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Sup guys, this is my first post on this forum. I'm getting back into 40k after many, many years and I'm really feeling like going the Chaos direction. One thing I'm kinda curious in that regard is what life would be like on a world controlled by Chaos for an extended period of time. Like if there are any civilized worlds, hive worlds, agri-worlds, etc, that are governed by Chaos? One thing I never "got" about Chaos is that, to some degree, the human Chaos forces can be self-sufficient and have their own ways of doing things that echo the ways the Imperium does things (making new Marines, manufacturing weaponry, etc). I find the idea of it very interesting, and kinda want to understand how sophisticated, say, a hi-tech Chaos human army would be compared to Imperial Guardsmen. Not just rebellious guard turned over to Chaos, but guard who were born worshipping Chaos, were drafted into the Warmaster's army, put through training with drills and disassembling his rifle and all of that, and given a set of uniform armor. Is this something that exists? I'm equally curious about how training Marines would work for the legions. Obviously there's tons of new Chaos Marines being made, what with Fabius Bile's character being all about that and Storm of Iron ending with the Iron Warriors and Black Legion bringing home half the geneseed in the galaxy to create new Legionnaires. How would that differ from the Imperial way of doing things?

Bison666 wrote:
Sup guys, this is my first post on this forum. I'm getting back into 40k after many, many years and I'm really feeling like going the Chaos direction. One thing I'm kinda curious in that regard is what life would be like on a world controlled by Chaos for an extended period of time. Like if there are any civilized worlds, hive worlds, agri-worlds, etc, that are governed by Chaos? One thing I never "got" about Chaos is that, to some degree, the human Chaos forces can be self-sufficient and have their own ways of doing things that echo the ways the Imperium does things (making new Marines, manufacturing weaponry, etc). I find the idea of it very interesting, and kinda want to understand how sophisticated, say, a hi-tech Chaos human army would be compared to Imperial Guardsmen. Not just rebellious guard turned over to Chaos, but guard who were born worshipping Chaos, were drafted into the Warmaster's army, put through training with drills and disassembling his rifle and all of that, and given a set of uniform armor. Is this something that exists? I'm equally curious about how training Marines would work for the legions. Obviously there's tons of new Chaos Marines being made, what with Fabius Bile's character being all about that and Storm of Iron ending with the Iron Warriors and Black Legion bringing home half the geneseed in the galaxy to create new Legionnaires. How would that differ from the Imperial way of doing things?

Basically, Chaos worlds are feudal worlds by their function as a society. Unless it's a daemon world, they're typically stable enough to support a civilization, although it's a cut-throat one where the strongest warriors and most shameless schemers make it to the top by leaving a massive trail of corpses behind them. At the top there are Chaos Space Chaos Lords that serve as the king(s) of the planet, only subservient to any Daemons they may have made pacts with (and even then, they may double-cross and trap the daemon). They either seize power by conquering it and claiming it for chaos, killing the previous Chaos Lord, or muscling in on a Chaos planet ruled by a traitor Planetary Lord who then either turns the mortal into his puppet or simply kills the planetary lord and takes direct control. Under him are him (or her as mortals can be Chaos Lords, although it's pretty rare) typically Chaos Space Marines, beefy cultists, Hereteks, etc- those who keep the population in line either by managing forces directly or being the enforcement of their Lord's law themselves. They'll manage everything from security from invasion and assassination to industry. Under them are the population, etc and etc.

How it all functions though, is think of a band of pirating feudal lords from old Europe. Planets are ruled by Chaos Lords ("Knights") who marshall their forces and maintain their land. When called upon those that they've pledged allegiance to, such as the Warmaster, Daemon Princes, greater Chaos Lords leading a Black Crusade ("Kings") they bring their forces to the "King's" fight, brinning with them their own prowess in battle, along with innumerable lesser warriors including Chaos Space Marines and mook cultists by the shipload. Or they're mercantile, and the "Knights" are hired by more powerful "Knights" wishing to turn themselves into kings, or just want backup as they punch the snot out of loyalists or annoying xenos. They're a marauding bad of pirates, but they're organized and incorporated pirates.

There's also variations of this as well. The Iron Warriors are more or less unified, with each Warsmith holding a system and contributing resources to the entire Legion for the Long War and are a completely industry based society. The Black Legion is a loosely connected mass of warbands that occasionally unite to go murder loyalists on a Black Crusade. But the theme of them operating like feudal worlds in organization is more or less unanimous.

As for their tech, much like the IOM, it varies incredibly. But on average, I'd say your usual Iron Warriors warband of their Legion will be much better equipped and armed than the Black Legion, as they clone-farm their own armies that equals of the Imperial Guard, and mass produce tanks, firearms, and well, they're the Iron Warriors. Whereas warbands like those of the Night Lords are small and under-equipped, as they don't really hold or produce anything so much as they scavenge it off the corpses of the enemy. They do carry their own population of citizens with them though.
(IIRC, it's a mix of cloning and industrialized sexual reproduction to make as many bodies as possible.)

If anything, Chaos is more varied than the Imperium, although they play the Feudal trope more often.

 Wyzilla wrote:

-snip-

As for their tech, much like the IOM, it varies incredibly. But on average, I'd say your usual Iron Warriors warband of their Legion will be much better equipped and armed than the Black Legion, as they clone-farm their own armies that equals of the Imperial Guard, and mass produce tanks, firearms, and well, they're the Iron Warriors.

Do you have a source for any of that? I doubt Chaos is that ordered as a faction, it probably varies wildly.

I feel I must address the quoted section. "Because they're Iron Warriors" is not a reason for anything, except "why is your army painted all metal?" Cloning, Traitor Guard units, mass production are not limited to IW armies, in fact, the resources of the Black Legion would make any Warsmith jealous.

Black Legion Supplement wrote:In spite of these difficulties, by M41 the Black Legion was the largest of the Traitor Legions, having ten times the numbers possessed by the Word Bearers.[11] This is aided by their policy of absorbing other Chaos Space Marines and their warbands into their own ranks, regardless of which God of Chaos they may follow, if any.

MarsNZ wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

-snip-

As for their tech, much like the IOM, it varies incredibly. But on average, I'd say your usual Iron Warriors warband of their Legion will be much better equipped and armed than the Black Legion, as they clone-farm their own armies that equals of the Imperial Guard, and mass produce tanks, firearms, and well, they're the Iron Warriors.

Do you have a source for any of that? I doubt Chaos is that ordered as a faction, it probably varies wildly.

I feel I must address the quoted section. "Because they're Iron Warriors" is not a reason for anything, except "why is your army painted all metal?" Cloning, Traitor Guard units, mass production are not limited to IW armies, in fact, the resources of the Black Legion would make any Warsmith jealous.

Black Legion Supplement wrote:In spite of these difficulties, by M41 the Black Legion was the largest of the Traitor Legions, having ten times the numbers possessed by the Word Bearers.[11] This is aided by their policy of absorbing other Chaos Space Marines and their warbands into their own ranks, regardless of which God of Chaos they may follow, if any.

Well I feel like the Iron Warriors would have a more regimented, disciplined style of mortal army backing them, that would also be more technologically advanced. Though I guess Storm of Iron kinda depicts their troopers as being basically a pair of pants and a gakky rifle that would be considered primitive by any standards used to judge firearms, let alone a universe that has bolters and lascannons.

From what I've read the Prospero Spireguard were among the best equipped mortal auxiliaries before Magnus squandered them along with pretty much the rest of his assets.

The idea of any of the Traitor Legions expending any brain-matter at all on their mortals' equipment seems strange to me.

MarsNZ wrote:
From what I've read the Prospero Spireguard were among the best equipped mortal auxiliaries before Magnus squandered them along with pretty much the rest of his assets.

The idea of any of the Traitor Legions expending any brain-matter at all on their mortals' equipment seems strange to me.

Well I mean there's like 1000 or more traitor guard for every Marine, so I'd say having disciplined riflemen and heavy weapons units backed up by Vanquishers and Executioners and Basilisks would be preferable to a bunch of rag-tag randoms with kitchen knives and the pistol they kept under their bed for home defense no matter how elite you are. I guess I can see how Chaos Lords would see themselves as being above them, though.

Horribly untouched aspect of the fluff, alas. You have worlds like Sicarus of the Word Bearers dedicated to worshipping Chaos but the only thing you know about civilian life there is that a lot of time is spent building cathedrals. Likewise, the only thing they really tell you about Medrenguard (Iron Warrior's main planet) is that it's a fortress, and don't really go into much detail about what civilian life is. Bubonicus runs a planet that has a line of humans wrapped around it always singing praises to Nurgle 24/7, but nothing about the rest of the populace or its society there. Mortarion's planet is similar to his homeworld but we don't really get much more details than that even for his homeworld in the first place besides a bunch of oppressed farmers. Chaos life is generally implied to be hellish, but... that's about it and that's ridiculously vague.

....so yea, horribly untouched aspect of the fluff that GW just seems like they'd rather write more Space Marine stories than delve into. The closest you can get to what actual chaos societies might be like is the Black Crusade RPG by FFG. I suggest going to the wiki or Lexicanum and beginning your search by looking up "The Screaming Vortex". Generally, most Chaos planets, even those with functioning societies, are quite..... wierd (which is to be expected).

Otherwise, I imagine most are feudal barbaric states of wandering nomads like the Warriors of Chaos in Warhammer Fantasy.

Basically as above mentioned. There really isn't much. I remember there is an old (out of production) BL book about a tzeentch planet. It seemed like a pretty odd world. Very tribal based lands with leaders often being "magical" in nature.

Anyways, the best I can think of is that of the FFG Black Crusade games. There are a variety of worlds that are very odd. There are a few that seem like rather great parts but they usually have a catch (hinting at a certain Tzeentch planet which basically is the oddest mix of awesome life, scheming, and the strangest economy in existence, all the while having a very good standard of living apparently). For the most part, I'd assume many of the planets are along the lines of feudal barbaric states of wandering nomads as well. Simple, disorderly, chaotic.

MarsNZ wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

-snip-

As for their tech, much like the IOM, it varies incredibly. But on average, I'd say your usual Iron Warriors warband of their Legion will be much better equipped and armed than the Black Legion, as they clone-farm their own armies that equals of the Imperial Guard, and mass produce tanks, firearms, and well, they're the Iron Warriors.

Do you have a source for any of that? I doubt Chaos is that ordered as a faction, it probably varies wildly.

I feel I must address the quoted section. "Because they're Iron Warriors" is not a reason for anything, except "why is your army painted all metal?" Cloning, Traitor Guard units, mass production are not limited to IW armies, in fact, the resources of the Black Legion would make any Warsmith jealous.

Black Legion Supplement wrote:In spite of these difficulties, by M41 the Black Legion was the largest of the Traitor Legions, having ten times the numbers possessed by the Word Bearers.[11] This is aided by their policy of absorbing other Chaos Space Marines and their warbands into their own ranks, regardless of which God of Chaos they may follow, if any.

Siege of Castellax. The Iron Warriors raise clone/mass bred Janissary armies and equip all of their men with lasguns that are well supplied in a timely fashion, and produce their own armor. While the Warmaster harvests armies from allies pledged to him and rallies support, the Iron Warriors are actually entirely self sufficient and largely produce their war material by their scattered fortress worlds.

The OP should definitely try to get a hole of the Tome of Fate, which is the Tzeentch supplement for the Black Crusade roleplaying game. It describes several chaos-worshipping societies that remain stable and active.

There's the Sabaat Worlds in Gaunt's Ghosts, the Blood Pact are an organised force.

Read Legion of the Heresy series.

It has a culture called the Nurthene that are Chaos Worshipers and they seem to have had a pretty stable life until the Imperium came along.

I kinda think that the heresy was a way for Chaos to regain some of the power it lost during the Great Crusade.

When talking about Nurth or any chaos societies not operated by the Legions, there is no reason to say they are any different from modern society. You would want to say that a world where people give their lives over to the service of just causes are nominally Imperial, and ones where they are avaricious or miserable and look like a basic Boiler Room, Wall Street, Wolf of Wall Street, American Psycho setting are Chaotic.

Hey though, maybe not.

 nwns wrote:
There's the Sabaat Worlds in Gaunt's Ghosts, the Blood Pact are an organised force.

They come from the "Sanguinary Worlds." At one point they have a psyker who was "created" by "Gore Mages," whatever that may mean.

A Forgeworld produced the Kai Gun daemon weapon, before being betrayed by the chaos powers.

The ghosts fight on a planet with several loyalist nations, and a chaos aggressor nation called Shadik who are led by a president.

I imagine it would be like living in the Imperium.


Life is still brutal thuggish and short, you'd probably die as a labourer or end up being drafted into the local Chaos flavoured PDF. If you look at a Chaos Marine he will probably kill you if he fancies it.

Basically the same as if it were an Imperial world, although you might be better off if you were born a mutant.

I find it amusing to think of a basic cubical office but chaos symbols everywhere and all the workers are dressed in rags.

"hey bob."
"hey phil. hows it going"
"oh the usual; accounting, spreadsheets, cult sacrifices, that sort of thing."

I imagine there are plenty of human and xenoes worlds were Chaos worship is the norm yet daemons and gibbering horrors aren't pouring out of the void every ten minutes.

I mean if you live on an agri/feudal world which suffers frequent bouts of disease and famine looking to Father Nurgle to protect you from contagion doesn't really seem a bizarre idea (how he does it is another matter...).

They might have blood cults (Khorne), a hedonistic culture (Slaneesh) or a dog eat dog hierarchy based on back-stabbing (Tzeentch). Maybe all of them, a planet that worships the four aspects of Chaos.

To my knowledge none of this necessarily demands CSMs or a heavy Daemonic presence.

Read "Traitor General." It does a fair job of describing a chaos controlled world.

If you can find them Eye of Terror by Barrington J Bayley, Pawns of Chaos by Brian Craig are old black library books that describe Conan like chaos feudal worlds

There is also a BL novel entitled 'Daemon World' which gives a very good look at life on a chaos planet. All levels of technology are represented.

Bison666 wrote:
Sup guys, this is my first post on this forum. I'm getting back into 40k after many, many years and I'm really feeling like going the Chaos direction. One thing I'm kinda curious in that regard is what life would be like on a world controlled by Chaos for an extended period of time. Like if there are any civilized worlds, hive worlds, agri-worlds, etc, that are governed by Chaos? One thing I never "got" about Chaos is that, to some degree, the human Chaos forces can be self-sufficient and have their own ways of doing things that echo the ways the Imperium does things (making new Marines, manufacturing weaponry, etc). I find the idea of it very interesting, and kinda want to understand how sophisticated, say, a hi-tech Chaos human army would be compared to Imperial Guardsmen. Not just rebellious guard turned over to Chaos, but guard who were born worshipping Chaos, were drafted into the Warmaster's army, put through training with drills and disassembling his rifle and all of that, and given a set of uniform armor. Is this something that exists? I'm equally curious about how training Marines would work for the legions. Obviously there's tons of new Chaos Marines being made, what with Fabius Bile's character being all about that and Storm of Iron ending with the Iron Warriors and Black Legion bringing home half the geneseed in the galaxy to create new Legionnaires. How would that differ from the Imperial way of doing things?

You reference Storm of Iron yet forget that the Iron Warriors herded their 'Traitor Guardsmen' into battle with fake/deactivated lasguns...

If anything else football would be a lot more interesting

One thing speaking of Chaos worlds is specifically the death of Chaos. Chaos feeds off of emotions, so I really think that the only way to win against them is to wipeout all life except Necrons that way they'd slowly starve to death. Correct?

[quote=Pilau Rice 584531 6628053 1dcca8440717500df28114e03e396425.png

I kinda think that the heresy was a way for Chaos to regain some of the power it lost during the Great Crusade.

I would second Daemon World. Very Fantasy Warhammer mixed with 40k.

One of the main characters you follow in the story is just a typical Mortal Champion that is on the Daemon World, and how his journey overlaps with the CSM main conflict.

 Jape wrote:
I imagine there are plenty of human and xenoes worlds were Chaos worship is the norm yet daemons and gibbering horrors aren't pouring out of the void every ten minutes.

I mean if you live on an agri/feudal world which suffers frequent bouts of disease and famine looking to Father Nurgle to protect you from contagion doesn't really seem a bizarre idea (how he does it is another matter...).

They might have blood cults (Khorne), a hedonistic culture (Slaneesh) or a dog eat dog hierarchy based on back-stabbing (Tzeentch). Maybe all of them, a planet that worships the four aspects of Chaos.

To my knowledge none of this necessarily demands CSMs or a heavy Daemonic presence.

I was always under the impression that the planet with the lizards erupting everywhere was a Chaos controlled world in Legion. I forget the name of the planet, but it is generally described as peaceful, relatively normal, but worshiping chaos. During a botched job the locals start summoning demons in the forms of lizards which start erupting out of the ground to chase the Legionnaires through the city. They also talk about warp weapons and chaos/warp enfused soldiers.

Life doesn't seem to be the popular concept of chaos, although there does still seem to be a definite sense of regime and order. We don't get a huge picture of the civilization, and I don't think it would be a nice place to live, but it sounds better than many imperial worlds are described.

See also the warp singer fight where Eidolon lets out his warp cry to beat the singer. It is a chaos world, and isn't gibbering demons everywhere. That said, I'm sure the gibbering thing planets are pretty much the norm given the bulk majority of depictions we get.

 BrotherOfBone wrote:

You reference Storm of Iron yet forget that the Iron Warriors herded their 'Traitor Guardsmen' into battle with fake/deactivated lasguns...

Its been awhile since I've read it, but ...
Storm of Iron spoiler


Only information about society on chaos held planets I remember are from Traitor guard, and Daemon world. Both were radically different, with Geron being a recently captured agri-world, and Daemon world being, well, a daemon world.

Traitor Guard gives very cool information on how chaos forces acquire the resources need for their armies by strip mining every last available resource on a planet, and leaving it a strategically useless rock. But, that's more than likely because they were not expecting to be able to hold it for long, and stripped it in a scorched earth tactic. It also shows the traitor installed government strategies put into effect on the people, and efficiently and effectively strip the planet and take their stuff.

Daemon world on the other hand was constantly fought over by the four chaos gods, tech available to the locals varied from warbands of barbarian humans, to well protected trade caravans sent by the lords and cheiftans to their Daemon Masters. I barely remember this book, so details are quite fuzzy.

 Lint wrote:
Read "Traitor General." It does a fair job of describing a chaos controlled world.

Also Dark Sun, Black Sky. Its about an Iron Warrior world in the EOT. Its also a comparable sequel to Storm of Iron.

 BrotherOfBone wrote:

Bison666 wrote:
Sup guys, this is my first post on this forum. I'm getting back into 40k after many, many years and I'm really feeling like going the Chaos direction. One thing I'm kinda curious in that regard is what life would be like on a world controlled by Chaos for an extended period of time. Like if there are any civilized worlds, hive worlds, agri-worlds, etc, that are governed by Chaos? One thing I never "got" about Chaos is that, to some degree, the human Chaos forces can be self-sufficient and have their own ways of doing things that echo the ways the Imperium does things (making new Marines, manufacturing weaponry, etc). I find the idea of it very interesting, and kinda want to understand how sophisticated, say, a hi-tech Chaos human army would be compared to Imperial Guardsmen. Not just rebellious guard turned over to Chaos, but guard who were born worshipping Chaos, were drafted into the Warmaster's army, put through training with drills and disassembling his rifle and all of that, and given a set of uniform armor. Is this something that exists? I'm equally curious about how training Marines would work for the legions. Obviously there's tons of new Chaos Marines being made, what with Fabius Bile's character being all about that and Storm of Iron ending with the Iron Warriors and Black Legion bringing home half the geneseed in the galaxy to create new Legionnaires. How would that differ from the Imperial way of doing things?

You reference Storm of Iron yet forget that the Iron Warriors herded their 'Traitor Guardsmen' into battle with fake/deactivated lasguns...

No, they herded their captured prisoners into battle with deactivated lasguns. Their actual traitors had really primitive guns and minimal armor.