Nuances of Chaos

[Kol Saresk]

And then there is the conflict between Ahriman who wanted to save his Legion from the flesh-change and Magnus who wanted them to embrace it. And then there is an ideological conflict between Khârn and Angron. Angron fights at the head of armies, destroying worlds in an orgy of blood and death. Khârn takes the solitary route, seeking those whose skull is most worthy while "his" warriors are those who are either brave enough or insane enough to actually fight beside him.

[TheDarkApostle]

Interesting analysis and it really speaks to the contradictory nature of Chaos.

 

Chaos is anything and everything you want or fear it to be. I don't remember the source of the quote, but it came from a Tzeentchian follower who expressed all of the other god's whims as but aspects of change with the point that Tzeentch was really all powerful. And the beauty of Chaos is that its true, but its also true that the aspects of each god could be thought of in terms of any individual god, if one looks hard enough.

 

"Don't you see? My Master Tzeentch cares not which of the Great Powers of Chaos you serve.

 

In the end, aren't the followers of the Blood God changing valiant warriors into headless corpses?

Aren't the whorshippers of the Lord of Flies changing strong, healthy bodes into rotting, diseased carcasses?

Aren't the disiples of the Dark Prince changing stern, steadfast heroes into slaves to their own senses?

 

Chaos is a stuggle to change, you must agree.

Change rules all."

 

Chaos Daemons codex, page 39.

 

:pirate:

 

TDA

[Dammeron]

I'm particularly fascinated by the conflict between Mortarion and Typhus. One would've thpought that Mortarion would be very grateful to his first captain for leading him into the embraces of Pappa Nurgle, yet the background states that the two are at ideological odds, owing to what Typhus regards as Mortarion's sickening sentimentality (shaping his daemon world to resemble Barbarus). There is a wealth of potential story material here; there could be an entire series of very, very interesting Black Library novels detailing the political and religious differences on the Plague World, culminating in a kind of civil war that sees Typhus and his sympathisers taking ship and leaving for the material universe.

 

It seems that neither are fundamentally "right" in how they choose to manifest their worship: Mortarion is obviously Nurgle's most favoured son, since he is the demi-god, daemonic overlord of Nurgle's daemon hordes (Liber Chaotica Nurgle makes this explicit), but Typhus represents aspects of Nurgle that are far more pro-active, and has therefore also received the Plague Lord's blessings (though not to the same degree). Whereas Mortarion is the slow and certain descent into decay; the creeping inevitability of disease, death and the despair that comes with them, Typhus is more akin to a rampant pandemic, sweeping across entire worlds and leaving nothing but festering filth in his wake. He is also the aspect of Nurgle as the Lord of Fear, his reputation making him a herald of death and misery.

 

Of course, there's a very similar dynamic that exists between Magnus the Red and Ahriman: whereas Magnus has realised the utter futility of defying Tzeentch's manipulations and now stands as the god's ultimate and willing puppet, Ahriman utterly refuses not only to accept Tzeentch's manipulations, but his own damnation; unlike Typhus, who is a willing servant to Nurgle, Ahriman spends his entire existence in defiance of the patron who so favours him; seeking to actively conquer Chaos as a whole and bring it under mankind's dominion. In that regard, he represents the aspect of Tzeentch as the patron of the self willed and egocentric: Ahriman is Tzeentch's ultimate puppet, and once again, arguably far more active than Magnus, who is conscious and willing capitulation to the inevitability of change. Of all the ostensible "Chaos" carachters, I find Ahriman the most interesting, in that he doesn't define himself as a servant of Chaos, but rather as one who might tame and utilise it. What could be very interesting is if he succeeds: if he somehow gained the knowledge to mould and reorganise the condition known as Chaos, then Ahriman could end up being not only the saviour of all mankind, but a new kind of deity; one that has broken the influence of Chaos and brought it under human control. Of course, the likelihood of this is very slim, especially considering that greater psykers than him -Magnus, for one- have made the attempt and failed utterly.

 

And Khârn is just Khârn.

[Kol Saresk]

One weird thing that just popped into my head. Even without it being mentioned in A Thousand Sons, since the warp is a reflection of the material universe that is made up of emotion and ideals, couldn't/shouldn't there be benevolent warp creatures who could be just as powerful as the Chaps Gods? Except, nice?

[Dammeron]

One weird thing that just popped into my head. Even without it being mentioned in A Thousand Sons, since the warp is a reflection of the material universe that is made up of emotion and ideals, couldn't/shouldn't there be benevolent warp creatures who could be just as powerful as the Chaps Gods? Except, nice?

 

Interestingly, it looked like that was going to originally be the case: the original RoC book, Slaves to Darkness, makes mention of Gods of Order, against which the Chaos gods were diametrically opposed. However, by the time the second book, The Lost and the Damned, rolled around, the idea of the Warp had evolved and altered so much that the "Gods of Order" had been abandoned in favour of something more bleak and complex.

 

The Liber Chaotica books, specifically an essay by a Slaanesh cultist by the name of Dolmance (a thousand internets to anyone who gets the reference) explicitly explores and dissects the nature of Chaos, the Warp; gods, divinities daemons etc. In it, he explains that the Four Great Powers caolesced and evolved to states of supreme sentience because of the predominant drives, dreads and inspirations of mortal creatures. Within them is contained all potential; positive, negative and otherwise. The Warp and chaos itself makes no distinction between positive drives and negative drives, since the qualification of such relies largely on where one happens to be standing in the system. Therefore, when a Priest of Morr, the sanctioned god of Death in the warhammer world's Empire, prays to his God, he is actually praying to an aspect of Nurgle which is simply more palatable to human concerns and preoccupations, since Nurgle is the God of Death. Similarly, when the elves and Eldar call to Khaine, they are revering an aspect of Khorne that has been torn away and made separate during a struggle with Slaanesh. Whatever powers, divinities, deities, angels or daemons one prays to in the 40K universe or warhammer world, one is unwittingly calling to something that exists within the spectrum of facets and aspects that comprises one of the Four Great Powers. Whether that particular fragment or facet of that god is "good" or not depends entirely on your point of view: for example, do you think Nurgle's Plague Marines are unhappy in their conditions? Do they lament and rail against the god who cursed them, or do they revel in the conditions he provides, regarding their various poxes and disfigurements as gifts and rewards? To them, Nurgle in all his multifarious foulness is the ultimate good; the only truth, and the bosom of all comfort.

 

Of course, you have to bear in mind that this comes from the perspective of a chaos worshipper; perhaps the truth is more complex and multifarious than his prejudices allow for :unsure:

[Kol Saresk]

And if we followed his view, the Chaos Gods would have to be nice..... Yeah I don't buy that. The truth is more nefarious and complex than our fragile, human minds can ever comprehend.

[Dammeron]

And if we followed his view, the Chaos Gods would have to be nice..... Yeah I don't buy that. The truth is more nefarious and complex than our fragile, human minds can ever comprehend.

 

Oh, good god, no; he never proclaims that the Chaos gods are "nice" or even particularly pleasant; he simply describes them as what they are: the only and ultimate truth, regardless of what you happen to worship, so one may as well hurl oneself into the torrent and enjoy the ride. The interesting thing about Dolmance is that he isn't some mindless fanatic; he is urbane, witty and educated. Furthermore, he acknowlegdes Chaos for what it is in all of its complexity; he merely sees no reason for denying it, since it is inevitable, and has therefore chosen Slaanesh as his patron of choice, since he'll at least get some gratification out of it. Ironically, later on, he is actually claimed by Tzeentch, who was manipulating him all along as a means of achieving some abstruse goal or other.

[Kol Saresk]

"The only choice is to choose to embrace for all must join Chaos."

 

Basically right?

[Dammeron]

"The only choice is to choose to embrace for all must join Chaos."

 

Basically right?

 

Exactly. You either acknowledge and embrace the inevitable, or you rail against it and shrivel into denial. Within the constraints of the Warhammer world and the 40K universe, those are the only options, unless you happen to be a Craftworld Eldar, Haemonculus or Tyranid. The Craftworld Eldar have managed to stave off the inevitable via use of their infinity matrix (which, by the way, can still be shattered, corrupted or destroyed), the Haemonculi practise a kind of soul and flesh alchemy that renders them totally immune to the depredations of the Warp, since they simply return to their dungeons and grow a new body when they are physically destroyed, and the Tyranids operate on an entirely other spectrum; it's questionable whether they have essences or anima in the same way other species do anyway.

 

Oh, and the Undead in the Warhammer world exist exclusively because of this certainty: Nagash created the dark arts of necromancy as a means of anchoring his soul beyond the ultimate consumption of Chaos, and he actually succeeded too, to the point whereby he has ascended to a condition very much like that of a minor Chaos power, but not within the warp; rather bound spiritually and physically to the material plain.

 

Going back to the notion of "positive" gods and divinities, the mythology of the Warp and Chaos has been expanded so that they basically incorporate anything you can conceive, certainly within the purview of human or conscious experience. The reason the Chaos Gods seem so overwhelmingly negative to humans in terms of their aspects and effects is that their totality represents the most consistent and powerful drives we sub-consciously express and exhibit. Somewhere within their limitless complexity and ultimate contradiction can be found those aspects and manifestations that might seem ostensibly "positive" to human beings, and which give rise to manifestations such as Khaine and Morr, but the Chaos Gods are the totality of all those aspects cohered beneath a deliberate consciousness, that seeks to sustain itself and constantly swell to new heights of power and status by encouraging the most powerful and extreme of the emotions that feed it: in the case of Khorne, wholesale slaughter and hate fuelled genocide, in the case of Slaanesh, indulgence in unutterable perversity and the most extreme desire. Even so, were one able to cleanly dissect a Chaos power and set each of its attributes and aspects aside, one would find in Khorne: martial honour and self sacrifice, brute hatred and rage, adherence to abstract ideals and martial codes, assassination, murder, brutality, genocide, vengeance, vendetta, warfare; in Slaanesh: desire, inspiration, self indulgence, the pursuit of self perfection, art, poetry, beauty, aesthetics, philosophy, perversity, egocentrism, indolence, sadism, masochism, pain, pleasure, extremes of sensual experience...all of which are aspects that undoubtedly have names and faces in cults and cultures throughout time, space and reality; all of which are "gods" in and of themselves, whilst also being part of the greater systems that are the Great Powers.

[TheDarkApostle]

Ah good old Alphonse Dolmance, my favorite Chaos Cultist of all time. :(

 

He really gives alot of good food for thought that man.

 

TDA

[Caffeineated Chaos]

It's also worth noting there are or were other powerful warp entities to help cover the "nice" side. The Eldar pantheon for one, of which only 3 gods remain(khaine in fragments, who at least in 40k seems to be completely separate from khorne, the one who's nurgle's prisoner, and the trickster one that fled into the webway. Which, according to some fluff at least, were made by the old ones to watch over the eldar(whom they also made) prior to the chaos gods manifesting, when there were few sentient species and the immaterium was still calm.

 

Then there's Gork and Mork, seeing as the waugh and weirdboys channeling it, orks have a significant presence in the warp, you'd think they'd greatly empower khorne(for obvious reasons), and slaanesh(there addictive obsessive personalities and love of sensation) but since those actions fall under orky-ness they are fed to Gork and Mork instead, who I imagine could beat any other god or warp entity in an actual fight(due to orks' absolute confidence in there species and gods' strength) yet are not the strongest since the power of a warp entity is determined by the amount of "territory" the entity currently claims in the warp.

 

Finally the emperor. The most powerful psyker of all time by far and large, his "footprint" in the warp would have to be massive. He fuels the astronomican, but that was supposed to be Magnus' job, he would still have psychic power to spare. And some fluff says the other reason that it's important he stays plugged up is because he does battle w/ the chaos gods in the warp. I'd imagine given the nature of the warp, of coalescing ideals and emotions, and the way Gork and Mork are fuelled by belief in ork superiority. The imperium's worship of him may actually make him stronger, as well as emotions and beliefs in line with his own. And anyone believing in mankind as from the imperium and the emperor's vision for it, may actually fuel and strengthen him. Albeit I believe he was equivalent in power to a god beforehand, at least by Eldar god terms if nothing else(ESP. considering he beat the strongest of the c'tan, the void dragon, and then imprisoned him to use as a battery for every land raider and Titan and other excessively large imperial vehicle or ship).

 

But these are just my understandings, beliefs, and theories, based off my(admittedly somewhat limited) understanding of 40k lore and 40k warp lore in specific. And it means little for us, since ultimately the more positive warp entities apply only to the orks and Eldar, or is the emperor, and we being traitors don't care much for him.