Lesser gods being summoned?

[Lord Kallozar]

is it possible for lesser chaos gods to actually appear physically in the material realm?

[Dumah]

I do believe that the little known/canonically fuzzy "god" Malice is supposed to be able to take physical form (following the appropriate sacrifice of the 11 "Doomed Ones"). Don't know if he's really a god or just a jumped-up daemon with delusions of grandeur.

[Furnace Lord]

Well, all daemons of a Chaos God are really parts of it, even if they have their own personalities. So when you see a daemon manifest it's like the god in question manifesting. So I suppose if they were weak enough, as there are countless warp entities not aligned with the four powers, and any warp entity is arguably a god on some level. Although the more powerful they get the greater the warp shenanigans involved.

[Panzer]

Yeah strictly speaking you summon the god itself whenever you summon one of his daemons. ^^

[Subtle Discord]

As other say, you can't summon any of the gods per se, but I would say yes, you can summon lesser daemons that are not aligned with the Major Four. The Furies are an example of an 'Undivided' daemon representation, but, their physical form could vary wildly as per the whims and ways of the warp, especially as it tears the veil in order to manifest in real space. Almost any concept or emotion that is believed in by enough people will create something in the Warp, but just how much it can coalesce into something with a will or directed agency all depends on many factors. Do you want to create such a lesser 'god'? Go for it.

[Cheex]

There hasn't been a lot of explanation about the differences between gods and daemons in recent fluff.

 

I recall older fluff talking about how gods couldn't manifest in reality at all, so they had to create daemons who weren't as bound to the warp in order to do their bidding. Some gods have been known to pour all of their strength into creating a handful of daemons - lessening their overall power, but giving them greater ability to enter reality, essentially rebirthing themselves as new beings. Khaine is a good example of this: after his battle with Slaanesh, he was left too weak to defend himself to shattered himself into the Avatars rather than letting Slaanesh or Khorne claim his power.

 

Personally, I don't like the idea that "gods" are defined as being completely incapable of manifesting in reality, while "daemons" are ones that could. It doesn't make sense when you have daemons like Skarbrand attempting to usurp their patron. What makes more sense to me is if a god and a daemon are fundamentally the same, but the distinction is purely linguistic.

 

In my headcanon, gods are warp entities that derive power directly from emotions and actions of psychic species, while daemons are entities that are fed by their patron or are otherwise formed by random Chaos energies. Any warp entity could theoretically be summoned, but summoning becomes exponentially harder the more powerful the warp entity is.

 

So by the way it works in my head, you could summon a lesser god, but that lesser god may or may not be any more powerful than a daemon of one of the Big Four.

[MasterDeath]

Well, lesser gods are basically Daemon Princes or very powerful Greater Daemons, at least according to the Liber Chaotica from years past. This can be summoned, so why not?

[Slasher956]

What is a god?  what is a demon (or angel)?

 

where is the line between the two?

 

Or to put it another way... why cant a lesser god be summoned in to the material plain... a greater god attempting to enter the material plain would cause a disturbance and it could be argued that is what caused the eye of terror to be formed... so summoning a lesser god could be what causes a planet to enter the half way situation between being in the material plain and the warp.

[Panzer]

I'm with Cheex there. Something big like the chaos gods probably could be summoned in theory but they are such huge warp entities that realistically no amount of psyker would have that kind of power.

 

Not to mention what that might even imply for the universe if it were possible. What would happen if the very concept of blood, war and murder would leave the realm of where all those thoughts and actions pool together and enters the realm of where it comes from? What would remain in "place" (not literally a place as we would understand it in reality) where Khorne used to be in the warp?

The chaos gods are a concept that became self-aware unlike other kinds of gods in the warp. They are on an entirely different level and not for no reason the kind of apocalyptic threat they are.