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Gidun wrote:
Well here's a curveball, isn't it possible the chaos gods has already won in what in real space would be the future but for them it has always been the case and they've already won. Which basically leads to them "starving" which is also a constant reality for them. And if the end result (seen from real space pov) is always the same it is futile for the chaos gods to do anything but go through the motions that will inevitably lead to their demise. View it as knowing what your own cause of death would be and when. Regardless of your actions you're left without any way to prevent it, so what's left but to play a galaxy spanning version of risk until it happens? Assuming they don't have warhammer 40k to play in the warp.

Tldr, them knowing the future as the present and the past locks it in as an inevitability.

They don’t know the future, present and past. Those things don’t exist to them. There is no time so no present and so on. They there don’t know anything. It’s perfectly conceivable that they have both won and lost a million times.

I do think that perhaps what happens, is that the gods reach from the warp into realspace, but causality kicks in when they do and therefore they only appear in realspace along a causal timeline.

It's kind of like playing portals with time. You can make a portal anywhere and stick your hand through and it will appear wherever the other end is, but if the other end always appears in the same place, it doesn't matter where you stick your arm in.

In chaos' case, they're sticking their arm through anywhere and everywhen, but causality means it will only appear within a confined timeline.

Thus slannesh always exists but when it reaches into realspace, it's actions only materialise after its birth (or during its gestation in the lead up to birth).

The causal timeline works from the fixed point of the eldar fall and radiates or from that point, weaker going backwards and stronger going forwards.

 morganfreeman wrote:

Voss wrote:

Welcome to 40k. That's seriously the fundamental principle of the setting.
'There is no time for peace, no respite, no forgiveness, there is only war.'

The flaw here is taking it seriously.

The exact timeline millions (billions?) of years before the setting doesn't matter. You might as well argue about the effects of stone age hunters on the roots of American government.

There are some cannons / IP's where I have an actual investment in the story, and 40k is not one of them. I don't take the story seriously. That does not mean I don't notice when it tries to pull pants-on-head slowed crap. There's a term called 'internal consistency' which applies to the many fictional settings that exist.

Basically, what what that means is that the setting has to play nice for itself. For examples, let's look to some classical examples from famous sources:

Popeye: Spinach makes Pop-eye hulk out, it's his trump card. When he eats spinach he becomes unbeatable. This doesn't just apply to Popeye, we have an episode where he force-feeds it to Bluto in order to make Bluto give him a thorough roughing up, and he then gains sympathy from Oliveoil. We also see Oliveoil eat it at some point and gain the effects.

So the internal consistency is that, in the Popeye universe, spinach is basically on-demand steroids. It makes whomever consumes it super strong. It's consistent, it's logical, it makes sense in the setting.

So what happens if, all of a sudden, a character ate spinach and didn't get the effects? There had better be a damn good reason, and it'd better be made clear. If not the setting's internal consistency is thrown into turmoil, and the building blocks of what makes it tick no longer do that.

Roadrunner: I'll keep it simpler with this one. An integral part of the Roadrunner / Willy Coyote 'universe' is that the Roadrunner will always outrun Willy, so he has to reply on tricks and traps to try and catch him. What happens if, without warning, we have an episode which features Willy able to out run Roadrunner with ease? There has to be something behind it, because it's been staunchly established that this does not happen. If it happens with no explanation, it makes show hard to appreciate because the creators are gakking all over the rules of the universe, which are mandatory to create tension.

These are baseline examples, but it applies to a lot of things.

Now with 40k, we have the same concept. Yes 40k is satire, but satire must still have internal consistency and logic or else it loses its fangs.

As someone else pointed out, we have a demonstrable timeline in the 'real' universe. This is internally logical. The warp, however, can throw people around in time when they leap-frog through it. This is also logical.

We also know that all factions will do anything to achieve their end goals. Chaos isn't holding any tricks or weapons back when it comes to corrupting & conquering real space, and the gods themselves aren't pulling punches about one another.

So what you have is a faction with no moral issues with any steps they could take to win, who is also totally omnipotent for all actions that ever have, or will be, under taken. Combining those two elements gives you with a faction that wins the race as soon as it starts running. And if it doesn't, it violates the internal logic of the setting.

That's just the most glaring issue. There are other ones which have been pointed out. Ones like Slaanesh not retroactively nomming all Eldar souls, Mortarian not having Draigo's name carved into his heart as soon as he was born, M'tar not knowing the consequences for tangling with Draigo, the Emperor tricking the big 4, ect.

Absolutely none of this works, story wise, if the warp denizens simultaneously have no time barriers and complete comprehension of time in the mortal realm. It rips away the internal consistency of the conflict, and makes it tepid and weak.

Still missing the point, Popeye aside.

In real space there is x y and z happening in a set time line with set factions. Logical. That’s where the logic stops. When it come to the warp logic, literally has no meaning. In the warp time does not exist so as much as the chaos gods know of what has happened or will happen they also don’t know at the same time. The internal logic of the warp is that it has no rules or logic. So all those examples you point out you are looking at from a perspective of the universe and it’s rules. It isn’t that time is fluid in the warp and they can move back and forth through it it’s that time has no meaning at all, it doesn’t exist. So slaanesh doesn’t appear all of a sudden in the warp. There is no such thing as all of a sudden. It isn’t a parallel universe or dimension it’s an entirely other plain of existence.

The gods are immensely powerful in there realm where emotion is the stuff of matter in the real universe but they are limited in real space because the very essence of them doesn’t exist as a substance real space. They are made of a philosophical concept. Emotion.

So instead of imagining a dimension where sentient beings watch over real space sliding along the time line at will, imagine there is a realm where time doesn’t exist at all. Detach it from real space because that carries on regardless with its Newtonian limitations. Two separate backgrounds, two separate stories each trying to influence each over. One is real and one is just a feeling. That is 40ks internal logic. To try and apply real space limitations to the warp is what breaks the internal logic.

You all are wrong about timeless Chaos. Chaos existed as long as first emotions existed. This warp and these Gods are actually not the first. Ever heard of Enslavers? Of War in Heavens? Of conflict so intense that reality literally broke apart and countless demons poured in to feast upon living? These "first" demons are still around, they had exterminated most life in this galaxy before and veil grew still, calm due to lack of living beings. Gods and demons had starved out and died and warp began a new. The Pantheon, Ruinous Powers are not the first Gods to have lived, these are merely OUR Gods. They had existed for as long as we had existed. They grew on emotions of different species (not Eldar though, they channeled their emotions to their own feeble weakling Gods), but those weren't enough to give birth to them as galaxy was too peaceful, too calm to cause Gods to born and species living there too atheistic, too calm, rational, unemotional and too few in numbers. Eldars would had never had made Chaos Gods as they had their own Gods. Orks have their own Gods. Species like Tau are like animals. You would rather see wolves create their own Gods before such feeble species as Tau manages to create their own Pantheon. In truth, it is quite difficult to get such great race as humanity. We breed fast, we live intensely, we live long enough and are bothered enough to think, to create tools, to use our heads and to become wise. At the same time, we are balanced in spirituality, physical strength, mind. We experience emotions intensely, we can devote ourselves to whatever lifestyle we prefer. Despite being highly technological, intelligent race, we have huge craving for spirituality and brutality in our souls. Human form presents such perfect balance between anything that species could have.

Actually, this incarnation of Chaos is a lot wiser and smarter. It also have unique traits. Because humans are such uniquely psychic race, outpacing even Eldar, we were granted special status as God chosen species to rule the galaxy in their name. It is we who were marked for greatness and ascension by the Primordial Annihilator. Gods had kept their promise as it is seen after ten thousand years of devotion to them. Humanity is ascending. There is also another very unique trait of this Primordial Annihilator which wasn't present before. It is its uniqueness and division. It is so varied, there are so many major and minor Gods. Humanity is truly great and blessed species as it can produce so many Gods simultaneously with their faith. Our devotion and fanaticism is what makes our Gods so much superior to Eldar weakling Gods. We would almost universally rather die and suffer than to give them up, Eldar would rather run and cover for they are craven. This trait makes their Gods also cravens who couldn't survive against any competition.

Last major trait is also most amazing. Ruinous Powers are wise as never before. They moderate themselves. They set common rules. For example, they do not seek to enslave or to rule the galaxy. It is given over to humanity to do as they seem fit with it. By comparison, previous Gods and demons tried to enslave it, eat it whole. Even more, they moderate themselves. They are aware of their natures and that they can lead humanity to their self destruction. Remember Cabal and its plan to destroy Chaos by making them win? Well, Chaos is painfully aware of that and they had planned this exact outcome for millenia. They did not wanted to win against the Emperor. They wanted a stalemate. They wanted a slow, long war with it. They do not want Imperium to fall as its presence allows it to grow. See how much Chaos had expanded thanks to Imperium during 10 thousand years! Chaos now can rival entire Imperium on its own and it is only getting worse!

The warp and Chaos are two separate things. The dimension of the warp has always existed. It's not dependent on chaos exisiting for it to

Andykp wrote:

Gidun wrote:
Well here's a curveball, isn't it possible the chaos gods has already won in what in real space would be the future but for them it has always been the case and they've already won. Which basically leads to them "starving" which is also a constant reality for them. And if the end result (seen from real space pov) is always the same it is futile for the chaos gods to do anything but go through the motions that will inevitably lead to their demise. View it as knowing what your own cause of death would be and when. Regardless of your actions you're left without any way to prevent it, so what's left but to play a galaxy spanning version of risk until it happens? Assuming they don't have warhammer 40k to play in the warp.

Tldr, them knowing the future as the present and the past locks it in as an inevitability.

They don’t know the future, present and past. Those things don’t exist to them. There is no time so no present and so on. They there don’t know anything. It’s perfectly conceivable that they have both won and lost a million times.

Sorry I might not have been clear enough on how I presented my thoughts, my point was in essence that from their pov it's the same as if you and I would watch a movie on x amounts of screens of different timestamps of said movie. Using terminology as past, present and future is simply a way to better get the point across.

Anyway, say that your watching the beginning and the end of a movie on two screens. The beginning, the middle and the end would be the same regardless of what point of the movie you're watching, so what we're left with is for all intents and purposes the same story. Even if the chaos gods could move to change the parts that make the story they might not simply because they might believe it's an inevitable outcome since they exist at the end point of the movie in parallell to the beginning.

Basically it's the same question if knowing the future is what causes it to occur. Regardless, the warp is fun and weird as is us collectively trying to catagorise it into something comprihensible.

I’ve given some thought and decided the first daemon was probably a psychic amalgamation of the petty competativity of, and frustration caused by, internet ‘First!!!’ commenters.

 solkan wrote:

If Chaos (or any part of it) could focus, or had self control, it wouldn’t be Chaos. Yet if you find out about the warp, and you didn’t know it was being run by the equivalent of a billion randomly connected Twitch-stream play groups, you’d try to explain it as intelligent yet fickle and infighting beings.

I'd like to add that retroactive existing is not the same as retroactive knowledge or power. What Slaanesh knows in M31 is not the same as what he/she/xe knows at M41, or before the 'birth event' in realspace. The chaos gods are not omniscient or ominipresent gods- it is possible to hide stuff from them. They learn and grow and decline in power- they can even forget-

There was a time when Tzeentch reigned supreme over all of the Chaos Gods, and held more power than any of them individually. The other Gods became envious, and joined forces to overthrow Tzeentch, thus beginning a conflict that would leave much of the universe devastated. During the final battle, Tzeentch feared that the combined army of the other Gods would defeat him and take his crystal staff, the symbol of his power, and opted for an alternate and more cautious approach. Tzeentch yielded, and broke his own staff as a token of surrender. In a sorcerous explosion, the staff shattered into countless pieces. Each of these fragments took the form of a different spell, and was flung to every corner of space and time, irredeemably lost. This event coincides with the birth of magic, and helped ensure that nobody would ever wield as much power as Tzeentch once did.

Thinking of the chaos gods as people with staffs and goals is simplistic, but effectively Tzeentch had all the spells and no longer does. That's lost knowledge and power, tied to a temporal materium event- some kind of initial psychic awakening that allowed magic to exist. Its easy to assume that Slaanesh may have existed pre birth, lacking consciousness, feeding on the background excess of the galaxies races.

The fact that the warp is incomprehensible is fine and all from an in-universe perspective. The problem is more out-of-universe, from a pure storytelling perspective when authors use the warp as a cheap way to fill in plot holes they made because they're bad at their job. If you push it too far then everything becomes meaningless, because the warp can alter the universe the way the author wants it to for no good reason.

I need to get a character out of the way to make a part of the story work? It's not a contrivance, it's a warp storm!
My timeline is incoherent? Surely it's not poor planning. That's because time is meaningless in the warp!
My character shows up even though he died a while ago? I didn't forget I killed him off, the warp brought him back!
One guy shows up in several places at the same time? It's not that I wanted to force him into that plot point, it's a warp thing!
My character knows information he couldn't possibly know? That's not a writing mistake. He learned it from the warp!
My character forgot really important information he'd learned before? I sure didn't! It's simply that the warp has clouded his mind!
Magic/technology doesn't work the same way it worked the last time we saw it? Of course I could keep my universe consistent if I wanted to. It's all the warp's fault, man!

When you have a setting as vast and old as 40k, where dozens of writers have been working on it with little to no coordination between them, it's not surprising to see a lot of incoherence. So you need a lot of retcons to fix it. That's fine. Plenty of other franchises have grown into disjointed messes over the years.

A great writer can make it look like every plot hole was planned from the start and use them to make an even deeper story. A decent writer will find a solution to fill the plot holes in a way that mostly makes sense and keep the story together. A bad writer will say it was all magic, open even more plot holes because of that explanation and expect the audience to just ignore it.

The idea that the warp has absolutely no rules just encourages people to be bad writers. It becomes a "get out of jail free" card. Why bother thinking of a competent plot when you can use deus ex machina at will, right? You can just let the audience do the mental gymnastics required to make sense out of it. Genius!

Gidun wrote:

Andykp wrote:

Gidun wrote:
Well here's a curveball, isn't it possible the chaos gods has already won in what in real space would be the future but for them it has always been the case and they've already won. Which basically leads to them "starving" which is also a constant reality for them. And if the end result (seen from real space pov) is always the same it is futile for the chaos gods to do anything but go through the motions that will inevitably lead to their demise. View it as knowing what your own cause of death would be and when. Regardless of your actions you're left without any way to prevent it, so what's left but to play a galaxy spanning version of risk until it happens? Assuming they don't have warhammer 40k to play in the warp.

Tldr, them knowing the future as the present and the past locks it in as an inevitability.

They don’t know the future, present and past. Those things don’t exist to them. There is no time so no present and so on. They there don’t know anything. It’s perfectly conceivable that they have both won and lost a million times.

Sorry I might not have been clear enough on how I presented my thoughts, my point was in essence that from their pov it's the same as if you and I would watch a movie on x amounts of screens of different timestamps of said movie. Using terminology as past, present and future is simply a way to better get the point across.

Anyway, say that your watching the beginning and the end of a movie on two screens. The beginning, the middle and the end would be the same regardless of what point of the movie you're watching, so what we're left with is for all intents and purposes the same story. Even if the chaos gods could move to change the parts that make the story they might not simply because they might believe it's an inevitable outcome since they exist at the end point of the movie in parallell to the beginning.

Basically it's the same question if knowing the future is what causes it to occur. Regardless, the warp is fun and weird as is us collectively trying to catagorise it into something comprihensible.

That’s assuming the beginning middle and end are always the same. In real space the seers of the eldar can view the future but it can change depending upon action and unforeseen circumstances. In real space, fate can change. So there is no knowing that what the demons are witnessing in the warp is actually accurate. It also how the witness it, the warp doesn’t have cctv into real space, what they will really be seeing or divining are the emotions of those involved in the events, which as you can imagine would just give a very skewed idea of what had happened, it’s easy to see how two people involved in one event at the same time in real space would feel very different emotions about it.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Tiennos wrote:
The fact that the warp is incomprehensible is fine and all from an in-universe perspective. The problem is more out-of-universe, from a pure storytelling perspective when authors use the warp as a cheap way to fill in plot holes they made because they're bad at their job. If you push it too far then everything becomes meaningless, because the warp can alter the universe the way the author wants it to for no good reason.

I need to get a character out of the way to make a part of the story work? It's not a contrivance, it's a warp storm!
My timeline is incoherent? Surely it's not poor planning. That's because time is meaningless in the warp!
My character shows up even though he died a while ago? I didn't forget I killed him off, the warp brought him back!
One guy shows up in several places at the same time? It's not that I wanted to force him into that plot point, it's a warp thing!
My character knows information he couldn't possibly know? That's not a writing mistake. He learned it from the warp!
My character forgot really important information he'd learned before? I sure didn't! It's simply that the warp has clouded his mind!
Magic/technology doesn't work the same way it worked the last time we saw it? Of course I could keep my universe consistent if I wanted to. It's all the warp's fault, man!

When you have a setting as vast and old as 40k, where dozens of writers have been working on it with little to no coordination between them, it's not surprising to see a lot of incoherence. So you need a lot of retcons to fix it. That's fine. Plenty of other franchises have grown into disjointed messes over the years.

A great writer can make it look like every plot hole was planned from the start and use them to make an even deeper story. A decent writer will find a solution to fill the plot holes in a way that mostly makes sense and keep the story together. A bad writer will say it was all magic, open even more plot holes because of that explanation and expect the audience to just ignore it.

The idea that the warp has absolutely no rules just encourages people to be bad writers. It becomes a "get out of jail free" card. Why bother thinking of a competent plot when you can use deus ex machina at will, right? You can just let the audience do the mental gymnastics required to make sense out of it. Genius!

The setting is just that, a setting...for games, for you to create and write your own stories. The warp is a great bit of background written when people really cared about the setting. The fact that they have tried to milk that setting like a cash cow by paying jobbing writers to dumb it down is the problem. It has lead to a situation where people are so used to being spoon fed stuff that the subtlety and nuance has been lost on many. I see it so many times, “it said in X book that this happened so that’s how the warp works”. It is one of the things that make me dislike black library books especial those about the wider story or main time line. Things like taunts ghosts where they have created there own story arc and characters etc are ok but things like the horus heresey novels really lessen the story altogether.