Afterlife in the 41st Millenium?

[Warsmith Demetrios]

           I'm not quite sure if there is already a topic or discussion covering this topic on the B&C, but I have heard several different opinions regarding an afterlife in the Warhammer 40k universe. The Chaos Gods tormenting their servants who have failed them, the warp predators ripping apart the souls of the departed, or the simple dissipation of the mortal soul into the warp's currents. I ponder on the average mortal soul's fate in this universe because in a recent piece of writing I have been working on for my Iron Warriors warband, an Ultramarine successor in slain in battle destroying an alpha maulerfiend which had been hunting his sequestered Deathwatch kill team since the Chaos Astartes had breached the fortress city's walls. When he wakes he finds himself wandering the formless wastes of the warp, assailed on all sides by daemons and beasts. Just as he is about to be overwhelmed, the Big E himself (in the form of some golden, radiant giant) shows up and saves the day, untold quadrillions of faithful Imperial souls standing behind him from Astartes to simple citizenry, all armed and roaring praises towards their god who raises the Space Marines back to his feet and leads his infinite army against the equally innumerable hosts of daemons charging from the distance. I guess what I'm asking hear is if this is plausible, that the souls of the Imperial faithful are just as vulnerable to the predations of the Dark Gods, or are they equally damned to serve eternally as some sort of fuel for the Emperor to hold back the tides of Chaos?

[Conn Eremon]

My own personal view, which is as much formed from my own opinions and preference for how I think it should be as it is from actual sources depicting how really is, is that all souls depart for the Warp and are shredded, torn asunder, assimilated into the ethereal nothingness and ultimately becoming just another element of the Chaos, unidentifiable and without identity, barring intervention of some kind, such as the soulstones of the Eldar, the powerful minds of the Warp-touched, or the waiting maws of the predators that lurk.

[Captain Nameless]

Wouldn't the Emperor qualify as a, if not The "powerful mind of the warp-touched".

 

(By warp-touched, you mean psyker, right? If not, feel free to correct me.)

[Conn Eremon]

Read AD-B's Talon of Horus. Not only is it quite good, but it depicts an interesting interaction of the Warp spilling from the Eye of Terror and the Astronomican, the Emperor's psychic beacon.

 

Honestly, what you describe could very easily be one of an infinite number of ways in which these two pseudo-primordial forces rage against each other, just one way in which an Imperial Space Marine can rationalize what can't be rationalized, experience what can't be defined.

[Kol Saresk]

We have seen a few examples. Wyrdmaker and an unnamed captain in A D-B's Abaddon short "Chosen" are described as having been torn apart by daemons. After being resurrected, Cyrene mentions having nightmares about how daemons chased her soul. And at first, it was that Tarik Torgaddon had become a daemon , but rather the daemon that consumed his soul had also assimilated his personality while apparently the remainder is now haunting Garviel Loken.

 

But it usually doesn't end well.

 

And as for the Emperor being able to intervene, I would probably suggest reading Talon of Horus, as Cormac already has.

[GrandMagnus]

Buuuut doesnt the C:CD mention that the plaguebearers are infact the souls of those people who have died from Nurgles Rot. And that Khornes bloodletters are the souls of his fallen mortal servants?

[Kol Saresk]

Buuuut doesnt the C:CD mention that the plaguebearers are infact the souls of those people who have died from Nurgles Rot. And that Khornes bloodletters are the souls of his fallen mortal servants?

Which brings up Tormageddon. Except for when he goads Loken about being the daemon that devoured Torgaddon's soul, he fully identifies as being Torgaddon. He even acts a though he is back with his brothers and father and IIRC, at one point he even thinks it.

 

Which creates a branching theory for me that if a weak enough daemon is the one who devours the soul, the daemon and the soul become one entity with the identity of the soul. It creates the illusion that the souls of the dearly departed become daemons while at the same time keeping the rather concrete background that the souls are devoured. So when Bobby the Slicer dies and goes to the Skull Throne and is eaten by a Neverborn with no conscious thought, Bobby the Daemon is born, who has the memories and personalities of Bobby the Slicer an for all intents and purposes is Bobby the Slicer, even though Slicer's soul was still destroyed and consumed.

[Tenebris]

The afterlife in the Warp is the same as life in the Warp, which means it is exactly how the single individual thinks it will be. It is not the Warp that shapes the individual, but the individual who shapes the Warp. It is this resonance which gives credit to the theory that a "heaven" exists as well as an "inferno". 

 

So:

 

Do you know what really lies beyond the veil? Can you conceive of what the warp really is? Us. It is us. The truth is that there is nothing in this galaxy but us. It is our emotions, our shadows, our hates and lusts and disgusts that lie in wait on the other side of reality. That’s all. Every thought, every memory, every dream, every nightmare that any of us have ever had. The Gods exist because we gave birth to them. They are our own vileness and fury and cruelty given form, imbued with divinity because we cannot conceive of anything so powerful without giving it a name. The Primordial Truth. The Pantheon of Chaos Undivided. The Ruinous Powers. The ‘Dark Gods’... And, forgive me, I can barely speak that last name without forcing my scribe, the patient and diligent servitor, to record nothing but breathy laughter for several moments. The warp is a mirror that swirls with the smoke of our burning souls. Without us there would be no reflection, no patterns to perceive, no shadow of our desires. When we look into the warp, it looks back. It looks back with our eyes, with the life we have given it.

 

And:

 

So remember these words. The Gods do not hate us. They do not scream for the destruction of all we hold dear. They are us. They are our sins coming home to the hearts that gave them life. We are the Gods, and the hells that we have made are our own.

 

From: Talon of Horus, by ADB. (Chapter: Warband)

 

PS: Gods I love bookmarking things with the e-book format. Always so handy.

 

This is the theory behind the whole Warp/Gods/Daemons/Angels. The Warp is what you make of it. In truth this means that there is a heaven for the faithful of the Emperor, as it is an inferno for the lost and the damned. Yet the core concept is as simple as it is frightening, it is us, we who shape the Warp with our own perception, with our dreams, acts and faith. So truth be told there is not a single form of the Warp, of afterlife, what is in fact is as many visions of heaven and hell as there are mortal souls in the galaxy... So in proper 40k fashion, everything goes. 

 

The event that happened to the marine in the first post is thus legit, for this is how he perceived his faith, his interpretation of the Emperor, his "at the right side of the Golden Throne..." concept. What happened is what the Ultramarine believed it would happen in the afterlife, how he understood his "faith", how he understood "worship". The Warp looked back and resonated with the belief of the marine...

[GrandMagnus]

 

Buuuut doesnt the C:CD mention that the plaguebearers are infact the souls of those people who have died from Nurgles Rot. And that Khornes bloodletters are the souls of his fallen mortal servants?

Which brings up Tormageddon. Except for when he goads Loken about being the daemon that devoured Torgaddon's soul, he fully identifies as being Torgaddon. He even acts a though he is back with his brothers and father and IIRC, at one point he even thinks it.

 

Which creates a branching theory for me that if a weak enough daemon is the one who devours the soul, the daemon and the soul become one entity with the identity of the soul. It creates the illusion that the souls of the dearly departed become daemons while at the same time keeping the rather concrete background that the souls are devoured. So when Bobby the Slicer dies and goes to the Skull Throne and is eaten by a Neverborn with no conscious thought, Bobby the Daemon is born, who has the memories and personalities of Bobby the Slicer an for all intents and purposes is Bobby the Slicer, even though Slicer's soul was still destroyed and consumed.

 

That is actually a very interesting theory, but wouldnt that effectively mean that some daemons have conscious thought and intelligence (even to an extend free will) while the rest are simply controlled by one of the 4 gods or the warp itself?

[Conn Eremon]

I would definitely say there is a tier system of intelligence among the daemons. Mostly, daemons appear to have their own consciences and identities, but you also hear of animalistic daemons, feral, instinctual and predatory.

 

So I would place on the bottom those that are, more or less, nothing more than animals of the Warp. They are ruled by their instincts, which are in turn defined by their god or the very nature of the Warp. These daemons would hunger for souls because of simple hunger, and might overpower the soul with that basic simplicity. Or the soul will dominate the beast, the void where its identity could be filled by this soul, whether the soul still exists or not. You are what you eat.

 

On the flipside, you do have fully sentient daemons. Ancient beyond reckoning and powerful. These are the most likely to simply dominate whoever or whatever they take, and understand enough to basically have free will, even if they are bound to a greater will.

 

And you can have daemons anywhere in between. Argel Tal's daemon was basically the former, but did have a childlike intelligence, for instance.

[Kol Saresk]

 

 

Buuuut doesnt the C:CD mention that the plaguebearers are infact the souls of those people who have died from Nurgles Rot. And that Khornes bloodletters are the souls of his fallen mortal servants?

Which brings up Tormageddon. Except for when he goads Loken about being the daemon that devoured Torgaddon's soul, he fully identifies as being Torgaddon. He even acts a though he is back with his brothers and father and IIRC, at one point he even thinks it.

 

Which creates a branching theory for me that if a weak enough daemon is the one who devours the soul, the daemon and the soul become one entity with the identity of the soul. It creates the illusion that the souls of the dearly departed become daemons while at the same time keeping the rather concrete background that the souls are devoured. So when Bobby the Slicer dies and goes to the Skull Throne and is eaten by a Neverborn with no conscious thought, Bobby the Daemon is born, who has the memories and personalities of Bobby the Slicer an for all intents and purposes is Bobby the Slicer, even though Slicer's soul was still destroyed and consumed.

 

That is actually a very interesting theory, but wouldnt that effectively mean that some daemons have conscious thought and intelligence (even to an extend free will) while the rest are simply controlled by one of the 4 gods or the warp itself?

 

I would argue that it means some have conscious thought and intelligence(I personally believe all daemons have free will, that's why we have stories of daemons rebelling against the gods) and then, as Cormac said, there are those that simply operate on instinct. And then, just like with any scale of intelligence, those two are simply the polar opposites with individual daemons filling up the entire spectrum in between.