Duality of Chaos

[Slave to Darkness]

Something I started on the old 'Great Crusade' forums years ago (we did heresy gaming before it was cool) and I thought I'd see what you guys thought...

 

All the Chaos gods potentially have alter-egos or "good" sides this is why -

Khorne - Yeah we know know he's the god of blood, and murder and killing and general violent gribblyness. Thing is he's also the god of battle. This means he's the god of warriors, honorable combat and martial pride. As honorable combat and evil don't sit very nicely together could that mean he has a good side?

Slannesh - The god off excess and pleasure in pain. Which ever way you want to see it pleasure is pleasure ... if you take out the excess and the pain bit this god isn't looking so nasty anymore either.

Nurgle - Okay we've gpt the god of decay ... this also means we've got the god new life and rebirth. The whole point of decay is to allow for new life ... this could probably be considered a good thing ... can we see a pattern forming here?

Tzeench - The god of change ... now the last time I looked change didn't need to be for the evil ends. As change is change things will probably also alter for the better.

The big point is that these are the gods of Chaos not the gods of Evil. The whole point of Chaos is that anything can come out of it and really great things can come from it.

As a conclusion to this I was left wondering whether there are two aspects to each of the Chaos gods, one good, one evil. Therefore, you could potentially have good aligned Chaos worshippers who adhere to the "good" aspect of the god.

What do you lot think?

[Vesper]

Khorne is the god of anger and destruction, the warrior god of Chaos whose bellows of rage echo throughout time and space. He sits upon a great throne of brass atop a mountainous pile of bleached skulls. Whenever a champion of Khorne is slain in battle his skull is added to the pile, which slowly grows higher and higher. Khorne is a fighting god and his daemons and mortal Champions are amongst the most potent warriors of all. Khorne is a noble warrior who respects strength and bravery, who takes no joy in destroying the weak, and considers the helpless unworthy of his wrath. It is said that fate will spare any brave warrior who calls upon Khorne's name and pledges his soul to the blood god. It is also said that Khorne's daemons will hunt down and destroy any warrior who betrays his honour by killing a helpless innocent or murdering in cold blood. Khorne's great delight is battle and the spilling of blood.

 

That's from the Renegades supplement for Epic.

[Marshal Rohr]

Khorne is the god of anger and destruction, the warrior god of Chaos whose bellows of rage echo throughout time and space. He sits upon a great throne of brass atop a mountainous pile of bleached skulls. Whenever a champion of Khorne is slain in battle his skull is added to the pile, which slowly grows higher and higher. Khorne is a fighting god and his daemons and mortal Champions are amongst the most potent warriors of all. Khorne is a noble warrior who respects strength and bravery, who takes no joy in destroying the weak, and considers the helpless unworthy of his wrath. It is said that fate will spare any brave warrior who calls upon Khorne's name and pledges his soul to the blood god. It is also said that Khorne's daemons will hunt down and destroy any warrior who betrays his honour by killing a helpless innocent or murdering in cold blood. Khorne's great delight is battle and the spilling of blood.

 

That's from the Renegades supplement for Epic.

 

Now that's a chaos god I could see people following. 

[Yogi]

Disagree.

 

Duality comes from people talking about fantasy chaos. Especially Khorne.

 

Or Epic it seems. Always trying make Khorne less insane and ruthless.

 

This is like trying to reframe their behaviour to appear more benevolent. 

 

The chaos gods are about power. You want some you make an arrangement, short or long term. 

 

By following them you're ambitious, mad and selfish. But it just might be worth it.

 

OP's name is Slavetodarkness. Darkness. Not duality of light and darkness.

 

Chaos gods are evil and selfish. As are most of the followers.  Accept it. 

[Marshal Rohr]

Disagree.

 

Duality comes from people talking about fantasy chaos. Especially Khorne.

 

Or Epic it seems. Always trying make Khorne less insane and ruthless.

 

This is like trying to reframe their behaviour to appear more benevolent. 

 

The chaos gods are about power. You want some you make an arrangement, short or long term. 

 

By following them you're ambitious, mad and selfish. But it just might be worth it.

 

OP's name is Slavetodarkness. Darkness. Not duality of light and darkness.

 

Chaos gods are evil and selfish. As are most of the followers.  Accept it. 

 

But that interpretation blows. I like the other one better. 

[Yogi]

You're a loyalist stick to the emperor.

 

At best the benevolent fantasy is used to lure new converts. but in the end The gods laugh. They don't care. 

[Bryan Blaire]

I think it's a bit narrow to simply view it as two "extremes", only two sides, that you could follow only one side or the other. It's Chaos, it doesn't simply have two sides, it's an entire range. If you follow the god as it is aspected, you don't just follow a single concept that the god represents, but rather the entirety of what the god represents. That's the great thing about 40K, IMO, it's always been good at showing that nothing is truly black-and-white, everything is shades of grey.

 

I don't think that a follower that only embraced one very narrow view of a Chaos God would be considered a very good follower, whether that's as "evil" or "good".

[Vesper]

Disagree.

 

Duality comes from people talking about fantasy chaos. Especially Khorne.

 

Or Epic it seems. Always trying make Khorne less insane and ruthless.

 

This is like trying to reframe their behaviour to appear more benevolent. 

 

The chaos gods are about power. You want some you make an arrangement, short or long term. 

 

By following them you're ambitious, mad and selfish. But it just might be worth it.

 

OP's name is Slavetodarkness. Darkness. Not duality of light and darkness.

 

Chaos gods are evil and selfish. As are most of the followers.  Accept it. 

I'd say there are nuances.

The Chaos gods are overall negative beings because of the negativity carried by mankind's feelings feeding them. That's the Darkness. Mankind's darkness make them dark. Being a slave to darkness is being a slave to his human nature, his instinct.

 

Yet people may also try to be better, and to do so, they fight their instinct, struggle with their desires. The Chaos gods are the living representation of that inner fight. They are both sides of the coin. So it's not strange to depict them as multidimensional beings. To some beings/societies Khorne will be the god of absolute wrath and slaughter. To others he will be the defender of the weak, the god of honor.

 

The gods surely are selfish (if they can, on an ontological level), but Tzeentch feeds on plotting and stuff as much as he feeds on the hope of a child. Khorne grows stronger not only through mindless bloodshed and carnage, but also through honor and selfless sacrifice.

[Wade Garrett]

The Chaos Gods? Evil?

 

When wolves pull down a deer, I have no doubt the prey considers it the vilest evil possible, yet when its flesh fills the belly of the wolf's pups they call it good.

 

Is the shark evil because it hungers for meat? Is fire evil because it burns? Of course not. They simply act according to their nature.

 

And the nature of Khorne is to fight and kill.

 

The ocean of blood that borders his domain is fed by the kills of raiders who sweep in to slay the inhabitants of a village....and by the blows struck by those same villagers if they have the courage to raise axe and scythe in defense of their homes.

[Yogi]

 

The gods surely are selfish (if they can, on an ontological level), ..... Khorne grows stronger not only through mindless bloodshed and carnage, but also through honor and selfless sacrifice.

 

 

 

 

Disagree.

 

http://i.imgur.com/Ah3ye5n.png

 

He doesn't feed off nobility. Its what the weak followers harp on about to justify their degeneracy. The chaos gods have many deluded followers it seems. 

[Forté]

Like others have said, not all the Gods and their followers are necessarily evil.

 

Take Nurgle for example. He delights in creating new diseses but at the same time gifting those who follow him the ability to survive such creations and share them with others.

 

Slaanesh, while not necessarily evil, is very selfish. But at the same time let's his followers experience everything in new ways and to higher highs than ever.

 

Khorne promotes and rewards martial prowess, which while brutal and bloody is no worse than the Imperium demanding obedience and compliance with the threat being war.

 

Tzeentch promotes knowledge which is something the Imperium seeks to limit and control.

 

None of them really are more evil than a shark that attacks and kills to feed.

[Yogi]

The Chaos Gods? Evil?

 

When wolves pull down a deer, I have no doubt the prey considers it the vilest evil possible, yet when its flesh fills the belly of the wolf's pups they call it good.

 

Is the shark evil because it hungers for meat? Is fire evil because it burns? Of course not. They simply act according to their nature.

 

And the nature of Khorne is to fight and kill.

 

The ocean of blood that borders his domain is fed by the kills of raiders who sweep in to slay the inhabitants of a village....and by the blows struck by those same villagers if they have the courage to raise axe and scythe in defense of their homes.

 

Maybe you can say they are a dark grey. But if the wolf kills prey it has a purpose. Its hungry. If it kills other wolves, If it kills everything it meets, then its more khornate. 

[Vesper]

The Chaos Gods? Evil?

When wolves pull down a deer, I have no doubt the prey considers it the vilest evil possible, yet when its flesh fills the belly of the wolf's pups they call it good.

Is the shark evil because it hungers for meat? Is fire evil because it burns? Of course not. They simply act according to their nature.

And the nature of Khorne is to fight and kill.

The ocean of blood that borders his domain is fed by the kills of raiders who sweep in to slay the inhabitants of a village....and by the blows struck by those same villagers if they have the courage to raise axe and scythe in defense of their homes.

Clearly, there's also the survival of the fittest thing with Khorne.

And Yogi, I'm certain imperials don't want to know how everything about them feeds Chaos and they prefer to be the ones hiding behind honor and courage while Blood Angels slaughter innocent children .

[Marshal Rohr]

You're a loyalist stick to the emperor.

 

At best the benevolent fantasy is used to lure new converts. but in the end The gods laugh. They don't care.

You should stick to minding your own :cuss business and not telling people what they can and can't say.

[Kol Saresk]

http://www.tarasivec.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/500px-Anchorman-well-that-escalated-quickly.jpg

 

I think we can all agree that one of the things we all love about this universe is that it allows us to have our own unique, and sometimes shared, interpretations. Some of those interpretations only see one absolute. Some see a duality. Others see a whole spectrum.

 

To one, Khorne is monster. To another, he is a monster who has honor. To a third, he is monster created by those who follow him and because those are his creators, if they have honor, then so does he.

 

One thing to remember about the Chaos Gods is that they are shaped as much by their followers as their followers are shaped by them. It is a self-perpetuating symbiosis.

 

Khorne is the War God. Most of his followers are warriors. Most warrior cultures have some form of honor code. All of this mixes together. As a result, there is no one true view. There are many.

[incinerator950]

The Chaos gods have more than a single, mindnumbing aspect to aspire and follow.

[totgeboren]

(Ok, here goes. I mean no offence by this but it's just my very personal interpretation of chaos in w40k and how to rationalise someone following them, despite them being obviously 'evil'. I have no religious persuasion whatsoever myself and view religions at best as... quaint, so if you find that offensive you might best look away and not click the spoiler button.)

The chaos gods are Gods, and thus following them means you are following a religion, say in this case the Religion of War, or Khorne. Religion and Morality, especially the kind pertaining to good and evil really don't have much to do with the other as a casual look on the TV shows us. What is good or evil is dependant on people and their experiences, whilst what religions say is good or evil is simply a matter of asserting authority, and is in many cases totally divorced from the well-being of anyone. The deer might find the actions of the wolf evil, but the deer has no concept of religion at all for example.

People say their own particular religion is oh so good and honourable and X, Y and Z which is bad/evil is of course not permitted. Yet then we have lots and lots of people who do X, Y and Z explicitly with religious motivations and rationalizations.

For me the exact same thing is true in w40k, with the exception that following your Gods moral code (which has nothing to do with what most people in reality perceive as 'Good' or 'Evil') gives you real power and benefits. If people who followed say the Aesir gained immortality, psychic powers and immense physical strength, I would bet the number of for example Christians and Muslims in the world would drop sharply, no matter how pious they may proclaim to be right now. If following one particular religion gave huge and measurable benefits, that would sort of end most theological debates on the subject of which religion was true and which wasn't.

That is w40k. Some strange prophet shows up and promises many strange things if you only follow his word, spoken by "The True Gods". And then people around you who start to follow him really do gain all these great gifts! What such a god proclaims is good or evil would be what people think is good or evil, because the religion is obviously true since it deliver on its promises. I mean, today we have poor albino African kids who get chopped to bits because some witch-doctor says that they are daemons and allowing them to live is a great sin. For most people here that is obviously a case of religious morality not correlating to our own sense of morality, but in w40k these people might be blessed with real powers after committing such an act.

If Khorne says X is moral, you think X is moral. At the start, you might think a coward who strikes down innocent people is immoral and you as a proud follower of Khorne must avenge them! Many years after, you might find a group of so called 'innocents' hiding in a cellar, and become so offended you strike them down because of their cowardice. A follower of the one true God would never hide in a cellar, and so these blasphemers must be put to the sword!

In w40k, as is also often the case in the real world, someone simply not being a fellow follower of your God, or not following your God in the right way will be enough justification for slaying that person on moral grounds.

So yeah, I hope I don't get banned, but the Gods in w40k can be rationalised in many ways. Mine is the one above.

[Vesper]

Well, I think that misses something huge.

 

Khorne is plural. He has many names, many titles, many dimensions.

People may worship Khorne in many different (and sometimes antagonistic) ways, for instance, the people in Daemon World worship it differently than the Blood Pact.

That could be based of cultural differences, different values, a different paradigm. That could be tied to how the knowledge of Khorne is brought in, or on the personality who brings it in.

 

So I don't think there is one way to worship Khorne. There are recurring themes, that's for sure, but once again, mankind is diverse, so are the gods and the ways to worship them.

[Kol Saresk]

Well, I think that misses something huge.

 

Khorne is plural. He has many names, many titles, many dimensions.

People may worship Khorne in many different (and sometimes antagonistic) ways, for instance, the people in Daemon World worship it differently than the Blood Pact.

That could be based of cultural differences, different values, a different paradigm. That could be tied to how the knowledge of Khorne is brought in, or on the personality who brings it in.

 

So I don't think there is one way to worship Khorne. There are recurring themes, that's for sure, but once again, mankind is diverse, so are the gods and the ways to worship them.

But I think Totgeboren is going for is that, in-universe, it wouldn't be uncommon for people who worship Khorne to be antagonistic towards each other over how each individual worships Khorne. For example, one might be viewed as a liberal because he just slaughters and slaughters, regardless of what he's killing. Meanwhile, there might be a conservative warrior who only believes in killing those who attempt to fight back with a weapon, never killing innocents and believes that anyone who does is a dishonorable cur deserving only of death. And then there's a third who is a blood witch, who is disliked by both for using "magic", even if it is a blood magick that Khorne has had no problem blessing in the past. So then all three get into it.

 

All three worship Khorne. All three are acknowledged by Khorne. All three say X, Y and Z are either right or wrong, and all three are willing to kill each other over it.

[totgeboren]

Yeah Kol_Saresk got me right. I mean, I don't imagine a Khorne-dedicated world as one where everyone gets along because they all follow the same God. They would be theologically fractioned as most big religions are, though they might not view the violence in quite as negative a light as many of us do (being followers of the God of War after all).

[Wade Garrett]

Oh boy. This thread is going to go great places, I can tell.

 

http://makeameme.org/media/created/meanwhile-internet-discusses.jpg

[Kol Saresk]

Yeah Kol_Saresk got me right. I mean, I don't imagine a Khorne-dedicated world as one where everyone gets along because they all follow the same God. They would be theologically fractioned as most big religions are, though they might not view the violence in quite as negative a light as many of us do (being followers of the God of War after all).

Have you by chance read Hammer of Daemons? It has exactly what you are thinking about.

[Vesper]

Yeah Kol_Saresk got me right. I mean, I don't imagine a Khorne-dedicated world as one where everyone gets along because they all follow the same God. They would be theologically fractioned as most big religions are, though they might not view the violence in quite as negative a light as many of us do (being followers of the God of War after all).

 

Oh, I haven't read your post that way.

Note that a word (or a system, an empire...) is unlikely to have conflicting views on how to worship Khorne due to the very nature of Khorne. War quickly harmonizes things up.

[Slayer le Boucher]

Op and Vesper interpretations are the ones that made me want to be a Khorne follower bakc in 2nd Ed with the RoC books.

 

Yogi interpretation is the bland and stupid itteration of Khorne since 4th Ed, the itteration that in the end made me loose interest in 40k in the long term.

[totgeboren]

Oh boy. This thread is going to go great places, I can tell.

To be fair, we are discussing the nuances of a fictional religion set within a scifi-space-opera universe, so I at least don't think it's as bad as it sounds.

Have you by chance read Hammer of Daemons? It has exactly what you are thinking about.

Oh, no I missed that one. Next on my list to read I guess.

Oh, I haven't read your post that way.

Note that a word (or a system, an empire...) is unlikely to have conflicting views on how to worship Khorne due to the very nature of Khorne. War quickly harmonizes things up.

Ok, yeah, it's always a balancing act to write enough to ensure you are understood and not writing too much so no one bothers to read what you wrote (and 'you' is not you, but a more general form of 'someone' )

But yeah, they will all worship Khorne, but I would bet all sides in the conflict would have some sort of theological motivation as to why the other guy needs to be killed and why their own side is more deserving of Khornes favour.