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Where does it come from? I've been looking for the source of all the talk I've been hearing recently about how the cults that caused the Fall were in fact created by Slaanesh/a Keeper of Secrets, but I can't find a source. Is there one? Or is it just fanfiction seeping into "common knowledge" of 40k?

Uh what, slaneesh didn't exist until the fall

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
Uh what, slaneesh didn't exist until the fall

That's the point. I've heard from multiple people that thanks to the Warp being the Warp(tm), Slaanesh created itself.

 Wyzilla wrote:
Where does it come from? I've been looking for the source of all the talk I've been hearing recently about how the cults that caused the Fall were in fact created by Slaanesh/a Keeper of Secrets, but I can't find a source. Is there one? Or is it just fanfiction seeping into "common knowledge" of 40k?

The thing is, the warp is non-linear. Or in other words, time isn't really a thing there. Concepts of beginning and end are a real-space-dweller's thing. In the warp, everything has always been there, time has no meaning.

It's really weird, and that's probably why it's so dang cool. If you are a Star Trek: DS9 fan, think of the warp entities kinda like the wormhole prophets of Bajor.

 A Musketeer wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
Where does it come from? I've been looking for the source of all the talk I've been hearing recently about how the cults that caused the Fall were in fact created by Slaanesh/a Keeper of Secrets, but I can't find a source. Is there one? Or is it just fanfiction seeping into "common knowledge" of 40k?

The thing is, the warp is non-linear. Or in other words, time isn't really a thing there. Concepts of beginning and end are a real-space-dweller's thing. In the warp, everything has always been there, time has no meaning.

It's really weird, and that's probably why it's so dang cool. If you are a Star Trek: DS9 fan, think of the warp entities kinda like the wormhole prophets of Bajor.

I'm quite understanding of that, my problem is this coming up from seemingly no-where with no source in sight.

The novel Farseer.
The daemon codex also mentions how Slaanesh has always existed.

I know I read it in White Dwarf originally, although I don't have an issue reference.

I have this from the Liber Chaotica, which is a hybrid fantasy/40k work (having Karl Franz talked about in the same book as Black Crusades and next to pixtures of chaos marines with heavy bolters is... jarring).

"... and so Chaos was allowed to sink its roots once more into the bedrock of our beloved homeland. Those roots bored deep into the hearts of our people, and from them sprang a terrible tree... ... and when that tree bore fruit, the fruit it bore was Slaanesh."

Later on, in the c hapter 'Echoes of the Birth' it says;

"... and so it was that I witnessed Slaanesh grow almost entirely from the pleasures of The Elder. While living, many strove to suppress and control their raging feelings, but when they died their brilliant souls melted back into the broiling energy of the Warp, and all their long-guarded temptations were released..."

"... Even by recognising this embryonic Power as a potential, The Elder had given Slaanesh an identity. Without fully realising what was happening, The Elder began to be manipulated by the psychic-potential they themselves had conceived..."

"... in the space of but one generation, the majority of The Elder paused in their quest for enlightenment and chose a darker path of inward-looking excess and debauchery. Daemons and other Chaos entities broke free from the Warp once more and spread like fire through dry grass..."

Then it goes on to describe in visceral detail how all the Eldar within range of the homeworld exploded to give birth to Slaanesh. So, not quite the line about a single subversive influence that I remember from the White Dwarf excerpt, but still, evidence that Slaanesh manipulated the Eldar to ensure his birth (although only from an embryonic state rather than as a fully formed chaos god).

Animus wrote:
The novel Farseer.
The daemon codex also mentions how Slaanesh has always existed.

And yet at the same time S/he never has, which I think explains very well why s/he's usually considered the weakest of the four gods.

 Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:

Animus wrote:
The novel Farseer.
The daemon codex also mentions how Slaanesh has always existed.

And yet at the same time S/he never has, which I think explains very well why s/he's usually considered the weakest of the four gods.

I think this could be true of any of the Chaos Gods though as the explanation could be used to describe each one from the others perspective.

The text from the Chaos Daemons Codex says

That is how events are viewed from the chronology of the material universe. In the Warp, things are different, for the lmmaterium is not bound by linear time, and events do not occur in a strict sequence of cause then effect. As his rival gods reckon it, Slaanesh has always existed in the Warp, and yet has never existed at all.

I would say same applicable for each God as they are all tied to the the immaterium the same way.

I had forgotten about Farseer. Written by Gav Thorpe, father of the Eldar, so it must be true!

All chaos books that talk of the chaos gods (Hordes of Chaos, Realm of Chaos, Slaves to Darkness, Lost and dammned, Warriors of Chaos, deamons of chaos etc.) All say that Slaanesh came into exsistance at the time of the fall but as other people have said the warp does not follow the laws of time or reality so in the warp Slaanesh has always existed.

Even RoC mentions that time has no meaning there.

It's like this... there has always been bloodshed and violence in the Material Realm. There has always been disease and pestilence and death. There has always been dreams, hopes, ambitions and desire for change. There has always been pleasure, perversion and vice.

Within the Warp, all of these things (and every other conceptual thing as well) have always had some sentience associated with it. Whether they were known as the Ruinous Powers, the Chaos Gods, the Outer Gods, the Other Gods, the Primordial Malice, or some other name is irrelevant. These forces have always had sentience, and wax and wane in power based on the events happening in realspace.

Thus, the sentience now called Slaanesh has always existed, even if by another name, and the Fall of the Eldar simply heralded a sort of "passing of the crown" from pre-Slaanesh to now-Slaanesh.

It was in the book Farseer by Bill King (Not Gav Thorpe) in which a daemon claemon of Slaanesh showed a vision of the past where it egged on the Eldar toward the fall and the Birth of Slaanesh.

Birth may be a misnomer in this case. Slaanesh existed always in a dormant state, in the same way that all races have the dormant capacity for excess and perversion. The fall was more like the awakening of this potential.

It's purely about there being no concept of time in warp space. Hence Slaanesh has always "existed"

However in real space terms along with the rest of the Galaxy, time is fairly reliable and it was created during the fall.

The warp storms that encompassed Eldar space (and that prevented Humanity from moving around and expanding) were merely labour pains.

It's not such a complex concept to grasp

The complicated bit is where Slaanesh caused his own birth by manipulating the Eldar.

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The complicated bit is where Slaanesh caused his own birth by manipulating the Eldar.

But if he had always existed in Warp Space, then there is no issue with him influencing things before "he" was "born".

Still seems fairly straightforward