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Chaos clearly represents emotion and savagery in a daemonic form. Slaanesh is the God of Lust, Khorne the God of Anger, etc., etc. But what's the opposite of Chaos. In 40k, what would Order be? Here are a few basic ideas.

1) The Absence of Chaos. Chaos in 40k was inspired by Michael Moorcock, and in Moorcock's work, Order is stagnation when isolated. Order is defined by restrictions. So, the laws of psychics, and all restrictions in general would be Order. But what faction represents that? The Imperium's laws are motivated by emotion (fear and hatred mostly). The Eldar come close, seeing as they purposefully try to avoid emotion, but again they're motivated to enforce laws by fear and self-preservation. Necrons used to embody this well, but now they have empires ruled by emotional leaders that fight each other.

2) The Purely Physical. Chaos is insubstantial. Emotions are just ideas, and Daemons exist in the warp. So something purely physical, motivated by physical urges (such as hunger and fatigue) without emotion would be the embodiment of order. This also fits the Necrons well, especially the C'tan, who lived only to devour stars, despite being incredibly powerful and intelligent Gods. But 5th edition changed that.

3) Good. Lately, the forces of Chaos have been drifting away from the ideas of Michael Moorcock and more towards biblical demons. Less emphasis is put on the freedom aspect of Chaos, and more on the evuuuuul aspect of it. This is especially evident in the Horus Heresy series, where the chaos-corrupted Primarchs are all whiny bitches.

4) Guilt. This has less to do with 40k and more to do with D&D. Awhile ago, I remember reading something about the Archdevils of Hell, and someone in the comments complaining that it mentioned one of the Archdevils feeling guilt. After all, he's literally a devil. Someone responded that, without guilt, there's nothing to separate Lawful Evil from Chaotic Evil; without guilt, an Archdevil would just be a Demon Lord who was forced to follow the rules. Guilt on the other hand, makes it voluntary. Guilt is the law that regulates itself. Because they're evil, they might feel guilty about different things than us, but as long as they're lawful they'd feel it. This works well, but there's no problem. Guilt is an emotion and chaos is an emotion. That would make the God of Order chaotic, which would be weird.

the warp and its denizens are chaos. realspace is not.

Just a minor correction, Slaanesh is the god of excess, not lust
(lust is just a minor part of the whole)

Honestly, my first reaction is to say the old ones, yet it was they that made Chaos so....

I'd say there is no 'order' faction in the 40k universe.
Necrons and Eldar come close... put they are not 'pure' enough to be an 'order' faction

Orks seek to impose their view of order on the universe, which is simply "might makes right" and "survival of the fittest" ~ both of which seem to reflect the natural order inherent in the universe

Tyranids impose order by killing everything capable of creating chaos.

Necrons. They don't feel emotion (for the most part) and they are destroying what creates chaos.

I think classic mythology works rather well (better than the misleading Chaos-Order dichotomy)

Chaos (Greek χάος, khaos) refers to the formless or void state preceding the creation of the universe or cosmos in the Greek creation myths, more specifically the initial "gap" created by the original separation of heaven and earth.

Chaos is pre- or proto-creation. The "potential" that exist before something is definitifely "created" or "given substance". The opposite of Chaos is creation, the "physical" in the broadest possible sense. That which already has been given form.

Alternative meaning

Greek χάος means "emptiness, vast void, chasm, abyss", from the verb χαίνω, "gape, be wide open, etc.", from Proto-Indo-European *ghen-, cognate to Old English geanian, "to gape", whence English yawn.

Both the first and the second meaning have an association with being torn open (i.e. separation of heaven and earth), a wound, a rift, a chasm... making 40K's Eye of Terror are very literal application of this meaning.

The Necrons as a faction used to be the faction representing extreme order (Creating a galaxy where sentient beings are soulless husks, cattle to be enslaved and devoured by the C'tan), but no longer.

Necrons are still the most order-ish faction, but the order-lyness (probably) had to be toned down because it made them REALLY boring when EVERY necron player was the same emotionless robot with the same goa (Tyranids somehow manage to avoid this issue, for a whole bunch of possible reasons I'm sure everyone can think of. Besides, in my opinion it's okay to have one faction that's single-minded. Two factions was just too much, though)

Nurgle is actually the Chaos God of Order, in that he desires Order. One responsibility of plaguebearers is to try to keep order amonst their naturally chaotic horde and teammates. However, like the other Chaos gods, he's naturally chaotic. Nurglings, who make good helpers if supervised well but tend to cause a ruckus and break things down if not, are a good example of the embodiment of this.

I always thought the Imperium was order...

 ImotekhTheStormlord wrote:
I always thought the Imperium was order...

Like I said in my post, its laws are motivated by fear, which is chaotic.

Order does not truly exist it is a man made ideal that is used to give the illusion of control. We like to think that we direct our live fully but the reality is unforeseeable events will effect us throughout our lifetime.

In short there is no Order only Chaos eternal so lament and be quelled with fear if you serve the False Emperor or accept the gifts bestowed by the pantheon of the four gods and rejoice as the galaxy burns.

"The opposite of Chaos is not order, brother. It is stagnation."
-- Lorgar Aurelian, The First Heretic

So the question is, who represents stagnation? Almost everyone else. The Imperium most notably, Necrons and Eldar too.

And again, to make order, the best way is to kill everyone, ergo the Tyranids are the counterbalance to chaos.

SImple....Necrons. Necrons are Stagnation.

Their souls are locked away from the Warp.

Nurgle is the god of stagnation. Although again, he's chaotic by nature, which makes him one messed up fellow.

For the most part, the sides of order are the ones where there's little progression in an individual's life. IE, your'e stuck in your orderly role within the machine. Of these, the most orderly are the necrons (where there's pretty much no such thing as the word "Promotion", anymore), Tau (born into castes, though you can advance up your caste at least), Eldar (stick to a path, though again, you can advance up your path and eventually change to a new one), and the Imperium (varies, but for the most part people are stuck with their life, though there is some capability for advancement).

The Imperium is actually the least orderly of the order factions in this regard due to the fact that it consists of so many planets of varying types (though still a LOT more orderly than what's typically viewed as the "chaotic" factions, and a LOT more orderly by this criteria than most "protagonists" in other stories).

Ironically, Chaos is actually perhaps the least chaotic of the other chaos factions (although like the Imperium, still a lot more chaotic than everything else). This of course does make it the mirror/opposite of the Imperium, though, which is fitting.

Tyranids are a wierd case. They were supposed to be the ultimate extreme chaos faction to be the opposite of the crons, which is why the two were set as rivals sometimes (and still are, to this day). They're so extreme in their chaos that they're mindless chaotic beasts, just like how necrons are mindless orderly robots. At least, that's how it was SUPPOSED to be. However, they're either so extreme that they loop around back to order, or somewhere along the line the fluff writers screwed up. One or the other. *shrug* Perhaps the former, as "death of all life" isn't meant to be either an orderly or a chaos concept (as an example, the god Malal wants everyone to die too just like tyranids. Heck, he wants HIMSELF to die, unlike the tyranids, but he's a chaos god, not an order god)

This is not really an appropriate question. It is a poor and unprompted assumption that there must be any kind of opposite or complement to chaos, and from there another assumption that it would be called order.

The only potential grounds for those assumptions are in the Eternal Champion books from the first part of the OP. I think those are irrelevant just because the settings are not the same and there are only a few appropriated ideas. If anything, I think the borrowing is actually an indication that there is no order, since that is the point of using those ideas in a different setting, and not just using the original setting.

That is also corroborated by explicit statements.

Bryan Ansell wrote:I don't think our vision of Chaos Warriors overlaps much with that of Michael Moorcock (although we did occasionally borrow his arrow symbol).
For me, all the roots of the Chaos Warriors that Citadel made over the years lie with Frank Frazetta's "Death Dealer" paintings and sketches,

http://realmofchaos80s.blogspot.com/

The same statement discusses gods of law, and that they were never created. This assumption of duality was considered and then, by some process, rejected. There are no opposites or complements to chaos, or at least nothing representing order. So no, I think in this case there are reasons not to be reductive enough to ask where Order is.

Bloodfrenzy187 wrote:Order does not truly exist it is a man made ideal that is used to give the illusion of control. We like to think that we direct our live fully but the reality is unforeseeable events will effect us throughout our lifetime.

In short there is no Order only Chaos eternal so lament and be quelled with fear if you serve the False Emperor or accept the gifts bestowed by the pantheon of the four gods and rejoice as the galaxy burns.

"Then the universe is gonna coool down,
then there'll be no more work,
and there'll be perfect peace."
- Michael Flanders

Order is the end result of Entropy. Chaos creates Order by its very nature, because Chaos is energetic, and entropy is the transition of energy into potential energy.

pelicaniforce - the Tyranids predate the Necrons by a considerable amount, and they've always been extragalactic locusts (although at one point, they did use Zoats to try and make the other factions ally with them).

Automatically Appended Next Post:

TiamatRoar wrote:
Nurgle is the god of stagnation.

I don't think he is, Stagnation is stasis, Nurgle is putrefaction, he renders all to nothing, Biological or Mineral or metal. He's the father of corruption and the disintergration and actually of life, just because plagues are abhorent to us doesn't mean they aren't life, it's just life that is not palatable to us.

Necrons, never change, never evolve that is true stasis, true stagnation. All the other powers of Chaos, are emotion or agents of change.

They desire change or Emotional upheaval good or bad they feed of the emotion of life. Without life, the Chaos gods would never have come to be...

Necrons oppose life, and therefore the thing that feeds the Chaos Gods.

Tyranids are highly evolved lifeforms they have that Psychic Darkness, but I don't see them as Anti-Chaos. Chaos could feed off Tyranids. Nurgle, Tzeentch or even Slaanesh could form a bond with Tyranids it's just a case of engineering the situation (Look at the Doom of Malantai) , could you imagine a Khornate Hive Tyrant or Tervigon. Who knows the 5th Chaos God might feed off the Tyranids directly.....

 mwnciboo wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:

TiamatRoar wrote:
Nurgle is the god of stagnation.

I don't think he is, Stagnation is stasis, Nurgle is putrefaction, he renders all to nothing, Biological or Mineral or metal. He's the father of corruption and the disintergration and actually of life, just because plagues are abhorent to us doesn't mean they aren't life, it's just life that is not palatable to us.

Necrons, never change, never evolve that is true stasis, true stagnation. All the other powers of Chaos, are emotion or agents of change.

They desire change or Emotional upheaval good or bad they feed of the emotion of life. Without life, the Chaos gods would never have come to be...

Necrons oppose life, and therefore the thing that feeds the Chaos Gods.

Tyranids are highly evolved lifeforms they have that Psychic Darkness, but I don't see them as Anti-Chaos. Chaos could feed off Tyranids. Nurgle, Tzeentch or even Slaanesh could form a bond with Tyranids it's just a case of engineering the situation (Look at the Doom of Malantai) , could you imagine a Khornate Hive Tyrant or Tervigon. Who knows the 5th Chaos God might feed off the Tyranids directly.....

Unlikely given that the shadow in the warp virtually completely cuts off the chaos gods just as it does the astronomicon. And the Chaos gods can't feed off of anything when the Tyranids leave nothing but a dead husk of a galaxy.

Furthermore, Chaos needs emotion to feed off of, without emotion Chaos dies. The Tyranids do not feel any emotion. They do not feel anything save for hunger. If they win, there will not be a single emotion in the entire milky way, nothing save for billions of utterly dead worlds and a silent void.

Nurgle can feed off Living flesh, Ergo if Plague Marines got in a fight with nid's it would be great for him old "Papa Plague" wouldn't it?

What about a Daemon World being invaded by 'nids, Khrone doesn't care how just that Blood flows and Skulls are taken?

Wouldn't Tzeentch, enjoy playing with the fates of civilisations as the Devourer comes forth?

Wouldn't Slaanesh enjoy the want Joy and despair all the Conflict causes?

I'm guessing here, I don't know enough of the Tyranid Canon or have read widely enough on 'nids to be 100% sure of the exceptions (doom of Malantai sucking up a Whole Craftworlds worth of Psyker power being a good example).

Legos..are order.

 Furyou Miko wrote:


Order is the end result of Entropy. Chaos creates Order by its very nature, because Chaos is energetic, and entropy is the transition of energy into potential energy.

I think the thing people are missing here is that Order is a subjective category. Entropy doesn't create Order, the mind does.

That's why Order isn't the opposite of Chaos, Entropy is, and Order is nowhere to be found on that gradation.

 Zweischneid wrote:
I think classic mythology works rather well (better than the misleading Chaos-Order dichotomy)

Chaos (Greek χάος, khaos) refers to the formless or void state preceding the creation of the universe or cosmos in the Greek creation myths, more specifically the initial "gap" created by the original separation of heaven and earth.

Chaos is pre- or proto-creation. The "potential" that exist before something is definitifely "created" or "given substance". The opposite of Chaos is creation, the "physical" in the broadest possible sense. That which already has been given form.

This.

Does that definition apply to Chaos in the warhammer universe though (both warhammers)? Pretty sure sentient races came about before chaos did...

TiamatRoar wrote:
Does that definition apply to Chaos in the warhammer universe though (both warhammers)? Pretty sure sentient races came about before chaos did...

IIRC, Slaanesh is said to have been born and having existed before its birth. Whatever that means.

Only within the realm of Chaos, where there's no such thing as time (which IMHO doesn't make much sense even for Chaos. Time is relative, which means that theretically, there could be a realm where time doesn't exist. However, Chaos interacts with the material realm, therefore time HAS to exist for that interaction to be possible since time has to be relative to it, but... whatever. Crazy fluff writers)

....anyways, in terms of the material realm, the entire warp itself (which predates Chaos. So much for time not existing there) came into being after the war with the Old Ones and the C'Tan broke out, if I recall correctly. IE, AFTER the old ones started creating things wily nily (in fact, creating crap all over the place is what made Chaos exist, not the other way around)

TiamatRoar wrote:
Only within the realm of Chaos, where there's no such thing as time (which IMHO doesn't make much sense even for Chaos. Time is relative, which means that theretically, there could be a realm where time doesn't exist. However, Chaos interacts with the material realm, therefore time HAS to exist for that interaction to be possible since time has to be relative to it, but... whatever. Crazy fluff writers)

....anyways, in terms of the material realm, the entire warp itself (which predates Chaos. So much for time not existing there) came into being after the war with the Old Ones and the C'Tan broke out, if I recall correctly. IE, AFTER the old ones started creating things wily nily (in fact, creating crap all over the place is what made Chaos exist, not the other way around)

Except Slaanesh doesn't exists outside the Warp, no more after his/her birth than before. And the Immaterium existed before the War in Heaven. It simply hadn't grown to its current extra-bity, extra-rapy state.

At one time, there were "Gods" of order in the warhammer world. They were described in the original WHFRP book. I think there were were three of them at least.

For some reason, GW just never developed this part of their mythos any further and they have just faded from the game from lack of attention. They were there at the start though.

In the Warhammer Fantasy Universe, not the 40k Universe as far as I am aware.