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Hello everyone, I'm not sure if I'm creating a topic in the right subforum, but still. I read here a long time ago that Gav Trope wrote in his book Wild Rider that Chaos existed before the War in Heaven, because some guy (I think it was the editor-in-chief of BL at the time, I'm not sure) told him that he can write whatever he wants in books, because the editor himself believes that canon only in codices. After the failure of these books, the third book was canceled and the editor was fired. Can anyone tell me more about this and what was the name of this editor in chief? Or is it all fiction?

not sure what you're talking about exactly, but I think you're barking up the wrong tree, because chaos would have always existed before the war in heaven by its very nature - time is meaningless in the warp (which has always existed and will always exist), just like how slaanesh existed even before the eldar gave birth to it, etc.

There may have been a retcon or change by Gav Thorpe in the book that caused problems, but thats not it.

darkoms wrote:
Hello everyone, I'm not sure if I'm creating a topic in the right subforum, but still. I read here a long time ago that Gav Trope wrote in his book Wild Rider that Chaos existed before the War in Heaven, because some guy (I think it was the editor-in-chief of BL at the time, I'm not sure) told him that he can write whatever he wants in books, because the editor himself believes that canon only in codices. After the failure of these books, the third book was canceled and the editor was fired. Can anyone tell me more about this and what was the name of this editor in chief? Or is it all fiction?

like chaos0xomega says, the warp is screwy. after the Birth of slaneesh, She, retroactively, always existed.

but as far as i know, "chaos", as in the warp entites that exist as reflection of realspace sentence, were around before the war in heaven. its just the effect of that war massivly increased the power of them to interact with real-space and lead to the growth of what we call the Chaos Gods.

xerxeskingofking wrote:
...She, retroactively, always existed.

I do not fully comprehend the ramifications of this, but thank you for bringing this concept into my brain.

IIRC Chaos is formed by human/sentient thought.

So as soon as the first human picked up the first club and bashed in the first brain (or Eldar, or Necon or Slaan) Khorne was there.

Never read Wild Rider so can't speak to the books being canceled, editor fired, whatever but I cannot for a second believe a naval-dwelling question about when chaos was created would get anyone fired or any book cancelled.

There have been far far worse retcons/inconsistencies than Slaanesh daemons being present during the War in Heaven.

Remember, this is the same series of books which has the Visarch getting trapped in Nurgle's Garden with one of the Croneswords and saying 'this is fine' to himself...

Except that time has no meaning in the Warp. So when Slaanesh was birthed, within the Warp, Slaanesh always was and always will be.


It's why if you enter the Warp you could experience thousands of years in the Warp, but appear in reality only seconds later. Or vis versa, a second in the Warp and suddenly appear hundreds of years later in reality.

Clearly there are ways to mitigate, reduce and attempt to tame it enough that you can use the Warp in a functional sense - eg space travel - however its still a possibility.

Slannesh is the Eldar face of excess, but excess still existed from other species in the warp.

Just as khorme is the human face of rage.

All emotions go into the warp and form the primordial forces of chaos. It's just that the strongest imprint controls the image.

Indeed, lots of cultures had their own versions of the Pantheon such as pre-Imperial Colchis or the Laer species. The Interex also had quite an extensive knowledge of the powers of Chaos.
TBF even within humanity's very vague understanding of the Dark Gods, there are hundreds of variations on the names and roles of the Pantheon.

Not to mention the fact that the Chaos "Gods" are just super powerful warp entities. In 40K there's Gork and Mork in the Warp as well; whilst AoS has the Great Horned Rat.


Older lore also had several other named Chaos Gods that kicked around for a bit. So whilst a lot of the time there's going to likely be one of the 4 big named ones greater demons running around pretending to be a different named god to mortals, there's a chance you could be worshipping a smaller demonic entity.

That's something I feel AoS really conveyed well with the Warcry stuff. How each one prays to a god who isn't one of the great 4, but each time its just a demon tricking them and any one of the warbands might have the same "concept" of a god within their faction, but each tribe/city/group could have a different greater demon from one of the 4 big names behind them.

You also see it in Necromunda, with corpse grinder cults worshipping the "Lord of Skin and Sinew". This is their interpretation of an aspect of Khorne.

 Gert wrote:
Indeed, lots of cultures had their own versions of the Pantheon such as pre-Imperial Colchis or the Laer species. The Interex also had quite an extensive knowledge of the powers of Chaos.
TBF even within humanity's very vague understanding of the Dark Gods, there are hundreds of variations on the names and roles of the Pantheon.

While that's true, the emotions behind them are identical. All human rage is the same flavour because it's all from the same species. Khorme is basically the true human face, representing the human emotion of rage. Each of the local versions are cultural more than actual versions. All those cultural variations are still Powered by the same human rage and all merge in concert.

If kroot were the dominant species their rage would be the face and name of the primordial rage god.

Khaine is what Eldar rage looks like and that's why khorne fought slannesh to keep him.

It’s not completly wrong though. I have not read the book in question. But chaos has always existed sort of. Iirc the story goes that the empyrean/sea of souls was calm (it would later be called chaos). The ancient slann where the first to breach it and mess with it. And they got into a fight with the necrons (the war in heaven) which messed it up and started the change from the empyrean to chaos. However, the sea of souls worked very much like chaos works today. So subcounciousness, undesirable traits and emotions does get reflected. We know that the slann we’re not the only inhabitants of the milky way at the time. At the very least there was the necrontyr and probably other minor races. So all the chaotic traits of those races reflected in the warp and would likely have created minor chaos areas. So yeah, makes logical sense to me that chaos would pre-date the war in heaven. But not as an entire realm. More like minor disturbances.