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I am interested in finding out what options there are for the various codexes that can use daemonology but, in the fluff, would not actually summon daemons. The purpose is to assist in creating balance while retaining army flavour. One ideal I've heard is for marines & other imperium forces to "call in" legion of the damned. I think that's a pretty cool idea to keep to the fluff while using new mechanics. After all, the legion is out there in their nether worldly realm - ready to appear into existence where and when needed. But what about other codexes like orks and eldar? I would love to hear your thoughts. thanks!

Fenrisian Wolves for Khorn Dogs?

They don't necessarily need to have existing models in 40k or otherwise. This is about fluff. Models can be made/converted/etc... To fit the appropriate fluff.

As an Ork player, the Foot of Gork is something I would use the replace a Greater Daemon. I don't see any reason that you need to use daemons and even if with the Tau say, all of the possible down sides to summoning daemons could come about simply from highly experimental weaponry going awry.

I I love the idea of the foot of gork! So awesome we're thinking along the same lines - there is more than enough fluff to make a fluff-questionable rule legit in battle. I'm still having trouble thinking of eldar ideas... Maybe Harlies standing in for slanesh models? They do appear mysteriously through the webway

Well technically the Avatar is a Greater Daemon, even requiring a sacrifice to summon so I see no fluff reason why you couldn't summon an Avatar during the battle even if rules wise you can have one in the army anyway. As for regular daemons, well, time to see some Slicing Orbs of Xandros me thinks. You could always use something like a Psychneuein, Astral Hound, Ensalvers, or Umbra perhaps and say that, rather than being summoned on purpose these things simply appear and either aide your forces or whatever.

You could even have the 'psyker' be some kind of communications officer for example, responsible for handling mercenaries. Maybe the unit of Tyrellian Dog Soldiers turns up and fights for as planned, maybe they've secretly been paid off by the other side. There all sorts of 'counts as' I can imagine could be used rather than daemons.

I'm hardly an expert on the Fluff but...

I was under the impression that there really wasn't anything else inside the Warp that wasn't somehow aligned with Chaos - excluding the Emperor, Gork and Mork, and umm.. Kaldor Draigo. Maybe the Enslavers?

A lot of non-GW sources (and some BL material) point to the idea that the Warp once upon a time had a lot more entities inside of it that could have served functions or roles to what you are looking for, but ever since Slaanesh showed up and tore apart whole pantheons of gods (if you take that thing in Xenology about him slicing apart Qah, God of the Hrud) the Warp has become ratherhat ironically uniform for a place of Chaos. Either you are serving one of the Big 4, Chaos Undivided, or are strange enough/powerful enough (Enslavers?) to ignore them.

That really doesn't leave much in terms of the summoning.

I haven't really looked to deeply into the rules changes, but from what i understand everyone gets to summon Daemons right? But...

For the Imperium: Legion of the Damned work fine, I suppose having St. Celestine or Kaldor Draigo showing up out of the blue fits the fluff as well.

For the Tau: I mean - wasn't one of the major sticking points to their faction was that they were naieve to the ways of the Warp?

For the Orks: I COMPLETELY approve of the Foot of Gork..but then again i'm ridiculously biased.

For the Necrons: This is worse than the Tau - they are supposed to be Anti-Warp.

For the Tyranids: A friend actually suggested coming up with a Game Effect related to the Hive Mind/Shadow of the Warp to replace the Summoning.



Another one of my friends suggested that if it were a ______ vs. Chaos fight, perhaps bringing back Malal/Malice the Renegade God of Chaos would work - the being in question hates the Big 4 and can be summoned to the Materium. Although the process of such a summoning is less than pleasant.

Thank-you for the fantastic ideas Gogsnik! I was also thinking that the Avatar is in many ways the Eldar version of a chaos daemon. Those primarily "neutral" monsters you listed are cool too. I had never heard of the Umbra before. The possible connection to the Eldar, as fragments of a god, is intriguing too.

Sphinx I think your ideas of those imperial heroes as a sort of "imperial greater daemon" is awesome totally fits!

As for this stuff for Nids, Necrons, and Tau... well they can't access daemonology for reason of the hive mind, for the former, and because no psychers for the latter.

There are none, for summoned daemons to be friendly.
That said only Chaos Marines, and Daemons allowed.

 PotentiallyLethal wrote:
Fenrisian Wolves for Khorn Dogs?

Hrmm.. can someone perhaps expand upon the Fenrisian Wolves thing? My knowledge of the Space Wolves chapter is almost zilch....

Are there references in BL fluff or GW fluff where they are summoning things?

I think it is a modelling suggestion primarily though I too am ignorant when it comes to space wolf fluff

I'll try to do this army by army as I see it.

Imperium: legion of the damned is a good option for all the imperium, though you'll still struggle with the greater daemons ( maybe dreadnoughts? )

Blood angels can summon the sanguinor, so why not other angel based things.

Space wolves can't 'summon' wolves in that wolves are real animals. However, they could teleport them in. One of their ( now defunct ) powers was that freki and geki ( two fenrisian wolves ) attacked the opponent in some sort of spirit form, so it seems feasible that they could summon wolf spirits.

CSM and Daemons are obvious.

Eldar. Harlequins could be 'summoned' from the webway. The avatar is a daemon, so he could be summoned. I don't know the specific fluff but mandrakes ( DE ) are daemons, so they could also be summoned from the webway? Come to think of it, all DE stuff could appear out of the webway based on psychic communication with them.

Orks. Gork and mork entities are the obvious ones. However, warpheads are renowned for not controlling their powers very well, so I see no reason why they can't summon daemons just because that is what happens when they turn on their psychicness.

I think I've covered all the ones that can summon.

Maybe a weired boy is taken over by power of gork/mork
They become super charged, able to tank immense damage + strong attack.

Just in orks ways unstable and prone to turn on other orks, enemy or explode in great ball of energy, greater vortex's or maybe fry all Brauns in x area of effect.


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Orks concepts are never safe or prediuctable

For SW, why not the 13th company? IIRC them and Russ buggered off into the warp about 100 years after the Heresy for shenanigans and tomfoolery, and every now and again they come out dressed up in bits of Chaos marine Armour and proceed to troll whatever chaos forces are fighting the wolves today with their wulfen powers and then they just leave all Legion of the Damned style?

For the summoning of Greater Daemons, Imperium allied forces can have the Sanguinor (BA special character), Living Saints (From SOB), and for minor daemons i can see LOTD, or even the spirits of the dead (like the GK grand master mordrack). Bonus points for modeling them with sheets over their heads!

The Avatar isn't a demon in the traditional sense in this regard. He resides in a specific physical body with a specific activation ceremony.

That being said, Cegorath or possibly even Ynead demons are possible, but webway reinforcements seems more appropriate. Something like:
Bloodletters-> Banshees
Plague Bearers -> either Scorpions or smaller Wraiths
Demonettes -> Harles
Horrors -> various seers/warlocks/craftsmen
Heralds could be Eldar on the path of Damnation
GUO-> Wraithlord or hand of Ynead
Keeper of Secrets -> hand of Cegorath
Lord of Change -> damned Farseer (or just Tzeech causing problems)
Bloodthirster -> damned Warlock

I've seen some excellent ideas mentioned here on Dakka - so good I can only wish GW had went with that instead of the one-size-fits-all nonsense they've served up.

My favourite to date would be Tuska for the Orks. There's something very appealling in the idea of him taking a break from his endless war on the daemon world to help out the ladz.

Bharring wrote:
The Avatar isn't a demon in the traditional sense in this regard. He resides in a specific physical body with a specific activation ceremony.

He is a daemon in the traditional sense. He even has the daemon special rule.

He's just not a daemon of chaos. He's a fragment of an Eldar god, just like how Chaos daemons are fragments of their god. He just resides in the physical universe in a physical body with a different activation ceremony.

But he is still on a basic level little different from other daemons, especially Greater Daemons(maybe a little more powerful)

Except it exists in the real world without needing a warp rift. So different to all daemons at a basic level.

Space wolf wolfen from the 13th company .


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ContemplativeSphinx wrote:
I'm hardly an expert on the Fluff but...

I was under the impression that there really wasn't anything else inside the Warp that wasn't somehow aligned with Chaos - excluding the Emperor, Gork and Mork, and umm.. Kaldor Draigo. Maybe the Enslavers?

A lot of non-GW sources (and some BL material) point to the idea that the Warp once upon a time had a lot more entities inside of it that could have served functions or roles to what you are looking for, but ever since Slaanesh showed up and tore apart whole pantheons of gods (if you take that thing in Xenology about him slicing apart Qah, God of the Hrud) the Warp has become ratherhat ironically uniform for a place of Chaos. Either you are serving one of the Big 4, Chaos Undivided, or are strange enough/powerful enough (Enslavers?) to ignore them.

That really doesn't leave much in terms of the summoning.

I haven't really looked to deeply into the rules changes, but from what i understand everyone gets to summon Daemons right? But...

For the Imperium: Legion of the Damned work fine, I suppose having St. Celestine or Kaldor Draigo showing up out of the blue fits the fluff as well.

For the Tau: I mean - wasn't one of the major sticking points to their faction was that they were naieve to the ways of the Warp?

For the Orks: I COMPLETELY approve of the Foot of Gork..but then again i'm ridiculously biased.

For the Necrons: This is worse than the Tau - they are supposed to be Anti-Warp.

For the Tyranids: A friend actually suggested coming up with a Game Effect related to the Hive Mind/Shadow of the Warp to replace the Summoning.



Another one of my friends suggested that if it were a ______ vs. Chaos fight, perhaps bringing back Malal/Malice the Renegade God of Chaos would work - the being in question hates the Big 4 and can be summoned to the Materium. Although the process of such a summoning is less than pleasant.

The tau are so naïve to the warp that exposure melts kills them, as the can not defend from it. The space wolf 13th company is in there, though.

I was once thinking of using Wood Elf Dryads as frost monsters to represent Daemons. Just removing the leaves and painting them like they are made of ice. You could just use the Dryads to show plants growing super-fast and coming to life under the control of the psyker.

That is a damn cool idea! Sort of like the psycher animating the world around him/her/it to fight rather than summoning daemons. Certainly the power exists to do so. You could paint them up for a variety of world types too based on the basing-style that the army is on (lava/jungle/frost/earthen etc)

mr.darkness wrote:


One of their ( now defunct ) powers was that freki and geki ( two fenrisian wolves ) attacked the opponent in some sort of spirit form, so it seems feasible that they could summon wolf spirits. .

Freki and Geki? You mean Leman Rus' wolves are spirits????

You could always just have something go wrong, a librarian reads an extract from a book he doesn't know is a summoning spell for example. For fluff reasons alone though I don't like non chaos units being able to summon daemons so won't be doing it with non-chaos forces


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You could model stuff like planetary defence forces from a Chapter's homeworld and use them as daemons

Deamons of Emperor was a idea I had a while back.

ContemplativeSphinx wrote:
I'm hardly an expert on the Fluff but...

I was under the impression that there really wasn't anything else inside the Warp that wasn't somehow aligned with Chaos - excluding the Emperor, Gork and Mork, and umm.. Kaldor Draigo. Maybe the Enslavers?

A lot of non-GW sources (and some BL material) point to the idea that the Warp once upon a time had a lot more entities inside of it that could have served functions or roles to what you are looking for, but ever since Slaanesh showed up and tore apart whole pantheons of gods (if you take that thing in Xenology about him slicing apart Qah, God of the Hrud) the Warp has become ratherhat ironically uniform for a place of Chaos. Either you are serving one of the Big 4, Chaos Undivided, or are strange enough/powerful enough (Enslavers?) to ignore them.

That really doesn't leave much in terms of the summoning.

I haven't really looked to deeply into the rules changes, but from what i understand everyone gets to summon Daemons right? But...

For the Imperium: Legion of the Damned work fine, I suppose having St. Celestine or Kaldor Draigo showing up out of the blue fits the fluff as well.

For the Tau: I mean - wasn't one of the major sticking points to their faction was that they were naieve to the ways of the Warp?

For the Orks: I COMPLETELY approve of the Foot of Gork..but then again i'm ridiculously biased.

For the Necrons: This is worse than the Tau - they are supposed to be Anti-Warp.

For the Tyranids: A friend actually suggested coming up with a Game Effect related to the Hive Mind/Shadow of the Warp to replace the Summoning.



Another one of my friends suggested that if it were a ______ vs. Chaos fight, perhaps bringing back Malal/Malice the Renegade God of Chaos would work - the being in question hates the Big 4 and can be summoned to the Materium. Although the process of such a summoning is less than pleasant.

a) Tau, Necrons and Tyranids cannot take Daemonology.
b) LotD are perfect, they're literally demons apparently.

pm713 wrote:
Except it exists in the real world without needing a warp rift. So different to all daemons at a basic level.

No different than a daemon who has found itself a host.

Its also part of a god who is entirely in the physical realm.

If any of the Chaos gods were to manifest in the real world their Daemons would be able to stay there too.

Except when.it.comes to summoning one from the Warp.

Maybe skeletons could be used or other undead models. Hexwraiths as flesh hounds maybe.

The idea being the psyker uses his powers to animate the dead by using his will or some little known type of warp-magic.

I think that is entirely plausible within the 40k universe.

I was actually thinking that a cool idea might be the actual warp spiders in place of nurgling swarms for Eldar. They are literal warp entities that inhabit the craftworld. I'm not sure if they are also present on Exodite Worlds. Does anyone know if they are or, if not, whether there is something comparable?