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I'm not sure i understand why the Eldar revere Khaine the way they do. Every mythic cycle we know of Khaine show him to be a realistic God of War, hateful and cruel. He crippled Vaul, Tortured Isha, murdered Eldanesh and wanted to commit genocide on the Eldar race. Sure, he stood up to fight Slaanesh, but that was his nature, he didn't do it to save the Eldar. And I'm pretty sure if Khaine was to be reborn (say, if his Avatars were reassembled with a mass sacrifice) he would NOT be happy with the Eldar, who created Slaanesh in the first place.

So everything we have points to him being an antagonistic god to the Eldar, who would slaughter them should he ever regain full power, yet the Eldar revere him. Similarly, Khaine is the Bloody Handed God of Murder, yet the only phoenix lord to actively teach Khaines teachings (Arha) was cast out by the other Phoenix Lords because he didn't follow the teachings of Asuryan (Hence, the Asuryata). We also shouldn't just ignore the obvious similarities between Khaine and Khorne.

So in conclusion, the only redeeming qualitites of Khaine have been fighting the Night Bringer (Full power) and Slaanesh, and everything else was been evil. Yet he is one of the main Eldar Gods still worshiped. I just don't get it.

Well, there are a couple of reasons for this.

One, they revere and revile him in relatively equal measure. Our information about the Eldar is more or less solely about them at war, when Khaine and his blessing is needed. Like the Aspects that the warriors put on, the Eldar revere Khaine in times of war, but once those times are over, they are quiet about him.

Second, apart from Cegorach, Khaine is the only Eldar god still around. He's all they got.

There's also the fact according to their myths he gave them anger so they could defend themselves and during one of their wars he turned up to help them win. So he's really more a mix of being horrible and yet needed.

There are lots occasions when a group of Eldar will think that massacres are the only sane way they can deal with the universe. That's how life is sometimes. So I don't know that hat he isn't evil, but I know that otherwise functional societies will go a little nuts if there is some kind of real or imagined threat or offense that they can react to.

I feel lik you could pretend, just hypothetically, that Kahine was just a metaphor or a social construct, and that it would still make sense in that case to say "Khaine almost destroyed the same Eldar," because it would mean that the Eldar almost drove themselves to extinction by starting bloody wars with other species or with themselves, and by being too distracted by that to, for instance, do anything related to smithing or reproducing.

So it's not necessarily that the whole society loves Khaine all the time, it's that there is a crisis, and that leaders who do love
Khaine somewhat become more popular and Khaine generally has more influence. The Eldar, knowing that this is a phenomenon that will inevitably occur, build shrines, etc, so that they will have a name for it when they see it.

You can compare it to countries that used to have a ministry or department of war, in contrast to currently having a department or ministry of defense. The Eldar, by worshipping Khaine, are effectively choosing the war terminology instead of defense. They are saying this is our war god, when we are in thrall to him it can be either for defense or for aggression, and no matter which, people are probably going to die and people are probably going to kill.

If you look at other religions and mythologies on Earth they've all had an warrior/death god of some kind who is cruel. They being is worshipped and revered. So nothing different from Eldar mythology to Earth mythology.

It's only Christian based religions that don't worship a similar aspect.

I think he also gets points for being the only one of their gods that tried to defend them. Yea he probably did it for selfish reasons and he failed but he did try and his pieces to this day still protect them. The only other living gods are currently in the hands of another warp god or ran away.

Khaine isn't a warrior god, he's a murder god.

Khaine is Kali

Khaine is more like Ares I would say, a god that was not actively worshipped in the same way Zeus or Athena were. Only Khaine actually exists within the setting, so not worshipping him might be a bad idea.

Many ancient religions had gods that you had to placate rather than asked for help. Often even the ones that you asked for help were temperamental and quick to take offense.

Is going flying rodent gak crazy to save your race from extinction and going on a rampage as a result, evil? He's a necessary evil. He represents an era of the Eldar race where emotion ran rampant, something they try to control now, but on those occasions where controlled rage doesn't work and they need to bust out his Avatar they need to Hulk out. Khaine provides them with the anger and power to save themselves.

Edit: humourously, the swear filter takes "bat(gak)" and changes it to "flying rodent gak"

The problem here being, they aren't his race. Khaine wanted to commit genocide on the Eldar, wipe them out, the reason Asuryan forbade the Gods from interfering with the Eldar was to save them from Khaines fury. Slaanesh represents when they were rampant with emotion. Khaine was a product of the time before that, when the Eldar were new and were created only to war with the Necrontry and the C'Tan.

The fact Khaine fought Slaanesh is because of his nature, I very much doubt it was to save the Eldar. If anything, wouldn't Khaine blame the Eldar for creating Slaanesh in the first place?

So i suppose my question is actually the other way around, not why do the Eldar worship Khaine but rather why does Khaine fight for the Eldar? He has been nothing but hostile to them, and they have caused him nothing but misery yet he serves as their protector. Seems a bit off character to me.

Let's assume Khaine was reforged, bought back from the brink by collecting the Avatars together and a massive blood sacrifice, would he be on the Eldar's side, or continue his Genocide now he had the chance?

Eldar are all evil bastards for those who are not eldar.
Their god of war isn't any better.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The question is [.....] evil in the 40k universe will almost always be yes .

The whole "there is only war" and the" grim darkness" will ensure it.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
The problem here being, they aren't his race. Khaine wanted to commit genocide on the Eldar, wipe them out, the reason Asuryan forbade the Gods from interfering with the Eldar was to save them from Khaines fury. Slaanesh represents when they were rampant with emotion. Khaine was a product of the time before that, when the Eldar were new and were created only to war with the Necrontry and the C'Tan.

The fact Khaine fought Slaanesh is because of his nature, I very much doubt it was to save the Eldar. If anything, wouldn't Khaine blame the Eldar for creating Slaanesh in the first place?

So i suppose my question is actually the other way around, not why do the Eldar worship Khaine but rather why does Khaine fight for the Eldar? He has been nothing but hostile to them, and they have caused him nothing but misery yet he serves as their protector. Seems a bit off character to me.

Let's assume Khaine was reforged, bought back from the brink by collecting the Avatars together and a massive blood sacrifice, would he be on the Eldar's side, or continue his Genocide now he had the chance?

There's at least one story where Khaine fights with the Eldar so it seems to me he would fight with the Eldar if he came back.
I've always thought of Khaine as having an attitude where only he is allowed to kill the Eldar.

Yes. That was easy.

As to why they revere him, he is their god. He may be an evil god, but he's theirs, and he's the only one they have left.

Why do people from broken homes still love their family?

To be fair they have Isha and Cegorach as well. And neither of those have been shattered to pieces.

pm713 wrote:
To be fair they have Isha and Cegorach as well. And neither of those have been shattered to pieces.

They don't know about Isha.

They find Cegorach less appealing than Khaine in their current state of affairs.

 DarknessEternal wrote:

pm713 wrote:
To be fair they have Isha and Cegorach as well. And neither of those have been shattered to pieces.

They don't know about Isha.

They find Cegorach less appealing than Khaine in their current state of affairs.

I think they do as one Craftworld tried to contact her to save them from a plague. Source for the Cegorach thing?

Their current state of affairs is "suicidally depressed." Khaine can at least help them die.

Cegorach is trying to save them, which they don't have much interest in.

Khaine is little more than a tool right now. Shattered in to a thousand pieces, The Thing That Was Khaine is now a living weapon, more than a sentient being. As such, I don't say Khaine is evil. Khaine just exists. If Khaine is evil, then so is a Titan.

The entire Eldar pantheon seems to be based more on the Greek gods, which makes Khaine an expy of Ares. In that sense, the Eldar ambivalence about Khaine is very well grounded in our own history. The Greek nation-states worshiped Ares along with the rest of the gods, figuring that his divinity and the importance of his portfolio (war) made him worth keeping on their side. The Eldar worship Khaine the same way: warily.

Even the stories about Khaine, which you cite, are a reflection of the conflict between Hephaestus and Ares over the love of Aphrodite. The writers at GW weren't ashamed to directly copy the classical sources.

You may have read that there are still extant statues of Ares bound in chains. That seems like the sort of thing the Eldar would do with Khaine, too. He's their god, but they wouldn't want him running amok.

Keep in mind that people don't always worship gods because they love them. That's a fairly recent phenomenon, historically speaking.

Traditionally humans worship gods to placate them. 'Please turn away your fury' is more common than 'please help me (because you're nice). Read your Greco-Roman, Egyptian, Sumerian myths. 'Sacrifice to God X or eat fire and brimstone'!

Celtic deities were whimsical, sometimes helpful and sometimes cruel. To court their active favor was considered insanely desperate and slightly mad. As in the best 'bargain with the devil' stories you were likely to get the letter of your agreement honored, with horrific side effects. These are not the fluffbunnies of Wicca.

Of course, with the Norse you were just biding your time and jostling for a good seat with the Einherjar before Ragnarok, at which point everything gets destroyed. Fun fun.

Neither the Aztec or Inca deities were very nice. Human sacrifice and all that, with the Aztecs counting their victims in the tens of thousands.

Yahweh was fond of doling out plagues and disasters to those who did not keep his covenant (Sodom and Gommorah anyone?) alternately, if you tried to stick it to the Hebrews (Assyrians, Egyptians, Philistines) you got your kingdom thrown down, your armies drowned in the Red Sea, your people slaughtered with the jawbone of an a** or a temple pulled down around your ears by a blind prisoner.

Being a Christian myself I see a big difference between Yahweh of the Old Testament and the forgiving, loving God of the New Testament. Culturally, I think that's where the break from capricious deities to beneficent ones occurs in Western culture.

The Hindus had Shiva for destruction (as part of the creation/destruction/recreation cycle), but if that wasn't good enough you had Kali built in for your murdering pleasure. The Thugee were a real thing, after all.

The Chinese had the Celestial Bureaucracy. If that's not death by slow, mind-numbing, inevitable strangulation I don't know what is. I'd rather take my chances with Kali.

In 40k the devotees of Chaos know darn well they're playing with fire when they ask for the Ruinous Powers favor. (Not entirely true, Chaos has scads of unwitting dupes and pawns.). They do it anyway because they think it's better than the alternative, slaving away as a dutiful menial drone for their Imperial masters.

Dark Eldar do what they do to stave off a slow wasting death. And because cruelty is ingrained in their culture. Suffering is it's own reward I guess.

So yeah, in nthe touchy-feely 21st century, where we presuppose that people worship Gods they suppose to be good, it may be hard to imagine worshipping Khaine or Chaos or even the Emperor of Mankind. But for most of history humans worshipped capricious deities as much to keep them at bay - to get them to leave the supplicant alone - as to obtain some direct benefit.

My two cents.

Warboss Gorhack wrote:
Keep in mind that people don't always worship gods because they love them. That's a fairly recent phenomenon, historically speaking.

Traditionally humans worship gods to placate them. 'Please turn away your fury' is more common than 'please help me (because you're nice). Read your Greco-Roman, Egyptian, Sumerian myths. 'Sacrifice to God X or eat fire and brimstone'!

Celtic deities were whimsical, sometimes helpful and sometimes cruel. To court their active favor was considered insanely desperate and slightly mad. As in the best 'bargain with the devil' stories you were likely to get the letter of your agreement honored, with horrific side effects. These are not the fluffbunnies of Wicca.

Of course, with the Norse you were just biding your time and jostling for a good seat with the Einherjar before Ragnarok, at which point everything gets destroyed. Fun fun.

Neither the Aztec or Inca deities were very nice. Human sacrifice and all that, with the Aztecs counting their victims in the tens of thousands.

Yahweh was fond of doling out plagues and disasters to those who did not keep his covenant (Sodom and Gommorah anyone?) alternately, if you tried to stick it to the Hebrews (Assyrians, Egyptians, Philistines) you got your kingdom thrown down, your armies drowned in the Red Sea, your people slaughtered with the jawbone of an a** or a temple pulled down around your ears by a blind prisoner.

Being a Christian myself I see a big difference between Yahweh of the Old Testament and the forgiving, loving God of the New Testament. Culturally, I think that's where the break from capricious deities to beneficent ones occurs in Western culture.

The Hindus had Shiva for destruction (as part of the creation/destruction/recreation cycle), but if that wasn't good enough you had Kali built in for your murdering pleasure. The Thugee were a real thing, after all.

The Chinese had the Celestial Bureaucracy. If that's not death by slow, mind-numbing, inevitable strangulation I don't know what is. I'd rather take my chances with Kali.

In 40k the devotees of Chaos know darn well they're playing with fire when they ask for the Ruinous Powers favor. (Not entirely true, Chaos has scads of unwitting dupes and pawns.). They do it anyway because they think it's better than the alternative, slaving away as a dutiful menial drone for their Imperial masters.

Dark Eldar do what they do to stave off a slow wasting death. And because cruelty is ingrained in their culture. Suffering is it's own reward I guess.

So yeah, in nthe touchy-feely 21st century, where we presuppose that people worship Gods they suppose to be good, it may be hard to imagine worshipping Khaine or Chaos or even the Emperor of Mankind. But for most of history humans worshipped capricious deities as much to keep them at bay - to get them to leave the supplicant alone - as to obtain some direct benefit.

My two cents.

I'm genuinly impressed by this post^

pm713 wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:

pm713 wrote:
To be fair they have Isha and Cegorach as well. And neither of those have been shattered to pieces.

They don't know about Isha.

They find Cegorach less appealing than Khaine in their current state of affairs.

I think they do as one Craftworld tried to contact her to save them from a plague. Source for the Cegorach thing?

Isn't Isha imprisoned by *Nurgle in the warp? There was some stuff in the 5ed deamon codex about it.

Regardless no one has seemed to focus on the question at hand: "Why would Khaine want to be worshipped by the Eldar".
The way I see it in order to answer this we need to establish what the eldar gods are. The eldar where created alongside the orks by the old ones to combat the Necrontyr and the C'tan. When the orks where created the enteties "gork and mork" seemed to appear with them, and when the eldars where spawned the same can be said for their gods. Most likely the gods are a reflection of the collected eldar psyche in the warp (like the big 4 but on a smaller scale). Kaela mesha Kain would have his rightfull Place as the eldar god of murder as we can easily see this aspect in each and every eldars dark urges. We know that the warp reflection in question gives it's owner substance, or more like the more that Believe the more powerfull you are. I don't like the later explanation because it's not enitrely true but it's a rough enough plausable explanation. So if what allows Kain to exsit in the warp is the Eldars then he's always going to be better of having them around, and not making a complete genocide of them. It's also entirely possible he fought slanesh because he'd take up all of the eldars attention, therefore being completly selfish in his defence of the eldars.
Honestly I don't like that theory because it leaves a series of plotholes. Why would Kain fight the eldars? Why would he not intervene when things went to hell? Why aren't the eldar gods bigger players pre-slaanesh? Why didn't all of them try to stop the realm of souls from going chaos? And so on and so on.

There is another theory that the eldar gods are actually powerfull old one's. I like this more but I won't argue with it here.

Anyway how I see it the eldar gods appear to be deamonic (or maybe warpy is a better term) in nature and if they follow the rules given for the other denzities of the warp then they reflect the living beings in the material universe. Hence Khaine has no choice but to be part of the eldar and would die/morph if they where to completly dissapear.

Isha is imprisoned by Nurgle not Slaanesh.

pm713 wrote:
Isha is imprisoned by Nurgle not Slaanesh.

my bad
*edited

Yeah, nurgle actually rescued her from slanesh, IIRC. He loves her in his own special way (infecting her with diseases that she cures).

@Nerak

I've been under the impression that the Eldar Gods were created by the Eldar after the War in the Heavens. The Eldar Gods are just the reflections of the Old Ones, told in stories passed down through the generations. This explains the whole Cegorarch=/=Deciever thing, as since the Deciever played both sides of the War in the Heavens and hence managed to sneak his way into Eldar Mythology. So as the War in the Heavens became a memory, became myth, became religion, and hence the Gods were created in the percieved image of the Major Players in the War.

I'm not one to believe that the Eldar worship Khaine due to being suicidally depressed, and I really like the connection to Ares. That makes a lot of sense to me culture-wise. However, do you believe it would be possible for Khaine to be resurrected?

I'm wanting to create a campaign for a few friends about The Incubi order under Drazhar attempted to resurrect Khaine using Avatar-Shells and Blood Sacrifice. So the forces of order, including Craftworlders, must stop them because Khaine-Reborn would not be a nice fellow who would want to Murder the Eastern Rim.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
The problem here being, they aren't his race. Khaine wanted to commit genocide on the Eldar, wipe them out, the reason Asuryan forbade the Gods from interfering with the Eldar was to save them from Khaines fury. Slaanesh represents when they were rampant with emotion. Khaine was a product of the time before that, when the Eldar were new and were created only to war with the Necrontry and the C'Tan.

The fact Khaine fought Slaanesh is because of his nature, I very much doubt it was to save the Eldar. If anything, wouldn't Khaine blame the Eldar for creating Slaanesh in the first place?

So i suppose my question is actually the other way around, not why do the Eldar worship Khaine but rather why does Khaine fight for the Eldar? He has been nothing but hostile to them, and they have caused him nothing but misery yet he serves as their protector. Seems a bit off character to me.

Let's assume Khaine was reforged, bought back from the brink by collecting the Avatars together and a massive blood sacrifice, would he be on the Eldar's side, or continue his Genocide now he had the chance?

I'm fairly much a noob to WH40K but I wanted to give my impression or what I knew of Khaine's myth:

1) Khaine did not have anything against the Eldar themselves. He wantead to kill them because of a Prophecy that the Eldar would lead to his death (which is what happened) and in a way could be argued as self-defence (if you believe prophecy from a fellow god to be legitimate reason to take action.)

2) Asuryan took action not just to protect the Eldar from Khaine but to protect Khaine from the Eldar (the whole prophecised death thing.) Right now Asuryan is probably thinking he should have let Khaine murder those stupid Eldar.

3) Khaine probably did fight Slaneesh due to his nature but I believe there was a fair chunk of simply survial. I mean Slaneesh was going around eating Eldar gods, Khaine fighting her/him was a given.

Finally Khaine as the whole god is shattered. So Khaine himself is not fighting for the Eldar. When the Avatar of Khaine fights there are likely two reasons why he fights for the Eldar:

a) The Avatar of Khaine requires an Eldar sacrifice. It's not surprising that the sacrificed Eldar would have some influence on the Avatar.

b) Right now the Eldar are the only Khaine can influence the world and possibly regenerate. If the Eldar die, then there is no way that Khain could influence the world at all. Second (making some fan assumptions here) if Khaine actually feeds off war and bloodshed then having his Avatar going around and killing might actually help him recover his full strength eventually.

Both reasons why he would help the Eldar.