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IMO, too many of 40k's subfactions are either completely or heavily immune to the effects of Chaos.

Custodes couldn't become corrupted even if they wanted to.
Up until the return of Angron, Sisters of Battle have only two definite examples of Chaos corruption. While I can understand that their fanaticism could make them less likely to succumb, the current resistance they have seems not very believable due to them not having any real abilities to repel Chaos.
Votann have apparently have 'hardened souls.' Just making them immune off the bat to Chaos strikes me as cheap, and it doesn't make sense that a bunch of dwarf miners should be as Chaos-resistant as warriors personally sculpted by the Emperor.
T'au have a small presence in the warp, making them not noticed by Chaos all that much. I really hope that this shifts over time in the lore as the T'au expand outward, as keeping them Chaos-free smacks of Mary Sue writing since they will be coming more and more into contact with the followers of Chaos.
Necrons apparently can't be corrupted by Chaos because they have no souls, which strikes me as a major copout as we've seen inanimate objects become corrupted. Again, the Necrons simply shrugging off Chaos really seems like Mary Sue writing.
Orks have the waaagh energy, but that's still tapping into the warp. There have been examples of Chaos Orks, but given the Orks' relatively shallow motives, there should be whole clans at least partially succumbing to Chaos, even if they don't know that they are, given how Chaos abilities would give them many new ways to krump their enemies, as well as the Orks' general shallow nature of the warp. There actually is a story in which some Orks start worshipping an idol of a green creature, thinking that it's Gorkamorka, only for it to be a Nurgle talisman and for all of the Orks to be corrupted. More of this should be happening and Orks should be prime targets of the Chaos gods.
Tyranids have the Hive Mind and Shadow in the Warp, which is pretty cool lore, but what about isolated Tyranids that have been cut off from the Hive Mind? Given the explosion of warp energy after the fall of Cadia, there should honestly be plenty of isolated, Chaos-mutated Tyranids all over the place, possibly even Hive Fleet tendrils.
Eldar should have a good number of Chaos followers what with their super-bright souls, high psychic sensitivity and long history with Chaos. Absolutely all of them rejecting Slaanesh doesn't make sense either, and IMO there should be a noticeable number of them who just decide that the various Craftworld paths are too exhausting to maintain and too restrictive, that the effort to follow them isn't worth it, and that just giving in to Slaanesh is the easier choice. For the Harlequins, running from Slaanesh for thousands of years would get tiring, and it would make sense that some would just give up. Drukhari are like addicts who are trying to get sober from crack by smoking meth instead. They are Slaaneshi in absolutely everything they do, and it would be a very small and easy step for them to falter and throw off the few restrictions they hold themselves to. Eldar should also be susceptible to other gods. Tzeentch could appeal to their strong psychic nature, Nurgle might appeal to those who want to dull their strong bodily sensations and just give up entirely, while Khorne, as the enemy of Slaanesh, could appeal to some in that way as well as an attempt to regain their species' martial strength.

This just leaves normal humans, most Space Marines, and the Mechanicus as truly vulnerable to Chaos. There are other alien species at there, but they are hardly ever mentioned and don't matter that much to the overall lore at the moment. The current state of things regarding Chaos makes both the bulk of the Imperium and Chaos look somewhat pathetic. Chaos is a reflection of the emotions, fears and desires of all living beings in the galaxy, and while humans may have the some of the brightest souls out there, Chaos should be a danger to everybody to some degree, as everyone should be vulnerable to the collective reflections of themselves in the warp.

As things are, Chaos just looks like some parasitic force feeding on the portions of humanity, not some all-encompassing dark reflection of the material world made tangible.

On the other hand if everything was a different flavour of chaos it might get samey. And I think there is a difference between resistant and immune. Plenty of space in the galaxy for fans to do chaotic versions of anything.

Okay so… there’s quite a bit to unpack here. As a whole I do agree that “resistant to chaos” is a bit of an overused gimmick. Chaos is supposed to be a reflection of yourself. Denying it is the same as denying your own desires/goals/personality. That’s the whole paradox of the Emperors plan. Starving chaos through reason and stoicism would just create a new aspect of chaos. But that’s off topic, let’s move on to the actual races:

Dark Eldar: All of drukhari are pretty much chaos worshippers. They do it in a very roundabout way but that’s what their culture boils down to. Remember that you don’t need to worship chaos as is. You just kind of have to give in to desires to feed chaos as an entity. The 4 gods are more like… opinions in the warp. Wanting their specific desires to be fed.

Eldar: I’m sure there are cases of Exodite and craftworld eldar falling to chaos. Though the entire society of craftworld eldar is formed to avoid chaos. I guess that when it comes to eldar it’s better to view them as chaos prey rather then something that falls to it. I seem to recall that in the path of the seer book it’s mentioned that chaos often gets it’s clutches on seers in training as well as rangers, given that they live outside of the craftworld structure.

Tau: actually has my favorite case of chaos influence. Which is commander Farsight. He’s the only Tau specialized in close combat, his team is called “the legendary 8” (khorne’s holy number), his army specialize in hit and run tactics and his colour is red. Imagine his faction actually being unknown subjects of khorne. Puts things into perspective I think. Other then that the Tau actually have a chaos entety protecting them. It’s some kind of woman bodhisattva thing.

Votann: it’s a long held trope to have dwarves be resistant to magic in fantasy. I think that’s the case here. Although I find it a little silly in this case.

Orks: do have a lot of chaos worshippers. In fact technically they all are. It’s just that they worshipp Gork and Mork who are (supposedly) the two most powerful chaos entities there are. Sometimes they stray into the territory of other gods though. Mostly Khorne.

Necrons: yeah you got this one completly right. If a stone can get corrupted then a necron can. Chaos does work similar to radiation as well as psychological corruption.

Tyranids: is an interesting case. There is a hive fleet that has the sole purpose of hunting down other chaos corrupted hive fleets. It’s called hive fleet Kronos. There’s also cases of tyranids being killed and not absorbed back into the hive because of potential corruption. Tyranids don’t really care about biological corruption so it should be concerning chaos.

As to custodes and such there really aren’t that many of them. A race numbers in absurd numbers. The earth today has about 8.000.000.000 people on it. Let’s say a similar minor race has 5 planets and fall to chaos. That would be 40.000.000.000 corruptible creatures. Compared to that 10.000 custodes isn’t that impressive. Even if one was to fall they’d probably just be quickly killed of by their peers.

Sisters of battle have an abundance of people that fall. Whenever in major or minor ways. That’s where the repentina and the penitent engine comes into play. If not just straight up executions.

As for the minor xenos I think there’s documented chaos Kroots. The kroot actually even have their own chaos entity. I can’t be bothered to look up the name. Something along the lines of Qua. It’s currently sleeping in it’s Umbra and will probably never be touched by GW in writing again. Not sure about vespids, Jokkaero, or other minor xenos. As a side note according to lexicanum there’s 334 named minor alien species in 40k: https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Category:Minor_Alien_Species_and_Factions

Edit: oh and a minor thing. GW has recently been heading into the direction of… well “holy chaos” I guess, for a lack of a better term. This is the admittedly arguable case of the legion of the dammed and the immortal saints of the sisters of battle. The idea is that the faith in the emperor has created a new presence in the warp that blesses, sends out miracles and even deploys angels/deamons. It’s not that weird honestly because the warp was originally a calm cool place called the sea of souls or “the empyrean”. Cleaning it up with faith could theoretically work, though not for all of the warp.

There is a difference between getting "corrupted" and "falling" to Chaos.
Any species can be corrupted but falling is entirely different. Chaos magic, plagues, or rituals can cause beings to become corrupted like with Nurgles Rot or the Murder Curse. Falling to Chaos is a choice, one often made under duress or during great suffering but a choice nonetheless.

I don't think that all warp gods and other similarly powerful Warp entities are "Chaos" gods. Gork and Mork for example, whilst immensely powerful Warp entities, do not operate in remotely the same way as the Chaos pantheon and could perhaps be considered gods of "Order" (to Orks, anyway). Likewise for the Eldar pantheon (excepting Slaanesh, which is technically part of the Eldar gods).

The non-Chaos gods don't corrupt in the way Chaos does. This is probably the simplest divider of the two types.

In short, the Warp does not equal Chaos.

There have been Chaos Squats in the past, I hope they make a return at least in the background when GW dives deeper into Votann lore.
All Tau allies can fall as seen in the 4th sphere.
Necrons have been infected with a rust virus by the Death Guard, technically you could do Nurgle Necrons with that.

I think there's enough room for Chaos in the background, it's more that there representation in the game has been lacking and since the background of campaign books and Codizes usually follows what is available in the game you see many CSM but little else. The largest Chaos faction was only done by Forgeworld and now via Kill Team. It's good to see Beastmen return at least. I'm still hoping for Chaos Eldar at some point, they've been hinted at as a whole faction in the 8th Edition rulebook but I'd be happy with a single Kill Team character at least .

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
There have been Chaos Squats in the past, I hope they make a return at least in the background when GW dives deeper into Votann lore.
All Tau allies can fall as seen in the 4th sphere.
Necrons have been infected with a rust virus by the Death Guard, technically you could do Nurgle Necrons with that.

I think there's enough room for Chaos in the background, it's more that there representation in the game has been lacking and since the background of campaign books and Codizes usually follows what is available in the game you see many CSM but little else. The largest Chaos faction was only done by Forgeworld and now via Kill Team. It's good to see Beastmen return at least. I'm still hoping for Chaos Eldar at some point, they've been hinted at as a whole faction in the 8th Edition rulebook but I'd be happy with a single Kill Team character at least .

The largest Chaos faction was also done in 3rd edition by GW proper as the Lost and the Damned list in Codex: Eye of Terror. Had mutants (incl. plague zombies) and traitor guardsmen.

That’s…kind of the vital part of the setting.

Humanity is the problem. We’re the unguarded soul and unthinking aggressor. We’re the Young Race hurling itself out into the void with little idea of what horrors exist.

The sheer brutality of life in The Imperium is a rich source of new followers for the Great Enemy.

Eldar of all stripes are wise enough to resist, or find ways to trick their way out of it.

Orks? Orks have the single most permissive society. Every Ork, Grot and Snot doesn’t accept Might Makes Right, but wholeheartedly believes that. Their Gods demand they fight, and the Orks fight. They’re Great Waaaghs! are as much the best excuse for the biggest possible scrap, as they are migration and religious Crusade. The other Gods just don’t have anything to really offer to an Ork that Gork, Mork and Ork society don’t provide and encourage.

Kin are genetically adapted to their task. In a sense, they’re the Orderly Reflection of Orky Anarchy. They want to Mine and gather resources. Their familial bonds are genetically encoded. Their hardened souls are a deliberate bit of genetic programming.

Necrons? No souls, nothing to offer the Gods, and few of them have anything like the personality left to even consider striking an infernal bargain. Plus there’s the third strike of “been there, done that, stupid idea was stupid, sod off we’re trying to undo it”.

Tyranids. Yeah. Well. They’re a single super organism. With thoughts utterly alien. Same with Genestealer Cults.

Space Marines are meant to be hardened against it. Not in Soul, but in mind. Hence the ridiculous psycho-conditioning they go through, up to and including post-war mind wiping. And that doesn’t always work.

Sisters of Battle are indoctrinated from an early age to abhor and reject any god that isn’t The Emperor. Their faith and the miracles it can perform is enough to keep them from straying.

Custodes ultimately lack proper free will. All part of their genecrafting.

That leaves the untold trillions of Mere Human Plebs. And yet? They’re often more than enough to topple worlds and disrupt sectors.

There’s also the argument, based on Realm of Chaos era background and some more modern stuff that being a realm reflecting the emotions of realspace, humanity being the most numerous species have a disproportionate influence on the Chaos Gods, to the point that as ineffable and insane as the Chaos Gods are, whatever passes for their thought process is now so heavily influenced by Humanity and human thought/instinct, they’re less able to exert necessary influence on other species. Spesh when there are such rich pickings in humans.

Humanity being the primary victims of chaos is simply due to being the most abundant species that isn't orks. The factions of 40k are simply the only factions of any appreciable size in the galaxy. There are definitely more aliens than humans, but only the orks make up a statistically significant portion of that. Most alien races are small insignificant groups occupying a handful of worlds at most. They are of course subject to the predations of chaos the same as humans but are individually irrelevant.

The Eldar probably have smaller populations than most minor alien races, it is just their status as a fallen elder race that makes them relevant due to their technology and meddling in galactic affairs.

And obviously, since Chaos is an immutable fact of reality and force within the universe, in order to be a relevant contender on the galactic stage a species has to have some resistance to chaos in order to get to that scale. Otherwise you are just another set of pawns for the chaos gods.

Getting to be a galactic level civilization that isn't under the thrall of chaos requires you to have some resistance to it.

I think the Votann are immune to chaos because they've already given their minds to their AI overlords. They are more or less living the nightmare scenario that humanity has tried to avoid post-DAoT.

All of the Imperium factions claiming immunity to chaos is propaganda, obviously. Given the right circumstances I'm confident a Custodes could fall.

Are the Leagues immune or resistant to Chaos? If the latter, then Chaotic Kin will exist, but be rare.

Highly resistant. I think it does mention fallen Kin are super rare, but not entirely unheard of.

I think there is literally only 2 sub factions that are "immune" to chaos. Sisters of Silence, and Grey Knights. And both of those are NOT immune to getting shot/stabbed in the face. So are the REALLY immune?

Can you define what you mean by immune?

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
IMO, too many of 40k's subfactions are either completely or heavily immune to the effects of Chaos.

Slightly agree.

Custodes couldn't become corrupted even if they wanted to.

And even if they did, it would presumably be a one-off thing; not something GW would build a faction around unless you want a bunch of custodes (an already tiny faction) to basically retread some tired astartes ground.

Up until the return of Angron, Sisters of Battle have only two definite examples of Chaos corruption. While I can understand that their fanaticism could make them less likely to succumb, the current resistance they have seems not very believable due to them not having any real abilities to repel Chaos.

Pretty sure that sisters do very occassionally fall to chaos, but their entire lifestyle and existence is designed to make that less likely. Their faith does seem to have some supernatural benefits, so I imagine that they're difficult for a chaos god to corrupt in the same way that it's probably hard for Tzeentch to convert a follower of Nurgle. Basically, if the emperor had a chaos-style "mark", sisters would have said mark.

Votann have apparently have 'hardened souls.' Just making them immune off the bat to Chaos strikes me as cheap, and it doesn't make sense that a bunch of dwarf miners should be as Chaos-resistant as warriors personally sculpted by the Emperor.

Agreed. Chaos Votann seem like they should probably be a thing. I get that having lots of willpower makes chaos corruption less of a thing for them, but I'm not aware of any fluff that does a good job of justifying how chaos proof they seem to be.

T'au have a small presence in the warp, making them not noticed by Chaos all that much. I really hope that this shifts over time in the lore as the T'au expand outward, as keeping them Chaos-free smacks of Mary Sue writing since they will be coming more and more into contact with the followers of Chaos.

Tau are corruptable. We see a guy get full on possessed in the Farsight novels. But it makes sense that their "small souls" would prevent huge swaths of the species from going chaotic. In tau society, taking too much interest in the wrong academics or holding hands in public can both be scandalous acts with repercussions. If someone started acting chaos-y, you'd expect that to get noticed and reported pretty quickly and the offending tau would likely be disappeared pretty quickly. And that's assuming a chaos faction decides that the tiny little empty calorie souls are worth putting effort into corrupting in the first place when there are juicy human souls all over the galaxy. Basically, chaos tau are and should be a thing, but I don't think we need them to be like, a major subfaction. Making things spiky for the heck of it would get stale.

Necrons apparently can't be corrupted by Chaos because they have no souls, which strikes me as a major copout as we've seen inanimate objects become corrupted. Again, the Necrons simply shrugging off Chaos really seems like Mary Sue writing.

Yeah. Necrons are weird. We know that their "code" and bodies can be corrupted because we've seen what phenomena like the flayer virus looks like. Plus, the lore on whether or not they have "souls" is very have your cake and eat it too with their "heka" and whatnot. My headcanon is that some 'cron corruption will probably happen but that they're kind of a low-returns target for intentional corruption (like tau), and they haven't been awake long enough to have had much corruption happen yet.

Also, I'm not sure if chaos 'crons would even be all that interesting or different from what we have now? If you give enough personality back to their warriors, then you'd kind of ruining one of the major aspects of the faction. If you just want to have crypteks and nobles that are extra blood thirsty/hedonistic/tricksy/obsessed with not dying, well we already have all of that without needing to involve the chaos gods. Like, does Trazyn become more interesting if he starts talking about how "perfect" his collection needs to be? Does that melee dynasty get more interesting if they start chanting about skulls for the skull throne?

You can probably justify spiky chaos 'cron army if you want to. It's a big galaxy. It could happen. But I feel like adding chaos corruption to 'crons would just be kind of redundant with the various forms of corruption and insanity they already have to explore.

Orks have the waaagh energy, but that's still tapping into the warp. There have been examples of Chaos Orks, but given the Orks' relatively shallow motives, there should be whole clans at least partially succumbing to Chaos, even if they don't know that they are, given how Chaos abilities would give them many new ways to krump their enemies, as well as the Orks' general shallow nature of the warp. There actually is a story in which some Orks start worshipping an idol of a green creature, thinking that it's Gorkamorka, only for it to be a Nurgle talisman and for all of the Orks to be corrupted. More of this should be happening and Orks should be prime targets of the Chaos gods.

As you pointed out, orks do occassionally get a bit chaos-y. As a whole they're resistant (because if they weren't, they'd probably just be universally a chaos faction given their gestalt soul). But if you want to do chaos orks, you can do chaos orks. But given that orks are all part of the same gestalt soul, and given that Gork and Mork are quite a bit stronger than the chaos gods, and given that extreme deviations in proper orky behavior would likely get you krumped the same way a genestealer cultist ork would, it makes sense that chaos orks are usually isolated exceptions rather than the norm.

Tyranids have the Hive Mind and Shadow in the Warp, which is pretty cool lore, but what about isolated Tyranids that have been cut off from the Hive Mind? Given the explosion of warp energy after the fall of Cadia, there should honestly be plenty of isolated, Chaos-mutated Tyranids all over the place, possibly even Hive Fleet tendrils.

Chaos 'nids have been canon for quite a while now. We see some nurgly ones in the Space Wolves omnibus, and I'm pretty sure they've popped up here and there elsewhere. But as you've pointed out, these are exceptions rather than the norm.

Eldar should have a good number of Chaos followers what with their super-bright souls, high psychic sensitivity and long history with Chaos.

Chaos eldar exist. They've been canon since... 2nd(?) edition. They even show up in a couple of novels.

Absolutely all of them rejecting Slaanesh doesn't make sense either, and IMO there should be a noticeable number of them who just decide that the various Craftworld paths are too exhausting to maintain and too restrictive, that the effort to follow them isn't worth it, and that just giving in to Slaanesh is the easier choice.

There's a pretty big jump from "my craftworld is too strict" to "and therefor I'm going to throw myself into an eternity of suffering." Generally if a craftworlder finds the path system too restrictive, they go become a ranger for a while or sign on as a corsair. And notably, the 7th edition corsair rules (RIP) did have rules to reflect the idea that such individuals were dangerously close to some form of chaos corruption.

For the Harlequins, running from Slaanesh for thousands of years would get tiring, and it would make sense that some would just give up.

I mean, harlequins are soul-bound to Cegorach in a similar way to an astropath being bound to the emperor or a cult marine being bound to their chaos god. See above about Tzeentch having a hard time stealing a follower from Nurgle. Additionally, becoming a harlequin (and wearing the masks) seems to change their personalities/psychologies a fair bit. Getting tired of resisting might simply not be a thing for them.

Drukhari are like addicts who are trying to get sober from crack by smoking meth instead. They are Slaaneshi in absolutely everything they do...

Right. Yes. You have successfully understood the whole gimmick of the drukhari.

, and it would be a very small and easy step for them to falter and throw off the few restrictions they hold themselves to.

Drukhari aren't non-chaos-worshippers (double negative) because they adhere to "restrictions." They're non-chaos worshippers because the entirety of Commorraghn society is designed to resist Slaanesh's grip on them. If bob the kabalite starts talking about how cool Slaanesh is, he's going to disintegrated pronto, and so is everyone he's ever been in a room with. And that's assuming that Slaanesh doesn't slurp up his soul and instantly huskify him.

Eldar should also be susceptible to other gods. Tzeentch could appeal to their strong psychic nature, Nurgle might appeal to those who want to dull their strong bodily sensations and just give up entirely, while Khorne, as the enemy of Slaanesh, could appeal to some in that way as well as an attempt to regain their species' martial strength.

It happens. See above. Heck, even Drazhar/Arhra are implied to have gotten a little chaos corrupted at one point. What you're missing, I think is that once an eldar goes full chaos, they kind of stop being a member of any of the major eldar factions. So sure, chaos eldar are out there, but you're not going to see them hanging out with craftworlders, drukhari, harlequins, exodites, or even conventional corsairs. There's a short story somewhere about a kroot who ate some chaos meat and became an outcast who fell into the service of an inquisitor because of his corruption. Chaos eldar are going to be found in roles more like that or in their weird, small little societies.

This just leaves normal humans, most Space Marines, and the Mechanicus as truly vulnerable to Chaos. There are other alien species at there, but they are hardly ever mentioned and don't matter that much to the overall lore at the moment. The current state of things regarding Chaos makes both the bulk of the Imperium and Chaos look somewhat pathetic. Chaos is a reflection of the emotions, fears and desires of all living beings in the galaxy, and while humans may have the some of the brightest souls out there, Chaos should be a danger to everybody to some degree, as everyone should be vulnerable to the collective reflections of themselves in the warp.

As things are, Chaos just looks like some parasitic force feeding on the portions of humanity, not some all-encompassing dark reflection of the material world made tangible.

A.) As Grotsnik and Templar have pointed out, humanity being the main food source is kind of the point.
B.) If a faction is susceptible to chaos and doesn't have a mechanism in play to avoid being extremely corrupt, then they functionally just become another one of the weird masses that get enslaved by/allied with other chaos factions. That horde of snail people with too many teeth? Maybe that was a whole galaxy-spanning snail alien society at one point. Now they're just random nurgle mook number 173.

The thing with Chaos Nids is that for it to happen you need to cut them from the Hive Mind, and Nids cut from the Hive Mind are kinda unable to function on their own (ever tried to play Nids without Synapse Creatures? It never goes well)

So Chaos Nids, in the weird isolated situations that might happen, inevitably quickly die off.

There is also the further issue that Nids are simply unable to interact with Chaos at the meta emotional level (as they are emotionless and souless), so they need to be forcibly physically corrupted and cannot fall to Chaos.

It's probably been said but: Orks are perfectly susceptible to chaos, it's just that Chaos has nothing for them.

Want war? Gork's got you covered. Are you ambitious and want to become the boss / build the biggest something / conquer all that you see? Gork, or possibly mork, still have you covered. Obsessed with speed, fire, or killing tanks? Mork and gork gotchu, fam. Would you rather not die? Mork, or possibly gork, has got your back.

An ork can be an ambitiously cunning speed-obsessed lunatic who has a connoisseurs taste for only the finest skulls while also not wanting to die. Their gods give them everything that Chaos can, with no need to relinquish other parts (Slaanesh won't take too kindly to you having a love for skulls; Khorne isn't much for obsessive creators). The ork gods also aren't out to dick their followers over; they're pro ork and the influence they have on their followers is purely beneficial. Gork (or possibly Mork) has never turned a follower into a spawn.

Lastly, orks have a very strong feeling for things which are not "orky" enough. And a tendency to kill those things. They self police by basically lynching any ork who steps out of cultural norms for being too weird in unorky ways.

 Tyran wrote:
The thing with Chaos Nids is that for it to happen you need to cut them from the Hive Mind, and Nids cut from the Hive Mind are kinda unable to function on their own (ever tried to play Nids without Synapse Creatures? It never goes well)

So Chaos Nids, in the weird isolated situations that might happen, inevitably quickly die off.

There is also the further issue that Nids are simply unable to interact with Chaos at the meta emotional level (as they are emotionless and souless), so they need to be forcibly physically corrupted and cannot fall to Chaos.

Tyranids are quite capable of surviving and thriving when cut off from the hivemind. They just lose track of any planet-devouring goals and become part of the local ecosystem. Krakens on Fenris and catachan devils on Catachan are both believed to be examples of this.

Although I guess chaos corruption could interfere with whatever reproduction method wild 'nids use.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Tyranids are quite capable of surviving and thriving when cut off from the hivemind. They just lose track of any planet-devouring goals and become part of the local ecosystem. Krakens on Fenris and catachan devils on Catachan are both believed to be examples of this.

They are unable to survive as cohesive swarms, as without the Hive Mind they tend to kill each other and only the largest organisms may survive on their own, but 99.9999999% of the swarm tends to die.

Although I guess chaos corruption could interfere with whatever reproduction method wild 'nids use.

Chaos corruption in general should be a negative impact on life expectancy because radical mutation of your anatomy tends to be a bad thing.

On Eldar and Chaos?

They’re just a more mature, more aware species. They’re acutely aware of the risks, and the incredibly few benefits of following Chaos.

I mean, look at the untold billions of human Cultists. Then compare that number to Daemon Princes and Big Famous Chaos Lords.

Whilst it’s not as explicit today, Realms of Chaos made it clear that when you follow Chaos, you’ll get one of three flavours of eternal damnation.

1. Regular, bog standard death. Your soul becomes God Food.
2. Spawndom. Yeah that’s worse than death
3. Daemonhood. Arguably the best result, but that’s you for ever. Eternal life yes. But more accurately, eternal servitude as your god can always overrule your wishes.

It’s the same rationale that a toddler is far more likely to stick their hand in a toaster than an adult. The adult simply has a greater appreciation that sticking your hand in a toaster is going to hurt, so just don’t do it.

There is also the exceedingly rare outcome of daemonhood with multiple patrons, therefore providing freedom. The Be'Lakor route.

There is one known example. One.

And only because the insane entities learned as direct result when everyone “owns” it? Nobody owns it.

Spesh when your co-owners are by default super difficult and you keep undermining each other, because that’s all you’ve ever known, and it’s those cross purposes which allowed this single experiment off the leash, and having mortal origins is somehow even more of a Richard than you ever imagined.

Custodes were actually corrupted into raising their hands against the Emperor when they first teleported onto Horus' flagship at the end of the Heresy. He had to toast a few of them as a result.

Needless to say, Big E took that rather personally.

Dude come on that's a big spoiler.

 Ketara wrote:
Custodes were actually corrupted into raising their hands against the Emperor when they first teleported onto Horus' flagship at the end of the Heresy. He had to toast a few of them as a result.

Needless to say, Big E took that rather personally.

Ehhh, psychic mind control doesn't really count as corruption.

Well if we don't count that then we are back to pretty much everyone being immune because Chaos offers feth all to Orks, Necrons, Tyranids, Eldar, etc.

Really it is only humans who are dumb enough to trust what the Daemons say.

I mean, I think we've established that most xenos factions are resistant but *not* immune to chaos corruption.

So with that in mind, what's the ask/complaint?

If you want to write fluff about your converted up army of chaos tau/orks/eldar/necrons, you can justifiably do so. The canon seems to leave room for it.

If you want every faction to have a chaos version of itself complete with codex and model range, I think you'd risk homogenizing the game's factions too much. (Let's ignore how many factions are astartes for now.)

I think we do need to properly define what is Chaos corruption, because while no faction is 100% immune, many of them are immune to the common corruption vectors that are the primary way Chaos spreads.

Necrons, Tyranids and Orks technically can be affected and mutated by Chaos stuff like Nurgle diseases, but you are never going to see Chaos worship and much less an actual Chaos aligned cult among those species.

Eldar and some Imperial factions like Grey Knights and Custodes in theory can fall to Chaos, but in practice they may very well be immune because they are very well trained and indoctrinated to resist it.

Custodes can be corrupted by chaos as shown by End and the Death, more mind control than falling to chaos and Drach'nyen also states he could possess one but it would take an age to break the custodes.

Orks can fall to chaos just fine.

Eldar of all types can too

Tau are in the process of falling to Chaos in the current lore with Tzeench and Khorne taking a keen interest in them, we also have a corrupted Water caste member causing havoc within their ranks in the Farsight books, the water spider iirc.

Nids can also be corrupted just fine too, just not to the extent that they worship chaos and the like, their bodies are still open to corruption, also devestation of baal shows the hive mind can be directly hurt by chaos, the first time in its existence I think it said.

Orks are extremely unlikely to fall to Chaos as they are simply too happy for Chaos to have a pull on them.

Plus even in the rare case an Ork may fall, Orks naturally find and kill "unorky" Orks (which is also the reason why Genestealer Cults last very little among Orks).

Nids can be physically corrupted, but they also have so many psychic and metaphysical defenses that it only happens in isolated cases. And at the spiritual level they are pretty much immune.

I reference Gert above- corruption is a broader term than falling to Chaos. Any being can be corrupted to some extent- a Necron could be struck down by a machine plague of Nurgle, or a Tau Ethereal could be mutated into a Tzeenchian spawn. They haven't fallen to Chaos as worshippers though, but have suffered its warping, corrupting touch. Even the attacks of daemons are a type of warp corruption, they have no corporeal form. If a Tyranid hive fleet wandered into the Eye of Terror, it would most likely be mutated hideously, but would likely still attempt to be loyal to the inscrutable objectives of the Hive Mind.

The group susceptible to becoming worshippers is much smaller, and largely confined to humanity on a galactic scale.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Tyran wrote:
Orks are extremely unlikely to fall to Chaos as they are simply too happy for Chaos to have a pull on them.

Plus even in the rare case an Ork may fall, Orks naturally find and kill "unorky" Orks (which is also the reason why Genestealer Cults last very little among Orks).

Nids can be physically corrupted, but they also have so many psychic and metaphysical defenses that it only happens in isolated cases. And at the spiritual level they are pretty much immune.

There are the odd Ork genestealer cults though, but very rare. I suppose they would have to infect a feral tribe in its infancy, and infiltrate the Orkoid population from there. Freebooterz also strike me as a more likely candidate due to their relative isolation.

I don't think any newer canon has retconned Khorne Stormboyz? Chaos Orks definitely exist in the lore, although again likely to be exceptionally rare in any meaningful numbers. Again, I'd think more likely amongst Freebooterz.