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As the title says, how much would you think the average shock trooper would know of the nature of Chaos? We know the inquisition goes to extreme lengths to prevent knowledge of Daemons getting out, and the general public have little to no knowledge of Chaos.

However surely soldiers who would be fighting against it often would have to have some understanding of it?

My guess would be that a need-to-know basis would apply. All I can find in the codex is that Guardsmen are trained to follow orders and be disciplined while facing the horrors of the galaxy, which isn't really the same as being told what said horrors actually are.

It may depend on the regiment and type of commander as well. If a commander wanted to get his men into battle with minimal hassle, he might forget to mention that they'll be up against Bloodcrushers and Great Unclean Ones this morning. Alternatively, if the commander cared about his men (ie Catachan), he'd likely tell them everything he could without being labelled a heretic.

Imperial Guard Uplifting Primer goes into this a bit. Chaos-affiliated armies are shown to be "heretics" who practice "dark magic", but no mention of Chaos, nevermind what it really is, is mentioned.

I think that Cadia would be one of those worlds where Chaos is fairly known, even to the common "Cadian civilians". A lot of the fluff says Chaos is this great kept secret, but when you're planet is right in front of the greatest warp storm in the galaxy, people are mutating left and right, chaos cults are everywhere, your entire planet is kept as a garrison world because of the stuff that comes out of the storm, and constantly fight huge battles against said forces to not allow them inroads into the Imperium, they are going to be aware of Chaos and how to identify it at some level.

My guess: they have some knowledge. There's no denying the presence of it. However, all they know is what they see of Chaos: angry daemonic supersoldiers attacking them. They don't understand why this is happening or how is came about. Those who ask questions or even openly discuss it are executed. Its a planet-wide elephant in the room.

Also, from one of the Eisenhorn books the Inquisition has a permanent presence on Cadia, and at least one Inquisitor uses Kasrkin for their team. So it's possible that the more specialist they are the soldier might know a bit more if they are used for hunting clandestine cultists, but your average grunt is probably going to know what LoneLictor said, and act accordingly when you have an organization devoted to suppressing it quite nearby.

Thanks for the replies, I always imagined it was known about, but not understood, I imagine even the Imperium itself does not know the true nature of Chaos.