Chaos Personalities

[Lexington]

I dunno about identifying with any of the Legions. There's obviously unhealthy connotations to seeing oneself in a rag-tag band of psychopathic superhumans bent on revenge against an ancient galactic empire (plus, really, ancient galactic empires are in worryingly short supply these days), but I also don't like the idea that you ever need your wargaming faction to be a lifestyle choice that reflects the real you. People are more complex than that, and plenty of us have multiple armies. I don't think that should be a diagnosis of multiple personalities.

 

Bill Watterson once said that all of the characters in Calvin & Hobbes were at least halfway him, tho, and I think there's something to take away from that, here. If you really enjoy an army, it's because you find something about them captivating, and that's part of who you are. I love Orks in the same way I love Gremlins 2 and the Killer Tomatoes movies, as goofball cultural parodies. The Space Marines I make generally have a sort of nobility to them, because I like the idea of choosing a noble, vaguely humanistic philosophy in a universe of grim horror. It's not me - I'm a boring consumer drone who putters along with the flow of the world, and at best does a tiny bit of good on the edges. It's an idea I like, tho. That's enough.

 

For Chaos, I do Word Bearers because as a dumb teen, I read about Lorgar's idea of humans needing to worship to find meaning and thought that was an understandable, identifiable and perfectly awful idea. The concept of needing to draw a fake little box around human activity and focus it on maintaining and sustaining rather than exploration and reflection, because of a fear that maybe there's nothing more to be derived from existence? Yikes, man! It makes sense and it's terrible and I hate it, which is why I've been making stories and models about it for, like, twenty damned years at this point. It's like a die, something to carve an ideology against, if anything.

 

So, no, I don't think one needs to put on the aforementioned Sorting Hat to be divided into your Internet Quiz Legion and have an identity. Your choice of 40K faction's going to come out of your own internal world in one way or another, but it's not an easy, one-to-one relationship sort of thing. It might only be clear later on ("like all fortunes opaque on arrival, inevitable in retrospect"), but it'll definitely be you in your own way, for your own reasons.

[slitth]

Do you think the personality of a traitor legion or renegade Chapter army should match the player? Why or why not?

 

No, people are complex and the "personalities" of a legion is to subjective.

 

I prefer the Alpha Legion.

I prefer them because I see pragmatism dialled to 11.

I prefer them because I like the contradiction of having people look alike and act alike but also be trained to be individual thinkers.

I prefer them because the there pride that them are best at warfare because they strive to control warfare in its totality.

 

Now all this thing are my perspective of the Alpha Legion, but I would expect that a good many people have a different perspective of the Alpha Legion.

And I would not say that any of this traits define me or something that I would strive to become.

[McElMcNinja]

I started with good ol space marines and that's what everyone else I played with ran them too, save one eldar player. Then my friend had won a grab box of eldar stuff that happened to have 2 blister packs of Nurgle Marines. He didn't want them so he gave those 4 miniatures to me and I've been plagued ever since. This was back in the day when they were made out of lead and I could have gotten some sort of poisoning/plague from them.

And over the years I've collected and sold many other armies, I was never able to part with my Nurgle stuff. I still run those old lead ones every chance I get. Along with all the others I've collected and I've never repainted them over the years. I do want to rebase them to the larger bases Death Guard come on now, but that's a project for another day.

As far me becoming my army, I was thinking no. I do bathe regularly and I'm not that guy at the game store no one can stand next to. But then thinking about it more, I have had cancer twice (stupid lead miniatures) so maybe.

[Kite Senet]

I certainly sympathize with the Thousand Sons; as a graduate student, I know the feeling of an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. I also resonate with the concept of Fate that plays heavily in their narrative, as well as unstoppable, stubborn hope in the face of difficulty. There are sections of the Thousand Sons lore that are less savory, of course, but since I do sympathize with them so much I tend to retcon these aspects a bit in my own personal warband's fluff.

 

For example, My Dudes don't consider their cultists as disposable per se, since I (obviously) consider that rather abhorrent--one of the primary reasons I like the Thousand Sons is because of Ahriman's relentless quest to save his comrades from his Rubric, after all; it seems contradictory for them to not also value their newer warriors. Rather, my Thousand Sons promise their cultists eternal life, and they do indeed deliver...through a sorcerous reincarnation as a Tzaangor. It's a Faustian bargain at best, as they are now ostracized from mainstream humanity and are fully dependent on the Thousand Sons and their sorceries for their next cycle of reincarnation, but there's no lying or deception or even coercion there; and any of these cultists can hope to eventually transcend to become a shaman after numerous reincarnations and dedicated service to the Sons.

 

I don't know if that makes absolute sense, but I think it draws out more of the aspects of Hope and Ambition from the followers of the Architect of Change, which tend to become lost in the grimdark, and I think it makes it easier for me to sympathize more directly with my army.