A quest to absorb Nurgle?

[SangoProduction]

Not a very...helpful title. I am just a bit lost for words.

So, players in one of my groups are playing as gods reborn in mortal form, after an age of disbelief. Caused by some contract after a certain conflict. Details mostly irrelevant.

One of the players is a goddess of healing and agriculture. And has decided to adopt a huge sized plague wolf - a divine beat of Nurgle. They have absolutely no idea whether Nurgle was also reincarnated or survived the age or what have you.
But... Good rolls, and finally something they were interested in... I let it be turned non-hostile and follow them.

I'm trying to figure out where to take that. The most obvious way is the reveal that Nurgle was, in fact, still around and come looking for his pet. Or that he's using it as a spy.
The option is to say that she can undergo a ritual to bind the beat to herself instead. Letting them actually make use of the plague wolf, but with obviously more manageable size.

But I'm thinking that I can actually take advantage of this to hook the player into a more involved quest line that involves subsuming Nurgle's portfolio to then enable the binding of the plague wolf. They were hinting that they were actually interested in taking on the plague domain if they needed to.
And then I feel the absolute terror in the face of making such a monumental quest, and not making it seem completely trivial for what they are trying to do. But at the same time making it interesting to play throughout.

I don't even know where to start with that.

[weckar]

Wait, you mean Nurgle from Warhammer?

[SangoProduction]

Wait, you mean Nurgle from Warhammer?

Not exactly. But essentially. I needed to name a god of plague in the middle of a session.

[Analytica]

What if Nurgle/Nergal/what have you is actually incarnated into the wolf?

[SangoProduction]

What if Nurgle/Nergal/what have you is actually incarnated into the wolf?

Definitely a possibility.

[icefractal]

This needs a lot of details filled in, but maybe a series of big symbolic acts that unify plague with her existing portfolio. Which is going to be somewhat tricky, but not impossible:

Plague + Healing: Using one disease to prevent or defeat another. Examples: cowpox as an inoculation for smallpox, fighting cancer with viruses (oncolytic viruses).

Plague + Agriculture: "Noble rot" in wine grapes, Huitlacoche, even blue cheese - situations where a parasite fungus improves the quality of the food or is itself a highly desired food. Also to an extent this connection already exists via decomposition fertilizing new growth.

So the acts would be things like creating/discovering one of these, saving a major city this way, convincing a kingdom to embrace a new crop that fits this, etc. Once enough ground-work has been done, basically setting up the belief/precedent that Plague "should" fall under her portfolio, then a final battle (or debate) against either Nurgle, if he still exists, or against other gods who'd also want to claim that domain.

As far as Nurgle, he could be out of the picture entirely, or he could be biding his time and opposed to being absorbed, but there's a third possibility. The wolf may be what's left of Nurgle, and he might want to be absorbed by her rather than by other gods who'd eventually claim the domain. Or he might claim that's what he wants, but really be trying to infect her from the inside and take control over their blended portfolio, it depends on what this Nurgle is like.

[ezekielraiden]

Is there a distinction made between healing and medicine proper? If so, you could have something of a "convert without erasure" plot here. Perhaps Ms. Healing-and-Agriculture would like Nurgle to come to be more like Minerva, who (unlike Athena, whom she was often syncretized with) was a goddess of healing and medicine in addition to being a goddess of war.

Since the IRL Nergal was also associated with death, you could potentially move in a psychopomp-y direction, with neo-Nurgle becoming a deity straddling both sides of death: separating those who must go on to their final rest from those who can linger in life a little longer. Under this approach, neo-Nurgle takes on aspects akin to the old-school, Orphic or Mycenaean Dionysus, which presents a number of useful mythic tropes to tap into. For example, perhaps Nurgle "survived"...but was torn apart (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparagmos), and must be reassembled.

Maybe that was the plan, maybe it was an accident--both present interesting avenues. If your lady is the one to do it, undoubtedly neo-Nurgle would be far more positively predisposed to her than he was before. (Doubly so if she took care of his dog for him!) But there may be other forces at work, those which want to steal Nurgle's shattered divinity, or who remain loyal to the being he was, not the being he might become, or who want to kill him off for good rather than trying to resurrect him. Further, if the purpose isn't just to revive him but to "rehabilitate" him in the process, that's surely going to entail some extra risk--which means either a risky ritual, or risks taken to mitigate those problems beforehand.

You can tap into all sorts of symbolic stuff if you go this route. The sparagmos, the living-dead-reborn process, the Dionysian association with turning living grapes into revived wine, a lack of inhibitions, various symbolic animals (bulls were quite popular). And, as others have noted, there's a useful association here, namely that what would be a spoiled "plague" in other contexts is the very thing that makes wine worth drinking, and likewise for other stuff. Going slightly further afield, you also have the dismemberment and reassembly of Osiris, and how that cemented both Isis' place as goddess of healing (and magic!) and Osiris' place as ruler of the dead. So potentially you could tie neo-Nurgle to madness, death, opposition to the undead, transformation, creativity, liberation, and any of several other things besides.

Doling out the occasional clue or lead, revealing more of what happened to Nurgle before his sparagmos, and revealing the occasional direct antagonist or "faithful" adherent of the old Nurgle sounds like plenty of baseline options for you to work with, until you have a more solidified plan of what you want to do with this story.

[SangoProduction]

ooo. Those are some definite ideas. Don't mind if I pluck a couple of those for myself.