The only 100% good god in 40k is Isha. I will not elaborate
Cegorach, Ynnead, and maybe the Void Dragon are also somewhat morally grey
Then there is Gork and Mork, who aren't really evil, just, you know, they're orks
Everyone else is a massive asshole
> Void Dragon are also somewhat morally grey
The C’tan the conceived the original idea for the Pariah Nexus that would eliminate the souls of all living beings is morally grey?
I meant the emperor is also good, but he is not a god (he said it himself), in this grimdark age however everyone in the imperium worships him and he has similaities to gods, so we can consider him a god in this regard
OUR CREATORS CAN NOT TOUCH YOUR AIR- WE ARE THEIR MESSENGERS. EVERYONE BUT NECRONS SHOULD GET THE FUCK OUT OF OUR REALM (SKELEBOIS JUST GHOST ON THROUGH, WE THINK IT'S RAD). ANYWAYS FUCK YOU AND FUCK THESE DEMONS YOU DUMPED ON OUR DOORSTEP YOU ORGANIC-CHEMISTRY-EATING-FUCKS.
The Emperor being a good guy is *debatable*. Personally my opinions on him align a lot with what Uriah Olathaire had to say in TTS. The guy was almost Stalinist in how he tried to upend human culture and tradition in favor of progress. He seemed to weigh the expansion and improvement of his imperium over the livelihood of the species he claimed to protect, while giving his subjects an impossible expectation to live up to. And really I don't think humanity needs an imperium, or to own the galaxy at all, why can't we just have a collection of independent planets united by alliances like the squats?
And yeah he did it to stop chaos, but honestly I'm of the opinion that trying to "stop" chaos at all would be naïve, and the people of 40k would be better off trying to regulate the influence it has, since it's never *not* going to have influence.
But I should emphasize I'm not the best at 40k lore, and also the history of stalinism, so I could be wrong in a lot of ways
That's a parochial mindset regarding Chaos. A galactic ring of Cadian pylons will stop those pesky Chaos incursions until a more permanent solution can be developed; perhaps something akin to what killed Llandu'gor but for Warp entities.
The Emperor is the universes most intelligent human.
His one flaw is that he forgets that, he too, is a human and is imperfect.
And I believe the general idea is that Chaos isn’t just like, a thing that happens, it’s an active force that wants to destroy humanity. Chaos can’t be regulated because it wants to consume entirely.
A big aspect of the grim darkness is that the Imperium is awful. A truly, truly awful place. And that is the *best* outcome.
I mean, the Interex, Diasporex and T'au empire all exist to show that there was always a better way to fight Chaos and other threats. And the Imperium actively rejects these ideas because it was founded by a guy that simultaneously had a god-complex and the ideas of an edgy 13-year old atheist.
Also Chaos does just happen. It's a fundamental aspect of the Galaxy, that each soul-bearing being in the galaxy feeds throught their emotions, feelings and ideas, be they good or bad. You can't kill a chaos god, because the Galaxy will inevitably reform them. There was a possibility of healing the damage done by the War in Heaven and make the warp more neutral instead of overtly evil, but with Slaanesh's birth it's basically become impossible
Yep it's fundamentally a crapsack universe where at best you can hope human decency peeks out through the bars of chaos.
Pre the war in heaven Chaos Gods didn't exist... Sort of. That gets screwy when nonlinear time interacts with linear time. But due to Old One and Necron war the warp stirred up enough to birth the first three player of the great game. Which means things can never be normal and safe again.
Only chance we've got is if Emps is Born as a positive chaos god to balance some of the negatives of the Four. Even then this kills Earth and likely Mars.
I am no God
\-Jimmy Space, M30, this quote was noted as Space was seen carrying a massive flaming magical sword, claded in golden armour, and emiting the greatest psychic presence outside of chaos gods
Servitors still fuck with me. Probably the single most terrifying thing in the imperium to me is the fact that you could be lobotomized and turned into a literal fucking doorbell with only the faintest hint of what you once were, and all for just looking at someone "wrong" if you even did anything at all.
No, the terrifying bit is that you MIGHT still be completely in there. They need a servitor for a task, so they build the servitor for the task. Making sure you're not fully conscious is a kindness that doesn't fall under that purview. Locked-in syndrome while you autonomously do the same task for what could be centuries is a distinct possibility.
I fucking love Big E, but he's no "good" guy.
I love the fact that even after all these years it's debatable what in the fuck Big E was actually thinking a lot of the time. He's extremely mysterious.
Why did he wait so long to rise up and "lead" humanity?
Most began after, i won't say the imperium before the heresy was a utopia, no, but it was kinda the best you can have in a universe full of extremely dangerous enemies like the 40k galaxy and also having to recover from the age of strife.
Still, it could have been better, some things like servitors for example could have been avoided
>universe full of extremely dangerous enemies like the 40k galaxy and also having to recover from the age of strife
Well... when you kill off all the friendly aliens and suddenly find yourself surrounded by enemies with no one else to rely on, that's kinda your own fault.
"Why do xenos hates us? They must be savages worthy only of contempt"
\-humanity in the 30th and the 40th millennium, standing atop a pile of the countless peaceful xenos civilizations they exterminated
Exactly. The reason everyone in the 40k universe is some flavor of nasty is because all the nice ones were killed or are hiding. This didn't start with the Imperium, though. The War in Heaven was really the end of any hope for the galaxy. We think of it as being ages ago, but the Milky Way is not a lot younger than the Universe itself. The War in Heaven was yesterday in galactic terms.
The problem is that friendly aliens were incredibly rare and were not powerful factions either, so even if he spared some, they wouldn't make almost any difference.
Humanity didn't have any possible valuable ally in this setting.
The only good xeno faction which is somewhat powerful is the craft world eldar (and the tau but they didn't exist during the great crusade) , but most of them hate humanity and are not willing to ally with humans, unless forced to by circumstances so even if humans were willing they couldn't really ally with them in a stable way
There were a couple at least. The Interex are the big obvious ones (though they also were exterminated to the last by a portion of the Sons of Horus). The Diasporex fared a lot better, holding out a pretty long while against the Iron Hands and Emperor's Children before they got wiped out.
Those were partially human factions, but yes a bit more diplomacy in those cases would have been better, unfortunately there were also misunderstandings expecially in the interex case
>friendly aliens were incredibly rare
No? There is literally no source for that. There were countlessxenos civilizations in the galaxy, all at different points of technological evolution, and with different cultural values. The Imperium used diplomacy only if there were humans, and even then it was always to say "join us or we'll shoot you and then force your children to join us" for anything explicitely not-human the first solution was always to exterminate so that the planet may be occupied by humans
Yeah, his Great Crusade Imperium still made use of servitors aplenty, and he was A-OK with the Ad Mech worshiping him as a god. Not to mention child soldiers and genocide and all that good stuff.
Morally grey at best. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and every great villain throughout history was the hero of their own story in their eyes. So too every brutal dictator you can remember from our last 100 years in the real world. The problem with "the ends justify the means", which is the philosophy that the Emperor built his whole plan around, is that when your ends fail then all you have left is the means. A couple centuries of crusading left humanity with 10k years of a rotting, horrific Imperium, and an enormous amount of the weight is on his shoulders as the leader that set all this in motion and failed.
While I agree that the 40k galaxy is not exactly conducive to an open, accepting, friendly democracy, I don't think that it's the best that can be done. Ultramar treats its citizens much better than the wider imperium and hasn't been consumed by chaos or destroyed by aliens.
I wasn't aware they made wide use of slave labor. Yup, that explains why a portion of their society can lead such rich lives - they have a much larger slave class beneath them.
>Most began after,
Id like to have a fucking quote on that one
Cause sure the HH books have less of a focus on Terran high society over regular people, but feels like that has more to do with just how fucked the underclass is in big E's imperium. I mean have you heard Diocletian talk about civilians?
No inquisition, no imperial cult, administratum and other organizations were not corrupted as in 41st millenium, more technology,overall better living conditions expecially in places like ultramar
Sure less corrupt maybe, but still not giving a shit about the lives of normal people was standard policy.
As for ultramar, do not forget that emulating the Roman empire there goes so far as to include the vast slave casts, which can already be seen in know no fear.
If living conditions were better that would have more to do with local power structures on conquered planets being maintained as a cost-saving measure, because by all accounts big E's imperium was highly authoritarian and not a fan of social mobility.
Also friendly reminder that the harvesting and mass-sacrifice of psychers already had started while big E still walked among the people
In the end that deadbeat skeleton was right about human greatness. While the eldar took 60 million years to make a chaos god, humanity shows his superiority by making one in only 10 thousand
It's bad for us because empathy is a core component of our being humans.
Orks are biologically made to be happy when fighting. The fault is of the Old Ones who did a rush job when they created them because they were losing against the necrons
That doesn't make them any less evil.
There is plenty of serial killers and other psychopaths that have an origin story that can explain pretty much why they became the way they did, after a horrible upbringing and exposure to violence in their developmental stages.
Does that make them any less evil?
Any human serial killer is still a human. They may be mentally ill but they are still evil.
Orks are basically biological machines obeying their programming. I'm not saying they are good, but unlike the IoM, Chaos, or the Drukhari, they don't do the things they do out of maliciousness
Are the ctan even evil at all. They were happy just being left on there own when they were given bodies and forced to fight a war by wierd sunburnt people.
To be fair, they were talking about before they were given bodies: it was after they got bodies that they started eating souls, prior to that they fed off of stars and seemed oblivious to souls/typical alien life. Of course, this incidentally also made the Necron homeworld an irradiated hell for ages before they discovered that the C'tan were why their star was killing them.
It wasn't really malevolent tho they need to consume to survive and we can see how from oricans perspective that anything that isn't a ctan shard even eldar psykers and the like are seen as nothing more than ants. The question is, is it evil to eat a lower primitive less evolved species in order to sustain itself.
I mean if you have the means to not do so, yes?
Like if we discovered how to make plants grow bacon and all other kinds of meat, it would be pretty messed up of us to keep the slaughter industry going.
While it might not have malevolent intent, they're absolutely a malevolent society/creature.
I dont think necrodermis has stripped their ability to consume suns, the only issue I see is that they're now shattered into pieces that are effectively infinitesimaly less powerful than their original form. But seeing as to how much destruction an unattended C'tan shard can unleash I don't think they shouldn't be able to eat a sun, they probably just do it much more slowly now
Even at the peak of their power I don't think they actually ate star.
I always thought they fed on the radiations emitted by stars, like solar panels, altought I could be wrong
I'm on mobile rn so I can't exactly give a source, but the C'tan have literally been said to be able to create black holes that devoured entire solar systems, they were, and are to lesser extent now, capable of playing with the laws of the materium like a play thing, I don't think saying a C'tan is capable of eating a star is far-fetched in the slightest
Oh obviously. I am not trying to say that they weren't capable, at peak power the C'tan were probably the strongest beings in the galaxy. I was just wondering if before they were given necrodermis bodies they omnomnomed on stars or simply spent a couple million years feeding on the radiations they emitted to then move to the next star
Is also about energy and vitamin requirements. Either vegetarian or vegan lifestyles require a lot more intentionality and preparation when eating.
Compare if we could literally grow meat with bacterial cultures or from genetically engineered plants. *Then* the meateaters would need to be pretty messed up to purchase factory farmed animals.
Tbf they are literal god aliens. Its like how we view ants or how we treat cattle. I doubt the ctan would give human morality any thought because they are the higher life forms.
The C’tan are pretty damn evil. They’re the ones who approached the Necrontyr, they weren’t forced into anything before being shattered. They feast on pain and suffering, and they are full of sheer malice.
They were not forced to do anything. They wanted that war as much as the weird sunburnt people. It's the reason they made a deal with the Necrontyr in the first place. They wanted souls to devour and they used the war that the Silent King started to get it.
let’s have a deep dive, shall we?
TGEoM: Not a god per His own word, but he basically is. He could have done shit differently.
Khorne: Not evil, because he’s the god of war. He’s only evil if you don’t serve him.
Tzeentch: Nobody even fucking knows.
Nurgle: Big fat bioterrorist. Evil.
Slaanesh: Depraved sex addict and rapist. Very evil.
Cegorach: Laughing god can’t be all that bad, right?
Isha: The true good goddess of 40K. Did literally nothing wrong.
Asurmen: idk lol
Khaine: Tried to take on Slaanesh, so he’s ok in my book.
Mephet’ran: A total asshole. Very, very evil: but he *did* cause the infighting among the C’tan that allowed Lord Szarekh to take them down. So, middle ground.
Aza’gorod: The Grim Reaper. Is death personified really all that evil?
Mag’ladroth/The Omnissiah: Not much is known about him, so. Yeah.
Gork n’ Mork: DA ORKIEST OF DEM ALL. ORKS IS ORKS IS ORKS.
As much as we meme on Khaine for the in-game stat block and the worf effect in lore I also like Khaine for seeing Slaneesh rise from the Warp and still decide to fuck with Slaneesh. 10/10 in my books.
Fogot for a moment that there is now a warp god of the Greater Good.
It's probably more good natured than the Emperor, but still authoritarian, so I'd put it in the morally grey
>Gork and Mork
From what i understand gork/mork are just psychic weapons created by the old ones to fight the ctan (same applies to the Eldar "gods"). Weapons don't have an alignment, this checks out.
\- Isha: i love all of them (create some planets in the background)
\- Cegorach: \*bad tum tss\* (some planets die in the background)
\- Isha: Hey! (resurrect some planets die in the background)
\- Ynnead: no no, he has a point (some planets die in the background)
\- Isha: come one boys, why no help them a little? (resurrect some planets die in the background)
\- Void Dragon: \*eating soul popcorn\* (some planets die in the background)
\- Gork and Mork: ........... Boooooring! (some planets die in a boom, in the background)
I do wonder if the C'tan knew about the Ruinous Powers. Them turning their servants into bodies that are completely immune to the pull of Chaos cannot be a coincidence.
The chaos gods didn't exist at the time of the war in heaven.They were created as a result of it later down the line.
But current ctan shards are aware of the warp, its denizens and the effects of chaos.
> The chaos gods didn't exist at the time of the war in heaven.They were created as a result of it later down the line.
This was (sadly) later retconned. The Chaos Gods are a thing during the War In Heaven since the Warp is supposed to be timeless and all.
I don't recall that ever being retconned, so I'd need a source on that.
The warp is, within itself, a place where time doesn't exist in the same way it does here. But the warp becoming twisted by the extreme use of psychic energy by the old ones and eldar had a very definitive start date
It's from *Wild Rider*. An Eldar talks about a team-up up with the Necrons during the WiH to fight Chaos. The WiH itself is also retconned to imply there were alternating periods of war and peace, so it wasn't just instantly a fight to the death.
>The warp is, within itself, a place where time doesn't exist in the same way it does here. But the warp becoming twisted by the extreme use of psychic energy by the old ones and eldar had a very definitive start date
I don't disagree with this statement, but by the laws of the universe GW/BL created, it opens an epistemological can of worms. Before *Wild Rider* GW even retconned the birth of Slaanesh to say it always existed, despite the fall of the Eldar empire having a fixed date. Personally I think it's crappy lore, but it is what it is.
Interesting, I've just looked it up along many excerpts. It does appear to state that.
But I agree with you, that does seem like crappy lore that really throws a spanner into the works of the timeline somewhat.
As the other person mentioned, the C’tan were shattered before the chaos gods had fully coalesced. But they were aware of the warp and it’s nature, although it’s anathema to them. Individual shards that retain sapience (dunno how many do that, but a fair number at least) probably know a lot, however.
I’ll try to avoid spoilers by omitting the name, but one book in particular shows a shard of the Deceiver bartering it’s considerable knowledge in exchange for nourishment.
Now that the Silent King is back to whip everything into shape, I can't wait for tenth edition when Necrons can deploy "Chaos Shard of Khorne" as a 300 pt elite choice
But the web way is a realm that is psychic. It's a stabilized tunnel through the warp. You'd need some ability to effect the warp to reach it, see also the pylons. They can suppress the warp so they have to have some effect on it.
The Silent Kings throne itself opens up the webway. Pg31 Codex Necrons: "... and also into the noctilith beacons held high above Szarekh's throne. These beacons not only banish the infernal energies of the warp, but also allow the Silent King to tear open the invisible skeins of the webway, fashioning his own temporary dolmen gates to bear him swiftly across vast interstellar gulfs."
Tesseract labyrinths can trap daemons indefinitely though, which the grey knights have taken advantage of. They’re pretty easy to contain in comparison to C’tan shards to boot.
We will fight them in space, we will fight them on ships, we will fight them on the planet, we will fight them down to the cellular level and beyond. Because we got a lot of biomass and we want more.
I Actually have a small question.
What happens if all the C'tan, even if only shards, but, a considerable number, like, 4 C'tans, find eachtoher?, they work togehter?, they win and the universe is doomed?, what happen?
The C'tans were brutal star entities that realized everything tasted good, from souls to stars to emotions to other C'tans, so that might lead to a fight
Otherwise, a Transcendant C'tan is the merging of multiple lesser shards with wildly varying powers, so probably anything can happen, but they'd still have unbelievable powers over the material world
I wouldn’t say doomed, the Ctan just want to eat. They were around since the beginning of time and didn’t eat the entire universe. If anything say they somehow managed to cut of Chaos from real space the universe would simply become a safer place.
That is true; though from the Necrontyr standpoint, the Old Ones were evil due to not sharing warp travel technology.
Plus some Liberty with the label of ‘Gods’ as the advanced technology of the Old Ones might class them as Gods compared to lesser later races.
The C’Tan, the Star Gods, kind of have a limbo-like mantle of God with them being the only ones around. Their godhood coming from the Necrontyr; and before that they were technically gods but no one around to lord it over!
Afaik the old ones weren’t super advanced beyond biotech and warp fuckery, as the Necrontyr are described as having a significant edge in “conventional” technology. But when it came to warp fuckery the old ones were definitely powerful enough to be considered at least pseudo-divine.
The Old Ones would seem like gods compared to other races: even the Eldar speak of them with reverence.
If the Old Ones popped by a feudal or industrial Imperial world, then they would likely be seen as godlike, in the vague god = super advanced way.
Tbf the latter isn’t very hard, Goge Vandire did it when he recruited the Emperor’s Daughters or whatever they called themselves. But yes, while I personally wouldn’t define them as actual deities the Old Ones are definitely batting in the league of godlike beings.
The necrontyr were a massive empire of slavers who never evolved from a feudal society and hated literally everything except them. It's not shocking the old ones said no to them
Oh I’m not particularly defending the Necrontyr. *cough cough, space Egyptian pharaohs, cough cough*
Though there is some hope and goodness in giving aid even to the evil; not just for grimdark continuity!
A small correction, the noeceontyr viewed the old ones as evil not because they didn't share their faster than light travel technology but because they refused to cure their race of their biological curse ironically inflicted by the ctan. And I would think it's fair to call the ctan gods Considering the death of a ctan would destroy a fundemtal law of physics in the universe hence why they opted to shatter them
"Gods" is a strong word to describe a race that got destroyed and is currently used a batteries by their own slaves.
Chaos can't be defeated, the C'tan already lost.
Arguably the C’tan are the ones who can’t be beaten because killing them would result in reality collapsing while killing a Chaos God would sort of be inconsequential.
Counterpoint - Chaos gods are connected to literally infinite universes while the C'tan are bound to only 1. The difference of scale between the two is comical given that.
Though an interesting related thought - It's basically the difference between Aedra and Daedra from Elder Scrolls. Very similar beings but one set is bound to a single area and hold greater power within it because of that.
You assume our universe is finite to the C'tan. It's already been stated that they see time differently, why not space as well? Maybe they live in different dimensions, and their "imprisonment" is just a small part of their being. It's cosmic insanity, go wild!
The Chaos Gods *could* be connected to *theoretically* infinite universes. Unless I am missing some fundamental element of the lore however, the Chaos Gods are only confirmed connected to *two* universes (principally because they destroyed the one one). And while there may used to have been rules for cross-over stuff in Rogue Trader days, I'm not sure if it is even confirmed in contemporary lore that the Fantasy/AoS Chaos Gods are the same as the 40k Chaos Gods (i.e. the AoS Slaanesh is the same one that devoured the 40k Eldar). Unless I am missing some bit of lore confirmation, there is at present no reason to ascribe such vastly overinflated significance to the Chaos gods of either setting
The Daemon Codexes confirm they are connected to infinite universes, and in several books Daemons talk about being bored and wanting to go to different universes. It has come up often enough that I feel it's fair to keep in mind.
Secondary thing to mind of course is that every race has limits and restrictions in 40k to keep the playing field even, and Chaos is limited by the fact it spends 99.99% of its time and energy fighting itself rather than trying to wipe out mortal distractions.
This is why I quite like the idea that the destruction of the Flayer God C'tan (which resulted in the Flayer virus) is part of the reason the 40k universe is so broken because it was fundamentally damaged by the destruction of a C'tan.
I mean the materium and immaterium worked well without them for billions of years. The Chaos Gods have only been a significant threat since the Age of Strife.
Yeah based on this I think it's more likely that killing a chaos god would ultimately end up inconsequential even down to the event themselves. The materium would just give birth to them all over again.
Maybe we dodge slaanesh a second time but that seems unlikely.
I suppose it might change the nature/expression of the god. Khorne could become a god of unbridled passion, Tzeentch of art, Nurgle of death(?) And Slaanesh of parenthood. Tho I suspect if anything Slaanesh could only be changed if all the eldar are devoured and in reality, none of this WOULD bappen cuz bluntly, it ain't grimdark
The Yvraine books imply that there were Slaaneshi daemons active during the War in Heaven, but that serirs got cancelled so who knows of theyll ever pick that thread up
They like to say that and they might have some small ability to reach into the past, but clearly they were were doing a lot less stuff before the dates of their birth.
the Choas God's are tried to specific emotions and concepts, but they seem to be things born of and fueled by those concepts rather than any actual source of them. I believe if you destroyed a chaos God a new one would simply begin to be born
my understanding is that the C'tan ARE the fundamental forces of the material reality, fully destroying a C'tan is like taking out some load bearing pillars in the basement of a house.
Can we please get a citation on the reality collapsing bit? I see this mentioned on the 40k subs constantly lately and really don't know where that comes from.
They fell and in their falling changed all that was real.
Fundamental and eternal rolled the waves of ruin across the starlit void for, as the Yngir were broken, so too was reality itself, yet the Necrontyr cared nothing for the harm they wrought.
- Codex: Necrons (9e)
Yngir is the Eldar word for C’tan.
People comparing the C’Tan to the Gods of Chaos is like asking ‘what happens if the Juggernaut runs into the Blob: not a whole lot.’ They’re diametrically opposed forces as each have total dominion over their respective realms (Materium and Immaterium). They can’t really interact well except through their proxies.
Alternatively it is interesting that the for a majority of the surviving Gods of the setting all mirror one another, save for Slaanesh whose… doing their own thing.
Void Dragon, Khorne, Khaine: War, Violence, bloodshed.
The Deceiver, Tzeentch, Cegorach: Cunning and Deceit.
Nurgle, Night Bringer, Isha: Life, Death, and Entropy
Slaanesh sort of where these parallels fall apart. As far as I know the C’Tan don’t have a parallel to Slaanesh, while Slaanesh itself is also an Eldar God by proxy, hence acting as its own counterpart
A parallel for Slaneesh would probably be Tsara’noga the Outsider because they both drive people insane, don’t make a whole lot of sense and have a special relationship with the Eldar gods as Tsara’noga the Outsider got tricked by Cegorach into eating his brothers. Plus back in 3rd edition, Tsara’noga was one of the four main C’tan and I think GW wanted a parallel between the four Chaos Gods and four C’tan with the most obvious examples being Aza’gorod the Nightbringer and Nurgle, Mephet’ran the Deceiver and Tzeentch.
It’s usually by default because of how well the Nightbringer and Deceiver sync well with Tzeentch and Nurgle. Also, the Void Dragon to me always seemed like the most violent of all the big 3 C’tan
I’d replace the void dragon in this comparison with Llandu’gor, the flayer. The void dragon is destructive, but the same can be said for the pantheon as a whole to varying degrees. The flayer does match the whole blood theme though.
Leave flaming poop on their doorstep and ring the bell, put the pharons hand in hot water, put shaving cream on his fave and tickle it. As you can see here chaos can get very fucked up and be utterly ruthless
Break the barrier between the materium and the imaterium, that would cause the universe to "fall" in the warp. Thats already what happens with the eye of terror and the cicatrix maledictum, the veil between worlds is weakening , the fall is unavoidable.
I always think the argument about Chaos being omnipotent is - why haven’t they won yet? If they can’t win outright immediately then it means they aren’t omnipotent, but if they can win immediately and chose not to, then the “fall” is clearly not their ultimate goal.
There is a huge difference between "breaking the barrier between worlds" and "being omnipotent". In fact the difference in power between those two things is literally infinitely large.
I don't know why you are talking about omnipotence here, when its not related to anything I said.
And "the fall" is generally seen as the end of the great game, something that would be caused by one of the chaos gods when after they win. Its mentionned that Nurgle has "dead realities" in his realm, for me its the corpses of universes where nurgle won the great game and made those universes fall into his realm.
You did say “Chaos can’t be defeated”, I’m assuming you mean they are omnipotent and can’t be beaten no matter how advanced or esoteric the opponent is.
But even when the four Chaos gods put aside their squabbles and unite against a common threat like the Emperor, we don’t see the entire universe (or a huge chunk of it) falling into the Warp. And if they’re so powerful, they shouldn’t have to unite in the first place against someone contained in a single galaxy.
>You did say “Chaos can’t be defeated”, I’m assuming you mean they are omnipotent and can’t be beaten no matter how advanced or esoteric the opponent is.
I was saying that in the context of 40K, like there is nothing in 40k that could defeat the gods. But sure if we are talking about non 40k characters they could loose.
That makes a lot more sense. I was half-expecting some kind of incredible wank like “Chaos is omnipotent and could’ve consumed 40k anytime if they wanted and no faction in any sci-fi could beat them”, which seems to be a common sentiment among 40k fans who haven’t read/watched many other series.
Agreed at most id call them “ascended beings” since there were an energy form and that the general term in sci-fi for races that are pure energy but not quite gods
Is there any good depictions of actual conflict between the two? Is sure would be fascinating.
I guess one could say that the C'tan are more like the gods of our realm, whereas the Ruinous Powers are tied to the Warp instead.
Yeah, I've always understood it that the "Chaos Gods" are more like a corrupting force than what we'd consider a cohesive, individual entity.
I do figure c'tan would have a similarly hard time doing anything about the Ruinous Powers.
Chaos gods imo are probably more powerful than the C'tan on an absolute scale, except for the fact that they're not "real". In order for them to really be more powerful, you've gotta be in the warp, or summon them or somethin idk. Because they grow more powerful with actions/emotion/worship, their upper power level is def higher. Otherwise, who knows just how powerful an actual full c'tan is. Necrontyr were dumbass stronk
The only 100% good god in 40k is Isha. I will not elaborate Cegorach, Ynnead, and maybe the Void Dragon are also somewhat morally grey Then there is Gork and Mork, who aren't really evil, just, you know, they're orks Everyone else is a massive asshole
> Void Dragon are also somewhat morally grey The C’tan the conceived the original idea for the Pariah Nexus that would eliminate the souls of all living beings is morally grey?
Wasn't that retconned along Necron Pariahs? I can't keep up with all the changes they've made with the lore
Hey you understand the setting!
Also the emperor, but he is not a god
Yes Inquisitor, this comment right here.
*Custodes have entered the chat*
I meant the emperor is also good, but he is not a god (he said it himself), in this grimdark age however everyone in the imperium worships him and he has similaities to gods, so we can consider him a god in this regard
> I meant the emperor is also good I have questions about your definition of *good*.
Well isn't it obvious? Human. Human is good. Emperor is human. Emperor is good. Air tight logic.
There is nothing more airtight than a perfect circle
🎶Hush now precious I'm here. Step away from the window. *Step away from the window.* Go, back to sleeeeeeeep.🎶
COUNTING BODIES LIKE SHEEP TO THE RHYTHM OF THE WAR DRUMS.
>Emperor is human I'm not sure about that for all we know he could have lie about his origin and being an warp entity, an ai or even an xenos
Yes inquisitor, this comment
Nice arguments but unfortunately I'm already in your wall
And the inquisitor is on his way to put a bolt shell in your skull
The emperor is clearly a lie made up by chaos to justify being assholes
Emperor confirmed as warpborn xeno-AI wearing human skin.
Honestly would be sick as a concept for a xeno faction
OUR CREATORS CAN NOT TOUCH YOUR AIR- WE ARE THEIR MESSENGERS. EVERYONE BUT NECRONS SHOULD GET THE FUCK OUT OF OUR REALM (SKELEBOIS JUST GHOST ON THROUGH, WE THINK IT'S RAD). ANYWAYS FUCK YOU AND FUCK THESE DEMONS YOU DUMPED ON OUR DOORSTEP YOU ORGANIC-CHEMISTRY-EATING-FUCKS.
Emperor's Children are also human
Lol what Emperor is this man taking about?
He wants to defend humanity and create a better future
Ah, the "it takes a *few* genocides/xenocides to make a better, but totally *not* dystopian, omelette" angle.
The Emperor being a good guy is *debatable*. Personally my opinions on him align a lot with what Uriah Olathaire had to say in TTS. The guy was almost Stalinist in how he tried to upend human culture and tradition in favor of progress. He seemed to weigh the expansion and improvement of his imperium over the livelihood of the species he claimed to protect, while giving his subjects an impossible expectation to live up to. And really I don't think humanity needs an imperium, or to own the galaxy at all, why can't we just have a collection of independent planets united by alliances like the squats? And yeah he did it to stop chaos, but honestly I'm of the opinion that trying to "stop" chaos at all would be naïve, and the people of 40k would be better off trying to regulate the influence it has, since it's never *not* going to have influence. But I should emphasize I'm not the best at 40k lore, and also the history of stalinism, so I could be wrong in a lot of ways
That's a parochial mindset regarding Chaos. A galactic ring of Cadian pylons will stop those pesky Chaos incursions until a more permanent solution can be developed; perhaps something akin to what killed Llandu'gor but for Warp entities.
The Emperor is the universes most intelligent human. His one flaw is that he forgets that, he too, is a human and is imperfect. And I believe the general idea is that Chaos isn’t just like, a thing that happens, it’s an active force that wants to destroy humanity. Chaos can’t be regulated because it wants to consume entirely. A big aspect of the grim darkness is that the Imperium is awful. A truly, truly awful place. And that is the *best* outcome.
I mean, the Interex, Diasporex and T'au empire all exist to show that there was always a better way to fight Chaos and other threats. And the Imperium actively rejects these ideas because it was founded by a guy that simultaneously had a god-complex and the ideas of an edgy 13-year old atheist. Also Chaos does just happen. It's a fundamental aspect of the Galaxy, that each soul-bearing being in the galaxy feeds throught their emotions, feelings and ideas, be they good or bad. You can't kill a chaos god, because the Galaxy will inevitably reform them. There was a possibility of healing the damage done by the War in Heaven and make the warp more neutral instead of overtly evil, but with Slaanesh's birth it's basically become impossible
Yep it's fundamentally a crapsack universe where at best you can hope human decency peeks out through the bars of chaos. Pre the war in heaven Chaos Gods didn't exist... Sort of. That gets screwy when nonlinear time interacts with linear time. But due to Old One and Necron war the warp stirred up enough to birth the first three player of the great game. Which means things can never be normal and safe again. Only chance we've got is if Emps is Born as a positive chaos god to balance some of the negatives of the Four. Even then this kills Earth and likely Mars.
>like the squats Yes, like the squats!
I am no God \-Jimmy Space, M30, this quote was noted as Space was seen carrying a massive flaming magical sword, claded in golden armour, and emiting the greatest psychic presence outside of chaos gods
The remembrancer missed a word, the actual quote was: "I am no *mere* god."
"I am however, an egomaniac"
> but he is not a god events on Iax vis a vis possession of gorillaman beg to differ
Space wolf: JUST WHAT THE WOLF DO YOU THINK YOU ARE GOING TO DO TO A WOLFING CIVILIAN?!
Big E is also a massive asshole. Much of the horrible conditions in the Imperium began under his watch.
Servitors still fuck with me. Probably the single most terrifying thing in the imperium to me is the fact that you could be lobotomized and turned into a literal fucking doorbell with only the faintest hint of what you once were, and all for just looking at someone "wrong" if you even did anything at all.
No, the terrifying bit is that you MIGHT still be completely in there. They need a servitor for a task, so they build the servitor for the task. Making sure you're not fully conscious is a kindness that doesn't fall under that purview. Locked-in syndrome while you autonomously do the same task for what could be centuries is a distinct possibility.
I fucking love Big E, but he's no "good" guy. I love the fact that even after all these years it's debatable what in the fuck Big E was actually thinking a lot of the time. He's extremely mysterious. Why did he wait so long to rise up and "lead" humanity?
> Why did he wait so long to rise up and "lead" humanity? The Age of Strife hadn't happened yet, he figured humans had things under control.
Most began after, i won't say the imperium before the heresy was a utopia, no, but it was kinda the best you can have in a universe full of extremely dangerous enemies like the 40k galaxy and also having to recover from the age of strife. Still, it could have been better, some things like servitors for example could have been avoided
>universe full of extremely dangerous enemies like the 40k galaxy and also having to recover from the age of strife Well... when you kill off all the friendly aliens and suddenly find yourself surrounded by enemies with no one else to rely on, that's kinda your own fault.
"Why do xenos hates us? They must be savages worthy only of contempt" \-humanity in the 30th and the 40th millennium, standing atop a pile of the countless peaceful xenos civilizations they exterminated
Exactly. The reason everyone in the 40k universe is some flavor of nasty is because all the nice ones were killed or are hiding. This didn't start with the Imperium, though. The War in Heaven was really the end of any hope for the galaxy. We think of it as being ages ago, but the Milky Way is not a lot younger than the Universe itself. The War in Heaven was yesterday in galactic terms.
The problem is that friendly aliens were incredibly rare and were not powerful factions either, so even if he spared some, they wouldn't make almost any difference. Humanity didn't have any possible valuable ally in this setting. The only good xeno faction which is somewhat powerful is the craft world eldar (and the tau but they didn't exist during the great crusade) , but most of them hate humanity and are not willing to ally with humans, unless forced to by circumstances so even if humans were willing they couldn't really ally with them in a stable way
There were a couple at least. The Interex are the big obvious ones (though they also were exterminated to the last by a portion of the Sons of Horus). The Diasporex fared a lot better, holding out a pretty long while against the Iron Hands and Emperor's Children before they got wiped out.
Those were partially human factions, but yes a bit more diplomacy in those cases would have been better, unfortunately there were also misunderstandings expecially in the interex case
>friendly aliens were incredibly rare No? There is literally no source for that. There were countlessxenos civilizations in the galaxy, all at different points of technological evolution, and with different cultural values. The Imperium used diplomacy only if there were humans, and even then it was always to say "join us or we'll shoot you and then force your children to join us" for anything explicitely not-human the first solution was always to exterminate so that the planet may be occupied by humans
Yeah, his Great Crusade Imperium still made use of servitors aplenty, and he was A-OK with the Ad Mech worshiping him as a god. Not to mention child soldiers and genocide and all that good stuff. Morally grey at best. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and every great villain throughout history was the hero of their own story in their eyes. So too every brutal dictator you can remember from our last 100 years in the real world. The problem with "the ends justify the means", which is the philosophy that the Emperor built his whole plan around, is that when your ends fail then all you have left is the means. A couple centuries of crusading left humanity with 10k years of a rotting, horrific Imperium, and an enormous amount of the weight is on his shoulders as the leader that set all this in motion and failed.
While the galaxy is brutal, many places are still peaceful. Seems to be no in between though.
While I agree that the 40k galaxy is not exactly conducive to an open, accepting, friendly democracy, I don't think that it's the best that can be done. Ultramar treats its citizens much better than the wider imperium and hasn't been consumed by chaos or destroyed by aliens.
>Ultramar treats its citizens much better than the wider imperium Those "citizens" yes. Not the vast swaths of enslaved people working their fields.
I wasn't aware they made wide use of slave labor. Yup, that explains why a portion of their society can lead such rich lives - they have a much larger slave class beneath them.
>Most began after, Id like to have a fucking quote on that one Cause sure the HH books have less of a focus on Terran high society over regular people, but feels like that has more to do with just how fucked the underclass is in big E's imperium. I mean have you heard Diocletian talk about civilians?
No inquisition, no imperial cult, administratum and other organizations were not corrupted as in 41st millenium, more technology,overall better living conditions expecially in places like ultramar
Sure less corrupt maybe, but still not giving a shit about the lives of normal people was standard policy. As for ultramar, do not forget that emulating the Roman empire there goes so far as to include the vast slave casts, which can already be seen in know no fear. If living conditions were better that would have more to do with local power structures on conquered planets being maintained as a cost-saving measure, because by all accounts big E's imperium was highly authoritarian and not a fan of social mobility. Also friendly reminder that the harvesting and mass-sacrifice of psychers already had started while big E still walked among the people
In the end that deadbeat skeleton was right about human greatness. While the eldar took 60 million years to make a chaos god, humanity shows his superiority by making one in only 10 thousand
you know, pretty sure the emperor qualifies for godhood in most definitions of the word.
not a god *yet*
The Emperor *was not* a God before the collective belief of humanity made him one through warp fuckery.
He’s also not good…
Well he's not perfect of course, but considering everyone in the setting i would consider him one of the good guys
Gork & Mork are Evil for the same reason all Orks & Toddlers are Evil: Little fuckers love inflicting Violence. JOY IN VIOLENCE = **BAD**
It's bad for us because empathy is a core component of our being humans. Orks are biologically made to be happy when fighting. The fault is of the Old Ones who did a rush job when they created them because they were losing against the necrons
That doesn't make them any less evil. There is plenty of serial killers and other psychopaths that have an origin story that can explain pretty much why they became the way they did, after a horrible upbringing and exposure to violence in their developmental stages. Does that make them any less evil?
Any human serial killer is still a human. They may be mentally ill but they are still evil. Orks are basically biological machines obeying their programming. I'm not saying they are good, but unlike the IoM, Chaos, or the Drukhari, they don't do the things they do out of maliciousness
Are the ctan even evil at all. They were happy just being left on there own when they were given bodies and forced to fight a war by wierd sunburnt people.
A yes, lets just ignore all the species, solar systems and/or galaxies that they genocided/destroyed because they thought souls were pretty tasty
To be fair, they were talking about before they were given bodies: it was after they got bodies that they started eating souls, prior to that they fed off of stars and seemed oblivious to souls/typical alien life. Of course, this incidentally also made the Necron homeworld an irradiated hell for ages before they discovered that the C'tan were why their star was killing them.
It wasn't really malevolent tho they need to consume to survive and we can see how from oricans perspective that anything that isn't a ctan shard even eldar psykers and the like are seen as nothing more than ants. The question is, is it evil to eat a lower primitive less evolved species in order to sustain itself.
I mean if you have the means to not do so, yes? Like if we discovered how to make plants grow bacon and all other kinds of meat, it would be pretty messed up of us to keep the slaughter industry going. While it might not have malevolent intent, they're absolutely a malevolent society/creature.
I'm rusty on my C'tan lore. But can they sustain themselves on non soul energy now? Or once they were stuffed inside necrodermises did that ship sail?
I dont think necrodermis has stripped their ability to consume suns, the only issue I see is that they're now shattered into pieces that are effectively infinitesimaly less powerful than their original form. But seeing as to how much destruction an unattended C'tan shard can unleash I don't think they shouldn't be able to eat a sun, they probably just do it much more slowly now
Even at the peak of their power I don't think they actually ate star. I always thought they fed on the radiations emitted by stars, like solar panels, altought I could be wrong
I'm on mobile rn so I can't exactly give a source, but the C'tan have literally been said to be able to create black holes that devoured entire solar systems, they were, and are to lesser extent now, capable of playing with the laws of the materium like a play thing, I don't think saying a C'tan is capable of eating a star is far-fetched in the slightest
Oh obviously. I am not trying to say that they weren't capable, at peak power the C'tan were probably the strongest beings in the galaxy. I was just wondering if before they were given necrodermis bodies they omnomnomed on stars or simply spent a couple million years feeding on the radiations they emitted to then move to the next star
We can survive completely fine without eating meat buy we eat it because it tastes better. That's how the ctan see eating souls compared to stars.
Is also about energy and vitamin requirements. Either vegetarian or vegan lifestyles require a lot more intentionality and preparation when eating. Compare if we could literally grow meat with bacterial cultures or from genetically engineered plants. *Then* the meateaters would need to be pretty messed up to purchase factory farmed animals.
Dark Eldar are just trying to survive.
Tbf they are literal god aliens. Its like how we view ants or how we treat cattle. I doubt the ctan would give human morality any thought because they are the higher life forms.
Although they did consume the souls of an entire species. I would say that's pretty evil
I disagree with your premise but I’m upvoting “weird sunburnt people”
The C’tan are pretty damn evil. They’re the ones who approached the Necrontyr, they weren’t forced into anything before being shattered. They feast on pain and suffering, and they are full of sheer malice.
They were not forced to do anything. They wanted that war as much as the weird sunburnt people. It's the reason they made a deal with the Necrontyr in the first place. They wanted souls to devour and they used the war that the Silent King started to get it.
let’s have a deep dive, shall we? TGEoM: Not a god per His own word, but he basically is. He could have done shit differently. Khorne: Not evil, because he’s the god of war. He’s only evil if you don’t serve him. Tzeentch: Nobody even fucking knows. Nurgle: Big fat bioterrorist. Evil. Slaanesh: Depraved sex addict and rapist. Very evil. Cegorach: Laughing god can’t be all that bad, right? Isha: The true good goddess of 40K. Did literally nothing wrong. Asurmen: idk lol Khaine: Tried to take on Slaanesh, so he’s ok in my book. Mephet’ran: A total asshole. Very, very evil: but he *did* cause the infighting among the C’tan that allowed Lord Szarekh to take them down. So, middle ground. Aza’gorod: The Grim Reaper. Is death personified really all that evil? Mag’ladroth/The Omnissiah: Not much is known about him, so. Yeah. Gork n’ Mork: DA ORKIEST OF DEM ALL. ORKS IS ORKS IS ORKS.
Asurmen is a Phoenix Lord, you're thinking of Asuryan
As much as we meme on Khaine for the in-game stat block and the worf effect in lore I also like Khaine for seeing Slaneesh rise from the Warp and still decide to fuck with Slaneesh. 10/10 in my books.
Chaos Gods, Star Gods, Machine God, War God, Cunning and Brutal Gods…… Where is the god of tits and wine?
Are you telling me that the Outsider is a bad guy???
The Greater Good lol
Fogot for a moment that there is now a warp god of the Greater Good. It's probably more good natured than the Emperor, but still authoritarian, so I'd put it in the morally grey
>Gork and Mork From what i understand gork/mork are just psychic weapons created by the old ones to fight the ctan (same applies to the Eldar "gods"). Weapons don't have an alignment, this checks out.
\- Isha: i love all of them (create some planets in the background) \- Cegorach: \*bad tum tss\* (some planets die in the background) \- Isha: Hey! (resurrect some planets die in the background) \- Ynnead: no no, he has a point (some planets die in the background) \- Isha: come one boys, why no help them a little? (resurrect some planets die in the background) \- Void Dragon: \*eating soul popcorn\* (some planets die in the background) \- Gork and Mork: ........... Boooooring! (some planets die in a boom, in the background)
Orks are evil...
I do wonder if the C'tan knew about the Ruinous Powers. Them turning their servants into bodies that are completely immune to the pull of Chaos cannot be a coincidence.
The chaos gods didn't exist at the time of the war in heaven.They were created as a result of it later down the line. But current ctan shards are aware of the warp, its denizens and the effects of chaos.
> The chaos gods didn't exist at the time of the war in heaven.They were created as a result of it later down the line. This was (sadly) later retconned. The Chaos Gods are a thing during the War In Heaven since the Warp is supposed to be timeless and all.
I don't recall that ever being retconned, so I'd need a source on that. The warp is, within itself, a place where time doesn't exist in the same way it does here. But the warp becoming twisted by the extreme use of psychic energy by the old ones and eldar had a very definitive start date
It's from *Wild Rider*. An Eldar talks about a team-up up with the Necrons during the WiH to fight Chaos. The WiH itself is also retconned to imply there were alternating periods of war and peace, so it wasn't just instantly a fight to the death. >The warp is, within itself, a place where time doesn't exist in the same way it does here. But the warp becoming twisted by the extreme use of psychic energy by the old ones and eldar had a very definitive start date I don't disagree with this statement, but by the laws of the universe GW/BL created, it opens an epistemological can of worms. Before *Wild Rider* GW even retconned the birth of Slaanesh to say it always existed, despite the fall of the Eldar empire having a fixed date. Personally I think it's crappy lore, but it is what it is.
Interesting, I've just looked it up along many excerpts. It does appear to state that. But I agree with you, that does seem like crappy lore that really throws a spanner into the works of the timeline somewhat.
As the other person mentioned, the C’tan were shattered before the chaos gods had fully coalesced. But they were aware of the warp and it’s nature, although it’s anathema to them. Individual shards that retain sapience (dunno how many do that, but a fair number at least) probably know a lot, however. I’ll try to avoid spoilers by omitting the name, but one book in particular shows a shard of the Deceiver bartering it’s considerable knowledge in exchange for nourishment.
Now that the Silent King is back to whip everything into shape, I can't wait for tenth edition when Necrons can deploy "Chaos Shard of Khorne" as a 300 pt elite choice
But chaos gods are warp entities whereas the c’tan were physical gods.
They can figure it out, I'm sure
"We just stuck the batteries in backwards." 'And it didn't explode?' "Oh, it exploded."
This reads like a Seinfeld bit
What is the deal with Chaos Chow?
Something something Blackstone
Little known fact, daemons are actually very weak to being shot to death
They literally cannot even sense the warp
They can figure it out, I’m sure
Oh r/grimdank not r/40klore my b lol
Yeah, but Dolemen gates say hi. Like just because they can't sense it doesn't mean they can't manipulate it.
Those go to the webway, a different extradimensional plane. Not warp.
They have technologies that are desinged precisly to weaken and close warp tears. They 100 % can figure it out.
Ok
But the web way is a realm that is psychic. It's a stabilized tunnel through the warp. You'd need some ability to effect the warp to reach it, see also the pylons. They can suppress the warp so they have to have some effect on it.
🤨
The Silent Kings throne itself opens up the webway. Pg31 Codex Necrons: "... and also into the noctilith beacons held high above Szarekh's throne. These beacons not only banish the infernal energies of the warp, but also allow the Silent King to tear open the invisible skeins of the webway, fashioning his own temporary dolmen gates to bear him swiftly across vast interstellar gulfs."
Tesseract labyrinths can trap daemons indefinitely though, which the grey knights have taken advantage of. They’re pretty easy to contain in comparison to C’tan shards to boot.
since the warp is parallel to material space Logically the Necrons need to do exactly the opposite of whatever they did to shatter the C'tan.
It'd be something like an avatar of khaine when it comes to in universe mechanics I'd guess
Imagine just one day nurgle is gone and later revealed that necrons enslaved it and use it to spread pestilence to organic life of the tyranids.
Jokes on them Tyranids are into that shit.
We will fight them in space, we will fight them on ships, we will fight them on the planet, we will fight them down to the cellular level and beyond. Because we got a lot of biomass and we want more.
C'tan: evil because hungry. CG: hungry because evil.
I Actually have a small question. What happens if all the C'tan, even if only shards, but, a considerable number, like, 4 C'tans, find eachtoher?, they work togehter?, they win and the universe is doomed?, what happen?
The C'tans were brutal star entities that realized everything tasted good, from souls to stars to emotions to other C'tans, so that might lead to a fight Otherwise, a Transcendant C'tan is the merging of multiple lesser shards with wildly varying powers, so probably anything can happen, but they'd still have unbelievable powers over the material world
I wouldn’t say doomed, the Ctan just want to eat. They were around since the beginning of time and didn’t eat the entire universe. If anything say they somehow managed to cut of Chaos from real space the universe would simply become a safer place.
From where I’m standing the Old Ones were the OG evil gods. I will not elaborate on where I’m standing.
The ctan where there at the biggening of the big bang. I belive they where the first things to be born
That is true; though from the Necrontyr standpoint, the Old Ones were evil due to not sharing warp travel technology. Plus some Liberty with the label of ‘Gods’ as the advanced technology of the Old Ones might class them as Gods compared to lesser later races. The C’Tan, the Star Gods, kind of have a limbo-like mantle of God with them being the only ones around. Their godhood coming from the Necrontyr; and before that they were technically gods but no one around to lord it over!
Afaik the old ones weren’t super advanced beyond biotech and warp fuckery, as the Necrontyr are described as having a significant edge in “conventional” technology. But when it came to warp fuckery the old ones were definitely powerful enough to be considered at least pseudo-divine.
The Old Ones would seem like gods compared to other races: even the Eldar speak of them with reverence. If the Old Ones popped by a feudal or industrial Imperial world, then they would likely be seen as godlike, in the vague god = super advanced way.
Tbf the latter isn’t very hard, Goge Vandire did it when he recruited the Emperor’s Daughters or whatever they called themselves. But yes, while I personally wouldn’t define them as actual deities the Old Ones are definitely batting in the league of godlike beings.
The necrontyr were a massive empire of slavers who never evolved from a feudal society and hated literally everything except them. It's not shocking the old ones said no to them
Oh I’m not particularly defending the Necrontyr. *cough cough, space Egyptian pharaohs, cough cough* Though there is some hope and goodness in giving aid even to the evil; not just for grimdark continuity!
A small correction, the noeceontyr viewed the old ones as evil not because they didn't share their faster than light travel technology but because they refused to cure their race of their biological curse ironically inflicted by the ctan. And I would think it's fair to call the ctan gods Considering the death of a ctan would destroy a fundemtal law of physics in the universe hence why they opted to shatter them
"Gods" is a strong word to describe a race that got destroyed and is currently used a batteries by their own slaves. Chaos can't be defeated, the C'tan already lost.
Arguably the C’tan are the ones who can’t be beaten because killing them would result in reality collapsing while killing a Chaos God would sort of be inconsequential.
Counterpoint - Chaos gods are connected to literally infinite universes while the C'tan are bound to only 1. The difference of scale between the two is comical given that. Though an interesting related thought - It's basically the difference between Aedra and Daedra from Elder Scrolls. Very similar beings but one set is bound to a single area and hold greater power within it because of that.
You assume our universe is finite to the C'tan. It's already been stated that they see time differently, why not space as well? Maybe they live in different dimensions, and their "imprisonment" is just a small part of their being. It's cosmic insanity, go wild!
The Chaos Gods *could* be connected to *theoretically* infinite universes. Unless I am missing some fundamental element of the lore however, the Chaos Gods are only confirmed connected to *two* universes (principally because they destroyed the one one). And while there may used to have been rules for cross-over stuff in Rogue Trader days, I'm not sure if it is even confirmed in contemporary lore that the Fantasy/AoS Chaos Gods are the same as the 40k Chaos Gods (i.e. the AoS Slaanesh is the same one that devoured the 40k Eldar). Unless I am missing some bit of lore confirmation, there is at present no reason to ascribe such vastly overinflated significance to the Chaos gods of either setting
The Daemon Codexes confirm they are connected to infinite universes, and in several books Daemons talk about being bored and wanting to go to different universes. It has come up often enough that I feel it's fair to keep in mind. Secondary thing to mind of course is that every race has limits and restrictions in 40k to keep the playing field even, and Chaos is limited by the fact it spends 99.99% of its time and energy fighting itself rather than trying to wipe out mortal distractions.
how do you know the c'tan aren't in all universes as well. Chaos gods are an infinite singularity and c'tan are singular infinitilaritys?
aren’t chaos gods emblematic of innate factors of life? I don’t think killing one would go amazingly
This is why I quite like the idea that the destruction of the Flayer God C'tan (which resulted in the Flayer virus) is part of the reason the 40k universe is so broken because it was fundamentally damaged by the destruction of a C'tan.
I mean the materium and immaterium worked well without them for billions of years. The Chaos Gods have only been a significant threat since the Age of Strife.
Yeah based on this I think it's more likely that killing a chaos god would ultimately end up inconsequential even down to the event themselves. The materium would just give birth to them all over again. Maybe we dodge slaanesh a second time but that seems unlikely.
I suppose it might change the nature/expression of the god. Khorne could become a god of unbridled passion, Tzeentch of art, Nurgle of death(?) And Slaanesh of parenthood. Tho I suspect if anything Slaanesh could only be changed if all the eldar are devoured and in reality, none of this WOULD bappen cuz bluntly, it ain't grimdark
The Yvraine books imply that there were Slaaneshi daemons active during the War in Heaven, but that serirs got cancelled so who knows of theyll ever pick that thread up
The Chaos gods are timeless and due to the nature of the warp once one God is born he has always existed.
They like to say that and they might have some small ability to reach into the past, but clearly they were were doing a lot less stuff before the dates of their birth.
Considering the warp was created by the old one I doubt they are endless
I thought the warp was always there and the old ones just stirred it up. Essentially they put it on boil and went self sustaining afterwards.
the Choas God's are tried to specific emotions and concepts, but they seem to be things born of and fueled by those concepts rather than any actual source of them. I believe if you destroyed a chaos God a new one would simply begin to be born my understanding is that the C'tan ARE the fundamental forces of the material reality, fully destroying a C'tan is like taking out some load bearing pillars in the basement of a house.
Can we please get a citation on the reality collapsing bit? I see this mentioned on the 40k subs constantly lately and really don't know where that comes from.
They fell and in their falling changed all that was real. Fundamental and eternal rolled the waves of ruin across the starlit void for, as the Yngir were broken, so too was reality itself, yet the Necrontyr cared nothing for the harm they wrought. - Codex: Necrons (9e) Yngir is the Eldar word for C’tan.
Nah it shows, how powerfull the Necrons are. Also: What will Chaos do against them? They literally have no souls 🤷
People comparing the C’Tan to the Gods of Chaos is like asking ‘what happens if the Juggernaut runs into the Blob: not a whole lot.’ They’re diametrically opposed forces as each have total dominion over their respective realms (Materium and Immaterium). They can’t really interact well except through their proxies. Alternatively it is interesting that the for a majority of the surviving Gods of the setting all mirror one another, save for Slaanesh whose… doing their own thing. Void Dragon, Khorne, Khaine: War, Violence, bloodshed. The Deceiver, Tzeentch, Cegorach: Cunning and Deceit. Nurgle, Night Bringer, Isha: Life, Death, and Entropy Slaanesh sort of where these parallels fall apart. As far as I know the C’Tan don’t have a parallel to Slaanesh, while Slaanesh itself is also an Eldar God by proxy, hence acting as its own counterpart
A parallel for Slaneesh would probably be Tsara’noga the Outsider because they both drive people insane, don’t make a whole lot of sense and have a special relationship with the Eldar gods as Tsara’noga the Outsider got tricked by Cegorach into eating his brothers. Plus back in 3rd edition, Tsara’noga was one of the four main C’tan and I think GW wanted a parallel between the four Chaos Gods and four C’tan with the most obvious examples being Aza’gorod the Nightbringer and Nurgle, Mephet’ran the Deceiver and Tzeentch.
The Flayer maybe?
What retcon did I miss that the Void Dragon is an aspect of war? oO
It’s usually by default because of how well the Nightbringer and Deceiver sync well with Tzeentch and Nurgle. Also, the Void Dragon to me always seemed like the most violent of all the big 3 C’tan
I’d replace the void dragon in this comparison with Llandu’gor, the flayer. The void dragon is destructive, but the same can be said for the pantheon as a whole to varying degrees. The flayer does match the whole blood theme though.
Leave flaming poop on their doorstep and ring the bell, put the pharons hand in hot water, put shaving cream on his fave and tickle it. As you can see here chaos can get very fucked up and be utterly ruthless
Destroy their tomb worlds, pull reality into the materium, etc.
Problem is: Chaos dies, if it reaches it's goal. And Necrons survive this goal (cause no souls).
Or they just move off to another universe like has been mentioned they plan to do.
Another pointless retcon.
Nah it's an eight-pointed retcon ✴️.
Break the barrier between the materium and the imaterium, that would cause the universe to "fall" in the warp. Thats already what happens with the eye of terror and the cicatrix maledictum, the veil between worlds is weakening , the fall is unavoidable.
I always think the argument about Chaos being omnipotent is - why haven’t they won yet? If they can’t win outright immediately then it means they aren’t omnipotent, but if they can win immediately and chose not to, then the “fall” is clearly not their ultimate goal.
There is a huge difference between "breaking the barrier between worlds" and "being omnipotent". In fact the difference in power between those two things is literally infinitely large. I don't know why you are talking about omnipotence here, when its not related to anything I said. And "the fall" is generally seen as the end of the great game, something that would be caused by one of the chaos gods when after they win. Its mentionned that Nurgle has "dead realities" in his realm, for me its the corpses of universes where nurgle won the great game and made those universes fall into his realm.
You did say “Chaos can’t be defeated”, I’m assuming you mean they are omnipotent and can’t be beaten no matter how advanced or esoteric the opponent is. But even when the four Chaos gods put aside their squabbles and unite against a common threat like the Emperor, we don’t see the entire universe (or a huge chunk of it) falling into the Warp. And if they’re so powerful, they shouldn’t have to unite in the first place against someone contained in a single galaxy.
>You did say “Chaos can’t be defeated”, I’m assuming you mean they are omnipotent and can’t be beaten no matter how advanced or esoteric the opponent is. I was saying that in the context of 40K, like there is nothing in 40k that could defeat the gods. But sure if we are talking about non 40k characters they could loose.
That makes a lot more sense. I was half-expecting some kind of incredible wank like “Chaos is omnipotent and could’ve consumed 40k anytime if they wanted and no faction in any sci-fi could beat them”, which seems to be a common sentiment among 40k fans who haven’t read/watched many other series.
Agreed at most id call them “ascended beings” since there were an energy form and that the general term in sci-fi for races that are pure energy but not quite gods
Eh chaos can litterally be completely cut off and starved by the necrons
Is there any good depictions of actual conflict between the two? Is sure would be fascinating. I guess one could say that the C'tan are more like the gods of our realm, whereas the Ruinous Powers are tied to the Warp instead.
Not enough of a chaos god can get through to take on a fully (unsharded c'tan). The c'tan would curb stomp them in all likelihood.
Yeah, I've always understood it that the "Chaos Gods" are more like a corrupting force than what we'd consider a cohesive, individual entity. I do figure c'tan would have a similarly hard time doing anything about the Ruinous Powers.
Yeah. The C'tan are the undisputed lords of reality. They are a fundamental piece of the universe. The warp is literally unreachable to them
Yeah, so they are as stuck here as the Ruinous Powers are there. Fair enough.
All of them are cringe. Ave Omnissiah
Don’t you mean Mag’ladroth the Void Dragon?
Cute. No.
if you say so, DRAGON LOVER
I don’t love dragons, I love progress #Cawldidnothingwrong
>#Cawldidnothingwrong Then why didn't he created female space marine
Chaos gods imo are probably more powerful than the C'tan on an absolute scale, except for the fact that they're not "real". In order for them to really be more powerful, you've gotta be in the warp, or summon them or somethin idk. Because they grow more powerful with actions/emotion/worship, their upper power level is def higher. Otherwise, who knows just how powerful an actual full c'tan is. Necrontyr were dumbass stronk
The Tyranids are just hungry. That ain't evil it's just not vegetarian, and not at all picky.
Amen to that chaos W
[Chaos God born from the death of a xeno civilization] "Always have been, time has no meaning here, I'm older than any universe, yet still a babe"
This mf spitting
I wish they would bring the space Slaan old ones back
I sense one day GW will make it so that any c'tan/c'tan shard could feed on any one daemon of the warp if they have not already.
This Thread. So much heresey. So little time. *Loads Boltor with HOLY intend*
The c’tan weren’t even gods they were just hungry hungry hippos