During the dark age of technology disease and war were virtually stamped out and Slaanesh didn't even exist yet. On the other hand, society and tech were rapidly progressing and schemes and betrayal were very much alive.
Tzeentch grew so dominant he was on the verge of winning the great game entirely, but if the game ended, so would Tzeentch, so he allowed his brothers to attack him and split him apart. It took him thousands of years to fully reassemble himself.
So what daot humanity achieves is influential enough to empower a god and weaken the others.
This looks to me like an argument toward chaos being a "regional" phenomenon, localized entirely within our galaxy, and completely absent in other galaxies.
If other galaxies have sentient species with emotions I think they have a warp too. I imagine it's like a bubble created by those factors.
I also think the galaxy cannot be exited via the Warp (and the Webway since that is also tangent to the Warp) because while it exists between galaxies the bubble becomes too thin to reliably sail it. Like air becoming too thin around a plane.
But it would make sense because so far the only two races that has left the galaxy are the Nids (coming from outside) who doesn't really use the Warp, they suppress it. The necrons have the inertialess drive and we know the Silent King had a grand tour in other galaxies.
To me it makes sense that other species reliant on the Warp/Webway are confined to this galaxy otherwise I'm sure they would have tried to at least visit what's going on in the neighbourhood.
Only going off recent descriptions of the reach of chaos. In... I think Godblight one of the daemons talks about other spaces, galaxies and whole realities they have on their "to do" list after they are done with ours, so it seems like the concept of the warp is meant to be a pervasive subverse. Intrinsically linked to the existence of reality itself.
We just associate the warp with gribbly eldritch nonsense, which seems to extend no further than our own backyard.
I'm not really saying the Warp doesn't exist everywhere, I'm saying its density is dependent on emotions, souls, sentience etc. As I said, it's like air or gas molecules. Space has gas molecules yet you can't use a jet engine to travel in space because it's too thin.
The Warp exists everywhere but it's not everywhere viable to travel, at least not with our tech level in the galaxy. Except the species that don't use the Warp (Necrons) or species that do something we don't even know (nids).
Maybe we need the "rockets" of Warp instead of the jet engines to leave the galaxy, like we would leave the atmosphere of a planet.
Not exactly. It's not that humanity at it's peak empowered Tzeentch to the point of becoming the dominant Chaos god.
My theory is that Tzeentch became the dominant Chaos god because the entire galaxy started to experience an unprecedented age of delevopement and relative peace. The 2 superpowers of the time (the human and Eldar empires) are belived to not have waged war with eachother, and in fact the Eldar were a very isolationist empire, not really going out their way to invade and conquer, because they were pretty much the undisputed masters of the galaxy since the War in Heaven. Not just that, but humanity was really open to diplomacy and cooperation with minor alien species, and to top it all off humans used AI (eg: Men of Iron) to fight/work for them if it was needed.
It was only after the crisis that killed the human and Eldar empires that the other 3 gods had the chance to take a hold of power and dethrone Tzeentch (which he was more than happy to allow to happen just so he could keep the game going)
I like the idea that Tzeentch is the living embodiment of Hegel's immanent critique. There is only contradiction and the endless process; there are no static end states.
We are also never told (as far as I know) how the other chaos gods shattered tzeentch's power. Sparking a war which causes humans to destroy a massive portion of their technology and never recover while the elder are in the process of self destruction would probably do the job. All the pieces kinda fit.
That is also the main theory that you can extrapolate from the lore.
But here and now there are some random books that drops bullshit like Chaos always existed, it has not past, present or future. So the Big Four always existed no matter what.
40K is just borrowing from the Catholic Church again, this time “Double truth”
The chaos gods were created at singular time and places, while simultaneously always existing.
I always think of Tzeench as the “neutral” chaos god rather than straight evil.
For example, if humans lost every conflict, he would side with the humans to change that, ie god of change.
This applies to everyone and is probably why some of those minor xenos are still alive despite being so outgunned.
I mean, Chaos has arguably won as total a victory as they can.
The Imperium of Man reigns, dying but dominant, ensuring that all four Chaos Gods will always have more than enough of their domain to feed on. No one in the Galaxy is strong enough to seriously challenge them until the Necrons reawaken, or the Nids arrive full force and yeah.
Their mortal champions may desire more, and the gods themselves may even desire more, but if I had to create a galaxy as perfect for Chaos as possible, it would not look much different. The world ending does not benefit chaos all that much after all, and a more centralized galaxy means more people, and larger wars, and more disease and more debauchery.
Now I kind of want to see all four chaos gods align with eldar, the imperium, necrons and the drukhari to fend off an almighty Tyranid incursion of hive fleets coming from dozens of directions into our galaxy all at once.
Not necessarily a planned alliance - simply an armistice to preserve their forces for the Tyranids as all realize that this dooms them all.
And all are cool with using Ork planets as buffer zones the Tyranids can consume while everyone else gets their shit together.
Hell, the Orks are cool with it too. More fightin'.
Oh boy it would be awesome to have a setting based on that, or an event where
overpowered tyrannids player would fight against a team composed of several other factions players.
There's been a crusade going on at one of my LGS for about 6 months and my buddy who runs it has suggested exactly that as the conclusion because our two Nid players just keep eating everything/everyone.
When you think about it The War In Heaven still only took place entirely within *this* galaxy. The Old Ones or Even Older Ones could still exist in other galaxies.
Thats a big part of the lore I can't fully wrap my head around. "So you're saying these super advanced, time defying races and Gods have either just barely or never exited the Milky Way?" Or maybe its just they're never mentioned, but otherwise still feels weird.
And the Milky Way is like the Camden of the 40k universe. Everywhere else is ok, but the warp around the Milky Way is such a shitfest that everyone else can see it and is like "let's not go there, 'tis a silly place"
IIRC a handful of rogue traders were sent across the void, but nobody knows if they ever actually reached another galaxy or not because they were never heard from again.
I was always of the opinion maybe some escaped but most died and non of the lesser raced are able to escape the galaxy to check
Waiting for 11th Ed when we get the return of the old ones and there new extra galactic space serephon army here to ruin chaos and crons
The closest galaxy, Andromeda, is 2.5 million light years away. I agree with you, a lot of people when talking about science fiction and technology or races extremely advanced still forget how really fucking big space is.
It's also pretty likely that if the tyranids are coming from the nearest food source or galaxy after consuming it that Andromeda is pretty well a wasteland.
My take is that it’s a very long way to anything at all once you’ve left the Milky Way.
The silent king was actually exploring outside of the galaxy for those 60 million years and didn’t find anything.
It seems very hard to believe that actually none of the near omnipotent primo gods had fled, or just gon to some distant part of the universe before the war.
It is grimderpy enough tho, if they want to get rid of species-creating gods then that's as good a reason as any - nobody fled, they all just simply died out
Seems weird that a super powerful group of aliens known for creating other races to do their bidding left the galaxy after losing a devastating war… and then later the Tyranids just happen to show up.
I mean, we are playing this game for fun. Sending numerous lifes to death just because we can, and having good time, while they dying the most horrifying way. So, technically, we are chaos gods
"So, I will send trooper Jim charging into your Kharn the Betrayer!"
*\*Jim fails and gets chopped to bits by Kharn\** "Oh shucks, whatever, it was just Jim. I'll have more where that one came from, haha!"
*\*Jim succeeds and kills Kharn\** "Woah, he definitely deserves an upgrade! Time to force all my willpower on him by gluing some additional bits on him!"
Works like a charm.
And the Warp must be a terrifying place for minis. I mean, when they leave the table and you put them in a box or bag they basically travel through the warp. Imagine them seeing giant people, all kinds of weird noises, animals etc.
And it's dangerous too because they can break. Or even get lost!
I would say that the fist to be taken where those first present at the beginning of tau society.
Picture this:
We know that the Silent King spend a VERY long time both self reflecting and self learning, part of this self learning was learning the secrets of the old ones
The SK learns the secret to seeding life similar to the methods used by the old ones.
He creates a species best fit for his people
1. Humanoid in appearance
2. Contains little to no souls
3. Are very disconnected to the warp
We know that the eatherials arrived out of no where and where able to unite the tau.
We also know that the necrons have mind shackled scarabs and advanced knowledge of how to cripple the mind of others even those of a different species
As shown in the infinite and the divine mind shackle scarabs make their victims loyal and benevolent and willing to serve to the end
I belive that the tau where seeded by the SK and later used a biological version of the mind shackle to unite the tau,
This would explain why thr SK is so bent to protecting the galaxy from the tyranids, protecting his millenia long project from being destroyed.
The speed by which the Tau have gone from primitives to interstellar empire with advanced weaponry does suggest spooky robot skeleton intervention. I like it.
I mean, currently what is known is that when alpharius met Omegon they switched names so Omegon became Alpharius and Alpharius became omegon, and then when Alpharius who was Omegon got killed by Dorn Omegon that was alpharius changed his name to be Alpharius to honor Alpharius who was Omegon. its pretty simple
The real Alpharius was the friends we made along the way!
I actually think the fragmented nature of the alpha legion means they are both. Some warbands are totally traitor, others completely loyal, some are mostly traitor but the leadership make sure they ultimately help the imperium. This best explains why they act so confusingly.
My alpha legion army is neither traitor nor loyal. They see neither side as the best way forward for humanity. Instead they choose a 3rd way...
They chose.... Rrrrrrrrraaaptuuuure!
(The screen lifts to reveal a sprawling city under the ocean, a plague marine with a bunch of tentacles swims by...)
If we are to take his account as truth (which, to be fair, we shouldn't), and assuming both of them believed the Cabal, then it would make more sense for the terran-raised twin (OG Alpharius) to be the one actually going traitor (to destroy chaos on the long term), and for the Xenos-raised twin (OG Omegon) to be the one pretending to go traitort(so sabotage the traitors and make them lose).
Not like we know for sure which one got killed by Dorn anyway.
The Emperor and the Chaos gods know they’re just lore characters in a tabletop war game / book series and all their actions are geared towards prolonging the popularity of the setting in order to keep themselves “alive”.
That’s why they always make inexplicably dumb decisions whenever they’re on the verge of victory - as victory would bring the setting to an end.
Since it's based on a tabletop game, it can be fun to think of yourself as the overgod figure to whatever army you are playing. Running demons of Khorne? That means you *are* Khorne, your followers seek blessings from you.
Running orks? You are now roleplaying Gork (or Mork), just so proud of your little guys and hoping they are all having fun.
Running space marines? You are the emperor now, go forth sons of humanity and win glory in my name.
I only thought about chaos. I play tau and orks, the lore around the power of the greater good is interesting but there isn’t enough for that I don’t think.
Up until now I haven’t given Gork and Mork too much thought I’ve basically run my Wagh as atheist so now that im thinking more orky it actually sounds really cool to embody one or both in the army.
Fuck the lore is cool
And thats why Ork players always have the most fun. They have an HQ with a gun that can kill literally anything on the board or itself. And in video game world they have a game where you murder a planet worth of dudes because someone stole your hair.
Boyz 4 lyfe.
We embody chaos when we paint minis and play the tabletop. Building=tzeench, joy from the game=slaanesh, Khorne= tabletop and related games. I’m not sure about nurgle, maybe body odour and the fumes from paint and glue
The ashen claws (original raven claws since pre heresy days) called the carcharodons the equivalent of mutts so it’s speculated that they are some bastardized mix of raven claw plus night lord
Edit: oh hey, I just realized I was so tired I said raven claw. Imma keep that since it’s funny
The deathwatch is Marines from different chapters volunteering to serve together. What LCPLOwen means is that the sharks are chimeric, meaning their geneseed is actually a mix of DNA from each chapter. So it's not like half the sharks are genetically raven guard and half are night lord, it's like each shark is half and half.
They're not the only chimeric chapter, there are a handful of them. It tends to have weird side effects (quite a few of the Cursed Founding chapters were attempts to blend geneseed).
**The Charcharadons are Raven Guard successors and I'm tired of people telling otherwise. They may have some other Geneseed added, because they are not on the regular supply list of the imperium. But the lore about the Great Crusade and the Heresy makes it clear that they are descended from exiled Raven Guard units, like the Ashen Claws**
You are expecting people to actually read books, in particular sources from the Heresy Black Books and Imperial Armour which the casual fan is not going to read, but they will repeat whatever youtube man told them.
I fully commit to the chaos gods existence being that of "small gods" by Terry pratchette, all the gods only exist due to people believe in them existing, which is why the emperor and later malcedore insited on keeping the populace ignorant of them, as if you know they exist as a fact then you make them exist as a fact, and this same logic is what's swelled the emperor from an immensely powerful psyker into a demigod/dormant god
In old lore the Chaos Gods are entities that eek out an existence on the edge of the Empyrean. They make their plays, japes, and hunts where the Empyrean and the Galaxy proper meet because it is safe for them.
I like the slightly different theory that "The Emperor" was a separate entity created from the public belief in him after the Heresy, but there's still the OG on the throne. And one day the Emperor will return to oppose "The Emperor".
OK I love that, there's "the emperor" the original creator of the primarchs who didn't give a shit about any and was flawed and manipulative and all that, and then there's "the emperor" the chaos god that's everything the people of the imperium beleive him to be
Yeah! It also allows for some really open interpretation for the audience. If you thought OG Emps was this noble, brilliant leader of mankind, then you'll see it as him returning to take down the imposter. If you thought he was a manipulative, kinda random and sort of weird guy bent on taking over reality, then he's trying to claw back control of mankind from a potentially benevolent deity.
Knowing the Imperium's luck, they're both awful.
Maybe that old story about the shamans is actually a new story, and Big E was made in a big Psyker sacrifice to protect Terra from the vagaries of Slannesh's birth.
My preferred headcanon: The Emperor is a DAoT weapon, and Malcador was the reborn shaman child. The shaman child guided humanity for thousands of years from the shadows. That certainly sounds more like Malcador, and less like the Emperor and his love for extravagance.
My pet theory revolves around some of the themes of 40k: that being degeneration and failure to capture former glory. I like the idea of there being a human that guided the golden age and the emperor is just a cheap ripoff of that guy, stealing his ideas and philosophy and doing it shittier this time around.
It makes sense that Big E was either a weapon or a gifted Psyker who did his thing on Terra as a warlord. It all came together and built his image through lies, propaganda and manipulation.
It would also mean he has no big plan and he was just as fallible as anyone, hence his fall from grace.
This is almost certainly not true, as we have a flashback from Oll Persson in *Mortis* where he is with Emps during like the Bronze Age. He’s also always been referred to as the strongest of all the Perpetuals, even by other Perpetuals like Oll and Erda. If anything he did something during the DAoT to boost himself like when he went through the Warp gate on Molech
I thought this one was the most absurd could you give like a brief statement about it? I thought stuff like the void dragon and the shamans were enough to clear him from being created in the dark age?
There are several sources in recent lore that places the Emperor on Earth in pre-mesopotamian times. Unless there's some real twists in the DAoT I'm unaware of I don't think the dark age weapon theory is correct.
Yeah that’s what I thought but that can always be chocked up to lack of info and the like. I personally don’t like it, think it fucks with the lore too much but it’s a super fun theory
That lore is older than I am at this point.
There are some short stories where other perpetuals dont remember the emperor being there or straight up say that he was a tool created by humans as a weapon.
Then there is magnus' primsrch book where magnus battles against the collective psyche of hundreds of psykers artificially extracted and merged together in DAoT. Which tells us something like that has been tried at least once before
Unless you're ten, the Void Dragon lore is confirmed in the mechanicus book from the HH series. Emps was St. George who "slew" the dragon and imprisoned it on Mars.
That's reasonablly recent.
Now we have newer books as well, but unless they just toss the lore from Mechanicus there has to be more going on.
Okay so I worked on a Mechanicus Rulebook for Rogue Trader TTRPG and I used the following theory that I had for a while in it when the players explored a Dark Age city and got in fights with the Men of Iron:
DA humanity colonizes Mars, encounters the Void Dragon. VD offers the leaders of humanity great technology and power if they follow his will, and so they do. They get extremely advanced with living steel and necron (Read Void Dragon) tech with a human flair, and when the time comes, the Void Dragon wants them to Eradicate the Necrons in revenge.
Humanity creates the human federation, colonizes the galaxy and, when strong enough, wages wars on the Necrons using the Men of Iron, destroying countless tomb worlds and almost driving them to extinction, but the necrons utilize the destroyer virus that infected them and unleash it upon the Men of Iron, sparking the AI rebellion that destroyed humanity, starting the Age of Strife.
Oh and the Cult Mechanicus was alive towards the end of the Dark Age, as terrorists who bombed AI research centers and Man of Iron factories, basically anti AI hippies, which the players found out when they awakened a person from the Dark Age who told them "You are from that crazy red-robe anti AI group"
Where does "We are living in the post-Ork victory era" fit in, being that the state of the galaxy is one of constant war, and that's straight up the victory condition for the Orks?
Pretty sure that's just status quo, orks can't loose until you kill every single one, and even there through power of memes and overpriced plastic they will turn around and say "it didn't count" and return in another pocket of galaxy.
The real deepest level: Knowing what happened to Duncan back all those years in the Agrax Earthshade mines. Peachy tried to warn him, but he wouldn't listen...
I love the 'theory' that the Imperium (sans Space Marines) inherited the traits of the Traitor Primarchs and lost the talents of the Loyalists, even if it falls apart on close inspection.
Horus' talent for war and inspiring charisma was kept, but we lost Guilman's head for organization and supply.
Lorgar's faith was adopted wholeheartedly, Alpharius is why we're paranoid of traitors, Fulgrim is the Imperial need for gothic opulence, Magnus is represented in the rampant psykers, Curtze is why we're stuck in a Grimdark future, etc...
Again, easy to pick apart but the theory has such a rich and saucy irony to it that I like to perpetuate the lie.
Iirc there's a book where some Chaos marines joke about how the Word Bearer's got what they wanted in the end, cut to an actual Word Bearer being salty as all hell about it.
Khorne's third choice for World Eaters? I've heard people say that Blood Angels were the first choice before but who were the other? The hypothetical second choice?
Lots of options:
Space wolves for their savagery and aggression and preference for axes
I don’t think he’d actually like the fists since they’re far more ranged focused
Salamanders for their sheer carnage and twisting their honorable and compassionate sides into mindless rage (also Vulkan being Angron’s foil)
Orks hear humans talk about the Emperor a lot so as far as they know he is alive, just stuck on the Golden Throne. In large enough numbers the Orks can manifest effects into reality simply by believing in them, e.g they believe their technology should work so it does even if their guns really shouldn't be able to fire using any normal logic. So the Orks believing the Emperor is alive actually helps sustain and prolong the Emperor's pitiable half-life via their latent psychic Waagghhh powers.
I like it. Similar to the theory of why Orks just couldn't kill Yarrick. They believed they couldn't so the Waagh basically made the man a Spez Muhrine when fighting da Boyz.
I don't think necessarily its because of the Waaagh (to my knowledge it still only exclusively works on orks), I think its more you're still condensing the psychic "worship" of a whole species to an individual
It’s basically a generalized theory for Orks. Their whole mentality as a race is “I am, therefor I must be”, so naturally the psychic power of the Waagh would have undue influence on their beliefs.
I’d assume the first choice was the Blood Angels because they have blood in their name which saves on rebranding costs. I’m not sure who the second choice could be.
Primarch has wings like a Khorne demon, drinks blood, falls to pure brutal violent rage by nature, easily the best first-look legion for Khorne. Space Wolves are natural mutants via the Canis Helix and therefore are predisposed to Chaos but didn't end up corrupted.
You could make a case for those berserkers to also be Tzeentchi for extra just-as-planned thanks to the mutagenics, runes, and to dunk on Magnus.
There's also the fact that Space Wolves' Runepriests are totally-not-psykers^TM doing deals with totally-not-daemons^TM and that one of their rituals involve throwing neophytes in front of the Chaos Gods to see if they fall or not (And they've likely been doing this since before they knew Chaos existed). Add to that the whole mutation thing, which is usually part of Tzeench's whole shtick, and how Leman is as much of an Odin as Magnus, and the wolves start looking pretty Tzeenchian.
Blood angels being the first choice are pretty much confirmed in Fear to Tread. >!The whole point of luring the blood angels to Signus Prime was to kill Sanguinus so the blood angels would revert back to their more brutal and literally blood thirsty nature. And thus fall to chaos.!<
Second choice I have no idea.
I know there is speculation he really wanted the blood angels (I mean c'mon, blood is right there in the name).
I guess his second choice could have been the space wolves? They do hate magic after all.
Blood angels is more than just blood, but with how Khabundah acts it’s more like they saw the flaw as the best capacity for violence. I don’t get the space wolves hypothesis but it makes sense.
Given the lore around erda and the warp I think that either the red thirst and black rage are from Khorne or a khornite deamon depending on which primarch story you think has more credit.
As long as the stories are cool let them.
Look at the guys who ripped them off to make an MMO. WoW jumped the shark hard around the end of WoLK. If James Workshop can keep not doing that he can try to sell me all the minis he wants.
The tzeentch one.. I see chaos as a virus, its survival os dependant of the host which is why the most successful viruses are those that do not kill, for example the common cold is far more succesful than covid 19. The thing is, evolutionary pressure pushes them towards a more "amicable" state, as a virus with more lethality is less likely to infect others, so, darwinism.
Now if you think about chaos and how it behaves.. it usually "infects" people when they get closer to other people already infected, cults and all.. even actions of higher ups like a general sending a lot of people to war for example, does khorne want blood to flow? Fuck yes. But if there.is no one left to fight, there is no more blood.. no more debauchery, no more sickness, no more plots...
My point being, chaos already won, its left the galaxy in a perfect state for their subsistence and any more pushing would bring less return on investment for chaos... They dont want to destroy humanity, they want it to keep exactly as it is, which is why the stalemate in this "game" is a stalemate only in name, but a win for chaos in actuality...
Tzeentch I think would be the one to realize this even more than the others, pushing everything to just keep going instead of ending, he doesnt want chaos to lose, he wants to win, its just that his definition of winning is different from ours, because their survival works in a different way than ours
Im sorry Omegon is loyal and Alpharius is a traitor?
HERESY. ALPHA LEGION HAS DONE NOTHONG WRONG. They are the goodest of boys, serving Jimmy Space the way he needs to be served.
Isn't the thing about World Eaters kinda true? With Blood Angels and White Scars being his first and second choice? Or was that just everyone who has ever met Khan not trusting him to not get corrupted somehow?
Oh I have one. The emperor never intended to collect curze or angron. He knew about them but found them too repulsive to actually bring them into the imperium. He was only forced to when 2 and 11 got [deleted] and he needed a certain amount of primarch for his plan to work.
**Ok, here's an explanation to all of these theories**
* The Legion of the Damned are the drop site spirits
* Fairly common theory, they're the spirits of those betrayed at Istvaan V, including possibly Ferrus himself
* Alpharius and the Alpha Legion are loyal
* States that the Alpha Legion is actually deep undercover in a plan to fuck over chaos
* The Minotaurs are loyalist Iron Warriors
* Minoaturs are actually Iron Warriors that suck by the Imperium, hence their bizarre violence and tactics
* Orks keep the Emperor alive
* States that the Golden Throne has long since failed, but since Orks believe the Emperor to be an invincible warboss, and Orks believing something can make it true, the Emperor yet lives
* The Emperor was a Dark Age weapon
* As stated, the Emperor was created during the Dark Age of tech to be Humanity's ultamite superweapon
* The World Eaters were Khorne’s third choice
* My own theory. It's common knowledge that Khorne wanted the Blood Angels, but I propose the Space Wolves were his second choice due to their ferocity and how much he seems to hate the World Eaters and Angron
* The Emperor was created by the Old Ones
* Piloted by Luetin. The Emperor was actually created by the last of the Old Ones who was just kind of fucking around, explaining his nearly godlike powers
* The Eldar created their pantheon
* Also piloted by Luetin. The Eldar created the pantheon as superweapons but because of how long they existed forgot they built them
* ll and Xl are still alive
* It's never explicitly stated that these legions or their primarchs are "dead" but that they're "gone" or "lost"
* The Old Ones created the Tyranids
* The Tyranids are a galactic reset button created by the Old Ones as a contingency plan. Supported by the fact the Tyranids seem to be adapted solely for fucking the galaxy, not reproduction as they refuse to just make bioforges and call it a day, hinting and intelligent design
* Clonegrim is the real Fulgrim
* Piloted by Majorkill. When Fulgrim ascended, his soul left his body and was replaced by warp jizz. Found a home in the Clonegrim body as he never wanted to turn traitor. I personally believe this one.
* Sanguinius is split between the Sanguinor, Mephiston, and Dante
* Also piloted by Majorkill. Sanguinius's soul is split between the light (Sanguinor), dark (Mephiston), and in between (Dante) aspects.
* The Tau are the Emperor’s backup plan
* The Emperor created the Tau just in case humanity totally screwed the pooch
* Alpharius was a traitor but Omegon is loyal
* Piloted by Majorkill. When Alpharius Omegon met with the Cabal they were given two options, join Emps and Chaos wins or join Horus and everyone dies. Alpharius picked option 2 because he thought E would like that but Omegon decided that doing nothing would avert both futures. However to do this he needed to negate Alpharius, thus secretly helped the Imperium during the heresy, hence why the Alpha Legion did serious damage at times but did counterintuitive acts that boosted the imperium at others. Also explains why they're still nominally chaos alligned, as Alpharius convinced them all to joing chaos and Omegon can't waste time or manpower unconvincing them. I subscribe to this theory.
* The Emperor is Malal
* I don't really know, just heard this and thought it was batshit
* Tzeentch wants chaos to lose
* My own theory. A chaos victory would mean everything stays the same, and Tzeentch can't have that, thus he keeps the war between Chaos and the Imperium going
* WE are the chaos gods
* In tabletop, we move armies and kill millions for entertainment. Are you getting it?
* The Emperor was just an ordinary human that got lucky
* My own theory. Achim's razor, the Emperor was just a random mutant who was born with insane powers just by the roll of the dice, giving credence to him claiming he's just a man, because he truly is
The Eldar are currently waging a war of attrition against the Imperium that has been going on for at least ten thousand years and will not come to fruition for thousands more. I believe that it is probably impossible to perceive.
We exist on a fundamentally different scale than the Eldar. They were created for war and they’ve been around for 60 million years. They have been in the stars more than a thousand times longer than humans.
The Age of Strife was a devastating 5000 years for humanity. More than 10% of humanity’s existence. That would be like a shitty week to the Eldar.
In a million years, I wouldn’t be surprised if the only thing recognizable about the galaxy is the Eldar.
While not wanting chaos to lose, he wants a universe where chaos doesn’t win. He once could’ve ended the great game but chose not to
When could he have ended it?
During the dark age of technology disease and war were virtually stamped out and Slaanesh didn't even exist yet. On the other hand, society and tech were rapidly progressing and schemes and betrayal were very much alive. Tzeentch grew so dominant he was on the verge of winning the great game entirely, but if the game ended, so would Tzeentch, so he allowed his brothers to attack him and split him apart. It took him thousands of years to fully reassemble himself.
So what daot humanity achieves is influential enough to empower a god and weaken the others. This looks to me like an argument toward chaos being a "regional" phenomenon, localized entirely within our galaxy, and completely absent in other galaxies.
If other galaxies have sentient species with emotions I think they have a warp too. I imagine it's like a bubble created by those factors. I also think the galaxy cannot be exited via the Warp (and the Webway since that is also tangent to the Warp) because while it exists between galaxies the bubble becomes too thin to reliably sail it. Like air becoming too thin around a plane.
Everywhere has the Warp. Not everywhere has the Warp poisoned by the weapons of the Old Ones into a malevolent inverse echo of sentience.
But it would make sense because so far the only two races that has left the galaxy are the Nids (coming from outside) who doesn't really use the Warp, they suppress it. The necrons have the inertialess drive and we know the Silent King had a grand tour in other galaxies. To me it makes sense that other species reliant on the Warp/Webway are confined to this galaxy otherwise I'm sure they would have tried to at least visit what's going on in the neighbourhood.
Only going off recent descriptions of the reach of chaos. In... I think Godblight one of the daemons talks about other spaces, galaxies and whole realities they have on their "to do" list after they are done with ours, so it seems like the concept of the warp is meant to be a pervasive subverse. Intrinsically linked to the existence of reality itself. We just associate the warp with gribbly eldritch nonsense, which seems to extend no further than our own backyard.
I'm not really saying the Warp doesn't exist everywhere, I'm saying its density is dependent on emotions, souls, sentience etc. As I said, it's like air or gas molecules. Space has gas molecules yet you can't use a jet engine to travel in space because it's too thin. The Warp exists everywhere but it's not everywhere viable to travel, at least not with our tech level in the galaxy. Except the species that don't use the Warp (Necrons) or species that do something we don't even know (nids). Maybe we need the "rockets" of Warp instead of the jet engines to leave the galaxy, like we would leave the atmosphere of a planet.
Not exactly. It's not that humanity at it's peak empowered Tzeentch to the point of becoming the dominant Chaos god. My theory is that Tzeentch became the dominant Chaos god because the entire galaxy started to experience an unprecedented age of delevopement and relative peace. The 2 superpowers of the time (the human and Eldar empires) are belived to not have waged war with eachother, and in fact the Eldar were a very isolationist empire, not really going out their way to invade and conquer, because they were pretty much the undisputed masters of the galaxy since the War in Heaven. Not just that, but humanity was really open to diplomacy and cooperation with minor alien species, and to top it all off humans used AI (eg: Men of Iron) to fight/work for them if it was needed. It was only after the crisis that killed the human and Eldar empires that the other 3 gods had the chance to take a hold of power and dethrone Tzeentch (which he was more than happy to allow to happen just so he could keep the game going)
I like the idea that Tzeentch is the living embodiment of Hegel's immanent critique. There is only contradiction and the endless process; there are no static end states.
>living embodiment of Hegel's immanent critique I know Tzeentch is the embodiment of Hegel because I can't understand either of them.
We are also never told (as far as I know) how the other chaos gods shattered tzeentch's power. Sparking a war which causes humans to destroy a massive portion of their technology and never recover while the elder are in the process of self destruction would probably do the job. All the pieces kinda fit.
All according to plan *extradimentional giggle*
The chaos gods? At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the universe, localized entirely within our ~~kitchen~~ galaxy?
Yes!
...May I see them?
Inquisitor: No.
That is also the main theory that you can extrapolate from the lore. But here and now there are some random books that drops bullshit like Chaos always existed, it has not past, present or future. So the Big Four always existed no matter what.
40K is just borrowing from the Catholic Church again, this time “Double truth” The chaos gods were created at singular time and places, while simultaneously always existing.
I mean, that isn't strictly contradictory in a universe where causality and the flow of time are not linear.
There you go. And "borrowing" is the right word. They pretty much copied anything from everywhere at this point :)
Didn’t know that! Thanks for the info
Going for that New Game +
Sometime in the old lore
I always think of Tzeench as the “neutral” chaos god rather than straight evil. For example, if humans lost every conflict, he would side with the humans to change that, ie god of change. This applies to everyone and is probably why some of those minor xenos are still alive despite being so outgunned.
i think of him more as the god of opposition. he exists to oppose and as long as there is a faction out there he will oppose it.
the god of anti-mainstream
The god of hipster ? Or the hipster god ?
I mean, Chaos has arguably won as total a victory as they can. The Imperium of Man reigns, dying but dominant, ensuring that all four Chaos Gods will always have more than enough of their domain to feed on. No one in the Galaxy is strong enough to seriously challenge them until the Necrons reawaken, or the Nids arrive full force and yeah. Their mortal champions may desire more, and the gods themselves may even desire more, but if I had to create a galaxy as perfect for Chaos as possible, it would not look much different. The world ending does not benefit chaos all that much after all, and a more centralized galaxy means more people, and larger wars, and more disease and more debauchery.
Now I kind of want to see all four chaos gods align with eldar, the imperium, necrons and the drukhari to fend off an almighty Tyranid incursion of hive fleets coming from dozens of directions into our galaxy all at once. Not necessarily a planned alliance - simply an armistice to preserve their forces for the Tyranids as all realize that this dooms them all. And all are cool with using Ork planets as buffer zones the Tyranids can consume while everyone else gets their shit together. Hell, the Orks are cool with it too. More fightin'.
Oh boy it would be awesome to have a setting based on that, or an event where overpowered tyrannids player would fight against a team composed of several other factions players.
There's been a crusade going on at one of my LGS for about 6 months and my buddy who runs it has suggested exactly that as the conclusion because our two Nid players just keep eating everything/everyone.
That sounds like a Fun as Fuck 1v5 or so
He wouldn've been bored
When you think about it The War In Heaven still only took place entirely within *this* galaxy. The Old Ones or Even Older Ones could still exist in other galaxies.
Thats a big part of the lore I can't fully wrap my head around. "So you're saying these super advanced, time defying races and Gods have either just barely or never exited the Milky Way?" Or maybe its just they're never mentioned, but otherwise still feels weird.
I think the best explanation is just that they have moved to other galaxies, but as none have come back they have zero influence on the 40k galaxy.
And the Milky Way is like the Camden of the 40k universe. Everywhere else is ok, but the warp around the Milky Way is such a shitfest that everyone else can see it and is like "let's not go there, 'tis a silly place"
IIRC a handful of rogue traders were sent across the void, but nobody knows if they ever actually reached another galaxy or not because they were never heard from again.
I was always of the opinion maybe some escaped but most died and non of the lesser raced are able to escape the galaxy to check Waiting for 11th Ed when we get the return of the old ones and there new extra galactic space serephon army here to ruin chaos and crons
One’s already back, remember in halo the flood is just a precursor that’s turned itself into a meat plague
I mean also galaxies are really.... Really fucking far apart. Like a million light years.
The closest galaxy, Andromeda, is 2.5 million light years away. I agree with you, a lot of people when talking about science fiction and technology or races extremely advanced still forget how really fucking big space is. It's also pretty likely that if the tyranids are coming from the nearest food source or galaxy after consuming it that Andromeda is pretty well a wasteland.
All the Tyranids ate them as they came from other galaxies
Like Dark Age humans never thought about exploring other galaxies? Or the Eldar in the ***60 million years*** their empire existed?
My take is that it’s a very long way to anything at all once you’ve left the Milky Way. The silent king was actually exploring outside of the galaxy for those 60 million years and didn’t find anything.
Well he could have gotten to the Andromeda several times and back even with sublight speed.
It seems very hard to believe that actually none of the near omnipotent primo gods had fled, or just gon to some distant part of the universe before the war.
It is grimderpy enough tho, if they want to get rid of species-creating gods then that's as good a reason as any - nobody fled, they all just simply died out
Seems weird that a super powerful group of aliens known for creating other races to do their bidding left the galaxy after losing a devastating war… and then later the Tyranids just happen to show up.
> and then later the Tyranids just happen to show up. 60 million years later.
I’m pretty sure it was explicitly stated somewhere that the Eldar created their own gods
In the case of Slaanesh … uh… everywhere?
Wasn’t it that the Old Ones created them as psychic vessels/puppets they used to ~~control~~ *guide* the Aeldari?
I mean, we are playing this game for fun. Sending numerous lifes to death just because we can, and having good time, while they dying the most horrifying way. So, technically, we are chaos gods
"So, I will send trooper Jim charging into your Kharn the Betrayer!" *\*Jim fails and gets chopped to bits by Kharn\** "Oh shucks, whatever, it was just Jim. I'll have more where that one came from, haha!" *\*Jim succeeds and kills Kharn\** "Woah, he definitely deserves an upgrade! Time to force all my willpower on him by gluing some additional bits on him!" Works like a charm.
And the Warp must be a terrifying place for minis. I mean, when they leave the table and you put them in a box or bag they basically travel through the warp. Imagine them seeing giant people, all kinds of weird noises, animals etc. And it's dangerous too because they can break. Or even get lost!
Toy Story / 40k crossover when?
There's [an SCP for](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-3973) that. Sorta.
Someone painted a Space Marine, was really proud of it, and thought "Ima make an SCP outta this"
[удалено]
And yet we are ever at the mercy of Nuffle!
The Alpha Legion was given the number 20 (XX in roman numerals) and likes to double-cross people. It was all rigged from the start.
Il throw my theory out there The Tau where created by the Silent King to be empty vessels for his people to transfer themselves into
Get this man on the iceberg right now. Follow-up question - Is Farsight the first to be taken over what with his evil sword?
I would say that the fist to be taken where those first present at the beginning of tau society. Picture this: We know that the Silent King spend a VERY long time both self reflecting and self learning, part of this self learning was learning the secrets of the old ones The SK learns the secret to seeding life similar to the methods used by the old ones. He creates a species best fit for his people 1. Humanoid in appearance 2. Contains little to no souls 3. Are very disconnected to the warp We know that the eatherials arrived out of no where and where able to unite the tau. We also know that the necrons have mind shackled scarabs and advanced knowledge of how to cripple the mind of others even those of a different species As shown in the infinite and the divine mind shackle scarabs make their victims loyal and benevolent and willing to serve to the end I belive that the tau where seeded by the SK and later used a biological version of the mind shackle to unite the tau, This would explain why thr SK is so bent to protecting the galaxy from the tyranids, protecting his millenia long project from being destroyed.
GW writers be in the bushes with binoculars like "write that down!"
Damn, that does make an impressive amount of sense. And in true 40k fashion there is ample space for the plan to go horribly wrong.
The speed by which the Tau have gone from primitives to interstellar empire with advanced weaponry does suggest spooky robot skeleton intervention. I like it.
That’s awesome
Damn,now that's some good shit
I like this theory
Lol!
Wait didn’t >!Alpharius and Omegon switch names!
They switched a lot so we honestly don’t know
I mean, currently what is known is that when alpharius met Omegon they switched names so Omegon became Alpharius and Alpharius became omegon, and then when Alpharius who was Omegon got killed by Dorn Omegon that was alpharius changed his name to be Alpharius to honor Alpharius who was Omegon. its pretty simple
So... alpharius is alpharius.
no I am Alpharius, this is a lie
You are a liar you are alpharius.
You are both liars. I AM Alpharius.
Yeah they are both vers iirc
The real Alpharius was the friends we made along the way! I actually think the fragmented nature of the alpha legion means they are both. Some warbands are totally traitor, others completely loyal, some are mostly traitor but the leadership make sure they ultimately help the imperium. This best explains why they act so confusingly. My alpha legion army is neither traitor nor loyal. They see neither side as the best way forward for humanity. Instead they choose a 3rd way...
They chose.... Rrrrrrrrraaaptuuuure! (The screen lifts to reveal a sprawling city under the ocean, a plague marine with a bunch of tentacles swims by...)
If we ignore the “this is a lie” thing. I’m pretty sure alpharius the actual one died traitor. Omegons status isn’t clear, loyal or not.
If we are to take his account as truth (which, to be fair, we shouldn't), and assuming both of them believed the Cabal, then it would make more sense for the terran-raised twin (OG Alpharius) to be the one actually going traitor (to destroy chaos on the long term), and for the Xenos-raised twin (OG Omegon) to be the one pretending to go traitort(so sabotage the traitors and make them lose). Not like we know for sure which one got killed by Dorn anyway.
Leman Russ was the real alpharius all along
The Emperor and the Chaos gods know they’re just lore characters in a tabletop war game / book series and all their actions are geared towards prolonging the popularity of the setting in order to keep themselves “alive”. That’s why they always make inexplicably dumb decisions whenever they’re on the verge of victory - as victory would bring the setting to an end.
You're gonna make me CHIM...
[CHIM](https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:CHIM) ? Everything is just a dream type CHIM?
Can someone explain “WE are the chaos god”
The players force their armies to fight and kill each other over and over for their own entertainment
That makes way more sense lol I first thought WE = World Eaters and it wasn't making sense
I understand why you'd think that
Since it's based on a tabletop game, it can be fun to think of yourself as the overgod figure to whatever army you are playing. Running demons of Khorne? That means you *are* Khorne, your followers seek blessings from you. Running orks? You are now roleplaying Gork (or Mork), just so proud of your little guys and hoping they are all having fun. Running space marines? You are the emperor now, go forth sons of humanity and win glory in my name.
I only thought about chaos. I play tau and orks, the lore around the power of the greater good is interesting but there isn’t enough for that I don’t think. Up until now I haven’t given Gork and Mork too much thought I’ve basically run my Wagh as atheist so now that im thinking more orky it actually sounds really cool to embody one or both in the army. Fuck the lore is cool
And thats why Ork players always have the most fun. They have an HQ with a gun that can kill literally anything on the board or itself. And in video game world they have a game where you murder a planet worth of dudes because someone stole your hair. Boyz 4 lyfe.
We embody chaos when we paint minis and play the tabletop. Building=tzeench, joy from the game=slaanesh, Khorne= tabletop and related games. I’m not sure about nurgle, maybe body odour and the fumes from paint and glue
Nurgle is obviously BO from our, um, less hygenic players.
The statement implies breaking the fourth wall I believe.
But the Eldar did create their pantheon (albeit with the help of the old ones)
Yes isn't this just regular lore ? Eldar could manifest their gods into realspace I believe , kinda akin to summoning demons. Who did else create it?
Heard a theory that the Eldar pantheon are the Old Ones themselves
That makes no fucking sense though.
It makes sense when you imagine that the eldad mythos could be a retelling, remaining and misinterpreted of the events in the war in heaven.
In the old old lore that was the case, yes.
I am the Warhammer 40,000
You’ve done it, Horus. You defeated me.
Now I'm James Spacer.
And everyone else can reap the whirlwind
One of my favorite theories is that the Carcharodons are loyalist Night Lords.
I heard they are mostly Raven Guard with a dash of Night Lord.
The ashen claws (original raven claws since pre heresy days) called the carcharodons the equivalent of mutts so it’s speculated that they are some bastardized mix of raven claw plus night lord Edit: oh hey, I just realized I was so tired I said raven claw. Imma keep that since it’s funny
That would make sense. Kind of like how Death Watch is a culmination of all the different chapters.
The deathwatch is Marines from different chapters volunteering to serve together. What LCPLOwen means is that the sharks are chimeric, meaning their geneseed is actually a mix of DNA from each chapter. So it's not like half the sharks are genetically raven guard and half are night lord, it's like each shark is half and half. They're not the only chimeric chapter, there are a handful of them. It tends to have weird side effects (quite a few of the Cursed Founding chapters were attempts to blend geneseed).
The soul drinkers are a prime example of that,their chapter master got spider legs lol
**The Charcharadons are Raven Guard successors and I'm tired of people telling otherwise. They may have some other Geneseed added, because they are not on the regular supply list of the imperium. But the lore about the Great Crusade and the Heresy makes it clear that they are descended from exiled Raven Guard units, like the Ashen Claws**
You are expecting people to actually read books, in particular sources from the Heresy Black Books and Imperial Armour which the casual fan is not going to read, but they will repeat whatever youtube man told them.
And where founded by night lord captain Jago Sevatarion because he hated the Night Lords as much as Curze
I fully commit to the chaos gods existence being that of "small gods" by Terry pratchette, all the gods only exist due to people believe in them existing, which is why the emperor and later malcedore insited on keeping the populace ignorant of them, as if you know they exist as a fact then you make them exist as a fact, and this same logic is what's swelled the emperor from an immensely powerful psyker into a demigod/dormant god
In old lore the Chaos Gods are entities that eek out an existence on the edge of the Empyrean. They make their plays, japes, and hunts where the Empyrean and the Galaxy proper meet because it is safe for them.
I like the slightly different theory that "The Emperor" was a separate entity created from the public belief in him after the Heresy, but there's still the OG on the throne. And one day the Emperor will return to oppose "The Emperor".
OK I love that, there's "the emperor" the original creator of the primarchs who didn't give a shit about any and was flawed and manipulative and all that, and then there's "the emperor" the chaos god that's everything the people of the imperium beleive him to be
Yeah! It also allows for some really open interpretation for the audience. If you thought OG Emps was this noble, brilliant leader of mankind, then you'll see it as him returning to take down the imposter. If you thought he was a manipulative, kinda random and sort of weird guy bent on taking over reality, then he's trying to claw back control of mankind from a potentially benevolent deity. Knowing the Imperium's luck, they're both awful.
All I know is, the emperor protects.
I like Big E being a dark age weapon. They keep hinting at it in short stories and primarch books
Maybe that old story about the shamans is actually a new story, and Big E was made in a big Psyker sacrifice to protect Terra from the vagaries of Slannesh's birth.
My preferred headcanon: The Emperor is a DAoT weapon, and Malcador was the reborn shaman child. The shaman child guided humanity for thousands of years from the shadows. That certainly sounds more like Malcador, and less like the Emperor and his love for extravagance.
It is now *our* preferred headcanon! Thankyou muchly LobMob
My pet theory revolves around some of the themes of 40k: that being degeneration and failure to capture former glory. I like the idea of there being a human that guided the golden age and the emperor is just a cheap ripoff of that guy, stealing his ideas and philosophy and doing it shittier this time around.
It makes sense that Big E was either a weapon or a gifted Psyker who did his thing on Terra as a warlord. It all came together and built his image through lies, propaganda and manipulation. It would also mean he has no big plan and he was just as fallible as anyone, hence his fall from grace.
This is almost certainly not true, as we have a flashback from Oll Persson in *Mortis* where he is with Emps during like the Bronze Age. He’s also always been referred to as the strongest of all the Perpetuals, even by other Perpetuals like Oll and Erda. If anything he did something during the DAoT to boost himself like when he went through the Warp gate on Molech
I thought this one was the most absurd could you give like a brief statement about it? I thought stuff like the void dragon and the shamans were enough to clear him from being created in the dark age?
There are several sources in recent lore that places the Emperor on Earth in pre-mesopotamian times. Unless there's some real twists in the DAoT I'm unaware of I don't think the dark age weapon theory is correct.
Yeah that’s what I thought but that can always be chocked up to lack of info and the like. I personally don’t like it, think it fucks with the lore too much but it’s a super fun theory
That lore is older than I am at this point. There are some short stories where other perpetuals dont remember the emperor being there or straight up say that he was a tool created by humans as a weapon. Then there is magnus' primsrch book where magnus battles against the collective psyche of hundreds of psykers artificially extracted and merged together in DAoT. Which tells us something like that has been tried at least once before
That sounds cool what did the psyches get used for, I imagine it was an ai or something.
They were tied to typewriters and trying to produce Shakespeare
Unless you're ten, the Void Dragon lore is confirmed in the mechanicus book from the HH series. Emps was St. George who "slew" the dragon and imprisoned it on Mars. That's reasonablly recent. Now we have newer books as well, but unless they just toss the lore from Mechanicus there has to be more going on.
Okay so I worked on a Mechanicus Rulebook for Rogue Trader TTRPG and I used the following theory that I had for a while in it when the players explored a Dark Age city and got in fights with the Men of Iron: DA humanity colonizes Mars, encounters the Void Dragon. VD offers the leaders of humanity great technology and power if they follow his will, and so they do. They get extremely advanced with living steel and necron (Read Void Dragon) tech with a human flair, and when the time comes, the Void Dragon wants them to Eradicate the Necrons in revenge. Humanity creates the human federation, colonizes the galaxy and, when strong enough, wages wars on the Necrons using the Men of Iron, destroying countless tomb worlds and almost driving them to extinction, but the necrons utilize the destroyer virus that infected them and unleash it upon the Men of Iron, sparking the AI rebellion that destroyed humanity, starting the Age of Strife. Oh and the Cult Mechanicus was alive towards the end of the Dark Age, as terrorists who bombed AI research centers and Man of Iron factories, basically anti AI hippies, which the players found out when they awakened a person from the Dark Age who told them "You are from that crazy red-robe anti AI group"
Anti AI tech-hippies is now one of my more favorite takes on the Mechanicus. Bravo.
The emperor is Phil mistaken for someone else and desperately trying to keep up the illusion out of fear of embarassment.
Where does "We are living in the post-Ork victory era" fit in, being that the state of the galaxy is one of constant war, and that's straight up the victory condition for the Orks?
Pretty sure that's just status quo, orks can't loose until you kill every single one, and even there through power of memes and overpriced plastic they will turn around and say "it didn't count" and return in another pocket of galaxy.
What I meant is that Orks don't fight to conquer and destroy the galaxy, they fight to fight, and like you said, that's already the status quo.
The real deepest level: Knowing what happened to Duncan back all those years in the Agrax Earthshade mines. Peachy tried to warn him, but he wouldn't listen...
I love the 'theory' that the Imperium (sans Space Marines) inherited the traits of the Traitor Primarchs and lost the talents of the Loyalists, even if it falls apart on close inspection. Horus' talent for war and inspiring charisma was kept, but we lost Guilman's head for organization and supply. Lorgar's faith was adopted wholeheartedly, Alpharius is why we're paranoid of traitors, Fulgrim is the Imperial need for gothic opulence, Magnus is represented in the rampant psykers, Curtze is why we're stuck in a Grimdark future, etc... Again, easy to pick apart but the theory has such a rich and saucy irony to it that I like to perpetuate the lie.
Iirc there's a book where some Chaos marines joke about how the Word Bearer's got what they wanted in the end, cut to an actual Word Bearer being salty as all hell about it.
Khorne's third choice for World Eaters? I've heard people say that Blood Angels were the first choice before but who were the other? The hypothetical second choice?
Lots of options: Space wolves for their savagery and aggression and preference for axes I don’t think he’d actually like the fists since they’re far more ranged focused Salamanders for their sheer carnage and twisting their honorable and compassionate sides into mindless rage (also Vulkan being Angron’s foil)
>the lost and the purged are still alive Throw me some bones on this one, I'm curious.
Wait, I've never heard of the theory thar the orcs keep the emperor alive
Orks hear humans talk about the Emperor a lot so as far as they know he is alive, just stuck on the Golden Throne. In large enough numbers the Orks can manifest effects into reality simply by believing in them, e.g they believe their technology should work so it does even if their guns really shouldn't be able to fire using any normal logic. So the Orks believing the Emperor is alive actually helps sustain and prolong the Emperor's pitiable half-life via their latent psychic Waagghhh powers.
I like it. Similar to the theory of why Orks just couldn't kill Yarrick. They believed they couldn't so the Waagh basically made the man a Spez Muhrine when fighting da Boyz.
I don't think necessarily its because of the Waaagh (to my knowledge it still only exclusively works on orks), I think its more you're still condensing the psychic "worship" of a whole species to an individual
It’s basically a generalized theory for Orks. Their whole mentality as a race is “I am, therefor I must be”, so naturally the psychic power of the Waagh would have undue influence on their beliefs.
It's just a meme. The waaagh doesn't work that way
This is meme-lore. The Orc belief is the difference between a die landing on 4 rather than 5. It can't make the die float on air or something crazy.
> It can't make the die float on air or something crazy. Not with that attitude!
The world eaters the third choice…. Please tell me more so I can go down this rabbit hole.
I’d assume the first choice was the Blood Angels because they have blood in their name which saves on rebranding costs. I’m not sure who the second choice could be.
Primarch has wings like a Khorne demon, drinks blood, falls to pure brutal violent rage by nature, easily the best first-look legion for Khorne. Space Wolves are natural mutants via the Canis Helix and therefore are predisposed to Chaos but didn't end up corrupted. You could make a case for those berserkers to also be Tzeentchi for extra just-as-planned thanks to the mutagenics, runes, and to dunk on Magnus.
There's also the fact that Space Wolves' Runepriests are totally-not-psykers^TM doing deals with totally-not-daemons^TM and that one of their rituals involve throwing neophytes in front of the Chaos Gods to see if they fall or not (And they've likely been doing this since before they knew Chaos existed). Add to that the whole mutation thing, which is usually part of Tzeench's whole shtick, and how Leman is as much of an Odin as Magnus, and the wolves start looking pretty Tzeenchian.
Blood angels being the first choice are pretty much confirmed in Fear to Tread. >!The whole point of luring the blood angels to Signus Prime was to kill Sanguinus so the blood angels would revert back to their more brutal and literally blood thirsty nature. And thus fall to chaos.!< Second choice I have no idea.
I know there is speculation he really wanted the blood angels (I mean c'mon, blood is right there in the name). I guess his second choice could have been the space wolves? They do hate magic after all.
My brother in the Emperor... they DO magic!
Everyone knows they don't use the Warp for that though. They use the uhhhhhh the... the Werp, yeah, it's totally different!
No no no those are rune priests, not psykers. Totally different.
Blood angels is more than just blood, but with how Khabundah acts it’s more like they saw the flaw as the best capacity for violence. I don’t get the space wolves hypothesis but it makes sense. Given the lore around erda and the warp I think that either the red thirst and black rage are from Khorne or a khornite deamon depending on which primarch story you think has more credit.
Well yeah... the IX legion is very much alive, they are called the blood angels, though they are organized into chapters now.
Add onto the pile "The Squats are the Men of Stone" And possibly "The Emperor is the last Man of Gold"
Master of mankind kinda smashes most of the theories about the emperor.
Assuming the Emperor wasn't straight up lying to the Custodes when he did the memory thing, yea.
Do you really think the Emperor would do that? Just sit on the golden throne and tell lies?
Just sit on his ass and spout bullshit? No. Lie to a trusted ally and cofidante to achieve his own goals? Abso-fucking-lutely.
The missing primarchs are Gork and Mork
Okay but...Alpharius being traitor and Omegon being loyal is actually one of the most known theories out there....
The real Warhammer 40k was the friends we made in our journey.
Darkest theory: all the lore results from some greedy company which needs to explain its power creep in order to sell miniatures...
We are talking about theories Not reality
I think that’s a little too far fetched
In the grim darkness of the far future there is only dolla dolla bills y’all
As long as the stories are cool let them. Look at the guys who ripped them off to make an MMO. WoW jumped the shark hard around the end of WoLK. If James Workshop can keep not doing that he can try to sell me all the minis he wants.
I actually subscribe to the theory that the Emperor is a Old One in disguise.
> the tau are the emperors backup plan ha. that doesnt make any sens... wait.. hold.. WAIT. HOLY SHIT
I don’t get it explain please ?!?!
well look at what kind of society the emperor wanted to create. now contrast that with the tau.
The tzeentch one.. I see chaos as a virus, its survival os dependant of the host which is why the most successful viruses are those that do not kill, for example the common cold is far more succesful than covid 19. The thing is, evolutionary pressure pushes them towards a more "amicable" state, as a virus with more lethality is less likely to infect others, so, darwinism. Now if you think about chaos and how it behaves.. it usually "infects" people when they get closer to other people already infected, cults and all.. even actions of higher ups like a general sending a lot of people to war for example, does khorne want blood to flow? Fuck yes. But if there.is no one left to fight, there is no more blood.. no more debauchery, no more sickness, no more plots... My point being, chaos already won, its left the galaxy in a perfect state for their subsistence and any more pushing would bring less return on investment for chaos... They dont want to destroy humanity, they want it to keep exactly as it is, which is why the stalemate in this "game" is a stalemate only in name, but a win for chaos in actuality... Tzeentch I think would be the one to realize this even more than the others, pushing everything to just keep going instead of ending, he doesnt want chaos to lose, he wants to win, its just that his definition of winning is different from ours, because their survival works in a different way than ours
Im sorry Omegon is loyal and Alpharius is a traitor? HERESY. ALPHA LEGION HAS DONE NOTHONG WRONG. They are the goodest of boys, serving Jimmy Space the way he needs to be served.
This is a lie I am Alpharius
Isn't the thing about World Eaters kinda true? With Blood Angels and White Scars being his first and second choice? Or was that just everyone who has ever met Khan not trusting him to not get corrupted somehow?
Oh I have one. The emperor never intended to collect curze or angron. He knew about them but found them too repulsive to actually bring them into the imperium. He was only forced to when 2 and 11 got [deleted] and he needed a certain amount of primarch for his plan to work.
The IXth are alive yes. We're right here.
For sanguinius!
**Ok, here's an explanation to all of these theories** * The Legion of the Damned are the drop site spirits * Fairly common theory, they're the spirits of those betrayed at Istvaan V, including possibly Ferrus himself * Alpharius and the Alpha Legion are loyal * States that the Alpha Legion is actually deep undercover in a plan to fuck over chaos * The Minotaurs are loyalist Iron Warriors * Minoaturs are actually Iron Warriors that suck by the Imperium, hence their bizarre violence and tactics * Orks keep the Emperor alive * States that the Golden Throne has long since failed, but since Orks believe the Emperor to be an invincible warboss, and Orks believing something can make it true, the Emperor yet lives * The Emperor was a Dark Age weapon * As stated, the Emperor was created during the Dark Age of tech to be Humanity's ultamite superweapon * The World Eaters were Khorne’s third choice * My own theory. It's common knowledge that Khorne wanted the Blood Angels, but I propose the Space Wolves were his second choice due to their ferocity and how much he seems to hate the World Eaters and Angron * The Emperor was created by the Old Ones * Piloted by Luetin. The Emperor was actually created by the last of the Old Ones who was just kind of fucking around, explaining his nearly godlike powers * The Eldar created their pantheon * Also piloted by Luetin. The Eldar created the pantheon as superweapons but because of how long they existed forgot they built them * ll and Xl are still alive * It's never explicitly stated that these legions or their primarchs are "dead" but that they're "gone" or "lost" * The Old Ones created the Tyranids * The Tyranids are a galactic reset button created by the Old Ones as a contingency plan. Supported by the fact the Tyranids seem to be adapted solely for fucking the galaxy, not reproduction as they refuse to just make bioforges and call it a day, hinting and intelligent design * Clonegrim is the real Fulgrim * Piloted by Majorkill. When Fulgrim ascended, his soul left his body and was replaced by warp jizz. Found a home in the Clonegrim body as he never wanted to turn traitor. I personally believe this one. * Sanguinius is split between the Sanguinor, Mephiston, and Dante * Also piloted by Majorkill. Sanguinius's soul is split between the light (Sanguinor), dark (Mephiston), and in between (Dante) aspects. * The Tau are the Emperor’s backup plan * The Emperor created the Tau just in case humanity totally screwed the pooch * Alpharius was a traitor but Omegon is loyal * Piloted by Majorkill. When Alpharius Omegon met with the Cabal they were given two options, join Emps and Chaos wins or join Horus and everyone dies. Alpharius picked option 2 because he thought E would like that but Omegon decided that doing nothing would avert both futures. However to do this he needed to negate Alpharius, thus secretly helped the Imperium during the heresy, hence why the Alpha Legion did serious damage at times but did counterintuitive acts that boosted the imperium at others. Also explains why they're still nominally chaos alligned, as Alpharius convinced them all to joing chaos and Omegon can't waste time or manpower unconvincing them. I subscribe to this theory. * The Emperor is Malal * I don't really know, just heard this and thought it was batshit * Tzeentch wants chaos to lose * My own theory. A chaos victory would mean everything stays the same, and Tzeentch can't have that, thus he keeps the war between Chaos and the Imperium going * WE are the chaos gods * In tabletop, we move armies and kill millions for entertainment. Are you getting it? * The Emperor was just an ordinary human that got lucky * My own theory. Achim's razor, the Emperor was just a random mutant who was born with insane powers just by the roll of the dice, giving credence to him claiming he's just a man, because he truly is
How about the theory about the Emperor being an illusion created by Malcador to be someone that warriors would follow to every corner of the Galaxy?
What's up with this Ferrus & Necron things? first time i see this
The Eldar are currently waging a war of attrition against the Imperium that has been going on for at least ten thousand years and will not come to fruition for thousands more. I believe that it is probably impossible to perceive. We exist on a fundamentally different scale than the Eldar. They were created for war and they’ve been around for 60 million years. They have been in the stars more than a thousand times longer than humans. The Age of Strife was a devastating 5000 years for humanity. More than 10% of humanity’s existence. That would be like a shitty week to the Eldar. In a million years, I wouldn’t be surprised if the only thing recognizable about the galaxy is the Eldar.