For some reason, if I load NOM after Creatures X, the textures for the diseased and blighted creatures don't show up, ie a diseased cliffracer which should have red spots on it, appears as a normal cliffracer. When I load Creatures after NOM, the diseased textures return. Anyone run into this? Not that its a problem but I'm curious as to what causes it.

Looks like both NOM and Creatures X modify the same creature. Whichever mod loads last, that mod's changes appear. So, Creatures X changes the model of cliffracer and NOM, I'm guessing here, probably changes creature drops. If you load NOM last, then you get only the loot changes. If you load Creatures X last, you only get the model change.

So better create a http://wiki.theassimilationlab.com/mmw/TESTool#Merged_Objects using TESTool. Merged objects was created specifically to address these kinds of mod conflict.