Sons of Horus/Cthonian culture

[Daylight]

After reading though Betrayal, I have a few questions about the Sons of Horus. Most legions have fairly obvious inspiration from real world cultures, but I'm having trouble figuring out the historical/modern day analogue to the SoH/Cthonians. They seem to be inspired by generic gangs, or am I missing something? Also, I tried to decipher what language Cthonian (ex. aebathan, to cut an enemy warlord's throat) sounded like, but came up blank. Any ideas on any of this?

[FunkyMonkey]

There isn't really a real world culture.  A lot of legions don't have historical analogues.  Examples include Raven Guard, Salamanders, Iron Hands, and all of the traitor legions with the exception of the Thousand Sons.  The Traitor legions seem to be more based around archetypes rather than cultural themes.

 

And yeah, it's been really clear that the SoH is all about gang culture and the casual brutality (as opposed to World Eaters crazed ferocity) and turf-war style power plays that come with it.

[Scribe]

Military practice aside, the Cthonians are to me, a Mad Max, post-apoc type gang/tribe culture. Not in the same capacity as Night Lords gangland low tech cyberpunk feel (to me).

[MordentHex]

Cthonic comes from greek, Meaning under the earth or subterranean.  It is mostly to refer to gods of death and the afterlife.  Hence you could refer from that it is a death cult/ cult of death of a type.  So sacrifices and such should actually be common, like slain enemies and the like as dedicated sacrifices to such cult.

Maybe this will help you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chthonic

[GhostMalone]

Busting out the Wikipedia entries ;)

 

Nice touch

[FunkyMonkey]

In Greek culture, the Cthonian underworld is not quite the same as the Hades underworld.  Cthonian has more to do with, as you said being actually tied to the earth, and the term is most commonly used to describe the spawn of Typhon such as Cerberus, Ladon, the Hydra, the Nemean Lion, etc.  Typhon was the son of Tartarus, and though Tartarus has connotations with punishment of the wicked in the afterlife, it gains that association mostly by virtue of its more distinctive quality of representing the bottomless pit / abyss.  Anyways, the Tartarus-Typhon-Cthonic line mainly refers with the underground aspect with the spiritual/afterlife aspect being tacked on as a derivative of the underground aspect.

 

In this case, the name merely refers to how the Cthonian gangs from the Sons of Horus recruit are underhive gangs, so they are quite Cthonic in the sense that the are underground, if ground was considered the main level of the hives.  Extending it to death cults and sacrifices is a little more of a stretch.  I don't recall sacrifices ever being mentioned, and if there were, they were most likely started after contact with the Davinites and the warrior lodges.

[Conn Eremon]

It also has a lot of Biblical Hebrew influence, right? Abaddon is the only one I can think of that directly corresponds with something, but most of the Marines have that Hebrew sound to their names. Like Abaddon, they seem to center around those of the underworld. Combined with Cthonia, which has already been extrapolated on, their theme is basically Hell.

 

Which is kind of amusing, considering their lord and master is named after an Egyptian god of the heavens.

[FunkyMonkey]

Abaddon was the only Hebrew sounding name that I thought of.  I always thought that Hebrew names, if they weren't the names of angels/demons (which would give the -el/-ael "of God" root) like those of the Dark Angels, would incorporate a noticeable hard k or aac sound that is related to the Assyrian and Mesopotamian -ech  or -uk sounds.  Several of the other names seemed to be variations or twists of the Abaddon base, like Torgaddon, Ekaddon, etc.  Abaddon itself is tied to the angel/demon Abaddon "the Destroyer" of the apocalypse.  I thought this was mainly related to Abaddon's status as Warmaster of Chaos and the bringer of the numerous Black Crusades.

 

There are other names that I'm fairly certain aren't really Hebrew sounding, such as Kibre, Maloghurst, Luc Sedirae (this sounds somewhat similar to a European Mediterranean name), Sejanus, and of course Qurze, Loken, and Horus Aximand.  Honestly, I can't really seem to derive a theme for these names apart from the several Abaddon names.

 

In my opinion, their theme, besides underhive gansgsters, was being First Among Traitors, and thus, they were the most representative of and had the theme of chaotic destruction with tearing down the old and the good.  This position is shared with the Word Bearers who are First Among Traitors in the spiritual sense.

 

 

 

Though the general names of the Sons of Horus are among my favorite from the legion, I do enjoy the culturally thematic names like those from the Thousand Sons and the Ultramarines.  KSons names are so Egyptian, though interestingly, Ahriman (and his brother and Magnus) is the only one so far from the legion with a name reflecting somewhere non-Egyptian.

[Conn Eremon]

Babylonian, Egyptian, and I remember finding one other while searching a few months ago, ancient cultures that were popularly known to enslave or hold captive huge Jewish populations. Most of the Marine names have some for of connection to these cultures through that Hebrew connection. For instance, Akkad - Ekaddon. For the others, well they all have that feel to me, but I'm certainly no expert on it.

[Kol Saresk]

Dangnabbit. I need like quotas man!

 

So if the ties seem to most likely be centered around cultures that had contact with the Hebrews/Israelites/Jews, then we'd be looking at Egyptian, Ishmaelite(proto-Pakistani IIRC), Persian, Baylonians, Caananites, Chaldeans, Philistines, pretty much anyone else who ever existed in the Middle East, up to an include the including the Hellenistic Greeks and the Romans and possibly the subjects/visitors of both, such as the Celtics and Proto-Germanics?

[FunkyMonkey]

I think linguistically, the most similar to Hebrew would be the closer Near East ancient cultures.  Persia might be a bit too far, though it is likely that Hebrew and Persian exchanged influences when Cyrus freed the Jews.  So that would bring us to, as you Kol said, Assyrians, Caananite, Chaldeans, Philistines, probably also including the early Mesopotamian city states like Ur, Uruk, and Akkad, since if the Bible is to believed, Israelites are descendants of the citizens of Ur through the line of the patriarchs up to Abraham.  The Philistines are debatable, because historians lean toward the opinion that they weren't a Semitic people like everyone else in the region was.  But, I suppose that doesn't rule out anything.  After all, you have Ahriman and Ohrmuzd of Sassanid Persia and Uthizzar, probably of Arabian, Assyrian, or Babylonian-Chaldean connotations, in the Thousand Sons, not to mention that Magnus seems like a Latin term (though usually used as name in only Scandinavian nobility).

 

I doubt Egyptian, because that's already taken by the Thousand Sons.

 

Anyways, like I said before, I really don't see a thematic connection between the names of known Sons of Horus astartes apart from Abaddon and Co.  I'm content to believe that like most of the traitor legions, the Sons of Horus don't really have a cultural theme and are instead based on archetypes.

[Kol Saresk]

I need more likes.

[Conn Eremon]

Don't forget that pure Mesopotamian is already taken by the Word Bearers, who at multiple times are as blatant as those like Horus, Vulkan or Ferrus Manus, from their home world to their naming mechanics. Though there is some overlap.

 

However, just because a cultural theme could be applied doesn't mean that it can be applied universally. Using the Word Bearers, we got Colchis, Marduk, Kor Phaeron and Bel sSomething Or Other. All heavily themed around a central source, or clearly chosen for its proximity to one. But you also got Erebus, whose Greek influence puts him more in line with the Sons of Horus and Abaddon. But most characters, typically secondary ones to whichever story is written, are hard to find and, more than likely, were actually made up. Any connections they would have is probably just the author trying to make up a name that sounds like it could come from the same culture (the actual culture, not the real one it may have been based on) that the others did. Or not and they are examples of Marines recruited elsewhere, like Terra or a newly compliant system.

[crimsonhand]

There isn't really a real world culture.  A lot of legions don't have historical analogues.  Examples include Raven Guard, Salamanders, Iron Hands, and all of the traitor legions with the exception of the Thousand Sons.  The Traitor legions seem to be more based around archetypes rather than cultural themes.

 

And yeah, it's been really clear that the SoH is all about gang culture and the casual brutality (as opposed to World Eaters crazed ferocity) and turf-war style power plays that come with it.

Raven guard are clearly native Americans, and Salamanders are very Zulu mixed with sci fi

[Grim Dog Studios]

On the Sons of Horus having hebrew names, Gavriel is the hebrew for Gabriel. I always saw Garviel as a slightly changed Gavriel, so in my eyes Loken has a hebrew name. 

On the actual culture of cthonia I have no clue, but like Scribe of Khorne said, I always pictured them as post-apocalyptic mad max kind of gangs in a wasteland.

[MordentHex]

In Greek culture, the Cthonian underworld is not quite the same as the Hades underworld.  Cthonian has more to do with, as you said being actually tied to the earth, and the term is most commonly used to describe the spawn of Typhon such as Cerberus, Ladon, the Hydra, the Nemean Lion, etc.  Typhon was the son of Tartarus, and though Tartarus has connotations with punishment of the wicked in the afterlife, it gains that association mostly by virtue of its more distinctive quality of representing the bottomless pit / abyss.  Anyways, the Tartarus-Typhon-Cthonic line mainly refers with the underground aspect with the spiritual/afterlife aspect being tacked on as a derivative of the underground aspect.

 

In this case, the name merely refers to how the Cthonian gangs from the Sons of Horus recruit are underhive gangs, so they are quite Cthonic in the sense that the are underground, if ground was considered the main level of the hives.  Extending it to death cults and sacrifices is a little more of a stretch.  I don't recall sacrifices ever being mentioned, and if there were, they were most likely started after contact with the Davinites and the warrior lodges.

Its 40k, i was tryign to keep it dark and Gothic. Make sacrifices and death cult it up as much or little as you like. I was kind of referring to how the SoH liked to kill their enemies "eye to eye"  Seems cultism...kinda...maybe...