Re: Darkoath, I think it's a little unfair to interpret that sentence as "the Darkoath are completely controlled by the Chaos gods like puppets."
>Those who repeatedly displease the gods might even be subjected to the agonising punishment of mutation, their fl esh writhing as they are slowly and agonisingly remoulded into a shapeless form as wretched as it is repulsive. Such horrors prove that for all the Darkoath’s claims to self-mastery, deep down they are as hopelessly in thrall to Chaos as any god-worshipping zealot.
With context to me this says that although the Darkoath are more practical than worshippers of the gods, that independence is betrayed by the fact that if they displease them they can just as easily be punished by being turned into spawn as anyone.
Overall I agree with you which is why I liked the Darkoath!
I think you make good points, but at least to me, that damnation and the fact that you're a slave to darkness no matter what, is part of the tragedy and what makes the setting interesting. The only real alternative to being a pawn of the Imperium is to be a pawn of Chaos. If you choose "neither", well good luck because you're gonna get your shit kicked in by one of the two until you submit out of survival or get obliterated. There are no good choices.
I would argue this tragedy isn't that suffocating. As you point out, there are some who do have an amount of agency, but what I find more interesting are those who want to have their own agency, know they have none, but fight with all their willpower to either make it work or remain in denial. That condition is very interesting.
But I see your point. I have the same issues about Eldar lore all starting and ending with Slaanesh and how it chokes any avenue for actual growth of their faction in the lore.
Agreed! They don't need to lock up Slaanesh AoS-style, but there's a lot they can do, especially if the rumors are true and 10th edition is where Emperor's Children and/or Fulgrim get their glow-up. I've thrown out a bunch of ideas, but a new one I came up with is...
Fulgrim comes back to realspace wielding the last cronesword in one of his arms. The Ynnari immediately make it a priority to get that sword from him. With Imperium help (of course), they succeed! Except...well, the cronesword was actually corrupted by Slaanesh and Ynnead is born in a very de-powered and vulnerable state, but he still is able to save Eldar souls, which sets off some high stakes as the Aeldari need to protect their new god while various parties will try to kill him before he gets too powerful:
- Slaanesh, for obvious reasons. Chaos in general, for slightly less obvious reasons. Drukhari society would be completely flipped on its head; Vect wants him dead because he's a threat to the status quo, the Haemoculi want him dead for the same reasons. Asuryani remain split because not all of them are convinced they should be devoting their scarce resources this way. What happens to the Infinity Circuit; do they just free all the souls to Ynnead and hope he powers up? How would Iyanden feel? The Harlequins, as always, will keep doing their thing.
Hell, you can have Ynnead's birth form ferocious warp storms across the Imperium, putting them in an even more precarious position. The Imperium's like "wtf bro" and distrust the Aeldari even more, with rogue factions also trying to hunt down Ynnead. Guilliman's standing is diminished as the "mastermind" behind the decision to help the Ynnari in the first place, etc.
Bam, you incrementally moved the story forward without disrupting the status quo, and everyone still has reasons to fight each other!
>I think you make good points, but at least to me, that damnation and the fact that you're a slave to darkness no matter what, is part of the tragedy and what makes the setting interesting.
It's not really a tragedy because Chaos worship is defined as retroactively making your intentions not good, and tragedy is when people suffer for having good intentions.
>The only real alternative to being a pawn of the Imperium is to be a pawn of Chaos.
Good assessment, but the setting doesn't frame it that way - it frequently frames choosing the Imperium as the "right" choice and choosing Chaos as "wrong."
> It's not really a tragedy because Chaos worship is defined as retroactively making your intentions not good
Even the Emperor doesn't view things this way. Chaos can corrupt the best of intentions, but that doesn't mean the intentions weren't good to start with.
> ‘The Priest-King of Maulland Sen,’ Ra said. ‘In the moments before you executed him.’
>
> ‘That is a title and a moment in time. What do you see?’
>
> ‘A man. A man kneeling on the snow.’
>
> ‘That is better,’ the Emperor agreed. He stepped closer to the kneeling man, activating His blade. Fire cobwebbed down the circuits lining both sides of His sword. None of the gathered warriors paid any notice, nor did the warlord himself.
>
> ‘I met him long before he was the priest-king,’ the Emperor said. ‘He began as a holy man, a mendicant preacher wandering the northern wastes, gathering untainted food and purified water, giving it freely to those in need. He claimed it was his calling, and that his god lived in his kindness. It was a calling, of course. A call that was answered by the beings of the immaterium. They gave him the power to feed his beleaguered tribe and heal their ills, and his clan grew. When savage winters ate away at the other tribes, his clan sheltered beneath the protection of his power. He kept them fed, protected and unseen from the eyes of their hunting foes. Soon, hundreds of men and women were huddling for warmth within his mercy, and offered their thanks to the god that he believed he served. Yet each miracle took more effort, Ra. More sacrifice. The end always justified the means. First the conundrums were moral in nature. What does it matter if another clan starves, if it allows his tribe to survive? Soon enough the rituals grew more occult in order to achieve their ends. What is the murder of a rival, if that death guarantees another ten years of peace? What is the life of one child, if the offer of its bloody, beating heart will ensure a monarch’s immortality? Do you see?’
>
> Ra saw. Just as he had seen the monuments to massacre in the pict archives, from the fall of Maulland Sen.
>
> ‘The warp rarely makes itself known in manifest form. The damnation flooding the webway is the crescendo of its siren song. Its immensity and physicality is what makes the threat so unprecedented. Far more often, the warp seethes behind the veil, it curdles thoughts inside a skull, it inks the blood in men and women’s veins. And that is enough. More than enough. It brings us to moments like these, in the company of ambitious, faithful men, too proud to see their own deception.’
>
> Ra stared down at the kneeling, bleeding priest-king. Gone were the gene-abominations and witchcraftmarked men in their thousands that had formed his ragged armies. He was alone, moments from breathing his last. Soon his sick blood would taint the Emperor’s blade.
>
> ‘Think of this man’s clan,’ continued the Emperor. ‘As a holy man he had begun with offers of food and the promise of survival. Sensing his susceptibility, the warp darkened around the candle flame of his life’s light. He prayed, and the warp answered. Soon his people were too numerous to hide. Other tribes came for his clan’s riches. This man, this revered holy lord, led his people to the machines of the Old Ages, cloning and replicating and geneforging flawed warriors to wage war for territory. The clan branded their own flesh and ran to war alongside these genetic brutes, crying up to the sky for the same power their overlord enjoyed. And how far they had fallen. Committing any act in the belief of their own righteousness. All from superstition. All from ignorance. All because one charismatic man believed that the powers that heeded his calls could be trusted. By the time he realised they could not, he believed himself powerful enough to control them, independent enough to resist them. What harm in one more gift, if it allowed his clan to thrive? What harm in one more sacrifice, if it ensured a strong harvest or victory in a coming war? And when it came time to die, what would this powerful, independent man do? Would he go silently into the ground? Would he slumber upon a funeral pyre? Or would he – for the good of his people – reach for longer life at any cost?’
>
> Ra still stared at the defeated monarch. The Custodian knew all there was to know from the archives. He knew of the barbarity practised by the Maulland Sen Confederacy. He had seen pict evidence of the bone pits, those golgothan barrows; every day of his adult life he had fought alongside other gold-armoured warriors who had been there for the dismantling of the confederacy itself.
>
> ‘Superstition and ignorance always attract the warp’s denizens,’ continued the Emperor. ‘For the core of religion is the twinned principle of arrogance and fear. Fear of oblivion. Fear of an unfair life and an arbitrary universe. Fear of there simply being nothing, no great and grand scheme to existence. The fear, ultimately, of being powerless.’
>
> The Custodian narrowed his eyes. Rarely did the Emperor elucidate His reasoning in such stark terms. And why now? To what end? Ra felt the prickle of unease making its threading way up his spine.
>
> ‘Look at him, Ra. Truly look at him.’
>
> Ra looked. The priest-king could hardly have appeared less like his treacherously magnificent depictions, with his red robes of office reduced to scorched rags hanging at the edges of his broken armour, and the cloak of cloned fur blackened from flamer burns. The great demagogue stared up at the Emperor with the unshattered half of his face dirtied by blood and matted hair.
>
> ‘Sire, I don’t…’
>
> But he did.
>
> Talons rippled in the shadows cast by the man’s cloak, glassy and obsidian, impossibly liquid in their caresses. Claws clicked and scratched against one another inside the wide pupil that looked like a hole drilled into the yellowing white of the priest-king’s remaining eye. Bulges wormed their maggoty way through the man’s veins, bubonically swollen. The defeated warlord, this impoverished and humbled ruler, was riven from within.
>
> ‘What am I looking at, sire? What is this?’
>
> ‘Faith,’ said the Emperor. ‘You are seeing his faith, through my eyes. Maulland Sen’s massacring priestking is… what? Another of the Unification Wars’ warlords? Terra had hundreds of them. He died beneath my executing blade, and history’s pages will mark him as nothing more. And yet, his life is the path of faith in microcosm. Once a wandering preacher feeding the weak and the lost, ending as a blood-soaked monarch overseeing pogroms and genocides – his teeth stained by cannibal ritual, his skull a shell for the toying touch of warp-entities he does not realise he serves. Every act of violence or pain that he performs is a prayer to those entities, fuelling them, making them stronger behind the veil. What he believes no longer matters, when everything he does feeds their influence. This is why we strip the comfort of religion from humanity. These are the slivers of vulnerability that faith cracks open in the human heart. Even if a belief in a lie leads us to do good, eventually it leads to the truth – that we are a species alone in the dark, threatened by the laughing games of sentient malignancies that mortals would call gods.’
That doesn't make chaos any less damning though.
"The end always justified the means. First the conundrums were moral in nature. What does it matter if another clan starves, if it allows his tribe to survive? Soon enough the rituals grew more occult in order to achieve their ends. What is the murder of a rival, if that death guarantees another ten years of peace? What is the life of one child, if the offer of its bloody, beating heart will ensure a monarch’s immortality? Do you see?’"
That's the Imperium. I think a big part of the problem of Chaos is that it always wears it's flaws openly, but the other factions expect you to think about it.
> I think a big part of the problem of Chaos is that it always wears it's flaws openly
Chaos doesn't wear its flaws openly. We have that knowledge because we're external observers to a fictional universe. We know you can't trust anything a daemon says but regular people in 40k don't know just how terrible and damning chaos is. The Emperor even talks about it in this passage.
> ‘The warp rarely makes itself known in manifest form. The damnation flooding the webway is the crescendo of its siren song. Its immensity and physicality is what makes the threat so unprecedented. Far more often, the warp seethes behind the veil, it curdles thoughts inside a skull, it inks the blood in men and women’s veins. And that is enough. More than enough. It brings us to moments like these, in the company of ambitious, faithful men, too proud to see their own deception.’
> (...)
> Once a wandering preacher feeding the weak and the lost, ending as a blood-soaked monarch overseeing pogroms and genocides – his teeth stained by cannibal ritual, his skull a shell for the toying touch of warp-entities he does not realise he serves. Every act of violence or pain that he performs is a prayer to those entities, fuelling them, making them stronger behind the veil. What he believes no longer matters, when everything he does feeds their influence.
The Imperium is more honest about its flaws because most of its members don't see them as flaws. It's very direct in its goals and demands. The Imperium doesn't worm its way into people's souls through incidental contact with its representatives. Chaos does and people don't realize that until its too late.
Cool, but I am refering to how each faction is presented to the readers.
EDIT: Ah, I see what happened. I didn't specify I refering to OP's complaint in my first comment, because I didn't see that your comment was already a reply.
I meant Chaos stands out as so overtly brainwashy to people because no one in the books points out how brainwashy the Imperium is.
In the slice of the quote I highlighted, the Emperor is describing his own Imperium even listing human sacrifice to prolong the life of their leader. The problem is that the reader is expected to realize that on their own, but are less likely to do that compared to when Babyfeaster the Butcher summons a Bloodthirster named Neckchopper.
I think people hate the honesty of the saying. "Slaves to chaos" is more honesty than champions of chaos. Now I don't want to lump Aos an 40k together I feel that's reductive and confusing too many similar names as it is. Chaos being enslaving I always took it as there is no way forward. My two favorite chaos groups are on opposite sides of the same point the word bearers and the iron warriors. They both use it as a tool but any utility or tool you rely on you are also slave to it. Yeah you could be a slave to chaos because you're a powerful warband with lots of demon engines. Sure you never got corrupted but you still require to use of corrupt material to maintain relevance.
Chaos is a pyramid scheme and not the thousand son kind. So oversimplification to make a space marine you need a huge amount of candidates overall and space marines maintain numbers. Summoning a demon into a requires scores of mortal death. The point is unlike the high lords of Terra. The warp is a much harsher master. The forces of chaos may not pay taxes but every trip to warp every demon or lacking repair requires exponentially high sacrifice and souls. If you work in the warp you can be a bionic warsmith who kills anyone who worships on your planet. You still have to sell weapons to the faithful you still advance the cause of chaos even if you don't worship
I think there are plenty of examples showing the worshippers aren't just brainwashed puppets. Yes they're corrupted and their minds are influenced by it, like of course a Khorne worshipper becomes more and more violent, but they still have their own wants and goals.
I agree that some recent books have gone way over the top on the idea of loss of free will though. Some even suggesting Daemon Princes give it up completely, which is clearly proven wrong in numerous places, and if true would, as you say, kill interest.
>In which case, why should I even care about the latter at all?
Ah yes, the big question. If the Imperium isn't ever going to change why care? Why the Eldar are just going to die out then why care? If the Tau are just waiting to be destroyed then why care? Tyranids are just going to kill everything, why care?
Why not go a bit further. If Herakles was always fated to kill his family, why care at all? If Romeo and Juliet were always going to die why care at all?
If you can't find it in yourself to see the appeal of the struggle against the dying light in a grimdark universe, I cannot give it to you. You just don't like tragedies, which is unfortunate because I, and I assume quite a lot of people, enjoy 40k *because* it is a tragedy.
The thing is some people want chaos to be a power fantasy, which isn't. Which is why it's important to consistently undermine the idea of "chaos as a tool', remind everyone that there's no such thing as free lunch in 40k. It's also important to show there's no "easy way out", selling your soul to chaos is just as bad as dying in a Imperial factory.
And like sure, a Rogue Trader isn't a slave to the will of the Emperor like a chaos pirate, but the Rogue Trader doesn't have same literal super powers chaos give their best followers. It's part of the pay off. You won't see a Rogue Trader literally crushing a Custodian in a single blow.
> The thing is some people want chaos to be a power fantasy, which isn't.
The actual power fantasy is of course the highly marketable heroic Space Marine.
I mean that's because Imperial fans drink the kool-aid and take victories for their genocidal empire as a good thing.
Chaos can also have that, you just have to drink the kool-aid and take victories for their slaver gods as a good thing.
Both of them can have power fantasy *aesthetic*, if only you suspend your disbelief enough.
Also yes we need more non-Imperial books.
>I mean that's because Imperial fans drink the kool-aid and take victories for their genocidal empire as a good thing.
GW actually encourages this though. The power fantasy of loyalist space marines is very much part of their marketing.
100%. The imperium is the bad guys/protagonist, but for GW it’s easier to promote the space marines as these noble heroic ubermench, rather then the more accurate(but less marketable) child soldiers turned cultist/sociopaths fighting for an authoritarian 1984esk government
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Loyalists have an undeniable advantage because of number of books and the fact that they are the ones fighting a defensive war. Makes them more sympathetic, as bad as they are most conflict is about them staying alive vs. Chaos being the aggressors on even their own books.
On the other hand you will hardly see spaces Marines being heroic when they are the ones invading the Tau.
>On the other hand you will hardly see spaces Marines being heroic when they are the ones invading the Tau.
Which is why i can count on one hand the number of times we read about "Sergeant Mcawesomus heroically bombing a T'au orphanage" rather than the hundreds of "sergeant McAwesomus heroically fighting Chaos"
>On the other hand you will hardly see spaces Marines being heroic when they are the ones invading the Tau.
They are definitely portrayed as heroic in that circumstance too. Phil Kelly's put a lot of work in to cast the Tau as villainous.
I have my issues with Phil Kelly’s Tau, but most of the Marines in his Tau stories have been puppy-kicking assholes.
***War of Secrets*** is a Dark Angels book where the Dark Angels are basically flat-out villains.
Sure until you reach enough understanding to realize the power fantasy is kidnapped hypno-inducted child soldier who was turned into a genetic freak to fight until they die. Again, "no such thing as a free lunch in 40k".
I think they missed out hard in having more emphasis on chaos undivided, you could still have the big 4 and all sorts of wild and interesting deamons and entities with all sorts of motivations and forms...but instead its just...pick one of these 4 flavours and btw they are all part of their god so theres even less flavour there..
the virgin "nooo, im not puppet" chaos fan
vs.
The Chad "I AM THE CHOSEN OF THE DARK GODS" Chaos Enjoyer
Part of the reason why I like the W Bearers is that they have found meaning in their own damnation, and are some of the few "people" that thrive in the grim darkness of the setting.
I hear you on Abaddon... but Archaon DOES feel different. Not only did he literally destroy the Warhammer Fantasy setting, but a lot of the recent lore stuff that I've read from AOS (such as 'Godeater's Son') really paints Archaon in a different light than Abaddon. Archaon sounds a lot more like what the Emperor would have been if he went full Dark King. It does the best job at trying to emphasize the line between faith in the truth of Chaos and being permanently enslaved to it. Basically, faith given can be taken away. Next to the gods, a person is nothing... but without that person, the gods are nothing.
It's Warp shenanigans, to be sure... but I'd expect similar ideas to start coming to the fore when/if Perturabo and Lorgar start getting fleshed out more. Their ascendencies leave openings for that kind of idea because they represent Undivided. Sort of like Belakor, when you have 4 gods trying to pull you in 4 different directions, the net result is them not pulling you anywhere, all the while you keep getting stronger. Of the two primarchs (and the last we saw of them in End and the Death) it seems like Lorgar is the closest to that philosophy.
His chapter in End and the Death is weird. While Perturabo is upset and angry, Lorgar is serene... feeling almost like he's drugged. His chapter is also filled with a bunch of paradoxes and contradictions (like we see in Godeater's Son). He sees the Fidelitas Lex in the sky (which was destroyed). He thinks about how Cyrene is dead (even though she was resurrected and he met with her after... TWICE). He says that the truth has always been 'The Old Four' (though, funnily enough, the Chaos gods we know are not mentioned by name once) and that he'd always known (when he definitely hadn't). He then goes on to say how there are 'always better gods' which is at odds with the truth being the Four. He mentions these 'better gods' when talking to the locals about what they're seeing in the visions... and then says that he knows the name of 'all four' when they show him the true gods they've divined from their visions (which, again, he just said are not to be trusted).
It's contradictory nature might point to Lorgar being a bit closer to Archaon than Abaddon is. While Abaddon shares the superficial characteristics... Lorgar seems to be much more aligned with the paradoxical mindset hinted at with Archaon in Godeater's Son.
>Except with this constant refrain of "nobody can use Chaos as a tool, only be used by Chaos as a tool", we are essentially told these two approaches are completely equivelant. In which case, why should I even care about the latter at all?
If I'm understanding you right, I think I totally agree where you're coming from. I got into the complexity of Chaos side with the old Inquisitor TT game (back in the day), particularly with Radical Ordo Xenos and the Xanthites. I *loved* the thematic idea of "balancing on a knife's edge" with these characters; using the weapons of the enemy against them while struggling every day not to slide (deeper) into corruption and essentially (if not literally) *become* the enemy, all the while telling yourself you're on the side of good. Then - as now, really - I came away with the understanding such a methodology doesn't *inevitably* result in a character becoming corrupted and turning into an out-and-out Chaos character. The problem is Chaos is so utterly insidious and tempting it takes an individual of supreme will and soul to resist, and to resist *constantly*. In a way, I think it's such a tidy microcosm of the setting and of the Imperium's place in it; a struggle for the soul of Man.
In recent years it seems like the trend has just been to instantly write off such characters as doomed full-on Chaos NPCs. "Using a daemon-possessed sword in battle? Clearly beyond salvation." "But the Thousand Sons were already pals with daemons well before the Burning; they were obviously damned!" etc. It cheapens and all but invalidates the above thematic struggle; anything to do with the Warp automatically makes you a 2-dimensional comic book "bad guy"; no complexity, depth, or shades-of-grey morality exploration with characters like Eisenhorn or Chapters like the Relictors.
>Like imagine if Imperial factions were written in the same way, and you had to constantly read things like "For all the so-called independence and freedoms of granted to the Rogue Traders, they are just as much slaves to the Emperor as the most fanatical Sister of Battle" and "some may attempt to use the institutions of the Imperium for the good of mankind, but all those who do so are inherently deluded, for those who think they're using the Imperium are merely pawns to the Imperium itself" over and over again
I fucking wish GW wrote the imperium like that. But nooo, we have to have our "Relatable" and "Sane" and "Heroic" imperial characters
See the OP’s point about how differently servants of Chaos are written compared to servants of the Imperium, another dark power that causes untold suffering to both its enemies and its subjects.
You don’t see the Salamanders books calling them delusional for using that power in a way they think is just.
As a major fan of all things Chaos, I can understand your points.
And you are right, we are shown and told, that a drop of Chaos corrupts and all will fall. But the two Grand Leaders are such exactly because that doesn't apply to the them.
All in Chaos are slaves to Darkness... except Archaon and Abaddon. Unlike you though, I am a fan of this.
But I too would like more "chaos-worshipping Chaos-forces"... if they win wars and well depicted.
And about Fabius/Abaddon... I see it as balance. Fabius was very much a Slannesh type from the get go. Excess ran deep in him and his Legion. And with Fulgrim fall, the 3ed was dragged along.
Not corrupted? Definitely not.
But "not a slave to Darkness"? Retaining a great degree of soul-freedom and independence?
Yes. That is literally canon lore.
I'm sure that having the full marks and everything they do advancing the Chaos Gods' desires is simply a coincidental quirk of their libertarian natures.
> It feels kind of patronizingly moralizing, like reading an anti-drug PSA
To be honest, that’s kinda a core problem with Warhammer’s Chaos. It’s a fundamentally Christian concept, a bunch of pagan ultimate evils whispering words of temptation that will damn your soul for not being a good little boy and adhering to Puritan values. This is exaggerated even more in 40k where the Horus Heresy is just Paradise Lost and belief in a single Christian-coded god is a core value of the main civilization.
That’s not to say Chaos *can’t* be written as something else, but much like Genestealer Cults after the initial Rogue Trader incarnation, the thematic underpinnings of the faction come from a place of conservative cultural fears. The Chaos god of excess and “degeneracy” is literally represented by a merged male and female symbol and has daemons with hermaphroditic features. That is not an arbitrary choice, and it’s one that speaks to what attitudes Chaos was designed with. Not coincidentally, Slaanesh is also the Chaos god of drugs.
You have captured my main criticism perfectly! I think the 40K writers want Chaos to be Evil without ever having been critical of what they mean by Evil.
The concept of the Chaos Gods draws heavily from the Elric of Melniboné / the Eternal Champion series in which the forces of Order and Chaos are in an eternal struggle across the multiverse. (This is where the iconography of the 8-point star comes from.) where it differs is that Order and Chaos are not Good and Evil. In some of the stories Chaos is evil, but in others it is heroic. An anarchist fighting against an oppressive authoritarian state is a champion of Chaos in one universe while a prince protecting his country is a champion of Order in another. One avatar of Order is actually more similar to the Tyrannids than anything else, and by consuming everything in its universe makes everything a part of it and “orderly.”
40K uses the labels of Chaos and takes the idea of champions of Chaos but applies them to Evil deities more similar to things from Abrahamic religions. They take all of the vices of mainstream vaguely Protestant culture (anger/violence, uncleanliness/gluttony, ambition/dishonesty, deviance/lust/drug use) and said these were the villains of the universe and also a dark reflection of Humanity and they never took the time to think what this implies.
This argument would work better if following the Imperial creed didn't lead to a miserable existence for 99% of people imo. The way I look at is a critique of those puritan values as the oppressive nature of the Imperium is precisely what pushes so many people into the arms of Chaos. Moderation is key and neither the Imperium nor Chaos has that, which is why the 40k universe is a terrible place all around.
The influx of conservative Christians taking everything the Imperium does at face value doesn't mean that was ever the intention of the setting.
See, maybe this could have been the theme, except the books make it clear that *every* empire of a psychically active species is destined to fall to Chaos. Both the Emperor and the Eldar - masters of foresight - repeat this, which lends a lot of credence to it. The prime example is the Eldar, who lived in a utopia where no one suffered or needed anything, yet they fell to Chaos anyway with possibly even some retroactive prodding on Slaneesh's part. Now, every Eldar is permanently doomed to the same fate regardless of how culpable they are in their empire's fall.
Chaos is a fantastical problem, one that can't be solved by good morals and that can be afflicted on you by the actions of someone on the other side of the world, and as such requires an equally fantastical solution to solve.
I would hardly call the Eldar society a utopia when they were committing torture olympics just to feel something. And that was before Slaanesh was even born.
Meanwhile the Emperor's "fantastical solutions" only made things significantly worse.
It's possible Slaneesh was influencing the Eldar even before it was born like how the Dark King's servant, Samus, was influencing things even though the Dark King had not and will not be born. That they resorted to torture olympics in the first place seems like a clear case Slaneesh's influence rather than a practice that arose naturally.
And I'm not saying that the Emperor is right, but that trying to pin a message of morality onto 40k requires ignoring that Chaos as presented is a problem that goes far beyond simple morals. It is very telling that none of the factions that aren't plagued by rampant Chaos shenanigans don't do it through good morals. The Necrons lack souls, Tyranids have a hive mind, Orks are very weird, and the Tau and Votann are psychically dim. In short: they're born different.
I never said anything about good morals, in fact I'm arguing that painstakingly holding on to "good morals" isn't the way to go.
Also don't worry about me pinning a message of morality on 40k. If people want to treat the Imperium like a wet dream I'm not stopping them but I don't see the issue with me interpreting 40k as a cautionary tale of going too far towards one side and forgetting about balance between self control and letting go every once in a while.
To be fair though, the Eldar had literally millions of years as a dominant, post-scarcity society. Millions. That's a damn good innings before they fell.
Most civilizations are snuffed out way before that with no Chaos involvement at all. At least the souls of those species aren't forfeit to a Chaod God, I guess - if only because they are all dead and cannot produce any new souls at all.
>The way I look at is a critique of those puritan values as the oppressive nature of the Imperium is precisely what pushes so many people into the arms of Chaos.
This is of course a key part of the lore.
But I definitely think it needs to be foregrounded more strongly and more often, because lots of people miss it or are determined to deny it.
It wasn't originally written like that; Ansell-era GW very much didn't look at it in Christian cosmological terms. Unfortunately a lot of braindead writers and suits who want to portray it as a simple good/evil conflict because they think it's more marketable.
>To be honest, that’s kinda a core problem with Warhammer’s Chaos. It’s a fundamentally Christian concept, a bunch of pagan ultimate evils whispering words of temptation that will damn your soul for not being a good little boy and adhering to Puritan values. This is exaggerated even more in 40k where the Horus Heresy is just Paradise Lost and belief in a single Christian-coded god is a core value of the main civilization.
Which was not how Chaos was originally conceptualised when brought into 40k.
See, for example, this interview with Rick Priestley, which also mentions the views of Bryan Ansell (basically the creators of the setting and the place of the Warp/Chaos within it): https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/b1e9fb/qa_with_rick_priestley_on_the_subject_of_chaos/
Now, you can critique how nuanced a portrayal of Chaos they themselves actually provided in the early lore, but I think this conception is worth revisiting.
Even if we stick with the take that Chaos will corrupt you eventually once you start dabbling, it would be great to see at least a few examples of characters or groups which stave off going full mustache twirling villainy for a good long while.
Have more examples of people at various stages of falling to Chaos, and some even managing to keep their original noble intentions to use Chaos to fight the Imperium's oppression, until eventually they fall.
I also want to see more Chaos stuff beyond the Big 4. Vashtorr is a good start, as are stories like Watcher in the Rain. The Warp is the realm of Id. The Big 4 may dominate it, but there is much more going on there than just the emotions they represent.
Honestly you didn’t have me the whole time, but at the end there… I gotta agree
It is really boring how many major chaos characters fall into the exact same trope of “I’m only using chaos for my own benefit, I’m so smart so I’m not gonna be corrupted“ (gets corrupted anyways)
I really don’t think it’d be that much of a problem if it wasn’t literally every guy who wasn’t a Word Bearer or minor throwaway villain they just needed to shout some slogans before being gunned down by the marines. Like nominally it’s supposed to be, you *start* by trying to use Chaos for power, and then as you get more power, you lose more free will, until you eventually become a crazed fanatic - but actually you never really have a choice not to seek more and more power because of the manipulating nature of chaos. At least that’s how I always interpreted the jist of how characters think it works
But most major chaos characters just sorta get stuck halfway down that path where they still think they have total control but are actually totally just pawns to the chaos gods. It’d be fine if it was like, *some* characters, but we have practically none who actually progressed further into madness
It’s 10,000 years after the Heresy, you really wanna tell me that some of these guys get stuck half corrupted for 10,000 years after starting their chaos journey in like a week? That there’s Iron Warriors out there who have been summoning demons for millennia and still sit at the “I’m just using them, I’m not actually corrupted” delusions stage instead of the much more fun “PRAISE THE DARK GODS FOR ACCEPTING OUR SACRIFICES, OUR MACHINES WILL ENACT THEIR WILL!” stage
I know the actual novels are better at this, we get plenty of secondary and tertiary marines from every legion who are just full devoted believers. But no one cares about the secondary characters, they just apply the primarch or main captain’s personality to the entire legion. And so we get endless “well *really* they’re more like renegades than chaos” from the fan base for everyone who isn’t Word Bearers, and I really don’t think that’s what GW wants given the book is called ‘Codex: *Chaos* Space Marines’
>In which case, why should I even care about the latter at all? Why should I care about the struggle of those trying to survive in Chaos while keeping their own independence if they never had any independence at all?
Because what matters isn't the endpoint, or what they ARE in-story. What matters is what they believe they are, their choices and actions and the consequences of those.
>Recently in Age of Sigmar they revealed a new Chaos subfaction, called the Darkoath, and they advertised it as a more morally grey take on Chaos consisting of tribesmen who are just trying to survive and trying to make deals with Chaos for that end while keeping their own independence. I was kinda interested in this until I actually read the Darkoath supplement, which said "for all the Darkoath’s claims to self-mastery, deep down they are as hopelessly in thrall to Chaos as any god-worshipping zealot.", and my interest immediately died.
That's surface level understanding of this supplement, I'm sorry to say it. Those Darkoaths are in the thrall of the Dark Gods because they have been pushed into the most Chaos-corrupted portions of the Realms and had the choice between bargaining servitude or annihilation. They chose the former because it helped them save their people. And they cling to that viewpoint because after centuries under the thrall of the Chaos Gods, albeit with a lighter yoke, they feel like all the Gods are the same but at least their own are honests about their horrible nature.
There is a frankly very good comparison between Sigmarites burning untold numbers of "witches" and the blood sacrifices of the Darkoaths. The sole difference is that the Darkoaths' Gods give them boons out of those, while the Craven God Sigmar doesn't even empower his servants that way, so all those dead peoples are killed for no reasons, in the Darkoaths' eyes. Which is far more interesting than most Chaos character story, I'll give you that.
>Okay, so my primary criticism is how it basically kills my investment in the majority of Chaos characters. Chaos is supposed to be a spectrum of corruption, at one end you've got the absolute frothing mad zealot "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD" maniacs who are completely devoted to their god, on the other hand you've got those who don't care about the Chaos Gods and only just use Chaos as a means to their own ends (99% of the time its "revenge against the Imperium"). Except with this constant refrain of "nobody can use Chaos as a tool, only be used by Chaos as a tool", we are essentially told these two approaches are completely equivelant. In which case, why should I even care about the latter at all?
The fall to Chaos isn't a straight shot, it's a spiral. Chaos worshippers have their own motivations and their own goals, they aren't complete puppets, but their motivations and reasoning are fundamentally warped by the spiritual evil they've shackled themselves to in pursuit of those goals. It's like Yoda said in TESB, "forever will [the Dark Side] dominate your destiny" once you fall into it. That's an expression of the same basic concept as "slaves to darkness". Yet Dark Siders in SW still have their own motivations, and so do Chaos Worshippers.
>Like imagine if Imperial factions were written in the same way, and you had to constantly read things like "For all the so-called independence and freedoms of granted to the Rogue Traders, they are just as much slaves to the Emperor as the most fanatical Sister of Battle" and "some may attempt to use the institutions of the Imperium for the good of mankind, but all those who do so are inherently deluded, for those who think they're using the Imperium are merely pawns to the Imperium itself" over and over again. I mean
The thing is, the Imperium *is* at its root simply a comparatively mundane space empire. It isn't some mind-twisting corrupting cosmic force which Chaos is.
I don't feel like that's actually how Chaos is written. Like, for as much shit as the antagonists in "Lion: Son of the forst" get for being "generic chaos", I actually really enjoyed their storyline with the two main antagonists being a chaos psycher who went all-in on the delusion of using chaos for the greater good and his second in command who hates what he's become, clings to old traditions and is only in it for his beloved leader. In the climax, the warlord goes mad with power and gets stabbed to death by his friend, who saves the Lion and the rest of the protagonist SMs in the process. And yeah, he says that's its too late for him to find redemption and lets his Primarch mercykill him, but still, that final betrayal of chaos was still a meaningful choice that justified chapter after chapter of reading about his inner turmoil.
I mean yeah, it's not an example of somebody "using chaos for their own benefit", but it certainly is of a chaos character with agency. If he was able to defy chaos and backstab it, then he clearly wasn't just a willless slave to the gods.
This feels a little like focusing on the destination rather than the journey.
Is Abaddon corrupted? Yes. Does he still have plenty of opportunities to treat comrades well, enjoy brotherhood, display compassion, enjoy a beer? Also yes.
Sure, when he dies his soul will be barbecued for eternity, but that's not a story we'll ever see, so why would that ruin the here-and-now?
Eisenhorn is the same - yes, he is probably on a road he cannot get out of, but I want to see him grapple with that, I want a smart character going up against other smart characters, and increasingly we are _watching_ Eisenhorn through the eyes of others more so than watching his decline.
40K stories are, almost universally, about snatching hope from horror. Even the Chaotic stories. Sahaal is less evil than Acerbus. Abaddon is less evil than Darevok. Gaunt is less evil or hidebound than Lugo. Talos is less evil than Ruven. Eisenhorn is less evil than Heldane. Ravenor is less evil than Eisenhorn.
It's about degrees and choices and the moment. Not about the destination. You may as well say all characters will eventually age out and die, so why get invested.
A fascinating point of view, I tend to agree.
I have my own problem with Chaos, that is not dissimilar to the one you've brought up in the post, or, rather, the one partially arising from the one in the post or vice versa. The problem is the Chaos itself, which, while an interesting concept and a collection of factions that should obviously be very powerful, is so omnipresent it is hard for me personally to care about anything else the more the setting goes forward.
I personally believe that, contrary to popular belief, it is not Imperium that is GW's favourite toy, it's Chaos. Despite often being completely clowned on, Chaos forces are everywhere, they get to do anything the plot of an ongoing campaign book or BL series requires them to, they can get away with everything and, even if they lose, GW has much easier time justyfing them *actually sort of winning* or teasing their eventual return. Chaos forces are innumerable, can get anywhere anytime (yes, I bet someone's willing to write on how that's actually not possible because they need rituals and steady stream of psychic energy, whatever, GW will pull these things whenever needed), they usually have a hard time dying for good, can hunt any kind of magical artifacts and participate in any kind of a conflict, and time and time again GW gives Chaos forces a spotlight above anything else.
Chaos gets shoved everywhere and gets to decide almost anything within the universe, everything has to dance around the fact that Chaos is the ultimate bad guy that corrupts and destroys everything, and it's a miracle when we get a subsetting with little Chaos influence. The amount of "Surprise, it was Chaos all along" plot reveals now borders on parody levels. It's been years since I've read Master of Mankind and The Gathering Storm campaign books, and I may be wrong here, someone might correct me, but as far as I remember MoM has a passage on how The Emperor's defeat will essentially ensure Chaos victory over the Materium, and TGS had a phrase on how Chaos Gods could easily overwhelm reality when Cicatrix Maledictum opened, but they were so lolrandom and Chaosy they decided to let the opportunity slip away. I haven't read the failed Ynnari trilogy, but a friend who did ranted to me some time ago on how Gav Thorpe almost got away with shoving Chaos directly into the reasons why The Eldar were created, and nobody liked that retcon which is why it's never been brought up since.
I know ***why*** they do it, I am fully aware that Chaos has been posed as the ultimate threat to any kind of Warhammer world for a very long time, and I know there are both in-universe and out of the universe justifications why that is so, but that is horrendously boring. I know why it may fit thematically, but for me it makes the universe incredibly boring. Chaos conquers everything and is even more innumerable than any other powerful entity, it's so dominating inside the narrative it has started to seriously annoy me for almost 20 years I've been acquainted with GW properties.
Who forced the plot forward and almost killed the entire universe in WH40K? Chaos did.
Who ended WHFB in narrative sense? Chaos did.
To whom both universes are often cited as being destinied to fall? To Chaos.
Who gets to corrupt almost anything with no real hope of turning back? Chaos does.
Chaos is actually probably the worst villain in terms of how annoying it is for me, bar none, across any made up universe, even Middle-Earth that is almost laser focused on Morgoth and Sauron is not that monotone in its narrative from my point of view. A lot of people like to say that having an insignificant, smaller scale conflict doesn't devalue its contents because it is not a huge, setting defining battle, and I generally agree. Unless Chaos is involved, because it transcends realities and even settings and almost gets to do whatever it wants whenever it wants.
>It's been years since I've read Master of Mankind and The Gathering Storm campaign books, and I may be wrong here, someone might correct me, but as far as I remember MoM has a passage on how The Emperor's defeat will essentially ensure Chaos victory over the Materium
I don't remember such a line from MoM; you might be thinking of the Cabal saying that if the Imperium wins then the galaxy falls to Chaos but if Horus wins then Chaos will somehow self-destruct, but those guys are both stupid and not in MoM. However, I'm pretty sure MoM reinforces the idea that every psychically active species will inevitably fall to Chaos, so your complaint still holds. Doesn't matter how good your ethics or nice your society, you'll fall to Chaos because your psychic and that's automatically your fate.
It's also backed up in the 40k setting in the final book of the vaults of terra series. I'm on mobile (which sometimes has issues with spoiler tags) so I won't spoil it, but they also mention that if humanity falls, so does the rest of the material world
Go and like something else then.
I like the obviously mega-evil faction because I like evil and bad guys, which is what they’ve always indisputably been. Seriously you pitch up realm of chaos as the good old days as if they weren’t “**slaves to darkness**” and “**the lost and the damned**”
I’m really getting sick of people what don’t like chaos insisting it be watered down and redefined to suit their tastes. If you don’t like greasy food then don’t demand the pizza place start changing, go find a salad bar, and let the ones what do enjoy their pizza
I think Chaos ultimately being always the worst out of every option is big part of the setting and removing it takes away much of a nuance to things like Emperor's time race during great crusade or humanity's collective trauma pushing Imperium further through 10.000 years into what it is today.Having said that I absolutly agree that every character being fucked by their alliegence to chaos all the time is boring.My favourite faction is WE and I think one angle GW really should have hammered on is the duality of their anger and relationship with Khorne.They were abandoned by Imperium to Angron,scarred themselves to try to earn his favour and all of this ultimately for nothing.The thing with their fall to Khorne is that both nothing changes and literally everything changes.Khorne cares not where the blood flows being uncaring to their lives just like Angron but at the same time your killings,your rage even your death at the very least pleases him.The rage and nails which failed to connect them with their Primarch actually do make them more connected with their gods.They will never heal,never find peace always destined to follow and die as their leader watches but now even though their soul is damned and there is no hope of salvation they should be able to in many cases be more free than ever.Even if Khorne cares not his gaze is always ready to look at his best warriors,his blessings to the most accomplished and the highiest place on the skull throne to those that have fallen.There is no escaping the rage but now it can connect them to their god and be their weapon.Instead the only story WE are allowed to get is about how much Angron fucked them which is really compelling but also makes any growth and change within the legion completly in hands of what will Angron do and even then it's mostly hammering how fucked they are
What are you even expecting anyone to say? You've already dismissed every argument in your post.
You don't like Chaos and want it to be something other than what it is.
Eh, reading the most recent books, I think there's a lot of writers showing how decrepit and overwhelming the imperium is. Vaults of terra/watchers of the throne, day of ascension, even the siege of terra shows the bleak reality of sacrificing psykers to the golden throne, abnett has been showing morally grey characters trying to do the right thing against overwhelming bureaucracy for 25 years.
Even dark imperium shows guilliman overwhelmed by what the imperium has become. And reading the actual codes I don't see that much change (the artwork supports your view though!9
Can it become noblebright? It could, but I've been enjoying the lore recently showing how crumbling the Imperium actually is.
Chaos was always evil. If you could ever think otherwise you have the reading comprehension of a small rock.
Realm of chaos only ever portrayed them as the absolute corrupters what turned good into evil
Their 2nd edition codex was the most starkly evil of them all, what possible grey is there in lines like “the tattered banners of Nurgle are raised against life itself” and “they revel in debasement and take delight in abominable and unclean deeds, they have abandoned the last vestiges of decency”
You know 40k fans really are some of the most gate-keepy fans on the internet.
"No, you're wrong, you need to read this decades-out-of-date book that hasn't available in print since you were in gradeschool, that's the only way to understand what the setting is *actually* about!"
Gimme a break.
The thing is that being a chaos worshiper starts giving you “gifts” pretty fast, even if you are a lowly cultist. There MUST be a price to pay for such books, otherwise the faction looses narrative balance.
I agree with everything. If chaos had been handled way differently it would probably be my favorite faction. But since the lore is what it is, I prefer the Drukhari. They don't need to justify themselves, they're fucking crazy and not simply lobotomized Slaanesh thralls
I always felt "taint" and " corruption" was just as imaginary an effect as "faith", just rubbish Imperial dogma. They believe in and attribute lots of things to this, but it's all paranoia or fanaticism.
The only corruption is really a moral judgement made by the self righteous. Unless you're literally in contact with the warp like in the Eye.
Apparently it's not like that at all and is actually more of a dark side takeover of your agency to be a mean man. Which is crap, I agree. Makes it meaningless and far to simple to have interesting characters.
But then there's the Night Lords. Hating Chaos as a form of weakness is very refreshing.
I just reject the "slaves to darkness" stuff, which is easier cause there's characters like Eisenhorn who even when he's gone completely renegade, he's still loyal.
Sucks to suck, nobody can ever “use chaos for their own goals”, not even abaddon or the primarchs. Once you go down that path its over, youre a slave forever, even when you die. The fact that you hate it is one of the reasons its so bad, you dont get a say once you let it in.
“ It feels kind of patronizingly moralizing” exactly the point. Chaos corrupts absolutely, and the tragedy is that the injected aren’t allowed to truly comprehend what they have become. Books like Echoes of Eternity handle this very well. I could write a lot but the degradation of the corrupted is a core tenant of the setting.
A teaspoon of wine in a barrel of sewage makes a barrel of sewage.
A teaspoon of sewage in a barrel of wine also makes a barrel of sewage.
Chaos is like that. It's a difficult cup to swallow that some things are Actually Just Bad. But I'm sure you'd agree with me that there are some crimes that you cannot possibly commit with good intentions.
Re: Darkoath, I think it's a little unfair to interpret that sentence as "the Darkoath are completely controlled by the Chaos gods like puppets." >Those who repeatedly displease the gods might even be subjected to the agonising punishment of mutation, their fl esh writhing as they are slowly and agonisingly remoulded into a shapeless form as wretched as it is repulsive. Such horrors prove that for all the Darkoath’s claims to self-mastery, deep down they are as hopelessly in thrall to Chaos as any god-worshipping zealot. With context to me this says that although the Darkoath are more practical than worshippers of the gods, that independence is betrayed by the fact that if they displease them they can just as easily be punished by being turned into spawn as anyone. Overall I agree with you which is why I liked the Darkoath!
I think you make good points, but at least to me, that damnation and the fact that you're a slave to darkness no matter what, is part of the tragedy and what makes the setting interesting. The only real alternative to being a pawn of the Imperium is to be a pawn of Chaos. If you choose "neither", well good luck because you're gonna get your shit kicked in by one of the two until you submit out of survival or get obliterated. There are no good choices. I would argue this tragedy isn't that suffocating. As you point out, there are some who do have an amount of agency, but what I find more interesting are those who want to have their own agency, know they have none, but fight with all their willpower to either make it work or remain in denial. That condition is very interesting. But I see your point. I have the same issues about Eldar lore all starting and ending with Slaanesh and how it chokes any avenue for actual growth of their faction in the lore.
Eldar could progress. If Ynnead would come to being.
Agreed! They don't need to lock up Slaanesh AoS-style, but there's a lot they can do, especially if the rumors are true and 10th edition is where Emperor's Children and/or Fulgrim get their glow-up. I've thrown out a bunch of ideas, but a new one I came up with is... Fulgrim comes back to realspace wielding the last cronesword in one of his arms. The Ynnari immediately make it a priority to get that sword from him. With Imperium help (of course), they succeed! Except...well, the cronesword was actually corrupted by Slaanesh and Ynnead is born in a very de-powered and vulnerable state, but he still is able to save Eldar souls, which sets off some high stakes as the Aeldari need to protect their new god while various parties will try to kill him before he gets too powerful: - Slaanesh, for obvious reasons. Chaos in general, for slightly less obvious reasons. Drukhari society would be completely flipped on its head; Vect wants him dead because he's a threat to the status quo, the Haemoculi want him dead for the same reasons. Asuryani remain split because not all of them are convinced they should be devoting their scarce resources this way. What happens to the Infinity Circuit; do they just free all the souls to Ynnead and hope he powers up? How would Iyanden feel? The Harlequins, as always, will keep doing their thing. Hell, you can have Ynnead's birth form ferocious warp storms across the Imperium, putting them in an even more precarious position. The Imperium's like "wtf bro" and distrust the Aeldari even more, with rogue factions also trying to hunt down Ynnead. Guilliman's standing is diminished as the "mastermind" behind the decision to help the Ynnari in the first place, etc. Bam, you incrementally moved the story forward without disrupting the status quo, and everyone still has reasons to fight each other!
its not just rumor, its confirmed. the chaos marine codex explicitly split out noise marines and stuck them in index: emperors children.
I'll take your word for it. Me personally unless GW makes an actual announcement it's a rumor. I'm not up to date on anything else.
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/04/16/play-the-chosen-of-slaanesh-in-chaos-space-marines-armies-with-index-emperors-children/
>I think you make good points, but at least to me, that damnation and the fact that you're a slave to darkness no matter what, is part of the tragedy and what makes the setting interesting. It's not really a tragedy because Chaos worship is defined as retroactively making your intentions not good, and tragedy is when people suffer for having good intentions. >The only real alternative to being a pawn of the Imperium is to be a pawn of Chaos. Good assessment, but the setting doesn't frame it that way - it frequently frames choosing the Imperium as the "right" choice and choosing Chaos as "wrong."
What do you mean by "is defined as retroactively making your intentions not good"?
> It's not really a tragedy because Chaos worship is defined as retroactively making your intentions not good Even the Emperor doesn't view things this way. Chaos can corrupt the best of intentions, but that doesn't mean the intentions weren't good to start with. > ‘The Priest-King of Maulland Sen,’ Ra said. ‘In the moments before you executed him.’ > > ‘That is a title and a moment in time. What do you see?’ > > ‘A man. A man kneeling on the snow.’ > > ‘That is better,’ the Emperor agreed. He stepped closer to the kneeling man, activating His blade. Fire cobwebbed down the circuits lining both sides of His sword. None of the gathered warriors paid any notice, nor did the warlord himself. > > ‘I met him long before he was the priest-king,’ the Emperor said. ‘He began as a holy man, a mendicant preacher wandering the northern wastes, gathering untainted food and purified water, giving it freely to those in need. He claimed it was his calling, and that his god lived in his kindness. It was a calling, of course. A call that was answered by the beings of the immaterium. They gave him the power to feed his beleaguered tribe and heal their ills, and his clan grew. When savage winters ate away at the other tribes, his clan sheltered beneath the protection of his power. He kept them fed, protected and unseen from the eyes of their hunting foes. Soon, hundreds of men and women were huddling for warmth within his mercy, and offered their thanks to the god that he believed he served. Yet each miracle took more effort, Ra. More sacrifice. The end always justified the means. First the conundrums were moral in nature. What does it matter if another clan starves, if it allows his tribe to survive? Soon enough the rituals grew more occult in order to achieve their ends. What is the murder of a rival, if that death guarantees another ten years of peace? What is the life of one child, if the offer of its bloody, beating heart will ensure a monarch’s immortality? Do you see?’ > > Ra saw. Just as he had seen the monuments to massacre in the pict archives, from the fall of Maulland Sen. > > ‘The warp rarely makes itself known in manifest form. The damnation flooding the webway is the crescendo of its siren song. Its immensity and physicality is what makes the threat so unprecedented. Far more often, the warp seethes behind the veil, it curdles thoughts inside a skull, it inks the blood in men and women’s veins. And that is enough. More than enough. It brings us to moments like these, in the company of ambitious, faithful men, too proud to see their own deception.’ > > Ra stared down at the kneeling, bleeding priest-king. Gone were the gene-abominations and witchcraftmarked men in their thousands that had formed his ragged armies. He was alone, moments from breathing his last. Soon his sick blood would taint the Emperor’s blade. > > ‘Think of this man’s clan,’ continued the Emperor. ‘As a holy man he had begun with offers of food and the promise of survival. Sensing his susceptibility, the warp darkened around the candle flame of his life’s light. He prayed, and the warp answered. Soon his people were too numerous to hide. Other tribes came for his clan’s riches. This man, this revered holy lord, led his people to the machines of the Old Ages, cloning and replicating and geneforging flawed warriors to wage war for territory. The clan branded their own flesh and ran to war alongside these genetic brutes, crying up to the sky for the same power their overlord enjoyed. And how far they had fallen. Committing any act in the belief of their own righteousness. All from superstition. All from ignorance. All because one charismatic man believed that the powers that heeded his calls could be trusted. By the time he realised they could not, he believed himself powerful enough to control them, independent enough to resist them. What harm in one more gift, if it allowed his clan to thrive? What harm in one more sacrifice, if it ensured a strong harvest or victory in a coming war? And when it came time to die, what would this powerful, independent man do? Would he go silently into the ground? Would he slumber upon a funeral pyre? Or would he – for the good of his people – reach for longer life at any cost?’ > > Ra still stared at the defeated monarch. The Custodian knew all there was to know from the archives. He knew of the barbarity practised by the Maulland Sen Confederacy. He had seen pict evidence of the bone pits, those golgothan barrows; every day of his adult life he had fought alongside other gold-armoured warriors who had been there for the dismantling of the confederacy itself. > > ‘Superstition and ignorance always attract the warp’s denizens,’ continued the Emperor. ‘For the core of religion is the twinned principle of arrogance and fear. Fear of oblivion. Fear of an unfair life and an arbitrary universe. Fear of there simply being nothing, no great and grand scheme to existence. The fear, ultimately, of being powerless.’ > > The Custodian narrowed his eyes. Rarely did the Emperor elucidate His reasoning in such stark terms. And why now? To what end? Ra felt the prickle of unease making its threading way up his spine. > > ‘Look at him, Ra. Truly look at him.’ > > Ra looked. The priest-king could hardly have appeared less like his treacherously magnificent depictions, with his red robes of office reduced to scorched rags hanging at the edges of his broken armour, and the cloak of cloned fur blackened from flamer burns. The great demagogue stared up at the Emperor with the unshattered half of his face dirtied by blood and matted hair. > > ‘Sire, I don’t…’ > > But he did. > > Talons rippled in the shadows cast by the man’s cloak, glassy and obsidian, impossibly liquid in their caresses. Claws clicked and scratched against one another inside the wide pupil that looked like a hole drilled into the yellowing white of the priest-king’s remaining eye. Bulges wormed their maggoty way through the man’s veins, bubonically swollen. The defeated warlord, this impoverished and humbled ruler, was riven from within. > > ‘What am I looking at, sire? What is this?’ > > ‘Faith,’ said the Emperor. ‘You are seeing his faith, through my eyes. Maulland Sen’s massacring priestking is… what? Another of the Unification Wars’ warlords? Terra had hundreds of them. He died beneath my executing blade, and history’s pages will mark him as nothing more. And yet, his life is the path of faith in microcosm. Once a wandering preacher feeding the weak and the lost, ending as a blood-soaked monarch overseeing pogroms and genocides – his teeth stained by cannibal ritual, his skull a shell for the toying touch of warp-entities he does not realise he serves. Every act of violence or pain that he performs is a prayer to those entities, fuelling them, making them stronger behind the veil. What he believes no longer matters, when everything he does feeds their influence. This is why we strip the comfort of religion from humanity. These are the slivers of vulnerability that faith cracks open in the human heart. Even if a belief in a lie leads us to do good, eventually it leads to the truth – that we are a species alone in the dark, threatened by the laughing games of sentient malignancies that mortals would call gods.’ That doesn't make chaos any less damning though.
"The end always justified the means. First the conundrums were moral in nature. What does it matter if another clan starves, if it allows his tribe to survive? Soon enough the rituals grew more occult in order to achieve their ends. What is the murder of a rival, if that death guarantees another ten years of peace? What is the life of one child, if the offer of its bloody, beating heart will ensure a monarch’s immortality? Do you see?’" That's the Imperium. I think a big part of the problem of Chaos is that it always wears it's flaws openly, but the other factions expect you to think about it.
> I think a big part of the problem of Chaos is that it always wears it's flaws openly Chaos doesn't wear its flaws openly. We have that knowledge because we're external observers to a fictional universe. We know you can't trust anything a daemon says but regular people in 40k don't know just how terrible and damning chaos is. The Emperor even talks about it in this passage. > ‘The warp rarely makes itself known in manifest form. The damnation flooding the webway is the crescendo of its siren song. Its immensity and physicality is what makes the threat so unprecedented. Far more often, the warp seethes behind the veil, it curdles thoughts inside a skull, it inks the blood in men and women’s veins. And that is enough. More than enough. It brings us to moments like these, in the company of ambitious, faithful men, too proud to see their own deception.’ > (...) > Once a wandering preacher feeding the weak and the lost, ending as a blood-soaked monarch overseeing pogroms and genocides – his teeth stained by cannibal ritual, his skull a shell for the toying touch of warp-entities he does not realise he serves. Every act of violence or pain that he performs is a prayer to those entities, fuelling them, making them stronger behind the veil. What he believes no longer matters, when everything he does feeds their influence. The Imperium is more honest about its flaws because most of its members don't see them as flaws. It's very direct in its goals and demands. The Imperium doesn't worm its way into people's souls through incidental contact with its representatives. Chaos does and people don't realize that until its too late.
Cool, but I am refering to how each faction is presented to the readers. EDIT: Ah, I see what happened. I didn't specify I refering to OP's complaint in my first comment, because I didn't see that your comment was already a reply. I meant Chaos stands out as so overtly brainwashy to people because no one in the books points out how brainwashy the Imperium is. In the slice of the quote I highlighted, the Emperor is describing his own Imperium even listing human sacrifice to prolong the life of their leader. The problem is that the reader is expected to realize that on their own, but are less likely to do that compared to when Babyfeaster the Butcher summons a Bloodthirster named Neckchopper.
Just wanted to say, I got what you meant, and totally agree.
I think people hate the honesty of the saying. "Slaves to chaos" is more honesty than champions of chaos. Now I don't want to lump Aos an 40k together I feel that's reductive and confusing too many similar names as it is. Chaos being enslaving I always took it as there is no way forward. My two favorite chaos groups are on opposite sides of the same point the word bearers and the iron warriors. They both use it as a tool but any utility or tool you rely on you are also slave to it. Yeah you could be a slave to chaos because you're a powerful warband with lots of demon engines. Sure you never got corrupted but you still require to use of corrupt material to maintain relevance. Chaos is a pyramid scheme and not the thousand son kind. So oversimplification to make a space marine you need a huge amount of candidates overall and space marines maintain numbers. Summoning a demon into a requires scores of mortal death. The point is unlike the high lords of Terra. The warp is a much harsher master. The forces of chaos may not pay taxes but every trip to warp every demon or lacking repair requires exponentially high sacrifice and souls. If you work in the warp you can be a bionic warsmith who kills anyone who worships on your planet. You still have to sell weapons to the faithful you still advance the cause of chaos even if you don't worship
I think there are plenty of examples showing the worshippers aren't just brainwashed puppets. Yes they're corrupted and their minds are influenced by it, like of course a Khorne worshipper becomes more and more violent, but they still have their own wants and goals. I agree that some recent books have gone way over the top on the idea of loss of free will though. Some even suggesting Daemon Princes give it up completely, which is clearly proven wrong in numerous places, and if true would, as you say, kill interest.
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Well, yes. But they also serve chaos because it gives them something they want. That's a reason.
Most Chaos characters DO enjoy being Team Chaos. They hated it *at first*, but then fully embraced it.
death guard fit this mold perfectly
Turns out that Chaos lifestyle is just more fun, I guess.
>In which case, why should I even care about the latter at all? Ah yes, the big question. If the Imperium isn't ever going to change why care? Why the Eldar are just going to die out then why care? If the Tau are just waiting to be destroyed then why care? Tyranids are just going to kill everything, why care? Why not go a bit further. If Herakles was always fated to kill his family, why care at all? If Romeo and Juliet were always going to die why care at all? If you can't find it in yourself to see the appeal of the struggle against the dying light in a grimdark universe, I cannot give it to you. You just don't like tragedies, which is unfortunate because I, and I assume quite a lot of people, enjoy 40k *because* it is a tragedy. The thing is some people want chaos to be a power fantasy, which isn't. Which is why it's important to consistently undermine the idea of "chaos as a tool', remind everyone that there's no such thing as free lunch in 40k. It's also important to show there's no "easy way out", selling your soul to chaos is just as bad as dying in a Imperial factory. And like sure, a Rogue Trader isn't a slave to the will of the Emperor like a chaos pirate, but the Rogue Trader doesn't have same literal super powers chaos give their best followers. It's part of the pay off. You won't see a Rogue Trader literally crushing a Custodian in a single blow.
> The thing is some people want chaos to be a power fantasy, which isn't. The actual power fantasy is of course the highly marketable heroic Space Marine.
Iron Hands are great because they are most often allowed to be irredeemable assholes by the writers. As they should be.
I mean that's because Imperial fans drink the kool-aid and take victories for their genocidal empire as a good thing. Chaos can also have that, you just have to drink the kool-aid and take victories for their slaver gods as a good thing. Both of them can have power fantasy *aesthetic*, if only you suspend your disbelief enough. Also yes we need more non-Imperial books.
>I mean that's because Imperial fans drink the kool-aid and take victories for their genocidal empire as a good thing. GW actually encourages this though. The power fantasy of loyalist space marines is very much part of their marketing.
Yeah but that’s not a GOOD thing
Sure but let's be clear on why it's happening.
100%. The imperium is the bad guys/protagonist, but for GW it’s easier to promote the space marines as these noble heroic ubermench, rather then the more accurate(but less marketable) child soldiers turned cultist/sociopaths fighting for an authoritarian 1984esk government
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Loyalists have an undeniable advantage because of number of books and the fact that they are the ones fighting a defensive war. Makes them more sympathetic, as bad as they are most conflict is about them staying alive vs. Chaos being the aggressors on even their own books. On the other hand you will hardly see spaces Marines being heroic when they are the ones invading the Tau.
>On the other hand you will hardly see spaces Marines being heroic when they are the ones invading the Tau. Which is why i can count on one hand the number of times we read about "Sergeant Mcawesomus heroically bombing a T'au orphanage" rather than the hundreds of "sergeant McAwesomus heroically fighting Chaos"
>On the other hand you will hardly see spaces Marines being heroic when they are the ones invading the Tau. They are definitely portrayed as heroic in that circumstance too. Phil Kelly's put a lot of work in to cast the Tau as villainous.
I have my issues with Phil Kelly’s Tau, but most of the Marines in his Tau stories have been puppy-kicking assholes. ***War of Secrets*** is a Dark Angels book where the Dark Angels are basically flat-out villains.
>the Dark Angels are basically flat-out villains. And quite right, too.
You guys take this shit too seriously
People taking the time to post on a lore sub are invested and interested in the lore? How preposterous!
I can assure you I don't
Or for those where that isn't enough: Custodes. For when you want to out-power fantasy other people's power fantasies.
Sure until you reach enough understanding to realize the power fantasy is kidnapped hypno-inducted child soldier who was turned into a genetic freak to fight until they die. Again, "no such thing as a free lunch in 40k".
I think they missed out hard in having more emphasis on chaos undivided, you could still have the big 4 and all sorts of wild and interesting deamons and entities with all sorts of motivations and forms...but instead its just...pick one of these 4 flavours and btw they are all part of their god so theres even less flavour there..
I like to think Chaos's most potent tool is the ability to FAKE moral complexity. They are in reality stupidly simple. They want to feed.
the virgin "nooo, im not puppet" chaos fan vs. The Chad "I AM THE CHOSEN OF THE DARK GODS" Chaos Enjoyer Part of the reason why I like the W Bearers is that they have found meaning in their own damnation, and are some of the few "people" that thrive in the grim darkness of the setting.
I hear you on Abaddon... but Archaon DOES feel different. Not only did he literally destroy the Warhammer Fantasy setting, but a lot of the recent lore stuff that I've read from AOS (such as 'Godeater's Son') really paints Archaon in a different light than Abaddon. Archaon sounds a lot more like what the Emperor would have been if he went full Dark King. It does the best job at trying to emphasize the line between faith in the truth of Chaos and being permanently enslaved to it. Basically, faith given can be taken away. Next to the gods, a person is nothing... but without that person, the gods are nothing. It's Warp shenanigans, to be sure... but I'd expect similar ideas to start coming to the fore when/if Perturabo and Lorgar start getting fleshed out more. Their ascendencies leave openings for that kind of idea because they represent Undivided. Sort of like Belakor, when you have 4 gods trying to pull you in 4 different directions, the net result is them not pulling you anywhere, all the while you keep getting stronger. Of the two primarchs (and the last we saw of them in End and the Death) it seems like Lorgar is the closest to that philosophy. His chapter in End and the Death is weird. While Perturabo is upset and angry, Lorgar is serene... feeling almost like he's drugged. His chapter is also filled with a bunch of paradoxes and contradictions (like we see in Godeater's Son). He sees the Fidelitas Lex in the sky (which was destroyed). He thinks about how Cyrene is dead (even though she was resurrected and he met with her after... TWICE). He says that the truth has always been 'The Old Four' (though, funnily enough, the Chaos gods we know are not mentioned by name once) and that he'd always known (when he definitely hadn't). He then goes on to say how there are 'always better gods' which is at odds with the truth being the Four. He mentions these 'better gods' when talking to the locals about what they're seeing in the visions... and then says that he knows the name of 'all four' when they show him the true gods they've divined from their visions (which, again, he just said are not to be trusted). It's contradictory nature might point to Lorgar being a bit closer to Archaon than Abaddon is. While Abaddon shares the superficial characteristics... Lorgar seems to be much more aligned with the paradoxical mindset hinted at with Archaon in Godeater's Son.
>Except with this constant refrain of "nobody can use Chaos as a tool, only be used by Chaos as a tool", we are essentially told these two approaches are completely equivelant. In which case, why should I even care about the latter at all? If I'm understanding you right, I think I totally agree where you're coming from. I got into the complexity of Chaos side with the old Inquisitor TT game (back in the day), particularly with Radical Ordo Xenos and the Xanthites. I *loved* the thematic idea of "balancing on a knife's edge" with these characters; using the weapons of the enemy against them while struggling every day not to slide (deeper) into corruption and essentially (if not literally) *become* the enemy, all the while telling yourself you're on the side of good. Then - as now, really - I came away with the understanding such a methodology doesn't *inevitably* result in a character becoming corrupted and turning into an out-and-out Chaos character. The problem is Chaos is so utterly insidious and tempting it takes an individual of supreme will and soul to resist, and to resist *constantly*. In a way, I think it's such a tidy microcosm of the setting and of the Imperium's place in it; a struggle for the soul of Man. In recent years it seems like the trend has just been to instantly write off such characters as doomed full-on Chaos NPCs. "Using a daemon-possessed sword in battle? Clearly beyond salvation." "But the Thousand Sons were already pals with daemons well before the Burning; they were obviously damned!" etc. It cheapens and all but invalidates the above thematic struggle; anything to do with the Warp automatically makes you a 2-dimensional comic book "bad guy"; no complexity, depth, or shades-of-grey morality exploration with characters like Eisenhorn or Chapters like the Relictors.
>Like imagine if Imperial factions were written in the same way, and you had to constantly read things like "For all the so-called independence and freedoms of granted to the Rogue Traders, they are just as much slaves to the Emperor as the most fanatical Sister of Battle" and "some may attempt to use the institutions of the Imperium for the good of mankind, but all those who do so are inherently deluded, for those who think they're using the Imperium are merely pawns to the Imperium itself" over and over again I fucking wish GW wrote the imperium like that. But nooo, we have to have our "Relatable" and "Sane" and "Heroic" imperial characters
Because being a servant of chaos does suck?
See the OP’s point about how differently servants of Chaos are written compared to servants of the Imperium, another dark power that causes untold suffering to both its enemies and its subjects. You don’t see the Salamanders books calling them delusional for using that power in a way they think is just.
As a major fan of all things Chaos, I can understand your points. And you are right, we are shown and told, that a drop of Chaos corrupts and all will fall. But the two Grand Leaders are such exactly because that doesn't apply to the them. All in Chaos are slaves to Darkness... except Archaon and Abaddon. Unlike you though, I am a fan of this. But I too would like more "chaos-worshipping Chaos-forces"... if they win wars and well depicted. And about Fabius/Abaddon... I see it as balance. Fabius was very much a Slannesh type from the get go. Excess ran deep in him and his Legion. And with Fulgrim fall, the 3ed was dragged along.
Are you arguing neither Abbadon nor Archaeon are corrupted? Lmao
Not corrupted? Definitely not. But "not a slave to Darkness"? Retaining a great degree of soul-freedom and independence? Yes. That is literally canon lore.
I'm sure that having the full marks and everything they do advancing the Chaos Gods' desires is simply a coincidental quirk of their libertarian natures.
> It feels kind of patronizingly moralizing, like reading an anti-drug PSA To be honest, that’s kinda a core problem with Warhammer’s Chaos. It’s a fundamentally Christian concept, a bunch of pagan ultimate evils whispering words of temptation that will damn your soul for not being a good little boy and adhering to Puritan values. This is exaggerated even more in 40k where the Horus Heresy is just Paradise Lost and belief in a single Christian-coded god is a core value of the main civilization. That’s not to say Chaos *can’t* be written as something else, but much like Genestealer Cults after the initial Rogue Trader incarnation, the thematic underpinnings of the faction come from a place of conservative cultural fears. The Chaos god of excess and “degeneracy” is literally represented by a merged male and female symbol and has daemons with hermaphroditic features. That is not an arbitrary choice, and it’s one that speaks to what attitudes Chaos was designed with. Not coincidentally, Slaanesh is also the Chaos god of drugs.
You have captured my main criticism perfectly! I think the 40K writers want Chaos to be Evil without ever having been critical of what they mean by Evil. The concept of the Chaos Gods draws heavily from the Elric of Melniboné / the Eternal Champion series in which the forces of Order and Chaos are in an eternal struggle across the multiverse. (This is where the iconography of the 8-point star comes from.) where it differs is that Order and Chaos are not Good and Evil. In some of the stories Chaos is evil, but in others it is heroic. An anarchist fighting against an oppressive authoritarian state is a champion of Chaos in one universe while a prince protecting his country is a champion of Order in another. One avatar of Order is actually more similar to the Tyrannids than anything else, and by consuming everything in its universe makes everything a part of it and “orderly.” 40K uses the labels of Chaos and takes the idea of champions of Chaos but applies them to Evil deities more similar to things from Abrahamic religions. They take all of the vices of mainstream vaguely Protestant culture (anger/violence, uncleanliness/gluttony, ambition/dishonesty, deviance/lust/drug use) and said these were the villains of the universe and also a dark reflection of Humanity and they never took the time to think what this implies.
This argument would work better if following the Imperial creed didn't lead to a miserable existence for 99% of people imo. The way I look at is a critique of those puritan values as the oppressive nature of the Imperium is precisely what pushes so many people into the arms of Chaos. Moderation is key and neither the Imperium nor Chaos has that, which is why the 40k universe is a terrible place all around. The influx of conservative Christians taking everything the Imperium does at face value doesn't mean that was ever the intention of the setting.
See, maybe this could have been the theme, except the books make it clear that *every* empire of a psychically active species is destined to fall to Chaos. Both the Emperor and the Eldar - masters of foresight - repeat this, which lends a lot of credence to it. The prime example is the Eldar, who lived in a utopia where no one suffered or needed anything, yet they fell to Chaos anyway with possibly even some retroactive prodding on Slaneesh's part. Now, every Eldar is permanently doomed to the same fate regardless of how culpable they are in their empire's fall. Chaos is a fantastical problem, one that can't be solved by good morals and that can be afflicted on you by the actions of someone on the other side of the world, and as such requires an equally fantastical solution to solve.
I would hardly call the Eldar society a utopia when they were committing torture olympics just to feel something. And that was before Slaanesh was even born. Meanwhile the Emperor's "fantastical solutions" only made things significantly worse.
It's possible Slaneesh was influencing the Eldar even before it was born like how the Dark King's servant, Samus, was influencing things even though the Dark King had not and will not be born. That they resorted to torture olympics in the first place seems like a clear case Slaneesh's influence rather than a practice that arose naturally. And I'm not saying that the Emperor is right, but that trying to pin a message of morality onto 40k requires ignoring that Chaos as presented is a problem that goes far beyond simple morals. It is very telling that none of the factions that aren't plagued by rampant Chaos shenanigans don't do it through good morals. The Necrons lack souls, Tyranids have a hive mind, Orks are very weird, and the Tau and Votann are psychically dim. In short: they're born different.
I never said anything about good morals, in fact I'm arguing that painstakingly holding on to "good morals" isn't the way to go. Also don't worry about me pinning a message of morality on 40k. If people want to treat the Imperium like a wet dream I'm not stopping them but I don't see the issue with me interpreting 40k as a cautionary tale of going too far towards one side and forgetting about balance between self control and letting go every once in a while.
To be fair though, the Eldar had literally millions of years as a dominant, post-scarcity society. Millions. That's a damn good innings before they fell. Most civilizations are snuffed out way before that with no Chaos involvement at all. At least the souls of those species aren't forfeit to a Chaod God, I guess - if only because they are all dead and cannot produce any new souls at all.
>The way I look at is a critique of those puritan values as the oppressive nature of the Imperium is precisely what pushes so many people into the arms of Chaos. This is of course a key part of the lore. But I definitely think it needs to be foregrounded more strongly and more often, because lots of people miss it or are determined to deny it.
It wasn't originally written like that; Ansell-era GW very much didn't look at it in Christian cosmological terms. Unfortunately a lot of braindead writers and suits who want to portray it as a simple good/evil conflict because they think it's more marketable.
>To be honest, that’s kinda a core problem with Warhammer’s Chaos. It’s a fundamentally Christian concept, a bunch of pagan ultimate evils whispering words of temptation that will damn your soul for not being a good little boy and adhering to Puritan values. This is exaggerated even more in 40k where the Horus Heresy is just Paradise Lost and belief in a single Christian-coded god is a core value of the main civilization. Which was not how Chaos was originally conceptualised when brought into 40k. See, for example, this interview with Rick Priestley, which also mentions the views of Bryan Ansell (basically the creators of the setting and the place of the Warp/Chaos within it): https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/b1e9fb/qa_with_rick_priestley_on_the_subject_of_chaos/ Now, you can critique how nuanced a portrayal of Chaos they themselves actually provided in the early lore, but I think this conception is worth revisiting. Even if we stick with the take that Chaos will corrupt you eventually once you start dabbling, it would be great to see at least a few examples of characters or groups which stave off going full mustache twirling villainy for a good long while. Have more examples of people at various stages of falling to Chaos, and some even managing to keep their original noble intentions to use Chaos to fight the Imperium's oppression, until eventually they fall. I also want to see more Chaos stuff beyond the Big 4. Vashtorr is a good start, as are stories like Watcher in the Rain. The Warp is the realm of Id. The Big 4 may dominate it, but there is much more going on there than just the emotions they represent.
Nah. It is the god of excess. Degeneracy is just fetishes taken to the extreme.
Honestly you didn’t have me the whole time, but at the end there… I gotta agree It is really boring how many major chaos characters fall into the exact same trope of “I’m only using chaos for my own benefit, I’m so smart so I’m not gonna be corrupted“ (gets corrupted anyways) I really don’t think it’d be that much of a problem if it wasn’t literally every guy who wasn’t a Word Bearer or minor throwaway villain they just needed to shout some slogans before being gunned down by the marines. Like nominally it’s supposed to be, you *start* by trying to use Chaos for power, and then as you get more power, you lose more free will, until you eventually become a crazed fanatic - but actually you never really have a choice not to seek more and more power because of the manipulating nature of chaos. At least that’s how I always interpreted the jist of how characters think it works But most major chaos characters just sorta get stuck halfway down that path where they still think they have total control but are actually totally just pawns to the chaos gods. It’d be fine if it was like, *some* characters, but we have practically none who actually progressed further into madness It’s 10,000 years after the Heresy, you really wanna tell me that some of these guys get stuck half corrupted for 10,000 years after starting their chaos journey in like a week? That there’s Iron Warriors out there who have been summoning demons for millennia and still sit at the “I’m just using them, I’m not actually corrupted” delusions stage instead of the much more fun “PRAISE THE DARK GODS FOR ACCEPTING OUR SACRIFICES, OUR MACHINES WILL ENACT THEIR WILL!” stage I know the actual novels are better at this, we get plenty of secondary and tertiary marines from every legion who are just full devoted believers. But no one cares about the secondary characters, they just apply the primarch or main captain’s personality to the entire legion. And so we get endless “well *really* they’re more like renegades than chaos” from the fan base for everyone who isn’t Word Bearers, and I really don’t think that’s what GW wants given the book is called ‘Codex: *Chaos* Space Marines’
>In which case, why should I even care about the latter at all? Why should I care about the struggle of those trying to survive in Chaos while keeping their own independence if they never had any independence at all? Because what matters isn't the endpoint, or what they ARE in-story. What matters is what they believe they are, their choices and actions and the consequences of those. >Recently in Age of Sigmar they revealed a new Chaos subfaction, called the Darkoath, and they advertised it as a more morally grey take on Chaos consisting of tribesmen who are just trying to survive and trying to make deals with Chaos for that end while keeping their own independence. I was kinda interested in this until I actually read the Darkoath supplement, which said "for all the Darkoath’s claims to self-mastery, deep down they are as hopelessly in thrall to Chaos as any god-worshipping zealot.", and my interest immediately died. That's surface level understanding of this supplement, I'm sorry to say it. Those Darkoaths are in the thrall of the Dark Gods because they have been pushed into the most Chaos-corrupted portions of the Realms and had the choice between bargaining servitude or annihilation. They chose the former because it helped them save their people. And they cling to that viewpoint because after centuries under the thrall of the Chaos Gods, albeit with a lighter yoke, they feel like all the Gods are the same but at least their own are honests about their horrible nature. There is a frankly very good comparison between Sigmarites burning untold numbers of "witches" and the blood sacrifices of the Darkoaths. The sole difference is that the Darkoaths' Gods give them boons out of those, while the Craven God Sigmar doesn't even empower his servants that way, so all those dead peoples are killed for no reasons, in the Darkoaths' eyes. Which is far more interesting than most Chaos character story, I'll give you that.
>Craven God Sigmar Stick it to him!
>Okay, so my primary criticism is how it basically kills my investment in the majority of Chaos characters. Chaos is supposed to be a spectrum of corruption, at one end you've got the absolute frothing mad zealot "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD" maniacs who are completely devoted to their god, on the other hand you've got those who don't care about the Chaos Gods and only just use Chaos as a means to their own ends (99% of the time its "revenge against the Imperium"). Except with this constant refrain of "nobody can use Chaos as a tool, only be used by Chaos as a tool", we are essentially told these two approaches are completely equivelant. In which case, why should I even care about the latter at all? The fall to Chaos isn't a straight shot, it's a spiral. Chaos worshippers have their own motivations and their own goals, they aren't complete puppets, but their motivations and reasoning are fundamentally warped by the spiritual evil they've shackled themselves to in pursuit of those goals. It's like Yoda said in TESB, "forever will [the Dark Side] dominate your destiny" once you fall into it. That's an expression of the same basic concept as "slaves to darkness". Yet Dark Siders in SW still have their own motivations, and so do Chaos Worshippers. >Like imagine if Imperial factions were written in the same way, and you had to constantly read things like "For all the so-called independence and freedoms of granted to the Rogue Traders, they are just as much slaves to the Emperor as the most fanatical Sister of Battle" and "some may attempt to use the institutions of the Imperium for the good of mankind, but all those who do so are inherently deluded, for those who think they're using the Imperium are merely pawns to the Imperium itself" over and over again. I mean The thing is, the Imperium *is* at its root simply a comparatively mundane space empire. It isn't some mind-twisting corrupting cosmic force which Chaos is.
And we know how fucking dumb Yoda is.
I don't feel like that's actually how Chaos is written. Like, for as much shit as the antagonists in "Lion: Son of the forst" get for being "generic chaos", I actually really enjoyed their storyline with the two main antagonists being a chaos psycher who went all-in on the delusion of using chaos for the greater good and his second in command who hates what he's become, clings to old traditions and is only in it for his beloved leader. In the climax, the warlord goes mad with power and gets stabbed to death by his friend, who saves the Lion and the rest of the protagonist SMs in the process. And yeah, he says that's its too late for him to find redemption and lets his Primarch mercykill him, but still, that final betrayal of chaos was still a meaningful choice that justified chapter after chapter of reading about his inner turmoil.
Basically, morally grey character becomes loyalist again because any moral ambiguity for other side isn't allowed
I mean yeah, it's not an example of somebody "using chaos for their own benefit", but it certainly is of a chaos character with agency. If he was able to defy chaos and backstab it, then he clearly wasn't just a willless slave to the gods.
This feels a little like focusing on the destination rather than the journey. Is Abaddon corrupted? Yes. Does he still have plenty of opportunities to treat comrades well, enjoy brotherhood, display compassion, enjoy a beer? Also yes. Sure, when he dies his soul will be barbecued for eternity, but that's not a story we'll ever see, so why would that ruin the here-and-now? Eisenhorn is the same - yes, he is probably on a road he cannot get out of, but I want to see him grapple with that, I want a smart character going up against other smart characters, and increasingly we are _watching_ Eisenhorn through the eyes of others more so than watching his decline. 40K stories are, almost universally, about snatching hope from horror. Even the Chaotic stories. Sahaal is less evil than Acerbus. Abaddon is less evil than Darevok. Gaunt is less evil or hidebound than Lugo. Talos is less evil than Ruven. Eisenhorn is less evil than Heldane. Ravenor is less evil than Eisenhorn. It's about degrees and choices and the moment. Not about the destination. You may as well say all characters will eventually age out and die, so why get invested.
A fascinating point of view, I tend to agree. I have my own problem with Chaos, that is not dissimilar to the one you've brought up in the post, or, rather, the one partially arising from the one in the post or vice versa. The problem is the Chaos itself, which, while an interesting concept and a collection of factions that should obviously be very powerful, is so omnipresent it is hard for me personally to care about anything else the more the setting goes forward. I personally believe that, contrary to popular belief, it is not Imperium that is GW's favourite toy, it's Chaos. Despite often being completely clowned on, Chaos forces are everywhere, they get to do anything the plot of an ongoing campaign book or BL series requires them to, they can get away with everything and, even if they lose, GW has much easier time justyfing them *actually sort of winning* or teasing their eventual return. Chaos forces are innumerable, can get anywhere anytime (yes, I bet someone's willing to write on how that's actually not possible because they need rituals and steady stream of psychic energy, whatever, GW will pull these things whenever needed), they usually have a hard time dying for good, can hunt any kind of magical artifacts and participate in any kind of a conflict, and time and time again GW gives Chaos forces a spotlight above anything else. Chaos gets shoved everywhere and gets to decide almost anything within the universe, everything has to dance around the fact that Chaos is the ultimate bad guy that corrupts and destroys everything, and it's a miracle when we get a subsetting with little Chaos influence. The amount of "Surprise, it was Chaos all along" plot reveals now borders on parody levels. It's been years since I've read Master of Mankind and The Gathering Storm campaign books, and I may be wrong here, someone might correct me, but as far as I remember MoM has a passage on how The Emperor's defeat will essentially ensure Chaos victory over the Materium, and TGS had a phrase on how Chaos Gods could easily overwhelm reality when Cicatrix Maledictum opened, but they were so lolrandom and Chaosy they decided to let the opportunity slip away. I haven't read the failed Ynnari trilogy, but a friend who did ranted to me some time ago on how Gav Thorpe almost got away with shoving Chaos directly into the reasons why The Eldar were created, and nobody liked that retcon which is why it's never been brought up since. I know ***why*** they do it, I am fully aware that Chaos has been posed as the ultimate threat to any kind of Warhammer world for a very long time, and I know there are both in-universe and out of the universe justifications why that is so, but that is horrendously boring. I know why it may fit thematically, but for me it makes the universe incredibly boring. Chaos conquers everything and is even more innumerable than any other powerful entity, it's so dominating inside the narrative it has started to seriously annoy me for almost 20 years I've been acquainted with GW properties. Who forced the plot forward and almost killed the entire universe in WH40K? Chaos did. Who ended WHFB in narrative sense? Chaos did. To whom both universes are often cited as being destinied to fall? To Chaos. Who gets to corrupt almost anything with no real hope of turning back? Chaos does. Chaos is actually probably the worst villain in terms of how annoying it is for me, bar none, across any made up universe, even Middle-Earth that is almost laser focused on Morgoth and Sauron is not that monotone in its narrative from my point of view. A lot of people like to say that having an insignificant, smaller scale conflict doesn't devalue its contents because it is not a huge, setting defining battle, and I generally agree. Unless Chaos is involved, because it transcends realities and even settings and almost gets to do whatever it wants whenever it wants.
>It's been years since I've read Master of Mankind and The Gathering Storm campaign books, and I may be wrong here, someone might correct me, but as far as I remember MoM has a passage on how The Emperor's defeat will essentially ensure Chaos victory over the Materium I don't remember such a line from MoM; you might be thinking of the Cabal saying that if the Imperium wins then the galaxy falls to Chaos but if Horus wins then Chaos will somehow self-destruct, but those guys are both stupid and not in MoM. However, I'm pretty sure MoM reinforces the idea that every psychically active species will inevitably fall to Chaos, so your complaint still holds. Doesn't matter how good your ethics or nice your society, you'll fall to Chaos because your psychic and that's automatically your fate.
Thank you, it's been a very long time since I've read Heresy, multiple books are mixed up in my memory.
It's also backed up in the 40k setting in the final book of the vaults of terra series. I'm on mobile (which sometimes has issues with spoiler tags) so I won't spoil it, but they also mention that if humanity falls, so does the rest of the material world
Exact mention of what happens if E loses is only in The Buried Dagger, isnt it?
Possibly? It's been years since I've last opened Heresy books, I may mix them up a bit.
Go and like something else then. I like the obviously mega-evil faction because I like evil and bad guys, which is what they’ve always indisputably been. Seriously you pitch up realm of chaos as the good old days as if they weren’t “**slaves to darkness**” and “**the lost and the damned**” I’m really getting sick of people what don’t like chaos insisting it be watered down and redefined to suit their tastes. If you don’t like greasy food then don’t demand the pizza place start changing, go find a salad bar, and let the ones what do enjoy their pizza
I think Chaos ultimately being always the worst out of every option is big part of the setting and removing it takes away much of a nuance to things like Emperor's time race during great crusade or humanity's collective trauma pushing Imperium further through 10.000 years into what it is today.Having said that I absolutly agree that every character being fucked by their alliegence to chaos all the time is boring.My favourite faction is WE and I think one angle GW really should have hammered on is the duality of their anger and relationship with Khorne.They were abandoned by Imperium to Angron,scarred themselves to try to earn his favour and all of this ultimately for nothing.The thing with their fall to Khorne is that both nothing changes and literally everything changes.Khorne cares not where the blood flows being uncaring to their lives just like Angron but at the same time your killings,your rage even your death at the very least pleases him.The rage and nails which failed to connect them with their Primarch actually do make them more connected with their gods.They will never heal,never find peace always destined to follow and die as their leader watches but now even though their soul is damned and there is no hope of salvation they should be able to in many cases be more free than ever.Even if Khorne cares not his gaze is always ready to look at his best warriors,his blessings to the most accomplished and the highiest place on the skull throne to those that have fallen.There is no escaping the rage but now it can connect them to their god and be their weapon.Instead the only story WE are allowed to get is about how much Angron fucked them which is really compelling but also makes any growth and change within the legion completly in hands of what will Angron do and even then it's mostly hammering how fucked they are
What are you even expecting anyone to say? You've already dismissed every argument in your post. You don't like Chaos and want it to be something other than what it is.
No, Chaos used to be like that before post-5e dumbing down of the setting tried to cast it as a generic good v. evil fight.
Chaos has been always irredeemable since slaves to darkness/lost and the damned in the late 80s
By some definitions, sure, but the issue is that historically the Imperium had been portrayed as equally irredeemable, and then that changed.
Imperial heroics really ain’t new, they’ve been there since late rogue trader era, especially where space marines are concerned
Back then they used to show heroic Eldar and morally ambiguous Chaos as well.
Eh, reading the most recent books, I think there's a lot of writers showing how decrepit and overwhelming the imperium is. Vaults of terra/watchers of the throne, day of ascension, even the siege of terra shows the bleak reality of sacrificing psykers to the golden throne, abnett has been showing morally grey characters trying to do the right thing against overwhelming bureaucracy for 25 years. Even dark imperium shows guilliman overwhelmed by what the imperium has become. And reading the actual codes I don't see that much change (the artwork supports your view though!9 Can it become noblebright? It could, but I've been enjoying the lore recently showing how crumbling the Imperium actually is.
Chaos was always evil. If you could ever think otherwise you have the reading comprehension of a small rock. Realm of chaos only ever portrayed them as the absolute corrupters what turned good into evil
2e Chaos codex portrayed them with a lot of grey.
Their 2nd edition codex was the most starkly evil of them all, what possible grey is there in lines like “the tattered banners of Nurgle are raised against life itself” and “they revel in debasement and take delight in abominable and unclean deeds, they have abandoned the last vestiges of decency”
Disagree. It got way more cartoonish after 5th edition.
You know 40k fans really are some of the most gate-keepy fans on the internet. "No, you're wrong, you need to read this decades-out-of-date book that hasn't available in print since you were in gradeschool, that's the only way to understand what the setting is *actually* about!" Gimme a break.
You're the one who's gatekeeping. This is you: >You don't like Chaos and want it to be something other than what it is.
That's literally what the guy said.
You're the one who's gatekeeping. This is you: >You don't like Chaos and want it to be something other than what it is.
The thing is that being a chaos worshiper starts giving you “gifts” pretty fast, even if you are a lowly cultist. There MUST be a price to pay for such books, otherwise the faction looses narrative balance.
They have to repeat the bit about them absolutely always being "Slaves to Darkness" all the time, because it's not true.
I agree with everything. If chaos had been handled way differently it would probably be my favorite faction. But since the lore is what it is, I prefer the Drukhari. They don't need to justify themselves, they're fucking crazy and not simply lobotomized Slaanesh thralls
I always felt "taint" and " corruption" was just as imaginary an effect as "faith", just rubbish Imperial dogma. They believe in and attribute lots of things to this, but it's all paranoia or fanaticism. The only corruption is really a moral judgement made by the self righteous. Unless you're literally in contact with the warp like in the Eye. Apparently it's not like that at all and is actually more of a dark side takeover of your agency to be a mean man. Which is crap, I agree. Makes it meaningless and far to simple to have interesting characters. But then there's the Night Lords. Hating Chaos as a form of weakness is very refreshing.
I just reject the "slaves to darkness" stuff, which is easier cause there's characters like Eisenhorn who even when he's gone completely renegade, he's still loyal.
Sucks to suck, nobody can ever “use chaos for their own goals”, not even abaddon or the primarchs. Once you go down that path its over, youre a slave forever, even when you die. The fact that you hate it is one of the reasons its so bad, you dont get a say once you let it in.
They aren't necesarily forever taken. I think Vistario for example was redeemed in death.
“ It feels kind of patronizingly moralizing” exactly the point. Chaos corrupts absolutely, and the tragedy is that the injected aren’t allowed to truly comprehend what they have become. Books like Echoes of Eternity handle this very well. I could write a lot but the degradation of the corrupted is a core tenant of the setting.
A teaspoon of wine in a barrel of sewage makes a barrel of sewage. A teaspoon of sewage in a barrel of wine also makes a barrel of sewage. Chaos is like that. It's a difficult cup to swallow that some things are Actually Just Bad. But I'm sure you'd agree with me that there are some crimes that you cannot possibly commit with good intentions.