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I like the comparison to a computer too.

A good question would be: is there a "programmer"? An entity who is Chaos itself, with the Chaos Gods being facets of aspects of it. This would be the "Primordial Annihilator" the Cabal speaks of in the Horus Heresy novels.

 asimo77 wrote:
Well you could argue inanimate objects and things as it were can know "stuff". Does an automatic door know when to open? Does it choose to open? It senses movement in front of it and responds in kind. perhaps in a sense it's a token of a virtuous epistemic agent. Does the Chinese Room know Chinese? Is it conscious? More importantly does it need to be?

No, it has no intelligence. No, it has no free will. No, since it gives its answers without knowing what does the answers mean (debatable). No. Important for what? Just my opinion, of course.

"Could a Chinese Room be evil?" sounds really strange. Imagine someone believes that what the Room says is a good advice, follows it and dies horribly. Would the Room be evil? Not at all. For me at least is obviously out of the good/evil scale.

I'm of the opinion that consciousness is the least important part of existence when it comes to these sorts of questions. Every being could act exactly as it does with or without consciousness and there wouldn't be any discernible difference. Furthermore perhaps it's epistemic chauvinism for us to say certain things can or cannot know, or do or do not have consciousness.

Perhaps, but it would be even worse to project our concept of good/evil to something that is not human. In the setting, judging the Eldar, the Tyranid or the Orks from a human perspective would be unfair. Chaos Gods are even more alien.

What do you think about Necrons? Are they evil?

 da001 wrote:
I like the comparison to a computer too. A good question would be: is there a "programmer"? An entity who is Chaos itself, with the Chaos Gods being facets of aspects of it. This would be the "Primordial Annihilator" the Cabal speaks of in the Horus Heresy novels.

I believe the true force behind Chaos is the Human race itself. In the end, the Chaos Gods are our creations. Deep inside every human there's the primal need to tear down the shackles of law, civilization and culture and return to a state of animalistic atavism, the Ruinous Powers being at the same time cause and consequence of this.

What about Nicassars, Orks, Eldar, Saruthi and the rest? Many races have a presence in the warp.

Which brings more questions: are the gods the same for all races? We know that is not the case: Mork and Gork are the most obvious example. Is the Warp a different "place" then for every race?

If the gods were really THAT unintelligent, you wouldn't have things like Tzeentch throwing a hissy fit demanding to know how a little girl managed to get past his impossible maze. Again, you wouldn't have Slaanesh getting angry at the Masque when the Masque was trying to cheer her up. In addition to this, you wouldn't be able to have conversations with demons in general, when in fact they actually display a scary degree of intelligence if you can manage to get one to talk to you (which IS possible to do, even with Khorne demons, albeit quite difficult)

People actually DISCUSS things with daemons on rare occassions. That's not something an unintelligent nonsentient being with no free will can do.

The thing is those entities could have no sentience, intelligence, free will, etc. and act the same way without anyone being able to tell the difference. That's why I don't think any of those things should be a prerequisite for good or evil.

@ da001 I didn't mean to ask could the Chinese Room be evil but was using it to get across the point that identifying what are thinking, knowing, conscious things is no easy task. More importantly despite those properties things with those properties can produce the same consequence as things without them, I think we should look to consequence to help judge what is right and wrong.

As for projecting our sense of good and evil, I think it's just as selfish to keep those concepts just to humans, or more accurately persons. Also if you define good and evil as irreducible properties I don't think there should be any trouble applying them to other species, then we have a universal definition for them.

Finally as a die hard Necron fanboy I of course think they are always in the right , though more seriously yes I think they are evil, like pretty much everyone else in the setting.

TiamatRoar wrote:
If the gods were really THAT unintelligent, you wouldn't have things like Tzeentch throwing a hissy fit demanding to know how a little girl managed to get past his impossible maze. Again, you wouldn't have Slaanesh getting angry at the Masque when the Masque was trying to cheer her up. In addition to this, you wouldn't be able to have conversations with demons in general, when in fact they actually display a scary degree of intelligence if you can manage to get one to talk to you (which IS possible to do, even with Khorne demons, albeit quite difficult)

People actually DISCUSS things with daemons on rare occassions. That's not something an unintelligent nonsentient being with no free will can do.

Tzeentch throwing a hissy fit translates as such to humans, sure, but that is merely as I said, a translation.

As for Daemons, Daemons are not the Gods. Daemons are self-contained pockets of stability within the Realms of Chaos. They can change and think independently of their patron god or of the emotions of the galaxy itself. They have a preordained nature that's basis is in the emotions their god used to create them, but they can change, and think.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

TiamatRoar wrote:
If the gods were really THAT unintelligent, you wouldn't have things like Tzeentch throwing a hissy fit demanding to know how a little girl managed to get past his impossible maze. Again, you wouldn't have Slaanesh getting angry at the Masque when the Masque was trying to cheer her up. In addition to this, you wouldn't be able to have conversations with demons in general, when in fact they actually display a scary degree of intelligence if you can manage to get one to talk to you (which IS possible to do, even with Khorne demons, albeit quite difficult)

People actually DISCUSS things with daemons on rare occassions. That's not something an unintelligent nonsentient being with no free will can do.

Tzeentch throwing a hissy fit translates as such to humans, sure, but that is merely as I said, a translation.

As for Daemons, Daemons are not the Gods. Daemons are self-contained pockets of stability within the Realms of Chaos. They can change and think independently of their patron god or of the emotions of the galaxy itself. They have a preordained nature that's basis is in the emotions their god used to create them, but they can change, and think.

Here is something else I'd like the Imperium to consider before passing judgment on the Daemons of Chaos. Look at the Daemons Codex itself and compare it to the Chaos Space Marines codex. The first thing that probably goes unnoticed should be the artistry used on the Daemons codex. In the CSM codex, the pictures are painted as if they were drawn straight from the battlefield. I'd gather that the Space Marines codex follows this same line. That's because those are depictions of things that have been seen and recorded outright. There is documentation, veterans, survivors, shipwrights, etc. that exist which can attest to these events as they are portrayed. The pictures look real.

In the Chaos Daemons codex, this is not the case except with a few of the earlier murals. The pictures in the Legions Infernal look more like cartoons scribbled by mad men during happy time at the Inquisitorial Asylums. This is because the Warp can only be expressed in abstractions, metaphors and the like. There are no official records past the Ordo Maleus that are available to the average IoM citizenry. Where-as, while the CSM's are a well kept secret, they're not as well kept as the existence of the Daemons themselves. This is because much of the Imperium would turn to Chaos if they knew the truth that the Chaos Gods had it well within their power to bestow power beyond mortal imagination. This is why so many citizens turn to Chaos in the first place, let alone Space Marine Chapters, and this is with Chaos being a well-guarded secret and all that jazz. A secret within a riddle, wrapped up in a lie, tied together with a legend and sprinkled with a touch of fear and heresy to ensure more people stay away from the package itself.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

As for Daemons, Daemons are not the Gods. Daemons are self-contained pockets of stability within the Realms of Chaos. They can change and think independently of their patron god or of the emotions of the galaxy itself. They have a preordained nature that's basis is in the emotions their god used to create them, but they can change, and think.

Do you think Daemons are more sentient and free-willed than the gods that created them or something? I find it hard to believe there's such a difference between the two, considering that a god becomes a daemon if it loses too much power (basically showing that the only real difference between a chaos god and a chaos daemon is just a matter of scale)

(as an aside, in case anyone still doesn't believe daemons are free-willed or at least initially free-willed, Tzeentch's oldest lord of change Auros Ras Kais however-you-spell-his-name is explicitly stated that he had to have his free will bound up by Tzeentch. And Skarbrand had his "sentience" (the word used, assuming my memory isn't off) throttled out of him by Khorne)

If Daemons are free-willed, then logic would be that gods are free-willed too, considering that the gods become daemons if they lose too much power in the first place.

TiamatRoar wrote:

Do you think Daemons are more sentient and free-willed than the gods that created them or something? I find it hard to believe there's such a difference between the two, considering that a god becomes a daemon if it loses too much power (basically showing that the only real difference between a chaos god and a chaos daemon is just a matter of scale)

(as an aside, in case anyone still doesn't believe daemons are free-willed or at least initially free-willed, Tzeentch's oldest lord of change Auros Ras Kais however-you-spell-his-name is explicitly stated that he had to have his free will bound up by Tzeentch. And Skarbrand had his "sentience" (the word used, assuming my memory isn't off) throttled out of him by Khorne)

If Daemons are free-willed, then logic would be that gods are free-willed too, considering that the gods become daemons if they lose too much power in the first place.

To be honest I have no idea what you are talking about, concerning the gods becoming Daemons if they lose enough power.

I do know that a Daemon is explicitly cut off from the emotions that power and dictate the nature of the god they serve.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

TiamatRoar wrote:

Do you think Daemons are more sentient and free-willed than the gods that created them or something? I find it hard to believe there's such a difference between the two, considering that a god becomes a daemon if it loses too much power (basically showing that the only real difference between a chaos god and a chaos daemon is just a matter of scale)

(as an aside, in case anyone still doesn't believe daemons are free-willed or at least initially free-willed, Tzeentch's oldest lord of change Auros Ras Kais however-you-spell-his-name is explicitly stated that he had to have his free will bound up by Tzeentch. And Skarbrand had his "sentience" (the word used, assuming my memory isn't off) throttled out of him by Khorne)

If Daemons are free-willed, then logic would be that gods are free-willed too, considering that the gods become daemons if they lose too much power in the first place.

To be honest I have no idea what you are talking about, concerning the gods becoming Daemons if they lose enough power.

I do know that a Daemon is explicitly cut off from the emotions that power and dictate the nature of the god they serve.

I'm only kind of following this line of thought as well. I think what isn't being understood is the difference between the Chaos Gods and the Daemons they Spawn. A Daemon is created when a Chaos God expends a measure of his power to, for lack of a better word, enchant or bless a spirit (or thought-form/w.e) with it's energy. This is why mortals are so important and so much fun to corrupt, because they make great Daemons and Daemons are important to the Gods for this reason specifically; because the Chaos Gods are tied directly to the Warp, they cannot breach real space as their Daemon Minions can. However, their Daemon Minions can affect real space enough, to render it unto Warp Space and thus bring the Chaos Gods "into existence" at that place in time.

Talking about the Chaos Gods themselves losing power and "becoming Daemons," they don't become Daemons; they become consumed by greater Warp Gods that lurk. Even now there are still even greater presences in the Warp than that of Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch, and Slaanesh (respectively and combined), but lack a "sentience" enough to organize as the Big 4 do, which give them a considerable advantage. At any time they could be replaced, but the nature of their being will never change, nor does the nature of the greater gods that could consume them change either. This is the Paradox of the Warp. The Chaos Gods are enslaved to the Warp, and so they go about enslaving mortals to themselves. This is why mortals have the advantage of being "better than/stronger than" daemons. Choice is the ultimate weapon against them, something that they themselves crave and steal, but never have. The reason why Chaos will conqueror the universe without any of the Gods themselves achieving their ultimate objective.

TiamatRoar wrote:
Do you think Daemons are more sentient and free-willed than the gods that created them or something? I find it hard to believe there's such a difference between the two, considering that a god becomes a daemon if it loses too much power (basically showing that the only real difference between a chaos god and a chaos daemon is just a matter of scale) (...)
If Daemons are free-willed, then logic would be that gods are free-willed too, considering that the gods become daemons if they lose too much power in the first place.

Never heard of that. Daemons and Chaos Gods are quite different beings as far as I know. Time for a new quote:

Codex: Chaos Daemons. Page 7, Chaos Daemons entry:
"Daemons are beings of a somewhat different nature to their masters (...). A Daemon is "born" when a Chaos God expends a portion of its power to create a separate being. This power binds a collection of senses, thoughts and purposes together, creating a personality and a consciousness that can move within the Warp" "(Daemons) are not so closely bound to the Warp."

So the differences are:
1) Daemons have senses (Chaos Gods do not, page 6).
2) Daemons have thoughts and purposes (Chaos Gods lack the first, page 6; they have a single purpose: domination).
3) Daemons have personality (I think page 6 implies Chaos Gods do not, though it is arguable).
4) Daemons have consciousness (Chaos Gods have a rudimentary consciousness, page 6).
5) Daemons can move within the Warp (Chaos Gods are trapped in certain locations or, to put it better, they ARE the positions themselves, page 6).
6) Daemons are not so closely bound to the Warp (Chaos Gods cannot scape the Warp, they ARE the Warp, page 6).

TiamatRoar wrote:
If the gods were really THAT unintelligent, you wouldn't have things like Tzeentch throwing a hissy fit demanding to know how a little girl managed to get past his impossible maze. Again, you wouldn't have Slaanesh getting angry at the Masque when the Masque was trying to cheer her up. In addition to this, you wouldn't be able to have conversations with demons in general, when in fact they actually display a scary degree of intelligence if you can manage to get one to talk to you (which IS possible to do, even with Khorne demons, albeit quite difficult)

“The Realm of Chaos exists far outside imagination; an impossible abstraction made real only by metaphor and the roiling emotions of mortal mind. (…) No mundane sense can see, smell or hear it”

They are supposed to be tales, allegories, metaphors. Just like the tales about the Greek gods or, well, the tales about any gods humans have worshipped.

 asimo77 wrote:
The thing is those entities could have no sentience, intelligence, free will, etc. and act the same way without anyone being able to tell the difference. That's why I don't think any of those things should be a prerequisite for good or evil.

Which turns us back to the "definition of evil" problem I am unable to understand how words like "good" or "evil" can be applied to something so alien we don´t even know how to properly describe it. And I don´t think the word evil should be applied to a wolf feeding on a human or a cow feeding on grass.

Also, what about you while eating a chicken? You are feeding on something like a Chaos God feeds on humans.

As for projecting our sense of good and evil, I think it's just as selfish to keep those concepts just to humans, or more accurately persons. Also if you define good and evil as irreducible properties I don't think there should be any trouble applying them to other species, then we have a universal definition for them.

It is still a prejudice, a derogatory, pejorative term applied to something that is not human and, actually, feed on humans. I don´t think is selfish to keep the word to humans. It is a human concept. The Ork concept of good or evil would probably be different.

Finally as a die hard Necron fanboy I of course think they are always in the right , though more seriously yes I think they are evil, like pretty much everyone else in the setting.

Which I find senseless. They have no soul. How they could be evil?
Yet it still depends, of course, of your definition of "soul".

It's on both Lexicanum and the wiki. though neither says where it comes from so I guess it could be wrong. If someone knows where it comes from, I'd be much obliged if you could point it out.

The least of the minor gods may be so limited in their power that expending their power to create a daemon means their entire power is expended; in effect, the god becomes a daemon.

As daemons have explicitly been stated to have sentience and free will on several occasions (Skarbrand and ARK, before Khorne throttled it out of him and Tzeentch placed bindings on him, at least), if this aspect of gods to daemons is true, then gods having free will is unarguable.

TiamatRoar wrote:
As daemons have explicitly been stated to have sentience and free will on several occasions (Skarbrand and ARK, before Khorne throttled it out of him and Tzeentch placed bindings on him, at least), if this aspect of gods to daemons is true, then gods having free will is unarguable.

Daemons enter real-space, and that is where they are (by and large) encountered. This may sound off, but what if real-space infects the daemon?

You know how mold can grow on cheese (or bread, meat, w/e) when left alone in the dark with a touch of moisture? Kay, think of a Bloodletter as the meat, The Warp is the fridge, and real-space (the materium) is that dank little corner under the fridge. Rather then taking a couple of days, it takes mere seconds for the Bloodletter to be altered by real-space. He is not surrounded by the Warp; cut off from all but the barest sliver of Khorne's power. His form stagnates, hell, he has a form at all! Clearly reality has a drastic effect on daemons, what if free-will / thought was one of them?
The daemons who are affected by the Gods in the warp just suffer the effects of the Gods attention. Skarbrand lost some of his power (Khorne stripped him of it). ARK was altered by Tzeentch in some fashion (added more power, removed some brick-a-brack) ect. ect. What we (humans) see as a loss of some ability or gains in other powers aren't the result of the deities careful considerations, it's just the end result of a power flux.

Gotta say I like how this is going though... We've moved past arguing if Chaos is evil and onto the level of thought and free-will it possesses

The emperor eats 10,000 people a day, that's pretty evil in my opinion.

Lord of Lustria wrote:. Can you really say that all of them are any more evil than the imperium?

Yes.

One thing is always true in 40K. The Imperium is bad, but Chaos is always worse.

TiamatRoar wrote:

As daemons have explicitly been stated to have sentience and free will on several occasions (Skarbrand and ARK, before Khorne throttled it out of him and Tzeentch placed bindings on him, at least), if this aspect of gods to daemons is true, then gods having free will is unarguable.

Yet I have quoted you over and over and over again the places where it clearly states that they lack such a thing...

TiamatRoar wrote:
It's on both Lexicanum and the wiki. though neither says where it comes from so I guess it could be wrong. If someone knows where it comes from, I'd be much obliged if you could point it out.

The least of the minor gods may be so limited in their power that expending their power to create a daemon means their entire power is expended; in effect, the god becomes a daemon.

The bit about the Chaos Gods turning Chaos Daemons is coming from 1st edition, Rogue Trader, the Realm of Chaos books. We are moving 25 years back in time to 1988. A lot of things have changed in the setting… however, I like old fluff.

In the first volume, Slave of Darkness (1988) the Chaos Gods are described (page 212) as "mindless and unthinking", yet with a crude consciousness, "aware only in the crudest of ways". No surprises here. They are made of raw emotion, and so on. They are compared to storms, and I think it is implied that Warpstorms can be part of a God (a mouth I guess, nice concept). The clearest difference from 6th edition fluff is the existence of Minor Powers of Chaos. They "coalesce from the Warp for a brief time", and while they hold together they "achieve intelligence, personality and purpose". "They waste their substance upon the Warp, and dissolve once more into formless Chaos".

Not a word about becoming a Daemon yet. But we see a big difference between the big ones and the little ones: intelligence, personality and purpose, all three things usually asociated with Daemons, yet not Chaos Gods.

The section about Chaos Daemons (213) describes them as "beings of a completely different order to their masters". Again, the Daemons have personality and consciousness, and are able to move within the warp.

However, page 213 also says this: "The lesser Chaos Powers can also give birth to a Daemon. The ripples of warpspace create short lived and very minor Powers, some of whom invest all their energy in a single Daemon. They ‘become’ the Daemon, and gain independence from the Warp´s ceaseless currents (…) Such Daemons are crude, insensate beings and even by the measures of Chaos, they are fickle. Only the weakest Powers choose such an existence". Notice that the Daemon dies while doing this, which is the reason why ‘becoming’ is between ‘’. Then there is a section about other beings such as Enslavers and Astral Hounds.

The second volume, The Lost and the Damned (1990) dedicates 18 pages to the Lesser Chaos Daemons, saying that they are “in the process of creation” or “ancient Powers whose potency has waned”. No references to Chaos Gods becoming Daemons, but there are powerful independent Daemons (some of them quite cool) with no explanation about how they were created. I am assuming they are the Chaos Gods that created a Daemon and died, thus creating an independent Daemon and, somehow, ‘becoming’ it.

I don´t know if this helped you or not, but it was quite a time since I read that and I am enjoying it.

 LoyalistAlphaLegion wrote:

Gotta say I like how this is going though... We've moved past arguing if Chaos is evil and onto the level of thought and free-will it possesses

Yeah I noticed that too.

We have given so many reasonings for Chaos not being evil that the topic has moved to cherry-picking sentences to discuss one of the conditions needed for the Chaos Gods to be evil. Except for those who just entered the thread...

 da001 wrote:

TiamatRoar wrote:

As daemons have explicitly been stated to have sentience and free will on several occasions (Skarbrand and ARK, before Khorne throttled it out of him and Tzeentch placed bindings on him, at least), if this aspect of gods to daemons is true, then gods having free will is unarguable.

Yet I have quoted you over and over and over again the places where it clearly states that they lack such a thing...

TiamatRoar wrote:
It's on both Lexicanum and the wiki. though neither says where it comes from so I guess it could be wrong. If someone knows where it comes from, I'd be much obliged if you could point it out.

The least of the minor gods may be so limited in their power that expending their power to create a daemon means their entire power is expended; in effect, the god becomes a daemon.

The bit about the Chaos Gods turning Chaos Daemons is coming from 1st edition, Rogue Trader, the Realm of Chaos books. We are moving 25 years back in time to 1988. A lot of things have changed in the setting… however, I like old fluff.

In the first volume, Slave of Darkness (1988) the Chaos Gods are described (page 212) as "mindless and unthinking", yet with a crude consciousness, "aware only in the crudest of ways". No surprises here. They are made of raw emotion, and so on. They are compared to storms, and I think it is implied that Warpstorms can be part of a God (a mouth I guess, nice concept). The clearest difference from 6th edition fluff is the existence of Minor Powers of Chaos. They "coalesce from the Warp for a brief time", and while they hold together they "achieve intelligence, personality and purpose". "They waste their substance upon the Warp, and dissolve once more into formless Chaos".

Not a word about becoming a Daemon yet. But we see a big difference between the big ones and the little ones: intelligence, personality and purpose, all three things usually asociated with Daemons, yet not Chaos Gods.

The section about Chaos Daemons (213) describes them as "beings of a completely different order to their masters". Again, the Daemons have personality and consciousness, and are able to move within the warp.

However, page 213 also says this: "The lesser Chaos Powers can also give birth to a Daemon. The ripples of warpspace create short lived and very minor Powers, some of whom invest all their energy in a single Daemon. They ‘become’ the Daemon, and gain independence from the Warp´s ceaseless currents (…) Such Daemons are crude, insensate beings and even by the measures of Chaos, they are fickle. Only the weakest Powers choose such an existence". Notice that the Daemon dies while doing this, which is the reason why ‘becoming’ is between ‘’. Then there is a section about other beings such as Enslavers and Astral Hounds.

The second volume, The Lost and the Damned (1990) dedicates 18 pages to the Lesser Chaos Daemons, saying that they are “in the process of creation” or “ancient Powers whose potency has waned”. No references to Chaos Gods becoming Daemons, but there are powerful independent Daemons (some of them quite cool) with no explanation about how they were created. I am assuming they are the Chaos Gods that created a Daemon and died, thus creating an independent Daemon and, somehow, ‘becoming’ it.

I don´t know if this helped you or not, but it was quite a time since I read that and I am enjoying it.

 LoyalistAlphaLegion wrote:

Gotta say I like how this is going though... We've moved past arguing if Chaos is evil and onto the level of thought and free-will it possesses

Yeah I noticed that too.

We have given so many reasonings for Chaos not being evil that the topic has moved to cherry-picking sentences to discuss one of the conditions needed for the Chaos Gods to be evil. Except for those who just entered the thread...

Or maybe one side has given up trying to convince the other :p

Quiet simply, we have a fundamental difference of structure going on here. On the one hand, you have us Oracles of Chaos letting everyone know how it works and on the other we have Imperial Propaganda that is too afraid of it's own shadow...which is what Chaos apparently is. lol

I find that dichotomy far more amusing than Good v. Evil - Blah v. Blah.

 TheRedWingArmada wrote:
Quiet simply, we have a fundamental difference of structure going on here. On the one hand, you have us Oracles of Chaos letting everyone know how it works and on the other we have Imperial Propaganda that is too afraid of it's own shadow...which is what Chaos apparently is. lol

I find that dichotomy far more amusing than Good v. Evil - Blah v. Blah.

Heh, I really like this post since it is somewhat true, I have been keeping an eye on this topic since its really interesting to read people's posts on chaos.

Kaesoron wrote:

who will enact a regime so bloody and cruel it cannot even be imagined, for it surpasses all human comprehension.

It would probably be pretty gakky for the first couple of centuries but afterwards not that bad. Life for the blood pact can't be that bad considering how they fight against the imperials. The problem with the Imperium is that its founded on ignorance, wether ignorant science pre heresy or ignorant religion later on. With Chaos its like why wear on unbrella when your already wet. Once everyone had accepted the new order their would be no going back, no heresies, probably some wars between the gods and definitily against aliens but I can't imagine that they'd actually have MORE WARS. A Chaos ruled Imperium might actually usher in the unity the Emperor wanted. Who knows, maybe the Emperor wonders if Horus would have done a better job than him and he should have just let him win.

The Blood Pact, being a creation of Dan Abnett, seems absolutely predicated on cruelty. Do you remember the descriptions of the Blood Pact soldiers? How horrifically scarred they were from their pain-rites, the mind-destroying chemicals they were pumped full of before every battle? Why? To what end?

The glory of Chaos. They are *pawns*, to be used now in the service of their masters and cast aside when they are no longer useful.

There is no unity in Chaos. The Ruinous Powers fight constantly between one another. Hell, Tzeentch fights with *himself* all the time. A planet ruled by Khorne will wage eternal, unceasin war against a planet ruled by Slaanesh. A Tzeentchian planet will undergo a radical, bloody revolution every time Tzeentch gets bored, because that is how the Changer of the Ways rolls.

I don´t see how the gods embrace evil.

Slaanesh feeds on depravity and perversion. S/he will direct hir servants to perform the most perverse, debased actions in order to fuel Hir powers.

 da001 wrote:
What about Nicassars, Orks, Eldar, Saruthi and the rest? Many races have a presence in the warp.

Which brings more questions: are the gods the same for all races? We know that is not the case: Mork and Gork are the most obvious example. Is the Warp a different "place" then for every race?

Good questions.

Orks strike me as much more alien that they seem at first glance. That may be the reason why they have managed to stay apart, to create their own bubble within the warp. The mindset of an ork is probably impregnable to other races, that's why I'm led to believe Gork and Mork don't pay attention nor receive sustenance from any other races.

As for "shared" gods, only the Chaos Gods seem to appeal to a variety of races. I think society and culture play an important part in the process of spawning gods in the warp.

Take the Eldar. Vaul, Isha, Asuryan, Khaine... were created at a time when Eldar culture and society kept their lower instincts in check, the Eldar pantheon being an ideallized mirror image of their own feelings, aspirations and societal values. But at some point, Eldar society collapsed. The rules that bound generations came apart, and the true primal side of the Eldar surfaced - creative, hedonistic, capricious beings that won't stop short of killing to get their fix of earthly pleasures. And so, Slaanesh came into being. Their earlier pantheon was exclusive to the Eldar culture. Slaanesh, created by raw emotion, in absence of reason, law and cultural constraints, is universal (or, at least, shared by races which can feel the same emotions that spawned it).

 Psienesis wrote:

Kaesoron wrote:

who will enact a regime so bloody and cruel it cannot even be imagined, for it surpasses all human comprehension.

It would probably be pretty gakky for the first couple of centuries but afterwards not that bad. Life for the blood pact can't be that bad considering how they fight against the imperials. The problem with the Imperium is that its founded on ignorance, wether ignorant science pre heresy or ignorant religion later on. With Chaos its like why wear on unbrella when your already wet. Once everyone had accepted the new order their would be no going back, no heresies, probably some wars between the gods and definitily against aliens but I can't imagine that they'd actually have MORE WARS. A Chaos ruled Imperium might actually usher in the unity the Emperor wanted. Who knows, maybe the Emperor wonders if Horus would have done a better job than him and he should have just let him win.

The Blood Pact, being a creation of Dan Abnett, seems absolutely predicated on cruelty. Do you remember the descriptions of the Blood Pact soldiers? How horrifically scarred they were from their pain-rites, the mind-destroying chemicals they were pumped full of before every battle? Why? To what end?

The glory of Chaos. They are *pawns*, to be used now in the service of their masters and cast aside when they are no longer useful.

There is no unity in Chaos. The Ruinous Powers fight constantly between one another. Hell, Tzeentch fights with *himself* all the time. A planet ruled by Khorne will wage eternal, unceasin war against a planet ruled by Slaanesh. A Tzeentchian planet will undergo a radical, bloody revolution every time Tzeentch gets bored, because that is how the Changer of the Ways rolls.

I don´t see how the gods embrace evil.

Slaanesh feeds on depravity and perversion. S/he will direct hir servants to perform the most perverse, debased actions in order to fuel Hir powers.

So.... The Blood Pact are (primarily) written about from the perspective of Gaunt's Ghosts, who are, ya know, Imperial. Additionally, at the time of the writings, the Sabbat worlds are at war. Nothing in the 40k universe looks its best in the midst of a segmentum wide brawl. Hive cities go into lock down, production has to be sped up to the point of mangling their own workers, and summary executions become the proverbial 'rooster crow' of each morning. And that would be the IMPERIAL worlds. Additionally, most of the Chaos worlds explored are losing ground, and so have to force even more hellish conditions onto their troops and subjugated peoples to hold onto their territory. And when I mean subjugated people, I mean civilian populations that haven't fully given over to worship of Chaos, an occupied populace. While native Chaos worshipers might not fare much better, we have to remember that what we are most often showed is the few flagging loyalists being whipped, beaten, and executed. We're supposed to think of it as 'terrible' and 'evil', that's the goal, to make us sympathize more with the Ghosts and the Imperium as a whole.
The last reason we might see such barbarity is spite, a sort of 'scorched earth' policy to deny the IoM any real benefit from their wins. No surviving populace, industry smashed to all hell, land mines sowed across the everywhere. And before you (or others) try and condemn such practices, I'd like to point out 'Kryptman's Cordon'. When Hive Fleet Leviathan began tearing apart the IoM, Lord Inquisitor Kryptman ordered a succession of worlds subjected to Exterminatus just after the Tyranids had captured them. Imperial citizens were still on the planets; and they were sacrificed by the billions in 'the single largest act of genocide upon the IoM since the HH' (Tyranid Codex, 4th ed). When confronted by the Tau, Ultramarine Captain "The Codex does not support this action!" Uriel Ventris promised to Exterminatus Pavonis rather then let the Tau claim it (Courage and Honor).

So, back to square ? Yeah, back to square ...

@Agent_Tremolo: interesting thoughts.

IF the Warp is different for every sentient being, then space-travel is different too. That means that the routes in the Warp humanity follows are completely different from those of, say, the Fra´al or the Rak´Gol. The human Empire is scattered through the stars with big chunks of "unexplored territory" in the middle. Following this reasoning, this "unexplored galactic territory" would be associated to an "unexplored emotional territory", an emotion or set of emotions humans are not capable of.

I will do a proper research about the matter as soon as Real Life allows me so.

 Psienesis wrote:

The Blood Pact, being a creation of Dan Abnett, seems absolutely predicated on cruelty. Do you remember the descriptions of the Blood Pact soldiers? How horrifically scarred they were from their pain-rites, the mind-destroying chemicals they were pumped full of before every battle? Why? To what end?

The glory of Chaos. They are *pawns*, to be used now in the service of their masters and cast aside when they are no longer useful.

My answer would be a copy-paste of what LoyalistAlphaLegion just said. However, I would like to point out a couple of things.

First point: The Blood Pact is in itself a good example of a cult that is part of a stable civilization. The political entity fighting the Imperium on the Sabbat Worlds (called "Sanguinary Worlds" by imperial propaganda) has been there since before the Heresy. If they were mindless butchers, they would have been unable to do so. You need engineers to build a space fleet, you need teachers and schools to get engineers, you need a lot of things not possible in a Khorne-worshipping society as the Imperium depicts it. Conclusion: it is a lie. Propaganda.

Second point: In "The Eye of Terror", two Daemons (a Bloodthirster and a Lord of Change) have a petty dispute. To resolve it, they create a bridge between two worlds full of humans (their followers), and an apocalyptic war ensues. A victor is proclaimed with both sides reduced to an age of stone. Then, the Daemons accord to build an army. They merge the two worlds in one and survivals of both sides are told to cooperate and prepare for war. The Daemons leave, let a brief instant for them to pass, and when they are back (in a split second) two thousand years have passed. The survivals had developed a powerful space fleet, bigger and more powerful than the Imperial Warfleet Obscurus, the one guarding the Eye of Terror. They are commanded to attack, but the materials they used to build the fleet are not... "stable" out of the Eye of Terror, and the army is completely destroyed. Everyone dies, and the Daemons attention focused on something else.

Cruel? Yes. Playthings of the Daemons? Yes. Two thousand years of peace and development? Yes. What happen to the world after that? Life goes on. It is a Daemonworld like many more.

I don´t see how the gods embrace evil.

Slaanesh feeds on depravity and perversion. S/he will direct hir servants to perform the most perverse, debased actions in order to fuel Hir powers.

1) Slaanesh does not direct its followers. That would cause it to waste its power. Slaanesh exists as the possibility for any entity with free will to perform an act of depravity... among many other things. “He is the God of Obsession, the Master of Excess in all things, from gluttony to lust to megalomania.” “… wherever the lust for power and temporal gain exists, the talons of Slaanesh dig deep.” The Chaos Gods get more powerful when someone willingly uses them, and get weaker when they need to force their extremely crude will on others.

2) Nurgle loves everything, that´s what the background says. Let it sink in: Nurgle.Loves.Everything

So.... The Blood Pact are (primarily) written about from the perspective of Gaunt's Ghosts, who are, ya know, Imperial. Additionally, at the time of the writings, the Sabbat worlds are at war. Nothing in the 40k universe looks its best in the midst of a segmentum wide brawl. Hive cities go into lock down, production has to be sped up to the point of mangling their own workers, and summary executions become the proverbial 'rooster crow' of each morning. And that would be the IMPERIAL worlds. Additionally, most of the Chaos worlds explored are losing ground, and so have to force even more hellish conditions onto their troops and subjugated peoples to hold onto their territory. And when I mean subjugated people, I mean civilian populations that haven't fully given over to worship of Chaos, an occupied populace. While native Chaos worshipers might not fare much better, we have to remember that what we are most often showed is the few flagging loyalists being whipped, beaten, and executed. We're supposed to think of it as 'terrible' and 'evil', that's the goal, to make us sympathize more with the Ghosts and the Imperium as a whole.
The last reason we might see such barbarity is spite, a sort of 'scorched earth' policy to deny the IoM any real benefit from their wins. No surviving populace, industry smashed to all hell, land mines sowed across the everywhere. And before you (or others) try and condemn such practices, I'd like to point out 'Kryptman's Cordon'. When Hive Fleet Leviathan began tearing apart the IoM, Lord Inquisitor Kryptman ordered a succession of worlds subjected to Exterminatus just after the Tyranids had captured them. Imperial citizens were still on the planets; and they were sacrificed by the billions in 'the single largest act of genocide upon the IoM since the HH' (Tyranid Codex, 4th ed). When confronted by the Tau, Ultramarine Captain "The Codex does not support this action!" Uriel Ventris promised to Exterminatus Pavonis rather then let the Tau claim it (Courage and Honor).

You are making the same mistake that others have been making this entire thread.

THE IMPERIUM IS NOT "GOOD". THERE ARE NO GOOD GUYS IN 40K.

I say again:

THE IMPERIUM IS NOT GOOD. IT IS EVIL. IT IS JUST LESS-EVIL THAN CHAOS.

How many fething times must this be repeated?

I think many people assume that Good - Evil is not an absolute, it is a balance. Like heat - cold.

By saying "the Imperium is less evil than Chaos" you are (for me) somehow implying that you believe there is a "relative" good: Imperium, and a "relative" evil, Chaos. So you are defending a "good Vs evil" (or a "less evil Vs less good") simple setting. I cannot agree with that, so I try to convince you that "Chaos is not that evil"... or that the "Imperium is not that good". For me, both sentences are more or less the same.

I get your point, however. You see Chaos and Imperium as different entities, and one of them is evil and the other is evil too, but less. I see Chaos and Imperium being the two plates of a Balance. The balance is Good. Unbalance is Evil, no matter the side. The plates are plates, uncaring and unintelligent, they cannot be evil or good.

Coming to think of it, you could always ignore the "Imperium part" of this kind of reasonings. In the post written by LoyalistAlphaLegion he actually addresses your point about the Blood Pact.

The Imperium *is* a relative good. It is less-evil than Chaos. A Chaotic society might be all fine and dandy... until some visiting member of the World Eater Legion decides to cut your head off because he was bored. Or because a member of the Emperor's Children thought you, your wife, your children, your family pet and four random inanimate objects were giving him "the lusty eye" and so he decided to have his tentacle-limbed way with you.

The Blood Pact is, with the information presented to us, evil as feth. They burn, pillage, destroy, rape, murder... and this is not even started on what they do to Imperial planets they land on. They are a nasty, nasty bunch of work for professional soldiers... and few, if any, of them are Traitor Guard. The Blood Pact are born and raised on Chaos-held worlds, rather than being Imperial Guardsmen who then turn to Chaos. They are some mean motherfethers.

If you're coming into this, asking the question as to whether or not Chaos is not as evil as we expected, then the resounding answer is no, it was exactly as evil as I expected, perhaps more so. This added-on parameter of the argument of whether or not Chaos and the Imperium exist as some sort of "balance" to one another is not present in the original question and is, frankly, irrelevant. Balance does not exist inherently to one or the other of these, for both are evil, but one is Chaos and the other is Order, Balance is found in the conflicts between the two... and that is the point that Moorcock was making.

 Psienesis wrote:
The Imperium *is* a relative good. It is less-evil than Chaos.

Wrong

A Chaotic society might be all fine and dandy... until some visiting member of the World Eater Legion decides to cut your head off because he was bored. Or because a member of the Emperor's Children thought you, your wife, your children, your family pet and four random inanimate objects were giving him "the lusty eye" and so he decided to have his tentacle-limbed way with you

Or not. You could stay two thousand years living far better than in the average planet.

And something quite similar can happen to you in the Imperium. Note than I am focusing in the "less-evil than Chaos" point.

This added-on parameter of the argument of whether or not Chaos and the Imperium exist as some sort of "balance" to one another is not present in the original question and is, frankly, irrelevant. Balance does not exist inherently to one or the other of these, for both are evil, but one is Chaos and the other is Order, Balance is found in the conflicts between the two... and that is the point that Moorcock was making.

And the point I am making too. Claiming that one of the plates of the Balance is less-evil than the other invalidates the Chaos/Order equilibrium.

At this point, however, I think we have exhausted the topic. To begin with, we are no longer talking about Chaos (the barely sentient beings made of raw emotion) but about their human followers. And humans are capable of both good and evil. I think I have provided enough quotes to prove at least one thing: the Chaos Gods do not care about mortals. All those worlds are ruled by humans. By using their free will, those humans may become good or evil. It is their choice.

And the point I am making too. Claiming that one of the plates of the Balance is less-evil than the other invalidates the Chaos/Order equilibrium.

But that wasn't your question. Your question boils down to "Is Chaos evil?" and the answer is "Yes. Yes, it is."

the Chaos Gods do not care about mortals

You're right, they don't, which is why they are free to use and abuse them as much as is their wont, to bring to the galaxy an eternity of carnage and slaughter to the mocking laughter of thirsting gods. Which makes them evil.

 Psienesis wrote:

So.... The Blood Pact are (primarily) written about from the perspective of Gaunt's Ghosts, who are, ya know, Imperial. Additionally, at the time of the writings, the Sabbat worlds are at war. Nothing in the 40k universe looks its best in the midst of a segmentum wide brawl. Hive cities go into lock down, production has to be sped up to the point of mangling their own workers, and summary executions become the proverbial 'rooster crow' of each morning. And that would be the IMPERIAL worlds. Additionally, most of the Chaos worlds explored are losing ground, and so have to force even more hellish conditions onto their troops and subjugated peoples to hold onto their territory. And when I mean subjugated people, I mean civilian populations that haven't fully given over to worship of Chaos, an occupied populace. While native Chaos worshipers might not fare much better, we have to remember that what we are most often showed is the few flagging loyalists being whipped, beaten, and executed. We're supposed to think of it as 'terrible' and 'evil', that's the goal, to make us sympathize more with the Ghosts and the Imperium as a whole.
The last reason we might see such barbarity is spite, a sort of 'scorched earth' policy to deny the IoM any real benefit from their wins. No surviving populace, industry smashed to all hell, land mines sowed across the everywhere. And before you (or others) try and condemn such practices, I'd like to point out 'Kryptman's Cordon'. When Hive Fleet Leviathan began tearing apart the IoM, Lord Inquisitor Kryptman ordered a succession of worlds subjected to Exterminatus just after the Tyranids had captured them. Imperial citizens were still on the planets; and they were sacrificed by the billions in 'the single largest act of genocide upon the IoM since the HH' (Tyranid Codex, 4th ed). When confronted by the Tau, Ultramarine Captain "The Codex does not support this action!" Uriel Ventris promised to Exterminatus Pavonis rather then let the Tau claim it (Courage and Honor).

You are making the same mistake that others have been making this entire thread.

THE IMPERIUM IS NOT "GOOD". THERE ARE NO GOOD GUYS IN 40K.

I say again:

THE IMPERIUM IS NOT GOOD. IT IS EVIL. IT IS JUST LESS-EVIL THAN CHAOS.

How many fething times must this be repeated?

Erm, not calling them good? I agree, the IoM is evil. Actually, I never even wrote 'the IoM is good' up there, what I was driving at was that the protagonists (whom the story is written so you should root for) are Imperial, which makes the IoM LOOK good (or at least, less ). Part of it's just to draw comparisons from the IoM to Chaos (or the servants of Chaos as the Blood Pact are), showing that the IoM isn't better. They're not less evil, or more evil, but (same as Chaos) just fething evil.

 Psienesis wrote:

And the point I am making too. Claiming that one of the plates of the Balance is less-evil than the other invalidates the Chaos/Order equilibrium.

But that wasn't your question. Your question boils down to "Is Chaos evil?" and the answer is "Yes. Yes, it is."

Nope. My question was not mine. The OP asked: "Chaos not as evil as you thought?". Most people think that Chaos is more evil than most factions, so I answered: "no, it is not".

If "Chaos" means "the Chaos Gods" then Chaos is a plate in the balance. It lacks intelligence, consciousness and free will enough to be evil, even by human standards.

And by this I mean that you and many others assume that Chaos Gods are evil because they feed on human emotions. Which causes humans to suffer. But they are not evil, because:
1) They would starve if they didn´t.
2) They have no choice. They are whirlwinds of raw emotions, they cannot select a course of action.
3) At least one of them is described as a bringer of life and laughter.
4) They are not humans. They are utterly inhumans, to the point that they cannot even be described by words. They cannot be seen, smelt of heard. Why should they care for the food they eat? Are you evil if you eat a banana?
5) Extra points: they are Chaos from Moorcock Chaos/Order balance. They are not intended to be evil. Read the first part of Codex: Chaos Daemons.

the Chaos Gods do not care about mortals

You're right, they don't, which is why they are free to use and abuse them as much as is their wont, to bring to the galaxy an eternity of carnage and slaughter to the mocking laughter of thirsting gods. Which makes them evil.

I meant "they don´t care" in this sense: they will do nothing. The Chaos Gods do not search the humans, it is the other way around. The evilness, the choice of doing something wrong in their search of power, is in the human´s heart. Because the human has the capacity to discern between good and evil, and makes a choice.

The only exception is Nurgle, who actively search the humans... and try to help them.