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  According to the game fluff, the warp creates demons from the negative emotions of hate, fear lust, ect.   Has it ever been explored in 40k  the possibility of what might be created from positive emotions?  

Hummmm.... In a time of war and nothing but, hope might be lacking.

      I disagree, as an extreme example, in quite a few stories, there are people that sacrifice themselves to save their friends or a planet.  I would think  that would generate something extremely powerful and positive.  Even without hope, there are still plenty of positives to be had.  The courage of standing ground when a position is known to be doomed (like the Spartans or the Alamo) that later serves as a rallying point.  The joy of a mother with her newborn, or the happiness of a doctor that saves a patient, not to mention the patient's happiness at being saved, to name some others that come to my mind also should kick in something positive.
   As long  as the list for negative emotions is, the cause for the positive is equally long.  It could be an interesting avenue to explore fiction and fluff wise.

The old, old 1st edition realms of chaos books had some answers to that. According to them in order to kill Horus the Emperor had to cast out all hope and goodness within him. But (like all good pseudo-science stories) this energy can neither be created or destroyed, only changed.

So the Emperor's good side is dorment in the warp as the Star Child. The Emperor's (literal) children and their decendants (all known as the Sensei) tap into it and are the universe's force for good.

In more recent books there have been Imperial Saints who tap into the Emperor's power.

So yeah, although doom and gloom dominate there are forces of good in the warp.

I think, what Relapse is trying to get at, is the question, are physical characters ( Anti Deamons ) created by the warp from positive emotions or thoughts?......

GW has been extremely clever or lucky with their whole Warp philosophy. The warp is Chaos in nature, and some source books have even stated that within the Chaos can be seen ( from the eyes of an individual ) scenes of abject horror to scenes of crushing beauty. However, what is horror and what is beauty.....it depends on the individual. The warp caters for your positive emotions in the form of the Chaos powers Slannesh, Tzeentch, Nurgle and Khorne....but what you have to remember is that all emotions within the warp have been taken to their polar extremes.....extreme pain, extreme pleasure, extreme change ( freedom ) and Decay....

Every emotion be it postive or negative will tend towards these extremes, if left uncontrolled...and this is the point of the Warp....its without restraint, without controll....to an "ordered" mind this may seem to be negative.....but in reality it is neither negative nor positive....it simply is.

The Deamons spawned by the warp do not consider themselves "evil or friendliy" they are. They embody their emotional pole and act from this baisc nature.

So in a way, the answer to your question is yes, characters and beings are created from positive energy ( Slannesh created from the pleasure cults of the Eldar ) but taking that pleasure to its utmost extreme can be for some a form of horror.

As far as those particular things (pleasure, pain, liberty, etc) go, I buy that argument.

But where does all the pent up hope, empathy, charity, tenderness, etc of the 40k universe go? After all, for every lustful lover (Slaanesh) there's some elderly couple on a backwards Imperial agri-world that dies quietly in love or something.

I buy the idea that they all exist in the Emperor / within the "light" of the Emperor in the warp. It strikes me as very...Dantean. A realm of protected good things surrounded by an endless, horrid sea of their warped counterparts.

-Adso

I remember reading about the Sensei in the old Slaves to Darkness book. It was one of their powers in game fluff to cause Chaos champions to lose their mutations and powers gained from following the various powers and tread once again the path of the Emperor. I believe the power was called redemption, but I'm going to have to do a book hunt to make sure. I think the Illuminati also had plans to use them to help the Emperor regenerate his body and say adios to the Golden throne.

Adso hit pretty close to what I was getting at in my statement except I don't think the good things in the warp need protection. If anything, they would at least be the equal in power to the evil in the warp, but have a different outlook on interference with the material plane. If you look at it, the nature of evil IMHO is to disrupt the free will of the individual through any means possible, while the nature of good is to build up one's ability to use free will wisely.

Posted By BrotherAdso on 04/15/2007 7:53 AM
But where does all the pent up hope, empathy, charity, tenderness, etc of the 40k universe go?

Just as despair is the domain of Nurgle, hope is the domain of Tzeentch.  Nurgle is portrayed as being quite tender and fatherly towards his followers.  And all the Chaos gods can be quite generous and charitable towards those who please them.

On the other hand, the "light" of the Emperor is not all good - just ask a mutant.  The Emperor also stands for intolerance, xenophobia, oppression, rigid obediance, and unquestioning faith.  If the Emperor "awoke" as a Warp god I'm sure he would be just as "evil" as the other Chaos gods towards those who oppose and/or displease him.

Posted By Abadabadoobaddon on 04/15/2007 10:38 AM

Posted By BrotherAdso on 04/15/2007 7:53 AM
But where does all the pent up hope, empathy, charity, tenderness, etc of the 40k universe go?

Just as despair is the domain of Nurgle, hope is the domain of Tzeentch.  Nurgle is portrayed as being quite tender and fatherly towards his followers.  And all the Chaos gods can be quite generous and charitable towards those who please them.

On the other hand, the "light" of the Emperor is not all good - just ask a mutant.  The Emperor also stands for intolerance, xenophobia, oppression, rigid obediance, and unquestioning faith.  If the Emperor "awoke" as a Warp god I'm sure he would be just as "evil" as the other Chaos gods towards those who oppose and/or displease him.

Now this I like, Abadabadoobaddon well said old chap, well said!

Posted By Abadabadoobaddon on 04/15/2007 10:38 AM

If the Emperor "awoke" as a Warp god I'm sure he would be just as "evil" as the other Chaos gods towards those who oppose and/or displease him.

That's a possibility in the old fluff. He might awaken as the Star Child and be humanity's power in the warp, or he might take a dark turn and become the Hydra when he wakes up.

The Alpha legion's symbol is the hydra and I always hoped they'd link them to a plot to corrupt the slumbering emperor. The star child/sensei stuff seems to be totally purged from the fluff now, though.

Loyalty, Sacrifice, Courage, Honor, Faith, Imagine the Archons of good that could be summoned to the battlefield by one filled with the faith to tap into these emotions. Relapse has a great idea, and games workshop could make some great holy Archon models.

well, certain people it seems do "tap" the good side of the warp. look at colonal schaeffer and Gaunt. they have such faith that they wont be effected by chaos and they dont. Schaeffer doesnt ever get hurt in his novels (more or less) and gaunt and his team had such "faith" in the emperor that they werent effected by Geron when they went there to kill what-his-face.

perhaps since chaos "rewards" its believers, the Emperor does the same, just no tenticles and extra appendages to show for it.

My X girlfirend is also in the Warp.  She is a Greater  Demon of Slaanesh

she had 6 boobles? o_O

Unfortunatly Not. But she was a sadist

The 4th ed ork codex is in the Warp. GW have lost 16 games developers trying to get to it.
Sad really.

Posted By beef on 04/19/2007 9:25 AM

My X girlfirend is also in the Warp.  She is a Greater  Demon of Slaanesh

Instead of a boob-snake did she drive a boob-car?

Hey there. First post in a few years. This topic just begged for me to reply =P

Something that might be of interest to this topic is some fluff concerning the eldar around the 13th black Crusade campaign period. Now I'm not entirely sure where I read it (since it could have been either a codex or dwarf) but isnt the ultimate goal of the craftworld eldar the creation of a new god in the warp to counter balance Slaanesh?

Afaik thats one of the reasons (next to the obvious soul saving) of collecting the souls of the Eldar and inserting them in the infinity matrix.

next to that I also remember reading some really really REALLY old rules about Emperors deamons. It seems however that Gw has completely closed of the 'emperor is a god in the making' concept. That or they arent continueing on it in the near (and far) future.

Next to that I read a rumour about a wing of the inquisition who looked for the reincarnated for of the emperor. It held links to Cypher. argueing that he would be his so called new form which those sun worshipper folk are looking for.

The new eldar god of the dead is Ynnead. I feel like the fluff  said he's just randomly forming from the souls in the infinity circuits, it's not intentional. He will fight Slaanesh if he rises, but he won't wake up until every single  eldar is dead, i.e. it's a bum deal for the space elves.

Ynnead has to wake up before the death of all eldar. Otherwise he wouldn't be the last hope that Eldrad is counting on. The Eldar are in the process of making (or remaking) three gods. Ynnead, with the infinity circuits, Khaine is being repowered by consuming the souls of the young king, and the Laughing god gets the harliquin souls.

One could argue that the Sisters of battle call upon the "good" powers of the warp as their "Acts of Faith". The secret power protecting Cypher could also be a good chaos god. Good warp creatures ruled over the Eldar in the distant past before slannesh killed and ate them, and in the eldar fluff the birth of slannesh drove away the more kindly warp creatures and gave it over to the preadators. I also recall some fluff where the C'tan's conflict with the Old Ones put them in conflict with the "good" warp powers as well. It may be that the combination of the C'tan's assault and Slannesh's birth drove most of the good demons away or cast them down so that the evil ones took control of the majority of the warp. The good demons, few and far between, are simply unnoticed because the odds of bumping into a evil creature are so much higher and the good emotions are rare in a universe of constant war.

If dozens of planets worth of people have to be sacrificed just to make one demon prince, just think how many have to be blissful utopias of good in order to make a good prince. Given the current state of the universe, it just isn't going to happen.

I can just imagine it now. Imperial guard preachers summoning up daemons of peace and harmony. Puff a bunch of Tie Dyed long haired hippie looking daemons show and are protected by a 3+ cover save from a mysterious warp spawned smoke screen. They have the power to annoy there opponent to death with bad music or bore them to death by their constant ramblelings containing the words "Dude" and "Wow" and in CC they can only be hit on six's with a Leadership check taken at a -6 due to the mysterious powers of the smoke surrounding them.

The warp is full of chaos, chaos is neither good or bad it just is.Personally I think that the four Gods already cover most things and if you look into how the primarchs of the of the 4 Gods(Magnus,Mortarion,Fulgrim and Angron) you can see good in their acts as they fell.

Magnus wanted to help people using sorcerey
Mortarrion was wary of change (not a great reason maybe some deathguard players could help me out)
Fulgrim wanted perfection
Angron wanted an Martial Honour

I think the four powers represent a kind of salvation from four of our greatest fears and weaknesses as mortals. Nurgle will make us tough and resistant to death. Khorne provides an outlet for our suppressed, often impotent rage. Slaanesh amplifies the pleasure we seek from the things we desire most. Tzeentch gives us control over our destiny.

At least, that's the best case scenario. Most worshippers might end up being an 8 point GEq with useless frag grenades and infiltrate if they're lucky.

= goodly imperial demon?

more seriously remember the enslavers are in the warp and they aren't demons...

but they have been written out of the fluff ever since we cant use chpater approved book no more

Nothing gets "written out" of the fluff, Beef.

squats much?

no more rules, no models being made, and no new background forever. effectively written off.

well, as fun as this convo is, and indeed the warp COULD contain many fun and exciting things, it is based quite heavily on what the bible proclaims the end of the earth to be, the four powers are indeed the 4 hoursemen, and the warp is merely an embodiment of them, much like the earth is meant to be with the reckoning... so i would say that the fluff represents this, the warp merely contains the end of humanity/all life.

a good fluff example would be all the ggodness that was the eldars self-indulgence, there was plentiful amounts of joy and hope there, they were gods in their own right, but everythings bad in excess, hence the fall. so one could argue that that lil problem and new chaos god is merely all the goodness that comes from being happy for somethng...

The bible angle might be true as far as you take it. You neglect, however, to finsh the story to where the fifth horseman appears with his crew and kicks the dogsnot out of all the evil that's mentioned up to the point of his entrance on the scene.  This cleans  the canvas, so to speak for the good to emerge..

If what you say is true, then by conjecture the fifth power might be just biding it's time in the warp, waiting for the fullness of time so everyone can have a fair chance to be fully declared one way or the other.

The only thing that sticks out at me is that nearly all of the fluff seems to be written (on purpose or not) as imperial proganda. How do you know that chaos = evil? Because imperial propaganda tells you so?