Chaos Space Marine Intentions

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**Axel**

Are the Chaos Space Marines truly "Evil" certainly they are insane and corrupted but from what I can gather, do they think they are trying to destroy or remove the God-Emperor/Imperium for the good of the galaxy? Or are they just there to kill and slay for their gods?

**Wilytank**

Axel wrote:
Or are they just there to kill and slay for their gods?

Definitely not this. If you want an army of mortals whose purpose is to kill for the greater glory of their gods, you'll want to look at this army instead.

Most of the original legions come across to me as angsty whiners with daddy issues and are hell-bent on removing the Emperor from existence. A lot of them think they can use Chaos as a means to an end.

**Axel**

And I would think if they successfully remove him(Unlikely as far as I know) they would just abandon chaos or establish it as the ruling worship practice among the citizens of the Imperium?

**Ashiraya**

Wilytank wrote:
Axel wrote:
Or are they just there to kill and slay for their gods?

Definitely not this. If you want an army of mortals whose purpose is to kill for the greater glory of their gods, you'll want to look at this army instead.

Most of the original legions come across to me as angsty whiners with daddy issues and are hell-bent on removing the Emperor from existence. A lot of them think they can use Chaos as a means to an end.

The first paragraph of this quote is true. WoC are all the same, every last one 'fighting for the gods' like you say.

CSM vary a lot more. From WE warbands who fight for nothing but skulls to BL who continue their ten millennia-war to the WB who do both that and fight for the gods, to Alpha Legion where nobody truly knows what they are fighting for...

The possibilities are many.

**Ailaros**

Axel wrote:Are the Chaos Space Marines truly "Evil" certainly they are insane and corrupted but from what I can gather, do they think they are trying to destroy or remove the God-Emperor/Imperium for the good of the galaxy? Or are they just there to kill and slay for their gods?

I'll give you my stock answer:

I've been asked before why a person should play a Chaos Space Marine army. My response is that there are two things I really like about them.

The first thing is the fluff. They've done a bad job with the current codex, but if you branch out, there's some wonderful stuff there.

I mean, we're talking about a spiritual realm made of liquid id, that space marines need to completely supress to the point where they become inhuman automatons. Then, the absolute peak of humanity - strongest, best trained, best equipped, gods among men - have the faintest glimmer of what it's like to be human again, and instantly they rebel. They use their incredible power to explore what being human really means. They spend the remainder of their possibly immortal lives discovering the extent of human knowledge or experience, or they are allowed to continue on their path of the warrior, but to do so with the ameteur zeal and personal joy that comes with being able to try things out, and improve your skill in your own creative way. You get to be the best YOU can be, not the best someone else trains you to be, and no further.

... and spending your free time butchering those who castrated your humanity, and engaging on a never-ending quest to liberate the rest of mankind from the most brutal, oppressive regime in its history. They're the only civil liberty revolutionaries in the fluff.

Also, there are some other neat tidbits. Like, read the current fluff for The Scourged (p.15). They were a chapter of space marines working with the inquisition. Their job was to rout out heretics and burn them alive. The chapter master thought is problematic (or at least inefficient) that they might be burning tens of thousands of innocent people, and so, while meditating on a solution, Tzeentch bestowed upon his whole chapter the magical ability to always tell when someone was lying. The next day, they show up for their briefing with the inquisitor, and he says "Hey, great job yesterday, everybody. We killed a lot of guilty heretics, and have made mankind much safer. Keep up the good work, and remember that you're making a big difference".

... and they all immediately understand that 100% of what the inquisitor just said is a complete lie. And they instantly flipped over to chaos. The fluff contains several examples of the idea that all you need to do to make a space marine switch over to chaos is make them just a little bit better at their jobs. It's all you need for them to take matters into their own hands and apply their own genius and creativity, and take their own initiative. And that, really, is the core of what separates a regular marine from a chaos one. That and eventually they get mutations and start praising gods that exist, rather than ones that don't.

The second thing I like about CSM is how they play on the table. They are 100% aggressive, 100% of the time. Going through their current codex and looking for units that exist only to engage in long-range shooting, and you have certain (but not all) builds of havocs, and predators, and... umm... sort of vindicators and sort of autocannon forgefiends and.... that's pretty much it. Everything else is either geared towards close combat or 12" shooting.

They're also a marine army, which means that you get the kind of basic durability required to actually make it to your opponent, and the kind of damage that they can put out is shocking.

For the price of 10 THSS terminators, you can get 20 khrone berzerkers with veterans. On the charge, those berzerkers get 80 attacks that hit on rerollable 3's, and wound on 3's. That's 47 armor saves, which means 8 dead terminators. The few hammers swing back, and the survivors are pulped the next turn. I bet you've never seen THSS terminators disappear in close combat like that, much less to nothing more than a bunch of lunatics with chainsaw swords.

And that's just one example. 10 combi-plasma terminators with power axes and MoK can do hideous damage, and even when you scale down, you've got things like maulerfiends (which I've seen take down land raiders on the charge with a single round of attacking) and khorne lords with axes of blind fury. It's really not that hard for most properly kitted chaos squads to completely pulp something they come across in a single action.

They're an army of going over to your opponent's side of the board, at land raider, jump pack or infiltrator speeds (or just on foot) and beating them up like a bunch of thugs. Stone cold gangster.

If I had to say a third thing about them, I'd also note that there is the most possible modelling opportunities second maybe only to orks. If you run a nurgle army, you get to spend a lot of time with greenstuff if you want, and if you're skilled, make some really stunning work. There's a lot that you can do and still have it look chaosey.

Anyways, I guess the short pitch for CSM is to imagine that you had semi-immortality, and semi-invincibility, and all the power you can use. What would you do with that kind of godlike ability? What would you do after that? What would you do 1,000 years after that, after your initial petty goals were accomplished? What would it be like to really be a god? What if you fielded a whole army of them?

That's what CSM is about.

Now, to answer your question more specifically, CSM aren't evil... per se. They're superhumans who have regained their humanity. The only reason CSM are evil is because humans have the capacity for evil, especially in the circumstances that they come from. Breaking out of their crazy discipline, and succumbing to their obsessions will make people behave very badly, but it's not a matter of CSM being space marines with a mustache that they twirl while cackling maniacally.

CSM are bad guys because it's so easy to see how they're really just normal people with certain flaws. Anyone could fall down their path in their circumstances. It's what makes them so believable, and thus, such good bad guys.

Anyways, with regards to the imperium, they fight as the only civil liberties revolutionaries in the galaxy, and also because of, you know, that giant blood-feud they've been having this whole time. Ten thousand years of grudge doesn't exactly go away over night.

**ashcroft**

Ashiraya wrote:
to Alpha Legion where nobody truly knows what they are fighting for...

For the Emperor.

Allegedly. Maybe.

I think most of the renegades are now sworn to one or more of the gods, even if overthrowing the Imperium in the name of said gods, or for simple vengeance, takes a back seat to the day to day business of survival, feuding among themselves and whatever other individual goals they have. Of the original nine traitor legions only the Night Lords (mostly) avoid the patronage of the ruinous powers.

And the Alpha Legion. Maybe.

**Jancoran**

Axel wrote:
Are the Chaos Space Marines truly "Evil" certainly they are insane and corrupted but from what I can gather, do they think they are trying to destroy or remove the God-Emperor/Imperium for the good of the galaxy? Or are they just there to kill and slay for their gods?

They are evil. they not only perpetrated a vile heresy but put entire worlds to the sword i nthe name of Gawds so terrible i ntheir aspect that to think on them is to court madness.

No, there's no mistaking things. they may once have meant well in their rebellion but they have long since crossed the line and the struggle that divided them was centuries ago. They recruit from the blackest hearts and the disenfranshised who dont understand the green Grass theory.

**JubbJubbz**

Loyalists are the evil ones. They don't see how the Emperor has caused the crappy situation the galaxy is in, how he used mankind and especially the Astartes to conquer and dominate the galaxy in his name. Don't forget that the crusades put many more worlds to death than any group since. The Emperor was a tyrant and was/is using humankind to fuel his own ascension. The Traitors are the ones who see him for the sham that he truly is; the only ones with the courage to stand up. They could not overcome his iron rule without outside help in the form of the chaos gods. Without being empowered by all 4 major gods of the warp, Horus would have been no match for the Emperor. Its a shame they needed so much extra outside help and thus many ending up being more slaves to chaos than partners. Still better to have taken the chance, siding with harmful warp entities than to serve under the worst evil the galaxy has ever known: the Emperor himself.

**Azreal13**

They're evil in the sense that Democrats may think Republicans are evil, or vice versa.

They hold a belief that is diametrically opposed to Loyalists, and history has made those differences irreconcilable.

It remains possible for a Chaos Marine to do something most would consider to be good, just as it remains possible for a Loyalist to do something most would consider objectively "bad."

I suggest you read Aaron Dembski Bowden's Night Lords series for a good insight into the shades of grey that compose the Chaos Marines motivations and actions.

**Psienesis**

JubbJubbz wrote:
Loyalists are the evil ones. They don't see how the Emperor has caused the crappy situation the galaxy is in, how he used mankind and especially the Astartes to conquer and dominate the galaxy in his name. Don't forget that the crusades put many more worlds to death than any group since. The Emperor was a tyrant and was/is using humankind to fuel his own ascension. The Traitors are the ones who see him for the sham that he truly is; the only ones with the courage to stand up. They could not overcome his iron rule without outside help in the form of the chaos gods. Without being empowered by all 4 major gods of the warp, Horus would have been no match for the Emperor. Its a shame they needed so much extra outside help and thus many ending up being more slaves to chaos than partners. Still better to have taken the chance, siding with harmful warp entities than to serve under the worst evil the galaxy has ever known: the Emperor himself.

Those worlds the Great Crusade destroyed had it coming. There are, however, more Daemon Worlds in the Eye of Terror in the hands of the Chaos Space Marines, plus the worlds of they Imperium they have slaughtered, than were destroyed in the Crusade.

It is Mankind's manifest destiny to rule the stars unopposed. What Horus did was unforgivable, for in his hubris, he sacrificed Mankind's right to rule.

**zeromaeus**

I'm not fully initiated in the fluff, honestly, but I've been pouring over this stuff for a while now that I feel I can at least throw in my two cents.

Are they evil? Yes. At least, on the whole. Then again, so are the forces representing mankind as a whole. To break it down into tabletop RPG terms, it seems that the Imperium of man is Lawful Evil while the Chaos Space Marines are Chaotic Space Marines.

That's not to say that the actions of either faction will always represent that or that they have an unyielding devotion to their predefined morality. There seems to be an equal opportunity to use the boons of the gods for one's own purposes as the gods will use you for theirs. That's the trade-off, though. The gods will use you. You will serve their mechanisms, and they do not have the best intentions of you or yours in mind. They did achieve a sense of freedom from their dark benefactors, and likely gained the insight necessary to see the evil of their past, but they still commit evils. At least, this is what applies to the factions you play as. You are the warriors. The destroyers. The machine of war. You are the worst and the best of what the faction has to offer.

On a conceptual level, one who does not follow the emperor is no less evil than one who does. Or, on a more comparable level, one who has thrown his lot in with a god of chaos is no more evil than one who blindly worships the god of mankind. Chaos is not evil. It is the uncontrollable. It is freedom. It is an abolition of order. Law is not good. It is order. Its is defined structure. It is absolute control. The evils of the Inquisition can far exceed the evils of a people that believe in the expression that Slaaneshi allows them. The destruction to the innocent that the Khornate cause can by and large exceed those the Salamanders manage to protect.

Simply put, everything can range into the grey of ambiguous morality, but most of everything you see as part of the game is just different takes on black.

**Lobomalo**

Sorry, but the remnants of the Emperor's Children or the Death Guard are flat out evil

**Jancoran**

JubbJubbz wrote:
Loyalists are the evil ones. They don't see how the Emperor has caused the crappy situation the galaxy is in, how he used mankind and especially the Astartes to conquer and dominate the galaxy in his name. Don't forget that the crusades put many more worlds to death than any group since. The Emperor was a tyrant and was/is using humankind to fuel his own ascension. The Traitors are the ones who see him for the sham that he truly is; the only ones with the courage to stand up. They could not overcome his iron rule without outside help in the form of the chaos gods. Without being empowered by all 4 major gods of the warp, Horus would have been no match for the Emperor. Its a shame they needed so much extra outside help and thus many ending up being more slaves to chaos than partners. Still better to have taken the chance, siding with harmful warp entities than to serve under the worst evil the galaxy has ever known: the Emperor himself.

Even if all the things said about the Emperor were true it doesn't change the fact that the IMperial Forces fight as much for their home worlds and the guy right next to them than they do for the Emperor...no matter what they may say.