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There's that bit of fluff about how Tzeentch used to be winning the Great Game prompting the others to team up against him. To avoid getting taken out entirely, he snapped his wand (staff?) over his knee shattering it into a bunch of pieces. This powered him down so much that the other gods broke off their alliance, and the Great Game continued. Collecting the shards of his wand so he can reclaim his edge is one of the responsibilities of the blue scribes (and presumably some other servants of his as well.)

Has there been any development on this front? I think I first ready the story in the 4th or 6th edition Codex: Chaos Daemons. Any little timeline blurbs about the shards or the scribes?

The scribes are still there, still scribbling away.

The shards aren't physical objects but are what became magic in realspace, so the blue scribes won't be 'done' till they record every spell, sorcery and psychic power ever. Which, obviously, will take them forever.

They're trying their best, though. Now, if you could direct them to someone capable of teaching them to cast "The Perplexing Curse Of Amon", they'll get out of your hair and on with their jobs.

Iocarno pretty much covered it.

Of course, it’s Slaanesh you want to keep your eye on. All the time the other Gods push their own champions to their preferred excess, the Prince grows ever stronger.

Cheers. Thanks. Somehow I managed to go over a decade without realizing that the shards of the staff were metaphorically (and thus literally) spells. I suppose that theoretically means that, were you to track down the staff in the warp and somehow smash a chunk off of it, you'd be re-adding the possibility of that spell into reality? And that each new the scribes find is then removed from general accessibility as it's re-added to the staff?

So what I'm hearing is, edition changes are caused by the scribes invalidating the available psychic powers.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Iocarno pretty much covered it.

Of course, it’s Slaanesh you want to keep your eye on. All the time the other Gods push their own champions to their preferred excess, the Prince grows ever stronger.

Is that right? Cos surely every time one of the gods sets its champions to war they are fuelling Khorne. And a clever strategy might be so tricky it fuels tzeench and then all that death will leave rotting corpses for papa nurgle.

Are they now a self sustaining group?

mrFickle wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Iocarno pretty much covered it.

Of course, it’s Slaanesh you want to keep your eye on. All the time the other Gods push their own champions to their preferred excess, the Prince grows ever stronger.

Is that right? Cos surely every time one of the gods sets its champions to war they are fuelling Khorne. And a clever strategy might be so tricky it fuels tzeench and then all that death will leave rotting corpses for papa nurgle.

Are they now a self sustaining group?

possibly? slanessh is obsession and excess, after all, so the single minded persuit of anything can power him as much as it would power khorne.

its one of those things that varies depending on the writer.

Do corpses laying around rotting actually do much for Nurgle? Like, I get that it fits his aesthetic and his whole decay concept, but does their existence generate any tasty warp power for Nurgle? I guess if someone saw the pile of corpses, it would resonate in the mind of the viewer and that would strengthen Nurgle.

If a rotten tree falls in the middle of a forest and no one is around to observe it, does it make a sound in the warp?

I have occassionally wondered how effective it would be for the chaos gods to try and starve each other. Like, what if Tzeentch had some servants running around petrifying armies before they could get into battle? Would you functionally be denying Khorne and Nurgle a meal ticket? Would giving imperials weekends off and reasonable working conditions allow them to live more balanced lives thus taking some of the excess out of their existence and making them less prone to converting to Slaanesh worship?

Wyldhunt wrote:
Cheers. Thanks. Somehow I managed to go over a decade without realizing that the shards of the staff were metaphorically (and thus literally) spells. I suppose that theoretically means that, were you to track down the staff in the warp and somehow smash a chunk off of it, you'd be re-adding the possibility of that spell into reality? And that each new the scribes find is then removed from general accessibility as it's re-added to the staff?

It's because, to be fair, you had to read both the 40k and WHFB books for Daemons to read between the lines of the respective backgrounds, as different things were said in each book, but with subtle similarities. I believe the physical staff itself was mentioned in the 40k book and the Blue Scribes task being collecting magic (but no staff being mentioned IIRC, just Tzeentch's knowledge being scattered over the multiverse) being in the WHFB book.


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Wyldhunt wrote:
Do corpses laying around rotting actually do much for Nurgle? Like, I get that it fits his aesthetic and his whole decay concept, but does their existence generate any tasty warp power for Nurgle? I guess if someone saw the pile of corpses, it would resonate in the mind of the viewer and that would strengthen Nurgle.

Yes, as Nurgle is as much the god of life as well as death. Those corpses are now hosts to billions of new life forms, blossoming more and more ripe disease for the cycle to begin anew.

I don't think 'spells' are removed from existence tzeench is god of magic, amongst other things, and extinguishing The Arte in the mortal world could hardly be in his interest.

But 'reforging' the staff would need to start with a complete list of every spell ever as 'bits', like the weirdest set of lego instructions imaginable.

locarno24 wrote:
I don't think 'spells' are removed from existence tzeench is god of magic, amongst other things, and extinguishing The Arte in the mortal world could hardly be in his interest.

But 'reforging' the staff would need to start with a complete list of every spell ever as 'bits', like the weirdest set of lego instructions imaginable.

Is he the god of magic or the god of sorcery? Plenty of psykers can do magic worshiping any of the other gods or none at all, librarians for example.