Brent: The Influence of Nurgle
Fibroma: a tumor “mainly consisting of fibrous or fully formed connective tissue.” You can imagine where the influence for this article developed; it seems like Nurgle’s followers are covered in the things.
Greetings Bell Faithful, welcome to your Terrible Tuesday offering. My name is Brent and I’ll host you and any Trolls that happen along.
We had a bit of a scare on the old home front these past few weeks. My long-suffering wife had an outpatient surgery to remove a rare form of fibroma. These days, that’s an outpatient surgery, but in Jenn’s case there was an extra concern. The type of fibroma she had is often misdiagnosed – either way – with a skin cancer called a sarcoma. Human sarcomas are rare, but scary.
Hell, saying ‘cancer’ is scary.
In my wife’s case, the family history of skin cancer made the whole thing an anxious ride. I won’t bore you with the too personal, but our case ended happily… though recurrence is a longterm threat. Point is we’re lucky and I’m grateful, because yeah, too many of these things don’t end well.
But the whole thing had me thinking about boils and bubos, parasites and plague. Naturally enough then, it had me thinking of Nurgle. Coincidently, I was painting the Forge World Greater Daemon of Nurgle at the time. In fact, I referred to him in my article two weeks ago on base painting, when he looked like this.
Yup. At this point, the Greater Daemon only wore his base coat, done entirely with spray paints. Nurgle was weak, as he hadn’t quite managed to take over my life. So he was just primed. For painting. Over a base coat.
To break it down further… Base. Coat.
If you’re wondering why I keep mentioning a base coat… in bold letters… then perhaps you missed the comments section of that article. If so, good. A few Trolls were out in force. While normally Trolls don’t bother me, I prefer my criticism nice and relevant. Meaning, at least read the article and set aside some few brain cells to get the freaking point.
That’s all. If you’re wondering why there is poo on the finished Daemon, now you know. Take a whiff, Troll!
So you can see, the Greater Daemon got some color along the way. Nurgle placed his Mark on my wife and became stronger, as he’s wont to do, and before long he got kind of disgusting. I couldn’t help but wonder how many diseases the big guy carried. How many germs? Parasites? Bacteria?
Pretty sure he’s responsible for bed bugs.
In a way, my goal for painting the Forge World Greater Daemon was influenced by reality – but frankly I’m also glad our hobby is a diversion from reality. I firmly believe we hobbyists understand that distinction; many of us are history buffs. Anyway, here’s some reality from a Harvard site on the History of Plagues. Visit the site, if you’ve a mind. It’s worth the read, but fair warning: the pictures are disturbing.
“This outbreak of Plague was accelerated by a total absence of sanitary procedures and lack of knowledge. For instance, the dead were heaped in piles, whereupon rats and dogs fed on the corpses and the cycle was extended. Homes were more like sties than what we would associate with buildings fit for human habitation. Roofs and walls were made of straw; floors were dirt; animals were kept inside. The streets, if that’s what you could call them, of cities were barely wide enough for a single cart to pass, and they were perpetually covered with mud, garbage, and excrement. For lack of heated water, people rarely bathed and fleas were commonplace.”
“When St. Thomas à Becket was prepared for burial in England in 1170, he was found to be wearing (from the outside in) (i) a large brown mantle, (ii) a white surplice, (iii) a coat of lambs’ wool, (iv) a woolen pelisse, (v) another woolen pelisse, (vi) the black robe of the Benedictine order, (vii) a shirt, and (viii) a tight-fitting suit of coarse hair-cloth covered on the exterior with linen. During preparation for burial the cold English air stimulated so many of the critters occupying his hair suit that it “boiled over with them like water in a simmering cauldron.”
The article spends a few good paragraphs on the history of the Brotherhood of the Cross – or as we know them, flagellants.
“It forbade its members from bathing, washing their heads, shaving, sleeping in a bed, having any contact with the opposite sex, or even changing their clothes during a procession without permission of the “Master.” Washing of hands was allowed, but only once a day and that had to be done when kneeling. Each member had to donate funds to cover the cost of their food for the duration. As if to satisfy the ascetic needs of a squeamish populace, the groups went from town to town and whipped themselves with scourges, i.e., sticks with three or four leather tails with large knots containing sharpened iron spikes. They continued until the blood ran and even when the spikes stuck in the skin and had to be torn out. Many of them died of infections of these open wounds. They formed in bands of 50 to 300 and moved in pairs with men in the front and women in the rear of this serpentine procession.”
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There’s the reality. Our diversion from reality is a healthy, creative hobby. If you wanted to use history as an influence, however, I thought it might be nifty to use the Warhammer Flagellants models to represent Plague Zombies in 40K.
I’ll leave you with this, my favorite. Here’s a list of some things people did to avoid the plague…
- burning incense
- dipping handkerchiefs in aromatic oils
- ringing church bells and firing cannons
- wearing talismans
- bathing in human urine
- placing “stinks” (dead animals) in their dwellings
- bleeding via leeches and bloodletting
- drinking the pus extracted from a suppurated bubo
- applying dried toads to relieve the pain of the buboes by absorbing the “poisons”
- drinking liquid gold or powdered emeralds
- joining groups of flagellants
It’s strange and fascinating. But also sad.
Nurgle influenced my home these past two weeks. My wife had a bit of surgery and I painted a cool model. I did my homework and explored just a tiny fragment of Nurgle’s painful bounty. And yeah, I thought about my favorite game.
Inevitably, some idiot will get on his high horse and accuse me of failing to take the subject matter seriously enough. More appropriately, perhaps, somebody may say a topic of this seriousness doesn’t belong on Bell’s front page.
Really, I don’t know. We will all of us experience loss, and pain, and normal human misery. Sadly common; Nurgle is kind of an ass. From my part, I’m glad our hobby has enough reality to be compelling, so we can enjoy what’s good about life, too.
That’s it for today. As always, your comments are welcome… even the Trolls! You drive up the comment count for me. Feel free to visit Strictly Average, where nothing of any seriousness is ever really discussed! And only one of the models is covered in poop, though perhaps others should be.
So thoughts? Comments? Hugs and gropings?
