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Or can they only manifest in the physical world under their daemonic form?

That’s a good question, and I’m not sure we’ve a particularly straight answer.

So I’m going to partially cop out, and suggest it may depend.

I can see being able to alter its form as something appealing to a Tzeentchian Daemon Prince. But perhaps more as a glamour than a “squelchy crackly bone and flesh reforming” approach.

What I am confident in is that it’s not a common ability. Once you’ve achieved the grand apotheosis? That’s it, that’s your form for the rest of infinity. So if a reward you earned on the path allowed you to shift your form? That likely carries over.

Then we get the more esoteric issue, whereby Daemons take on the form expected by an observer, as part of the wibblywobbly warp influenced the observer and the obverser influences the warp issue.

A bit of light googling suggests that Fulgrim, The Changeling and some slaaneshi daemon in Shadowsword were able to do some major size shenanigans.

Agree with the “it depends” call though

Being able to change size isn’t the same as going from Obviously Daemonic Horror to Jackie Daytona, Regular Human Bartender

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Being able to change size isn’t the same as going from Obviously Daemonic Horror to Jackie Daytona, Regular Human Bartender

Correct. I'm not suggesting they'd be able to walk incognito among Imperial society under their human form. A daemon primarch would only momentarily shed the "daemon" part, not the "primarch" part, in addition to having a psychic aura that makes even non-psykers' arm hairs stand on end from two city blocks away. Still, a human form may be useful or desirable for, say, commanding your fleet from the bridge of your flagship. Or simply being at eye level with your Heresy-era veterans, for old times' sake, as you congratulate them for a battle well fought. That sort of thing. Being a 10-meter-tall daemon all the time sounds like being a bull in a china shop.

Under his daemon form, Fulgrim would have a difficult time indulging in some of the pleasures commonly associated with Slaanesh. :O

.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Being able to change size isn’t the same as going from Obviously Daemonic Horror to Jackie Daytona, Regular Human Bartender

Nice.

-Guardsman- wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Being able to change size isn’t the same as going from Obviously Daemonic Horror to Jackie Daytona, Regular Human Bartender

Correct. I'm not suggesting they'd be able to walk incognito among Imperial society under their human form. A daemon primarch would only momentarily shed the "daemon" part, not the "primarch" part, in addition to having a psychic aura that makes even non-psykers' arm hairs stand on end from two city blocks away. Still, a human form may be useful or desirable for, say, commanding your fleet from the bridge of your flagship. Or simply being at eye level with your Heresy-era veterans, for old times' sake, as you congratulate them for a battle well fought. That sort of thing. Being a 10-meter-tall daemon all the time sounds like being a bull in a china shop.

Under his daemon form, Fulgrim would have a difficult time indulging in some of the pleasures commonly associated with Slaanesh. :O

.

I dunno.

If you’re Chaos Gifts include shapeshifting, I see no reason to place a firm limit on such powers.

But. I could raise a potentially interesting argument that a Daemon Primarch, having never been truly human? They may lack subtlety, and so there may be dead giveaways for those vigilant enough.

Think that film that that meme of Steve Buscemi and “hi, fellow kids”. You’ve got the size and clothes kinda more or less right, but still stick out like a soft thumb due to lack of genuine association with the thing you’re trying to impersonate.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Being able to change size isn’t the same as going from Obviously Daemonic Horror to Jackie Daytona, Regular Human Bartender

I didn’t realise we were playing “let’s split unecessary hairs”. I thought we had lost the pieces for that one.

Allegedly in the battle of the Fang Magnus changed from a child into his usual form.

I haven’t read the book so can’t confirm. VAran was described as having retractable claws or some kind of flesh shifting hands, so a range of examples how warp-touched individuals can morph themselves around, depending as you say on the specific powers they receive. Emeli forms into a greater daemon form by transmuting the corpses of the acolytes doing the summoning. It’s warp magic, from a fictional background. Impossible to prove that it can’t be done, and why would anyone bother trying?

Magnus is a cheat though. He's not a regular Daemon Prince, he's a Daemon Primarch and the most physically and sorcerary(?) gifted of any of the Primarchs both pre and post ascension.

Also, the Changeling isn't a Daemon Prince so wasn't a mortal who ascended. It's a "pure" Daemon made from pure warpstuff and is a chosen favourite of the Changer of Ways. So like also a cheat.

I think the bigger problem would be that wanting to be human in form, rather than a daemon, could be construed as ingratitude by the Chaos gods and then you'd be in big trouble.

But if you can play it off as a tactic to trick/seduce/sneeze on people you might be okay.

N’Kari is apparently described as changing from a bloated serpent thing into a lithe warrior form for combat in chapter 12 of Slaves to Darkness. Again nothing conclusive, but a lot of indicators that it might as well be a thing they could do if they wanted to.

WFB not 40k, but in the short story ‘The Seventh Boon’ features a daemon prince who spends all his appearances disguised as a regular human man. It’s Sammael who’s a fairly significant Slaaneshi daemon prince as well (the one Dechala was sold to pre Sundering).
He’s explicitly shapeshifting though.

I think ‘it depends’ is almost certainly right. Some daemon princes will have the ability (and temperament) to shapeshift into human form and others won’t. Depends on what they have been gifted and how much they’re into subterfuge.
On that note I’d not be surprised if it’s also more common for Tzeentch or Slaanesh who tend to be more into that sort of thing.

There's some weird inconsistency about this... Even when apothiosis has started, there are stories of it being reversible if caught in time - In the Shadowbreaker novel, Karras starts to turn, mutates even and then stops and forces it back, reversing the mutations which off the top of my head included some bone breaking that just reverts - ala the werewolf transformations in van helsing.

Much like Transformers, creatures of the 40k universe are really good at changing shape... or folding up their giant grotesque bodies into a smaller silhouette.

It's a common horror trope, where you see the former ally unfold into a true horror.

As long as it supports the narrative of the story, I believe that everything can truly occur in fiction.

That’s an underrated realisation.

40K, being a melting pot of tropes, influences and folklore means we can grant any given Daemon Prince pretty much any supernatural power we choose. So we shouldn’t feel limited by existing examples.

The most common trope in the modern day is Demon Prince = Massive Stature. But it ain’t necessarily so. It’s a handy cipher for their body being swollen with power, but not a requisite (outside of the game. WYSIWYG demands it). So just as not every Daemon Prince can fly, not every Daemon Prince is going to be a physical giant.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The most common trope in the modern day is Demon Prince = Massive Stature. But it ain’t necessarily so. It’s a handy cipher for their body being swollen with power, but not a requisite (outside of the game. WYSIWYG demands it). So just as not every Daemon Prince can fly, not every Daemon Prince is going to be a physical giant.

If we go by the old 3.5 codex then Daemonic Stature automatically makes you a Daemon Prince but you also qualify as one if your lord takes Chaos gifts beyond a certain point value. So you can be a Daemon Prince without being larger than a space marine (and without counting as a Monstrous Creature).

Don't forget what we see on the tabletop is supposed to be massive major battle situations. For armies like Chaos or Genestealer Cults this is where all pretence of hiding is thrown off. They aren't hiding, being sneaky or such they are 100% full blown out there and in the open.

Furthermore its a situation where any demon would want to assume its full form to bring as much power to itself as possible on the battlefield. Both to deal out damage and to survive.



Indeed its my impression that the more you dip into the lore the more you realise that Chaos is almost limitless in what it "can potentially maybe do". The idea of a Demon Prince being able to manifest itself in the mortal world as a regular person is honestly well within the potential boundaries of Chaos.
Of course being Chaos it might not be perfect, there might be issues; it might be that the demonic side is constantly fighting to break out; or it achieves it by keeping the greater part of itself in the Warp so its powers as human are more limited.

Are we talking exclusively about *actual* shape-shifting? Or do illusions/glamours count?

In The Darker Path short story, we see a Keeper of Secrets disguise herself as an eldar, and we know that mortal sorcerers are sometimes capable of some pretty impressive illusions. So I imagine a daemon prince with the right gifts could pull off something similar.

There's always a bit of haze when it comes to the line between a Slaanesh Glamour and shapeshifting. Sometimes its purely an illusion that only just maintains itself at distance; any contact and you're holding claw hands and such.

However other times it appears they are able to interact normally with the world around them.

A Keeper of Secrets is also huge, even before the model update they were still towering over regular people.

Also, do they even have a body as we understand it?

I’d argue they don’t. Oh they take on a physical form in real space, sure. But that doesn’t necessarily mean internal organs, circulatory system and that. It’s made from pure warp stuff. Just a container for the daemonic essence which, once destroyed or sufficiently destabilised, goes away returning the spirit to the warp.

Maybe shape-shifting in the classical sense is a matter of practice? The now daemonic soul making the realisation “hey, surely I now decide my size, shape and apperence”?

Why would a demon Prince want to hide their true form

mrFickle wrote:
Why would a demon Prince want to hide their true form

So they can infiltrate.

A huge part of Chaos is infiltration and corruption from within. A Demon Prince who can assume a human form can rise politically on a world; corrupt whole armed forces and vast swathes of the population without them realising. Corrupt the information going out and coming in etc....

There's a huge amount you can do in a position of power before you unveil yourself.

Yup. Which is also why Genestealer Cults are such a threat. Hybrids entirely aside, just infecting someone high up can cause a lot of trouble.

Indeed! If you're able to rise high enough you can divert resources; spread confusion and more.

Imagine sending back reports that everything is good and happy to other planets whilst at the same time cutting supplies in half to the world so that the average person is suffering under Imperial rule. Meanwhile diverting all those excess supplies to be sold for weapons which you then allow smugglers to smuggle to the population.

Meanwhile other members of the cult are corrupting and bringing those disgruntled into their fold ready to rise up against the Imperium.

They’re also something that, should the underlying cult be discovered and taken out, you then need to screen for.

Because if even a single Purestrain scuttles off up the right pipe and evades annihilation? It will, overtime, become the new Patriarch, taking over any and all remaining infected members of the society once again, giving the cult quite the leg up in recovering its fallen standing.

This is arguably more efficient than a Chaos Cult. Sure, it can do the same thing, should any survive the purge that happened to be of decent standing. But the GSC has its Supreme Leader baked solidly in, nearly avoiding (in theory*) further damage from scraps over who’s the new boss man.

*I say in theory as I’m not entirely sure we know what happens to previously infected smelly hoomans should the Patriarch snuff it. But I’ve not read many books outside of the relevant Codex.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Sod it, that’s a topic unto itself. Will go re-read my Codex first though, just in case.

Far as I'm aware Tyranid Cults should in theory have greater unity at the top end than Chaos because they are all one hive mind


HOWEVER - the lower ranks of cults could indeed fight. The Hive Mind might even make two cults fight each other so that the stronger emerges; they do it with Hive Fleets so there's no reason that two Genestealer Cults couldn't be fighting each other.


In the end a huge part of what Genestealer Cults are for is weakening the local resistance - if that means two major cults fight each other to weaken their joint position so that when the Hive Fleet arrives everything is weak and easy to conquer then that's a good thing. Don't forget in a Genestealer Cult a large number won't be under full Hivemind sway; many will be indoctrinated normally into the cult

In my head, GSCs aren't connected to the hive mind. Each individual cult has its own mini-hive-mind, but otherwise its just permanently on send to guide the gribbleys in. Genestealers are in a funky place hive mind wise anyway. Are the infiltrator organisms actually subtly different to the hive fleet shock troops?

For the Emperor is entirely based around a single GSC on Gravalax infiltrating multiple factions to foment hardcore chaos (small c). I'm not sure there is enough evidence of multiple cults on a single planet to extrapolate multi-faction GSC conflict.

 Flinty wrote:
In my head, GSCs aren't connected to the hive mind. Each individual cult has its own mini-hive-mind, but otherwise its just permanently on send to guide the gribbleys in. Genestealers are in a funky place hive mind wise anyway. Are the infiltrator organisms actually subtly different to the hive fleet shock troops?

For the Emperor is entirely based around a single GSC on Gravalax infiltrating multiple factions to foment hardcore chaos (small c). I'm not sure there is enough evidence of multiple cults on a single planet to extrapolate multi-faction GSC conflict.

We've never really had a proper understanding of how the Hive Mind works anyway. Everything we have is other races (mostly Imperial) guessing how it works.

We don't even know if the Hive Mind really is a singular intelligence as we'd understand it with a goal and drive; or if its just loads of local small hive-minds that link up and become greater and then can break down and become lesser as organisms move in and out of synapse range.

We've no idea even how much singular organisms can influence the Hive Mind.

 Overread wrote:

mrFickle wrote:
Why would a demon Prince want to hide their true form

So they can infiltrate.

A huge part of Chaos is infiltration and corruption from within. A Demon Prince who can assume a human form can rise politically on a world; corrupt whole armed forces and vast swathes of the population without them realising. Corrupt the information going out and coming in etc....

There's a huge amount you can do in a position of power before you unveil yourself.

This feels beneath a demon Prince, they are the organ grinder not the money.

Maybe a tzeentch demon Prince might get a kick out of it but it still seems a bit low key to me

Depends where your standing is among the forces of Chaos.

Even Daemon Princes can suffer colossal defeats, losing all or most of their mortal cronies. Those take time and guile to replace.

So a sneaky infiltration to start softening up a target to better lure new Goons to your side with the promise of a quick fight then sustained looting and sacrificing might be the very dab.