Are the chaos gods purely evil and horrible things that just happen to have a small positive aspect,

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**AngryAngel80**

Yes, but for Nurgle he loves everyone.

**Hecaton**

Galas wrote:
The Chaos Gods have existed for longer than humanity in 40k universe and not just "In the warp everything exists and dont exist at the same time" but in real time space too. Bel'Akor is older than humanity for example and he was a demon prince since a loooong time.

No. It's exactly because time is fucky in the warp. Humanity's negative emotions created the Chaos gods; the fact that they can affect things before their "birth" is relevant too.

**Stux**

I think its misleading to think of chaos as Evil as such. To me that implies a calculated decision to inflict harm for selfish reasons.

Chaos is just a reflection of aspects of the collective human (and other mortal) psyche back on itself. It makes no choice to be what it is, it simply is.

Humans that follow chaos you might describe as evil, but the denizens of the warp themselves? They're only really driven by the imprints in the warp that birthed them - they never had a choice about what they were.

**carldooley**

Chaos is chaotic, who knew?
take these 2 sayings, and merge them for the 40k perspective of chaos.
1. Chaos is chaotic. In one engagement, a chaos legion will fight on your side and be your best friend, but at the flip of a coin they can\will turn their blades and bullets on you. It may be before you meet them, at any point of the engagement, or a hundred years after you are dust. Chaos is chaotic.
2. The gamblers dilemma, or the house ALWAYS wins. The odds of something happening are always 50/50, but eventually the house is going to take it all. In this case, the house is GW, and while the gambler in this case is the person betting on whether or not their chaos allies will remain allies, the only time that matters is when chaos stops being an ally.

**Stux**

The house always wins precisely because its NOT a simple 50/50. The house wins because the payout doesn't match the odds of the event actually happening.

Simple example with a roulette wheel: you have 36 numbers you can bet on, and you get 36 times your stake if you guess correctly. On average that means you break even and so does the house, over a large number of bets.

BUT the wheel actually has a 0 (and sometimes also a 00) which are not factored in to calculating the payout odds. This is the casino profit margin. You win 36 times your stake but you only have a 1 in 37 (or 38) chance of winning. Over a large number of bets, the house will inevitably drain you. The house always wins, mathematically.

In practice it can be a lot more complicated with other ways to bet and other games, but that is the principle of how it works and why the saying is true - that the odds were always against you.

**Table**

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
They’re basically Nature Gods gone completely insane.

This is well demonstrated in Realm of Chaos, where it explains that the Gods make no distinction between the gifts they bestow on their followers.

You could complete a mighty task in their name, and earn reward or boon. You might receive iron hard skin, and immortality. Where as Unlucky Bob, who the God favoured more, received a pinhead, silly voice, silly walk and face of a Pug.

That Unlucky Bob’s gifts are debilitating or useless doesn’t matter to the God - all rewards are equal in their eyes.

They’re kind like Grandparents gone senile. What did they get you for Christmas? Well....it could be a manky, unwashed pair of socks they thought were something else. It could be a massive wad of cash, gifted in a moment of lucidity because they can’t take it with them. Which you receive is a matter of blind luck.

They’re obsession given form (hence Slaanesh’s sheer potential and threat to the rest of the pantheon). Nurgle loves all life, but doesn’t rank them by sentience. When we die, all manner of insects and that benefit. When the more the life the betterer the life, Nurgle doesn’t care that his end result caused one death.

When Nurgle answers the prayer of the sick man, he doesn’t cure the disease - he just stops it from killing you. You still absolutely suffer.

Tzeentch is political thinking taken to extremes where everything is a plan within a plan within a plan, and quite possibly without any particular goal.

Slaanesh is about improvement and indulgence of the self, regardless of the cost to others.

Khorne? Death is death is death. He cares not from whence the blood flows (though originally, he would strike down those who only killed the weak in his name as being unworthy).

So they’re not actually evil - and frankly their overall sentience is in question. But they are hopelessly, irrevocably insane. Hence you cannot treat with Chaos. You cannot master Chaos.

Correct on most, but the Nurgle part is wrong. In many cases, he does indeed take away the suffering. Death Guard are an example.

**Racerguy180**

Oh, no you still suffer. You're just less inclined to be debilitated by it.

**Sherrypie**

Death Guard do suffer, make no mistake. Their literary shtick is about fallen knights, twisted into the very horrors they once proudly defied. Many still hate and pity themselves for it while lashing out at the world which cruelly pushed them into their current lot. Only in gleeful insanity does suffering under Chaos end, and by that point you as a person are already long gone, even if your physical form still wreaks havoc anew.

Don't do Chaos, kids.

**Hecaton**

Sherrypie wrote:
Death Guard do suffer, make no mistake. Their literary shtick is about fallen knights, twisted into the very horrors they once proudly defied. Many still hate and pity themselves for it while lashing out at the world which cruelly pushed them into their current lot. Only in gleeful insanity does suffering under Chaos end, and by that point you as a person are already long gone, even if your physical form still wreaks havoc anew.

Don't do Chaos, kids.

I dunno, man. At least it isn't the Imperium.

**NinthMusketeer**

I think there is an argument to be made that in a realm of constant warfare the suffering of being a Chaos worshiper is relief. Simply because a mindset that would be insane for the conventional world we know IRL is quite sane within the context of insane levels of warfare. One might say that the mentality of a human is not adapted for war, but the mentality of Chaos is.