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When i got into the game when i was 12 i really liked chaos because of their aesthetics as i read the fluff i started to become disillusioned with chaos. now im 50 50 with chaos and the imperium. The imperium has some contrast, as in the space wolves and the salamanders actually care for the imperial populace while the carchardons and the inquisition would straight up kill the populace, that is cool because it shows good and bad. I always believed that the warhammer 40k factions were all supposed to be bad or good guys depending on your perspective. even the dark eldar, although by a long shot, could be seen as good people since they have to do certain things or have their souls devoured. But as for chaos i cannot see anything good with them, all the chaos themed books i have read literally undermine their own populace. Do chaos space marines actually care for their chaos population? Do they even care about their other battle brothers, or are they all greedy ? I really want to believe that there is some chaos faction out there that think that the imperium is doing the wrong thing and chaos is the right thing for humanity. and they would take bullets for their battle brothers, and they would have pride in their warband/ legion. is there such a thing?

There is no black and white or good and bad in the grimdark.

Its all grey and mixed

Once you're devoted to Chaos, you're not free. You're a puppet and your concerns are for pleasing your god, not looking out for your allies. There's no such thing as 'nice' Chaos.

A particular essay that I always turn to for my chaos inspiration:

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/271640-misconceptions-about-csm/?p=3316051

Edit: post #97. Won't seem to let me link directly.

Sorry for being ignorant but it the thread talks about how cult troops are not all world eaters and stuff like that.

 -v10mega wrote:
Sorry for being ignorant but it the thread talks about how cult troops are not all world eaters and stuff like that.

While the rest of the thread is interesting, I recommended just skipping to post 97, where ADB really shows the diversity of chaos, closer to what you were looking for.

Direct link:

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/271640-misconceptions-about-csm/page-4#entry3316051

Yes. I have it bookmarked.

thank you

Father Nurgle loves his children! He just shows it in an...interesting...way...

Chaos is bland for a long time now.

They are not a threat at all it makes no sense. Every marine kills dozens of chaos but only a couple turn..... So there is something going on in the warp thats rater R.

But chaos has become orks, they are there just to prove how bad ass everyone else is. It has gotten to the point they are tagging demon gods heart while slapping their behinds.

Do chaos space marines actually care for their chaos population? Do they even care about their other battle brothers, or are they all greedy ? I really want to believe that there is some chaos faction out there that think that the imperium is doing the wrong thing and chaos is the right thing for humanity. and they would take bullets for their battle brothers, and they would have pride in their warband/ legion. is there such a thing?

Read Talon of Horus by Aaron Dembsky-Bowden - it's one of the best I've read in a long time, but there are many good ones out there. it deals with the birth of the Black Legion, and you get to see that the leftovers of several legions are pretty much only held together by brotherhood, and they genuinely will risk a lot for the sake of a legion's name. Plus, it goes a long way to making Abbadon badass again in the reader's eyes.


Ones I'd recommend:

The Ahriman trilogy - Ahriman is motivated by grief and shame at what he did to his legion. At the start of the story, something happens and he decides to stop hiding in self-pity and do something about it. A lot of his soldiers are just generic mercenaries but he's fighting for a fairly decent cause - bringing his brothers back and undoing what he did to them.

The Word Bearers Trilogy - yes, on the face of it, generic "We are spikey and soooooo evil lulz", but they still fght as a disciplined force, have a concept of "that's heresy" and make a point of diverting from their mission to crush a xenos invasion flat. Granted, the populace's lot doesn't exactly improve (as they're not under the Word Bearer's control) but the Word Bearers still clearly see themselves as fighting for humanity. They just think that daemon-worship is the ideal end-state for the human race.

The Night Lords trilogy - Yes, they're cowards. And thieves. And murderers. And all-round asshats. But notice how often they end up saving 'civilians' and doing vaguely heroic things despite their best instincts otherwise.

Kharn: Betrayer - Yeah....okay. Both sides here are arseholes. But it's a good read, anyway.

Another angle to Chaos, you may want to read the Gaunt's Ghosts books.

Konrad Curze thought he was doing the right thing until he realised he had become the very thing he sought to destroy, and allowed himself to be killed by an assassin to prove his point that what he did was right.

90% of Chaos Marines have no loyalty to their current warlord, they either follow them out of loyalty or as part of a deal/common interest. They don't give a rats ass apart from that.

Almost everyone in the 41st Millenium is morally grey, with the exception of Daemons who are literally pure evil.

 -v10mega wrote:
. even the dark eldar, although by a long shot, could be seen as good people since they have to do certain things or have their souls devoured.

The Dark Eldar do evil things because they enjoy it. There are other ways for Eldar to live; just look at Corsairs, Harlequins, Exodites and Craftworld Eldar. Dark Eldar are evil and cannot be justified. Good people can fall to Chaos but it will turn them evil. It's what it does.

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

 -v10mega wrote:
. even the dark eldar, although by a long shot, could be seen as good people since they have to do certain things or have their souls devoured.

The Dark Eldar do evil things because they enjoy it. There are other ways for Eldar to live; just look at Corsairs, Harlequins, Exodites and Craftworld Eldar. Dark Eldar are evil and cannot be justified. Good people can fall to Chaos but it will turn them evil. It's what it does.

They haven't really fallen to Chaos though. They don't have any Chaos powers and completely hate it.

Corsairs live in a similar way or stick with the Craftworld method. They also can't just go and join with Harlequins.

pm713 wrote:

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

 -v10mega wrote:
. even the dark eldar, although by a long shot, could be seen as good people since they have to do certain things or have their souls devoured.

The Dark Eldar do evil things because they enjoy it. There are other ways for Eldar to live; just look at Corsairs, Harlequins, Exodites and Craftworld Eldar. Dark Eldar are evil and cannot be justified. Good people can fall to Chaos but it will turn them evil. It's what it does.

They haven't really fallen to Chaos though. They don't have any Chaos powers and completely hate it.

Corsairs live in a similar way or stick with the Craftworld method. They also can't just go and join with Harlequins.

not having Chaos powers and hating it doesn't mean anything. Dark Eldar spend their lives leaching pain and suffering to feed Slaanish (so he/she won't feed on them). I don't think you could argue that the dark eldar AREN'T in thrall to Slaanish. the slave may hate his master, but he is still a slave. as others have noted. dark eldar have choices. they choose the path they are on

BrianDavion wrote:

pm713 wrote:

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

 -v10mega wrote:
. even the dark eldar, although by a long shot, could be seen as good people since they have to do certain things or have their souls devoured.

The Dark Eldar do evil things because they enjoy it. There are other ways for Eldar to live; just look at Corsairs, Harlequins, Exodites and Craftworld Eldar. Dark Eldar are evil and cannot be justified. Good people can fall to Chaos but it will turn them evil. It's what it does.

They haven't really fallen to Chaos though. They don't have any Chaos powers and completely hate it.

Corsairs live in a similar way or stick with the Craftworld method. They also can't just go and join with Harlequins.

not having Chaos powers and hating it doesn't mean anything. Dark Eldar spend their lives leaching pain and suffering to feed Slaanish (so he/she won't feed on them). I don't think you could argue that the dark eldar AREN'T in thrall to Slaanish. the slave may hate his master, but he is still a slave. as others have noted. dark eldar have choices. they choose the path they are on

If they were a slave they'd serve Slaanesh. They don't. They're like a Space Marine. They give a Chaos God (Khorne/Slaanesh) power but don't serve them.

locarno24 wrote:

Do chaos space marines actually care for their chaos population? Do they even care about their other battle brothers, or are they all greedy ? I really want to believe that there is some chaos faction out there that think that the imperium is doing the wrong thing and chaos is the right thing for humanity. and they would take bullets for their battle brothers, and they would have pride in their warband/ legion. is there such a thing?

Read Talon of Horus by Aaron Dembsky-Bowden - it's one of the best I've read in a long time, but there are many good ones out there. it deals with the birth of the Black Legion, and you get to see that the leftovers of several legions are pretty much only held together by brotherhood, and they genuinely will risk a lot for the sake of a legion's name. Plus, it goes a long way to making Abbadon badass again in the reader's eyes.


Ones I'd recommend:

The Ahriman trilogy - Ahriman is motivated by grief and shame at what he did to his legion. At the start of the story, something happens and he decides to stop hiding in self-pity and do something about it. A lot of his soldiers are just generic mercenaries but he's fighting for a fairly decent cause - bringing his brothers back and undoing what he did to them.

The Word Bearers Trilogy - yes, on the face of it, generic "We are spikey and soooooo evil lulz", but they still fght as a disciplined force, have a concept of "that's heresy" and make a point of diverting from their mission to crush a xenos invasion flat. Granted, the populace's lot doesn't exactly improve (as they're not under the Word Bearer's control) but the Word Bearers still clearly see themselves as fighting for humanity. They just think that daemon-worship is the ideal end-state for the human race.

The Night Lords trilogy - Yes, they're cowards. And thieves. And murderers. And all-round asshats. But notice how often they end up saving 'civilians' and doing vaguely heroic things despite their best instincts otherwise.

Kharn: Betrayer - Yeah....okay. Both sides here are arseholes. But it's a good read, anyway.

Is there any good books about the Emperor's Children?

Fulgrim is eaither lvoed or hated depending on the reader, but no 40k set books about em. the emperor's children are hard to make an intreasting protagionist out of I suspect

Chaos Space Marines are consistently depicted as the big bad evil guy with darkness and spikes on his armor who likes to kill people for the lulz.

To a lot of people, that's interesting. To a lot of other people, that's bland. It's a matter of taste. Personally I find them to be a bunch of self-important spankers, and the rest of the forces of Chaos to be far more interesting.

BrianDavion wrote:
Fulgrim is eaither lvoed or hated depending on the reader, but no 40k set books about em. the emperor's children are hard to make an intreasting protagionist out of I suspect

I thought Heresy era Emperor's Children are a mixed bag. I enjoyed they're depiction in Path to Heaven but really didn't like them in previous books.

 Melissia wrote:
Chaos Space Marines are consistently depicted as the big bad evil guy with darkness and spikes on his armor who likes to kill people for the lulz.

Take a look at the Night Lords books. It might change your opinion.

Nope, it does not.

You have read it? If so, I can still understand why you don't like them, but I can't see how you say they are all 'big bad evil guy with darkness and spikes on his armor who likes to kill people for the lulz' because that is not what the book shows.

Take a look at the way the books themselves are advertised: as the telling the story of a group of people "garbed in symbols of death" who are "remorseless hunters and killers" and "prey upon the dying Imperium, bringing death from the darkness between worlds" and that they "bring their ways of destruction" to loyalist marines,

GW clearly believes them to be BBEGs wreathed in spikes and hatred and blood and death and gore. Regardless of how they write them in-story (which does give more personality than this, given that they're the villain protagonists of the story), they advertise the stories as exactly the way I described them.

Or, to be more blunt, when people mock the over the top grimdarkness of the 40k setting, Chaos Space Marines are generally what's in their mind.

 Melissia wrote:
Take a look at the way the books themselves are advertised: as the telling the story of a group of people "garbed in symbols of death" who are "remorseless hunters and killers" and "prey upon the dying Imperium, bringing death from the darkness between worlds" and that they "bring their ways of destruction" to loyalist marines,

GW clearly believes them to be BBEGs wreathed in spikes and hatred and blood and death and gore. Regardless of how they write them in-story (which does give more personality than this, given that they're the villain protagonists of the story), they advertise the stories as exactly the way I described them.

Or, to be more blunt, when people mock the over the top grimdarkness of the 40k setting, Chaos Space Marines are generally what's in their mind.

not really a lotta people are thinking of some of the over the top grimdarkness of the IoM.

 Melissia wrote:
Or, to be more blunt, when people mock the over the top grimdarkness of the 40k setting, Chaos Space Marines are generally what's in their mind.

I thought that was how the Imperium is a hellish regime of fascist zealots that is made all the more grim because it is the only option, and how technology is in regression with more being lost every year, the hounds amassing on all sides of the Imperium and its very heart even beginning to fail.

Big spiky people bringing death for various reasons is not unique to 40k. Hell, even my avatar is one such example, but since I know you don't like WoW we can pick Sauron as another.

pm713 wrote:

They haven't really fallen to Chaos though. They don't have any Chaos powers and completely hate it.

Corsairs live in a similar way or stick with the Craftworld method. They also can't just go and join with Harlequins.

Apologies for not being more clear. I didn't mean to suggest that the Dark Eldar serve Chaos but was referring to (separate) Chaos forces.

Has the Corsair lifestyle been elaborated on? I thought it was still murky how exactly they behave differently or similarly.

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

pm713 wrote:

They haven't really fallen to Chaos though. They don't have any Chaos powers and completely hate it.

Corsairs live in a similar way or stick with the Craftworld method. They also can't just go and join with Harlequins.

Apologies for not being more clear. I didn't mean to suggest that the Dark Eldar serve Chaos but was referring to (separate) Chaos forces.

Has the Corsair lifestyle been elaborated on? I thought it was still murky how exactly they behave differently or similarly.

I'm basing it on Path of the Outcast which has some Outcasts becoming Corsairs and keeping their spirit stones and some are former Dark Eldar who don't have spirit stones. Adding that to Doom of Mymeara stating that some Corsair attacks were mistaken for Dark Eldar seems to indicate that some Corsairs do the same thing as Dark Eldar. Or they're just mean or both.

 curran12 wrote:
Once you're devoted to Chaos, you're not free. You're a puppet and your concerns are for pleasing your god, not looking out for your allies. There's no such thing as 'nice' Chaos.

You can be devoted to many Gods, or none. Chaos is more than just the Four, and once you're devoted to it, you're truly "free". Free from the shackles of obedience, free from the constraints of society, free from your consience. The price is your humanity, but then again, being devoted to Chaos means to be truly human. Free to do whatever you want, however you want it to whomever you want.