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So my question is:
Do the Chaos Gods actually want to destroy the IoM? Or rather do they want to maintain the current status-quo of blood shed and suffering?

To answer this question I think we need to look at the motivations of the gods of chaos and the actions so far.

Black Crusades
First exhibit is the "ineffective" black crusades. These have not had the effect of major progress so far toward the fall of the IoM.
-What these have done though is further the wants of the Chaos Gods by spreading pain (slaneesh), bloody death (Khorne), disease (Nurgle), and causing planet and sector wide change (Tzeentch).
-They also keep the IoM focused on the Chaos Gods and eye of terror where they fear and hate the Chaos Gods where these emotions only empower these entities of the warp.
-Finally the crusades make it impossible to cut off knowledge of the Chaos Gods from the general populace as the IG troopers will have had direct contact with daemons having fought at least spawn. This means some small number of them will take home the message that these powers exist and will respond to those who call upon them.

Chaos Gods Motivations
This is the hardest part to figure out. What do the chaos gods want? I would say increased power is the major concern of the Chaos Gods where only Nurgle seems to have any particular desire for his followers to "survive". If an increase in power is the primary motivation then each god needs to increase the number of worshipers and/or the number of individuals undergoing their aligned emotions. I am unsure of which gives more power but I think these are the main ways to strengthen a warp entity.

Nurgle

Lexinum: In Nurgle's case, the source of power is the living's fear of inevitable death and disease, and their unconscious response to that fear, which is the "power of life", the motivating power of mankind and other races.

According to this the IoM as it is now is a great thing for Nurgle as the hive cities maximize the number of living individuals whose primary purpose in life is being forced to work long hours to produce for a war efforts. Motivation is given by the "threats" to the IoM that will kill them if they do not produce. If the IoM falls then plagues will move slower and only small sectors can fear death from any one threat and will probably die from that threat rather than staying alive to further fear it. Nurgle should love the IoM as it is almost a perfect battery for the lord of decay and stagnation...I will count him as IoM+.

Khorne

Lexinum: Khorne is the Chaos god of anger, violence, and hate. Khorne is the mightiest and the second to emerge of the four Gods of Chaos, fully coming into existence during Terra's Middle Ages. Every act of violence gives Khorne power, whether committed by his followers or by their enemies.

Khorne should want anything that means more blood shed and battles. If the IoM is destroyed such wide spread constant warfare could not be maintained. Without the IG level forces being churned out to die in the millions Khorne would be a sad boy. He should just want to keep the IoM at maximum maintainable warfare mode rather than destroying it outright. Interestingly enough the Inquisition and SoB priests are probably empowering Khorne with their hatred of the heretics and chaos gods. I will say IoM+.

Slaanesh

Lexinum: Slaanesh is the Chaos God of lust, greed, excess, pain, pleasure, perfection and hedonism. Slaanesh was the last of the major Chaos Gods to be born - coming into existence with the collapse of the Eldar civilisation.

This is the tough one. I could see the arguement going either way in that with the IoM in existence the heights that greed, lust, and excess can reach are much higher than if the IoM fell. Without the IoM however there would probably be more numbers of extreme cases of these emotions but they could never wish for the sheer wealth and excess that a powerful person in the IoM could reach. I will say conflicted with a distraction clause as she/he/it is still hard on for the eldar.

Tzeentch

Lexinum: Tzeentch is a God of Chaos who represents the vitality and volatility of change. Tzeentch is closely associated with sorcery and magic, as well as dynamic mutation, and grand, convoluted scheming. The domains of history, destiny, intrigue and plots are his chief interests, and in pursuit of these aspects he listens to the dreams and hopes of all and watches their plans take form.

This is probably the hardest one to call. Keeping the IoM in existence would seem to go against the lord of change. However with the IoM alive the degree of change from any single decision is much larger and magnified than without the IoM. For all we know the lord of change could destroy the IoM but be planning to bring back the emperor just for the biggest change possible. I will say IoM? as one head of the lord of change may not know the plans of the others.

My overall thoughts and the summary are:
The Chaos Gods do not want to destroy the IoM but rather to keep it a buzzing beehive of contention.

Let me know what you think and any arguments for or against. Please be cordial to others in your replies and don't foget the when joking .

The IoM is a political structure. The Chaos Gods could get the same thing turning all of its worlds into Daemon Worlds. There's also plenty of other mortals out there to fight, make sick, have plans with, or learn what gets them off.

They want to destroy the Imperium because it will grant them even greater influence imo. Whats better then a million semi-ordered world? A million disordered cut off worlds with rebellions/civil war and psykers running rampant. The Chaos gods were formed in the time of our Middle Ages (except Slaanesh), enough violence and disease. The fall of the Imperium would be delicious from Nurgle's point of view for example, no more quarantine authority to contain his diseases to a single world, people would flee and spread it to other worlds. Massive suffering and decay due to lack of food on hive worlds would feed him greatly. Also the fact of massive birth rates, which are countered by shipping off massive numbers to the IG in exchange for other materials, this would not happen anymore. Lack of necessities would bring these massive populations into conflict over those remaining (blood for the blood god right?).
Tzeentch likes manipulation, backstabbing and change. While the loss of the mighty fun, dark alleys, hand rubbing inquisition might be a shame it would still happen amongst the traitor marines. One might argue that it would become a more massive part, as Chaos marines might quikcly develop empires on the ruins of the Imperium. Also like you said it would be massive change. As for Slaanesh, difficult, but it already is with the Imperium. With the fall of the IoM controls would slip away, people would perhaps become more depraved with local law enforcement being unable to cope. And war also knows a lot of depravity, even now, which s/he might possibly feed on as the less martial aspect of war.
The survivors would probably be conquered by the Chaos marines. Who will start playing the great game in the materium to feed their masters.

@Psienesis: Actually do daemons even add to the warp when they feel? Daemon worlds are much lower in population and have worn down populations who are pretty much wrung out in terms of their will to live, blood lust, or sexual drive due to constant exposure to daemons. Kind of like how to get tougher against punches the karate guys will have their dojo mates hit them with sticks.

@Disciple of Fate: In the sort run, yes. what happens when all of the hive worlds have died from starvation due to not having a working economy to support them? Do you really think that there will be any real travel between sectors with no warp travel? The entire IoM would immediately be split into sectors and these sectors would either stay as normal or have a quick bursts of war which would settle down to gorilla warfare relatively quickly as neither side will have the resources to maintain a 100 million man force. The IG can fight and die all over the galaxy in the billions due to the support structure that is the IoM and the emperor. Without that the armies will have to scale back in size. Diseases will only be able to claim a single sector without warp travel which is entirely available due to the IoM.

Now if the CSM could quickly reconquer the IoM and manage it in an efficient tyrannical way then this could work as they can re-enable warp travel between sectors. However have you seen the CSM? They would have to work together and that is not going to happen.

 ansacs wrote:
@Psienesis: Actually do daemons even add to the warp when they feel? Daemon worlds are much lower in population and have worn down populations who are pretty much wrung out in terms of their will to live, blood lust, or sexual drive due to constant exposure to daemons. Kind of like how to get tougher against punches the karate guys will have their dojo mates hit them with sticks.

@Disciple of Fate: In the sort run, yes. what happens when all of the hive worlds have died from starvation due to not having a working economy to support them? Do you really think that there will be any real travel between sectors with no warp travel? The entire IoM would immediately be split into sectors and these sectors would either stay as normal or have a quick bursts of war which would settle down to gorilla warfare relatively quickly as neither side will have the resources to maintain a 100 million man force. The IG can fight and die all over the galaxy in the billions due to the support structure that is the IoM and the emperor. Without that the armies will have to scale back in size. Diseases will only be able to claim a single sector without warp travel which is entirely available due to the IoM.

Now if the CSM could quickly reconquer the IoM and manage it in an efficient tyrannical way then this could work as they can re-enable warp travel between sectors. However have you seen the CSM? They would have to work together and that is not going to happen.

Chaos doesnt need the astronomicon as much as the Imperium does, their gods hold power over the warp (not the storms in most cases though), so could allow safe passage to their followers (guiding them trough the warp so to speak). You could argue the eye of terror could focus as a beacon (its large and violent), normal navigators would probably turn mad from using it, but chaos navigators might not. Think about Gellar Fields, Chaos ships like the Terminus Est have nothing to fear from the warp anymore, they already suffered the consequences. They would never allow the Emperor to live as a beacon, its always been their goal to kill him. There is also mention in some HH books of short range warp beacons, making short jumps possible, thereby leapfrogging disease around.
Would hive worlds starve though? Its indicated they recycle their own dead for a portion of food, if desperate enough they could just eat each other (and what better way to get your free meat then those unknown people from the other side of town?), the Crusade of Fire lists one such hive world. On the fact of splitting up, this is what Chaos wants, only by staying together has the IoM survived. Local sectors could never stop a Chaos attack like the Black Crusades, they just have too few resources. After that I could imagine forming their own Chaos empires and just fighting each other with their new worlds/people. Siege of Castellax mentions such a scenario on a Chaos world, how its being provided for by Chaos marines for the production it provides in their war effort.

The goals and aims of the mortal followers of Chaos are not those of their masters in the Warp. Most traitors want to exact revenge on the Imperium in some way or another, but that doesn't concern the Dark Gods in the slightest as long as there's a constant supply of war, decay, intrigue and excess.

I'd say the only instance where the Gods have taken direct action on Imperial politics was the Horus Heresy. But then, the Emperor's plan to root out all entropy from mankind directly threatened their existance.

I think that at this point the chaos gods are self sufficient. They feed on death, pleasure, rot, and change, but they don't NEED them anymore. If humanity were to die, they might lose a lot of power, but they will still exists. The IoM is a nice and constant source of fuel for them, all they have to do is launch a crusade every so often, or send marauders to stir the pot.

Stopped at 'ineffective crusade'

I imagine you're of the type that regards any crusade that doesn't go all the way to Terra (regardless of it's actual goals) as a failure.

Eldar birthed Slaanesh without any input from the race of man, all this 'Chaos needs humans to survive' is pretty bs.

MarsNZ wrote:
Stopped at 'ineffective crusade'

I imagine you're of the type that regards any crusade that doesn't go all the way to Terra (regardless of it's actual goals) as a failure.

Eldar birthed Slaanesh without any input from the race of man, all this 'Chaos needs humans to survive' is pretty bs.

Not at all, that is why it is in quotations as they are only ineffective if their goal was to destroy terra in that crusade. They are extremely effective if the goal is to further the desires of chaos gods by spreading strife and disease.

They also do not starve but they loose tremendous power. Look at the chaos gods before the Eldar went orgytastic they were much weaker than they were during and after. Look at the chaos gods 30K versus 40K there are daemons constantly bubbling from the warp to the materium in 40K where they were rarely seen 30K. This indicates that the current IoM gives them more power than the 30K IoM did. If they kill off the large empire of near middle age level superstition and strife then they will loose power. This is unless they can figure out a way to create an even more tyrannical empire or replace the humans with another group who can feed them emotions. Perhaps the Tau are meant to be this group?

@Disciple of Fate
The problem with no astronomicon is that the only people who will move around don't do a good job at maximizing populations. They tend to kill them in a semi-perminment way or make them so down trodden they just don't care about anything at all. For most of the chaos gods the best population are hateful fear-mongering hedonistic semi-cultists in great quantity...well pretty much the top and under ground floors of a hive city.

Hive cities are huge. They are large countries by today's standards crammed in a city where nothing grows. What would happen if you were to cut a hive city off from its primary trade partners? You would eat each other for perhaps a few years but this is an ever decreasing cycle which progress extremely quickly to no city at all.

I think CSM the faction definitely wants to take over the IoM. I think the Chaos Gods themselves have no desire to see the IoM fall, they may not act to keep it alive (short of to stop tyranids or necrons from taking over) but the IoM is a pretty good deal for them as it is now. There is even a sort of hint to this in HH where they show Horus the future with the god emperor as a corpse god with religious zealots as followers and they laugh. They knew full well that they would get a corpse emperor and they liked the idea enough to invest some major efforts into it in the 30K millennium.

The Chaos Gods want to destroy the IoM, it is still an existential threat to them.

 ansacs wrote:

MarsNZ wrote:
Stopped at 'ineffective crusade'

I imagine you're of the type that regards any crusade that doesn't go all the way to Terra (regardless of it's actual goals) as a failure.

Eldar birthed Slaanesh without any input from the race of man, all this 'Chaos needs humans to survive' is pretty bs.

Not at all, that is why it is in quotations as they are only ineffective if their goal was to destroy terra in that crusade. They are extremely effective if the goal is to further the desires of chaos gods by spreading strife and disease.

They also do not starve but they loose tremendous power. Look at the chaos gods before the Eldar went orgytastic they were much weaker than they were during and after. Look at the chaos gods 30K versus 40K there are daemons constantly bubbling from the warp to the materium in 40K where they were rarely seen 30K. This indicates that the current IoM gives them more power than the 30K IoM did. If they kill off the large empire of near middle age level superstition and strife then they will loose power. This is unless they can figure out a way to create an even more tyrannical empire or replace the humans with another group who can feed them emotions. Perhaps the Tau are meant to be this group?

@Disciple of Fate
The problem with no astronomicon is that the only people who will move around don't do a good job at maximizing populations. They tend to kill them in a semi-perminment way or make them so down trodden they just don't care about anything at all. For most of the chaos gods the best population are hateful fear-mongering hedonistic semi-cultists in great quantity...well pretty much the top and under ground floors of a hive city.

Hive cities are huge. They are large countries by today's standards crammed in a city where nothing grows. What would happen if you were to cut a hive city off from its primary trade partners? You would eat each other for perhaps a few years but this is an ever decreasing cycle which progress extremely quickly to no city at all.

I think CSM the faction definitely wants to take over the IoM. I think the Chaos Gods themselves have no desire to see the IoM fall, they may not act to keep it alive (short of to stop tyranids or necrons from taking over) but the IoM is a pretty good deal for them as it is now. There is even a sort of hint to this in HH where they show Horus the future with the god emperor as a corpse god with religious zealots as followers and they laugh. They knew full well that they would get a corpse emperor and they liked the idea enough to invest some major efforts into it in the 30K millennium.

Considering that during 30K, there was far less races actively worshipping and trying to pull Daemons in.. After 30K? Half the legions of space marines, a ton of Imperial Guard, many worlds, Plenty of mechancius etc..

With them actively worshipping and bringing in new daemons, they began to destabalize space. Kinda like that one principle that you rip reality one to many times and the holes get easier to pass through.

Also the Chaos Gods were pretty effective before the Birth of Slaanesh. It's just it had a harder time bringing things through to the Immaterium world.

 ansacs wrote:

MarsNZ wrote:
Stopped at 'ineffective crusade'

I imagine you're of the type that regards any crusade that doesn't go all the way to Terra (regardless of it's actual goals) as a failure.

Eldar birthed Slaanesh without any input from the race of man, all this 'Chaos needs humans to survive' is pretty bs.

Not at all, that is why it is in quotations as they are only ineffective if their goal was to destroy terra in that crusade. They are extremely effective if the goal is to further the desires of chaos gods by spreading strife and disease.

They also do not starve but they loose tremendous power. Look at the chaos gods before the Eldar went orgytastic they were much weaker than they were during and after. Look at the chaos gods 30K versus 40K there are daemons constantly bubbling from the warp to the materium in 40K where they were rarely seen 30K. This indicates that the current IoM gives them more power than the 30K IoM did. If they kill off the large empire of near middle age level superstition and strife then they will loose power. This is unless they can figure out a way to create an even more tyrannical empire or replace the humans with another group who can feed them emotions. Perhaps the Tau are meant to be this group?

@Disciple of Fate
The problem with no astronomicon is that the only people who will move around don't do a good job at maximizing populations. They tend to kill them in a semi-perminment way or make them so down trodden they just don't care about anything at all. For most of the chaos gods the best population are hateful fear-mongering hedonistic semi-cultists in great quantity...well pretty much the top and under ground floors of a hive city.

Hive cities are huge. They are large countries by today's standards crammed in a city where nothing grows. What would happen if you were to cut a hive city off from its primary trade partners? You would eat each other for perhaps a few years but this is an ever decreasing cycle which progress extremely quickly to no city at all.

I think CSM the faction definitely wants to take over the IoM. I think the Chaos Gods themselves have no desire to see the IoM fall, they may not act to keep it alive (short of to stop tyranids or necrons from taking over) but the IoM is a pretty good deal for them as it is now. There is even a sort of hint to this in HH where they show Horus the future with the god emperor as a corpse god with religious zealots as followers and they laugh. They knew full well that they would get a corpse emperor and they liked the idea enough to invest some major efforts into it in the 30K millennium.

The Black Crusades are meant to be seen as some kind of longterm, Tzeentch giggling, scheme, which is so genius most of us just dont see the point anymore (its like plan-ception). Granted, its hard to believe that in 10.000 years he has only tried 13th times in which he now has the magic key to get to Terra (according to the prophecy). They should release a bit more information about his previous goals and the longterm effects of those attacks, maybe he would lose the Failbaddon nickname.
We dont know what amount of power the Chaos Gods had prior to the IoM, but I would say still a significant amount seeing how humanity was already spread out amongst the stars. Daemons are rarly seen in M30 because they already had their field day shortly before. And possibly because just before the Great Crusade Slaanesh popped up and yelled 'surprise', so the Chaos Gods had to deal with that problem in the great game first. The age of strife mentions a lot of deamon attacks due to unguided psykers. The worlds the Great Crusade encounters are probably for the most part the ones that culled their psykers in the age of strife, reducing the daemon invasion risk. Tau are worth less to the Chaos Gods, the tree goes a bit like eldar>human>tau, due to the effect they have on the warp as individuals. Its why Slaanesh hunts Eldar souls, much tastier then the more widespread humans.

But why should they care about maximizing populations? Their gods were created in our Middle Ages, with a whole lot less humans. So losing 3/4 of the imperial populations migh not bother them as long as the surviving others go on to full blown worship. There is no need for a certain approach, like how this deamon world operates its humans http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Bubonicus_(Planet)#.UYzh2rWpq88.
Again I can refer you to the example of this in the Crusade of Fire. The world of Ishraq was a hive world that has been cut off from supplies for a thousand years: ''The passage of the millennium has not been kind to the hives' population, however, as they quickly faced food shortages. Yet a populace of sorts remains within each hive, depraved, degenerate and devoted to the darker powers, recognisably human in body if no longer soul.'' This indicates pretty strongly that there is canibalism, so it would not be extremely unlikely for worlds to survive like this.
On the subject of what would happen with Chaos if the IoM crumbles, this is quite an enjoyable read about 50k and a guess at what Abbadon will be doing http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?t=51806&page=1. On the part of the Corpse-Emperor, one day Abbadon will most likely breach the Cadian Gate (probably when more hive fleets cause overstretch in the IoM). He will kill the Emperor, its the goal of all chaos marines from the Heresy. So if the Chaos Gods wouldnt like it they could do a better job of ruining Abby's crusades, like unreliable or almost no daemon support.

Im going to give you the super watered down, and probably wrong, oppinion i have.

Since the chaos god always fight among them self and always will they, treat the IoM and all other races as a sort of.....spawning pool, or recruits. they try to corrupt man to bolster their own forces to fight the other chaos gods and fight the IoM.

Since the Big E is out in the warp collecting the souls of men as they die, they are not getting a steady income of souls.

They dont really have an agenda, like universal domination, all they want to do is cause chaos in their respective fields. IE, murder, cause sicknesses and plagues. Learn forbidden knowledge, or Torture people with lust and pleasure.

Someone mentioned the warp gods were created in humans middle age of time, or something close to that, the chaos gods were created from the 'War in Heaven' refer to the Necron codex 5th ed. The emperor wasent even a monkey at that point. Tehe.

@Disciple of Fate
I don't think that any long term plan would interest khorne or slaanesh that much. And papa nurgle would never go along with something Tzeench endorses. Most of the crusades have had major elements of each of these gods DP and most devote CSM followers. There may be a long term plan but I doubt it is what the CSM envision. Perhaps Abadon knows but he seems to not be telling.

Thanks for that daemon world link. That was really cool, gotta love papa nurgle.


@Backspacehacker
As far as I know the human souls currently go to the warp even with the Most Holy Emperor on his throne of decay. The only races that doesn't go to the warp are eldar (all varieties except perhaps for corsairs), tyranids, and necrons.

Tyranids do not ever have their own souls.

Necrons "live" forever and do not even seem to register on the warp.

Eldar are so amazingly yummy that slannesh gulps their souls even when they are still alive. They either trap their souls in crystal/world spirits or trade away pain and suffering to extend their lives indefinitely to avoid this.

Therefore according to your theory the IoM is best left intact so the chaos gods have a constant supply of new souls.

@Frecklesonfire & Disciple of Fate
Slaanesh was either always there or born during the fall of the eldar by their depravity.