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This has been a subject that has had me thinking for a while now. In my mind I have come to the conclusion that perhaps chaos don't want to "win", but neither do they want their enemies to "win". Perhaps the constant war and stalemate for 10,000 years is exactly what chaos wants?
As we all know the chaos Gods are fed by the emotions of sentient races (some more than others), for example in the case of Khorne the more war and bloodshed, the stronger he becomes. It doesn't even matter if you serve Khorne or not, the only difference between a Khornate Berserker and a vicious Space Wolf is that one of them has allowed themselves to accept Khorne's "gifts". They both fight and spill blood, both will be feeding him similar levels of rage.
In the time of the great crusade the emperor tried to limit the feeding of chaos by enforcing the imperial truth across the imperium. If the emperor had taken control of the galaxy, the chaos gods may have become significantly weaker (although not destroyed as there are still plenty of mortals feeding them emotion). In a similar vein, if Horus had won and subsequently plunged the rest of humanity into a war of extermination, leading to their eventual extinction (as per the Cabal's wishes) the chaos gods would be similarly weakened (though again not completely destroyed as there would still be plenty of other mortal races feeding them). Is the current state of affairs in 40k perfect for the chaos gods? All races (wether they serve chaos or not) are locked in a never ending cycle of war and bloodshed, producing a huge amount of emotion to feed the chaos gods.
In addition it might even be detrimental to chaos for their forces to "win" and finally kill the emperor. Trusting that the emperor isn't re-incarnated or becomes the star child, the emperors wards sealing the warp from the galaxy would be broken and the entire galaxy would quickly be inundated by the warp. While chaos would reign supreme for a short while, the deaths of all the mortal races would lead to the gods having no emotion at all to feed on and they would eventually be destroyed. The same outcome, minus the galaxy wide eye of terror would also be achieved if the Tyranids successfully consumed all life in the galaxy. No sentient life = No emotion = No chaos gods.
Im curious to hear others opinions. Is this the reason neither the imperium or chaos "won" the Horus Heresy? Is this the reason Abbadon seems so mind blowingly incompetent?

It would also explain Horuses inconvenient, and permanant, death. and why the primarchs arnt up in thw imperiums face all the time

Very interesting take, however there are still other races out there and plenty of people think that there are more humans outside of the Imperium than there are in it. If the Chaos gods have always been around(except for Slaanesh), they must've found others to feed off of?

According to C: CSM, Abaddon's plan is actually making progress. Each Black Crusade brought him a little closer to his goals and his plan is on schedule. It's not that he's failing or stagnating on purpose. It's that he's planning for the long term, and his plan is actually going smoothly (relatively). Chaos does plan to win eventually. They're just taking their time.

I don't think chaos wants to win at least not Tzeentch. For Tzeentch its all about the game never actually winning the game, but playing it for an eternity. So over all I don't think there will be a true end to the game or any of the players , because for Tzeentch its just to much fun. Even if Abaddon makes it to the gates of Terra by Tzeentch's will some freak accident will occur and Abaddon will die just to keep the great scheme going.

 Gunhead1 wrote:
I don't think chaos wants to win at least not Tzeentch. For Tzeentch its all about the game never actually winning the game, but playing it for an eternity. So over all I don't think there will be a true end to the game or any of the players , because for Tzeentch its just to much fun. Even if Abaddon makes it to the gates of Terra by Tzeentch's will some freak accident will occur and Abaddon will die just to keep the great scheme going.

The game can still continue even after the Imperium is gone. There will still be Orks, Tyranids, Eldar, Dark Eldar, and Necrons to deal with. The Imperium could conceivably simply be one step to the greater game at large. (just a possibility, of course)

It seems that being totally devoted to chaos would mean no units/uniforms/symbols/FOC/plans/strategy. Nothing. Even concepts like winning and losing are too concrete for full-on chaos. Maybe 40K Chaos should be called "entropy in progress", or "currently devolving into chaos".

@TiamatRoar

True and just because the IOM is dead doesn't mean that humanity is gone with it and I agree that the IOM could be just a stepping stone for the game to continue, but with so many unsolved riddles (example missing primarchs and what is going to happen to the Emperor by this I mean is he truly dead, is he coming back, or if he really does kick the bucket does he become a new chaos god) there is still a lot to do before Tzeentch has had fill of the IOM IMO. Also if the Chaos gods need to be worshipped with a never ending state of war to survive then taking out a rather large portion of your followers is not a good idea. With few Orks ever going to chaos and the tyranids unaffected by chaos (form what I know). Eldar and Dark Eldar largely on the run or hidden from chaos and the tau hold little to no interest right now in the eyes of chaos. Chaos taking out its follower base would be a problem for them. Now this is if their true goal is not to kill off humanity, but to instead subjugate it in a very brutal fashion for followers then move on to conquer the rest of the galaxy and then chaos could truly win and be able to survive forever.

 Flanker wrote:
Very interesting take, however there are still other races out there and plenty of people think that there are more humans outside of the Imperium than there are in it. If the Chaos gods have always been around(except for Slaanesh), they must've found others to feed off of?

Slaanesh HAS always been around. Sure he/she/it may have been birthed in the late 29th or early 30th millennium, but time does not flow linearly in the warp. At the point of birth, Slaanesh became a universal truth that has always existed. Paradoxical? Yes. Makes your brain hurt? Probably. But that's the warp for ya.

It's not really a paradox. It depends on what you're referring to with the term "Chaos".

Also when I say the Chaos gods could be "destroyed", that is inly being viewed from the timeline of the material universe. In the warp of course all the chaos gods exist and dont exist all at the same time. Kind of hard to get your head around.
Also im not suggesting the forces of chaos within the material universe dont want to win, merely that the chaos gods may be influencing them that they never make any major progress, but they never suffer any devastating defeats either. As someone pointed out, it might be why the daemon primarchs are so rarely heard from.
Also Abbadon was meant to have won the eye off terror campaign, so he is not completely useless (took him long enough though).

That begs the question; If when a chaos god is "birthed" its as if it always existed so does that mean if one was ever "killed" would it be like they never existed?

They cannot *be* killed. They might lose their individual sentience and fade back into the raw matter of the Warp, but they are not dead in the sense that we understand it... moreso "dead" in the Lovecraftian sense.

So while you might dissipate one for awhile, even millions of years, once things in the galaxy get back to a point where whatever that Chaos God's portfolio is once again ascendant, it will pop right back out of the Warp-stuff and be right back to business as usual.

Here's yet another thing to think on. There is a 5th chaos god, which the other 4 are keeping imprisoned. Malal (Malice if you are weird) is the chaos god of chaos. The stronger chaos become, the stronger he gets, and the more he wants chaos to be more chaotic by destroying chaos. So, given that the chaos gods are getting stronger due to the 10,000 years of war, death, schemeing, and cocain-fueled-ultra-base-dubstep-orgies, chaos is getting stronger. Is there a breaking point where chaos becomes so strong, that T/K/N/S cannot contain their brother?

 StarHunter25 wrote:
Here's yet another thing to think on. There is a 5th chaos god, which the other 4 are keeping imprisoned. Malal (Malice if you are weird) is the chaos god of chaos. The stronger chaos become, the stronger he gets, and the more he wants chaos to be more chaotic by destroying chaos. So, given that the chaos gods are getting stronger due to the 10,000 years of war, death, schemeing, and cocain-fueled-ultra-base-dubstep-orgies, chaos is getting stronger. Is there a breaking point where chaos becomes so strong, that T/K/N/S cannot contain their brother?

Thats certainly an interesting Idea and a distinct possibility. It would make for an extremely interesting plot development, daemons of Malal spilling into the material universe attacking both chaos and non chaos factions indiscriminately. The other 4 chaos gods would have to temporarily unite to control their wayward brother, causing a massive chaos on chaos civil war in the material universe. Too bad Malal has been retconed out of existence by GW...

Its important to remember that Chaos Space Marines are just a small subset of the Forces of Chaos. Chaos Space Marines are the ones trying to defeat the Imperium and destroy the Emperor. They are the ones that want to get revenge against humanity. The Chaos Gods take notice of this fight and give their gifts to worthy champions, but I don't think the Gods in particular care weather or not the Imperium is defeated.


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 vodo40k wrote:

In addition it might even be detrimental to chaos for their forces to "win" and finally kill the emperor. Trusting that the emperor isn't re-incarnated or becomes the star child, the emperors wards sealing the warp from the galaxy would be broken and the entire galaxy would quickly be inundated by the warp. While chaos would reign supreme for a short while, the deaths of all the mortal races would lead to the gods having no emotion at all to feed on and they would eventually be destroyed. The same outcome, minus the galaxy wide eye of terror would also be achieved if the Tyranids successfully consumed all life in the galaxy. No sentient life = No emotion = No chaos gods.

It could definitely be detrimental to Chaos if they won by killing all mortal races, but self preservation isn't really a motivation of Chaos. They are born from the more extreme emotions of sentient creatures, which aren't always rational. But I don't think Chaos is trying to eradicate all life. I think the ultimate goal would be to expand the Eye of Terror (and other areas of instability) to encompass the entire galaxy.

There is a sort of paradox to chaos... or perhaps more like mutually assured destruction.

The practical application of chaos in WH40K is that it's actions result in dead people (humans and other sentient races). The problem with that is that, should all sentient races be annihilated (whether that's possible is another question altogether), the Chaos gods would die given that they feed on the emotions of those races.

So, the ultimate questions are these - if all sentient races died off to the man, would Chaos end right then and there? And, as soon as new sentient races evolved, would Chaos come back?