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Aren't these the same god? I'm reading the fourth malus darkblade book and it seems that there is little difference between the two.

yes. I think.

here's an article on it. I usually consider these to be trustworthy. References and everything.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaela_Mensha_Khaine

It describes that in 40k universe, Khaine and Khorne are seperate entities. In WHFB, it is debated, but the two do not exist within the same framework.

References are given for the 40k stuff (Eldar codices) but no references are given for the fantasy stuff.

*sigh* this again. It largely depends on who's writing what and what edition of the game it is. There's contradictions in all the fluff and across editions, ie. Khaine was worshiped by Elves before Chaos erupted onto the scene, yet the old(4th/5th ed era?) plastic Warhammer Quest(IIRC) Witch Elf model is wearing a symbol of Khorne on her hat(I'd post a picture of it, but mine had her symbol shaved off since she was going to be used for my Devoted of Slaanesh). They're somewhat similar but their titles give very important differences. Khaine is the god of murder and battle, Khorne of War, Blood, and Martial Pride. Khaine is all about underhandedness when worshiped by Dark Elves and Humans, praising assassination, especially when it's political. Khorne was once all about honor in combat and NOT bloodthirsty killing, but GW's recently decided to dumb down the Chaos gods and reduce them to baser instinct versions(and losing alot of the game's character in the process). This is closer to the High Elves' version of Khaine, but as I said, he was worshiped before Chaos came when the world was protected from the warp for the most part.

Draw your own conclusions, really, as it's ambiguous, I prefer to keep them separate, especially as I prefer the older versions of the Chaos gods.

The minor gods are aspects of the major gods. So Khaine is an aspect of Khorne. Other minor gods are Hashut, an aspect of Khorne and Tzeentch, and the Horned Rat, an aspect of Nurgle and Tzeentch. Think of the gods as circles, and where the cirles overlap with each other you get minor chaos gods.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Wait... how can there be an aspect of Nurgle AND Tzeentch. That doesn't make a lick of sense...

But come on. The Eldar hate Slaanesh. They worship a 'bloody handed God' named Khaine. They are friggin' Khorne worshippers. They just aren't very good at it.

@Ozymandias - I'm not so sure that's correct. If so then who do Gork and Mork represent? Khorne and Tzeentch? I doubt it. I've heard it said that Gork and Mork are significantly more powerful than any of the Chaos gods.

Stormtrooper X wrote:@Ozymandias - I'm not so sure that's correct. If so then who do Gork and Mork represent? Khorne and Tzeentch? I doubt it. I've heard it said that Gork and Mork are significantly more powerful than any of the Chaos gods.

not necessarily more powerful, just powerful enough not to be threatened by them. if any of the gods were greatly more powerful than any others more of them would be dead (most of the Eldar ones are because at a basic level there was a large power imbalance between them, which started a war and most of them ended up dead).

Being an Eldar player, I feel obligated to preface the following with a warning: Blatant Imperial Propaganda ahead.

My old gaming group had this discussion. Conclusion: Eldar are foul chaos worshipers.

The Eldar gave birth to the chaos entity Slaanesh.

The Eldar summon a daemon to fight their battles for them ( the avatar of Khaine)

The Eldar Farseers dabble in strange magicks and rituals best left unknown. They're surely damned because of it.

The Eldar have a library of Chaos. The black library. Now what could they be hiding? Might it not be their Chaos rituals?

Eldar machinery and constructs are powered by souls.

Khaine, Khorne. Sounds a lot alike. Coincidence? I think not!

The Dark Eldar have rituals that bear a striking similarity to Khornate summoning rituals.

Yeah, 40K and Fantasy seem to vary a bit in this regard. 40K seems to treat Khaine and Khorne as distinct warp entities with similarities. In Fantasy, the Chaos gods are much more generalized, though they have similarities to 40K. The Liber Chaotica indicated that Khaine is an aspect of Khorne, albeit one flavored by elven ideas as opposed to the more brutish barbarism of the human driven Khorne concept. Indeed, the skull rune of Khaine is almost identical to Khorne's. Elves seem to not like this and assert that their deity is distinct. It seems likely that Khaine was probably once the dominant aspect of Khorne, but as elves have declined and man ascended, Khorne has assimilated the elder concept.

As to other deities, this is not so clear. Gork and Mork seem to be independent of the Chaos Gods, though it is highly likely that they are very similar in concept (IE manifestations of the collective). But whereas the Chaos Gods predominately represent the human psyche (and, to a lesser extent the elven) G&K are wholly orky. It is not inconceivable that some orks might fall under the sway of Khorne, but ork psychology seems to be different enough to generally resist it. The same can be said of ogres and the Great Maw and Skaven and the Horned Rat.

And there is no reason why Tzeentch and Nurgle cannot overlap. Chaos by its nature is not fixed. Though the concepts may usually be at odds, it need not always be so. Pestilence may bring about change in myriad ways, after all. Decay is nothing more than a change from one state to another. Remember the circle of life.....

Part of the problem is that the Chaos gods are poor attempts to borrow the Chaos gods from Michael Moorcock's works and tie it to a broader theory while still clinging to a divinity pantheon and hoist it on Tolkien derivatives like dwarves, elves, and orcs. Oh and throw in some historic stuff, because that's cool. It's like a child mishmashing all of his favorite stories. Great literary genius, it is not.

Alex: This is WHFB, not 40k, what the Eldar do doesn't reflect what happens in the Fantasy universe.

Stormtrooper: I don't look at Gork and Mork as chaos gods. They seem to be manifestations of the Orc psyche which is completely different to the Chaos mentality. To give my own interpretation, I don't think Gork and Mork really exist. The Orcs generate their own magic and works of G&M are manifestations of that collective orc magic.

jmurph has it pretty spot on.

Ozymandais, King of Kings

Stormtrooper X wrote:@Ozymandias - I'm not so sure that's correct. If so then who do Gork and Mork represent? Khorne and Tzeentch? I doubt it. I've heard it said that Gork and Mork are significantly more powerful than any of the Chaos gods.

gods can't die there, especially not the major gods. the minor ones can be absorbed into the others, but not major players. also gork and mork would be bored without the other gods to push around. fluff says that gork likes to bash his enemies on the head, and mork likes to sneak behind the other gods, and when they least suspect it, bash them on the head. if the other gods died who could they bash on the head? oh and yes gork and mork make the chaos gods look like pansies, they wamp serious @$$

Khaine and Khorne are the same being..... don't let those pansy elves tell you differently. This theory is backed up in several pieces of fantasy fluff. And as far as 40k is concerned..... khorne and slaneesh hate eachother...... slaneesh wants to devourer ever eldar soul.... therefor, by the power of relativity, it makes sense that the eldar would start worshipping khorne in order to have khorne protect them from slaneesh

well, apparently khorne came to the scene after the asur were worshiping khaine so they would have to be different... right wrong! some people believe that the elves just gave khorne a different name like the maruders of some tribes do (example is arkhar or kharnath) but that would mean that he was even older than the other chaos gods by quite a bit.... but the thing is that the oldest chaos god is in fact tzeentch (changer of ways) so it is impossible for them to be the same god and khaine and khorne have different ideal combat styles different ways of worship different favorite weapons different places of worship so how can they be the same i ask you?!

tzeentch realy should have existed as long as the warp has, and if khaine is khorne then khorne only needed to exist as long as the eldar have at most. remember the warp came BEFORE the the eldar.

whoops wrote that in a 40k mindframe but it still should make sense in a WHFB mindframe
just switch eldar for elves

The concept of the gods is basically the same as that given by Douglas Adams in 'The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul' - namely that gods are manifestations of what their believers want (even at a subconcious level).

This works in both 40k and fantasy.
The Emperor is a classic example - In the HH books, you have the Emperor running around saying 'I am not a god' 'til he's blue in the face, but an underground cult believes he's a god, writes the Lectio Divinitatum and before you know it people are performing miracles!
A rough analogy occurs with Sigmar, where no-one thought he was a god in his lifetime, but people were told he became a god after he died, they believed it and so made it real.

Khaine and Khorne may or may not be aspects of the same entity, but it doesn't really matter. Khorne is a manifestation of every concious and subconcious impulse towards uncontrolled killing (making him a perfect god of war), Khaine is the same but for controlled killing (making him both a god of murder and also the dark elf war-god, as they never do anything without good reason)