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Please correct me if I'm wrong, but with the Emperor being a Perpetual and all, was the current state of the Imperium the only way to defeat him? Since he would just come back to life it he died it seems like Horus actually killing him would have not had the massive impact you would assume (though it still would have been huge, he would have just eventually come back.) Instead, mortally wounding him and leaving him trapped in a perpetual (ba-dum-tish) place of just about dead, but not quite, seems like the only way to functionally take him out of the picture. Chaos after all doesn't want a full all out win, they want to keep the blood flowing, the plagues pumping, and extacy happening. Except maybe Tzeentch, but who can ever tell what they are up to?

Seems like it.

Well little bit of a caviot to that, we dont actually 100% know if the emp really is a perpetual. Its highly suspected and likely but not 100% confirmed.

If you mean chaos as in the chaos gods? I dont really think they have a plan other then lol lets see what happens to screw this up. Since their whole MO is constant struggle. Because if this was the plan of chaos, they inadvertently ended up making the emperor of mankind far stronger then he ever was at anypoint in time, possibly to the level of a chaos god, just one of order rather then chaos.

So i think really, what you are asking is to know if the plans of a madmen and the insane are coherent and logical.

The "Big Plan" according to Ingethel the Ascended, was that humanity would turn to the worship of the Pantheon. The first pawn was to be the Emperor who bargained for a portion of power from the Pantheon with the promise that He would turn humanity. Obviously that didn't happen so the Gods then turned to pawns they already had, people like Erebus, Kor Phaeron and Typhon. The plan now was to put Horus on the Golden Throne and use force to turn mankind to the worship of the Dark Gods.
The only sure truth in there is that the Emperor went to Molech, went through a Warp Gate, and then ended up back on Terra all powered up.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

If you mean chaos as in the chaos gods? I dont really think they have a plan other then lol lets see what happens to screw this up. Since their whole MO is constant struggle.

Have to disagree with you there. All four gods marking Horus and also taking steps to turn various other traitor primarchs seems pretty planned-out. It would be a heck of a coincidence if the events of the Horus Heresy just so happened to result in the galaxy being so "nutritious" for them too. It's pretty unlikely that you "accidentally" baked a pie, especially given that you did so during the small timeframe in which you had pie ingredients (the primarchs) in the house.

The gods' plans for after the Heresy might have been vague and were probably adversarial towards each other, but I do get the impression that the general state of the galaxy was brought about somewhat intentionally.

Because if this was the plan of chaos, they inadvertently ended up making the emperor of mankind far stronger then he ever was at anypoint in time, possibly to the level of a chaos god, just one of order rather then chaos.

Grumble grumble. Insert rant here about how the term "chaos" is kind of just a holdover from the source material GW borrowed the term from. The chaos gods actually behave pretty predictably. A lot of the "random" stuff seems to be related to mutations and warp phenomena from where the warp and the materium touch. But those probably have metaphysical explanations if someone were to look hard enough. See: mutations often being symbolically relevant to the mutatee in some way. Warp stuff turning bullets into butterflies could be the result of that patch of the warp being occupied by thoughts of biological life or the perceptions of a dreaming psyker, etc.

Not that any of that changes your point. I'm just nitpicking.

So i think really, what you are asking is to know if the plans of a madmen and the insane are coherent and logical.

I mean, sometimes they are. Especially in 40k. Like, it may seem insane for a Slaaneshi cultist to want to poison his own city as a sacrifice to Slaanesh. But our hypothetical cult leader has had his brain rewired to process the pain of the nervegas and service to Slaanesh as pleasurable, dopamine-releasing activities and survival as a relatively minor afterthought. So given those changes to his mind, releasing the nerve gas over the city is going to give him exactly what he wants with no downsides that he cares about. Coherent. Logical. Still insane and self-destructive.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

If you mean chaos as in the chaos gods? I dont really think they have a plan other then lol lets see what happens to screw this up. Since their whole MO is constant struggle.

Have to disagree with you there. All four gods marking Horus and also taking steps to turn various other traitor primarchs seems pretty planned-out. It would be a heck of a coincidence if the events of the Horus Heresy just so happened to result in the galaxy being so "nutritious" for them too. It's pretty unlikely that you "accidentally" baked a pie, especially given that you did so during the small timeframe in which you had pie ingredients (the primarchs) in the house.

The gods' plans for after the Heresy might have been vague and were probably adversarial towards each other, but I do get the impression that the general state of the galaxy was brought about somewhat intentionally.

.

Given that its only one Galaxy in a universe of galaxies within a mutiverse and that the Chaos Gods are likely more interested in the game rather than the victory - because then the game ends - its all such small scale that likely only a tiny part of the personality of a Chaos God ever really pays attention.

Time doesn’t pass normally in the warp, cause and effect work differently, perhaps they always knew the imperium would end up this way they just had to figure out how to do it.

Either way I think they are pretty good schemers and a lot of what happened is to a plan. The scattering of the primarchs for example and now half the imperium is cut off and at the mercy of warp rifts. I fully expect that in their hour of need and fear many will turn to the worship of powerful deities


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Would be a bit crazy if that happened by chance

I'd prefer if the 40k setting was nobodies plan. Every single machination has failed and inexorably led to this. What's left is a hellscape of broken dreams and ideals with the last remenants desperately hanging on to try and salvage something. In that vein, the actions of Guilliman reborn to try and bring some semblance of control to the Imperium creates a momentary burst of light. Although what that achieves is highlighting the shadowy underbelly of the Imperium and everything that is wrong with it. With the Chaos gods main plan long since failed, their remaining pawns are scrabbling to find some victory or gain, but have never quite managed to achieve their own agenda.

Chaos, as in the Gods, had a plan?

That’s genuinely never been my impression. Rather they were pissed off The Emperor stole power, and wanted him punished/dead.

The rest? The now? That was Erebus, Kor Phaeron and the Davinites to begin with, then all sorts of swivel eyed loonies since.

My take is the Gods are simply so far beyond sanity, they have no particular plan. Even Tzeentch, who has quite honest very literary lost the plot, if he ever truly had one.

The Chaos Gods are Chaos nor order. A plan suggests, order, structure, logic (as we understand it).

The Chaos Gods want turmoil, confusion, chaos. They are beings of Chaos itself from a realm vastly removed and yet connected to our own reality. A place where time has no meaning; where 10 Thousand years can pass in a second , a millennia or longer all at once.


We've seen the Gods give support and withdraw it; we've seen them fight each other to their own detriment. These are not creatures working toward goals we'd understand; they are seeking a never ending turmoil. The Imperium isn't even that old - even within the Galaxy 10K years is nothing. The Necrons have slept for millennia longer than that

 Overread wrote:
The Chaos Gods are Chaos nor order. A plan suggests, order, structure, logic (as we understand it)...

The Chaos Gods want turmoil, confusion, chaos...

We've seen the Gods give support and withdraw it; we've seen them fight each other to their own detriment. These are not creatures working toward goals we'd understand; they are seeking a never ending turmoil.

Eh. Honestly, I think there's a lot of evidence that the chaos gods are more understandable than you're making them out to be. As much as I like the idea of the chaos gods being truly unknowable, unguessable entities, that just doesn't seem to be the case.

Basically, the chaos gods seem to be intelligent animals that eat certain types of psychic energy. Slaanesh does things like toss a couple hive fleets together so that a bunch of eldar will die trying to stop one from absorbing the other (see: Valedor.) When the gods do appear to have coherent goals for their followers, it generally boils down to actions that will result in generating psychic energy of the sort that god wants to eat (see: Slaaneshi cults encouraging hedonism, Nurgle worshippers spreading plagues, etc.)

I'm sure you're right about the gods wanting turmoil, confusion, etc. because those things tend to result in the battlefields and thirst for pleasure/knowledge/power that fuels the gods. When we see the gods squabbling (such as the Slaanesh vs Khorne events of Fall of Biel-Tan), we see that said squabbling has at least a bit of a reason behind it, even if that reason boils down to, "Bet I can stab mortals better than you." All of which suggests that the gods and their daemons (at least sometimes) possess motivations we can understand and are capable of formulating plans that utilize the basics of cause and effect as we understand them.

Their minds and natures might still ultimately be alien, but on some level they're basically just farmers squabbling over who gets to plant what where and who has the right to eat the berries on the bushes in no man's land.

Wyldhunt wrote:

Eh. Honestly, I think there's a lot of evidence that the chaos gods are more understandable than you're making them out to be. As much as I like the idea of the chaos gods being truly unknowable, unguessable entities, that just doesn't seem to be the case.

The Chaos gods (sans Slaanesh) are like the platonic ideal of an insane person. So it depends on how comprehensible insanity is.

I don't think the current state of the Imperium was Chaos's plan. It is a consequence of the Emperor's plan, however.

 Olthannon wrote:
I'd prefer if the 40k setting was nobodies plan. Every single machination has failed and inexorably led to this. What's left is a hellscape of broken dreams and ideals with the last remenants desperately hanging on to try and salvage something. In that vein, the actions of Guilliman reborn to try and bring some semblance of control to the Imperium creates a momentary burst of light. Although what that achieves is highlighting the shadowy underbelly of the Imperium and everything that is wrong with it. With the Chaos gods main plan long since failed, their remaining pawns are scrabbling to find some victory or gain, but have never quite managed to achieve their own agenda.

Yes, I don't subscribe to the Chaos gods being inevitable or destined to win. All the factions have their own sort of end game and the Chaos gods do not have it in the bag, being threatened by the Emperor, Ynnead, and the Necrons' Great Work. I don't like the idea of any faction being "pre-destined" to win, even in terms of background and a far off future that never arrives in actual RL.

I think the original plan if it can be called such, was for the Eye of Terror writ large on the galactic scale, with daemon worlds all over, ruled over by daemon princes.

The original writeup for the Emperor vs. Horus duel said the Chaos gods actually disengaged from Horus when the Emperor finally stopped holding back, as they did not want to get hurt. What happened to Nurgle in Godblight is what IMO they were trying to avoid. They similarly got annoyed enough by Luther losing to destroy Caliban in an act of anger/spite. So I would say, "No, the 40K Imperium is not the result of a conscious successful plan by the Chaos gods, but it still worked out well enough for them all things considered."

Deep lore moment.
The players are actually the chaos gods with each of the 4 representing an aspect of the player base.

Khorne: The rage gamer who takes things way to seriously and gets butt hurt when his army does not win

Nurgal: The cheeto dust covered fingers player who never showers, is super nice and loves the game just has not seen a bar of soap in years

Slaanesh: The player that way over shares personal details because they dontreally talk to many peole and kinda surge out at the prospect of being around others

Tzeentzch: The WAAC power gamer that just just wants to win, also is a bastion of untold amounts of lore and facts of the game. The inverse is also true, just plays the games for memes.

Gork and Mork: haha, lots of models go burrrrrr.