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While this may come as a silly topic, how is it that negative energy, anger, hatred, lust can manifest a god but positive energy cannot? I understand 40k is Grimdark & giving humanity any sort of hope is going against the tide, but what about the golden age when humanity & technology prospered. Surely feelings of positive belief & hope must have been at its peak during that time. While the Emperor is a god of sorts, how is it that no other supreme beings of order exist to combat the Chaos gods?

I think that when humanity is suffering we feel extremely sorry for ourselves, ie anger, hatred, etc. And when we prosper we take it for granted and no such extreme emotions are shown!

The Warp gods are not like your DnD/Greek pantheon per se.

They are vortices of the Warp (not literal, but that is one way of understanding it), caused by being shaped by the thoughts and feelings of sentient beings. The more 'violent' thoughts ripple it more.

The 'big four' are more of the big major concepts and ripples; other beings (the Emperor included) are not excluded from being part of them, but the majority of their form is formed by the majority of the thoughts and feelings of the population of the galaxy.

However, it is the warp that grants life; something that can't ripple the warp is not truly alive to begin with, and it may be the ripples cause a feedback that allow sentient beings to be born.

Chaos is life and death, a never ending cycle.

 Daba wrote:
The Warp gods are not like your DnD/Greek pantheon per se.

They are vortices of the Warp (not literal, but that is one way of understanding it), caused by being shaped by the thoughts and feelings of sentient beings. The more 'violent' thoughts ripple it more.

The 'big four' are more of the big major concepts and ripples; other beings (the Emperor included) are not excluded from being part of them, but the majority of their form is formed by the majority of the thoughts and feelings of the population of the galaxy.

However, it is the warp that grants life; something that can't ripple the warp is not truly alive to begin with, and it may be the ripples cause a feedback that allow sentient beings to be born.

Chaos is life and death, a never ending cycle.

Hmm, so in the event that the majority of life in the galaxy had a positive perspective & everyone was filled with positive emotion would that transform the Chaos gods to good? Where do Gork & Mork fall into the grand scheme of Gods?

The negative so far outweighs the positive that it creates a vicious cycle, with Chaos ensuring more bad things(TM) and largely only bad thigs happen. The fact that the major Xenos are mostly donkey-caves doesn't help, especially since the Imperiumis in turn, a bunch of donkey-caves.

Thus Tzeentch, god of donkey-caves, is the most generally successful. Because out of this huge pile of donkey-caves, none are more dickish than the great blue Jerk.

I've always considered that the Emperor (manifested as a warp entity with his worship and quadrillion psyker sacrifices) is the god of order. Sanguinor Exemplar of the Host, could be considered an example of a daemon of the Emperor the 'god of order'.

There are no gods of order because this is the grimdark future. The four chaos gods also represent concepts we see as virtue (for example Khorne also represents the noble and heroic soldier), they just inevitably corrupt their followers to the evil aspects. So really, no matter what you do your actions will always serve chaos.

Why is it that Hope, Friendship etc would manifest itself as Gods of Order.

If anything, the human will to power would manifest itself as a god of "Order"

Also, 40k doesn't use a 'chaos / order' alignment as such. Chaos just is.

Chaos also causes a feedback loop, so as mortals influence Chaos, Chaos leaks backs and influences mortals and so on.

The endgame of Chaos is where it entirely overlaps with real-space, which destroys all 'life', thus calming Chaos to nothing.

There would still be 'stuff', and eventually life may reform and start the cycle anew, starting the great game, to play it again, again and again.

I don't know if the fluff is still considered canon but once upon a time Nurgle was stagnation/decay and love, Tzeentch change and hope, Khorne death and honour and Slaanesh pleasure and.. something?

 jonolikespie wrote:
I don't know if the fluff is still considered canon but once upon a time Nurgle was stagnation/decay and love, Tzeentch change and hope, Khorne death and honour and Slaanesh pleasure and.. something?

Tzeentch: Hope, Ambition, Change, Mutation
Khorne: Hate, Rage, Honor, War
Slaanesh: Lust, Desire, Excess, Art
Nurgle: Despair, Acceptance, Disease, Decay.

It speaks volumes about the setting that the god of hope and effectively lord of everything...is also morally reprehensible and an outright troll.

God, the Chaos lore is the best part of 40k outside of Orks. I'd be happy if the setting was nothing but IoM, Orks, and Chaos warring eternally over a battlefield the size of the galaxy

Really wanna go pick up some Chaos Daemons now.

Chaos gods are actually just the incarnations of the human/xenos emotions. If the Galaxy wasn't such a terrible place, and everyone's minds wasn't polluted with dark emotions, they could be the gods of Order and Good, like Khorne being the god of Honor, Nurgle - compassion and so on. The only reason why the Gods are evil is because the Mankind in it's majority is evil too.

 Dakkamite wrote:
God, the Chaos lore is the best part of 40k outside of Orks. I'd be happy if the setting was nothing but IoM, Orks, and Chaos warring eternally over a battlefield the size of the galaxy

Really wanna go pick up some Chaos Daemons now.

Eldar are important in the concept of the 'past' empire and how something can fall to Chaos - they show what Chaos can do to you (and in the setting was the old power that waned for the new power of the Imperium).

Basically is why I always regarded as Imperium, Orks, Eldar and Chaos as the 'cornerstone' of the game and why those are the ones that get represented the most and first in outside media.

The Chaos gods do feed on the positives too, slaanesh on pleasure being the prime example but hope is associated with tzeentch

I personally think Gork N Mork are the Gods of Order. One day the Orks WILL consume everything and be the only ones left. Then, in their simple nature, live forever in the glory of krumpin 'eads. Sounds like a simple way to sort things out. Think about it, youll realize it makes sense

Like it has been said, the Chaos gods also incorporate positive aspects of the emotional spectrum. It could well be a deliberate by the designers about human nature that they are outweighed by the bad stuff. Humans work together and act as reasonable, moral beings quite a lot, but ask yourself, is it out of an inherent noble mind or the justifiable fear of society and their own life going to hell if they behave like selfish gakheads all the time?
Edit: duplicated post

Warhammer Fantasy has gods of order. Most of them are just as dick-ish as their Chaos counterparts. Though they're generally more impotent, too, which is why they rarely get brought up. One god of order wants like, no change whatsoever, including himself, so he never does anything because that would be change.

In WH40k, Nurgle is actually the god of desiring order. His plaguebearers are described as having the task of "bringing order to a naturally chaotic horde" when it comes to managing Nurgle's armies. Stagnation, the cycle of life and death, and inevitable decay are all signs of order, too. However, in the end, as shown by that plague bearer quote, Nurgle desires order but is naturally chaotic.

Tzeentch, Nurgle's opposite, has been described as "the purest form of Chaos", etc. So basically Tzeentch is a desire for chaos while Nurgle is a desire for order, although both are inherently chaotic in their nature since that's how the warp rolls.

The Warp is a reflection of disorder, and that's where Gods reside. So there's your answer.

The warp IS chaos, it would be anathema for gods of order as much as realspace is for gods of chaos. As such if there are gods of order they must exist in realspace, and the only things that currently exist only in realspace that are considered gods are the shattered remains of the C'tan. There you go, there were gods of order, the Necrons* broke them.

*and by Necrons I mean the Greater Daemon of Tzeentch known as Matthew Ward.

The negative so far outweighs the positive that it creates a vicious cycle, with Chaos ensuring more bad things(TM) and largely only bad thigs happen. The fact that the major Xenos are mostly donkey-caves doesn't help, especially since the Imperiumis in turn, a bunch of donkey-caves.

Thus Tzeentch, god of donkey-caves, is the most generally successful. Because out of this huge pile of donkey-caves, none are more dickish than the great blue Jerk.

This absolutely MUST be the introduction to Tzeentch in the next Demons book! lol

... because if they did, it would be *real* obvious they were ripping off Michael Moorcock.

They have Gods of Order in Warhammer Fantasy, but they are described as being strange and esoteric, and don't attract many followers. It is probable that, if one were to draw a time-line from Warhammer Fantasy to 40K, at some point during that time, the worship of the Gods of Law was subsumed into most of the old faiths of Humanity, which were destroyed or abandoned during the time between M3 and M30.

So, simply put, the Gods of Law, the Elder Gods (not Eldar), always noted as being "distant and uncaring", simply drifted away from the worship of mortals, and just vanished into the background of the Warp before it got all messed up in the current era.

 PrinceRaven wrote:
The warp IS chaos.

The Warp it the realm of emotions. It became polluted by chaos due to the War in Heaven, and later due to the human race, who's minds is full of chaotic emotions, spreading through the Galaxy, becoming one of the dominant species, second only to Orks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Psienesis wrote:
if one were to draw a time-line from Warhammer Fantasy to 40K

WAT? The only way WFB could be in one timeline with W40K is that FB is the distant future of 40k.

Not sure how you'd reach that conclusion but... ok.

 Psienesis wrote:
Not sure how you'd reach that conclusion but... ok.

All major fraction of 40k except tau slowly lose their tcehnologies. Some 10-20 thousand years in the future people would fight with swords and bows. Assuming Tyranids/Necrons/Chaos/Orks wouldn achieve ultimate victory and wipe everyone else by that time.

It works just as well as I posted it. In Warhammer Fantasy, the races simply haven't yet developed the technology.

What makes you think the Chaos Powers are just negative emotions?

Khorne is not just wrath and violence...he also embodies bravery. Tzeentch is deceit and ambition along with hope. Nurgle is rot and decay along with the will to live. Slaanesh is desire and hedonism along with love.

Basically, they reflect ALL emotions taken to excess.

Most depictions of Chaos and Order - for instance in Moorcocks books or Babylon 5 with the Shadows and Vorlons show that neither is good or evil but that victory by either is bad as they go to extremes - indeed it could be argued that the Warhammer universe is one where Chaos has won the battle/debate/game between them...........

Interestingly as I understand it, usually Chaos prefers to just play the game and Law to win.

 Daba wrote:

 Dakkamite wrote:
God, the Chaos lore is the best part of 40k outside of Orks. I'd be happy if the setting was nothing but IoM, Orks, and Chaos warring eternally over a battlefield the size of the galaxy

Really wanna go pick up some Chaos Daemons now.

Eldar are important in the concept of the 'past' empire and how something can fall to Chaos - they show what Chaos can do to you (and in the setting was the old power that waned for the new power of the Imperium).

Basically is why I always regarded as Imperium, Orks, Eldar and Chaos as the 'cornerstone' of the game and why those are the ones that get represented the most and first in outside media.

Oh don't get me wrong, got nothing against Eldar and they're next in line after the ones I mentioned (ditto on the whole cornerstone thing). They just don't seem as essential to the setting. I think of them as #4 in the Big Four.

 Psienesis wrote:
It works just as well as I posted it. In Warhammer Fantasy, the races simply haven't yet developed the technology.

It doesn't really work as 40k is supposed to be set in our future, while Fantasy is a whole different world.