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I have the players trapped in a Nurgle cult house where they need to complete specific tasks to advance. Any suggestions on a puzzle related to nurgle? Would be appreciated.

Puzzles doesn't really seem like a nurgle thing to do, that's more Tzeentch than anything else, I would think Nurgle would be more tests of endurance/sustaining disease. But anyway, maybe have them try to identify a certain disease?

Like WK said, Nurgle doesn't like puzzles, but what you could do is have them concoct an antidote for a terminal disease.

He's also representative for the cycle of life and death, maybe you can work with that? Cultists venerating death as an inseparable part of life. We typically view death as a bad thing, maybe the puzzle could revolve around how it's good instead? In an attempt to test beliefs and convert people to the ways of nurgle?

Roknar wrote:
He's also representative for the cycle of life and death, maybe you can work with that? Cultists venerating death as an inseparable part of life. We typically view death as a bad thing, maybe the puzzle could revolve around how it's good instead? In an attempt to test beliefs and convert people to the ways of nurgle?

This.

I hate the ever-prevailing image of Nurgle being a fat guy with ebola. His death and decay aspect really needs to be brought back.

 Alex C wrote:

Roknar wrote:
He's also representative for the cycle of life and death, maybe you can work with that? Cultists venerating death as an inseparable part of life. We typically view death as a bad thing, maybe the puzzle could revolve around how it's good instead? In an attempt to test beliefs and convert people to the ways of nurgle?

This.

I hate the ever-prevailing image of X being a fat guy with ebola. His death and decay aspect really needs to be brought back.

Exactly. And it can go for all gods. The way GW seems to be content with marketing their gods, every follower of khorne should be foaming at their mouths while committing suicide to spill bloodBLOOD BLUUUUUUD aSDFARQasdf s!?!?!...
I disagree lol. I prefer to think of the gods in more conceptual ways maybe. Or from a more neutral perspective rather than considering them evil. Assigning them to singular emotions like rage and lust is doing them a disservice.

TL;DR:
Strife and struggle is in all of us, and out of that, great champions are born: Khorne
The unrefined truth is too terrible for most people to bear and we avoid it and the change that comes from it: Tzeench
With out a cause to fight, a reason to life we are nothing and we get nowhwere. Desire is paramount: Slaanesh
As mentioned, Nurgle is very much about life and death, but people also forget that stagnation equals stability to a certain degree.

Of course in the case of the chaos gods, they are all single minded. Each is a part of a whole, each individual aspect neither bad nor good, but they all share an overwhelming need to dominate and too much of anything is bad.(I use he from here on out, but you can replace that with he/she/it if you prefer)

Khorne is still the god of war and also honour and more importantly rewards those who achieve greatness by their own proper efforts. Like Kyras who didn't need any magic tricks to engulf an entire sub sector in war and in so doing almost managed to sacrifice an entire chapter of astartes.
And even then, Khorne doesn't mind psykers who can tame the warp with the power of their own mind. It's only when you start relying on the aid of demons and the gods that he gets upset. So yea, people tend to forget that Khorne has a more rational side to him too.
On the flipside, his is a path of bloodshed and violence, and violence begets violence and more bloodshed and the more you fight it the closer to khorne you become and the more you loose yourself. Ultimately fighting and revelling in destruction for the sheer sake of it. This part is similar among all gods.

Tzeentch stands for change and not simply evil mindfething. Change is pretty much what life is all about. And yet we struggle with it, we keep resisting the inevitable. Tzeentch doesn't really care whether you use it for good or ill (actually none of them do), only that you promote change. He is also often associated with lies, but he is perhaps more about truth than he is about lies imho. We rarely use the bold full truth, and when we do, it is often out of desperation. Out of a need to change, because the truth is often ugly and yet at the same time we praise the truth as pure. Often we can't handle the truth (or so we think) and so we lie. Again on the flip side, the literally can't handle the absolute truth. All our achievements and struggles are meaningless in the grand scheme of eternity. Whether you live or die, whether your civilization prospers or whithers, kill or be killed. None of that matters and all your left with is scheming and change for the sake of it.

Same for Slaanesh, who is far more than just sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. More than greed, it is hunger that exemplifies slaanesh for me. The while excess thing is borne out of a hunger that can never be sated. Even if you think your good, some part of that has to be self centered. Improving yourself, dedicating yourself to a cause. As Slaanesh is also very much about the self. And of course desire. And not in a sexual way. So unless your apathetic, there is something driving you to do what you do. We revere people whom devote their entire being to achieve greatness like none before them. And yet you could say those same people are driven by an all consuming desire to become something more than human. To a degree that it would be considered unhealthy. That kind of desire is called all consuming for a reason too. Slaanesh allows you to achieve the peak of your desires.....and then what? It's like when you create something ...and it's "perfect", but you just can't stop messing with it and you end up ruining it, except here you can't ever stop and that thing becomes more and more twisted.

Finally there is a bit of each god in the other powers. Khorne is fueled by all manner of conflict and the machinations of tzeentch especially fuel said conflicts.
Every great champion, good or bad, represents aspects of slaanesh. They are all driven by a religious zeal of some kind or another.
The endless plots of the changer of ways lay the foundations for the champions of the other gods and every new plan or innovation they come up with in order to fight him/each other are also empowering him.
And while the other three fight and reach a stalemate, nurgle benefits from such stagnation, in turn breaking it and we're back to change and strife.

So basically what I'm trying to say is this. Yes, the gods are all about slaughter and snorting warp dust and all that, but sometimes we need to remind ourselves where that comes from. And that there is just as much good connected to these forces of nature as there is bad. I find it helps to keep these things in mind.

Why are dungeons full of traps and monsters?

The meta-answer is, so the players have something to fight/overcome. The most obvious in-setting answer is, to guard the treasure. This is a distinction without a difference. You have to look a bit deeper into the setting to succeed at designing an interesting encounter. For example, the classic set up is that the "boss" monster actually wants to fight the PCs but places obstacles in their way to wear them down or otherwise suitably prepare them for the ultimate confrontation.

So don't design your cult house encounter from the perspective of "completing tasks to advance." That will inevitably produce boring results. Instead, ask yourself why the cult would build such a trap. What is the purpose? For example, it could be a kind of initiation rite meant to impart insight about the Plaguefather.

Imagine a lush garden of overgrown thorny bushes resplendent with garish, pungent flowers. The bushes are resistant to hacking and burning, immediately growing back thicker wherever harmed. They are irrigated by a fountain at the heart of the garden. A dead-looking tree stands in its putrid waters that smell faintly of rotting meat. Rusty machinery pumps the water throughout the garden with a monotonous, chant-like humming. The atmosphere is thick with greasy moisture hung with an overpowering fragrance of cloying sweetness.

The bushes form a winding hedge maze. It is difficult to navigate. The characters will not be able to find their way to the center by simply mapping. Perhaps the garden is changing behind them? Perhaps the near-nauseating, stagnant air is playing on their minds? It is possible, however, to follow the increasing intensity of the humming machinery. Characters doing so receive bonuses on check to determine the correct direction.

You can insert appropriate threats along the way but to try to connect them to the larger picture. Some are ambient, such as gear jamming/rusting/dry rotting/fraying/etc. Other threats should be more immediate. For example:

Swarms of pus-colored stinging insects attack any characters who approach their throbbing hives. They appear to be some kind of mutated bee, gathering the flowers' oily nectar. If the characters puncture a hive, greenish honey spurts out. The smell is earthy but not unpleasant and the taste is intensely sweet. Any character that tastes the honey will experience audial hallucinations: the hum of the pumping water resolves into human words, a hymn of praise to the concentric radiation of birth from within death and vice versa. Characters who can hear the hymn automatically know how to navigate the maze.

As you design details, keep in mind the point of the maze is not to kill those who wander through it. Rather, it is supposed to initiate novice Nurgle-worshippers. Therefore, whatever the characters encounter should explain the glory and love of the Plaguefather. The horror of the Dark Fantasy game is not really that characters can become injured or die; rather, the horror is that their minds might be opened to Chaos.

When the characters reach the center, they find the fountain pump controls. A switch controls the direction of flow. If they reverse the pump, the water in the fountain will overflow such that the putrid water washes out. As the water clears, the surrounding bushes will wilt and blacken while the tree in the fountain blooms. The pump will automatically stop. Hordes of centipedes, beetles, and worms will emerge from the craggy bark and drop into the water, fleeing from sap suddenly oozing out of the trunk. Bulbous fruits will grow and ripen in seconds, dropping off the branches and plopping into the water where they dissolve almost immediately. The fruit has a strong stench of rotting meat. As more of them plop into the water, it will begin to grow cloudy and putrid again.

The bushes will not self-repair at this point. The characters can hack their way through, finding dying mutant bees drowned in their collapses hives along the way, over a matter of hours. They find an exit but it simply leads to a sterile white room with no doors or windows or any other features.

If the characters pull the pump switch again, however, the water flows back out through the garden and the tree dies as the bushes reinvigorate. The water in the fountain drains to the point that stairs leading downward become visible. The characters can follow the stair down to go into the deeper sanctums of the cult house.

Have this exalt good sir!