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In terms of 40K?

It’s equally all canon, and none of it is canon. That’s the joy of it as everything we’re told (outside of the Heresy series) comes from unreliable narrators.

 Da Boss wrote:
I don't find that aspect of the background enjoyable at all, for me the setting was a place to invent and create, not to catalogue. To each their own.

My interaction on the background forum and here gradually convince me that I'm not really a fan of 40K, just my idea of it that I constructed with limited information when I was younger.

It's sad but it seems to be the case.

I came to this revelation a while ago. It doesn't help that subtlety or nuance is something modern 40k writers lack almost completely and seem obsessed with unveiling every mystery. I don't want to use the term Flanderisation but it's the only word I can think of for how the setting feels these days.
Also the scale never sat right with me. GW write as if the loss of a single world or even star system is a big deal but it never is with the exception of Cadia. Oh no, the tyranids ate Bumblefuck VII and wiped out the Blood Monkey space marine chapter! How terrible! No it's not. There's a million other worlds and you just made up the Blood Monkeys just now for your silly fluff blurb. Who cares?

For the original question of why does Chaos suck in 40k. Well, seems like to me the business side of GW finds themselves in a bit of quicksand.

Space Marines are wildly popular, a large portion of sales and revenue are thanks to Space Marines. Many people play Space Marines, many people buy Space Marines thus we need to keep making Space Marine things to sell. They also spawn interest in other Imperial factions (AdMech, Sisters) which bolsters sales. More kits, more releases, more lore. Being the most popular faction they tend to save the day in all of their lore as well. Got to keep the customer happy right?

Why do Space Marines sell? Well they are the poster child, hold the lions share of releases and tend to thwomp everyone else in the lore.
Why are Necrons selling so well recently? Perhaps because they got a critically acclaimed book the Infinite & Divine and a complete model refresh.
Why aren't Eldar bringing in the big bucks? Perhaps because 90% of the range is of drinking age and 90% of their books is watching them comically fail at everything they do while saying "woe is me, who could have foresaw this?"

So GW gets into this spiral where they keep doing more Space Marines because that's what sells best and they want that giant swath of customers to keep buying. The feedback loops enhances this. It's not a sustainable trend of course, eventually less and less people will buy Chaos/Xenos kits then we'll run out of cartoon villains for a Space Marine to punch on the cover of a Marvel comic. GW is business savvy enough to realize this. It looks like they're current strategy is to refresh and prop up one bad guy per edition, make them the big bad and keep the deluge of Imperial releases. Keep the biggest customer happy with their wallet open while the other factions can tell each other "oh don't worry, we'll get out time in the sun eventually".

So why does Chaos suck despite being the big bad of the setting? Perhaps because you'd be insulting your biggest customer if Chaos starts beating up the Imperium. Remember the endless cacophony around the PA short story where a mean old Custodes killed a Space Marine who defied the voice of the Emperor. How rude.

 the_scotsman wrote:

Warhammer 40k

-Chaos takes already hyper-powerful space marines and transforms them into massively shittier space marines
-Greatest champion is a sad kylo ren melon-fether who carries around sempai's super-special powerfist even though this incredible relic is just a normal fething chainfist you can take on any space marine sergeant
-Greatest champion's grand plan was an excuse to release a whole new range of loyalist marine miniatures

Agreed with vipoid, you certainly have a way with words!

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
I don't find that aspect of the background enjoyable at all, for me the setting was a place to invent and create, not to catalogue. To each their own.

My interaction on the background forum and here gradually convince me that I'm not really a fan of 40K, just my idea of it that I constructed with limited information when I was younger.

It's sad but it seems to be the case.

I came to this revelation a while ago. It doesn't help that subtlety or nuance is something modern 40k writers lack almost completely and seem obsessed with unveiling every mystery. I don't want to use the term Flanderisation but it's the only word I can think of for how the setting feels these days.
Also the scale never sat right with me. GW write as if the loss of a single world or even star system is a big deal but it never is with the exception of Cadia. Oh no, the tyranids ate Bumblefuck VII and wiped out the Blood Monkey space marine chapter! How terrible! No it's not. There's a million other worlds and you just made up the Blood Monkeys just now for your silly fluff blurb. Who cares?

That is not just 40k writers. It's pretty much ned media trend since the Star Wars EU happened, and only accelerated as nerd stuff became mainstream.See the midichlorians and the demand from certain fans to document every hiccup and fart of Horus Heresy.
This notion that there should be some sort of Approved Timeline Keeper at GW checking BL stories for purity is part of that demand to have no stone left unturned, no mystery left in lore.

 Mr Morden wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
If you want to take Ian Watson's books seriously as canon work away.

But thanks for doing the thing I highlighted as unfun.

It does seem fair to mention this when you highlight it as a new element - why is it only now an issue in novels but was not then?

Because there is a (fairly) recent spate of people wanting some nebulous established "canon" in 40k and in cowing to their demands warped 40k from a huge sandbox setting to an utterly utterly stupid storyline it was never, ever meant to be. Everything now has to be known and codified, including the cancer that is the HH books that inevitably infected 40k with everyone and their mum wanting to know what the consistency of a Primarch's gak was on the day of the siege, because those things will be known and codified in almost pornographic detail 10k years after the fact. No, 40k was not an ongoing storyline. Get that HH sequel storyline gak out of 40k.

Now, you have half the posts in background forums about the bloody Primarchs and The Emperor and how everything MUST connect back to the HH. How these people want The Emperor to return and undermine literally everything that makes 40k what it is. This is their bed and I hope they are happy lying in it, as they've warped 40k with it. But we have to have everything be a known entity and everything be connected to the HH. No, the Nids couldn't just be a random occurrence of them invading the Milky Way. Nope. It of bloody course is caused by something happening the HH.

BL books back then were just extra fiction, now you have people hanging on everything that is churned out and taking it as gospel, because we can't just have extra fiction to enrich the setting. Noooo... we have to make the galaxy smaller and have everything now revolve around two dozen of so characters.

Almost like the Heresy was the defining event for the Imperium and is literally the root cause for the majority of its institutions and problems.
There's still plenty of mystery and sandboxing for 40k.
Also, come on dude is the swearing and cursing really necessary?

 Gert wrote:
Almost like the Heresy was the defining event for the Imperium and is literally the root cause for the majority of its institutions and problems.

I think the point is that while the HH might be the defining point with regard to the Imperium and Chaos, it shouldn't also be the defining point for Necrons, Tyranids etc.

Similar to the complaints people brought up earlier, where Xeno races have just become toothless threats that only exist so that GW can go "Hah, just kidding! The real threat is actually Chaos, just like it was last time and the time before that . . ."

 Gert wrote:
Almost like the Heresy was the defining event for the Imperium and is literally the root cause for the majority of its institutions and problems.

When you have ten thousand years of bureaucratic and religious stagnation, across a galaxy of millions of worlds, tying all of the Imperium's problems back to the same cast of superheroes is pretty limiting.

So I mean, yeah, having everything wrong with the Imperium come from the primarchs- including seemingly completely unrelated things like extragalactic aliens- is pretty dissatisfying for those of us who don't care for The Avengers But With Daddy Issues.

 vipoid wrote:

I think the point is that while the HH might be the defining point with regard to the Imperium and Chaos, it shouldn't also be the defining point for Necrons, Tyranids etc.

Similar to the complaints people brought up earlier, where Xeno races have just become toothless threats that only exist so that GW can go "Hah, just kidding! The real threat is actually Chaos, just like it was last time and the time before that . . ."

The only links I know of between the Necrons and the Heresy is that Trazyn nicked a ship full of EC gene-seed for kicks. But considering that Trazyn's entire character is that he nicks stuff I don't see how that counts.
And considering that the 40k setting is dominated by the Imperium there isn't really much that the Heresy wouldn't have effected. The Imperium's lax military policies post-Heresy due to the false belief that humanity was safe led to the resurgence of the Orks and the subsequent War of the Beast.
If the Traitor forces had won then the Aeldari would be in danger of extinction and consumption by Slaanesh, something they are kind of trying to avoid.
As for the Tyranids, IMO the act of friendship that saw Dantioch sacrifice himself to save Polux and a company of Ultramarines inadvertently getting the attention of a terrifying extra-galactic foe is pretty cool. Nobody within the setting even knows that's how the Nid's first noticed the Milky Way but now they've found it the Astronomican is the new beacon for the murder moths.


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 catbarf wrote:

When you have ten thousand years of bureaucratic and religious stagnation, across a galaxy of millions of worlds, tying all of the Imperium's problems back to the same cast of superheroes is pretty limiting.

So I mean, yeah, having everything wrong with the Imperium come from the primarchs- including seemingly completely unrelated things like extragalactic aliens- is pretty dissatisfying for those of us who don't care for The Avengers But With Daddy Issues.

That's a bit of an oversimplification of events. By "a bit" I mean "a very large".

I think its clear the fanbase (or online obsessives anyway) are divided on where they want the fluff to be or go.

Which could arguably be tied up with the tonal differences of "Grimdark but its ironic and funny", "Grimdark but VERY SERIOUS and grim. Seriously grim." and "Grimdark but isn't this awesome? Who doesn't like death everywhere. All the death!!! Also Guilliman is my spirit animal."

Filling in gaps is always difficult, because you potentially fill them in with something lame. Or just blatant contradictions. Which some people might not care about, but nerds are generally alienated by.

Why does so much seemingly get such a little to no look in 40k compared to loyalist marines ?

Because it's 40k and they have some ideas on what we all should cherish as opposed to bringing everything up together.

Also they seem to quietly hate CSM, I don't know why but it just seems to be a trend.


Everything is because of the HH. It's like that game where everything is just a couple steps away from it. The Necrons went into slumber because they wanted to be all rested for after the heresy. The Tau want to make their own heresy as it sounded fun from all the books they read about it. Necrons love some heresy and want to gobble it up. Heresy sounds like a mighty good scrum for dem Orks. Etc, etc, etc. If you don't know how everything you do in the game relates to the heresy, you may be the heresy.

 Gert wrote:
As for the Tyranids, IMO the act of friendship that saw Dantioch sacrifice himself to save Polux and a company of Ultramarines inadvertently getting the attention of a terrifying extra-galactic foe is pretty cool. Nobody within the setting even knows that's how the Nid's first noticed the Milky Way but now they've found it the Astronomican is the new beacon for the murder moths.

You say "pretty cool", and some of us say "shrinking the universe unnecessarily".

Making the HH the cause of the Tyranid invasion was dumb.

Agree to disagree HMBC.

Rihgu wrote:

This seems right… the Ao$ scheme is simple black and white scrum in the middle that gives chaos a role. In 40k, there is a less clear cut role, and without the inquisition’s role clarified, chaos remains underdeveloped..l maybe this is the sticking point for GW brain bugs…

W...What...? What about AoS is simple black and white...?

Jeff White consistently has zero idea what he's talking about. Not worth anything but an ignore and move on.


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 vipoid wrote:

 Gert wrote:
Almost like the Heresy was the defining event for the Imperium and is literally the root cause for the majority of its institutions and problems.

I think the point is that while the HH might be the defining point with regard to the Imperium and Chaos, it shouldn't also be the defining point for Necrons, Tyranids etc.

Similar to the complaints people brought up earlier, where Xeno races have just become toothless threats that only exist so that GW can go "Hah, just kidding! The real threat is actually Chaos, just like it was last time and the time before that . . ."

....and even then it is easily and always dispatched by the heroes of the setting.

 Gert wrote:
Agree to disagree HMBC.

 Da Boss wrote:
I really hate the new background regarding the Emperor and his direct interventions or direct communication with characters.
BLERGH
Awful stuff. Removes all the ambiguity from the character that allowed a Chaos player to claim that the Emperor was nothing but a mindless corpse on a throne channelling raw power and the fun "I have faith" arguments that Imperials could use in response.

Nah, ambiguity, we can't have ambiguity. Better lay it all out and make sure everyone knows what the Truth is, so discussions can just boil down to "Hey what if the Emperor is dead?" "Nah man, check out book X on pg Y, it's canon the Emperor is alive and these are his opinions and goals." "Oh cool thanks."

It's like the stuff they did to Star Wars, filling in every single detail and the details are always more disappointing than what you imagined, taking the fun out of talking about the setting.

Ambiguity is certainly preferable in this instance if you want the setting to remain just that, a setting that remains static and is a playground for players to make their own narratives in. But many of those ambiguities are going to be revealed if 40k is to be an ongoing narrative. So are you a player that wants a setting, or a narrative? But regardless, the people who want a narrative for better or worse have already won it seems.


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Iracundus wrote:

40K fans keep better track of the background and timeline than GW. I remember catching (major) Eldar continuity errors in Gav Thorpe's Eldar novels and pointing them out on his blog years ago.

This is the case with almost any fandom of a long-running work that has multiple writers like 40k. Because the reality is most fans simply do not give a gak about minor continuity errors, so there isn't much incentive to keep the canon air-tight.

 vipoid wrote:

 Gert wrote:
Almost like the Heresy was the defining event for the Imperium and is literally the root cause for the majority of its institutions and problems.

I think the point is that while the HH might be the defining point with regard to the Imperium and Chaos, it shouldn't also be the defining point for Necrons, Tyranids etc.

Similar to the complaints people brought up earlier, where Xeno races have just become toothless threats that only exist so that GW can go "Hah, just kidding! The real threat is actually Chaos, just like it was last time and the time before that . . ."

Man when I read Blood Of Baal and it ended with "turns out Chaos helped clean up the nids at the end" I was...well honestly I was pretty ambivalent because I was never that invested in 40k fluff, but if I HAD been invested I'd have been pissed.

I actually WAS pissed at them making the Hive Mind a partial warp entity and giving it emotions. I've played Nids since 2nd because I like that they're the most alien race in the game and GW seems to be reducing them to just Chaos but with eating.

The Hive Mind isn't just Chaos with eating though. Previously its been seen as just an animal following instinct but each successive Hive Fleet has shown that the Hive Mind is intelligent and dangerous. The fact that specifically targeted the Blood Angels, to me at least, shows that it's capable of emotion which makes it that much more dangerous. It can learn and adapt but also feel rage and pick out specific targets for that rage.
Also the Hive Mind has always been Warp sensitive, this isn't new. Thats what the Shadow in the Warp is, the Hive Minds presence blocking access.

"I hate them for what they are and for what they may one day become. I hate them not because they hate us but because they are incapable of good, honest, human hatred. "
That was a really cool quote about Tyranids in 2e. Shame it's not true any more.

And yeah, in case it's not obvious I vastly prefer my games to be settings rather than narratives.

 Sim-Life wrote:
I actually WAS pissed at them making the Hive Mind a partial warp entity and giving it emotions. I've played Nids since 2nd because I like that they're the most alien race in the game and GW seems to be reducing them to just Chaos but with eating.

The Hive Mind has always been an entity with emotions. Even in 2nd Ed short stories, Hive Ships would taunt Psykers in Gothic that had the audacity to board them before taking the psykers to torture.

You can blame the 3rd ed Codex lack of fluff for hinting otherwise.

There is a difference between a bird being able to mimic the human voice, or cat using frenquencies used by small children on humans, and a hive mind having a feeling of hate against the art and culture of BA and its succesors.

It is like a dog suddenly telling you they very much are Jungian in their personal views on life. Makes as much sense too.

There is a huge difference in a bird imitating a human voice and an extragalactic psychic presence speaking to you in your mind.
The Hive Mind isn't a bird it's a malevolent intelligence that rapidly adapts to the enemies it fights.

To answer the OP, there are three main reasons :

1. Even to this day, GW is struggling with the whole Chaos faction and doesn't really know what it is supposed to be. Are CSM supposed to be armed with gakky weapons which are no longer being produced by the Imperium and (over)compensate with the Dark Gods' powers ? Are CSM supposed to be armed with older patterns of weapons which were extremely powerful ? Are the legions supposed to be "the main representatives" of CSM ? What about the renegades which are also supposed to be powerful (Huron Blackheart, Crimson Slaughters, etc) ?
On top of that, the legions and different warbands have a different relationship to the daemons. Some legions are true followers of Chaos (Word Bearers), others are not (Night Lords), others sometime use daemons while not being followers themselves (Iron Warriors) and finally, some sub-factions are so independant that everything is possible (World Eaters warbands, Crimson Slaughter, Black Legion, etc).

2. As Galas said, Chaos is for losers. In Fantasy, Archaon joined Chaos because he discovered some sort of terrible secret / knowledge which made him renounce his faith in Sigmar, not because he was manipulated like a moron ala Horus or Angron. The Chaos Warriors and other elite units are Norsemen who have been "elevated" after countless trials, deadly combats, etc. The Norsemen (and Norsewomen) lived in the Chaos Wastes where they built a whole society and culture. They were also traders and they were not always at war with the Empire. For example, they used to trade with the Empire.

3. The setting. The galaxy is huge. Like, really fething huge. And the Imperium owns the galaxy whereas the Empire was a state among other states (in 40K all other factions, even the ones which have an "empire", are tiny compared to the Imperium). The Imperium just lost a couple of planets ? A sector ? Who cares. At the same time, somewhere else in the galaxy, the Imperium is already colonizing new worlds (perhaps after exterminating the local unnamed Xeno population). This is why I don't like seeing GW trying its hardest to make Chaos and CSM the supreme bad guys : I don't believe it. They are simply not numerous enough and they are plagued by so many internal problems that I don't see them as a credible single threat.

TL;DR :
- In 40K, Chaos is for losers ;
- In 40K, the Imperium is all-powerful while the Empire was not ;
- In 40K, victories and losses are meaningless because the galaxy is so incomprehensibly huge that for every loss you can be sure another world is being colonized by the Imperium at the exact same moment ;
- GW, to this day, doesn't seem to know what Chaos and CSM should be ;
- Because of all that, in 40K, Chaos works best as a vague, insidious threat in the background.

What I believe most people think (I myself do) is that it removes some of the appeal of the hive mind to have it have a personal vendetta agaisnt the Blood Angels, a nobody bunch of extra spicy food.

Is like you as a person hating a particular fried chip in a bag when you have already hate 3 or 4 before.

At the end of the day, its just there to make cater to imperial, space marines and blood angels fans. And when literally every piece of fiction or most of them need to have some appeal to imperial fans it becomes tiresome.

Is like when a child is having a party and you have to put a pie to his brother so he doesnt feel left behind.

What I believe most people think (I myself do) is that it removes some of the appeal of the hive mind to have it have a personal vendetta agaisnt the Blood Angels, a nobody bunch of extra spicy food.

I fully agree with you. When I red that, I rolled my eyes. I like the Tyranids precisely because they are so alien to us and even their thoughts are alien to us. Making te Hive Mind feels "rage" or "hatred" towards a specific faction is utterly dumb and it heavily dilutes the feeling of facing a lovecraftian horror whoch is supposed to be incomprehensible to us.

EDIT : and it is even more stupid because the author really did a good job with its description of the Lictor.

I mean, if GW tried to sell to me the idea that the Hive Mind "believes" the Imperium is another Hive Mind that presents a real threat because it can only understand the universe in his own concepts and this giganormous amount of biomass that throws hordes and hordes of soldiers agaisnt it (Basically with the same tactics) can only be another tyranid-like Hive Mind, that would be cool.

But GW writters aren't as clever.

I think it's a problem with a lot of the background. The tension between making things really alien and unknowable or making them relatable. I prefer the Chaos Gods and the Tyranids to be pretty unknowable and weird to any human perspective. The Tyranids because they are a crazy composite organism with a completely different perspective and drive than any individual human (the Tyranid organism is more like a social insect colony than anything else, but even that's not really getting into it enough) and the Chaos Gods because they are weird self contradictory beings that exist beyond time and causality.

But I think for the sort of comic book stories some authors want to tell it is easier to give everyone personalities and understandable goals, because it is more dramatic and allows for more traditional storytelling. Not everyone wants to read some lovecraft style mediations on the horror of existence all the time.

Unfortunately, according to GW, the Hive Mind only sees the Imperium as a prey.

What is baffling in my opinion, is that GW can be sometimes "brilliant" regarding the Tyranids. For example, in the fall of Shadowbrink, they played the "alien" part very well. Even though the Hive Mind had detected that something weird happened when the daemons first emerged, it didn't react since they are made of raw chaos matter and not biomass. The Hive Mind had a "wtf is going" and was very confused for a moment.

And it is because of that very precise reason (and their mutagenic power on the precious biomass) that the Hive Mind classifed the daemons as another "predator species".

Lovecraftian horror doesn't work with 40k as a setting, because 40k is an action setting.

Horror is a mostly low scale genre in which the protagonist is horribly out of their depth. Horror doesn't work when you have to represent a large scale strategic situation, and much less when the protagonists literally Know No Fear.

You can have a horror story set in a war, but you cannot have a horror story about war, if you understand the difference.

Selfcontrol wrote:
Even to this day, GW is struggling with the whole Chaos faction and doesn't really know what it is supposed to be. Are CSM supposed to be armed with gakky weapons which are no longer being produced by the Imperium and (over)compensate with the Dark Gods' powers ? Are CSM supposed to be armed with older patterns of weapons which were extremely powerful ?

They can do both. IA13 covered both Heresy era units and daemon engines just fine. And if they lifted the idiotic Martial Legacy rule for the Legions then both Heresy era units and daemon engines would be perfectly viable and equal options once our daemon engines get BS/WS3 like Death Guard's daemon engines.

Are the legions supposed to be "the main representatives" of CSM ? What about the renegades which are also supposed to be powerful (Huron Blackheart, Crimson Slaughters, etc) ?
On top of that, the legions and different warbands have a different relationship to the daemons. Some legions are true followers of Chaos (Word Bearers), others are not (Night Lords), others sometime use daemons while not being followers themselves (Iron Warriors) and finally, some sub-factions are so independant that everything is possible (World Eaters warbands, Crimson Slaughter, Black Legion, etc).

Again, both are possible. 3.5 and Traitor Legions covered the Legions almost perfectly, and Renegades would only need good custum traits to work. The only thing I'd change from 3.5 and Traitor Legions is allowing the Undivided Legions to take Marks other than Undivided if they wanted to, because they're YOUR DUDES, if you want to say your Night Lords warband has fallen to Slaanesh, that should be your decision. I wouldn't, but you should be able to if you want.

The rest is just up to the writers. Chaos has ripped a giant rift across the galaxy and split it in half, if they can't make it look like that means something, that's on them.