Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Ok so here are my questions:

Can the chaos gods be killed, i heard that a space marine guy tried and failed ( i also heard skarband went AHHGHGHGHGH *chink* and khorne is all like D:<
Is the hive mind a strong enough warp entity to hurt or kill a chaos god (shaow in the warp?)
Do the chaos gods have a physical manifestation?
Do the chaos gods have control over the warp?
What can hurt the chaos gods that arent er gods?

Killing Chaos Gods is simple. You just have to wipe out all sentient life in the universe. Necrons are on it!

The Chaos gods draw power and sustenance from the worship and emotions of the sentient races of the Milky Way galaxy. If all the races stopped generating power for the Chaos gods they would grow weaker and eventually starve and die. The tricky bit is the emotions and urges are so basic that individuals may still inadvertently end up fueling the Chaos gods. Furthermore, the Chaos gods are bloated with power right now so it would take a long time before they starved. In the meantime, they can still use their power to inspire and incite the acts and emotions that would feed them. Any of their daemons in the material world would also still be able to act, so one person being pacifist and feeling no rage or anger would not help them against that Bloodletter about to kill them with its blade. The only consolation would be that Khorne would gain no nourishment from that person while that person lived and upon death that person's soul would not go to Khorne.

The Tyranids pose a threat to the Chaos gods because the Tyranids threaten to eventually strip all life from the galaxy. The old omnicidal Necrons also had this goal (less so the new Necrons who seem more focused on ruling rather than wiping out other races). Without any life in the galaxy, the Chaos gods would have nothing to work with and would die.

Sabreguy wrote:
Ok so here are my questions:

Can the chaos gods be killed, i heard that a space marine guy tried and failed ( i also heard skarband went AHHGHGHGHGH *chink* and khorne is all like D:<
Is the hive mind a strong enough warp entity to hurt or kill a chaos god (shaow in the warp?)
Do the chaos gods have a physical manifestation?
Do the chaos gods have control over the warp?
What can hurt the chaos gods that arent er gods?

As mentioned above, yes they can be killed, but only by having all their resources (i.e humans, Eldar, Tau and other intelligent life) killed off. So the real threats would be Necrons and Tyranids, they are seemingly immune to Chaos, being emotionless walls of death and all. Furthermore the gods fight among themselves, but aren't strong enough to kill one another, or are too chaotic to actually get the job done.

Is the Hive Mind strong enough to kill them? Maybe. Trying to think about it makes my head hurt, though.

Chaos gods manifest themselves as Greater Daemons in realspace, or other things. In the way God manifested himself as a burning bush or Zeus as a randy bull in other religions, Chaos can possess anything that isn't a Necron, Tyranid or Grey Knight. But nobody knows (that is, GW haven't told us) what they look like in their warpspace realm. Other things are described, like Khorne's skull throne, Slaanesh's harem or Nurgle's disease cauldron. But not the gods' appearance. I just assume they look somewhat like the Greater Daemon models.

Nobody has control over the Warp! If Chaos had control, it wouldn't be Chaos!

Can they be killed? That presumes a lot about the way in which they exist. The Eldar story about the "birth" of Slaanesh is a good example of making such presumptions. A lot of fans think the depravity of the Eldar created Slaanesh. But there are statements in the Chaos Daemons dex to the effect of the Chaos gods having "always and never existed." The issue is that the Warp and real space do not exactly correspond. If you look into the Warp from real space, real space is the lens ... or, put slightly differently, to the extent that Chaos "touches" real space, it becomes "polluted" by Cosmos. The principle of order taints the principle of disorder -- from the perspective of real space, the Warp becomes organized, as it were, into reliable patterns of existence, namely the four Ruinous Powers. The fall of the Eldar therefore is not the birth of Slaanesh in a literal way but rather the discovery of Slaanesh or, to account for the other perspective, Slaanesh's discovery of the Eldar and our galaxy.

Also, I don't think the Hive Mind is a warp entity.

 Manchu wrote:
Can they be killed? That presumes a lot about the way in which they exist. The Eldar story about the "birth" of Slaanesh is a good example of making such presumptions. A lot of fans think the depravity of the Eldar created Slaanesh. But there are statements in the Chaos Daemons dex to the effect of the Chaos gods having "always and never existed." The issue is that the Warp and real space do not exactly correspond. If you look into the Warp from real space, real space is the lens ... or, put slightly differently, to the extent that Chaos "touches" real space, it becomes "polluted" by Cosmos. The principle of order taints the principle of disorder -- from the perspective of real space, the Warp becomes organized, as it were, into reliable patterns of existence, namely the four Ruinous Powers. The fall of the Eldar therefore is not the birth of Slaanesh in a literal way but rather the discovery of Slaanesh or, to account for the other perspective, Slaanesh's discovery of the Eldar and our galaxy.

Also, I don't think the Hive Mind is a warp entity.

Aaaaand my head just exploded. Thanks...

Yes, technically.


They feed off of emotions and actions, and have the sentience to keep mortals feeling those emotions and doing those actions.

If you were able to either purge all sentient life from the universe(necrons) or conquor the universe and prevent sentient life from having those emotions, at least to where the emotions would be weak, you could cause the chaos gods to dissolve.


You could never get rid of them completely, but you could make them so weak and powerless that they may as well not exist. If the restrictions keeping the fueling emotions in check were lifted, the chaos gods would reform anew over many thousands of years.




And the whole Slannesh thing is fairly easily explained by the fact that time, as we define it, does not exist in the warp. It is an alternate dimension, with its own things.

From the perspective of our universe, Slannesh did not exist before a certain point. From the perspective of the Warp, Slannesh and all the other Warp dieties have always existed.

I was always under the impression that since emotions create the dark gods, so if one of them "dies" they'll just reform, perhaps in another guise.

But I may be wrong because when Malal disappeared he never reappeared again. I mean, there aren't any omnicidal maniacs bent on unreason who wage war on chaos while ironically feeding....

...wait a minute.

 Boggy Man wrote:
I was always under the impression that since emotions create the dark gods, so if one of them "dies" they'll just reform, perhaps in another guise.

But I may be wrong because when Malal disappeared he never reappeared again. I mean, there aren't any omnicidal maniacs bent on unreason who wage war on chaos while ironically feeding....

...wait a minute.

He's called Malice now.

Imo the only way to kill the Chaos gods is to end all sentient life. The HH book Legion gives the idea that if Humanity goes extinct the Chaos gods will die too. Of course the giant logic hole of mentioning Slaanesh (and others, but ill stick to Slaanesh) is required. S/he was formed by the Eldar, yet s/he didnt die when s/he killed almost all of the in birth. She just jumped over to Humanity. Every sentient lifeform must therefore die, because they can all display emotion which feeds the Chaos gods. Even Tau will feed them without a presence in the warp. Think about it, was humantiy psychic when we, according to gw, birthed some of the Chaos gods in the Medieval period. I forgot to add something, they have trapped sentient species in the warp for their amusement. Who keep getting resurrected by them, so if that counts they have basicly an endless amount of emotion if they could trap enough people

Mankind lost all of its psykers when the Emperor was born in 8000 BC, it took nearly 20,000 years for psykers to reemerge.

Mankind isn't soulless, which is really what is important. This gives some sort of connection to the Warp allowing the emotions to flow.

Thats my point I was trying to make in regards to the Tau. Even if they dont register in the warp they still feed it. Just like Humans do.
If the end does doom for the Chaos gods they will probably ally with whoever provides them sustenance. They will defend the Imperium (even if it doesnt want it) from the Tyranids or Necrons to save themselves. Its like Tzeentch's grand scheme, he has no end plan, because ending it would end him.

Except Tau would barely feed the warp at all.

they are literaly between the line of being soulless or not. They would feed the warp so little that they might as well not feed it at all.

The difference between a human soul and a tau soul is like the difference between a protozoa and a dog. The tau soul is so tiny you can't even see it.

And a Psyker's soul is like a giant elephant next to the little dog.

Sabreguy wrote:
Ok so here are my questions:

Can the chaos gods be killed, i heard that a space marine guy tried and failed ( i also heard skarband went AHHGHGHGHGH *chink* and khorne is all like D:<
Is the hive mind a strong enough warp entity to hurt or kill a chaos god (shaow in the warp?)
Do the chaos gods have a physical manifestation?
Do the chaos gods have control over the warp?
What can hurt the chaos gods that arent er gods?

My opinions:

1. Yes, though some Chaos Gods are so powerful only other powerful entities can harm them. There has
2. The Hive Mind would destory the chaos gods if it ate everything. As far as the warp entity part. I always considered the hive mind to be seperate from the warp. It can affect warp transmission and block warp travel, but can't adversly effect it on its plane of existence. Maybe it could block connection to the material plane.
3. Chaos Gods can Physically manifest themselves in the Warp as far as I know, but do not. Why? Maybe because if they did the other Daemon Gods would be able to kill them. Or maybe even mortals.
4. Yes, even Khorne was able to torture a daemon prince, by reversing time to so that he kept dying, by Ork Power Klaw.
5. The emotions being killed off would be a start. The Emperor's plan seemed to be to take servents from them by creating the GOd-Emperor Persona.

But tiny doesnt mean useless, quantity also matters. I think they need to provide more information about this topic. Like the Eldar, they are the same to Humans as Humans are to Tau. Yet they only gave birth to a single Chaos god. As of now Humans are the best option to them, but it may only take time before they have to jump ship if Humanity is killed off enough.

Chaos Gods do not have direct physical manifestations on in real-space in the same way the inferior gods of the Eldar do (such as the Avatar of Khaine). When they need to speak, they do so through Daemons or various effects and artifacts of Chaos. An actual manifestation of a Chaos God in Realspace would corrupt Reality so thoroughly that a very large region (many thousands of light-years across) would effectively become The Warp.

 Crimson wrote:
Killing Chaos Gods is simple. You just have to wipe out all sentient life in the universe. Necrons are on it!

Just the way you say this made me laugh Kudo's for that! But yeah, your pretty much right about this Though Tau seem to be immune to warp/chaos? Although in this case you could say Farsight might be the first to finally go chaoss,.. though that is open for debate...

Are Nids sentient in such a way they have feelings and such?

 Waaghboss Grobnub wrote:

Are Nids sentient in such a way they have feelings and such?

That's a good question! Though I doubt that they'd have any feelings, they are sentient (albeit a primative insectoid sentience), so they must provide some feedback to the Warp. Since they have such a low-level intelligence, I'm sure the amount of feedback is negligible in comparison to mankind, but would it be possible to have enough of them to create enough of an effect on the warp to manifest as a new Ruinous Power?

Questions like that keep me up at night. Better stock up on Raid...

Due to writing themselves in a hole, GW has shown that basically the chaos gods are inexorably attached to humanity and vise versa.

Eldar have their own pantheon, orks have theirs (who might actually be stronger depending on the fluff), tau seem souless, necrons are souless, and tyranids have the hive mind.

This leaves humanity as the only source of worship and emotional creation that outside of a few minor races means that humanity is both the fuel and spark of creation for the chaos gods. Humanity goes the chaos gods go. Indeed, so was the plan of the Cabal in the HH novels.

 buddha wrote:
Due to writing themselves in a hole, GW has shown that basically the chaos gods are inexorably attached to humanity and vise versa.

Eldar have their own pantheon, orks have theirs (who might actually be stronger depending on the fluff), tau seem souless, necrons are souless, and tyranids have the hive mind.

This leaves humanity as the only source of worship and emotional creation that outside of a few minor races means that humanity is both the fuel and spark of creation for the chaos gods. Humanity goes the chaos gods go. Indeed, so was the plan of the Cabal in the HH novels.

Mehh mehh,.. yeah Necrons seem soulles, but their characters show a lot of character,.. Trazyn LIKES to find artifacts, Obyron has a immense sense of Duty towards Zahndrekh... doesn't this mean that at least a part of the Necrons have retained their souls?? Also they HATE the C'than, and i believe they hate the fleash wearing as well..

Tau are far from soulles though,.. they have a lot from the Asian Cultures,.. which are far from soulles. Those are full of tradition and sense of duty...


While tyranid gaunts seem to be pure instinct, the Hyve tyrants and Swarm Lords can actualy think for themselves... Though i doubt they are connected to the warp in the same way humans are..

Iracundus wrote:
The Chaos gods draw power and sustenance from the worship and emotions of the sentient races of the Milky Way galaxy. If all the races stopped generating power for the Chaos gods they would grow weaker and eventually starve and die. The tricky bit is the emotions and urges are so basic that individuals may still inadvertently end up fueling the Chaos gods. Furthermore, the Chaos gods are bloated with power right now so it would take a long time before they starved. In the meantime, they can still use their power to inspire and incite the acts and emotions that would feed them. Any of their daemons in the material world would also still be able to act, so one person being pacifist and feeling no rage or anger would not help them against that Bloodletter about to kill them with its blade. The only consolation would be that Khorne would gain no nourishment from that person while that person lived and upon death that person's soul would not go to Khorne.

The Tyranids pose a threat to the Chaos gods because the Tyranids threaten to eventually strip all life from the galaxy. The old omnicidal Necrons also had this goal (less so the new Necrons who seem more focused on ruling rather than wiping out other races). Without any life in the galaxy, the Chaos gods would have nothing to work with and would die.

That's pretty much my take on it. I tend to think that opposing Chaos powers could knock each other out though, as one or the other became stronger. Thus, Khorne and Slaanesh end up virtually destroying Khaine between the two of them. If the Star Child came to full power, he might be strong enough to knock out the major, corrupt powers, etc.

 Waaghboss Grobnub wrote:

Tau are far from soulles though,.. they have a lot from the Asian Cultures,.. which are far from soulles. Those are full of tradition and sense of duty...

I think you have completely missed what Soulless means in the context of the 40k universe.

Here, it literally means you have no soul. Or actually they have such tiny souls that they may as well have none.

Soul in the 40k universe is a concrete object that can be independently identified. Its a signiture your existance projects into the Warp. It also correlates with psychic powers.


Tau almost completely lack this signiture to where its almost indistinguishible from the normal warp fluctuations.

So, compared to humans, eldar, and other more psychic races, the Tau have no souls.


Pariahs on the other hand have Anti-souls. If a psyker has a positive warp signiture, a Pariah has a negative warp signiture.

The tau could be viewed as having zero value warp signiture, or at least one approaching zero.

As a fan of Chaos, I'm looking for ways for Chaos to be even more eternal than Necrons and Tyranid, and not just existing because of sentient life. Do Chaos need sentient life? How about even more fundamental aspects of the materium? Sentient life just gives Chaos form because it's sentient life which are observing Chaos.

By even more fundamental I mean, that Khorne exists as long as plus and minus fight each other (just are opposite) / electrons fight protons. Slaanesh exists for roughly the same reason but more because of the concept that in some instants there's much more plus(or minus) than the opposite, so the opposite "don't have a chance" and what is in excess "has nothing to fight/worry about"/extremes.

Tzeentch exist because of change from plus and minus emerging and becoming neutral/ electrons and protons emerging and becoming a neutron. Nurgle exist for the same reason but more because the sub particles end than becoming something new.

So how can Chaos have form when there's no sentient life, so it can keep fighting Necrons and Tyranids when all other races are gone?

There must be a way...

One way is that, like robots only need to be created and from there on they just exist and do their work, the same way Chaos got form. Chaos is now self aware and "independent", just because their creators/those who gave them form doesn't exist any more, they still exist. Necrons were created but even though they don't have sentient life as per say, they still have some kind of drive.

protons and electrons don't have emotions.

The Warp is a dimension of emotional energy. Without emotion the warp becomes stagnent. You have to have emotions and a connection to the warp to give it energy.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Waaghboss Grobnub wrote:

Tau are far from soulles though,.. they have a lot from the Asian Cultures,.. which are far from soulles. Those are full of tradition and sense of duty...

I think you have completely missed what Soulless means in the context of the 40k universe.

Here, it literally means you have no soul. Or actually they have such tiny souls that they may as well have none.

Soul in the 40k universe is a concrete object that can be independently identified. Its a signiture your existance projects into the Warp. It also correlates with psychic powers.


Tau almost completely lack this signiture to where its almost indistinguishible from the normal warp fluctuations.

So, compared to humans, eldar, and other more psychic races, the Tau have no souls.


Pariahs on the other hand have Anti-souls. If a psyker has a positive warp signiture, a Pariah has a negative warp signiture.

The tau could be viewed as having zero value warp signiture, or at least one approaching zero.

Aaaaaaaaah So thats how it meant... Hmmmk


@Zinderneuf,...

I believe that i read somewhere that it is impossible for a chaos god to kill another... I believe they are in perfect balance,... Should Korne get a victory against Nurgle,.. Nurgle will have a victory against Slaanesh at the same time, and then Slaanesh will have a victory against Tzeentz, and then Tzeentch will have a Victory against Khorne,... much like an unending cycle,.. One just cannot seem to get the upper hand. In short,.. Every victory comes at the cost of a defeat Now i do not know if this is true,.. but i seem to have a memory of this..

Well as I wrote, I just wanted a far out/weird kind of brain storm to make Chaos eternal. As it is now Chaos "can't win"... It wipes out all sentient life, it ends itself. That's what I don't like. So Chaos fight but actually don't want to win if it want to exist. If it keeps fighting it ends itself. Chaos should be fighting creations which aren't sentient life, but it doesn't, it fights what's making it exist. These reasons must be why it's called Chaos...

1) chaos gods get their power from every single consciousness in the galaxy except piriahs (e.g. tau and necrons) so killing a god is a bit difficult
2) physical manifestation, hmmmmmmm. in dark disciple (the book) i think it was, i think it was slaanesh who took over this dark apostles body so he/she/that could eat up all the dark eldar in a ship by summoning daemonettes everywhere. so yeah physical manifestation is cool
3) to some extent sure. it was them who cast the primarchs across the galaxy, them who scattered the dark angel unforgiven, and when you do rituals for them, the warp tend to tear out a new one. the power of the gods aren't really clear since their ya know, are too damn lazy to do shet in a real world
4) probably not, a man can't directly blow up a gods head off, and if he does, well that god can just come back by absorbing more emotion, so shet aye

 Waaghboss Grobnub wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Waaghboss Grobnub wrote:

Tau are far from soulles though,.. they have a lot from the Asian Cultures,.. which are far from soulles. Those are full of tradition and sense of duty...

I think you have completely missed what Soulless means in the context of the 40k universe.

Here, it literally means you have no soul. Or actually they have such tiny souls that they may as well have none.

Soul in the 40k universe is a concrete object that can be independently identified. Its a signiture your existance projects into the Warp. It also correlates with psychic powers.


Tau almost completely lack this signiture to where its almost indistinguishible from the normal warp fluctuations.

So, compared to humans, eldar, and other more psychic races, the Tau have no souls.


Pariahs on the other hand have Anti-souls. If a psyker has a positive warp signiture, a Pariah has a negative warp signiture.

The tau could be viewed as having zero value warp signiture, or at least one approaching zero.

Aaaaaaaaah So thats how it meant... Hmmmk


@Zinderneuf,...

I believe that i read somewhere that it is impossible for a chaos god to kill another... I believe they are in perfect balance,... Should Korne get a victory against Nurgle,.. Nurgle will have a victory against Slaanesh at the same time, and then Slaanesh will have a victory against Tzeentz, and then Tzeentch will have a Victory against Khorne,... much like an unending cycle,.. One just cannot seem to get the upper hand. In short,.. Every victory comes at the cost of a defeat Now i do not know if this is true,.. but i seem to have a memory of this..

Its not that they can't, its that they won't get a final victory against each other. If one god killed another, there would be imbalance and the other gods would be forced to kill each other off.

It would destroy the balance of power and result in total annhilation. It would also mean the end of the struggle.

So none of them are willing to be the first one to do it. Its kinda like nuclear weapons, nobody wants to be the guy that launches the first one.

If you were able to either purge all sentient life from the universe(necrons) or conquor the universe and prevent sentient life from having those emotions, at least to where the emotions would be weak, you could cause the chaos gods to dissolve.

Technically, they also draw power from nature, grass and stuff. Albeit really few.

 Serevor wrote:

If you were able to either purge all sentient life from the universe(necrons) or conquor the universe and prevent sentient life from having those emotions, at least to where the emotions would be weak, you could cause the chaos gods to dissolve.

Technically, they also draw power from nature, grass and stuff. Albeit really few.

Yeah, but it would be far too weak to sustain them and so they would die.