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humans cant die, if humans all die out the warp will have very little to feed off since humans are the main source of the emotions all that would happen is the universe will be filled with chaos god worshippers and wars will be fought in real world and the warp in the name of the gods.

When a human dies, his soul returns to, and becomes one with, the warp, like a raindrop returning to the ocean. It's no longer a distinct entity, but has simply been reunited with the swirling Chaos of the warp; dead humans don't run around the Warp as ghosts getting chased down by daemons, they simply become one with the Warp and enrich it.

Additionally, the Chaos Gods are not the only thing in the warp, they're simply manifestations of some of the warp's potential, four facets of the unlimited power and endless diversity of the Immaterium. A violent a bloodthirsty soul might feed/contribute to the manifestation of Khorne, but Nameless Joe the Manufactorium Worker would just as likely dissipate into the Warp without so much as a ripple.

Dying and returning to the Warp (the fate of humans) is not necessarily the same as dying and having your soul be devoured by Slaanesh (the fate of the Eldar).

There is a lot of fluf suggesting that daemons do eat souls. The rain drop analogy is pretty accurate but souls don't rejoin with the warp energy. They remain their own entity, like daemons, they are swirls in the warp that continue to exist after the person's death. Daemons can abosorb these ripples.

PresidentOfAsia wrote:So if the souls of all living things are fated to be eaten by the chaos gods...

They aren't.

Stormfather wrote:When a human dies, his soul returns to, and becomes one with, the warp, like a raindrop returning to the ocean. It's no longer a distinct entity, but has simply been reunited with the swirling Chaos of the warp; dead humans don't run around the Warp as ghosts getting chased down by daemons, they simply become one with the Warp and enrich it.

Additionally, the Chaos Gods are not the only thing in the warp, they're simply manifestations of some of the warp's potential, four facets of the unlimited power and endless diversity of the Immaterium. A violent a bloodthirsty soul might feed/contribute to the manifestation of Khorne, but Nameless Joe the Manufactorium Worker would just as likely dissipate into the Warp without so much as a ripple.

Dying and returning to the Warp (the fate of humans) is not necessarily the same as dying and having your soul be devoured by Slaanesh (the fate of the Eldar).

With a second, then by this same logic that soul an reenter materium in some new body after some time in Warp ( reincarnation? ).

In Killing Ground, I believe they explain that normally peoples souls "disperse in the warp" like heat into the background of the universe. They become nothing, yet everything. So Daemons probably eat souls that haven't "dispersed" which is why they are so coveted. Only psykers and the discontent souls linger, thus drawing daemons like scavengers to a fresh corpse to use them for energy...

I find it helps to give this stuff a sort of pseudo-physics. I always envisioned the warp as a raw energy, with currents, storms, and warp entities existing as standing waves. Thus a daemon or other creature of the warp is just a very complex and specific standing wave, just like a song on the radio, or an analog TV picture, for all their complexity, exist in the air as a wave of energy. As these waves will eventually decay and become lost in the background radiation that is the warp at large, daemons and other entities would have to constantly feed on some similar wave of energy

A human's soul is a tiny bit of warp energy, created in reality within your skull and driven by the act of sentient thought, and connected to the warp through the tiniest pinhole.There is a perfectly insulating barrier existing between reality and the warp in most cases, but this pinhole allows a shadow of your essence to exist in the warp. Violent or powerful emotions and thoughts escape as a minute vibration. Small scavenger warp creatures probably cluster about the souls of the living, feeding off their emotions constantly. If a human was to die peacefully, say of old age in their sleep, their soul would come unbound and a weak wave would enter the warp, likewise to be eaten by scavengers. These small scavenging creatures feeding off weak scraps of thought and emotion would be eaten by larger creatures, and on up the food chain, until you reach things like Leviathans, like great blue whales swallowing up any tiny scavengers (or starships) who don't get out of the way. You end up with a whole warp ecology of creatures, preying upon one another, hiding among the folds of warp storms to escape larger predators, etc.

I see true daemons as distinct from other warp predators. They are stronger and more well-defined, able to fight through weaker creatures to feed off fresh souls who died in violent or dramatic fashion, souls that were thrust rapidly into the warp and have not come completely unbound. Thus daemons would be drawn to death by battle, by deceit or cruel twist of fate, by disease, or by ecstatic excess. The particular type of death or suffering that draws them, and the souls they have consumed before, would give each entity a more distinct personality. This gives you the lesser and greater daemons of the Big 4, and their natural desire to enter the material realm. Why wait for your desired form of death to happen by chance and fight over the scraps in the warp when you can go straight to the source and have an even fresher soul all to yourself?

This also explains the dilemma of the Eldar and of psykers in general. Their minds are more open to the warp, larger than the tiny pinhole that protects most sentient beings - thus they constantly have to resist any creature attempting to tear through from the other side. Worse still, when they die their soul remains intact in the warp, making for a delicious feast for more powerful and well-defined daemons.

The Big 4 themselves are like vast repositories of the strongest and most common violent emotions. Their daemon minions exist to feed them souls directly, and in turn their minions are allowed to draw on their power when needed. Worshiping Chaos, summoning rituals for daemons - these things are like ringing a very specific dinner bell in the warp. You draw the attention of certain entities, and they will expect to be fed.