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.

As we all know, the physical universe is attached to or closely linked to the warp. That being said, Khorne, Slaanesh, Nurgle and Tzeentch dwell within the warp overlapping our galaxy. Could there be a possibility that there are other warp gods in different parts of the universe?

I don't know of anything that supports a contention that "Khorne, Slaanesh, Nurgle and Tzeentch dwell within our own galaxy".

[Citation Needed], please.

Well, what I meant by that was they live in warp that is closely connected to our galaxy.

Ok, that clarifies, thanks.

AFAIK, any galaxy that supports life beyond a certain developmental level necessarily support the Chaos Gods.

The question remains of whether or not warp entities like the Chaos Gods could move from galaxy to galaxy after they've ripped apart the Milky Way Galaxy. They need sacrifices, emotions, and followers to thrive, so if they do conquer the Milky Way Galaxy, they will eventually starve. Any ideas?

My headcanon has always been that the 'tides' of the Warp don't extend beyond the Milky Way because they're dependent on the emotions of living creatures. There's not enough sapient life in the intergalactic void to fuel anything in the Warp, so it remains a completely calm emptiness out there. No tides means no intergalactic travel via the Warp, but also no gods or daemons able to extend their influence outside the Milky Way, because they are fundamentally just intelligent warp-storms.

That calm emptiness is the Warp's 'natural' state. It was the meddling of the Old Ones and the War in Heaven that disturbed the local Warp within the Milky Way galaxy and ultimately created the Chaos Gods. Before the War in Heaven, the only Warp-based means of travel was the Old Ones' Webway, as the Warp had no tides yet for ships to take advantage of.

For another galaxy to have Warp-based gods, or even Warp-based travel (other than a Webway-anallogue), it would need to have undergone a similar galactic-scale conflict to the War in Heaven, with similar wide-scale use of psychic powers.

If everyone in the Milky Way was dead, the Chaos Gods would just fade into nothing. That doesn't preclude there being analogous Warp-entities in other galaxies where the conditions were similar, though.

 Duskweaver wrote:


That calm emptiness is the Warp's 'natural' state. It was the meddling of the Old Ones and the War in Heaven that disturbed the local Warp within the Milky Way galaxy and ultimately created the Chaos Gods. Before the War in Heaven, the only Warp-based means of travel was the Old Ones' Webway, as the Warp had no tides yet for ships to take advantage of.

This is not true, even before the War in Heaven, the Eldar and the necrontyr fought with demons and even created a special prison for the demons of Slaanesh
Eldar was created with the ability to be reborn to resist Chaos

darkoms wrote:

 Duskweaver wrote:


That calm emptiness is the Warp's 'natural' state. It was the meddling of the Old Ones and the War in Heaven that disturbed the local Warp within the Milky Way galaxy and ultimately created the Chaos Gods. Before the War in Heaven, the only Warp-based means of travel was the Old Ones' Webway, as the Warp had no tides yet for ships to take advantage of.

This is not true, even before the War in Heaven, the Eldar and the necrontyr fought with demons and even created a special prison for the demons of Slaanesh
Eldar was created with the ability to be reborn to resist Chaos

Before the War in Heaven Eldar didn't exist. They were made during the War and there were no demons at that point. Most of the Chaos Gods weren't 'awake' and Slaanesh didn't exist. That makes no sense and directly contradicts canon.

pm713 wrote:

darkoms wrote:

 Duskweaver wrote:


That calm emptiness is the Warp's 'natural' state. It was the meddling of the Old Ones and the War in Heaven that disturbed the local Warp within the Milky Way galaxy and ultimately created the Chaos Gods. Before the War in Heaven, the only Warp-based means of travel was the Old Ones' Webway, as the Warp had no tides yet for ships to take advantage of.

This is not true, even before the War in Heaven, the Eldar and the necrontyr fought with demons and even created a special prison for the demons of Slaanesh
Eldar was created with the ability to be reborn to resist Chaos

Before the War in Heaven Eldar didn't exist. They were made during the War and there were no demons at that point. Most of the Chaos Gods weren't 'awake' and Slaanesh didn't exist. That makes no sense and directly contradicts canon.

Read ''Rise of the Ynnari:Wild Rider''

darkoms wrote:

pm713 wrote:

darkoms wrote:

 Duskweaver wrote:


That calm emptiness is the Warp's 'natural' state. It was the meddling of the Old Ones and the War in Heaven that disturbed the local Warp within the Milky Way galaxy and ultimately created the Chaos Gods. Before the War in Heaven, the only Warp-based means of travel was the Old Ones' Webway, as the Warp had no tides yet for ships to take advantage of.

This is not true, even before the War in Heaven, the Eldar and the necrontyr fought with demons and even created a special prison for the demons of Slaanesh
Eldar was created with the ability to be reborn to resist Chaos

Before the War in Heaven Eldar didn't exist. They were made during the War and there were no demons at that point. Most of the Chaos Gods weren't 'awake' and Slaanesh didn't exist. That makes no sense and directly contradicts canon.

Read ''Rise of the Ynnari:Wild Rider''

Sadly I have. I'm not going to look at some rubbish novel and decide that masses of lore in codexes are invalid.

Seeing how fixated the Chaos Gods seem to be on the species of the Milky Way, it's probably safe to assume they are confined to the galaxy. Otherwise, it would beg the question of how something as nanoscopically minor (on a cosmic scale) as the War in Heaven and the Fall of the Eldar had the potential to create entities whose reach encompasses the entire universe.

Warp travel must still be possible beyond the Milky Way though. (It's how the Tyranids arrived after all)
With the Warp being empty and devoid of demonic or other native life, it should also be rather calm. Of course the problem is that there would be absolutely no method of navgiation.

pm713 wrote:

darkoms wrote:

pm713 wrote:

darkoms wrote:

 Duskweaver wrote:


That calm emptiness is the Warp's 'natural' state. It was the meddling of the Old Ones and the War in Heaven that disturbed the local Warp within the Milky Way galaxy and ultimately created the Chaos Gods. Before the War in Heaven, the only Warp-based means of travel was the Old Ones' Webway, as the Warp had no tides yet for ships to take advantage of.

This is not true, even before the War in Heaven, the Eldar and the necrontyr fought with demons and even created a special prison for the demons of Slaanesh
Eldar was created with the ability to be reborn to resist Chaos

Before the War in Heaven Eldar didn't exist. They were made during the War and there were no demons at that point. Most of the Chaos Gods weren't 'awake' and Slaanesh didn't exist. That makes no sense and directly contradicts canon.

Read ''Rise of the Ynnari:Wild Rider''

Sadly I have. I'm not going to look at some rubbish novel and decide that masses of lore in codexes are invalid.

What codex states that the Eldar were created precisely during the War in Heaven, and not earlier? What codex states that there were no demons and chaos gods before the War in Heaven? Has it not been said long ago that the chaos gods have always been?

darkoms wrote:

pm713 wrote:

darkoms wrote:

pm713 wrote:

darkoms wrote:

 Duskweaver wrote:


That calm emptiness is the Warp's 'natural' state. It was the meddling of the Old Ones and the War in Heaven that disturbed the local Warp within the Milky Way galaxy and ultimately created the Chaos Gods. Before the War in Heaven, the only Warp-based means of travel was the Old Ones' Webway, as the Warp had no tides yet for ships to take advantage of.

This is not true, even before the War in Heaven, the Eldar and the necrontyr fought with demons and even created a special prison for the demons of Slaanesh
Eldar was created with the ability to be reborn to resist Chaos

Before the War in Heaven Eldar didn't exist. They were made during the War and there were no demons at that point. Most of the Chaos Gods weren't 'awake' and Slaanesh didn't exist. That makes no sense and directly contradicts canon.

Read ''Rise of the Ynnari:Wild Rider''

Sadly I have. I'm not going to look at some rubbish novel and decide that masses of lore in codexes are invalid.

What codex states that the Eldar were created precisely during the War in Heaven, and not earlier? What codex states that there were no demons and chaos gods before the War in Heaven? Has it not been said long ago that the chaos gods have always been?

Slaanesh's creation through the Fall of the Eldar has been the very core of Eldar fluff since Eldar became a thing.
The creation of the other Chaos Gods by the War in Heaven has been canon since Codex Necrons 3rd Edi.
It has very, VERY explicitedly been part of the lore since the days of the old "Realm of Chaos" books from the 80ies that the Chaos Gods have not "always" been but that they were created by the collective emotions and thoughts of intelligent life in the physical universe.

Isn't there a quote in the recent Blood Angles v Tyranids book where the Hive Mind notes that "this prey-cluster" is unique for it's warp activity?

This is all further complicated by the atemporal nature of the Warp. From the point of view of a mortal in realspace, the Warp is different now from what it was before the Fall, and was different during Old Night from what it was at the height of the Age of Technology, and was different then from before the rise of humanity as a sapient and psychic species, and was different then from before the War in Heaven.

But from the point of view of a Warp-entity, the Warp is eternal and has always been as it is now. The Chaos Gods might well genuinely 'believe' they have always existed. Their very nature probably makes it literally impossible for them to conceive of a 'time' when they did not exist exactly as they currently are.

Again, this is just my interpretation, but it's based on the canonical descriptions of the Warp. It logically can't really be any other way given that time either doesn't exist at all in the Warp or is completely non-linear and obeys no laws of cause and effect.

Change without time requires a whole new reality to be created with each change. And each individual reality is itself eternal and unchanging. And from the PoV of an intelligence within that atemporal reality, it and everything it experiences is eternal and unchanging (it is always 'now'). Meanwhile you have a 'normal' material universe with linear time and classical causality existing in parallel and allowing communication between the two. And all the 'changes' that trigger whole new versions of the Warp to be spawned are dependent on events that occur in that parallel 'normal' universe. The experience of being a Chaos God or a daemon would be really weird. It's no wonder they seem completely crazy to us.

It's difficult to explain properly without getting into technical jargon like 'frames of reference' and 'ontological anosognosia', though.

Nothing suggests that the Chaos Gods are confined to the galaxy, indeed they're said to be not even universal but multiversal.

Animus wrote:
Nothing suggests that the Chaos Gods are confined to the galaxy, indeed they're said to be not even universal but multiversal.

I've never read that. Do you have a source? Everything I've read would indicate that the Chaos Gods are powered by and tied to mortal emotions. Without mortals, you get no Gods. That was sort of the whole point of the Horus Heresy. Had humanity "won", they would have burned bright, but short and taken the Gods with them when they went extinct. Instead, humanity survives in a sad state, but in a state that nourishes the Gods indefinitely.

If chaos and it's demons are based on the emotions and actions of humans or other sentient beings, then the answer depends on whether such beings exist outside the galaxy.

Existing outside of time and space suggests that they're not just in a different bubble of space-time tightly adjacent to the part of ours that contains the Milky Way.

I would say they don't. Just because the Chaos Gods live outside of time and space doesn't mean we do. To them existence is endless, without beginning or end. To beings in this galaxy there was a place where the Eye of Terror wasn't, and then it was.

 Kriswall wrote:

Animus wrote:
Nothing suggests that the Chaos Gods are confined to the galaxy, indeed they're said to be not even universal but multiversal.

I've never read that. Do you have a source? Everything I've read would indicate that the Chaos Gods are powered by and tied to mortal emotions. Without mortals, you get no Gods. That was sort of the whole point of the Horus Heresy. Had humanity "won", they would have burned bright, but short and taken the Gods with them when they went extinct. Instead, humanity survives in a sad state, but in a state that nourishes the Gods indefinitely.

I wouldn't exactly say that was the whole point of the Horus Heresy, since it's the belief of some minor alien characters who show up like three times in a million novels. The rulebook says that Chaos will remain after devouring the galaxy, the daemon codex makes reference to the universe spanning power of the gods (Tzeentch listening to hopes of every sentient being in the universe or Nurgle creating all the plagues in the universe) and brings up the multiverse, and then there are the other properties which explicitly share the same Chaos Gods, Fantasy, Bloodbowl, and Age of Sigmar. In one of the Ultramarines, Dead Sky Black Sun I think, they see a vision of another galaxy totally exterminated for the glory of Khorne, and in one of the Ynnari novels I think they mention it would be pointless to leave the galaxy because Chaos can get them anywhere.

Excerpt for that galaxy destroyed bit?

 Excommunicatus wrote:
I don't know of anything that supports a contention that "Khorne, Slaanesh, Nurgle and Tzeentch dwell within our own galaxy".

[Citation Needed], please.

According to "The devastation of baal", the tyranids do not seem to have encountered a galaxy like "ours" before, with a strong connection between the materium and immaterium. It could suggest that warp is limited to the milkey way.

darkoms wrote:

pm713 wrote:

darkoms wrote:

 Duskweaver wrote:


That calm emptiness is the Warp's 'natural' state. It was the meddling of the Old Ones and the War in Heaven that disturbed the local Warp within the Milky Way galaxy and ultimately created the Chaos Gods. Before the War in Heaven, the only Warp-based means of travel was the Old Ones' Webway, as the Warp had no tides yet for ships to take advantage of.

This is not true, even before the War in Heaven, the Eldar and the necrontyr fought with demons and even created a special prison for the demons of Slaanesh
Eldar was created with the ability to be reborn to resist Chaos

Before the War in Heaven Eldar didn't exist. They were made during the War and there were no demons at that point. Most of the Chaos Gods weren't 'awake' and Slaanesh didn't exist. That makes no sense and directly contradicts canon.

Read ''Rise of the Ynnari:Wild Rider''

I actually asked Gav thrope about this very aspect of his book. He gave me this answer:

"Hi,

Thanks for getting in touch, and for reading.

As intimated in the novel itself, it is very likely that there is no singular War in Heaven, but many events over the long aeons that the Aeldari cyclic mythology has interpreted as the War in Heaven, be it fights among the Old Ones, combating the Necrons and against the rise of Chaos. It's also true that the non-linear nature of the warp means that Slaanesh has always existed, though created by the Fall of the Eldar. As soon as Slaanesh came into being, Slaanesh had always come into being, hence the nascent power of Slaanesh to influence the Eldar minds and bring them to the Fall, creating a lovely loop / paradox!

I always advise caution about taking specific examples and events - such as those depicted in Wild Rider - and creating generalities out of them. A specific set of Tomb World, led by a particular Necron Lord, at some point allied with a faction of the Aeldari to defeat and trap a daemonic incursion. Aeldari and Necrons both came about sixty million years ago, but that particular incident may not have occurred until later. The Aeldari myths are certainly vague enough and the Watcher of the Dark's memories are incomplete, so there's always wiggle room. regarding what happened and when..;-)

Cheers,

Gav"

 Esmer wrote:

The creation of the other Chaos Gods by the War in Heaven has been canon since Codex Necrons 3rd Edi.

Problem is that non of it is mentioned in the 5th edition codex, so it might not be valid at this point.

DalekCheese wrote:
Excerpt for that galaxy destroyed bit?

I don't have the exact quote, but it specifically talks about Uriel Ventris having a vision of other galaxies being filled with the bones of extinct races who were slaughtered in the name of Khorne.

I also want to add that no one seems to be taking into account the Old World/Mortal Realms. Yes, I know it's not 40k, but GW has stated that those are exactly the same Chaos gods, and many daemons easily cross between dimensions. If the gods are multiversal, I don't see why they cannot have manifested in other galaxies in the same universe.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Isn't there a quote in the recent Blood Angles v Tyranids book where the Hive Mind notes that "this prey-cluster" is unique for it's warp activity?

Just re-quoting to confirm this is the case.

We can say for sure that the 4 chaos god we all know and love at the very least are localized to the Milky Way. Why? Slanesh. The lore is very very very explicit that the cause of Slanesh's birth was due to the constant un ending murderfucking of the pre fall Aeldari. But if the Chaos gods were universal that woulf make no fething sense. Do you know how big the Universe is? How many galaxy's? It doesn't matter how much Murderfucking the Aeldari were doing it would be not but a drop in the bucket compared to the total amount of Murderfucking in the universe. Thus we can conclude that the 4 Chaos gods are localized to the Milky Way Galaxy. Maybe there are other Choas gods in other galaxys but the four we all know and love arr Milky Way Only