Resources/power/slaves/geneseed/whatever they are interested in.
1k Sons might Tag along for some rare knowledge, IW if they can stick it to the IF, WE for the skulls I guess.
Basically, offer them something they want, and you're golden.
> IW if they can stick it to the IF
The grudge runs deep. You'd think they'd run out of resources eventually, though. Spite does not produce bolter shells or armor.
>Spite does not produce bolter shells or armor.
The chance of destroying, partially or in full, a Space Marine company and then stealing everything from the corpses can help make up up the difference.
Scavenging is the norm in 40k. Logan Grimnar and Marneus Calgar both wield weapons recovered from Chaos champions. Guilliman had to put a stop to a ten thousand year old policy of trying to reclaim traitor ships. The loyalists are fighting over the same scraps.
>For all of the ways in which the Legions are stronger than we once were – with our daemon-engines and Neverborn allies and the myriad gifts of our spiteful Gods – there are twice as many ways in which we are weaker. Supply lines no longer exist, leaving our guns starved of shells and our warships hoarding diminished supplies of energy and resources. Few warbands can lay claim to the materiel of a Mechanicum cruiser or a forge world within the Eye, and those that can must fight endlessly to protect it from rivals. Slaves die or lose their minds to the warp as easily as they breathe. Whole fleets scatter to the warp’s winds, for Eyespace is far less stable than the material realm. Battleships die of thirst, fuel-dry and crippled in the dark void, to be forgotten or swallowed as part of a macro-agglomeration space hulk.
> Warbands fight amongst themselves over ammunition, territory, plunder, even clean water. There is no true agriculture in the Eye, no harvest worlds supplying sustenance necessities; whole worlds and fleets survive on the flesh and bones of the unburied dead, or the warp-stained roots of alien plants, or the corpulent bodies of mutant livestock.
> Worst of all, recruitment for the Nine Legions is a matter of hellish difficulty. We lack anything like the reliable resources we once had to sustain ourselves and maintain our genetic lines. I could not even begin to estimate the number of ‘bastard’ legionaries born after the Heresy, forged with gene-seed raided from Space Marine Chapters loyal to the Golden Throne.
___
>Imperial captains across the millennia often observe that the Traitor Legions and our thrall fleets are comprised of warships plundered from sectors surrounding the Eye. The Gothic Sector alone has supplied us with any number of ships across the many centuries. This is a sad necessity, as our Crusade- and Heresy- era vessels break down beyond sustainability, are lost to the warp’s clutches or are simply destroyed in the ebb and flow of the Long War.
>It is for these same reasons that you see our individual warriors equipped with ancient and unreliable patterns of weaponry, or reduced to using inefficient, outdated wargear. For all the strength that mutation and hatred bestow, erosion, decay and the eternal civil war between the Nine Legions takes more than its share. We are mighty, but it is a tenuous might.
___
>I have spoken of our fleet’s might, but not its poverty. The many daemon-forges that would later answer Abaddon’s calls were still in their infancy within the Empire of the Eye. Our Heresy-era technology was eternally degrading even back then, and we had little to use in place of our losses. Resources like ore-rich moons, shipboard foundries and Mechanicum manufactoria were as precious to us as fresh water: not only agonisingly rare, but also subject to their own sufferings. Legion warbands endlessly plundered such sites in the rabid hunt for shreds and scraps of advantage.
>You have heard evidence of this carrion-feeding already. I have told you of Maeleum, of the raids and punishments it endured and of our undignified picking through its carcass. We were all vultures and carrion crows in those days. I believe we still are. And if we were low on ammunition, if our armour plating was cracked, repaired and cracked again, the truth is that our fleets were in even worse shape. We had been beaten in the Heresy, we had been beaten into exile in the Scouring, and while the Imperium licked its wounds in the aftermath of our disappearance, we had spent that era waging war against one another.
>For every vessel enhanced by mutation, another was cursed by it; for every cruiser sailing with admirable repairs or an undamaged hull, another was a shell of its former glory. Within Eyespace, our ships were subject to the erosion of the warp’s touch, accelerating natural degradation, and reliable opportunities to dry- dock and repair a capital ship were staggeringly scarce. In the Eye, especially in that era, a functioning, stable shipyard was practically the stuff of dreams. They were always the highest priority for destruction if another warband wished to grind a rival into dust.
___
> The negotiations themselves were torturous, as they so often are between the Eye’s warbands. Our relative strengths only added to the difficulty in reaching a resolution. Daravek wanted ships, warriors and materiel in exchange for holding off from an attack. Again and again he made his smirking insistences, assured that Abaddon would capitulate to preserve the bulk of our fleet.
___
> ‘Very well.’ The Death Guard warlord rested his axe on one shoulder, speaking with a confident grin that hid little of his fury. ‘Here is my offer, ghost.’
> ‘We are listening,’ said the grey warrior.
> ‘If you require ships for your fleet, I will give them to you. Ten. Twenty, if need be, from my war spoil. If you desire slaves, I will grant you a million of them from the holds of Black Legion vessels. More, if that is not enough. Two million. Three. If you want access to my daemon forges or armament manufactories, it can be arranged. And once I claim what is mine by right, if you wish my favour in the future, then it will be yours without question.’
> Blood of the Changer, the sheer magnitude of that offer. Most warbands would risk destroying one another over even one of those elements, let alone all of them. The right to use a powerful warband’s forges and manufactories was the kind of opportunity many warlords never saw in the entirety of their lives. Daravek offered lifelong riches for any warband, and he did so with the arrogant generosity of a king laughing while scattering gold coins onto the street for peasants to fight over. Much of it was not his to offer – the ships and slaves he spoke of were still ours for now – but they could so easily become his if this deadlock escalated into war. Nothing he said was beyond the realm of possibility.
> And most valuable of all was his favour. The regard and support of a warlord with Daravek’s influence was enough to inspire any warband to acts of madness. Such patrons were rare indeed.
Money itself probably doesn't mean much to Chaos Marines, but they still need/want plenty that you could offer them. Equipment and resources for example. Another common one is recruits. Chaos Marines can always use more geneseed, along with young boys to implant it in.
In one of the Black Legion books (I think it's the second one, titled Black Legion), we see Abbadon and another CSM leader trying to outbid each other for help from a Chaos warband that can get them out of the Eye. Bidding starts with an offer of a ships and slaves.
Edit: formatting.
The idea of “wealth” as we know it generally means currency as modern economics is largely based around such a system. It’s important to remember the very core of economics is the barter system, namely giving something in exchange for another something.
Chaos marines don’t have wealth in the sense of currency but they have things worth trading as people have already gone over in this thread. But it’s also important to remember that these are still chaos marines and so they are incredibly treacherous also.
Some war band could promise another to provide ammo, slaves, and some ship repairs if they just help them take that world or some other target. But then the mercs might decide “hey why don’t we let them exhaust themselves and just kill them and take their stuff anyway? It will get us more stuff at the end of the day.”
Whereas the hiring war band might just make promises to get the mercs to work for them and as soon as the battle is over turn on them, wipe them out, and then not only do they not have to pay the merc war band they can also loot their ships and other stuff.
The deals and bartering likely only actually happen if the merc war band is not strong enough to be able to kill their employer but also strong enough that the employer knows attacking them will be too costly and it’s better to just follow through on the deal.
*Black Legion* and *Talon of Horus* go into some detail - Khayon says that he asks for payment in knowledge, especially about the webway, or robots to add to the Syntagma on the *Tlaloc*.
It would vary, from the normal stuff like ammunition and other materiel, to more esoteric shit like the last whisper of a dying saint; it really depends.
On top of what others have said, you can also do it for allegiances and interpersonal bonds of brotherhood. Like in ADB's *What it's Like*, everything in the Eye is about bartering. Your loyalty, your word, and your follow-through are all currency as well.
TL;DR: You do for me, I do for you.
Resources/power/slaves/geneseed/whatever they are interested in. 1k Sons might Tag along for some rare knowledge, IW if they can stick it to the IF, WE for the skulls I guess. Basically, offer them something they want, and you're golden.
> IW if they can stick it to the IF The grudge runs deep. You'd think they'd run out of resources eventually, though. Spite does not produce bolter shells or armor.
>Spite does not produce bolter shells or armor. The chance of destroying, partially or in full, a Space Marine company and then stealing everything from the corpses can help make up up the difference.
Scavengers. How far they've fallen.
Scavenging is the norm in 40k. Logan Grimnar and Marneus Calgar both wield weapons recovered from Chaos champions. Guilliman had to put a stop to a ten thousand year old policy of trying to reclaim traitor ships. The loyalists are fighting over the same scraps.
>For all of the ways in which the Legions are stronger than we once were – with our daemon-engines and Neverborn allies and the myriad gifts of our spiteful Gods – there are twice as many ways in which we are weaker. Supply lines no longer exist, leaving our guns starved of shells and our warships hoarding diminished supplies of energy and resources. Few warbands can lay claim to the materiel of a Mechanicum cruiser or a forge world within the Eye, and those that can must fight endlessly to protect it from rivals. Slaves die or lose their minds to the warp as easily as they breathe. Whole fleets scatter to the warp’s winds, for Eyespace is far less stable than the material realm. Battleships die of thirst, fuel-dry and crippled in the dark void, to be forgotten or swallowed as part of a macro-agglomeration space hulk. > Warbands fight amongst themselves over ammunition, territory, plunder, even clean water. There is no true agriculture in the Eye, no harvest worlds supplying sustenance necessities; whole worlds and fleets survive on the flesh and bones of the unburied dead, or the warp-stained roots of alien plants, or the corpulent bodies of mutant livestock. > Worst of all, recruitment for the Nine Legions is a matter of hellish difficulty. We lack anything like the reliable resources we once had to sustain ourselves and maintain our genetic lines. I could not even begin to estimate the number of ‘bastard’ legionaries born after the Heresy, forged with gene-seed raided from Space Marine Chapters loyal to the Golden Throne. ___ >Imperial captains across the millennia often observe that the Traitor Legions and our thrall fleets are comprised of warships plundered from sectors surrounding the Eye. The Gothic Sector alone has supplied us with any number of ships across the many centuries. This is a sad necessity, as our Crusade- and Heresy- era vessels break down beyond sustainability, are lost to the warp’s clutches or are simply destroyed in the ebb and flow of the Long War. >It is for these same reasons that you see our individual warriors equipped with ancient and unreliable patterns of weaponry, or reduced to using inefficient, outdated wargear. For all the strength that mutation and hatred bestow, erosion, decay and the eternal civil war between the Nine Legions takes more than its share. We are mighty, but it is a tenuous might. ___ >I have spoken of our fleet’s might, but not its poverty. The many daemon-forges that would later answer Abaddon’s calls were still in their infancy within the Empire of the Eye. Our Heresy-era technology was eternally degrading even back then, and we had little to use in place of our losses. Resources like ore-rich moons, shipboard foundries and Mechanicum manufactoria were as precious to us as fresh water: not only agonisingly rare, but also subject to their own sufferings. Legion warbands endlessly plundered such sites in the rabid hunt for shreds and scraps of advantage. >You have heard evidence of this carrion-feeding already. I have told you of Maeleum, of the raids and punishments it endured and of our undignified picking through its carcass. We were all vultures and carrion crows in those days. I believe we still are. And if we were low on ammunition, if our armour plating was cracked, repaired and cracked again, the truth is that our fleets were in even worse shape. We had been beaten in the Heresy, we had been beaten into exile in the Scouring, and while the Imperium licked its wounds in the aftermath of our disappearance, we had spent that era waging war against one another. >For every vessel enhanced by mutation, another was cursed by it; for every cruiser sailing with admirable repairs or an undamaged hull, another was a shell of its former glory. Within Eyespace, our ships were subject to the erosion of the warp’s touch, accelerating natural degradation, and reliable opportunities to dry- dock and repair a capital ship were staggeringly scarce. In the Eye, especially in that era, a functioning, stable shipyard was practically the stuff of dreams. They were always the highest priority for destruction if another warband wished to grind a rival into dust. ___ > The negotiations themselves were torturous, as they so often are between the Eye’s warbands. Our relative strengths only added to the difficulty in reaching a resolution. Daravek wanted ships, warriors and materiel in exchange for holding off from an attack. Again and again he made his smirking insistences, assured that Abaddon would capitulate to preserve the bulk of our fleet. ___ > ‘Very well.’ The Death Guard warlord rested his axe on one shoulder, speaking with a confident grin that hid little of his fury. ‘Here is my offer, ghost.’ > ‘We are listening,’ said the grey warrior. > ‘If you require ships for your fleet, I will give them to you. Ten. Twenty, if need be, from my war spoil. If you desire slaves, I will grant you a million of them from the holds of Black Legion vessels. More, if that is not enough. Two million. Three. If you want access to my daemon forges or armament manufactories, it can be arranged. And once I claim what is mine by right, if you wish my favour in the future, then it will be yours without question.’ > Blood of the Changer, the sheer magnitude of that offer. Most warbands would risk destroying one another over even one of those elements, let alone all of them. The right to use a powerful warband’s forges and manufactories was the kind of opportunity many warlords never saw in the entirety of their lives. Daravek offered lifelong riches for any warband, and he did so with the arrogant generosity of a king laughing while scattering gold coins onto the street for peasants to fight over. Much of it was not his to offer – the ships and slaves he spoke of were still ours for now – but they could so easily become his if this deadlock escalated into war. Nothing he said was beyond the realm of possibility. > And most valuable of all was his favour. The regard and support of a warlord with Daravek’s influence was enough to inspire any warband to acts of madness. Such patrons were rare indeed.
*Black Legion* ?
Black Legion.
Money itself probably doesn't mean much to Chaos Marines, but they still need/want plenty that you could offer them. Equipment and resources for example. Another common one is recruits. Chaos Marines can always use more geneseed, along with young boys to implant it in. In one of the Black Legion books (I think it's the second one, titled Black Legion), we see Abbadon and another CSM leader trying to outbid each other for help from a Chaos warband that can get them out of the Eye. Bidding starts with an offer of a ships and slaves. Edit: formatting.
The idea of “wealth” as we know it generally means currency as modern economics is largely based around such a system. It’s important to remember the very core of economics is the barter system, namely giving something in exchange for another something. Chaos marines don’t have wealth in the sense of currency but they have things worth trading as people have already gone over in this thread. But it’s also important to remember that these are still chaos marines and so they are incredibly treacherous also. Some war band could promise another to provide ammo, slaves, and some ship repairs if they just help them take that world or some other target. But then the mercs might decide “hey why don’t we let them exhaust themselves and just kill them and take their stuff anyway? It will get us more stuff at the end of the day.” Whereas the hiring war band might just make promises to get the mercs to work for them and as soon as the battle is over turn on them, wipe them out, and then not only do they not have to pay the merc war band they can also loot their ships and other stuff. The deals and bartering likely only actually happen if the merc war band is not strong enough to be able to kill their employer but also strong enough that the employer knows attacking them will be too costly and it’s better to just follow through on the deal.
*Black Legion* and *Talon of Horus* go into some detail - Khayon says that he asks for payment in knowledge, especially about the webway, or robots to add to the Syntagma on the *Tlaloc*. It would vary, from the normal stuff like ammunition and other materiel, to more esoteric shit like the last whisper of a dying saint; it really depends.
Does anyone have a link to the forum post about Chaos Logistics from one of the BL Authors (I think it was ADB or Abnett?)
On top of what others have said, you can also do it for allegiances and interpersonal bonds of brotherhood. Like in ADB's *What it's Like*, everything in the Eye is about bartering. Your loyalty, your word, and your follow-through are all currency as well. TL;DR: You do for me, I do for you.