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I was idly reading through the chaos codex when the part about demon princes came up, and a thought struck me. Can demon princes remain indefinitely within the materium?
Before they become demon princes there would be human champions of chaos, despite their continual exposure to the imaterium they would still be physical beings of the material universe. However when they become demon princes their flesh specifically becomes the immaterial substance of the warp.

As we all know demons cannot exist outside the warp for prolonged periods whenever they attack it is normally by a rift in the warp that spills enough of the warp energies to allow them to maintain their physical existence. Straying too far eventually causes them to dissipate and return to the warp. This is why chaos armies are generally wanting to open and enlarge warp rifts. The thing is, is a demon prince is made of the same material as the warp, that means they are made of the same material as the demons which would imply that they require the constant energies of the warp for them to remain in the material realm.

Anyone else ever through about this? It would in part explain why the demon primachs never leave the eye of chaos, as well as why Horus and abbadon the despoiler are not demon princes despite their abundant blessings from the chaos gods. Their ambitions on the material universe requires them to maintain material form.

All daemons can stay out of the warp. IIRC in one of the Eisenhorn or Ravenor books a tzeentch daemon was kept by the DE.
Perhaps they used a rune or constant warp energy.

It would need some more swatting before I could give you anything more than that.

I believe demon princes, and primarchs, can stay in the real world indefinitely.

The primarchs just stay and skulk in the warp, apart from angron who occasionally leads an army out.

Abbadon doesn't want to be a demon prince until he topples the imperium, because horus almost did as a man, so he will.

Von Chogg

SylvanaSekNadin wrote:I was idly reading through the chaos codex when the part about demon princes came up, and a thought struck me. Can demon princes remain indefinitely within the materium?
Before they become demon princes there would be human champions of chaos, despite their continual exposure to the imaterium they would still be physical beings of the material universe. However when they become demon princes their flesh specifically becomes the immaterial substance of the warp.

As we all know demons cannot exist outside the warp for prolonged periods whenever they attack it is normally by a rift in the warp that spills enough of the warp energies to allow them to maintain their physical existence. Straying too far eventually causes them to dissipate and return to the warp. This is why chaos armies are generally wanting to open and enlarge warp rifts. The thing is, is a demon prince is made of the same material as the warp, that means they are made of the same material as the demons which would imply that they require the constant energies of the warp for them to remain in the material realm.

Anyone else ever through about this? It would in part explain why the demon primachs never leave the eye of chaos, as well as why Horus and abbadon the despoiler are not demon princes despite their abundant blessings from the chaos gods. Their ambitions on the material universe requires them to maintain material form.

You are correct. Daemon princes and daemon primarchs do require the energy of the warp to sustain them. This is evidenced by Angron's behavior at the 1st Battle of Armageddon. Originally reliant on a warp storm to sustain him and his forces, he was forced to delay his attack in order to engage in building Chaos monuments and conducting rituals to draw more energy from the warp to sustain he and his daemonic forces. This critical delay allowed the Imperium to reinforce and ultimately defeat Angron.

The need for sustaining warp energy is also why large daemons like greater daemons are comparatively rarely seen in realspace vs. the lesser daemons. They require that much more energy and effort to maintain.

Now it has been shown in the old 3.5 edition Chaos Codex and FFG RPG products that possession is one way around this, since the flesh of the host is normal matter. However this often results in the death or destruction of the host as the host body is warped to more closely resemble the daemon's true form, and then dead flesh is ultimately unsuitable as a long term vessel.

So in summary, daemons do have a logistical need in the sense of needing warp energy to maintain their form in realspace. This can take the form of:
1. Warp storms or warp rifts
2. Monuments or rituals/worship designed to draw energy.
3. Great upheavals in emotion which may weaken the boundaries between reality and the warp (as described in the Daemons Codex).

For smaller individual warbands wandering the galaxy outside of the Eye, the most likely and feasible methods would be through option 2, such as rituals or worship conducted by the warband members or cultist followers.

Iracundus has it.

KrimsunBaron wrote:All daemons can stay out of the warp. IIRC in one of the Eisenhorn or Ravenor books a tzeentch daemon was kept by the DE.
Perhaps they used a rune or constant warp energy.

It would need some more swatting before I could give you anything more than that.

Interested to know which book this is in, but its not Ravenor or Eisenhorn, DE do not make an appearance in either one. Again, i would like to know which novel that is in though if you find it?

The main daemon in the Eisenhorn novels, Cherubael, is always and constantly either bound into a host (even before we, the readers, know its a host) or is only temporarily present, either summoned by some other character or released and then re-bound.

There's a summoned Daemon in the Ravenor series, but it behaves just like any other summoned Daemon, acting for a duration of time until its task is complete or its destroyed.

The more powerful a daemon prince becomes, the more it becomes tied to the Warp as far as I know. Because of that, a powerful prince relies on Warp storms and worshippers to stay in the material realm. As long as they had a cult following them around they could remain indefinitely, but alone and unaided, they cannot remain.

Angron had to make constant sacrifices to Khorne (Actual rituals, not just the typical killkillkill thing) to keep his foothold in the Materium stable.

Indeed, and since he's the strongest daemon prince in Khorne's army (probably), it probably means there's a point where not even cults and storms can allow them to exist.

Yeah, seems like every second daemons are out of the warp a small part of their essence dissolves back into the warp, rituals are like glue holding them together in the material world... say which gets me wondering cherubael from the eisenhorn books, how does he stay in his daemonhost body for so long without it withering away or evolving into something that doesn't even look remotely human anymore.

Daemonhosts have the essence of the Daemon sealed into them, it is rather different than a Daemon Prince physically manifesting. A good chunk of their power is lost in the process, at least, they can't manifest it.

It's why Cherubael could be physically harmed and fought by Eisenhorn as a Daemonhost, but the pure essence of the Daemon did gak like take down a Warlord Titan (Granted, doing that drained it a good deal).