Don't laugh, How do you play Chaos?

[chillin]

I really don't see how actual real life morals have anything to do with what army you play in 40K.

[Legatus]

Imperialis_Dominatus stated my point about the Word Bearers more clearly. They think that the Chaos Gods are what's best for humanity.

To the Word Bearers, Chaos is the strength needed to save Humanity, destroy their enemies, and unite them for a common cause.

Why don't we learn a bit more about the Word Bearers from their Index Astartes?

 

"Lorgar would later say that as he turned his faith to Chaos, a veil lifted from his eyes and he was able to see the Emperor for what he was; not his god at all, but an irreverent man who had failed to grasp that what Humanity needed above all else was religious domination, that could only be provided by godlike beings such as himself. The resultant submission and fealty to Chaos would allow Mankind to stave off the countless alien hordes that sought to overwhelm and destroy the young Imperium."

 

"On the worlds they attack, the Word Bearers build huge monuments dedicated to their dark gods, and vast cathedrals are erected where the chants and prayers of the faithful intermingle with the screams of those being sacrificed in the name of Lorgar."

 

"The unshakeable belief of the Word Bearers that they alone can save the galaxy has seen them marching towards certain death, yet unwilling to take a single step backwards."

 

"Rooted in the beliefs of Lorgar himself, the Word Bearers are the heralds of a terrible new age of religious servitude. Only united behind the teachings of a god and offering the obeisance that such a god requires can the masses of Humanity be saved from the perils of alien menace and internal schism. There is only one power in the galaxy worthy of such submission, and that is the dark majesty of Chaos. Each warrior of the Word Bearers is a missionary bringing the darkness of Chaos with them, preaching the one true faith to those that will hear it and exterminating those who will not. Their belief is simple, tread the path of Chaos or die."

 

And a bit from the last Codex Chaos:

 

"Forced conversion by indoctrination is a common fate for those conquered by their armies, often as a precursor to a short, brutal life as a labour slave building immense temples to the Chaos gods. Their faith is a valuable commodity to the Chaos Gods and they have been rewarded with the service of hosts of Daemons to further their arms."

 

So, yeah, the Word bearers do think that their way of total Chaos worship is the only way for mankind to survive. The downside would be the whole Chaos worship part, which is briefly touched on in the quotes above.

 

 

 

About the potentially positive sides of the chaos gods, this is what the last Codex Chaos had to say about Slaanesh:

 

"Slaanesh whispers to Man in many different voices; each whisper attuned to the most secret desire of the listener. Many desire perfection, whether in the intellect, the body or in ability, and Slaanesh will grant these individuals the power and drive to hone their desires to the utmost excellence. The artist will produce works beyond Human comprehension, the narcissist hones their visage so that other mortals are driven insane with desire, and the warrior develops such abilities that a casual gesture may decapitate the mightiest of foes. To the followers of Slaanesh, the material world is a riot of colour, sound and sensation. However, their senses soon become accustomed to these levels of simulation and they are driven to extremes in search of the slightest fulfilment.

The followers of Slaanesh often exhibit the utmost physical perfection to the naked eye, and on the exterior it may be true that no mortal is capable of such beauty. But the soul of each follower screams in eternal torment, as the gifts bestowed by the Prince of Chaos are purchased at a price as high as that by any other Chaos god: eternal damnation."

 

And from the current Codex:

 

"Mortals that seek charisma and fellowship turn to Slaanesh, for his gifts can make one popular and inspiring. Poets and artists are drawn into his gaze by the promise of inspiration and fame, while even the hardiest of warriors might seek the adulation of the masses and the unflinching loyalty of their followers. Yet as one continues in the service of Slaanesh, such pleasures grow stale, and his servants are driven on to search for ever greater sensations, ever higher acts of self-fulfilment and worship, until only the most decadent and debased acts can stir their emotions."

 

To suggest that anything wholesome or positive might come from worship of Slaanesh or any of the Chaos gods seems to be a rather uninformed statement. Or maybe that person is just speaking in character, as a chaos devotee.

 

 

Here are some general descriptions of chaos as a whole, or "undivided", from page 38 of the last Codex:

 

"Many others however, worship Chaos in its undiluted glory, paying tribute to, and drawing their powers through, the primal essence of the Warp itself. As each Chaos power reflects a specific facet of human nature, some propose Chaos Undivided represents the infinite depths of evil that gnaw at the very roots of the mortal soul.

Man are not given to understand such matters, and the diverse followings of Chaos Undivided worship it in many different forms."

 

"Others worship Chaos Undivided as a single entity. They perceive the various powers as merely aspects of one vast, malevolent intelligence which mortals cannot hope to engage on any but the most basic level."

 

"Another form of worship of Chaos Undivided may be seen in those who look to use Chaos to their own ends, and seek only temporary pacts with the powers. These misguided individuals see their own ambitions as above those of teh chaos powers. This is the ultimate gamble, with but two possible outcomes: daemonhood or damnation."

 

There is nothing "grey" about the chaos powers. It does not depend on how the person worshiping them individually "interprets" their will. They are true and pure ancient evil. And they can be that, because they are a devised plot element, created to be exactly that.

[Schultzhoffen]

Agreed. Suggesting that Chaos is anything but Evil is avoiding their purpose as a plot device in 40K.

 

I, at no stage suggested the Imperium was good, I suggested it was a more desirable place to live than under a Dominion of Chaos (at least for most people). Personally I don't think the Emperor is giving ANY messages to anyone. I think that bullsh*t is made up so that the powers that be can continue to rule. Yes, he has an effect with his Psychic Powers but I tend to think of him as a Psychic vegetable (gasp! Blasphemy!). Communication? Doubt it. Opiate of the masses, eh? Certainly a very good tool for remaining in power and controlling the ignorant (let's hope the Inquisition don't come knocking tonight!).

 

Despite this, the difference between Chaos and the Imperium is clear. I keep asking the question, which regime could I actually raise a family under? More chance under the Imperium, don't you think? So yes, the Imperium commits evil acts but Chaos is worse, much, much worse.

 

However, as has been said before, none of this should deter someone from playing an "evil" army. After all, its merely a game with toy soldiers. The evil is only in the fluff. Hell, one of my armies has a distinctly Nurgle feel but to my knowlege the worst evil I've done with them is playing with a cold...

 

Hopefully none of us actually torture and murder our opponents after a game (a bad idea, limits our playing options).

[papadoc]

I had the same problem a couple of years ago OP. I really didn't like my army after I read their fluff (I play Black Legion btw). The problem I think is that in third and fourth edition chaos space marines were just spiky space marines. We were what Dark Eldar are to Eldar. The bad cousin you know. The ultimate manifest of this was made in the index astartes and the 4th edition Spiky Marine Codex. Space marines came in different chapters while spiky marines came in different legions. The theme for both was similar with Vikings in Space, Mongols in space, Religious fanatics in space, Rock stars in space, Egyptians in space and so on. In this theme the Night Lords became the Torturers Space Marines Chapter.

 

The fluff consisted mostly of preheresy stuff and because they lost during the Horus Heresy the Spiky Marines acted like small children and became angry and started to worship the chaos gods.

 

However what we have seen now with the latest codex the fluff moved away from spiky marine chapters instead inspiration was drawn from the awesome chaos fantasy lore. There we have a focus on warbands of elite warriors without loyalties who set their sights beyond the faceless life of the majority. The chaos space marines worship the chaos gods not because some dude made a rebelled ten millenia ago but for the material power such service can bring.

 

With this kind of fluff your warband may once have been Iron Warriors, Night Lords and so on but that matters little. Chaos space marines fight in warbands not in chapters and what their original chapter/legion motto and creed was is irrelevant.

 

I know that some people like the spiky marines a lot. I don't wish to offend them or anything because everything I wrote above is just.... my opinion man.

[chillin]

I had the same problem a couple of years ago OP. I really didn't like my army after I read their fluff (I play Black Legion btw).

 

What in the BL fluff made you not like playing the BL ??

[Askari]

Read legion and you'll see that chaos isn't all bad. The emperor's forces attack a peaceful world that worships chaos as a single god but were like normal people of today even happily greeting people with "May God watch over your soul". They were perfectly happy until the Emperor's troops attacked and then they fought back like anyone else would, using chaos sorcery to fight against the superior technology.

[Lay]

happily greeting people with "May God watch over your soul".

Wasn't the literal translation something like "May the primordial annihilator immolate your living soul."?

[Ace of Gods]

You gotta be good and conscious of moral and ethical values while your at work, home ,school, etc. While out there as the Night Lords, or any Chaos army for that matter; Have a little fun and relish in the evil you can bring across the board. The countless lives you can slaughter, and the worlds you can control and dominate. plus, hey, it gives the better sides such a more meaningful purpose. If all armies were nice and had non violent or evil attitudes, we wouldnt be having this war. Its a book, its a movie, its a play; That YOU get a direct role in. Now, about that Imperium city we were talking about...

[Brother Vader]

Do not underestimate the power of the dark side.

[Askari]

happily greeting people with "May God watch over your soul".

Wasn't the literal translation something like "May the primordial annihilator immolate your living soul."?

 

That's not what the people meant. That's just how the agent of the cabal considered the blessing to mean since he was anti chaos.

 

Chaos isn't evil, it's emotion. It isn't just bad emotions or extreme ones. Tzeeentch represents life, khorne a proud martial code and warrior spirit, slaanesh joy, and nurgle defiance. Of course; tzeentch also represents plotting, khorne slaughter, slaanesh perversion and nurgle death but those are all just aspects of their many domains.

 

Pretty much all gods from human religions have traits that people would consider negative or scary. And it's often these aspects that members of opposing religions (Imperial cult) will emphasize but are usually only a very small part of their personality. Chaos isn't good or evil it's just natural emotion.

[Darkapostle222]

I think that the Word Bearers hit it on the nail when it comes to their beliefs (before and after the Horus Heresy) Humanity past, present, and future needs religion. They need to believe that death isn't the end and that you will live on in the afterlife. This is seen throughout histroy, be it in Greece, Rome, Egypt, Europe, the Middle-East, and even when their were Cavemen. We, as humans, need something to believe in. The Emperor tried to abolish religion and look what happened to him. He got his ass wupped and is now a corpse on a throne with all of humanity WORSHIPPING HIM!!! The Word Bearers gave in to their need of worship and look where they are now. They are a powerful legion of Chaos, the gods LOVE them, they have legions of cultists, and Imperials crap their pants when they hear "WORD BEARER".

 

Another reason the Word Bearers got it right was that religion makes people do crazy things. When they turned to Chaos(They were the first of the Legions to turn) They managed to make other Legions and HORUS THE EMPEROR'S CHOSEN SON, and much of the Imperium turn on the man they called master. After the Imperium won, barely might I add ;) , the Lords of Terra relized this power and made the Emperor a god, A GOD. The man who abolished religion and punished the Word Bearers for worshipping him was named A GOD! How pissed of do you think the Word Bearers were when they heard this!

 

My point is that the Word Bearers knew how humanity needed religion and managed to harness that power before anyone else. I personally agree with the Word Bearers way of thinking and that is why I play them. Read Galaxy in Flames, Battle of the Abyss, Dark Apostle, and the upcoming Dark Disciple. Then I am sure you will either learn their way of thinking or keep your loyalist thoughts.

 

 

 

And with that DEATH TO THE FALSE EMPEROR!!!

[Legatus]

Chaos isn't evil, it's emotion. It isn't just bad emotions or extreme ones. Tzeeentch represents life, khorne a proud martial code and warrior spirit, slaanesh joy, and nurgle defiance. Of course; tzeentch also represents plotting, khorne slaughter, slaanesh perversion and nurgle death but those are all just aspects of their many domains.

 

Pretty much all gods from human religions have traits that people would consider negative or scary. And it's often these aspects that members of opposing religions (Imperial cult) will emphasize but are usually only a very small part of their personality. Chaos isn't good or evil it's just natural emotion.

 

No, I'm pretty sure it's evil.

 

"Within the Warp dwell unholy terrors formed of purest malevolence and murderous intent. (...) These vile denizens are manifestations of all that is twisted and dark in the human psyche. They are hatred and violence given form, twisted and perfidious envy come to life. Hidden within the shifting tides of the Warp, the Daemonos watch the realms of humanity, their souls burning with an eternal thirst that can only be quenched in blood and havoc. (...) Though there are many factions amongst the Daemons of the Warp, tehy are all united in a single quest: to make teh mortal plane a playground for their hateful needs and to slaughter and punish every living Creature they can find."

5th Edition Rulebook, page 150.

 

"Daemons are an extension of the will of their parent deity, splinters of the Ruinous Powers made sentient. Each Daemon resembles its vile progenitor, at least in part, and when the host marches to war they do so as a coruscating cavalcade of unreason that can unravel the mind or a mortal man."

5th Edition Rulebook, page 151.

[Darkapostle222]

(...) These vile denizens are manifestations of all that is twisted and dark in the human psyche. They are hatred and violence given form, twisted and perfidious envy come to life.

 

 

 

That sounds like living, extreme, emotions to me

[Legatus]

Yes. The evil ones.

[Schultzhoffen]

Pretty sharp, there, Legatus... :lol: Have to say I'm in agreement with you.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Thought and emotion are complex and intertwined things, and not so petty and easy to define as some within my brotherhood might wish to believe. For instance, I challange anyone who thought he or she could acurately define even such a widely accepted and important concept as love. In truth, love is not one thing but a blend of different drives and emotions, encompasng desire, passion, need, companionship, friendship, affection, and many others, held together by one overaching notion - the notion of "love" itself.

 

Using this as an example, it can be seen that the Chaos Gods - who are considered by some to be the personified manifestations of thought and emotion - must also, and by their very nature, be a blend of many differing thoughts and feelings bound together by an overarching notion (i.e. the identity and names that mortals give them) and given substance and energy by the stuff of Chaos.

 

The Chaos Gods are immensly complicated entities, that have evolved across countless millenia of intellectual and emotional evolution amongst the mortal races.

 

To bring matters back to Slaanesh, "pleasure" - being the core experience that makes up the reality of Slaanesh - is like love, a blanket term given to an amalgam of similar and related sensations. There are many different types and perspectives of what makes up "pleasure", and the actions, events and motivations that lead to the experience of pleasure are multifaceted and not always wholesome. Is, for example, the pleasure gleaned from a particularly attractive painting the same as a sadist might find in torturing a dog? Or is the sensual pleasure in eating a favourite delicacy the same as feeding debased thoughts through unsanctioned acts? It is the darker and more self-destructive pleasures some glean from the alchemically induced ecstasy of opiate abuse, and the malevolent joys some find in petty cruelties or outright sadism that seem most related to Slaanesh. But is it as simple as that? I think my investigations will prove otherwise.

 

These divisions are but a few of the countless facets that make up the god Slaanesh, for although His core springs from the experience of pleasure, Slaanesh can also be seen as an amalgam of all the diverse drives and emotions that surround the experience and concept of pleasure. These drives could include, for example, joy, contentment, aestheticism, romance and love, and potentially the more dangerous feelings of greed, selfishness, lasciviousness, lust and perversion. However, they are all linked, and the dangerous feelings often develop from the more innocent ones.

 

Yet also, quite apart from being the compound of all the many facets of pleasure, and all the many emotions and drives that are associated with pleasure, Slaanesh is also a purpose in His own right. This Purpose can be expressed as the drive to encourage in mortal creatures the pursuit of, and need for, pleasure.

 

 

Mortals see so much, but understand little. For as much as the Divine moulds the Mortal Realms to fit its purposes, so too do the Mortal Realms mould the Divine through their actions and inspirations. You look into the Aethyr for roof of Light, or a fear of finding Dark, yet the Aethyr is neither Light nor Dark, except when Mortals make it so.

 

Legatus, you focus too much on one aspect of the Chaos Gods, and don't look at the whole. As I've said before, if Chaos wsa truly the entirely negative concept you depict it as, only creating madness and bloodshed, then who would willingly turn to such beings to worship them? Wouldn't Slaanesh only embodying utter perversion, Khorne embodying only utter bloodlust, Nurgle embodying only the deepest depths of apathy, and Tzeentch only embodying madness incarnate, would they not therefore lose so many worshippers as to not have reached their current dominance?

 

And don't say that they can gain power by mortals experiencing emotions, because by denying that the Chaos Gods embody those "lesser" emotions, they therefore cannot be empowered by them. By your definition, Khorne is only powered whenever someone is in the depths of rage, hacking around themselves with a blade, Slaanesh only fuelled when people are in the most extreme of orgies, and so on. But how could people reach that level of actions when they have had no reason to reach a "lower" level?

 

Yes, it is true that those people who give themselves over entirely to the Chaos Gods become the evil that you desribe, but look at the theory by Jung of the Shadow. The Shadow is basically the "darker" part of our mind, the desire to kill those that anger us, to take whatever or whomever we please, and so on. This Shadow isn't inherently bad. When you give yourself over entirely to your Shadow, its quite a bad thing, and you'd be like the Chaos-worshippers you are so fond of picturing. If you have a balance though, then its much better for you. If we have the Chaos Gods as a version of the Shadow, you are discounting the possibility of creating a balance with it.

 

We have fluff examples of cultures that have managed to achieve this 'balance', examples being the Nurthene in Legion, and several of the Norscan tribes in Warhammer Fantasy. Both of these cultures worship Chaos, but are fully capable of trade, of living together, of conversation, and so on, all the things required for a culture, and all without trying to cut each others heads off because "the Chaos Gods told them too".

 

The Chaos Gods cannot embody only the emotions you say they do. Slaanesh is desire/pleasure, and all that it entails. Khorne is honour/rage, and all associated concepts. Nurgle is defiance/despair, and every other similar emotion. Tzeentch is knowledge/hope, and the other similar emotions.

[Schultzhoffen]

Ok, so where do Chaos Daemons fit into the picture? Not exactly girl scouts, are they? Not what I'd pick as the physical manifestations of gods with a cuddly side, would you? Nothing good could generate such evil. These are not the actions of "misguided" worshippers but ACTUAL manifestations of Chaos gods.

 

That is the point of the seduction/lure of evil. If a person knows being touched by chaos leads to madness/death, etc, of course, noone would come near it with a 10' barge pole.

 

The thing is, one doesn't, not until it's too late and you're too far down the path to turn back..."I am in blood Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o'er..." To quote Macbeth himself, someone else lured down the path of Damnation. Once Chaos has touched you that is essentially the beginning of the end of your humanity, it is only a question of how long this degradation takes.

 

There is NO balancing act with Chaos. Chaos is demanding of subserviance, of domination of the whole, without love, without compassion. The lie is that the Chaos worshipper thinks he has a choice.

 

Evil IS required in the 40K Universe. Not much point otherwise, so don't dress it up as something else. Revel in it! Don't turn it into a PC version of evil/Chaos is just misunderstood theory of a storyline. Turns evil into a rather pathetic, bland version of itself.

 

When I roll out the old Plague Marines on the table I chuckle evilly and prepare to maim my opponent's toys. C'mon, the Chaos gods demand no less!

[Lord_Caerolion]

You see, there's your difference. You bring out your Plage Marines, worshippers who have given themselves entirely over to Nurgle. There's your evil. I'm just saying that Chaos itself isn't necessarily evil, although its worshippers can be.

 

As for the Daemons, just remove all parts in those quotes where I referred to a God, and put the word "daemon" there instead. I mean, the quote about the Aethyr not being Light nor Dark does refer to daemons too, you know. And if the Chaos Gods are like that, then how can things that are parts of those same Gods be different?

To put it another way, can something be evil for acting its nature? Also, aren't the daemons of Nurgle described as kindly, and the Great Unclean Ones acting like grandfathers to others? Aren't Daemonettes, and other Slaaneshi daemons summoned for non-evil purposes, as well as Tzeetchi daemons? Daemons aren't summoned merely for hacking things up, even if Khorne daemons probably are, but if they are, how does that make them different from any other aggressive creature used for war? Wouldn't that make a warhound evil? After all, both are fighting because its in their nature, and they've been brought to that battlefield.

Also, with what daemons are, purified emotion, how can an emotion be evil? Is rage evil? Is pleasure, or despair, or hope? If no, then how can the manifestations of such emotions be evil? If yes, then we're all evil, because we all feel those things.

 

As I said before, don't judge the god by the fanatics. Chaos can and does exist in non-destructive ways. You still haven't disproved the existence of fully functioning Chaos-worshipping societies in the form of the Norscans and Nurthene. Therefore, Chaos-worship can exist in a normal society without everything going to hell, and without people killing each other all over the place.

That doesn't mean you can't have your evil, evil Chaos Marines. Most Chaos Marines are, from our point of view, evil. However, they're "evil" because they chose to become what they are, they aren't like that because of their nature. A Berzerker isn't inherently, deep down, rage embodied. A Bloodletter is. A Berzerker is like that because they chose to worship Khorne (not necessarily evil), and then chose to give themselves over, mind, body and soul. Thats the difference. Khorne never had a choice in being what he's like. He was formed like that, and he can't change it. To be evil, free will is required.

 

 

 

 

And about your argument that "Evil is required in 40k", I have a question: If we need an 'evil', don't we therefore also need a 'good'? After all, evil is relative, and you need good to judge the evil by, just as you need light to have dark, cold to have heat. So who's going to be this balancing 'good'? The Imperium, the faction that destroys whole worlds to kill a single cult, or to give the exact quote "Better one hundred innocents burn than one heretic go free."? Will it instead be the Eldar, the race willing to let millions of humans die to save a single Eldar life? Or perhaps the Tau, where you either join their Empire willingly or at the barrel of a gun? Those are the only races that could really be described in any way as "good", but none of them are really all that nice.

 

Thats what I love about 40k, the moral ambiguity. I don't want my heroes and villains clear-cut and colour-coded, like Star Wars (ooh, that guys got to be evil, he's got a red light-saber, whereas that guy has white!). Nothing in real life is ever that clear-cut, so why should 40k be? I prefer my villains to be understandable, rather than a simple plot-device to make the "shining-hero-who-can-do-no-wrong" look more goody-goody. I'd rather my villains do things other than burn orphanas for fun, and eat things other than kittens and the tears of innocents. This is why I don't like the latest direction Chaos Marines are being taken in (ooh look, he's gotta be evil, his armours got spikes on!).

You can keep your cackling, moustache-twirling villains, but some of us like villains that are a bit more 3D than that.

[Lay]

Legatus, you focus too much on one aspect of the Chaos Gods, and don't look at the whole. As I've said before, if Chaos wsa truly the entirely negative concept you depict it as, only creating madness and bloodshed, then who would willingly turn to such beings to worship them? Wouldn't Slaanesh only embodying utter perversion, Khorne embodying only utter bloodlust, Nurgle embodying only the deepest depths of apathy, and Tzeentch only embodying madness incarnate, would they not therefore lose so many worshippers as to not have reached their current dominance?

Chaos is a negative concept in that the Gods do not care for anything beyond creating the emotions that sustain them. They tempt, lie and corrupt and wage war to achieve this goal. They only reward those who satisfy their hunger.

 

By your definition, Khorne is only powered whenever someone is in the depths of rage, hacking around themselves with a blade, Slaanesh only fuelled when people are in the most extreme of orgies, and so on. But how could people reach that level of actions when they have had no reason to reach a "lower" level?

Codex CSM 3.5

"Amidst these groups grow elite cadres, warrior-cults for whom martial pride and honor is all. Honour may give these men strength in the field of battle, but against Khorne it will prove their undoing. For pride becomes conceit in the Realm of Chaos, and from conceit it is but a short step to tyranny.

"Every culture imposes limits and standards on its peoples. Slaanesh is the manifestation of the desire to stretch these limits to breaking point, exceed them and wallow in the act of violating every more of civilised society."

Chaos is pretty much a downspiral.

 

If you have a balance though, then its much better for you. If we have the Chaos Gods as a version of the Shadow, you are discounting the possibility of creating a balance with it.

We have fluff examples of cultures that have managed to achieve this 'balance', examples being the Nurthene in Legion, and several of the Norscan tribes in Warhammer Fantasy

The Chaos Gods do not care for balance, they push their followers to the extreme.

Lesser worshipers have always been shown as expensible: The Nurthene destroyed themselves when they couldn't win the war. The Kaschada tribe (from the last Codex) was thrown into battle against Space Marines so that a Chaos Champion could pick the survivors as possible recruits. Oh, and remember the composer Bequa Kynska from "Fulgrim"? Killed by the daemons she summoned.

On the other side there are the Champion of Chaos - the few the Gods actually notice and reward: It is the Daemon Princes that rule over both mortal Chaos followers and Daemon Worlds, not tribesmen and artists. It's butchers like Khârn or monsters like Lucious they bring back from the dead.

Once again, Chaos worship is a down spiral. It appeals to what is human, because that's what it roots from and pushes it towards inhuman levels in order to satisfy the Gods. There is nothing about that concept that qualifies as balanced or just as it only serves Chaos in the end.

 

Also, with what daemons are, purified emotion, how can an emotion be evil? Is rage evil? Is pleasure, or despair, or hope? If no, then how can the manifestations of such emotions be evil? If yes, then we're all evil, because we all feel those things.

Daemons are negative emotions incarnate. Humans aren't - unless they fall to Chaos and give themselves to their God.

 

A Berzerker isn't inherently, deep down, rage embodied. A Bloodletter is. A Berzerker is like that because they chose to worship Khorne (not necessarily evil), and then chose to give themselves over, mind, body and soul. Thats the difference. Khorne never had a choice in being what he's like. He was formed like that, and he can't change it. To be evil, free will is required.

And yet both will do as Khorne wishes.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Really? So the Nurthene are evil for killing themselves when they were losing a war, and were guaranteed to be killed when they lost? Wouldn't you try to take some of the enemy with you? It was a last stand, albeit a very successful one.

 

And yet both will do as Khorne wishes.

But can you be blamed for doing something you have no control over? The Bloodletter has no will in whether it does Khornes' bidding or not, the Berzerker got where it is by choice. Nature cannot be good or evil, it is purely neutral, it is natural. If a daemon does something, it cannot be blamed for doing it, or called evil for doing it, because the emotion is what it is. You can no more call a daemon evil for killing than you could a gun. Both may commit an 'evil' act, but there is no choice in whether they do so, so how can the blame rest on them? We have a legal defence for that sort of thing, its called duress. If you're forced into a crime, and have no other way whatsoever, then you cannot be guilty of the crime, and this includes self-defence.

 

Daemons are negative emotions incarnate.

But I've provided multiple times canon facts that daemons embody all emotions that characterise their God, just as the God does, not merely the negative. True, the game prefers to focus more on the negative aspects, to help portray the gods as evil, but there's also fluff, as I've given, showing the Gods having more postive elements to them. Shall I give the example again?

Using this as an example, it can be seen that the Chaos Gods - who are considered by some to be the personified manifestations of thought and emotion - must also, and by their very nature, be a blend of many differing thoughts and feelings bound together by an overarching notion (i.e. the identity and names that mortals give them) and given substance and energy by the stuff of Chaos...

 

 

To bring matters back to Slaanesh, "pleasure" - being the core experience that makes up the reality of Slaanesh - is like love, a blanket term given to an amalgam of similar and related sensations. There are many different types and perspectives of what makes up "pleasure", and the actions, events and motivations that lead to the experience of pleasure are multifaceted and not always wholesome. Is, for example, the pleasure gleaned from a particularly attractive painting the same as a sadist might find in torturing a dog? Or is the sensual pleasure in eating a favourite delicacy the same as feeding debased thoughts through unsanctioned acts? It is the darker and more self-destructive pleasures some glean from the alchemically induced ecstasy of opiate abuse, and the malevolent joys some find in petty cruelties or outright sadism that seem most related to Slaanesh. But is it as simple as that? I think my investigations will prove otherwise.

 

 

Here, another section:

Forget what you have been told. Chaos is neither good or evil. Chaos (being the very same place, state and thing as the Aethyr) is simply a mirror for the survivalist emotions of living beings within the Mortal Universe. Thus, the entities of Chaos - be they Gods or Daemons - exist solely because living things generate emotions and thoughts...

 

Always remember, the Chaos Gods cannot and should not be called "evil". They are simply exhuerant personifications of all thingsthat make us human. For you see, the relationship between Chaos and the Mortal Realms is entirely symiotic - much more so than any cleric or priest of this dull Empire would ever wish to admit. Chaos absorbs our emotions and thoughts, from our most basic drives to our most complicated and high-minded ideals, and then magnifies and reflects those emotions and ideals straight back at us.

 

But what bearing, you no doubt wish to know, does this have on the great Gods of Chaos? To put it in laymans terms: over time, and for whatever reason, all emotions (and their related concepts) converge together within the Chaos Realm. It is a case of like attracting like, with every scrap of anger or every scrap of ecstasy, slowly being drawn to one another until they create what could be described as a kind of vortex os psychical energy within the Chaos Realms - a vortex of emotion and thought. That vortex creates a disturbance across the Chaos Realm (and therefore our own psyche) that whever emotion or concept the Chaos-vortex is made from, is then reflected back into the Mortal Realms once more.

 

This has the effect of further promoting within our mortal psyches the emotion that the vortex is made from. Let's take anger as an example. If a man or woman feels a lot of anger, so over time, mortals will not only have their own naturally inspired and mundane anger, but will also experience a slightly more unnatural anger that has been reflected onto them by the Chaos Realm's anger vortex. This process is cyclic and never-ending, and in time the Chaos Realm's vortices become so powerful they cease to accidentally promote in mortal's minds the emotions they embody, but actually begin to do so deliberately - although perhaps subconsciously before they do so consciously.

 

An analogy of this might be the boiling of water in a room. If one boils a big pan of water in a room with no ventilation, quite soon one will find that all the windows in the room become covered with a fine sheen of water. The temperature in the room will get warm and humid, and things will get wet. This is not the water that has evaporated coming back to haunt us, it's just the natural consequence of boiling water in an airless room with glass windows.

 

One might say that mortals are similar to bowls of boiling water, and that our emotions are like steam pouring from that bowl. This water vapour is trapped within the airless room that comprises both our individual minds and the Realm of Chaos. This physical condensation could be seen as the very beginnings of the Chaos Realms vortices of emotion, senselessly reflecting back upon the airless room of our minds the water vapour emotions we first generated, making us even hotter (as it were) and therby causing us to give off more of the same emotion that started the process in the first place...

 

So I say now, you who have chosen to question the recieved wisdoms of others more ignorant than yourselves, to ruly emancipate yourselves, you must accept that it is impossible to know where your self-control ends and the control of the gods begins, and similarly, where your own emotions and ideas end and the projections and ideas of the Chaos Gods begin. For indeed, can there really be any difference between the two?

 

 

Now, let's look at that... "all emotions (and their related concepts) converge together within the Chaos Realm"... It would seem to me, therefore, that this canon source is stating that all emotions associated with a Chaos God merge into the one vortex. With this, it is impossible for the Chaos Gods to be purely the negative emotions you say, as the associated positive emotions would be attracted to them, and would merge with them. So the Chaos Gods cannot embody merely a fraction of their respective domains.

Chaos is the manifestation of all of a particular emotion, not merely the negative. All emotion echoes in the Warp, and all emotion is drawn to similar emotions. Annoyance is drawn to rage, lust to love, sadness to despair, hope to madness.

[Lay]

Really? So the Nurthene are evil for killing themselves when they were losing a war, and were guaranteed to be killed when they lost?

They are expendable just like all lesser servants of Chaos.

 

But can you be blamed for doing something you have no control over? The Bloodletter has no will in whether it does Khornes' bidding or not, the Berzerker got where it is by choice. Nature cannot be good or evil, it is purely neutral, it is natural.

Who talks about blaming anyone? The daemon is created to please his patron, the mortal champion wants to please his patron. Different origin, same motivation and result. Also, Chaos isn't some kind of working eco-system. That might have applied to the warp before the "war in heaven" turned everything upside down.

 

But I've provided multiple times canon facts that daemons embody all emotions that characterise their God, just as the God does, not merely the negative.

And I've pointed out that chaos worship is a downward spiral.

Khorne: honor -> conceit -> tyranny

Slaanesh: sensation -> decadence -> excess

 

Now, let's look at that... "all emotions (and their related concepts) converge together within the Chaos Realm"... It would seem to me, therefore, that this canon source is stating that all emotions associated with a Chaos God merge into the one vortex. With this, it is impossible for the Chaos Gods to be purely the negative emotions you say, as the associated positive emotions would be attracted to them, and would merge with them. So the Chaos Gods cannot embody merely a fraction of their respective domains.

Some emotions have higher priority to the gods than others. If you want to please Khorne: Bloodshed > teeth-grinding.

 

Annoyance is drawn to rage, lust to love, sadness to despair, hope to madness.

By that logic Khorne would be satisfied with people just being angry and Nurgle with people just being sad. You don't see the Chaos Gods showing these people the same kind of courtesy they offer their dedicated servants.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Who talks about blaming anyone?

I thought we were talking about whether Chaos was evil or not. That necessitates blaming Chaos for being evil, or not.

 

By that logic Khorne would be satisfied with people just being angry and Nurgle with people just being sad. You don't see the Chaos Gods showing these people the same kind of courtesy they offer their dedicated servants.

And not everyone wants to worship their god utterly, and Chaos doesn't make everyone go to these extremes, as the Nurthene show, even if they are "pawns". Chaos has its Champions, and its die-hards, but also the lesser followers, just praying to the god, taking part in small-scale rituals, and so on.

 

Chaos isn't always a downwards spiral. For it to become that, the individual has to have the ambition and drive to want to become a Champion. If they don't, then they'll spend their lives fuelling Chaos, getting petty favours in return, but nothing greater. A farmer might turn to Nurgle to stop famine killing his herds, or stop blights ruining the crops. That doesn't mean he's sacrificing babies in his cellar, and killing everyone who stops by. If he wants to get something more out of his worship, then he could begin that downwards spiral that comes from focussing solely on anything above all else, but if he's content to keep his livelihood safe in exchange for prayers, then Warhamer Fantasy shows us that thats fine. After all, these are the same gods.

[Dammeron]

Part of the attraction of Chaos and the joy of playing it is that it allows one to wallow in the filth and darkness of human nature in an inconsequential, fantasist environment. It is the same attraction that leads us to make icons of anti-heroes such as Pinhead, Michael Myers or Freddy Krueger. In this regard, one does not need to find some moral or philosophical connection with one's army in order to appreciate it; in fact they can represent the exact antithesis of what one feels, believes or whatever.

 

I'd go further to argue that those who allow expression of their, for want of a better, "darker" aspects via such inconsequential mediums are far less likely to find them being expressed in more unexpected and inappropriate ways.

 

Quite frankly, if one can find an army in 40K that does fit one's moral and philosophical stances like a glove, then I wouldn't want to be anywhere near that person. 40K is a universal arena of pathology and neurosis, from the monomaniacal appetite for warfare displayed by the Orks, to the xenophobia and religious intolerance displayed by the forces of the Imperium. There are no "good guys," not even any half way reasonable guys in this universe; that is one of the many things that is so attractive about the whole affair. It is mordant, gritty, despairing and unremittingly grim.

[Legatus]

But I've provided multiple times canon facts that daemons embody all emotions that characterise their God, just as the God does, not merely the negative.

Hm, the "canon" you quoted comes from Black Library, is from Warhammer Fantasy, and is written as the subjective account of a scholar who tries to understand Chaos. My "canon" quote is from GW Studio, for Warhammer 40,000, and is written blankly as if it was an omniscient point of view.

 

One important fact about 40K: In 40K there is the Warp, something that is not really a part of WHFB, other than maybe as an equivalent for the "winds of magic". In Warhammer Fantasy, the Realms of Chaos are the source for magical power, as far as I understand (I am not that knowledgable in WHFB lore). In Warhammer 40K, chaos is but one part of the warp. The warp is formed by emotions, and there are "beings" in the warp. There are gods, responding to these emotions. There is the laughing god of the Eldar, there is the aggressive Gork, and the mischievous Mork. And then there are the Chaos gods. Khaine, Gork and Mork are not Chaos gods, they are warp gods. Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle and Slaanesh are Chaos gods. What separates the chaos gods from all the other warp gods? Why, their pure malevolent and destructive nature, of course.

 

How can "rage", as an emotion, be evil? Put all the rage of a universe full of people together and give it an intellect and a will.

 

How can the Nurthene live peacefully while worshiping Chaos? I could not find a lot of information on them through googleing. Appearently they were the People of Nurth, a world encountered by the Imperium during the great crusade, and after they refused to join the imperium they were invaded. Their weaponry was appearently of chaos origin, and in the end they destroyed their own world with an arcane doomsday device of non-chaotic origin (sounds a lot like Necron tech). This is from the Novel "Legion", which mainly deals with the Alpha Legion.

I have not read the book, but I assume it has something to do with the turning of the Alpha Legion, and it was said somewhere that Nurth was encountered shortly before the heresy. If the incidents at Nurth have been instrumental in the developement of the Alpha Legion, then it is entirely viable to assume that the chaos influence on that world has been minor or dormant with the sole purpose of affecting the Alpha Legion in the way they ultimately did. Tzeentch would be capable of such intricate and foresighted plots.

[Lord_Caerolion]

The Warhammer Fantsy world, as far as I know, has been said by the studio to be linked to the 40k universe by the same Warp. Both have the same Gods, with few slight differences (elf gods being more active than Eldar, the Lady in the Lake, Dwarf Gods), and Black Library stuff is canon, or at least it is to my knowledge.

 

As for the Nurthene, they are from Legion, and are a culture that worships the Chaos Gods, and finds itself invaded by the Great Crusade. Understandably, they fight back against it, but they are never stated as being mutated, or insane, merely that they worship Chaos. The fact that they

destroy their whole population to kill their invaders, well, they were on the brink of being wiped out anyway. And also, the technology they used at the end was apparently Old One technology, not Chaos.

 

 

I'm not trying to say Chaos should be all happy and smiling, just that Chaos is not pure, unadulterated evil. We know that emotions are attracted to each other in the Warp, so if the Chaos Gods are entirely evil, what happens to the more beneficial emotions that are associated with their domain? There'd be enough of it to form a warp-presence, but like attracts like, so they would merge with the Chaos Gods.

 

Also, the argument that the Chaos Gods are called that because they're destructive, and the Ork Gods aren't is kinda weak. T Ork Gods are just as violent and destructive as the Chaos Gods, encouraging the Orks to go on their waaaghs!

 

So yeah, could we just call this debate a draw then? It's obvious I'm not going to convince you, and you aren't going to convince me. I just think that positie emotions are drawn into the Chaos Gods, even if as you say the negative emotions are often more dominant. I just don't think they're the entirety.