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Look, you think Aurelian wanted to kill all those people? Cause all that suffering? All he ever wanted was the truth, and the truth is harsh and disturbing.

Come to the side of Chaos. We have gluttony, power over disease, martial prowess, lust, rock and roll, addictions, and Obama.

 H wrote:

pelicaniforce wrote:
No you’re not allowed to know who the bad guys are you have to be nervous all the time. Because while your government is the bad guys then the good guys are still trying to kill you, and they’re probably not that good after all.

Right, I mean, part of the notion of "grimdark" is a refusal of what one could classify as the "fantastic" moral clarity. In Lord of the Rings, it's really not made unclear who the "good guys" and who the "bad guys" are. Of course, one can quibble on anything, but the work itself is not really aimed at complicating the notion of moral clarity.

Yes, there's no debate that those terrorists who sacked Saruman's attempt to build a city and civilize the Orc refugees were bad. It was obvious from how they stood against any form of social or technological improvement. And murdered the physically handicapped old man who was trying to end all war. And genocided much of Mordor. They would stop at nothing to keep the common person from living a decent life.

Those guys were so obviously evil.

I came over because I was told we had treats.

Bharring wrote:
Yes, there's no debate that those terrorists who sacked Saruman's attempt to build a city and civilize the Orc refugees were bad. It was obvious from how they stood against any form of social or technological improvement. And murdered the physically handicapped old man who was trying to end all war. And genocided much of Mordor. They would stop at nothing to keep the common person from living a decent life.

Those guys were so obviously evil.

See, there you go, you got the hang of it!

Even Tolkien himself was somewhat "troubled" by the sort of question of orcs. That is, the sort of moral question like, can you ever, in Middle-Earth, murder an orc?

LotR broadly tells us, no to that. But there are hints in there that this somewhat troubled Tolkien, who spent time, aside the novels themselves, trying to rectify the narrative depiction of orcs with what he felt would be a "realistic" depiction and origin. So, in LotR, it is very clear that you cannot ever murder an orc. But outside LotR's narrative, can you murder an orc? I think almost certainly, yes.

This quote, from Tolkien to his son Christopher is telling: “I think the orcs as real a creation as anything in ‘realistic’ fiction,” before adding, “only in real life they are on both sides, of course.”

He realized the sort of problem of the evilness of orcs, but the aim and intent of the narrative had no real place for the notion of moral complication, or ambiguity. But that, in part, can be a feature of fantastically simple moral clarity. That is, you can see the moral complication through the very clarity it offers.

Chaos is a corrupting influence that turns people in 2 dimensional caricatures that seek the end of everything there is.

The only reason Chaos may not be considered evil is because I'm unsure Chaos has the capacity to make moral choices.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Btw, they have quite a nice paintscheme.

Which looks amazing on primaris.

But yeah chaos is irrational as a base, it is inherently self destructive, but thanks to not really heeding the idea of logic that act of self destruction itself further perpetuates them.

Chaos isn't just "lol i'm so random" it's actively breaking down logic and reality, so things like consequences for their actions aren't really on their todo list.

"Inherently self destructive" is not "irrational". We only think that because self-preservation is a priority for us (and most life). There's no *rational* need for an entity to not be self destructive; it's merely a survivor's bias that means entities we encounter are not self destructive (as those that are are self destructive tend to not last).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
For instance, it's rational for Tzeench to plot against himself. He exists as the embodiment of schemes. His primary drive is to scheme. Therefore, he schemes at every opportunity. Schemeing against himself is an opportunity. Therefore, it would be irrational for him to *not* scheme against himself.

He doesn't exist to continue his own existence. He doesn't exist to maximize the amount of scheming in the universe. He exists to scheme.

While true, the results are irrational in this self destructive behavior does not actually destroy him, but rather becomes another extension of him. They exist for these things to happen, and what rationally would be taken as an act that should destroy them, is likely to have the opposite effect.

 H wrote:

Bharring wrote:
Yes, there's no debate that those terrorists who sacked Saruman's attempt to build a city and civilize the Orc refugees were bad. It was obvious from how they stood against any form of social or technological improvement. And murdered the physically handicapped old man who was trying to end all war. And genocided much of Mordor. They would stop at nothing to keep the common person from living a decent life.

Those guys were so obviously evil.

See, there you go, you got the hang of it!

Even Tolkien himself was somewhat "troubled" by the sort of question of orcs. That is, the sort of moral question like, can you ever, in Middle-Earth, murder an orc?

LotR broadly tells us, no to that. But there are hints in there that this somewhat troubled Tolkien, who spent time, aside the novels themselves, trying to rectify the narrative depiction of orcs with what he felt would be a "realistic" depiction and origin. So, in LotR, it is very clear that you cannot ever murder an orc. But outside LotR's narrative, can you murder an orc? I think almost certainly, yes.

This quote, from Tolkien to his son Christopher is telling: “I think the orcs as real a creation as anything in ‘realistic’ fiction,” before adding, “only in real life they are on both sides, of course.”

He realized the sort of problem of the evilness of orcs, but the aim and intent of the narrative had no real place for the notion of moral complication, or ambiguity. But that, in part, can be a feature of fantastically simple moral clarity. That is, you can see the moral complication through the very clarity it offers.

Tolkien did conclude that Orcs were not irredeemable, since to make them so would mean irreversible corruption of Children of Iluvatar, and thus thwarting of divine will (which Tolkien due to his faith felt was not possible).

However he did also say that Orcs were predisposed to evil given their corruption and their upbringing and brainwashing by Sauron and Morgoth, and that the long history of war between them and the other races meant quarter was not asked. He did write though that if by some miracle an Orc asked a human or Elf for mercy, then it should be given, and that cruelty should not be shown to captives. Doing otherwise would be an act of evil within Tolkien's LoTR theological paradigm.

Bharring wrote:
"Inherently self destructive" is not "irrational". We only think that because self-preservation is a priority for us (and most life). There's no *rational* need for an entity to not be self destructive; it's merely a survivor's bias that means entities we encounter are not self destructive (as those that are are self destructive tend to not last).

Right, especially if there is some notion of an "immortal soul." Although I can't remember how that is likened in 40K, off the top of my head.

Bharring wrote:
For instance, it's rational for Tzeench to plot against himself. He exists as the embodiment of schemes. His primary drive is to scheme. Therefore, he schemes at every opportunity. Schemeing against himself is an opportunity. Therefore, it would be irrational for him to *not* scheme against himself.

He doesn't exist to continue his own existence. He doesn't exist to maximize the amount of scheming in the universe. He exists to scheme.

Indeed, I'd personally surmise that Tzeentch's essence precedes his existence. So, Tzeentch is just existent scheming, not a thing that exists to scheme. To not scheme would be to not exist.


Another way to think about Chaos is that it exists as a function of Order. This about it this way, if order did not exist, chaos would not either. Because, without order, there would only be something like Being-Undivided. Now, we could imagine that as just Chaos, but I think this is a mistake. Chaos is a designation of things outside a specifically intentional ordered state. If there were no Ordered states, there is no Chaos. Even more so, there would be nothing to judge (or measure, or know) what is or is not Chaos.

In fact, even Chaos itself is not "full Chaos." The Ruinous Powers are "ordered" themselves, which is actually the way in which they exist, as "entities." Were they not, they would never be able to do anything. What they are in actually relatively less Ordered order. And that is a key part of why, to me, they are not "evil" in-itself, rather, they are a diametrically opposed, "oppositional force" to order itself.

That is, one could likely take Chaos as an entropic principle, of sorts. Or, as a dialectical determinate negation of order. In that sense, there is even no Order without Chaos, there isn't anything without it's mediating negation.

I do realize that such a philosophical approach is not going to appeal to most. But it does appeal to me, because moral clarity is not something I am interesting in 40K for.

Look to the fate of The Old World. The World That Was And Still Is, Just Only In Videogames of Warhammer fantasy has seen the end of a Chaos cycle. The Gods didn’t want eternal stalemate, they wanted the destruction of the world in their name. When the deed was done and the World that Was was a burning meteor tumbling from its orbit through space, the gods just laughed, and turned away to find another world to ruin.

So it is - the Chaos gods are just twelve year old boys playing Sim City with the universe, playing with the money cheat and hitting the “cause disaster” button over and over, laughing as the little ants try to fix the damage they unleash.

YeOldSaltPotato wrote:
While true, the results are irrational in this self destructive behavior does not actually destroy him, but rather becomes another extension of him. They exist for these things to happen, and what rationally would be taken as an act that should destroy them, is likely to have the opposite effect.

You're assuming an inherent rationality in self preservation. It's a common theme, but it's merely a surivor's bias.

You're assuming they exist to maximize their thing. This is easier in the (more) concrete sense, so let's focus on Khorne. Khorne exists for killing. But does he exist to kill or maximize the killing?

Let's imagine to maximize killing. How do you maximize killing? Not by killing. Every being you kill is one that no longer procreates. The less procreation, the less potential victims of killing. Thus, to maximize killing, you prevent killing (at least of those who can reproduce). Doing so might reduce the per-capita killing in the system, but it increases the population by more. And if you reduce the rate of killings by 50%, the population goes up, and more killings happen over time. Even assuming it'll only increase populations by 10% per-time-unit (unit doesn't matter), after only 8 time-units, you now get *more* killings per time-unit than before.

So if Khorne's purpose were to maximize killing, he'd be a massive hippy promoting peace and free love.

Now, let's imagine to kill. Random mortal being Bob is in front of him. He can kill Bob today, or let Bob go home, beget a child, kill Bob tomorrow and the child in the future. Which is more rational? To kill Bob now. Total amount of killing tomorrow has nothing to do with killing - it's merely a stat he doesn't care about.

I think it's fairly obvious that Khorne is written with the purpose to kill, not to maximize the killing.

Lets consider a timeout function in software. It's purpose is to alert the user (often another piece of software) that they should give up on what the timeout watches, because it took too long. The timeout watches a method for whom the agent (server, class, whatever) no longer exists. It will obviously never return. Which is the rational action for that timeout? Should it immediately tell it's user to give up, or wait until it's time is up? To a human, we consider the goal to be "Tell the user when to give up". But it's not human. It's purpose is to "Tell the user when to give up *because it took too long*". So the rational action on behalf of the *timeout* is actually to wait until time is up. You might assume it should care for and assist the user in better resource management, but it was given no reason to care. It gives zero feths that it could save it's user more time/resources. It only cares if the time is up.

Beings of the Immaterium are not humans. They don't inherently care about their future any more than a rock. Some might develop that consideration, but it's not necessary for "rational" thought.

Oggthrok wrote:
Look to the fate of The Old World. The World That Was And Still Is, Just Only In Videogames of Warhammer fantasy has seen the end of a Chaos cycle. The Gods didn’t want eternal stalemate, they wanted the destruction of the world in their name. When the deed was done and the World that Was was a burning meteor tumbling from its orbit through space, the gods just laughed, and turned away to find another world to ruin.

So it is - the Chaos gods are just twelve year old boys playing Sim City with the universe, playing with the money cheat and hitting the “cause disaster” button over and over, laughing as the little ants try to fix the damage they unleash.

Frankly, I think that is just poor writing to me though. It just smacks of narrative serving the marketing and not serving any other (seeming) purpose. That is, the End was needed, because it was the end of the product line, not because it made sense in-world. And, of course, the Chaos Gods don't exist as matters of fact, so they could do anything to serve the narrative ends. There, the narrative ends were to "close" the world, because it was the closing of the product line.

There is a much more (to me) elegant way to deal with eschatology that isn't just "blow up the world." But it's a case of the cart before the horse with respect to the Old World, since it was going to "end" with the product line in any case.

The ultimate point of Chaos being self contradictory is the facr there is a canonical god of aethism.

Tyran wrote:
Chaos is a corrupting influence that turns people in 2 dimensional caricatures that seek the end of everything there is.

Only in the Codexes. The Black Library books are very clear that there's a lot more nuance to Chaos than that.

In fact, the later Gaunt's Ghosts books have several character plot points that are mainly about that fact.

 Platuan4th wrote:

Tyran wrote:
Chaos is a corrupting influence that turns people in 2 dimensional caricatures that seek the end of everything there is.

Only in the Codexes. The Black Library books are very clear that there's a lot more nuance to Chaos than that.

In fact, the later Gaunt's Ghosts books have several character plot points that are mainly about that fact.

You would have a much better point if you actually gave examples rather than only mentioning them.

Tyran wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

Tyran wrote:
Chaos is a corrupting influence that turns people in 2 dimensional caricatures that seek the end of everything there is.

Only in the Codexes. The Black Library books are very clear that there's a lot more nuance to Chaos than that.

In fact, the later Gaunt's Ghosts books have several character plot points that are mainly about that fact.

You would have a much better point if you actually gave examples rather than only mentioning them.

In the Guants Ghosts novels we see that the worlds the Sabbat Crusade has been sent to reconquer are under the control of a human chaos civilization of sorts. It’s a brutal society, and would probably be a nightmare to actually live in, but from their perspective, the imperium is the destructive force. We see chaos worlds with agriculture, and signs of an existence outside pure wanton destruction as it’s end goal.

 agurus1 wrote:

Tyran wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

Tyran wrote:
Chaos is a corrupting influence that turns people in 2 dimensional caricatures that seek the end of everything there is.

Only in the Codexes. The Black Library books are very clear that there's a lot more nuance to Chaos than that.

In fact, the later Gaunt's Ghosts books have several character plot points that are mainly about that fact.

You would have a much better point if you actually gave examples rather than only mentioning them.

In the Guants Ghosts novels we see that the worlds the Sabbat Crusade has been sent to reconquer are under the control of a human chaos civilization of sorts. It’s a brutal society, and would probably be a nightmare to actually live in, but from their perspective, the imperium is the destructive force. We see chaos worlds with agriculture, and signs of an existence outside pure wanton destruction as it’s end goal.

But such civilizations are not the end goal of Chaos. Eventually daemons get involved, physics start breaking, the few lucky ascend to daemonhood and the rest become daemon chow.

And daemons are creatures of wanton destruction and so are the gods. It's just that sometimes their mortal followers don't get the memo.

The entire premise of the 40k universe is that little happens of import because "there is only war".
Would the average imperial citizen see much of a difference in happiness (or terror) with who is in charge?

Chaos would like to free humanity of their yoke, all they want in repayment is their devotion (and to be the plaything of their champions).
I am sure chaos would like to give more "freedom" to them than they can handle.
I fail to see how possession or being the plaything of a daemon would be any better or worse than the Mechanicus turning you into a servitor or has a few experiments to conduct or convert you to a Skitarii.
It is fun times either way.

It's important to remember that for millennia, especially during the Age of Strife, many human worlds succumbed to Chaos worship, and while some were turned into daemon slave worlds, there were also quite a few who just adopted it as a regular religion, like what we saw in Horus Rising, where the locals treated a daemon prince like some guardian angel.

 Irbis wrote:

shyzo wrote:
Chaos Gods rely (mostly) on mankind to sustain themselves.

Not really, they still have thousands of client xeno races (which is why Cabal plot was dumb and/or racist).

I think it presupposes that mankind have become the dominant civilised species of our galaxy. There’s a lot about the Cabal plot that’s a bit daft at face value, but I don’t see this as one of those bits.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
The ultimate point of Chaos being self contradictory is the facr there is a canonical god of aethism.

Ol’ Necoho the Doubter; I continue to hope we will someday see him again.

He canon in AoS IIRC, and that shares the warp with 40k so....

It doesn't. Otherwise Slaanesh wouldn't be a problem for Eldar.

pm713 wrote:
It doesn't. Otherwise Slaanesh wouldn't be a problem for Eldar.

It does. Confirmed by the studio via White Dwarf.

 Lord Fishface wrote:

 Irbis wrote:

shyzo wrote:
Chaos Gods rely (mostly) on mankind to sustain themselves.

Not really, they still have thousands of client xeno races (which is why Cabal plot was dumb and/or racist).

I think it presupposes that mankind have become the dominant civilised species of our galaxy. There’s a lot about the Cabal plot that’s a bit daft at face value, but I don’t see this as one of those bits.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
The ultimate point of Chaos being self contradictory is the facr there is a canonical god of aethism.

Ol’ Necoho the Doubter; I continue to hope we will someday see him again.

Modern GW seems to lack the sense of humor that was common when Something Rotten in Kislev was written.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

pm713 wrote:
It doesn't. Otherwise Slaanesh wouldn't be a problem for Eldar.

It does. Confirmed by the studio via White Dwarf.

Twenty five years ago, when the Realm of Chaos books came out, those books established that there were connections between WHFB and 40K. I present to you what rolled out over the next two decades as evidence what followed from there.

So you may want to check that you're taking an adequate amount of salt to accompany anything written in White Dwarf. At best, the founding principle of GW's approach to lore is "Just because it was true today, doesn't mean it will be true tomorrow."

 ClockworkZion wrote:

pm713 wrote:
It doesn't. Otherwise Slaanesh wouldn't be a problem for Eldar.

It does. Confirmed by the studio via White Dwarf.

Oh cool so Slaanesh is no longer a factor in 40k then. Best tell the Ynnari that She Who Thirsts is gone then!

I said they share the warp and people tutned that into that they said they don't share the warp?

I missed something there.

Humans are food for a chaos so... No they are not the good guys.