are 'in excellent shape'. The fact that his own undead are almost immune to chaos is just an added bonus: perhaps a cult of Nurgle counters the necromancer because it sees this being-immune as 'blasphemy'. Or/and perhaps one of his undead minions IS being touched by chaos, and is now working secretly against the necromancer; an unlikely ally for my players.

Thanks again...

ps: if remember correctly, in WFB version 1, necromancers were able to learn Deamonology, and thus a variant of Nurgle-spells. The dichotomy between Chaos and Undead, however cool I find it, seems to be relatively new. Whatever the case: things that rot and smell tend to do well against my players

Hi,

When you say you want to combine them does that mean they have to be allied, or can they be working against each other. An alliance is trickier but I could see combining them within the same plot and leaving the players to uncover who is behind which event to be very fun. "is that person swinging a big axe dead or just prematurely decomposing?"

If you want to link the two, a mysterious case of bodysnatching may be a good start. A secret cult of the Fly Lord plans raiding a physicians or even a temple of Morr to collect the corpses of certain individuals known to have died of a particularly virulent pox. If you wanted an early red herring you could have it as a sexually transmitted disease and see if they fall for a Slaaneshi bait. Send them round the towns brothels, tense confrontation with a crime lord. A local Vampire gent also is trying to collect some corpses for his own purposes. It may be to build a hit team to retrieve the remains of a lost vampire lover from the temple of Morr?. Any self respecting Vampire would have some servants carry out this dirty business. Perhaps the investigation starts with the players getting to know the local grave robbers. Another little red herring, a local physician looking to further medical science is also hiring grave robbers to bring him fresh bodies.

You may play it out that the cultist inadvertently pick up the vampire remains too, and look to use said relic as leverage. Perhaps seeing how effective the PCs were in stopping a subsequent cult operation the nice Vampire hires them...

Do you know what you want the finale of the campaign to entail? I guess that would be useful to building the right atmosphere and setup point.

Anyway hope that was some help. Actually given me an idea for my campaign, some kind of Vampire gold merchant arrived in Marienburg from Lustria...

Have fun.

Hehehe, nice. I have one Shallyan priestess in my group, so this is indeed usefull. My previous campaign was one filled with vampires, so I might have to be careful to to repeat myself, but perhaps the memories might just be the thing that draws them to the red herring.

To answer your question: no, they do not need to allied. It is indeed their visual similarities that are so much fun to work with.

Unfortunately I have no finale in mind. I was hoping to pitch them against Nagash himself in a retelling of the story of Alcadizaar (I like megalomanic stories: the previous campaign one of my players was possibly Sigmar himself, reborn to slay Archeon; i followed the lore pretty loosely, but it gave me an excellent excuse to travel the empire and to let my new players get to know the Old World... ) An other option is to let this campaign be an introduction to a dwarvenbased campaign (there was going to be an expension on dwarfs, I thought); the main focus would be the Nemesis Crown.

I seem to remember that there were stories of Skaven having conflicts or alliances with the Undead (ie, Necromancers).

Like, Clan Pestilens spreading diseases to kill off large swathes of population so that they can later be raised as undead. Meanwhile, the Skaven get dibs on all the goodies in the town's engineering or Mage quarters. I dunno: maybe the Grey Seer wants to take ownership over the Celestial Tower with all of its cool instruments.

Yoritomo said:

if i remember correctly in 40k there are plague-zombies: victims of biological mass-destruction weapons of nurgle, wich spread virulent disease that rot away the flesh and mind of the victim, actually transforming it in a walking corpse at the service of powerful nurgle minions.

This could be the perfect combination of nurgle and undead (well at least zombies): corpse that cannot feel pain or remorse, causes fear/terror and spread nasty disease...what ur adventurers could ask for more?

Maybe u can also introduce disgusting nurglish daemonic snail/worm that once introduced in a humanoid body via narices or ears burrow their way to the occipital area of the brain and seize control of the body, and then a nurgle sorcerer could command the victim...like a zombie or a ghoul.

I think it's pretty easy to see a necromancer practicing both forms. A necromancer has chosen to pursue forbidden lore in order to acquire more power. It's not really a stretch to see a necromancer also pursue chaos powers in an attempt to garner even more power. A cool twist might be if the necromancer has contracted a disease such as nurgle rot (or any disease that is very difficult to cure) in his pursuit and is trying to cure himself, or transform into a lich if unable to cure it. However in order to concoct a cure for his disease he needs test subjects...and the easiest way to get them is to infect others with the disease so he can study it. It's a race against the clock for the necromancer (a somewhat tragic villian) and the pc's who need to find out who's behind it all and put a stop to it...while trying not to become subjects themselves...

I see Necromancy as the big man-made evil, where Nurgle is the big off-world evil
Nagash goes for immortality through the use of Dark Magic & is all about the stalling/stopping of time, making things static. There is no compassion, no emotion except perhaps fear of oblivion.

Nurgle is all about the evolving, dynamism, and is usually depicted as being jolly, good humored even. He cares for the things he creates.

To me, they are both enemies of mankind, but on totally opposite ends of the spectrum. I think you'd have better luck linking Tzeentch & Necromancy. I could see a necromancer turning to Tzeentch before Nurgle.

Skaven are a factor/race that came into being because of Chaos, but they are really their own faction completely.



I think a good way of getting this set up, is to simply have 2 factions combatting your party/the city/province that your campaign is set in.
Have them either both leave no trace on operations/attacks/... that identifies which side is behind it, so that to the world/players it all seems like it is 1 faction.

Or have 1 of both factions impersonate the other for a good long time, so that to the players, it is one faction, only to after a while throw in the twist that a Nurgle cult has been deviously manipulated by a lich/necromancer/... to his own ends. Like he staged a few extra attacks and planted a few extra obvious clues to more easily get the Nurgle-cult identified & wiped out. (perhaps he saw the incursion of the Nurgle-acolytes as a threat/nuisance that he wanted to get rid of).

The party can even go after the necromancer once the Nurgle cult is purged, if they manage to piece it together.