How Invested are the Chaos Gods in other Species?

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**Arcsquad12**

Apart from Slaanesh, the Chaos Gods seem totally invested in humanity, preying and feeding on their emotions and sacrifices to gain power. But as Gork and Mork are the patron deities of the Greenskins, I doubt that their bloodshed goes towards Khorne, and "cunningly brutal or brutally cunning" seems a little lowbrow for the likes of Tzeench. Slaanesh takes a special interest in Eldar souls, but even he/she/it takes a vested interest in humanity like the other gods.

According to the Cabal, the destruction of humanity in the Heresy would have destroyed Chaos, since they had put so much of their commitment into humanity's fate. But the Cabal can't be trusted, and nothing they say can be taken without a grain of salt. But Orks have their gods, the Eldar actively fight Chaos, and the Necrons, Tyranids and Tau don't care. If humanity was gone, would the Chaos gods go with them, or try to influence another species in order to survive?

**TiamatRoar**

Well, Slaanesh had the Laer and the Eisenhorn novels had the Sarulthi. The Sabbat Crusades had the Loxotl. So there are a few Xenos that Chaos has its hands on, but it's sadly not as fleshed out as it should be, IMHO

Then again, that might justifiably be because most Xenos are extinct.

**Animus**

All bloodshed feeds Khorne. If humanity wasn't around then they'd of course try to corrupt others, and they have corrupted others, but they've got a whole multiverse to play with, so I don't think they'd need another big chew toy species in the galaxy to survive.

**PoisonWood**

As with the plague and the change god. All of them have unending cycles that are charged with these emotions and actions that accompany all human behavior.

**EVIL INC**

i would say most definitely yes. In the fluff, you can find mention of it in many places. tose of us who played chaos using the old Realm of Chaos books even had the option of playing other races (more so in fantasy but the gods are the same).
The game focuses mly on the parts of the universe that the game designers wanted tp but left a LOT of open ended areas that we can use out imagination for. if you expand out to the edges of human space and see"we" have influenced or brought chaos or where we have encountered it already in place and then expand out further to where THEY brought it over time and so on and so forth, you are likely to see that it is cyclic over eternity and space where humans may only be a flash in the pan to them in their eternal games.

**Omegus**

Arcsquad12 wrote:
Apart from Slaanesh, the Chaos Gods seem totally invested in humanity, preying and feeding on their emotions and sacrifices to gain power. But as Gork and Mork are the patron deities of the Greenskins, I doubt that their bloodshed goes towards Khorne, and "cunningly brutal or brutally cunning" seems a little lowbrow for the likes of Tzeench. Slaanesh takes a special interest in Eldar souls, but even he/she/it takes a vested interest in humanity like the other gods.

According to the Cabal, the destruction of humanity in the Heresy would have destroyed Chaos, since they had put so much of their commitment into humanity's fate. But the Cabal can't be trusted, and nothing they say can be taken without a grain of salt. But Orks have their gods, the Eldar actively fight Chaos, and the Necrons, Tyranids and Tau don't care. If humanity was gone, would the Chaos gods go with them, or try to influence another species in order to survive?

The big three human-spawned gods would probably lose some/all of their self-awareness and power. Chaos itself, in Primordial Annihilator guise, will stay forever.

**Shadow Captain Edithae**

Made this comment in a different thread regarding the Alpha Legion.

Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
chaos0xomega wrote:
The Alpha Legion remain a total mystery to me (and everyone else evidently) not really sure what their deal is and whether or not they were really traitors

The Alpha Legion are of course traitors, seeing as they sided with Horus but they did so for the right reasons.

Spoiler:

In Legion, they're manipulated into an encounter with a delegation of ambassadors from a collection of alien races called The Cabal.

This Cabal convince Alpharius that the threat of Chaos will eventually consume the galaxy and destroy all life. The only way to destroy the Chaos Gods is through the extinction of humanity. Chaos feeds on the psychic energy emanating from the emotions of real space life forms - the Warp is a sort of 4th dimension, or parallel universe, a shadow of real space where warp entities reflect real space life forms. The decadence and Fall of the Eldar race spawned the Chaos God Slaanesh. The violence of ancient humanity spawned the Chaos God Khorne. And so on.

With the gradual and ongoing extinction of the Eldar race, and the massive population of humanity - the dominant life form in the galaxy - the Chaos Gods are so heavily invested in humanity that if it were to go extinct, the Chaos Gods would be all but wiped out.

The Cabal showed Alpharius what they claimed to be visions of the future. They alleged that there were two possibilities, and outcomes of the pending Horus Heresy.

1. If the Imperium won, the Emperor would be mortally wounded and entombed on the Golden Throne for 10 thousand years, the Imperium doomed to a slow decline with Chaos and alien races pressing on all sides until its eventual collapse when Chaos will overrun the galaxy. (which is what did happen, hence Warhammer 40K.

2. If Horus won, he would be so consumed by self hatred and remorse that he would turn on his fellow traitor Primarchs. The remaining traitor Primarchs and Legions would fragment and turn on one another out of mutual distrust and loathing. What remained of humanity after the Horus Heresy would once again be plunged into civil war and would drive itself to extinction. With humanity extinct, the Chaos Gods will be wiped out, ending the threat of Chaos (at least, until a new alien race comes along and does something to trigger the birth of a new god).

The Alpha Legion naturally decided that Option 2 was preferable, as the lesser of two evils. They decided that Humanity must die, to end the threat of Chaos and thus preserve life in the Galaxy. To achieve this they had to side with Horus and ensure his victory. In a sense, the Alpha Legion are loyal at heart but are acting for the Greater Good - Humanity must be sacrificed to destroy Chaos.

Of course, they sided with Horus but failed to ensure his victory, so they failed in their mission. After 10 thousand years of failure, I imagine most members of the Alpha Legion have given up, and just pledged themselves to Chaos. Though Alpharius/Omegon (whichever twin is still alive) may still be trying to bring about Humanity's and thus Chao's extinction.

The Alpha Legion took the ultimate gamble, and failed.

**Iron_Captain**

Of course Chaos is busy with xenos species as well, it is just that humans are by far the most numerous species (apart from Orks and Nids, but I don't think those can fall to Chaos) and therefore have the Gods' greatest attention.

**Da krimson barun**

Orks can fall to chaos.Its just rare.Stormboyz of khorne...

**EyeOfDC**

In the chaos demon codex itis said khorne could survive on his own. Seeing as his dimension he brought orks and ressurects the dead ones daily to fight his bloodthirsters and feed himself.

**SYKOJAK**

I will throw out my own hypothesis. If the Imperium and the human race was wiped out, Slannesh would still seek Eldar/Dark Eldar souls. Khorne would be all over the Orks. Nurgle would seek to corrupt "the Greater Good" of the Tau. And Tzeneech would make a play for Tyranids hunger. It could be argued that Nurgle and Tzeneech could easily flip/flop on the Tau and Tyranids. Plenty of other sustenance for the Chaos Gods to subsist from.

**Shadow Captain Edithae**

Thats not what the Cabal believed.

**Kommissar Kel**

It really comes down to the Fluff.

Eldar and Dark Eldar have both found /practice ways to bulwark them from Chaos(And Slaanesh has Claimed them so the other 3 don't bother; which is a bunch of Male Cow Mess).

Orks, aside from a few stormboyz here and there(which are incredibly rare), are too devout to Gork and Mork.

Tau do not register, there emotions are too weak.

Necrons are bots, and never really registered either(Necron-Tyr had no Psychic ability and that is why the Eldar were engineered to combat them).

Tyranids are Alien and Anathema.

Squats no longer exist.

All that is left is Humans. And Minor races that appear in Novels and generally wind up with a chaos Cult or 2

**ansacs**

There actually have been a few mentions of this in the fluff with Tau having run across chaos a hand full of times. The problem is that the biggest entrance to the materium is blockaded by the IoM. So the people who deal with it the most is of course humans.

The eldar actually deal with all the chaos gods all the time. It is just that slaanesh is such a huge influence that it is easy to ignore the rest. Nurgle supposedly keeps Isha in his garden to try diseases on.

Just because you worship one go doesn't mean that the chaos gods cannot feed on your actions. Orks are worshiping khorne with the blood letting even if they never know of khorne. He doesn't interfere as G/Mork would rolf stomp him and how would he improve the blood letting? Offering ascendancy is meant to increase the blood letting...how do you increase the desire of orks to fight? Slaanesh and Tzeentch have no real use for orks and nurgle does his disease spreading thing whether you worship him or not.

Necrons have essentially isolated themselves from the warp and it's denizens.

Nids do not travel through the warp and their psykers use the will of the hivemind rather than warp like the rest. If the nids even come near the eye of terror or to a world corrupted by chaos then it could get interesting but as it is now they just aren't coming in contact with the chaos gods on a regular basis.

**Omegus**

Orks fighting are not feeding the Four, unless they are fighting humans.

**The Anathema**

The Gods are fed by emotion translated to warp energy, it doesn't matter who that emotion comes from as long as the organism registers at least some psychic potential

**techsoldaten**

Chaos was certainly responsible for the fall of the Eldar. Khaine was basically another representation of Khorne. Depending on what you read into that, it could mean that Chaos was (at some point) beneficial to other races or that it took a long time for Chaos to become the undoing of them.

In older Ork codexes, you used to be able to buy Chaos boys. I can't remember that much about the fluff, but I think they were like Freebooters but were looked up to by the rest of Ork society.

There has been lots of fluff over the years about Chaos preying on other races that are not present in the game. Obviously, Tau, Necrons and Tyranids are unaffected by the warp.

**StarTrotter**

I wouldn't say that Tau are unaffected by the warp nor Tyranids. I could be wrong, but if memory serves me, Farsight saw into the warp and had crazy things happen to him whilst Tyranids have dipped into the warp to gain tons of random mutations (although at risk of ruination of that fleet). I could be wrong though so apologies if I miss the mark.

**TiamatRoar**

Tau are affected by the warp. They're just not affected a lot by it. If they were completely unaffected by the warp, they'd be emotionless zombies. The fluff has always stated that they do have a reflection in the warp, but it's just "cookie crumbs" compared to other species.

**StarTrotter**

And why go for the cookie crumbs when you can go for the delicious cookie cake or the building sized finest desert that has ever been cooked oh so yummy mmmm..

**Omegus**

techsoldaten wrote:
Chaos was certainly responsible for the fall of the Eldar. Khaine was basically another representation of Khorne. Depending on what you read into that, it could mean that Chaos was (at some point) beneficial to other races or that it took a long time for Chaos to become the undoing of them.

Khaine is an entirely different entity from Khorne amd predates him by millenia. Some older fluff even has Khorne fighting with Slaanesh over bits of Khaine since Khorne felt that aspect of the Eldar belonged to him, hence the animosity between the two (back when there was animosity between the gods).

Yes, other races do contribute somewhat to the emotive storms that are the Gods, but the emotions that give them their personality and motives (as far as they have such things) are decidedly human.

Eldar were the cause on their own downfall, not Chaos. They were running in the streets murderraping each other and freebasing krokodil through their peeholes.

**Kosake**

The chaos gods are mirrors to what happens in this world. While they may have no influence on tau and come to think, not much on orks or nids neither, there are still enough other species that are influenced. By taking humanity away, the representations of the gods would change. In a universe with predominantly honorable warriors (d'uh, say tau-like guys but without the whole warp invisibility) khorne may be less a god of slaughter and more a god of valor and the protecting fighter. With the current mindset of eldar, tzeench may partonize the shifting "career paths" of the eldar, trying various professions during their lives... something along these lines. Though, by no means are humans alone responsible for the overall grimdark nature of the chaos gods. On the other hand, there are uncounted billions of them, surely orders of magnitude more than eldar or some minor races that aren't spacefaring or limited to a couple of planets.