Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

The Warp and the embedded Realm of Chaos can be seen as some kind of galactic "Hell".

Humans who become daemon princes achieve immortality within the Realm of Chaos.

For ordinary humans who die a natural death, do their souls face some kind of eternal torment in "Hell"/Realm of Chaos? Or do their souls disintegrate?


Is it possible for a dead man's soul to stay intact, and hence make it possible for the living to communicate with him? In essence, necromancy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necromancy

You mean as a ghost, or as a reanimated corpse? I mean necromancy is basically raising the dead and many so-called Saints seems to be dead people resurrected by the faith of fellow believers.

 Beaviz81 wrote:
You mean as a ghost, or as a reanimated corpse? I mean necromancy is basically raising the dead and many so-called Saints seems to be dead people resurrected by the faith of fellow believers.

As a ghost.

I'm imagining a Chaos sorcerer-medium enacting a ritual and talking to a brother who perished during the Horus Heresy.

The Eisenhorn books include something called an Auto-seance, but it's more like group psychometry than contacting the soul of the dead person.

Mostly because only really, truly powerful souls survive in the Warp, since daemons eat the rest of them.

Also, most saints, contrary to popular believe, do not rise from the dead. Historically, only one (three if you count Black Library, four if you count Soulstorm) Saints have ever risen from the dead - Celestine, Stern (the original), Sabbat and Anais, respectively.

Other Living Saints did not rise from the dead, but rather were sainted for other miraculous acts - Thor for calling the Storm of the Emperor's Wrath and Alicia Dominica and her Companions for their acts after meeting the Emperor being the main Living Saints. Other saints, such as Praxedes, died before ever being canonised and have never risen again.

Maximus Bitch wrote:

 Beaviz81 wrote:
You mean as a ghost, or as a reanimated corpse? I mean necromancy is basically raising the dead and many so-called Saints seems to be dead people resurrected by the faith of fellow believers.

As a ghost.

I'm imagining a Chaos sorcerer-medium enacting a ritual and talking to a brother who perished during the Horus Heresy.

Go ahead. This is fairly low-key as far as fluff is concerned. The challenge here would be to get enough power in my opinion not doing the act.

In hoping to answer your question, I went look up in the Rulebook and the 6E Codex: Chaos Daemons and Codex: Chaos Space Marines.
luckily I hit jackpot on Codex: Chaos Daemons, which has this to say:

When devotees of Chaos die, their souls do not fade in the Warp and disappear like the spirits of others. Instead, their immortal energy is swallowed into the greatness of their gods, their souls sustained forever, bound to the eternal power of Chaos. (Codex: Chaos Daemons. “The Haunted Immaterium”. 6th Edition. Print)

So yeah, if a mortal in 40k universe died and its soul went in the warp, they will either fade -- perhaps a metaphor for getting eaten by the Daemons; or the soul gets eaten by Slaanesh if it's an Eldar soul unprotected by soul stones or Cegorach; or it's a soul of a follower of one of the Chaos Gods, which gets claimed by the Chaos God in question.

 lcmiracle wrote:
So yeah, if a mortal in 40k universe died and its soul went in the warp, they will either fade -- perhaps a metaphor for getting eaten by the Daemons; or the soul gets eaten by Slaanesh if it's an Eldar soul unprotected by soul stones or Cegorach; or it's a soul of a follower of one of the Chaos Gods, which gets claimed by the Chaos God in question.

It doesn't say how long it takes for the soul to fade. The author could always do a handwave of "time flows differently in this warp-bubble" to explain how a soul from the Horus Heresy could still be around. I think Eldar souls are stated to stay "whole" (for a want of a better term) in the warp, which is why Slaanesh can torture them. Perhaps a strong-willed character can keep their soul together for slightly longer than normal.
Other options:
Some daemons would love to impersonate the dead in order to mislead the living.
There's some inquisitorial tech (or psychic ability?) that allows inquisitors to get reports from the dead. My memories of that is very, very vague. I think it was used as a framing device in a tiny piece of fluff. I'm guessing it involves a brain-scan of the recently dead - perhaps the person's corpse was preserved in a status chamber?
Simple psychometry, applied to the corpse.

Non psyker souls are not strong enough to maintain identity after death. So if you aren't a psyker you effectively cease to exist after death. You might be able to look at psychic imprints a soul leaves behind, but its nothing more than wisps of memory.

The Imperial Cult mostly believes the Emperor takes your soul if you were a loyal servant or whatever else.

Not that there's anything that guarantees what the Imperial Cult says is true.

Tarik Torgaddon's soul (Tarik was a loyalist, if you don't recall) contacted Garvial Loken, However, that was a special case (his soul was forcibly split by a demonic ritual)

There's a few examples of both contacting the dead and outright resurrection in the heresy series.

There's all kinds of Psychic and Sorcerous powers to do just about anything you could imagine in the setting, so holding a seance or reanimating a corpse or accessing the memories and knowledge of a corpse (cf. Speak with Dead from Dungeons & Dragons) should not be beyond the resources of those with access to such specialists.

Do you think it is possible to resurrect one of the Primarchs?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Captyn_Bob wrote:
There's a few examples of both contacting the dead and outright resurrection in the heresy series.

Examples? The only one I know is of Grulgor.

Maximus Bitch wrote:
Do you think it is possible to resurrect one of the Primarchs?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Captyn_Bob wrote:
There's a few examples of both contacting the dead and outright resurrection in the heresy series.

Examples? The only one I know is of Grulgor.

I think Eidelon too but that's what I've heard, haven't read it myself.

Maximus Bitch wrote:
Do you think it is possible to resurrect one of the Primarchs?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Captyn_Bob wrote:
There's a few examples of both contacting the dead and outright resurrection in the heresy series.

Examples? The only one I know is of Grulgor.

Not in the way you mean, no.

While I'm sure stupendously-powerful sorcerous rituals exist that could accomplish such a thing, dragging a soul out of the Warp, and shoving it back into a body that isn't its original body (or, worse, a body formed out of the raw matter of the Warp during the ritual), is likely to get you one fethed-up superbeing. Its first action will probably be to utterly crush those performing/attending said ritual into bloody smears, while mutating in wild and horrid ways, before beginning an agony-fueled rampage.

Maximus Bitch wrote:

Captyn_Bob wrote:
There's a few examples of both contacting the dead and outright resurrection in the heresy series.

Examples? The only one I know is of Grulgor.

The most recent example of a auto seance would be the Necron world engine book. Doesn't go into to much detail though.

 Psienesis wrote:

Maximus Bitch wrote:
Do you think it is possible to resurrect one of the Primarchs?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Captyn_Bob wrote:
There's a few examples of both contacting the dead and outright resurrection in the heresy series.

Examples? The only one I know is of Grulgor.

Not in the way you mean, no.

While I'm sure stupendously-powerful sorcerous rituals exist that could accomplish such a thing, dragging a soul out of the Warp, and shoving it back into a body that isn't its original body (or, worse, a body formed out of the raw matter of the Warp during the ritual), is likely to get you one fethed-up superbeing. Its first action will probably be to utterly crush those performing/attending said ritual into bloody smears, while mutating in wild and horrid ways, before beginning an agony-fueled rampage.

the imperium could always hold a seance and get leadership advice and instruction from a dead primarch

Maybe? The auto-seance shown in the Eisenhorn series did not end well. It seems a rather risky endeavor, with all those participating placed in mortal peril.

I recall listening to an audio story at a while back.

If I remember correctly (I think it was a 40k story!) an Inquisitor was able to communicate with the spirit of a recently deceased woman, (perhaps using her corpse as a link). She retained most of her identity and had an awkward, if slightly confused, acceptance of her fate. The Inquisitor was able to have a few questions answered regarding some 'problems' he was investigating.

I'm afraid I am unable to provide any further details.

Edit: and in some instances space marines have been known to 'communicate' with the dead by eating corpses. And by communicate I mean access some of the memories of the dead. This ability is granted through one of their implants but it is unclear if the mechanics of the organs abilities are a pseudopsychic or purely scientific process.

That's an aspect of one of their implants, but is meant to access genetic data of the target (so, eat part of weird-alien #47, and you understand that this species of Weird Aliens has social structure X, reveres Higher Caste Y, and has a predisposition to weakness against acids of pH 9 or higher, etc.)... though it would not surprise me if some BL authors had it accessing individual memories.

Space Wolves are particularly well known for eating Tzeentchians they've killed to find out when they last spoke to Ahriman or Magnus.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
(and complaining about it the whole time)

nareik wrote:
I recall listening to an audio story at a while back.

If I remember correctly (I think it was a 40k story!) an Inquisitor was able to communicate with the spirit of a recently deceased woman, (perhaps using her corpse as a link). She retained most of her identity and had an awkward, if slightly confused, acceptance of her fate. The Inquisitor was able to have a few questions answered regarding some 'problems' he was investigating.

I'm afraid I am unable to provide any further details.

The story you're thinking of is Regia Occulta from the Eisenhorn audio book, Thorn and Talon, in which Eisenhorn does just that.