Allegiace of Lorgar and Perturabo: To wich god they belong?

[Wade Garrett]

Bit off topic, but the bit about worship of the Emperor feeding Chaos comes from David Annendale, whose contributions to the lore include Sisters of Battle encouraging Black Dragons Assault Marines to devolve into Warp Talons FOR THE EMPRAH!

 

I personally put his stuff in the same category as Khaldor Draigo, THE MAN WHO WON WARHAMMER 40K, and the Chaos immune Grey Knights of Khorne.

[Dammeron]

Since the RoC days there has been not one but a number of concepts conglomerated under the notion of Chaos Undivided. Back then, the Warp (or The Realm of Chaos, as it was more accurately known) was a state of pure and limitless potential: all possibilities existed there in potentia, endlessly playing out and dissolving in a cauldron of contradiction. Thus, although the Four Great Powers were the greatest vortices of potential (owing to the dominance of the drives of conscious creatures from which they were derived), there were also an infinite number of potential powers or lesser powers derived from minor obsessions, cultural preconceptions; the beliefs of small faiths etc etc. Even adjuncts to the fvour great powers -greater daemons and daemon princes- could manipulate mortal emotion and belief to such a degree that they gained some degree of independence from their parent powers. Not only were there rules for a specific Mark of Chaos Undivided, there is an entire section in The Lost and the Damned detailing how such minor powers come about; how they can become patrons of warbands and spawn their own daemons, greater daemons, gifts and princes. The limit truly was the player's own imagination.

 

Another form Chaos Undivided took was the equal worship of all four great powers, or a status of mutual benefit between specific mortals and the powers (such as that demonstrated by the Iron Warriors and some members of the Night Lords). Others, such as the Word Bearers, regard the Warp and its infinite variety of denizens as a pantheon of divine influences, with the Four Great Powers taking primacy above and beyond the rest. Others regard individual entities that make up Chaos as facets or aspects of a singular truth or polyglot divinity; one composed of all things, and therefore contradictory by nature.

 

The current drive to remove these complexities and ambiguities from the background and leave only the Four Great Powers does the entire mythology a massive disservice by diluting its potential. Not only that, it actively contradicts elements that went before and which still subsist within the background: Lorgar and Perturabo have both ascended to daemonhood, yet owe fealty to no one god. It was entirely possible for this to happen under the parameters of the older background: the individual in question would simply be elevated by a confluence of the powers or by drawiong a sufficient amount of Warp energy to themselves through their actions to shed their mortal flesh and sculpt for themselves a metaphorical state within the siwrling morass of the Warp. Now we are left with the contradiction: Lorgar, an entity that clearly worships Chaos in all of its myriad states and forms, forced into the state where he must by necessity have been elevated by one power or another. It's irritating, especially when we have other examples in other forces of how the Warp can manifest: Gork and Mork are also entities within the Warp, as is The Laughing God of the Eldar and as Kaela Mensha Khaine was before his shattering.

[Iron_Within]

Bit off topic, but the bit about worship of the Emperor feeding Chaos comes from David Annendale, whose contributions to the lore include Sisters of Battle encouraging Black Dragons Assault Marines to devolve into Warp Talons FOR THE EMPRAH!

 

I personally put his stuff in the same category as Khaldor Draigo, THE MAN WHO WON WARHAMMER 40K, and the Chaos immune Grey Knights of Khorne.

 

I haven't read his other novels but that the short that involved that little nugget I liked. It makes sense in one respect and another. The first being that faith is a short term victory for a long term loss; overwhelming entities individually temporarily but ultimately feeding the poison that is the gods of Chaos in the Warp (remember that almost all incarnations of the background says that the Time of Ending is where the Gods are at their most powerful and they've building for thousands of millennia in power, e.g. Slaanesh wasn't sentient until the Eldar gave it the final push and made the entity self aware). 

The other obvious explanation is that that particular story was a daemon trying to drive someone insane, and daemons are lies made manifest, so it simply could have been a lie to demoralise.

[bloodhound23]

Since the RoC days there has been not one but a number of concepts conglomerated under the notion of Chaos Undivided. Back then, the Warp (or The Realm of Chaos, as it was more accurately known) was a state of pure and limitless potential: all possibilities existed there in potentia, endlessly playing out and dissolving in a cauldron of contradiction. Thus, although the Four Great Powers were the greatest vortices of potential (owing to the dominance of the drives of conscious creatures from which they were derived), there were also an infinite number of potential powers or lesser powers derived from minor obsessions, cultural preconceptions; the beliefs of small faiths etc etc. Even adjuncts to the fvour great powers -greater daemons and daemon princes- could manipulate mortal emotion and belief to such a degree that they gained some degree of independence from their parent powers. Not only were there rules for a specific Mark of Chaos Undivided, there is an entire section in The Lost and the Damned detailing how such minor powers come about; how they can become patrons of warbands and spawn their own daemons, greater daemons, gifts and princes. The limit truly was the player's own imagination.

 

Another form Chaos Undivided took was the equal worship of all four great powers, or a status of mutual benefit between specific mortals and the powers (such as that demonstrated by the Iron Warriors and some members of the Night Lords). Others, such as the Word Bearers, regard the Warp and its infinite variety of denizens as a pantheon of divine influences, with the Four Great Powers taking primacy above and beyond the rest. Others regard individual entities that make up Chaos as facets or aspects of a singular truth or polyglot divinity; one composed of all things, and therefore contradictory by nature.

 

The current drive to remove these complexities and ambiguities from the background and leave only the Four Great Powers does the entire mythology a massive disservice by diluting its potential. Not only that, it actively contradicts elements that went before and which still subsist within the background: Lorgar and Perturabo have both ascended to daemonhood, yet owe fealty to no one god. It was entirely possible for this to happen under the parameters of the older background: the individual in question would simply be elevated by a confluence of the powers or by drawiong a sufficient amount of Warp energy to themselves through their actions to shed their mortal flesh and sculpt for themselves a metaphorical state within the siwrling morass of the Warp. Now we are left with the contradiction: Lorgar, an entity that clearly worships Chaos in all of its myriad states and forms, forced into the state where he must by necessity have been elevated by one power or another. It's irritating, especially when we have other examples in other forces of how the Warp can manifest: Gork and Mork are also entities within the Warp, as is The Laughing God of the Eldar and as Kaela Mensha Khaine was before his shattering.

 

My impression of the HH novel series is that this sort of stuff is still very present in the fluff, particularly with some of the descriptions of the warp from Ahriman and Magnus in "Prospero Burns". Also, as to earlier points, my impression is also that a sort of space is still open for the notion of Chaos Undivided: and that is simply pre-theoretical belief in what Magnus called "the Primordial Creator". My impression is that without direct contact with warp entities, cultures who simply worshipped nature in some abstract way would be considered to be worshippers of Chaos Undivided, as their beliefs and desires would fuel one of the particular deities even though they would not be aware of which ones fueled which Chaos god, etc. According to the lore it seems, the Emperor, too, has a strong presence in the warp, and so beliefs/emotions/desires that go toward anything BUT the Emperor would be heretical and therefore Chaosy. Here it becomes a sort of device of rhetorical power for the enforcement of the views of the Ecclessiarchy, which I think fits in perfectly with the dystopian nature of 40k/30k.

[Iron_Within]

It's just a shame that the novels maturity doesn't translate to the tabletop really.

[Dam13n]

Well the way I see it the Primarchs were invariably more powerful than greater daemons even before those that did ascended to Daemon-hood.

 

Those that were elevated aren't so much Daemon Princes as Daemon Primarchs.  Something wholly different in the pantheon of chaos.

 

Now 4 of them each picked one god above all, and 2 died.  So they're not especially pertinent to the discussion at hand (oh, and 9 were too blind to see the truth, and 2 were "=][= Deleted by the Inquisition =][=" )

 

Alpharius/Omegon - well we don't really know what happened to either of them yet.  That one of them may have been killed has been around in the fluff for years, yet - every Alpha Legionnaire is Alpharius - so who's to say that an imposter didn't die in his stead.  (just a little bit of "aren't alpha legion awesome/sneaky" off topic stuff)

 

But Perturabo and Lorgar are.

 

Now the fluff does say that neither celebrated one god above all.  Because Lorgar worshipped the Pantheon and Perturabo didn't actually worship any of them.  However the fluff also tells us that both were elevated to Daemonhood.

 

Now we have Horus and Abaddon as examples of all 4 gods providing their blessing to a single individual.

 

Lorgar would also be a fitting individual to receive the blessings of all 4, as he worships each god equally.  Having him as a Daemon Primarch of the Pantheon of Chaos isn't too hard to believe.  Also, the way he's evolving in the HH books, becoming increasingly less naïve and more manipulative - one could well believe that if anyone could convince the 4 gods to all offer him their blessings, it would be Lorgar.

 

Perturabo is a little more difficult to fathom.  Whether he was blessed due to certain actions he performed, rather than direct worship is a possibility:

- The Drop-site Massacre and the Destruction of Tallarn - Khorne

- The Plague he unleashed - Nurgle

- His aiding of Fulgrim's path to Daemonhood in Angel Exterminatus- Slaanesh

- The Iron Cage and The Labyrinthine construction in Vulkan Lives - Tzeentch

The other possibility is that he turned to a different entity which better reflected his bitterness and envy - Malal - and was granted Daemonhood that way.

 

I'm really not a fan of the whole "must belong to one god" direction of the current codices.  It just seems like laziness. 

"How can we justify undivided daemon princes?"

"why bother, lets just drop them entirely and save ourselves the effort."

"Yet we still have furies in the daemon army."

"Who cares, almost nobody uses them anyway, we'll just make them useless and stop producing the models, then nobody will take them and we can phase them out completely in the next codex."

"So, rather than trying to figure out a complicated bit of the fluff we can focus on trying to create a load of new units so we can sell more models."

"Exactly."

"Excellent."

 

:P

[RapatoR]

After reading all comments and thinking about issue, I can boldly claim that we don't need Chaos Undivided. At all. Before you disagree do one thing: try to tell difference between woshipping Chaos Undivided and worshipping Chaos. There is none. You don't really need that adjective, you can just say Chaos and thats all. So I think that loss of Undivide is not loss at all.

 

Also I think that big four is so much more than people think. Every person is partially choleric, partially sanguinic, partially phlegmatic and partially melancholic. If someone would say your personality is wholly composed of those temperaments you wouldn't disagree, even if personality is an immensely complicated system. There are so many facets of those temperaments,they clash between each other, yet they seem to overleap at times. Now this is even more complicated with gods. They don't just hate each other, they even hate themselves (as daemons - their extensions constantly scheme against each other and sometimes even against their patron). I still struggle with "there are absolutely no other gods" as I am fan of SoD "make your own god" idea. Answer might be simple: the other gods simply don't produce daemons. (Or they do, Orks might be "daemons" of Gork and Mork.)

 

Also I doubt that you have to dedicate to a single god to become DP of one god. Ahriman hates Tzeentch, yet if he would become a DP, there is no doubt to wich god he would belong.

[Sception]

I absolutely would disagree with the idea that all of a person's personality could be reduced to just four 'humors'. The idea is as absurdly reductionist and overtly false as the idea that all matter could be reduced to the four classical elements. It's an idea with no foundation in reality, a metaphor that describes only itself. And the lack of any conceptual space for other deities or warp entities outside of the big four in the current version of chaos remains a major problem when such deities and entities remain prolific in the fluff.

[Ammonius]

[i'm old and crusty: My perspective is rooted in the Realm of Chaos books from the late 80's/ early 90's. In addition, the imagery of and potential of "Chaos Undivided" as described in the book "Blood Gorgons" really strikes a tone with me.]

 

Recently, I began running a Black Crusade campaign, and in the core book is a mechanic for determining which Chaos god is likely to mark a player character. Basically, if you build your character in a way that pleases one god above the others, you'll wind up aligned to that god.

 

Perhaps Lorgar and Perturabo find themselves ascended into Daemon Primarchs, but as yet unclaimed by any one god.

 

Lorgar continues his practices and worships each god equally, attracting the special favor of none. The result is that his Legion sees him brooding in his grand temple for thousands of years.

 

Perturabo continues his practice of mostly(?) ignoring the gods and spends his time tinkering with fantastic mechanisms that only an immortal mind could create one moment, and smashing them all to ruin the next. The result is that his Legion sees him brooding in his impenetrable fortress for thousands of years. The exception here is "The Plague of Perturabo".

 

To steal and rework a phrase "It takes a fantastic amount of effort to remain Undivided."

[RapatoR]

I absolutely would disagree with the idea that all of a person's personality could be reduced to just four 'humors'. The idea is as absurdly reductionist and overtly false as the idea that all matter could be reduced to the four classical elements. It's an idea with no foundation in reality, a metaphor that describes only itself. And the lack of any conceptual space for other deities or warp entities outside of the big four in the current version of chaos remains a major problem when such deities and entities remain prolific in the fluff.

But that is exact opposite to what I was trying to say. It is not abut reduction but about observation and classification. I will provide another example: You surely agree that term "living oranisms" includes vast variety of extremely diverse, unique individuals. Yet, based on certain common features, we still can clasiffy them into several main groups. Despite their vast diversity, despite how large the term is, without really disminishing term and its diversity. I have yet to meet a person that would claim that classification of living organisms is reductionist or somehow disminishes true diversity of living organisms.

 

And yes there are few debatable exceptions that hardly fit anywhere, still will try to debate where it should be categorised. Not complain about how reductionist that classification is.

[Verythrax Draconis]

It would be awesome if any "undivided" attention goes to Malal. It could even justify the envy and hate he nurture against the big four, simply because any worshiping to them doesn't belong to him.

 

And we discovered that in the effort of avoiding dedication to an specific god, we created a whole new force in his form.

[Kol Saresk]

They actually tried to make a god of no belief. Nobody believed in him so he died out.

[Verythrax Draconis]

They actually tried to make a god of no belief. Nobody believed in him so he died out.

The atheist god of the atheists.

But he didn't realize that atheists wouldn't believe in any god, even if this god was an atheist as well.

Poor thing.

[Kol Saresk]

Actually it was more like the players weren't very interested in him. IIRC, he was one of two gods that GW tried to make to cover their "specialness" concerning Malal and neither god really caught on so they were both left to gather dust.

[Tenebris]

Well Malal is more in the realm of betrayal, hatred and nihilism... sort of a betrayed betrayer.

[minigun762]

I always understood Malal/Malice to be the god of the underdog, the weak and those seeking revenge.

[RapatoR]

Sorry for bit of a theradomancy, but apparently rules and fluff for Be'lakor were released by GW and he is indeed unaligned Demon Prince so this option is entirely possible.

[Iron_Within]

where?

EDIT: Digital Edition: http://www.blacklibrary.com/games-workshop-digital-editions/Dataslate-Belakor.html

 

It suggests that he is the only one as he was such a colossal douche to the gods they said no more of those unaligned ones please.

[Sception]

That said, if they could make an exception for Be'lakor, I'm pretty sure they could make an exception for the Primarchs. The Emperor's children were too fundamental to the fate of the galaxy for the gods to let their individual squabbles get in the way of getting their talons on each one that they could corrupt.

[daboarder]

yeah the whole point of the heresy was that for one brief moment the gods actually worked together to obtain a single unified goal.

[RapatoR]

where?

EDIT: Digital Edition: http://www.blacklibrary.com/games-workshop-digital-editions/Dataslate-Belakor.html

 

It suggests that he is the only one as he was such a colossal douche to the gods they said no more of those unaligned ones please.

Darn.

Shame on me for not being informed in detail.

Well, at least there is hope it will be somehow cleared out.

[daboarder]

odds are aurelian will deal with lorgars ascension to daemonhood.

 

so far we've had fulgrim and angron, looks like the current HH trend is to detail how the primarchs wound up as the corrupted monsters they were when they appeared on terra.

[Clewz]

odds are aurelian will deal with lorgars ascension to daemonhood.

 

so far we've had fulgrim and angron, looks like the current HH trend is to detail how the primarchs wound up as the corrupted monsters they were when they appeared on terra.

it doesn't 

[daboarder]

bugger

[TheDarkApostle]

Just would like to point out that there is actually a third individual we actually know of in the 30k/40k lore that was blessed by all of the four Gods in unity.

 

Luther.

 

TDA