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Really I cant understand the justification for it. Be'Lakor was originally just the first Daemon Prince, but now there is a retcon where he is the ONLY Undivided Daemon Prince, and thus restricts us as players and as people who like to make their own narrative with fluffy rules. I hear rumors that ADB might have had a hand in this given rumors that he hates Undivided as a concept. What are your thoughts on all this? And how do we go about getting GW to listen and return the Undivided mark of Chaos to Daemon Princes?

Eh. Bell licker is kind of irrelevant to the whole deal.

The move away from Undivided started... eh. I'm not sure how many years ago now. At least two or three codexes/army books back. I'm pretty much resigned to it at this point.

Though that being the case, they should replace the current daemon prince kit with god-specific ones.

I like it from a lore perspective. The idea that the chaos gods dont share and dont work together. Mortals may do so in their names, but if you want to become a Daemon that's down to a specific god.

Makes a lot of sense to me.

 Stux wrote:
I like it from a lore perspective. The idea that the chaos gods dont share and dont work together. Mortals may do so in their names, but if you want to become a Daemon that's down to a specific god.

Makes a lot of sense to me.

But it makes the path of Undivided worthless if at the end they HAVE to pick a certain God.

GW has been removing undivided as a concept since like 2010 or maybe even before. This is something I stopped trying to combat a long time ago because I don't see anyone changing their mind.

 auticus wrote:
GW has been removing undivided as a concept since like 2010 or maybe even before. This is something I stopped trying to combat a long time ago because I don't see anyone changing their mind.

I almost believe the rumor that ADB wrote those short stories for the STD battletome in order to make sure Belakor stays the only Undivided, given how ADB seemed to dislike AoS quite a bit and was known for disliking it. He seems kind of adamant about ensuring that true Undivided is for his characters only.

10 years sounds a bit conservative, to be honest. It doesn't help that they can make claims to the Big 4 as concepts that are specific GW IP, but not chaos in general.

I'm honestly surprised Undivided gets as much play as it does in the new StD Battletome.

It isn't quite a reversal, but it was getting to the point where Undivided was daemon prince and furies only, and in some books they were gunning hard on insisting those be marked too.

FERRUMITE wrote:
I almost believe the rumor that ADB wrote those short stories for the STD battletome in order to make sure Belakor stays the only Undivided, given how ADB seemed to dislike AoS quite a bit and was known for disliking it. He seems kind of adamant about ensuring that true Undivided is for his characters only.

Eh. The push away from undivided started before GW picked up ADB. I don't think this can be laid at his feet.

FERRUMITE wrote:

 Stux wrote:
I like it from a lore perspective. The idea that the chaos gods dont share and dont work together. Mortals may do so in their names, but if you want to become a Daemon that's down to a specific god.

Makes a lot of sense to me.

But it makes the path of Undivided worthless if at the end they HAVE to pick a certain God.

It's not worthless. It's just the truth of the path of undivided is that it doesnt end in Daemonhood. You cant say Archaon's path is worthless. Theres a lot of power to be had by walking the line between the 4, it's just less immediately obvious.

That actually seems a lot more interesting to me.

Undivided is literally the only interesting part of chaos, so it's sad they keep removing options for it.

I like the idea that mortals can be undivided, but not daemons. It creates an interesting lore dynamic. As to removing undivided daemon princes... I'm not sure. I feel like some appropriate writing could have created room for them in the fluff, but I also understand why they did what they did.

Voss wrote:
10 years sounds a bit conservative, to be honest. It doesn't help that they can make claims to the Big 4 as concepts that are specific GW IP, but not chaos in general.

I'm honestly surprised Undivided gets as much play as it does in the new StD Battletome.

It isn't quite a reversal, but it was getting to the point where Undivided was daemon prince and furies only, and in some books they were gunning hard on insisting those be marked too.

FERRUMITE wrote:
I almost believe the rumor that ADB wrote those short stories for the STD battletome in order to make sure Belakor stays the only Undivided, given how ADB seemed to dislike AoS quite a bit and was known for disliking it. He seems kind of adamant about ensuring that true Undivided is for his characters only.

Eh. The push away from undivided started before GW picked up ADB. I don't think this can be laid at his feet.

Undivided was still a thing in whfb 7th ed, which ended in 2010. It was following 8th edition's release that 40k and whfb started moving away from the concept of undivided chaos. That I can remember. It may have had other pieces of removal here and there leading up to that, but I remember specifically it starting to heavily decline 2010.

I mean for a Daemon Prince, Undivided never made sense. Since to become a DP you need to have a patron god.

A DP is given powers from one of the gods that they follow, thats why they are exalted to a champion. If they didn't follow one of the gods they wouldn't be given the the powers.

But then you have ones like Horus, Abaddon, and Archaon who were/are known to have gifts from the four big ones.

Maybe true Undivided should be more about having gifts from all rather than none of them and as rare as those named are.

Alternatively, maybe they have been given gifts by powers in the Warp which are not yet Gods... Stories about about how two different beings became Gods in both 40K and Sigmar, and that is what they should represent.

Archaon is a known story that the gods liked him so much they were trying to get him on their side, then he basically became a god, so he is special, he was never turned into a DP. A DP isnt just 1 gift but many gifts (hence why they can turn to spawns instead) and deemed a champion of that god.

And this is Fantasy/AoS not 40k so Horus/Abaddon don't count. 40k you can still take Non marked DP's.

 Charistoph wrote:
But then you have ones like Horus, Abaddon, and Archaon who were/are known to have gifts from the four big ones.

They were also known for shunning daemonhood. Undivided is awesome as an option for mortals (it's my favorite way to play Slaves to Darkness!), but it doesn't make sense for daemons.

I was mostly pointing out the direction of capacity to be a force unified in their gifts received from the Gods, which would include Daemonhood. Notice that shunning the it means that they were offered it at one point.

I did acknowledge that truly undivided Daemon Princes should be incredibly rare, with only 3-4 being named possible across both systems. Just think about the work and efforts it would take to achieve a united Princehood from all 4 Gods.

Well, in AoS there are 5 chaos gods anyway not 4.

But I prefer the older background where there were numerous powers in the realm of Chaos and the Big 4 were just that, the biggest. It made sense that someone could become an undivided daemon prince by serving one of the lesser gods, or just by accumulating gifts from a variety of patrons until they transcended their humanity over time. Toward the end, the line between transcendence and degeneration into a spawn is thin, but I like it that way!

 auticus wrote:

Voss wrote:
10 years sounds a bit conservative, to be honest. It doesn't help that they can make claims to the Big 4 as concepts that are specific GW IP, but not chaos in general.

I'm honestly surprised Undivided gets as much play as it does in the new StD Battletome.

It isn't quite a reversal, but it was getting to the point where Undivided was daemon prince and furies only, and in some books they were gunning hard on insisting those be marked too.

FERRUMITE wrote:
I almost believe the rumor that ADB wrote those short stories for the STD battletome in order to make sure Belakor stays the only Undivided, given how ADB seemed to dislike AoS quite a bit and was known for disliking it. He seems kind of adamant about ensuring that true Undivided is for his characters only.

Eh. The push away from undivided started before GW picked up ADB. I don't think this can be laid at his feet.

It was following 8th edition's release that 40k and whfb started moving away from the concept of undivided chaos.

Did they, though?

Now granted, I have no experience of WHFB/AoS but in 40K all of the same Undivided options appear in Codex: Chaos Daemons as they did in the previous codex, and the one before that. More than half the OG 'Traitor' Legions remain Undivided. The Big Daddy of the Heretic Astartes Faction is Undivided.

It seems to me that reports of Undivided's death are greatly exaggerated.

 Da Boss wrote:
Well, in AoS there are 5 chaos gods anyway not 4.

But I prefer the older background where there were numerous powers in the realm of Chaos and the Big 4 were just that, the biggest. It made sense that someone could become an undivided daemon prince by serving one of the lesser gods, or just by accumulating gifts from a variety of patrons until they transcended their humanity over time. Toward the end, the line between transcendence and degeneration into a spawn is thin, but I like it that way!

Well the fifth one doesn't give a rat's ass about humans so lies outside the bounds of this particular topic. As for the rest, I would not be so sure. A certain novel has a character serving a chaos god outside the big 4, and he calls himself Zuvass...

Chaos undivided was about worshipping the chaos powers as a pantheon- praying and giving honour to all the gods. Non god specific corrupting energy of the warp could still reward a devotee for his service and devotion, in the same way that living in the eye mutates you and your armour.

'Khorne grant me strength and fury, Tzeentch grant me hidden knowledge, Nurgle grant me the power to bring low the mighty, Slaanesh grant me speed and supremacy.'

It makes sense in universe, it just doesn't make sense from a marketing perspective

 =Angel= wrote:
Chaos undivided was about worshipping the chaos powers as a pantheon- praying and giving honour to all the gods. Non god specific corrupting energy of the warp could still reward a devotee for his service and devotion, in the same way that living in the eye mutates you and your armour.

'Khorne grant me strength and fury, Tzeentch grant me hidden knowledge, Nurgle grant me the power to bring low the mighty, Slaanesh grant me speed and supremacy.'

It makes sense in universe, it just doesn't make sense from a marketing perspective

It makes more sense from a marketing perspective..... that means you'll be forced to take a mark and many people like to paint them the marked theme, so some are whiling to guy 2-3 for different marks.

Daemon Princes could last be Chaos Undivided in 6th, excepting Belakor.

Now I had one in that era and fluffwise it was technically frowned upon but legal and accepted because my army was 100% undivided as theme. The reasoning goes that Belakor doesnt have to obey the dark gods, and was such an annoyance by rubbing it in that the big four simply agreed not to repeat this mistake. So deamon princes of Chaos Undivided are one of three things, daemon princes raised shortly after Belakor and before the chaos gods stopped cooperating on making daemon princes. Daemon princes of minor chaos gods who can essentially give a mark but are not big enough to control a daemon prince once he has got it or mortals who ascended by other means.

 =Angel= wrote:
Chaos undivided was about worshipping the chaos powers as a pantheon- praying and giving honour to all the gods. Non god specific corrupting energy of the warp could still reward a devotee for his service and devotion, in the same way that living in the eye mutates you and your armour.

'Khorne grant me strength and fury, Tzeentch grant me hidden knowledge, Nurgle grant me the power to bring low the mighty, Slaanesh grant me speed and supremacy.'

It makes sense in universe, it just doesn't make sense from a marketing perspective

It actually makes more sense from a marketing perspective. It specifically excludes generic, general purpose models that can be used for multiple purposes and pins things down to IP concepts they control.
In universe it makes no sense at all, as it thins the infinite variety of chaos down to the Big Four and nothing else.

That's a matter of perspective.

On the other hand, being able to have your cake and eat it by not having to pick a side in the internal war in chaos and still get all the good stuff cheapens Daemonhood.

Daemonhood -is- a cheap thing. The fluff is rather consistent in describing that daemonhood isn't a victory for the mortal involved. But rather that something external and alien is using the person to hatch into the world, using the person as a chrysalis. Archaeon and Abaddon are clever sods, and every victorious daemon prince is a failure of their host.

But no, not picking a side means being fairly vulnerable. A daemon prince is mid tier, with a lot of creatures that will want to use and abuse the newborn daemon, and a whole host of greater daemons and powerful entities that can- and nobody is going to step in to prevent it, unless it's another being trying to take advantage.

Undivided daemons isn't about having cake, it's about not narrowing the scope of the setting.

I just think we fundamentally disagree on what the setting should be.

Which is fine! But I dont think we'll be able to convince each other what is best for the setting given that.