Question about World Eaters and Khorne Worshippers

[General Strike]

1. How does Khorne effect the minds of his worshippers, are they all blood thirsty mad men, or can they be seething cold anger or pure martial warriors? He is also the god of martial prowess and honor, right?

2. So Berserkers exist outside of the World Eaters? Are the bunny ears a must have? Arent they a world eater gladiator tradition?

[Panzer]

1. Regular Khorne Worshippers can think and act more or less normal. They just like doing Khorn stuff of course.

Yes Khorne is also the god of martial prowess and honor, like the other gods have good sides as well, however the 40k universe is rather screwed and all the negativity just pushes the negative aspects of the chaos gods even more. In a peaceful universe peaceful chaos gods could exist and thus Khorne worshipper who worship the more positive aspects ...that's not the setting tho, so Khorne worshipper who represent the positive aspects of Khorne would be extremely rare and still kinda corrupt.

 

2. Yeah they do. Their headpiece has no specific function but chaos gods love symbolism so I'd say it's no must-have but rather unlikely to see them without.

Edited October 5, 2017 by sfPanzer

[hushrong]

1. I always think of the berzerkers and the nails that bite into their minds. Some are able to resist the urges for violence and keep themselves from wanton bloodshed. Others no longer do and they are the gore drenched, uncontrollable murderers most imagine when one thinks of a berzerker.

 

I also do not believe they can all be murderous madmen always killing something if it had a pulse. Imagine a World Eater warship loaded with a few such madmen. They would kill their personal slaves who maintained their armor. They would kill the crew that commanded the ship, maybe even the navigator who is pretty important for getting around. Later they would kill the machine priests who really keep the ship together. After killing off vital crew members and anything other mortal they found they would kill each other or themselves.

 

All that would be left is ship whose interior looked like a meat grinder for some poor souls to find.

 

2. If I saw an astartes, eyes red and foaming at the mouth, while screaming for my blood and my skull the absence of bunny ears isn't going to make me feel any better. A bloodthirsty berzerker in the heat of battle is a bloodthirsty berzerker in the heat of battle no matter the armor or colors visible on it under all the gore Its a neat and unique look but not totally necessary.

[Sun Reaver]

Agree with the two above. Most berserkers are from the World Eater Legion, but not all of them. The difference between a more level headed Khorne worshiper and a World Eater one is the butcher's nails. They make the host feel pain at anything that is not violence, even breathing. 

 

If you read the some of the Age of Sigmar stuff, those Khorne worshipers act pretty normal (as far as Chaos goes), they just indulge in insane acts of bloodshed and violence. I think it would be cool to feature a war-band that focuses on the martial aspect and prowess of Khorne. They'd still be heretics, but less mad-man and more evil strategic duelists. It'd be a great parallel to a loyalist company champion. 

 

Additionally, the 'bunny' helmets are a variation of the gladiator style helmet the World Eater Legion favored heavily before their fall to Chaos. I like to think that they decorated and morphed the old helmets into the the more recognizable shapes you see today. 

[hushrong]

Thinking back to Khorne Worshippers I forgot about the Blood Pact.

 

I am pretty sure they were devoted to Khorne but unlike most Chaos cults and warbands they were highly organized. They were essentially a well drilled and disciplined guard regiment practically. Sure they smelled and would murder the hell out of you, maybe even keep your hands (among other things) as trophies, but they were a professional fighting force.

[General Strike]

I'm hoping to find some helmets similiar to the helm on the Lord of Contagion, and do some single style horns on them, but I might go a different route. I've got a couple projects brewing, and this project might not get work done on it before WE get their update and Angron, but I was developing fluff for it now.

[Fhanados]

Storm of Iron had a pretty cool depiction of an Iron Warriors Captain who was particularly bloodthirsty and short tempered. Still a great warrior and strategist, but the other captains had the attitude that it was only a matter of time before he completely devolved into a berzerk madman. 

[Bloody Legionnaire]

I always imagined that the Berzerkers who follow Khorne view him as the enabler. The only time they feel relief from the butcher's nails is through shedding blood in close combat and Khorne provides them plenty opportunity to go and shed blood. 

[Cheex]

It's your army, your fluff - do what you want. I don't mean to sound flippant, but it's a huge universe, so go nuts.

[Goreshed]

The Blood Pact were undivided, or at least they never said which Chaos god was worshiped by them, since after all the focus of those books were upon those pesky Imperial Guard....

 

While Khorne loves a good skull at the foot of his throne, I have no doubt that there are times when they can at least wait to get from point A to point B without outright killing everyone in sight. Any general worth his kahonayes would put those uncontrollable aspects of his army into some sort of holding cell to prevent them from destroying everything in sight.

 

But as Cheex said, this is 40k, go crazy with it. And as sfPanzer said, it is not a happy setting for anyone and grim darkness is the name of the game.

[MasterDeath]

1. In my Oppinion, yes their are "kinda sane" Khorne Worshippers. But no "kinda sane" Khorne Berzerkers. Basically a Chaos Space Marine that worships Khorne is "kinda sane", more aggressive for sure, but he is ok. Once he crosses the line into insanity, he becomes a Berzerker. And yes, Khorne is also a god of martial excellence and honour. So you could have a Chaos Lord of Khorne that is a very honourable person, but also always at the very edge of becoming a Berzerker, a kinda tragic figure.

And then there are World Eaters and the Butcher´s Nails. Its like the above described slow descend into madness, but way faster.

 

2. Take whatever helmet you want. Its your story.

[Azekai]

The Blood Pact were undivided, or at least they never said which Chaos god was worshiped by them, since after all the focus of those books were upon those pesky Imperial Guard....

Really? I thought their allegiance was pretty clearly telegraphed. The Blood Pact are Khornate.

 

The main 'Blood Pact' ritual where they gash their hands horrifically on the armor of the Gaur is a dedication to Khorne. The Ghosts don't say that in character because they don't know, and most ground-level Imperials are kept in the dark as to who or what Khorne even is...

 

So tl;dr, yeah, you can have 'sane' people serve Khorne, but the definition of the term is pretty flexible in the 41st Millennium.

[OPTIMVSCHRISTVS]

Really there's been so many variations on the theme of Khorne worshipers in 40k that you could get away with them being anything from frothing lunatics to hardcore dedicated warriors without being unfluffy. Even World Eaters have been depicted as acting fairly "normally" when the nails aren't biting in various cases (Lheor comes to mind immediately).

 

As hushrong mentioned earlier in this thread, if they were utterly crazy and uncontrollable at all times, they'd simply slaughter each other and leave themselves stranded in the void, ultimately posing a threat to nobody but themselves and probably remaining in very low numbers compared to other Chaos forces. If that were the case, Angron wouldn't have been able to mass 50,000 of these guys for the Dominion of Fire campaign, or for Armageddon, or any of those other instances in the fluff where you see massive hordes of these guys hurling themselves at the Imperium.

[Sagentus]

With my army I like to think of my exalted champion as a crazed khornate bezerker when on the battlefield, but he is able to think tactically as well as wanting bloodshed/skulls. He can make decisions that would not sacrifice his men in the name of bloodshed, but more able to use the little amount of warriors he has to tactically cause as much carnage as possible and gather as many skulls for his god as possible

[Goreshed]

 

The Blood Pact were undivided, or at least they never said which Chaos god was worshiped by them, since after all the focus of those books were upon those pesky Imperial Guard....

Really? I thought their allegiance was pretty clearly telegraphed. The Blood Pact are Khornate.

 

The main 'Blood Pact' ritual where they gash their hands horrifically on the armor of the Gaur is a dedication to Khorne. The Ghosts don't say that in character because they don't know, and most ground-level Imperials are kept in the dark as to who or what Khorne even is...

 

So tl;dr, yeah, you can have 'sane' people serve Khorne, but the definition of the term is pretty flexible in the 41st Millennium.

 

 

Hmm for some reason I could have sworn it wasn't outlined but then again I didn't read much material outside of the GG series.

 

Either way,

 

It's Khorne. It's 40k. It's a big universe. A lot of time the numbers don't make sense, a lot of time the numbers don't have to make sense. So go with what you think is cool. Long as the skulls fly and blood flows I don't think Khorne will care too much