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The fact that they have to adopt a Path at all should tell you enough - They do it to avoid fueling, Slaanesh, and need Sprit Stones to avoid getting absorbed by her when they die.

This is not because they worship Slaanesh, or have they pledged to her, it is because the Aeldari race is in the unfortunate position of having their souls pre forfeit. Compare it to humanity in the setting, who do not have any of those issues, and have the various Chaos entities competing for their attentions. Aeldari are chewed meat in comparison.

Yes but I am talking about Dark Eldar who switch to being corsairs but don't have to feed themsevles and hence Slaanesh.

I know that Slaanesh claims all Eldar souls - it does not mean he gets them - same as he did not get all the Eldar Gods or the oes the Harlequins trick out of him. If a non Slaanesh Daemon devours a soul stone pretty sure Slaanesh does not get it?

If a Drukhari switches to being a Corsair (and stops doing soul-drainy stuff), they would need to adopt the Path to protect themselves. The self-denial would protect them as it does other Corsairs; precariously.

The Cregorach thing is a loophole (no suprise there), and I guess the Ynnari change things quite a bit too.

No idea what happens if a Daemon eats a Spirit Stone...I would guess that they would to absorb it. I'm simply referring the the default destination of a soul after death; humans can make something of a choice, Aeldari no longer can, so they are less attractive to the Chaos powers.

Ynnari save you by having your soul get absorbed by nearby Eldar instead of Slaanesh or a soul stone. The appeal of which is beyond me because it seems awful even by comparison to a soul stone.

 Kroem wrote:
At least in the White Dwarf I have, they make a point of saying that although the Loxatl are quite happy to serve with worshippers of Chaos in conflicts, the Inquisition has seen no signs of Chaos corruption amoungst their race.

Maybe they support Chaos as a way to get at the Imperium.

The eldar have only 4 ways to avoid slannesh:

Adopt the path system and wear spirit stones
Live a simple life, with less stimulation and let your soul merge with a world spirit (I believe they still wear spirit stones though)
Consume the souls of others to replenish what Slannesh is slowly leeching away
Pledge your soul to a god, god through the ritual of binding*

*This is specifically Cegorach, but the concept of pledging your soul to a god and binding it is not new and not exclusive to Cegorach.

The chaos gods in the past have delighted in stealing away the souls of their brothers' champions. They take much more satisfaction in converting another god's champion to their cause than taking the souls of their lifelong worshippers.


there is nothing that stops the chaos gods from doing this to the eldar, it's just their souls are involuntarily bound to Slannesh at birth so the other gods would have to use various means to steal them away.

Cegorach's ritual shows it can be done and done by a god with far less power than Khorne or Tzeentch.


Ergo, it is not impossible for an eldar to fall to a different chaos gods and consciously pledge their soul to them.

I've attached the paragraph from the 2nd ed eldar codex where it describes chaos eldar. Modern background hasn't changed much from this. this book also has the cegorach ritual, exodites and the path systems as ways that avoid slannesh.

The world of humans that attempt to kill lions el Johnson in the firs DA HH book are chaos worshipers but they are seemingly normal. Not until DA attack do they try to summon the beasties

I think people get a bit confused with regards to the term ‘worship’. Sure speed freaks could ‘feed’ Slaanesh through their obsession with speed and loud noises, but I don’t believe this is comparable to worship. Just like all war grants power to Khorne and all disease sufferers sustain Nurgle all obsession to the point of excess will grant some power to Slaanesh.

To look at Orks specifically I personally feel the only realistic figure of worship among the chaos gods is Khorne, their innate love of battle could see them turn to Khorne. However I do feel that the Old Ones engineering has provided something of a fail safe Ork behaviour is already highly addictive, when an Ork does something it’s always 100%. If they’re going to travel they do it in the fastest, loudest and flashiest way possible. If they’re going to krump something they’re not going to be subtle about it. There really isn’t much for the chaos gods to get their hooks into because Orks can’t really be tempted to go that little bit further than they should. As a species, although they are tribal, fractious and warlike their shared beliefs, goals and sense of purpose are all terrifyingly similar, when compared to almost any of the other races.

 Overread wrote:
Meanwhile armies like Orks have some built in natural measures which help seriously restrict the chances of anything "non-orky" rising up in any great numbers.

I was wondering that through this topic. There are chaos orks, but they're apparently rare and get knobbled by regular orks pretty quickly. How much of that is because normal orky behaviour like battle-lust and speed obsession gets fed into Gork and Mork rather than the big 4? If they have the power to bat the chaos gods around, I'd say that's due to more than just sheer numbers of orks, otherwise Khorne would get a boost that would make the collective human psyche seem like a pittance.

It feels like orks had their version of Ynnead all along. Not airtight, not very conscious, but pretty effective.

 Vermis wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Meanwhile armies like Orks have some built in natural measures which help seriously restrict the chances of anything "non-orky" rising up in any great numbers.

I was wondering that through this topic. There are chaos orks, but they're apparently rare and get knobbled by regular orks pretty quickly. How much of that is because normal orky behaviour like battle-lust and speed obsession gets fed into Gork and Mork rather than the big 4? If they have the power to bat the chaos gods around, I'd say that's due to more than just sheer numbers of orks, otherwise Khorne would get a boost that would make the collective human psyche seem like a pittance.

It feels like orks had their version of Ynnead all along. Not airtight, not very conscious, but pretty effective.

Orks like fighting and have fun in doing so. Khorne is about killing and the shedding of blood, and as per the original Realms of Chaos books, this is meant to be a serious business, an act of bloody worship. The Realms of Chaos said that is why Khorne hates Slaanesh for Slaanesh views fighting and killing as just one more amusement.

Similarly, the Ork Stormboyz of Khorne as described in the original Freebooterz were dour and serious, unlike normal Orks.

So I would argue it is the attitude Orks take towards fighting that separates them from and prevents them from falling to Khorne (aside from a few rare exceptions like the Ork Stormboyz of Khorne).

So then why are Gork and Mork so powerful compared to Slaanesh?

 Vermis wrote:
So then why are Gork and Mork so powerful compared to Slaanesh?

Orks (as a whole, again barring rare exceptional cases out there) like the "simple" pleasures and don't seem to get up to the kinds of extreme exquisite extravagant depravity that humans and Eldar do.

I think there are two big issues with Chaos in and xenos as far as why the background mentions it occasionally and then drops it like a radioactive bad potato:
1. It just muddies the “aliens are creepy and weird” schtick
2. It just muddies the Chaos schtick
(and 3. Once you make a Chaos expansion for a race, everyone is going to want one, and ask why they can’t all ally together.)

I’m pretty sure that’s why Eldar and Dark Eldar ended up being (re)written as two different ways that Eldar completely avoid (dealing with the) taint of Chaos, instead of letting any Chaos Eldar escape past the Realm of Chaos, Rogue Trader, and 2nd edition material.

As I understood t. Slaanesh was an Eldar god, before any human worshppers took to their faith. After all, it was the creation of Slaanesh, that dvded and destroyed the Eldar civlizaton.

Also, there are distinctly different relationships to Chaos gods, any mortal can have. Worshipping Chaos isn't the same as being associated with Chaos:
The Red Corsairs are known in the fluff to not worship Chaos, but they definitely utilize Chaos psychic powers and dabble with Daemons. Same is probably true for Alpha Legion, which are rumoured to be closet loyalists after all, and probably some other of the more pragmatic CSM legions like Dark Legion or ron Warriors. -
As opposed to Wordbearers, Worldeaters, Emperor's Children, Thousand Son's and Deathguard, who go full r-tard on the religious aspect.

Then, there is a completely different category, being tainted by Chaos, or showing signs of corruption, which seems to be pretty much a question of physical manfestations.
It is definitely possible to associate or even worship Chaos and showng little taint or corruption. So, Inquisition reporting no signs of corruption within a certain xenos species is no proof against associaton with, or even worship of, Chaos.

The question of Orks worshipping Slaanesh or Tzeentch, to me, would be, could Orks even distinguish them from Gork and Mork? And, especially given the highly arbitrary nature of Ork faith, would it matter if they couldn't? For all we know, Gork and Mork could just be the orkish face of Slaanesh and Tzeentch.
When sightings of chaos tainted orks are reported, they are most often associated with Nurgle - who could truly be called un-orkish, given that he is mostly a patron of parasites of the flesh, while orks are fungi after all.
Khorne on the other hand is a strange one. His core feature, the unnatural blind rage, is pretty much a natural expression of all orks, but none of them seem to share his abject contempt for psychic powers...

I love this so much — It makes me things of a ork WAAAAGH slaughtering its way gleefully across a planet like a bunch of giant two-year-olds while Khorne screams at them “Stop having fun! This isn’t fun! This is serious!” like a neckbeard doing an online match with adolescents.

Iracundus wrote:

Orks like fighting and have fun in doing so. Khorne is about killing and the shedding of blood, and as per the original Realms of Chaos books, this is meant to be a serious business, an act of bloody worship. The Realms of Chaos said that is why Khorne hates Slaanesh for Slaanesh views fighting and killing as just one more amusement.

Similarly, the Ork Stormboyz of Khorne as described in the original Freebooterz were dour and serious, unlike normal Orks.

So I would argue it is the attitude Orks take towards fighting that separates them from and prevents them from falling to Khorne (aside from a few rare exceptions like the Ork Stormboyz of Khorne).