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In 40k, all daemon princes that I'm aware of were formerly Marines or even Primarchs, aside from Be'lakor who's far more ancient. This makes sense given how Marine-centric is GW's lore on Chaos. Plus, Marines are in a better position to serve the Ruinous Power thanks to their long lives and high status.

Still, raw combat ability can't be the only thing the Chaos gods reward their followers for. I could easily see Tzeentch granting daemonhood to a scheming noble whose decades of deception and machinations have come to fruition by turning a hive world into a daemon world. Even Khorne would likely respect a Pol Pot or Idi Amin figure who has achieved a lot of bloodshed without being a great fighter himself.

Are there examples of this? (I'm not including the theory that living saints are a form of daemon prince.)

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One of the Commissar Cain novels (The Traitor's Hand) has a mortal become a daemon princess.

The 6th edition Chaos Boon table (yay random tables!) allowed for Cultist Champion Joe Nobody to ascend to daemonhood mid-battle.

Yup, there are plenty in the background. Before the rise of the more powerful transhumans, Daemon Princes had to be regular mortals ascended to Princedom.

Some particularly noteworthy ones are:

- Doombreed, a Prince of Khorne believed to be an ascended form of a Mongol warlord from M1/M2

- Be'Lakor, the First Prince ever raised by the Pantheon,

- N'Kari, a Prince of Slaanesh raised likely during the Long Night when he led the forces of Chaos in conquering his homeworld.

Pretty sure Cherubael from the Eisenhorn series is an ascended human as well.

He’s definitely a Daemon Prince (Eisenhorn describes him as such a few time), and definitely does not appear to be a former CSM.

Yup. As covered above.

What’s interesting to me is the old path to Daemonhood as presented in Realms of Chaos.

Daemonhood, or Spawndom, depended on the number of Chaos Gifts and Boons a character had received. Once attained, I think it was a Willpower Check. If failed? The chaotic powers infusing your flesh were too much, and you devolved into a mindless, gibbering Chaos Spawn. If passed? You ascended to Daemonhood.

I see no real reason to say that’s been entirely binned as an underlying concept. Certainly I don’t think it’s ever been directly removed.

And it could explain why a fair number of Daemon Princes started out as Astartes. Simply put? The more robust physiology and psychology lends itself to surviving long enough to accrue sufficient blessings, and to withstand them in the first place.

So, whilst there are still Daemon Princes that were once entirely unenhanced mortals, it’s just more likely they’d end up as Spawn.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Thinking a little bit further? I guess it could be argued that an Astartes is simply capable of greater acts of violence and excess and that.

Yes, a Mortal can channel further power into them via warp craft, Sorceror and psychics. But an Astartes has a lesser need. And even if they do? Again their enhanced everything makes them more likely to survive that experience. The greater the atrocity, the fonder the god, the more likely you are to receive a gift, mutation or blessing and that.

Where this gets a bit unclear is the loose ranking of Chaos followers best set out in WHFB - but still applies to 40K.

Daemons, being entirely slaved to the will of their god are the least of the God’s followers. Next up would be species such as Beastmen and Dragon Ogres. Such species are born into the worship of chaos. But regular smelly Hoomans and their ilk? They choose chaos. Either in desperation, seduction, rage, a want for justice - it’s an active, personal choice. And so they’re considered more valuable pawns.

Whether Astartes are especially prized? Who knows. I don’t think we’ve confirmed info on that either way.

The benefit of being particularly suited to gaming the system of boons and presenting worship helps.

Greg the Human has maybe 70 years if he's lucky. Brontonius the Astartes could easily live for 300 years.

 Gert wrote:
The benefit of being particularly suited to gaming the system of boons and presenting worship helps.

Greg the Human has maybe 70 years if he's lucky. Brontonius the Astartes could easily live for 300 years.

Greg the Unfortunate Chaos Spawn is now immortal at least.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
One of the Commissar Cain novels (The Traitor's Hand) has a mortal become a daemon princess.

Oh, that's interesting. Who was she and what did she do?

The 6th edition Chaos Boon table (yay random tables!) allowed for Cultist Champion Joe Nobody to ascend to daemonhood mid-battle.

Heh. I can see why this sort of thing got canned (presumably, it required that the Chaos player have a spare daemon prince model), but I still miss these crazy tables, including the psyker mishap table.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So, whilst there are still Daemon Princes that were once entirely unenhanced mortals, it’s just more likely they’d end up as Spawn.

Fair. But daemonhood certainly wouldn't be a mortal's first (and last) boon. Presumably they'd get others beforehand as they rise in the ranks. In some cases it'll be visible mutations, in others it'll be something more subtle like psychic powers (if they weren't born with them).

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It is described as the gradual accretion of gifts and boons and that. Essentially a gradual build up of chaos energies within the body that, once sufficient, will provide an apotheosis of one kind or another.

Certainly I don’t think anyone has say, blown up an Officers Mess in the name of god and then been instantly elevated. It’s always presented as journey requiring strength of arm and strength of will.

There are rituals that would allow a mortal to ascend to Daemonhood straight away (obvs, them being a devotee of the Pantheon is a given), such as with Ingethel on Cadia.

Ingethel ascended due to a ritual where she revealed the Primordial Truth to Lorgar on Cadia just before his pilgrimage. It required a sacrifice of ten mortals, one of whom happened to be a Custodes.

@-Guardsman-

https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Emeli_Duboir

Details aren’t really given, but she just seems to be pretty good as a cult leader and central corrupter of humans.

Deacon Mamon from the Siege of Vraks is also a good example of a normal man ending up a Daemon Prince

 Gert wrote:
There are rituals that would allow a mortal to ascend to Daemonhood straight away (obvs, them being a devotee of the Pantheon is a given), such as with Ingethel on Cadia.

Ingethel ascended due to a ritual where she revealed the Primordial Truth to Lorgar on Cadia just before his pilgrimage. It required a sacrifice of ten mortals, one of whom happened to be a Custodes.

That is a unique circumstance if ever there was a unique circumstance. Not the ritual itself - but essentially being the first pebble in the avalanche that would thwart The Emperor’s grand design.

Whatever that grand design actually was!

For what it's worth, the current CSM Crusade rules clearly allow cultist characters to ascend to Daemonhood.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

That is a unique circumstance if ever there was a unique circumstance. Not the ritual itself - but essentially being the first pebble in the avalanche that would thwart The Emperor’s grand design.

Whatever that grand design actually was!

So still showing that ritualistic sacrifice can ascend one to Daemonhood if the right price is paid. That's all any Warlord is doing just on a different scale.

The vaunted 3.5 chaos codex made it clear that daemon Prince Dom wasnt exactly a hard line.

They had iirc 2 ways for your character to become one, give them the daemonic statue mutation or a combined total of 50+ points worth of them.

The difference between a chaos spawn and a daemon Prince is mostly one of consciousness and capabilities really. They both are similarly mutated.

In fact the 2nd ed nurgle daemon Prince foulspawn was both

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

. . .
And it could explain why a fair number of Daemon Princes started out as Astartes.
. . .

To pick at this a little bit, I think it's highly possible that the apparent high proportion of astartes-to-daemon-prince transformation may have more to do with GWs over-focus on Space Marines. Just as most in-universe wars are actually fought and won by Guard or other non-astartes troops in spite of the fact that much of what's published is overwhelmingly SM centric.

Also when considering the potential "true" numbers of Daemon Princes it has to be considered that the population ratio of mere humans to astartes is going to be billions to one. (Hundreds of billions? Trillions? Considering astartes have only been around for 10k years). Even if it were a million times more likely that an astartes make Prince, there ought to be many more mortal-Prince converts.

The Chaos codices are very focussed on the traitor marine contingent, so I think it’s natural for other focus to be on marine princes. The core daemon prince models all seem to have marine armour aesthetics as well. If they had gone the direction of more mortal guard-like forces as the core of chaos then there may have been a different direction on the princes/pincesses.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

. . .
And it could explain why a fair number of Daemon Princes started out as Astartes.
. . .

To pick at this a little bit, I think it's highly possible that the apparent high proportion of astartes-to-daemon-prince transformation may have more to do with GWs over-focus on Space Marines. Just as most in-universe wars are actually fought and won by Guard or other non-astartes troops in spite of the fact that much of what's published is overwhelmingly SM centric.

Also when considering the potential "true" numbers of Daemon Princes it has to be considered that the population ratio of mere humans to astartes is going to be billions to one. (Hundreds of billions? Trillions? Considering astartes have only been around for 10k years). Even if it were a million times more likely that an astartes make Prince, there ought to be many more mortal-Prince converts.

True. But consider that of the untold Trillions of smelly Hoomans riddling the galaxy? Not that many, as a percentage, are Chaos worshippers. And of those who have turned to the dark powers? A smaller percentage are actually Champions - the movers and shakers on the Path to Glory. The sad truth is the majority of Mortal Chaos followers are just cannon fodder. Disposable bodies of those duped into worship, expended for the plans of the Champions.

Many cults are stuck to one planet, and any uprising of sufficient scale runs a very real risk of being smashed by the PDF/other local forces.

Astartes not only, on average, live much longer but tend to be pretty mobile. Not only does that allow them to strike at more valuable targets (they just have more say in where they might attack), but if things do go wrong, they’ve a greater chance of surviving it and trying again elsewhere compared to a good number of Cults.

When dabbling with Daemons, a Chaos Sorceror has many more years to learn the craft and how to best bind the Daemons. So they’re again less likely to fall prey to the very aid they summoned. I was tempted to add greater access to Grimoires and that, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Only takes a put upon librarian coming across a forbidden tome after all, or an instigator travelling planet to planet leaving behind a trail of Very Naughty Books And Dangerous Instructions.

So again, there will be a healthy number of Once Human Daemon Princes. No doubt about that. But despite the vanishingly few numbers of Astartes, even at the absolute zenith of a given Legion’s strength? An Astartes just has a great many advantages when walking the Path to Glory. Resilience, Mental Discipline, Time. And a greater capability for committing atrocities. So perhaps the ratio just isn’t as skewed as we might initially think?