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The archetypal CSM is a traitor. He is a Space Marine that for whatever reason decided to betray everything that he once stood for. The usual story goes, he was hungry for greater glory/power and/or he "found out" that the Imperium is ... corrupt or something. Over the years, we have seen this played out emphatically in the HH novels and we've discussed the issue ad nauseum here on Dakka. A lot of folks think some of the traitorous Primarchs had especially good reasons to turn on the Emperor. But there is something terrifically naive about betraying humanity in 40k and, for that reason, CSM have come to strike me as rather weak.

The archetypal WoC, meanwhile, is a barbarian with his (or indeed her) eyes wide open. They do not betray their society by becoming WoC -- doing so is the highest virtue of their savage culture. In essence, the barbarians don't see much point to their lives other than striving to catch the attention of their fickle gods by mighty feats. And they're only after divine attention for the tangible benefits. WoC are gravely brutal but also cunning. They don't seem naive in the slightest.

I think CSM used to be portrayed more like WoC but the HH series may have blunted them, made them a little too soft and dim in the hope of creating identifiable characters. By comparison, the WoC evoke the horror of something unknown coming to burn your village from just over the horizon. Something that you can't argue with, something that you can't recognize as human. I'd like to see CSM return to that feel and away from the rationalized "conscientious objectors" of the HH series.

What do you think?

The 40k setting is full of enemies that cannot be reasoned with, either by nature (Tyranids, Orks, Dark Eldar) or by virtue of the Imperium's own extreme xenophobia. Chaos in this setting has a fairly unique role in being the enemy within, that which you cannot guard against with just weapons. I think that's a pretty cool role that adds a lot to the grimdarkness to the setting. Plenty of barbarians at the door already, so to speak.

Probably helps that WoC has always had more flavor then CSM in actual rules as well. Not to mention rules that work better (The chaos Mutation Chart for example)

Not to mention Chaos itself hasn't been really interesting in rules since it's 3.5 Incarnation.

@tgjensen: Yep, good point about the role of xenos in 40k. Of course, the other side of that is CSM coming off as a lesser threat. Character-wise, BL seems to want CSM to be conflicted, tragic figures.* Add that to being mostly stymied in the EoT and you have a not-so-impressive faction. WoC have a similar role in WHFB but the scale of the Old World means they're still massively formidable. The latest CSM dex tries (seemingly half-heartedly) to make them seem more effective but I still feel more sorry for them than impressed.

Additionally, CSM are still more barbarians at the door in 40k. A better example of an alternative would be traitor Guard.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Not to mention Chaos itself hasn't been really interesting in rules since it's 3.5 Incarnation.

At the risk of getting off track, that book had a reputation for brokenness. "Competitive" is not what I mean by "interesting," anyway.

*Siege of Castellax is a notable exception.

 Manchu wrote:
The latest CSM dex tries (seemingly half-heartedly)

The CSM codex...half hearted? That's an understatement if I ever heard one!

Seriously though, Chaos Spess suffer from the same problem that Darth Vader does now: authors attempt to humanize them and rationalize what they've done. By doing this, you remove the complete incomprehensible atrocities that they commit.

Look at Chaos legionnaires in Slaves to Darkness. All that you're told is that they were once the greatest defenders of man and now they are their greatest enemies. They're utterly alien in their thought process due to having spent millenia in the warp. They barely even look like Marines any more.

By trying to humanize them, you basically destroy the fear factor associated with them. Plus they also used to have those horrible, afflicting mutations which would curdle your blood if you saw them. Plus even if you somehow survived, the Inquisition would stop by and incinerate you.

This is exactly why I like Huron more and more. He is a warlord plain and simple. He doesn't come across (to me at least, ymmv) as a guy who became disenfranchised with the Imperium and so turned on them. More like he used that as a handy excuse to justify his rebellion to sympathetic chapters.
He's not relegated to the EoT, and is just merrily carving out a nice slice of space to call his own dominion. And that's it. He craves domination over everything for it's own sake.
I totally get what you're saying about CSM as a whole though, the more that they're humanized in the fluff, the less intense they become, thus less interesting to some.
Except the Night Lords. Those guys got scarier the more ADB wrote about them.

@Vlad: excellent Vader comparison, exactly what I had in mind

 Lint wrote:
Except the Night Lords. Those guys got scarier the more ADB wrote about them.

Can't agree. Throne of Lies ends with a group cry. ADB is a prime offender in this regard.

I think CSM used to be portrayed more like WoC but the HH series may have blunted them, made them a little too soft and dim in the hope of creating identifiable characters. By comparison, the WoC evoke the horror of something unknown coming to burn your village from just over the horizon. Something that you can't argue with, something that you can't recognize as human. I'd like to see CSM return to that feel and away from the rationalized "conscientious objectors" of the HH series.

My Rouge Trader memory is a little fuzzy so maybe they were treated differently in those days, but I'm pretty clear from 2nd ed on and I can't remember a time where they were ever treated much differently then they are now. They have always been traitors and renegades. I was just going through my second ed CSM dex last night reading some of the stories and they are all pretty much in lock-step with the HH. If anything, some of the shorts in the 2nded codex make them MORE human then they are even in the BL books.

That being said, I agree that I wish they could be a little more like WoC. Just an unstoppable "alien" force completely and naturally inimical to your way of life VS the sort of renegades and traders they actually are. IDK how you would accomplish that though with the 40k setting. If the CSM legions never turn traitor then there's never any CSM legions ...

EDIT:

Meant to add that I think part of the issue (fluff-wise) is that too many people know too much about Chaos in 40k. Compare that to what the average Bretonnian peasant knows about Khorne and it makes the WoC that much scarier. 40k doesn't quite have that luxury anymore. IMO anyway.

Can't agree. Throne of Lies ends with a group cry. ADB is a prime offender in this regard.

I have to admit that I don't like sperging out when it comes to 40k background but that's pretty lame

 Vladsimpaler wrote:
that's pretty lame

Yeah, I was super unimpressed. ADB's take on this band of criminally insane deviants already struck me as far, far too emo-noble before listening to Throne of Lies. I'd still recommend Soul Hunter but I wish he had written about some fallen chapter he'd invented rather than the NL.

CSM's of late have gotten less and less interesting, their fluff more and more either generic, verging on the edge of parody, or too humanized. Now, this isn't by any means unique to CSM's, 40k fluff as a whole has been in a notable decline the last 5-7 years (with some exceptions), but as it stands now, the Chaos Space Marines of 6th edition are nowhere near as interesting as the Chaos Space Marines of RT/2nd/3rd editions. I don't say this with rose tinted goggles, I didn't play most of those, but as a current player looking at what is and what came before.

Warriors of Chaos are still pretty baller however.

Tycho wrote:
Just an unstoppable "alien" force completely and naturally inimical to your way of life VS the sort of renegades and traders they actually are. IDK how you would accomplish that though with the 40k setting.

A good place to start is mutation. Typhus would make a great lead if someone wanted to do a CSM novel with more ... intimidating characters.

 Manchu wrote:

Tycho wrote:
Just an unstoppable "alien" force completely and naturally inimical to your way of life VS the sort of renegades and traders they actually are. IDK how you would accomplish that though with the 40k setting.

A good place to start is mutation. Typhus would make a great lead if someone wanted to do a CSM novel with more ... intimidating characters.

Honestly I think the inherent problem lies in making CSM the lead at all. I believe that CSM should always be the antagonist and never have internal dialogue. Basically you should never know what they are thinking/feeling.

Look at the difference between even Rogue Trader (Which had the best CSM background) and 2nd edition (when Chaos lost its edge). It doesn't take a high school senior taking AP English to realize that there were some very distinct changes.

I also believe that the art from Rogue Trader was much more inhospitable and cold than the "durr we got spikes and skulls XD" stuff that you have today. And I say this without any rose tint (much like Vaktathi) because I started in 4th edition.

It sort of depends on the chapter and character.

Fabius Bile for example didn't actually need Slaanesh's influence to betray the Imperium and become a disgusting monster. He was not present on Laer like the other traitors. For him, he was just always a vicious psychopath.

Typhus, similarly, is something of a brutal, manipulative bastard, being the man responsible for his Legion's fall.

Huron Blackheart was of course already mentioned.

Kharn I can't touch, due to not having read Betrayer.

Ahriman of course is sympathetic and had a tragic fall to Chaos, but that is entirely the point of the story of the Thousand Sons, more than just about any of the other Legions.

Abaddon? Eh, he wasn't really made much more sympathetic by the novels, though he is something of a hot-headed jerkass and idiot.

Lucius? Arrogance, arrogance everywhere. Like Fabius, he was not present at Laer, yet this arrogant, condescending psychopath is now one of She Who Thirsts' mightiest Champions.

So four out of seven characters fit the criteria you mentioned well enough, as per current fluff.

Also, Rogue Trader era art largely sucked ass, IMHO. Just because something was older does not make it better.

As for how they relate to the Warriors of Chaos, I couldn't entirely say myself, not being too familiar with Fantasy's fluff. But that Champion of Tzeentch in Warhammer Online's cinematic trailer was manly and brutal as hell.

 Vladsimpaler wrote:
Honestly I think the inherent problem lies in making CSM the lead at all. I believe that CSM should always be the antagonist and never have internal dialogue. Basically you should never know what they are thinking/feeling.

Kind of. The issue is, CSM should not be presented as protagonists in the usual hero-story way. That is the mistake, IMO at least, BL authors have made (again, CL Werner aside). For a great example from bona fide literature, check out Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Judge Holden could be a CSM. Or, speaking of Cormac McCarthy, BL authors should also look to his Anton Chigurh.

Great topic. I agree it does seem there is a certain purity to the WoC point of view. CSM do come across as somewhat tragic in their failings as much as relishing their circumstance. I can only speak for my own chaos chapter, who feels their betrayal by loyalists was a boon. They are now liberated in both body and mind to pursue what is their just birthright. Brutal survivalists on a crusade to either sway loyalist chapters to the light (and hoping they won't) or slaughter them in their folly. They have run amuck in a galaxy without moral foundation, and where the gods themselves are to be used and discarded like any other resource.

I guess what I'm getting at is that the ugliness should be in how they behave, not how they look (though my lord does have a cape of human skin w/ skull tassels lol!). Perhaps some rules that reflect the CSM utter & ruthless barbarity. Sadly they pale compared to what has already gone before in human history. Does grim-dark need to kick it up a notch?

 Manchu wrote:
Can't agree. Throne of Lies ends with a group cry. ADB is a prime offender in this regard.

Yes well, the audio drama aside. By third book, even after all of the fleshing out done by ADB, we still saw Talos skinning his own crew and hanging their carcass in the slave decks. So yeah he made them softer so to speak, but it made them all the creepier because of what they were capable of still doing.

 amanita wrote:
Sadly they pale compared to what has already gone before in human history.

I don't know that a tabletop game should be as savage as real history. I'd be happy with a punk take on it, hearkening back to early 40k -- again, CSM inspired by Judge Holden or Chigurh in this instance. Both characters are "realitsic," or rather they exist in realistic settings, but they are more ... mythological than historical.

 Manchu wrote:

 amanita wrote:
Sadly they pale compared to what has already gone before in human history.

I don't know that a tabletop game should be as savage as real history. I'd be happy with a punk take on it, hearkening back to early 40k -- again, CSM inspired by Judge Holden or Chigurh in this instance. Both characters are "realitsic," or rather they exist in realistic settings, but they are more ... mythological than historical.

Good point. Representing ravaged impaled corpses kinda goes beyond good taste.

Spoiler'd for the faint of heart:It's one thing to have that kind of image in a book meditating on what actually happened in a real place in real time. It's hard to justify it in the novelized tie-in to a table top game. On the other hand, you can still have dread and foreboding, something I feel CSM novels, short stories, and dex fluff have been lacking.

Agreed on both counts.

 Manchu wrote:
The archetypal CSM is a traitor. He is a Space Marine that for whatever reason decided to betray everything that he once stood for. The usual story goes, he was hungry for greater glory/power and/or he "found out" that the Imperium is ... corrupt or something. Over the years, we have seen this played out emphatically in the HH novels and we've discussed the issue ad nauseum here on Dakka. A lot of folks think some of the traitorous Primarchs had especially good reasons to turn on the Emperor. But there is something terrifically naive about betraying humanity in 40k and, for that reason, CSM have come to strike me as rather weak.

The archetypal WoC, meanwhile, is a barbarian with his (or indeed her) eyes wide open. They do not betray their society by becoming WoC -- doing so is the highest virtue of their savage culture. In essence, the barbarians don't see much point to their lives other than striving to catch the attention of their fickle gods by mighty feats. And they're only after divine attention for the tangible benefits. WoC are gravely brutal but also cunning. They don't seem naive in the slightest.

I think CSM used to be portrayed more like WoC but the HH series may have blunted them, made them a little too soft and dim in the hope of creating identifiable characters. By comparison, the WoC evoke the horror of something unknown coming to burn your village from just over the horizon. Something that you can't argue with, something that you can't recognize as human. I'd like to see CSM return to that feel and away from the rationalized "conscientious objectors" of the HH series.

What do you think?

Manchu hits it out of the park again!

The problem with CSM's for me is that there is NO WAY that they are not, in the end, completely 'in the wrong', 100%.

Yeah, how do you make sense of that as a fan? Meanwhile, the WoC are no more or less right about their worldview than anyone else. Living up in Norsca, what you stand to gain by pleasing the gods far outweighs what you stand to lose. CSM simply cannot say the same.

Well the Warriors of Chaos are from the frozen northern lands. I'd say that qualifies as "cooler"

What exactly did the traitor Legions lose?

Upon further reflection on this topic, I don't mind some having a sympathetic and/or weakness in the story of their fall as it lends a more interesting aspect to their madness.

I quite like the tale of the bitter traitor who feels it was he himself who was betrayed, who saw everything he sacrificed for (and what his comrades bled and died for) turn out to be a vile lie and all that was worth fighting for was in fact filth, who snapped and broke, and was remade anew as an insane demi-god of violence and war, and set unleashed upon the universe, caring only for the power to tear down that which they built, even (or especially) if he is ultimately damned by it, so long as the chance at vengeance is his, utterly beyond redemption or care of redemption (indeed finding the concept ridiculous and nonsensical) and left only with hate and insanity, bound entirely to prosecuting the Long War and the murder of those he once considered kin.

The problem is that GW has been rather bad at writing stuff like that and it pretty much just boils down to either "daddy issues" or "because....the warp".

 Void__Dragon wrote:
What exactly did the traitor Legions lose?

It's case by case and will ultimately come down to individuals. But to generalize, they basically lost their actual purpose. And ever since, they have been doing "lesser" things. The WE just rage across the stars now, with no meaningful direction. The NL are shamed buzzards. The WB plea for the affection of gods that barely notice them. The 1ksons are largely mindless automatons. Etc etc etc.

 Manchu wrote:
It's case by case and will ultimately come down to individuals. But to generalize, they basically lost their actual purpose. And ever since, they have been doing "lesser" things. The WE just rage across the stars now, with no meaningful direction. The NL are shamed buzzards. The WB plea for the affection of gods that barely notice them. The 1ksons are largely mindless automatons. Etc etc etc.

The World Eaters always raged across the stars without direction. Angron couldn't be happier. Not that they are always directionless.

The Night Lords I can't really comment on, but in their case their fall was not so much because they believed the Imperium wronged them, it was because their genesire was a lunatic.

The Word Bearers have received the Chaos Gods' affections in very tangible ways. Many among them are Daemon Princes, they have sway over Daemonic Legions to do their will, really, life seems okay for a Word Bearer. Though, this may be because I have not read their book series.

The Thousand Sons are the most legitimate example, but they were led to ruin through no choice of their own, it was through Magnus' hubris, Horus' deception, and Valdor's "sinister urgings", along with the most direct manipulation by a Chaos God seen. I don't recall one of the gods actually visiting any of the other Primarchs. The Thousand Sons only had the illusion of choice, you can't defy the Architect of Fate's designs upon you.

The daemons seem to be picking up the slack, and you still have unrelentingly evil CSMs like Eliphas. No sad back story, no justification, just slaughter in the name of the dark gods and undying evil.

V__D, I didn't recognize you with an Angron avatar -- until I read what you wrote about 1ksons. Then I was like, "hey that's a familiar noise."