Lesser Chaos Corruption

[dusara217]

Since there are (potentially) as many Chaos Gods as there are ideas and emotions, would it be possible for a few of the lesser Gods to corrupt some Space Marines and start havin' some fun? And would Gods of positive emotions (joy, love, etc.) or positive ideas (freedom, justice, mercy, etc.) gain sufficient power to start Cults of their own and start recruiting Guardsmen and form a Crusade of their own?

[Atia]

 

 

 would it be possible for a few of the lesser Gods to corrupt some Space Marines and start havin' some fun?

oc! back in RT era, where the wh-fantasy world was just a planet inside the realm of chaos, hashut and the horned rat alongside malal were lesser chaos gods (and malal had atleast some renegade marines)

[Arkangilos]

Since there are (potentially) as many Chaos Gods as there are ideas and emotions, would it be possible for a few of the lesser Gods to corrupt some Space Marines and start havin' some fun? And would Gods of positive emotions (joy, love, etc.) or positive ideas (freedom, justice, mercy, etc.) gain sufficient power to start Cults of their own and start recruiting Guardsmen and form a Crusade of their own?

Honestly, I think that has somewhat changed.

 

Khorne doesn't just represent anger and aggression, he also represents martial honor, pride, and things like that.

 

Tzeentch also represents hope. 

 

Nurgle represents acceptance.

 

Slaanesh represents joy, love, pleasure, and happiness. 

 

All four chaos gods represent Freedom. I mean, it's hard to believe considering they have slaves and what not, but they are the opposite of order, and order cannot exist with 100 percent freedom. The Chaos Gods let you choose what you want, do what you want, be what you want. The only thing about that is that you have to compete with everyone else doing the same thing.

 

I would really recommend checking out the Black Crusade RPG from FFG, it gives a lot of details about the various gods. It talks about the positive and negative emotions tied to each one, and the ideas that come with them.

 

 

And for the most part, the other warp entities may be worshiped (I mean, even daemon princes are worshiped), but they aren't necessarily "gods" like the big four. And typically if you don't worship the big four, you just become a fury.

 

Not to sound like a heretic or anything, but only through Chaos can you truly be free, and that is why true, absolute freedom, is scary.

[Lord Pariah]

Since there are (potentially) as many Chaos Gods as there are ideas and emotions, would it be possible for a few of the lesser Gods to corrupt some Space Marines and start havin' some fun? And would Gods of positive emotions (joy, love, etc.) or positive ideas (freedom, justice, mercy, etc.) gain sufficient power to start Cults of their own and start recruiting Guardsmen and form a Crusade of their own?

 

AFAIK, lesser gods have the same power as greater Daemons or daemon princes to give a sense of scale.. Both of them can rule a world without question so a lesser god ruling a world.. sure.

Having guardsmen... maybe renegades, same for astartes but their numbers would be limited to that world and what that world can produce as a daemon world, but i don't really see it getting bigger than that without attracting attention.

 

The biggest problem a lesser god/renegades Daemons of that power is infact other Daemons of similar power, as they would want said power, and with that struggle more will enter the fray in a bid to claim their prize..

 

 

as for what said Daemon is the aspect of... I find myself reminding my fellow denizens of damnation that the warp is liquid plot, given the industrial name of "handwavium" so you can do what ever you wish so long as the requirements are met. And that is a simple question, where is said Daemon getting it's power from.

Just be creative and keep everything abstract and seldom literal.

 

Case in point, a greater undivided Daemon i use is called Mal'ash, and he is the aspect of anarchy.. but instead of running around like a headless warp chicken, he plants seeds of doubt, despair and inequality until the lovely human race enacts a revolution. This is his defining moment, the absolute chaos of upheaval is where he gets his power.. he filled his quota but he did it by uniting people instead of splitting them apart as anarchy usually dictates... he even Created a race of super grots before that backfired and swiftly covered up by a Imperial crusade fleet.

I could go on and on, i know some people like to use big events as a birth of a Daemon that doesn't really follow any of the gods... so many possibilities.

 

does this help?

[*Furyou Miko]

Secret: the gods' meanings haven't changed. Tzeentch just wants you to believe they have. Hope is inherent to Tzeentch's nature because eternal change means 'things can always get better'.

[Xenith]

Sure, there will always be a god spawned of frustration, and another of the silent screams uttered when you stub your little toe.

[Quixus]

Don't forget the God(dess) of Things That Stick in Drawers.

[Brother Ambroz]

Arkangilos is right on the money. All four of the gods basically already embody pretty much all the emotions. Slaanesh is already joy and love, khorne could easily be justice and nurgle can be merciful. All the lesser gods of chaos have pretty much been retconned and become princes and greater daemons.

[Gorkimedes]

I'm sure Necoho is still chilling  out there somewhere  in warp space, or not it probably doesn't care either way.

[SpecialIssue]

 

Since there are (potentially) as many Chaos Gods as there are ideas and emotions, would it be possible for a few of the lesser Gods to corrupt some Space Marines and start havin' some fun? And would Gods of positive emotions (joy, love, etc.) or positive ideas (freedom, justice, mercy, etc.) gain sufficient power to start Cults of their own and start recruiting Guardsmen and form a Crusade of their own?

Honestly, I think that has somewhat changed.

 

Khorne doesn't just represent anger and aggression, he also represents martial honor, pride, and things like that.

 

Tzeentch also represents hope. 

 

Nurgle represents acceptance.

 

Slaanesh represents joy, love, pleasure, and happiness. 

 

All four chaos gods represent Freedom. I mean, it's hard to believe considering they have slaves and what not, but they are the opposite of order, and order cannot exist with 100 percent freedom. The Chaos Gods let you choose what you want, do what you want, be what you want. The only thing about that is that you have to compete with everyone else doing the same thing.

 

Tbh, I don't really think it ever has really changed from this? Haven't Khorne, Slaanesh and Tzeentch always been described as also being the gods of honour and justice, love, and hope respectively? The 'good' emotions and ideas are just tainted weaker versions of the stronger pure emotions that drive them, that the gods are summed from and powered by.

 

I have always been puzzled why Malal was a 'god', since its defining idea is around anarchy, and the tearing down of structure. Seems of a bit of a complex emotion for a major deity to be formed from, as anarchy easily could fall under Nurgle, who likes to see civil structure rot and disintegrate, or Tzeentch, which wants to overturn the established order. Anarchy involves the emotions from most of the major gods, so i can't see how its its own thing. It might be a Greater Daemon torn between the Big 4 or which has no firm allegiance (embodying Anarchy), but it ill always contain aspects of the others and thus can't be separated from them. 

 

Ive also heard an interesting theory that even if there are avatars or powers of pure 'good', they by their very core pacifist nature can't/won't defend themselves from the predatory nature of the evil ones, and swiftly are destroyed in the warp. The god of true, unadulterated altruism could never stand up to the god of love and lust. It'd just be trying to help Slaanesh torture and consume it.

 

You can have daemons and Greater daemons formed from very specific facets of the major 4 emotions - AD-Bs The Ragged Knight is a good example of a daemon formed purely from the emotions, memories and experiences that occurred when a specific city was sacked in ancient history.

 

But it all comes back to the Big 4 for me. You're either worshipping a Greater Daemon/facet of the Big 4, or one of the Big 4 itself in its whole.

[Arkangilos]

 

Tbh, I don't really think it ever has really changed from this? Haven't Khorne, Slaanesh and Tzeentch always been described as also being the gods of honour and justice, love, and hope respectively? The 'good' emotions and ideas are just tainted weaker versions of the stronger pure emotions that drive them, that the gods are summed from and powered by.

Oh, I meant changed from there being gods like "Malal" 

 

I wasn't saying the big four didn't represent those other things before. 

 

And yes to the rest, that's what I believe as well.

[*Furyou Miko]

I thought Malal was the God of Atheism, born of the frustrated excess belief of the billions of creatures who fervently believe that there are no gods?

[Hellios]

I thought Malal was the God of Atheism, born of the frustrated excess belief of the billions of creatures who fervently believe that there are no gods?

 

Isn't that Necoho that Gravitas mentioned.

 

Isn't Malal the god who hates the other Chaos gods.

[Vesper]

Malal is the god of the outcasts. Those who seek revenge against all. Those who have been casted away, left behind and such.

[Marshal Rohr]

It makes zero sense to have a god of anarchy. By having a god, it ceases to be anarchy and becomes a hierarchy, even if its just the God and all followers.  

 

 

 

I have always been puzzled why Malal was a 'god', since its defining idea is around anarchy, and the tearing down of structure. Seems of a bit of a complex emotion for a major deity to be formed from, as anarchy easily could fall under Nurgle, who likes to see civil structure rot and disintegrate, or Tzeentch, which wants to overturn the established order. Anarchy involves the emotions from most of the major gods, so i can't see how its its own thing. It might be a Greater Daemon torn between the Big 4 or which has no firm allegiance (embodying Anarchy), but it ill always contain aspects of the others and thus can't be separated from them

 

Tearing down structure in not Anarchy, its political decay. Anarchy etymologically means 'without leaders', and as a political system it does not 'without order'. Common parlance uses them interchangeably to describe unrest, but in the same way up and down are not interchangeable, the concepts of anarchy and chaos are mutually exclusive. What you're describing would be something like the God of Revolution, which is already firmly under the banner of Nurgle, and Vesper has already pointed out Malal is the god of the outcasts. 

[apologist]

 

[...]All four chaos gods represent Freedom. I mean, it's hard to believe considering they have slaves and what not, but they are the opposite of order, and order cannot exist with 100 percent freedom. The Chaos Gods let you choose what you want, do what you want, be what you want. The only thing about that is that you have to compete with everyone else doing the same thing.

Not to sound like a heretic or anything, but only through Chaos can you truly be free, and that is why true, absolute freedom, is scary.

 

 

Yes, I agree with Arkangilos. His post gets at what sits at the heart of Warhammer 40,000 for me. On the one hand, the misery and stagnation of living under the totalitation crushing grind of the Imperium; on the other, the freedom from laws, physics and sanity itself of chaos.  The depth of the setting lies in the fact that every human in the 40k universe has to make the choice between two repellent options. If you're willing (and able) to become a renegade and break free of the Imperium, the Chaos powers will aid you into becoming what you secretly already are; nothing more. It's the freedom from restraint that makes that pursuit ultimately repellent.

 

Chaos is not scary because it's bad or evil. Chaos is scary because it's us – a dark reflection of our own personal nature. 

 

For this reason, I don't consider that there's a distinction between 'good' and 'bad' emotions in 40k. Rather, the tone of the universe is set around the control and restraint. The Imperium is monstrous because it aims to choke all emotion, while chaos is monstrous because it exaggerates all emotion into parody. Duty, love, honour etc. are perverted into obsession, addiction or rampancy.

 

The philosophical setting of the universe has a lot of depth to it when handled maturely. The great joy of Rogue Trader was that  it balanced that maturity with an ironic, self-awareness that stopped it being too humourless. In losing that humour, the game has sometimes been taken to some rather po-faced places, and that has led to it opening itself up to parody (the 'GRIMDARK' and 'MOAR SKULLS') and – crucially – losing a lot of that emotional depth.

 

...Which is rather by-the-by; forgive my ramblings! :)

 

 

 

Since there are (potentially) as many Chaos Gods as there are ideas and emotions, would it be possible for a few of the lesser Gods to corrupt some Space Marines and start havin' some fun? And would Gods of positive emotions (joy, love, etc.) or positive ideas (freedom, justice, mercy, etc.) gain sufficient power to start Cults of their own and start recruiting Guardsmen and form a Crusade of their own?

 

Building on my point above, any human emotion taken to its logical conclusion becomes monstrous: admiration becomes obsession, then jealousy, then murder. A desire to defend his family from raiders sees a man join the defence force; then take pre-emptive action against the raiders; then butcher the raider's village; then order a pogrom.

 

For this reason, I think it's more than likely that Chaos cults begin with laudable or understandable aims – after all, few people would join The Church of Mutilating Yourself and Eating Babies – but those aims become corrupted and fanatical until the 'Brotherhood of Mercy' is breaking into people's homes to administer the punishment before they commit the crime. So, from that point of view, I'm certain that the 'gods of positive emotions' could start a cult; only for the god to eventually be revealed as one aspect of Khorne, Slaanesh, Tzeentch or Nurgle.

 

However, it's a crucial part of the setting that anything is possible. From our point of view, the very fabric of humanity in the 41st Millennium is monstrous. While the followers of Chaos are irredeemably insane, so too are the 'good guys' of the Imperium. The loyal denizens of most worlds would be quite happy to ignore logic and admit 2 + 2 =5. 

 

 

 

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. This is the tale of those times. It is a universe you can live in today - if you dare - for this is a dark and terrible era where you will find little comfort or hope. If you want to take part in the adventure then prepare yourself now. Forget the power of technology, science and common humanity. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for there is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter and the laughter of thirsting gods.

But the universe is a big place and, whatever happens, you will not be missed...

[dusara217]

How the frack is Slaanesh the God of love? That's Nurgle's forte; He loves his followers. Khorne has been retconned so that he is no longer about honor, just kill kill kill, so I don't see how he could be the God of Honor. Also, please explain to me how the Gods represent freedom? Each of the Gods represents slavery - slavery to sensation for Slaanesh, slavery to bloodlust and rage for Khorne, slavery to change for Tzeentch. Nurgle I can kinda understand the freedom thing, but it isn't that he represents freedom, it's just that he doesn't represent slavery.

 

On Slaanesh: Slaanesh represents perfection and pleasure. Nurgle represents love and happiness, but Slaanesh is all aesthetics, all short-term. There is no joy in pleasure, only addiction.

 

I can see how emotions taken to their extremes CAN become grotesque, but admiration to the extreme can instead become worship. Same thing with love. Honor to the extreme becomes law. The extremes can be good OR bad. It just depends on which extreme you go to.

 

Also, I was thinking of making a homegrown BA Chapter that worships a lesser Chaos God, but also remains loyal to the Emperor because this Chaos God basically says "The Emperor fought against the Evil Ones, and payed the ultimate price, he was awesome, etc." Unfortunately, I don't know what emotion/idea to base them off of. You guys have any ideas? NOT KHORNE.

[jimjimjimmyjim]

There's still a third hope to humanity, that of the tau, still in its infantcy, it welcomes all whom offer allegiance to sept.

 

The accounts of the gue'vesa worlds, that were left to themselves to fend the 3rd expansion of the tau universe, account of the humans settling for tau authority because they offered freedom from persecution and were much more relaxed than the imperium

[Brother Ambroz]

How the frack is Slaanesh the God of love? That's Nurgle's forte; He loves his followers. Khorne has been retconned so that he is no longer about honor, just kill kill kill, so I don't see how he could be the God of Honor. Also, please explain to me how the Gods represent freedom? Each of the Gods represents slavery - slavery to sensation for Slaanesh, slavery to bloodlust and rage for Khorne, slavery to change for Tzeentch. Nurgle I can kinda understand the freedom thing, but it isn't that he represents freedom, it's just that he doesn't represent slavery.

 

On Slaanesh: Slaanesh represents perfection and pleasure. Nurgle represents love and happiness, but Slaanesh is all aesthetics, all short-term. There is no joy in pleasure, only addiction.

 

I can see how emotions taken to their extremes CAN become grotesque, but admiration to the extreme can instead become worship. Same thing with love. Honor to the extreme becomes law. The extremes can be good OR bad. It just depends on which extreme you go to.

 

Also, I was thinking of making a homegrown BA Chapter that worships a lesser Chaos God, but also remains loyal to the Emperor because this Chaos God basically says "The Emperor fought against the Evil Ones, and payed the ultimate price, he was awesome, etc." Unfortunately, I don't know what emotion/idea to base them off of. You guys have any ideas? NOT KHORNE.

Ok you state khorne was retconned into no longer representing honor but then say that the lesser chaos gods still exist? Picking and choosing lore doesn't really work. Where was it ever retconned anyway that khorne no longer is associated with honor and martial pride? They are basically all emotions, every emotion can be broken down into one of the four depending on the way you view each god.

 

And Jim, okay but what does that have to do with anything? Tau don't really have anything to do with the chaos gods so...

[dusara217]

 

How the frack is Slaanesh the God of love? That's Nurgle's forte; He loves his followers. Khorne has been retconned so that he is no longer about honor, just kill kill kill, so I don't see how he could be the God of Honor. Also, please explain to me how the Gods represent freedom? Each of the Gods represents slavery - slavery to sensation for Slaanesh, slavery to bloodlust and rage for Khorne, slavery to change for Tzeentch. Nurgle I can kinda understand the freedom thing, but it isn't that he represents freedom, it's just that he doesn't represent slavery.

 

On Slaanesh: Slaanesh represents perfection and pleasure. Nurgle represents love and happiness, but Slaanesh is all aesthetics, all short-term. There is no joy in pleasure, only addiction.

 

I can see how emotions taken to their extremes CAN become grotesque, but admiration to the extreme can instead become worship. Same thing with love. Honor to the extreme becomes law. The extremes can be good OR bad. It just depends on which extreme you go to.

 

Also, I was thinking of making a homegrown BA Chapter that worships a lesser Chaos God, but also remains loyal to the Emperor because this Chaos God basically says "The Emperor fought against the Evil Ones, and payed the ultimate price, he was awesome, etc." Unfortunately, I don't know what emotion/idea to base them off of. You guys have any ideas? NOT KHORNE.

Ok you state khorne was retconned into no longer representing honor but then say that the lesser chaos gods still exist? Picking and choosing lore doesn't really work. Where was it ever retconned anyway that khorne no longer is associated with honor and martial pride? They are basically all emotions, every emotion can be broken down into one of the four depending on the way you view each god.

 

And Jim, okay but what does that have to do with anything? Tau don't really have anything to do with the chaos gods so...

 

I was just saying that i've never really seen Khorne as a God of Honor. He has never actually acted with honor according to recent fluff, except for killing the strongest foe. And i'm not picking and choosing from the fluff, i don't know why people always say that. If something has a lot of fluff or evidence contradicting it, then I discount it as it is bad fluff writing and undeserving of being in canon, and in 40k, there really is not canon outside of the Codeces and other official GW publications. Also, when was it said that there were no lesser chaos Gods? 

[Brother Ambroz]

 I was just saying that i've never really seen Khorne as a God of Honor. He has never actually acted with honor according to recent fluff, except for killing the strongest foe.

 

Pretty sure it's from the liber chaotica about him being honorable. That's because most of the time nowadays GW just wants to paint chaos as mustache twirling evil guys that the space marine heroes can smash. Different chaos cults and groups of marked individuals believe different things. For example, one group of beserkers believe khorne is all about killing everything in sight (which would mean they probably wouldn't last long, recent GW fluff) and act accordingly. Another group of World Eaters believe he is all about martial honor; they fight their opponents in one on one, wait for their enemies to see them before attacking, ect. It's easier to see the various aspects of the gods in fantasy than it is in 40k.

 

 And i'm not picking and choosing from the fluff, i don't know why people always say that. If something has a lot of fluff or evidence contradicting it, then I discount it as it is bad fluff writing and undeserving of being in canon, and in 40k, there really is not canon outside of the Codeces and other official GW publications.

 

If you discount something and take another as cannon, then is that not the definition of picking and choosing? Sorry but I really don't know what else that'd be called.

 Also, when was it said that there were no lesser chaos Gods?

There was a short blurb or something by ADB a little while ago that explained this. I have been away from the hobby for a few months so I'm not sure where it is. Maybe another member can help with this.

 

Edit: Forgot to answer the last question.

[dusara217]

 

 I was just saying that i've never really seen Khorne as a God of Honor. He has never actually acted with honor according to recent fluff, except for killing the strongest foe.

 

Pretty sure it's from the liber chaotica about him being honorable. That's because most of the time nowadays GW just wants to paint chaos as mustache twirling evil guys that the space marine heroes can smash. Different chaos cults and groups of marked individuals believe different things. For example, one group of beserkers believe khorne is all about killing everything in sight (which would mean they probably wouldn't last long, recent GW fluff) and act accordingly. Another group of World Eaters believe he is all about martial honor; they fight their opponents in one on one, wait for their enemies to see them before attacking, ect. It's easier to see the various aspects of the gods in fantasy than it is in 40k.

 

 And i'm not picking and choosing from the fluff, i don't know why people always say that. If something has a lot of fluff or evidence contradicting it, then I discount it as it is bad fluff writing and undeserving of being in canon, and in 40k, there really is not canon outside of the Codeces and other official GW publications.

 

If you discount something and take another as cannon, then is that not the definition of picking and choosing? Sorry but I really don't know what else that'd be called.

 Also, when was it said that there were no lesser chaos Gods?

There was a short blurb or something by ADB a little while ago that explained this. I have been away from the hobby for a few months so I'm not sure where it is. Maybe another member can help with this.

 

Edit: Forgot to answer the last question.

 

I only ever discount things that are directly contradicted by others, but this is off-topic, so I'm done discussing it. 

 

I'm sorry, but you can't lump every emotion or powerful idea into 4 categories. It simply does not work. You have love, hate, mercy, justice, death, life, happiness, joy, pleasure, sadness, pain, and a hundred other emotions that 4 Gods simply won't fit the bill for. On top of the emotions side of thing, you have the ideas side of things, where an entire race believing hard enough in something makes a reflection of it in the Warp (see: Eldar Pantheon).

[SpecialIssue]

 

 

I'm sorry, but you can't lump every emotion or powerful idea into 4 categories. It simply does not work. You have love, hate, mercy, justice, death, life, happiness, joy, pleasure, sadness, pain, and a hundred other emotions that 4 Gods simply won't fit the bill for. On top of the emotions side of thing, you have the ideas side of things, where an entire race believing hard enough in something makes a reflection of it in the Warp (see: Eldar Pantheon).

 

 

The only reason the Eldar had a pantheon with gods based on such complex ideas is because they are the most psychically attuned race in existence. e.g. they had a god of Smithing, Vaul. How is such an abstract and disparate concept powerful enough to create a God? With the Eldar, they are so much more emotionally sensitive and nuanced than humans, that they obviously felt a singular emotion strong enough to relate to the specific act of smithing. This is something incomprehensible to us uncouth humans, as we can't obviously imagine emotion outside of what we feel - which all are in some way spring from the Big 4 - pleasure and anger, despair and hope.

 

Can you think of an emotion outside of those 4? From the examples given; love is pleasurable, mercy is pity - which is emphasizing with despair; justice is simply constrained vengeance which ultimately springs from anger (no matter how subtle).

 

Death is despair in physical form, life is hope in physical form, happiness and joy are pleasure, sadness and pain are despair.

 

Honour is a form of pride, which is a pleasure to take yet forces anger and demands vengeance; guilt is despair, optimism is hope, and so on and so on. Whatever we feel, it is rooted in one of those 4 emotions.

[Gorkimedes]

 

 You have love, hate, mercy, justice, death, life, happiness, joy, pleasure, sadness, pain, and a hundred other emotions that 4 Gods simply won't fit the bill for. On top of the emotions side of thing, you have the ideas side of things, where an entire race believing hard enough in something makes a reflection of it in the Warp (see: Eldar Pantheon).

I feel like all of those emotions could  in someway be tied to any of the four. I suppose if the visual aesthetics of the franchise weren't wrapped up in selling miniatures individual daemons for any of the gods would be infinitely variable.

 

I always assumed that the eldar deities were something different from the chaos gods. Like ascended Old Ones or Eldar heroes that continued to grow in strength.

 

 

 

Isn't that Necoho that Gravitas mentioned.

 

 

Yea, Necoho was the god of the "struggle against the notion of gods and religions". But he might have only been a fantasy one, not sure.

[Brother Ambroz]

All of those emotions can be tied to one of the four in some way, shape or form. Like the others said.

 

Sorry don't know enough about the eldar to comment on that, although most of their gods are dead anyway aren't they?