The Nature of Khorne - looking past GW's abolsutes

[Kol Saresk]

In Chosen of Khorne, Khârn is presented with three chances to kill an old man. Khârn never kills the old man. When the man asks him why he is still alive, Khârn says it is because the man wishes to die so his death would not satisfy Khorne. Which suggests there is a requirement to the killing other than "just killing" and also gives the impression that Khorne does indeed care from whence the blood flows.

 

EDIT: The weird structure of my statement is based on the fact that the phrase "Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows" is virtually derived from the fact that his followers are willing to kill each other. The phrase is a social construct, much like honor and martial pride.

[Brother Ambroz]

Man I really do need to read that but it isn't at any of the stores around here. Hmm....hello Amazon...

[ChaosLord Leon Enaek]

In light of that quote could it be argued that it is true that Khorne does not care from whensce the blood flows provided the other emotions that feed him - namely rage, hate and anger- are also present? Could it be that the killing itself is all but irrelevant, and that killing an individual is simply the quickest (and least sorcerous/cowardly) way to condemn the victims' soul to Khorne? As such, when armies and Khornate champions do battle they are hot-blooded and filled with that hatred and rage that feeds Khorne, whereas an old man calmly consigned to death wll offer nothing but a scrap - a remnnt of anger that once was, rather than fresh hatred.

 

This would also help to explain why Khorne prefers the skulls of worthy champions - whilst Guardsmen will be ruled mostly by fear when confronted by a World Eater Berzerker, a more elite and disciplined fighter like a Commissar or a Space Marine will still feel that righteous hatred, that battle rage and that anger.

 

Just an idea :o discuss

 

:P

[Kol Saresk]

Man I really do need to read that but it isn't at any of the stores around here. Hmm....hello Amazon...

Well it is kind of hard to read an audiodrama :P

[Brother Ambroz]

Well it is kind of hard to read an audiodrama :P

 

:D Shhh you know what I mean! :P

[Nehekhare]

the man wishes to die so his death would not satisfy Khorne.

Of course. A mercy killing does not feed khorne with the emotions he is made of. I'd say Khorne does not care from whence the blood flows - as long as it flows with anger and rage.

[Chaplain ChonkE]

Khorne is not a Sith. He is not the aspect of emotion or anger, or hatred or any touchy-feely stuff. Sensation is the arena of a very different aspect of the 4-Powers and Slaanesh is often considered to be the binary opposite to Khorne in the Pantheon.

[Kol Saresk]

Khorne is not a Sith. He is not the aspect of emotion or anger, or hatred or any touchy-feely stuff. Sensation is the arena of a very different aspect of the 4-Powers and Slaanesh is often considered to be the binary opposite to Khorne in the Pantheon.

Technically a Sith is one who draws power from themselves through "negative" emotions such as hate, anger, jealously, pride, vanity but also draws from "positive" emotions as well such as love and a few others. It's just that most Sith usually draw from hate and anger.

 

Moving back to 40k, yes Khorne does draw from the darker, more aggressive emotions. However, he also draws from the concepts such as a warrior's honor and martial pride, not because he has a repertoire like some DnD god, but because people who carry those notions happen to be the majority of his followers and as such he draws from all of it because those notions, those constructs of society, are what are used to justify the emotions that fuel his power and is used to fuel the power of his followers while also urging the very mindsets that create his "fuel".

 

However, I also believe there is another component necessary. Not sure what though. Example is the one I pointed out above. If it was a simple matter of the killer needing hate and anger, Khârn should have had no problem killing the old man. But he did, and his reasoning is that Khorne would not be satisfied and the reason for the lack of satisfaction is because the old man was seeking death. There was some component that was missing that two entire warbands who were killing each other and everything between them still avoided this man as evidenced by the fact that he survived the battle while at the epicenter of it all and had one last chat with Khârn. Whether that component is that Khorne doesn't accept suicides and death wishes or if it's something else, I'm not sure.

[Chaplain ChonkE]

War is Khorne's fuel. Martial Prowess. Victory/Defeat in combat. Emotional content and feelings arent what Khorne are all about. Feeling anger does not give Khorne power. Feeling sorry for yourself does not give him power. War and bloodshed committed in the act of War or martial violence is what powers the beast. He does not care from where the War flows, how it flows or why it flows. The Spice must flow. It has given him accelerated... Nevermind, someone will just miss the point again with a different sci-fi reference :)

 

Khorne is the aspect of martial violence and war codified. He is strategy, tactical acumen, physical excellence, martial perfection. I havent read this story/novel so I cant say if the man is worthless in regards to the aspects of war but it sounds like he is. Why would Khorne want the blood or skull of someone who has no desire to even fight for their own life? Whether it is refugees fighting for their lives after being raided by Dark Eldar or Orks, Space Marines slaughtering Xenos for whatever reason, there is war involved in these acts. Codified (e:or non-codified) Martial Violence. Not slaughter or wanton murder for sensations sake (Slaanesh). Why would the embodiment of Khorne, Khârn, give a man who was worth NOTHING in the sight of his God, who ignored/feared/cowered/denied the very act that gives power to that being of the Warp, give him the peace of death that he wished? Would Khorne be super-stoked that the skull of a non-consequential (to him) sheep is lain at his feet by one of his Champions? Better to let the man find his way to a battlefield to seek death on the fields of War. That is what Khorne would want.

 

edit: codification; Khorne doesnt need a system :P He just need war and martial violence.

[Kol Saresk]

6th Edition Codex: Chaos Space Marines, page 30

 

The Mark of Khorne is bestowed only upon those whose relentless rage and boundless ferocity pays due homage to the Blood God's own. To such disciples, Khorne grants an unholy wrath that burns as hot as the stars.

 

4th Edition Codex: Chaos Space Marines, page 9

 

Khorne is the Blood God, an angry and murderous God of Chaos whose bellows of insatiable rage echo thoughout time and space. His great brass throne sits upon a mountain of skulls in the midst of a plain of splintered bones and lakes of blood; the remains of his followers slain in battle and those killed in his name. Khorne embodies mindless and absolute violence, destroying everyone and everything within reach, slaying both friend and foe alike.

 

The followers of Khorne are always ferocious warriors, for the Blood God abhors the trickery of magic and cowardly sorcerers. men turn to Khorne for the power to conquer. to defeat their enemies in battle, to wreak bloody vengeance and to attain unimaginable prowess. The most dedicated of his followers, those trapped fully within his clawed grasp, know that he desires only wild slaughter. Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows, only that it does.

 

You are right, he does rely on war and the social constructs such as vengeance, ambition and martial prowess that surround it. And Nehekhare is right that he feeds off of rage, hate and anger. And I am right for saying that he feeds off of both. The act alone isn't enough. It needs to have motivation, a driving force. A very old axiom states "A sacrifice has no meaning if it has no value." War alone is a worthless sacrifice. And anger alone has no value. But together, they become the sacrifice Khorne needs to survive, to attain his power. Without either, he receives nothing. But apparently there is also something else, something that would actually cause Khorne dissatisfaction if Khârn had killed the old man. What that is, only Anthony Reynolds knows.

[Chaplain ChonkE]

So when 500000 soulless Necrons with no emotional motivation wipe out an entire planet Khorne is unaffected in any way? I just dont see it man. War is all that matters. The planning/plotting/justification is left to Tzeentch and the experience/feelings to Slaanesh. War and blood is all that is needed. Not a war of words or spiritual debate. Bloodletting. War is never worthless to Khorne, even if the meanings to the mortals who wage it are worthless and nothing (in your eyes). War, Battle, Feuds, Duels always have reasons and they are usually good ones to the people involved if *they* are willing to sacrifice in such ways. Khorne is just like watching from above going like "Shut up already and cross swords! Jeeez!"

[Brother Ambroz]

He'd likely be affected by the mortals slain by the necrons in that example but he would not gain anything from the Necrons. Generally there aren't many named races that feed the gods emotions.

[Nehekhare]

War alone is a worthless sacrifice. And anger alone has no value. But together, they become the sacrifice Khorne needs to survive, to attain his power. Without either, he receives nothing. But apparently there is also something else, something that would actually cause Khorne dissatisfaction if Khârn had killed the old man. What that is, only Anthony Reynolds knows.

 

All chaos gods were formed from emotions, embody them and take sustenance/power from them. that is the nature of the warp: http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Gods_of_Chaos#.ULiRioY7t8E

(first transformed from a calm psychic mirror of realspace into the living hell it is now by the emotions of the old ones during their galaxywide struggle against the necrontyr and their c'tan allies btw)

 

Now, isn't war the physical outlet of rage and anger? the act that channels the emotion?

War is just a ritual, like a tzeentchian rite, a slaaneshi orgy or a nurglite infection. The emotions of which khorne is made of and feeds on are rage and anger (like pleasure/pain and lust for slaanesh, fear and despair for nurgle, will and ambition for tzeentch).

 

What form the ritual takes does not matter, it depends on the view the follower has of the god he wishes to praise and the effectivity and scale of the emotion provided as an offering. it's just a tool, a focus.

 

to prove my point: a ritual without emotion does not wake the gods, but emotion without (deliberate) ritual will. The stronger the emotions, the bigger the effect, the less dependent on ritual it will be.

 

THAT IS WHY killing the old man doesn't work: no anger, no rage, just mercy and the meaningless formality of ending a life begging for it. it would be an empty ritual.

[Kol Saresk]

Chaplain ChonkE this is Nehekhare. Nehekhare this is Chaplain ChonkE. Y'all are the two who is saying the other is wrong. I've said that both of y'all are right because both of you are right. So since both of you are desperate to prove your points, you have to prove them against each other because I already believe both points to be true, y'all are the ones who don't believe each other.

 

And I don't know if you have ever listened to Chosen of Khorne Nehekhare, but every time Khârn thought about killing the old man, he was pretty pissed off and the old man survived being in the center of, not one, but two warbands that slaughtered each other until only Khârn and the old were alive because they were filled with the unholy rage of Khorne. There is ChonkE's requirement for war and battle and there is your requirement for anger. And yet he survived.

[Rain]

Has it occurred to any of you all that the view of Khorne espoused by the author of that story is just that--the author's own view and not necessarily representative of Khorne in the overall universe? Or even that there is no definitive "representative" picture of Khorne as different fluff sources have posited conflicting information, especially with regard to whether Khorne cares about martial honor or just blind slaughter. In either case, the general idea behind why Khârn didn't kill the old man is kind of obvious, he wasn't seen as worthy. It seems that some Khornate champions make it a point to only kill those they see worthy of having their skull laid at the foot of Khorne's throne, so basically what Chaplain ChonkE said i suppose.

[Dammeron]

Khorne, like all of the Chaos gods, is formed of various and often contradictory aspects. Like his brothers, he is essentially the metaphorical personification of a particularly large and tempestuous vortex of potential energies within the Warp, formed and fuelled by a particular concentration of emotions and inspirations demonstrated by the conscious entities of the material universe. His core is anger and hatred; these are a the base emotions that fuel Khorne, and any example of these, or act committed as a result, fuels him. From this base, a number of abstractions have accrued and been extrapolated over many, many millennia. Arguably chief amongst them are conflict, physical violence and warfare, as these are all expressions and fomenters of the base emotions that inform the Blood God's nature. He is the warrior who kills out of tribal hatred and enmity; the religious crusader who slays heretics en masse for failing to follow the "true path." But he is also the wanton slaughterer; the deranged lunatic whose only expression for his own inner turmoil is violence. In this regard, he represents something profound and innate to conscious existence, that is the nature of consciousness to be in perpetual conflict with itself; the war between thought and emotion, between instinct and consideration, desire and duty. The truth is that there is no single truth or face of Khorne, just as there is no "true" or essential form the god wears, beyond the core emotions that inform him. Every abstraction that has been mentioned in this thread can be readily applied to the Blood God, or at least an aspect of him. Just as Nurgle is avuncular and enthusiastic in some representations, yet dour and fearful in others, so Khorne is at once mindlessly murderous and martially prideful. I honestly don't see why it's a problem that something as intrinsically complex as a Chaos God cannot harbour contradictions or ambiguities as a matter of its nature.

[Dammeron]

With regards to the "old man" example given above, the fact that he wanted to die is demonstrative of profoundest despair, and despair is Nurgle's realm; it is the core emotion that informs the Chaos God. As a result, the fulfilment of the man's wish would likely empower Nurgle rather than Khorne, making him an unworthy offering in Khârn's eyes.

[Kol Saresk]

Dammeron, I truly do love these...the word is escaping me right now but I do truly love your posts relating to the vagaries of the warp and its denizens.

[Dammeron]

Dammeron, I truly do love these...the word is escaping me right now but I do truly love your posts relating to the vagaries of the warp and its denizens.

 

My pleasure. It's one of the aspects of the background I enjoy the most; beneath the comic book stuff, there's actually quite a profound metaphysics to the 40K universe, similar in tone and general nihilism to that presented in H.P. Lovecraft's fiction, i.e. that there are forces and entities out there that demonstrate the qualities of deities, divinities and mythological entities in general that occur in humanity's various narrative traditions, but they are not strictly of the same order or nature; rather they are extra-dimensional entities who operate on a level of reality whose parameters are simply so different from those linear organisms such as ourselves operate under, they are essentially divine and/or infernal, to all intents and purposes.

 

With regards to Chaos and the Warp in particular, it represents a state of being where metaphor and physical reality are no longer distinct; where one becomes and informs the other and vice versa. There is something incredibly profound in this, in that the gods and angels; the devils and demons are all essentially our creations; reflections of consciousness in its most earnest and rarefied condition, yet also influence and inform the nature of consciousness through their actions, so are also shapers and moulders of humanity. The distinction between the creators and the created thus is also somewhat malleable. I actually find this far more profound than the contents of many traditional mythologies, which tend to set up hierarchical distinctions between humanity and the divinities it worships/fears/whatever. Instead, there is a pronounced systematic interplay between the material and immaterial; between the imaginers and the imagined, which serves to dissolve that very distinction, allowing for situations where the former descends to the latter's state, or the latter ascends to the former's condition.

[Nehekhare]

I actually find this far more profound than the contents of many traditional mythologies, which tend to set up hierarchical distinctions between humanity and the divinities it worships/fears/whatever.

Have you, by an chance, read Joseph Campbells masks of god? I think you might very much enjoy it if not yet.

[Dr. Clock]

Further, for ancient cultures in which a greater degree of fluidity between 'mortal' and 'immortal' realms: look to China.

 

The Shang Dynasty, ending roughly with the turn to the last millennia BCE, maintained a vast array of often violent ritual practices devoted to ancestor worship. However, this was not 'worship' in the sense that they simply 'gave glory' to the dead. Instead, there was a hierarchical continuum from Shang Di, an 'entity' whose status is still not fully understood in scholarship, down to through human lineages to present lineage 'heads.' Metaphysically, the two worlds were inextricably linked, though essentially hierarchical (if de-centralized... there were many different lineages constantly competing through war and ritual 'competition').

 

Offerings were made on the explicit understanding that one's forbears would 'receive' the offering and, in return, assist their living descendants in an almost contractual arrangement.

 

These arrangements, in fact, are the site where Chinese grammatical writing first emerges. Bones of animals were cracked using fire, and the cracks were 'read' by ritual specialists. Over time, the bones were inscribed with graphs representing the content of the questions, and these became Chinese language.

 

Interestingly enough, the most highly regarded ritual sacrifice was human captives or slaves, who were ritually beheaded. In order to maintain one's earthly social position, one would have one's slaves killed in this manner and buried in proximity to one's tomb.

 

I realize that this is a massive tangent... but Dammeron's "systematic interplay" between the material and spiritual got me thinking... and Ancient Chinese history is my passion.

 

I also really like this part of the background... In sum, I like to think of Chaos as basically assuming that the 'primal' religions were right - that there is an order to the Universe, but it is clearly Chaotic in terms of having more than one 'ruler.' Further, that there is an 'afterlife' from which the dead continue to gain power from us - and that we can expect repayment from Them in return if we do 'the job' well.

 

For Khorne: the job is the taking of skulls. Pure and simple. However, the skulls he prefers are those that not only do not want to be taken, but actively try to take the skulls of the supplicant. In sum, I would consider the 'purest' form of Khornate worship results in the annihilation of the self through violent hatred of another. This is a strong counterpoint to all other Chaos Gods - primarily Slaanesh, who is ALL ABOUT the self. When a Slaaneshi fights an opponent, they are testing THEMSELVES. When a Khorne worshipper fights an opponent, they are testing THE OPPONENT. They literally don't care who wins... (Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows) whatever the outcome, Khorne is pleased, so long as both parties are WILLING TO DIE SUCH THAT THE OTHER DOES ALSO.

 

@Dammeron: your last two posts were made of win.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

[Brother Ambroz]

Doc, that was a very educational and interesting read. Didn't know any of that about the Chinese.

 

In sum, I would consider the 'purest' form of Khornate worship results in the annihilation of the self through violent hatred of another.

 

When I read this part, I immediately thought of the "modern" 40k Khârn. He is that exactly.

[Dr. Clock]

Well, thanks...

 

I'm considering incorporating some Shang elements into my Khorne army, which is just getting off the ground - basically, burning and cracking bones is their method of communicating with and binding deamons. They found a daemon-forge which speaks through cracks formed in Black Carapaces. It's based off a Loyalist force I already had (I know, I know) that never felt as angry as I wanted them to be. The basic conceit is that it's the scouts that fall first. The Chapter's gene-seed interacted poorly with their home world population from the outset, causing the maturation process to significantly slow. I'm going to be kit-bashing half my scouts into possessed as bloodletters, and the other half will be enforcers in my cultist mobs.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

[Polaria]

In sum, I would consider the 'purest' form of Khornate worship results in the annihilation of the self through violent hatred of another.

 

I just recently finished reading the Outcast Dead and the way it described one of the three World Eaters slaughtering people with complete lack of emotional attachment to the act of killing but still purposefully getting into fights as if that was his only purpose of existing was pretty interesting in the light of your comment above.