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So I know that Chaos Warbands tend to lean towards the absurd end of evilness , but are there any Chaos Warbands that aren't particularly malevolent, perhaps even benevolent?

I mean we have a well disciplined Khornate cult army, perhaps somewhere in the grim darkness™ there exists a less brutal Chaos Warband.

Some Iron Warriors show up in the Beast Arises which are positively polite. True gents.

Your best bet is a band that is more focused on subversion and conversion. 40k is not a place where "less brutal" works. You might want to look at maybe Word Bearers, granted they deal heavily in the whole sacrifice thing.

You need to remember that selfishness is the fundamental core concept of any Chaos Space Marine. From the newest convert to the highest Lord, all of them are seeking to do one thing; raise their power in the name of their god(s). Being nice doesn't please any god, and it doesn't get the Marine anything, so there's no reason for them to do it.

Another option may be a Renegade Space Marine chapter. Little more wiggle room there, at least for genetically modified super killers.

Ahriman and his Thousand Sons are just as likely to do a deal with you that's genuinely beneficial as they are to sentence you to a fate worse than death. He wants knowledge and he's not particularly picky how he gets it. He's also pretty polite.

The Cleaved warband that worships Nurgle has been known to come to the rescue of renegades that are about to be purged by the forces of the Imperium purely out of the goodness of their hearts. Of course, being Nurgle, they're likely to spread some horrible disease, but that's just an unavoidable side effect (and from their point of view is doing you a favor).

Depending on your viewpoint most of them i suppose. Human life under the rule of Chaos is, by and large, better than life in the Imperium (for a given description of 'better').

You stand on your own merits, and have the potential to achieve immortality through your actions alone.

Horus had it right. The Chaos Gods exist. Better to learn to live with them than rail against them. You may as well rail against gravity.

Join us.

Praise the ruinous powers.

Join us and be free.

Edit: oh, and i have a bit of a thing for doing villains right in my own fluff, which feeds into this. The key principle is the phrase 'no-one is the villain of their own story'.

Everyone in the history of mankind who has committed heinous atrocities has, at their heart, thought they were doing the right thing. Whether they were right or not is another matter, but everyone thinks they are the hero of their own story.

How does this feed into Chaos?

I've tried to apply this to all my ideas for Chaos warbands, and i would like for GW to do so more often too as it makes for a much more believable villain.

Two examples.

1. My Slaaneshi warband began as Space Marines, but in their entire history of the Imperium they met only strife and suffering. Until they came across a Slaaneshi cult which provided pleasure to its followers at the cost of regular sacrifices to the Prince of Pleasure. For them, the joy of the many outweighed the death of the few. They truly believe they are doing what is best for mankind.

2. Heorulf, my Death Guard legionnaire was born on Terra. In his youth, he would try in vain to grow plants on the ashen wastes of middle-Albia. Now, as Nurgle's Herald, foetid plants spring up from his footsteps. He sees himself as terraforming every planet he goes to, one step at a time.

 MrVulcanator wrote:
So I know that Chaos Warbands tend to lean towards the absurd end of evilness

Spoiler:

, but are there any Chaos Warbands that aren't particularly malevolent, perhaps even benevolent?

I mean we have a well disciplined Khornate cult army, perhaps somewhere in the grim darkness™ there exists a less brutal Chaos Warband.

Absolutely. Nobody, no matter how cartoonishly evil from an Imperial perspective, is ever the villain of their own story.

 fallinq wrote:
Ahriman and his Thousand Sons are just as likely to do a deal with you that's genuinely beneficial as they are to sentence you to a fate worse than death. He wants knowledge and he's not particularly picky how he gets it. He's also pretty polite.

The Cleaved warband that worships Nurgle has been known to come to the rescue of renegades that are about to be purged by the forces of the Imperium purely out of the goodness of their hearts. Of course, being Nurgle, they're likely to spread some horrible disease, but that's just an unavoidable side effect (and from their point of view is doing you a favor).

Are you sure that was the right Nurgle warband? The wiki and Lexicanum didn't mention that behavior.

There is no "less evil" chaos in 40k. They might be delusional about their attrocities or their betrayals but they are chaos pawns and monsters all the same.

Alpha legion. Arguably mostly entirely untainted by chaos. Possibly still actually loyal to the emperors original vision. Not out to hurt anyone for the sake of hurting them.

Your best bet is going to be something like a renegade Space Marine chapter. Pretty easy to find a way to set up a righteous cause against the Imperium.
As an example...

Your Chapter finds itself fighting an open rebellion against the Impreium on a planet at the request of a high ranking Inquisitor when you discover the planet is only rebelling due to the Inquisitor using the planet's populace in his testing of chemical weapons, warp energies and genetic mutation! Stuck between following the orders of the borderline heretical radical Inquisitor and the duty to protect the citizens of the Imperium, you decide that it is in the best interest of humanity to save the citizens, destroying the Inquisitor's work and imprisoning the Inquisitor, but not before he gets the message out to the Administratum that you are declared Excommunicate Traitoris, heretics and renegades attempting to stop the Inquisitor in his quest to save the Imperium of Man!

The punishment, if you choose to submit immediately, is a clean death and the possibility of redemption for your Chapter in history's ledgers. You know, however, that there must be someone to protect the citizens of the Imperium lest those with power trample all over it! Deciding with your fellow Marines, you throw off the shackles of the Imperium, choosing to fight for humanity and the Emperor, its true savior, and not the little Lords of Terra who know nothing, or worse, everything, of the horrors they allow to occur.

I think the same can be said about CSM Marines, though you'd have to tweak the fluff to make sure it's something doable. I think Soul Drinkers would be a good reference point. A legion declared traitors due to massive mutations, but still fought in the name of the Emperor.

I also wouldn't conflate 'loyal to the Emperor' with 'not evil'.

Inquisitors purge whole planets of innocents to prevent the spread of Chaos.

Most Marine chapters routinely force unwitting natives through gruelling gladiatorial combat in order to weed out the unworthy from their recruitment pools.

The whole 'Marines Malevolent' thing.

Commissars routinely shoot their own men in the head to maintain discipline.

The Black Ships round up psykers en-masse on penal ships, subject them to terrible ordeals and then sacrifice the vast majority to the Golden Throne without any actual evidence beyond superstition that it actually needs psyker souls to maintain it.

The Imperium at large routinely lobotomises innocent civilians and turns them into labourers or warrior-drones.

It's a massive fallacy to assume that the Imperium is in any way 'the good guys'. That's the whole point of the shades of grey thing that runs through the 40k universe.

Thinking about your DnD alightment chart it depends on what you are looking for.

Followers of Nurgle and Slanesh are pretty much Chaotic Evil. They do evil and they do not care how they do it. They will come for you no matter what you do.

Word Bearers are Lawful Evil. Their goal is to bring the dark gods into the realm of men, to destroy the current world a build another one, but it would be one with laws and a rigid hierarchy. One could imagine being able to trade or deal with them.

With the exception of Kharn, the World Eaters are Lawful Evil verging on Lawful Neutral. They bring way and destruction, but they fight in a conventional way going after the strongest enemy they can find.

Night Lords are Chaotic Neutral. They do not worship the ruinous powers. They are not evil. But they aren't good. They are in it for themselves. If you get in their way, you are going to die, possibly horribly. If you dont get in their way, they will probably leave you alone.

 Lance845 wrote:
Alpha legion. Arguably mostly entirely untainted by chaos. Possibly still actually loyal to the emperors original vision. Not out to hurt anyone for the sake of hurting them.

This would be my guess as well.

The soul drinkers seem to be the most benevolent, being a park of chaos addled mutants that didn't realize until way too late that it was t the Emperor blessing them.

Everyone else is sort of dependent on how you write or play them. Chaos in books about loyalists tend to be there to be beat up by the hero, so they're evil enough that we feel good about them being killed.

But you could easily pick a warband to be repentant and downplay the chaotic elements, turning them more into a cursed company, rejected by both sides in the long war.

 Ynneadwraith wrote:


2. Heorulf, my Death Guard legionnaire was born on Terra. In his youth, he would try in vain to grow plants on the ashen wastes of middle-Albia. Now, as Nurgle's Herald, foetid plants spring up from his footsteps. He sees himself as terraforming every planet he goes to, one step at a time.

Exactly a fine example. In my sandbox sector, Nurglites recently captured Zedar a desert world made so by the toxic mass extraction of huge promethium deposits. The population live short, very unhealthy lives at the whip of Imperial agents, somewhere in their folklore are distant memories of when Zedar was green. Now here come the Nurglites and with them fauna (of a kind) is coming back to the planet. It might be through supernatural powers of the warp but its nice to see a tree too!

While depictions of Nurgle and his lot will inevitably lean to gribbly, maddening flesh horror he is the most paternalistic god and Imperial citizens are known to beseech him (under one alias or another) when they are at death's door. He is the oldest and I'd argue the most powerful Chaos God because he represents life and death. The Imperium, the Tau and many Chaos warbands of the other gods and Undivided have grand plans, huge schemes in which individual humans do not matter beyond being labour or cannon fodder. Nurgle can offer something else, that simply to live, for life in all its good and hideous forms, to be an end in of itself.

I've been trying to make some fluff for a Nurglite *Blood Pact, still Chaotic marauders but having some of the more positive elements of their god. The Blood Pact embrace Khrone's ideas of martial honour. Nurgle's positive side is he is about life and perserverance.

So I created the "Forgotten", formed from Imperial Guard abandoned on a world (the above mentioned Zedar) while fighting Nurglites due to the greater strategic concerns. Of course the guardsmen don't quite see it that way. Given the choice between dying for a cause that never treated them well and has just abandoned them, or embracing life and Father Nurgle, they do the latter. They now fight alongside their former foes against the Imperium that tossed them away, always keen to pick up POWs and refugees similarly discarded. Hell maybe Papa Nurgle goes one further and embues his new children with incredible healing powers so they can rise from mortal wounds to keep up the fight. If you were a hive serf with a life expectancy of 25 and you saw that, you might be attracted to what Nurgle if offering too.

One of the few that have a legitimate case for being "good" or not so evil are The Purge

 Exergy wrote:


Night Lords are Chaotic Neutral. They do not worship the ruinous powers. They are not evil. But they aren't good. They are in it for themselves. If you get in their way, you are going to die, possibly horribly. If you dont get in their way, they will probably leave you alone.

just because you don't worship the evil gods does not mean you are not evil yourself. the Night Lords are evil. I mean seriously the terror tactics they use are pretty blatently evil

BrianDavion wrote:

 Exergy wrote:


Night Lords are Chaotic Neutral. They do not worship the ruinous powers. They are not evil. But they aren't good. They are in it for themselves. If you get in their way, you are going to die, possibly horribly. If you dont get in their way, they will probably leave you alone.

just because you don't worship the evil gods does not mean you are not evil yourself. the Night Lords are evil. I mean seriously the terror tactics they use are pretty blatently evil

Yeah. The Night Lords are sadists. Its not about 'getting in their way', are you say Exergy they're not particularly plussed about Chaos (Chaos however loves them), they have no grand goal that you could be in the way of or not. They want to hear you scream. That's their goal.

I always think Nightlords are the truest chaos marines.

They don't chaos because of religious or ideological dogma. They don't chaos because they feel obliged or out of petty revenge. They weren't tricked or manipulated into chaosing.

They just chaos for chaos sake because chaos, not that they even care.

also thre whole "ohh none of em do the chaos thing" is bullocks, there are night lords deamon princes after all

It would definitely be one of the legions that didn't fall into chaos worship (or fell into it the least).

So Alpha Legion, Iron Warriors, etc. Iron Warriors seem to be pretty cavalier about wasting lives though.

Alpha Legion spy games seem like they'd have to involve a fair amount of expendable agents.

And while their plans can work on a strategic level it's not clear that they actual create better outcomes. One of the short stories featuring AL has one of their non-astartes agents plunging a farm world into chaos and infighting effectively destroying it's usefulness as a food production planet. While that might leave more survivors than Iron Warriors blasting everyone or Khornates decapitating every civilian it's going to cause more long term suffering. And that's if the Imperium doesn't just retake the planet by killing everyone.

The TL;DR is there are no least evil of any faction, that's kind of the point of 40k

The Dark Angels, obviously. Though admittedly they have murdered quite a few of their so called allies to keep their dirty secrets.

 MrVulcanator wrote:

 fallinq wrote:
Ahriman and his Thousand Sons are just as likely to do a deal with you that's genuinely beneficial as they are to sentence you to a fate worse than death. He wants knowledge and he's not particularly picky how he gets it. He's also pretty polite.

The Cleaved warband that worships Nurgle has been known to come to the rescue of renegades that are about to be purged by the forces of the Imperium purely out of the goodness of their hearts. Of course, being Nurgle, they're likely to spread some horrible disease, but that's just an unavoidable side effect (and from their point of view is doing you a favor).

Are you sure that was the right Nurgle warband? The wiki and Lexicanum didn't mention that behavior.

The Imperium's first recorded encounter with them was them bamfing in from the warp to save a rebellious planet. Also their quote: "Call with all your soul, little one. Call and we shall answer."

It's in the old 6th ed CSM codex.

Failbadon's Blacker Legion is the least evil warband. They fail so hard they are harmless.

Mmmm. I think after a point it stops being useful to compare traitor legions. They are just evil, there's no real ambiguity about it. I suppose we could talk about it from the perspective of intent. Each legion comes at their works from a different perspective.

For Death Guard, they are spreading plagues on behalf of their dark God. It's an act of faith, and I don't believe they see it as an evil. It's another form of galactic conquest, similar to the great campaign. From their point of view, they are doing a great good.

It's similar for Thousand Sons. Considering the majority of their forces are not human, I don't know if it's useful to look at them with a conventional morality. They are more shells of people occupied by beings of magic, and beings of magic are going to do what they do. From their point of view, they are just being true to their nature.

For Alpha Legion, who knows what they really mean to do? I think the fluff about them is confusing to the point where anything can be claimed to be untrustworthy. Calling them evil means making huge assumptions.

For World Eaters, they just want skulls. Period. They are not universe conquerors, they are not organized into anything beyond a high-tech mob. The absence of greater design leaves something to be desired.

For Iron Warriors, their evil grows from a desire to be seen as the toughest and most masterful siege fighters around. It's hard for me to look at low self esteem as some great and powerful force in the useful.

For Emperor's Children, it's the pursuit of new and unique sensations at a large scale. I see it as an act of self-indulgence rather than an expression of faith. While the worst people in history have always sought excessive gratification, I don't see this as being "greater" than anyone else's evil. The fact they like to melt down entire populations to make drugs is where their claim to the greatest evil lies, but it's not exactly the worst.

For Night Lords, they want to be the most evil, but they don't have the most evil friends. Their rejection of daemons is irritating, they could be so much worse if they just hung out with the blasphemous. Their use of terror tactics make them pretty awful, but it's just not as bad as it could be.

For Word Bearers, they are on the right path. I don't claim to know what their aims are other than devotion to otherworldly entities that seek to destroy the Universe. It's the opposite of the Night Lords problem, they are subsuming themselves in their devotion to the point where they do evil for evil's sake. It's pretty bad, but I would not say it's the worst.

Black Legion is the worst. They don't just seek to do evil, they seek revenge for 10,000 year old grudges. They impress everyone to do their bidding - slaves, other warbands, daemons, you name it. They are incredibly xenophobic and carry over the worst traits from the Imperium, while still finding ways to do worse. What makes them the most evil, IMHO, is the fact they are organized. They have their own sub-factions within the Legion devoted to Chaos Gods. They bring together all of the other evils from time to time to press forth with their endless war.

Now, does any of this make any of these Legions the most evil? This list just speaks for intent, not outcomes. I would argue there need to be many dimensions to evaluating this statement before anyone could lay claim to the title.

Well, I don't know about the least evil. But the Emperor's Children are without a doubt the most evil. They'll commit any atrocity just feel something. They also disgust the other Legion's and even each other to the point of not usually being able to work together. Not, to mention they can even "squick" Dark Eldar...

 Sersi wrote:
Well, I don't know about the least evil. But the Emperor's Children are without a doubt the most evil. They'll commit any atrocity just feel something. They also disgust the other Legion's and even each other to the point of not usually being able to work together. Not, to mention they can even "squick" Dark Eldar...

It amuses me that their numbers are pretty low because the other legions were so disgusted by their atrocities and so irritated by their behavior, that they all beat the #@%! out of the Emperor's Children.

 MrVulcanator wrote:

 Sersi wrote:
Well, I don't know about the least evil. But the Emperor's Children are without a doubt the most evil. They'll commit any atrocity just feel something. They also disgust the other Legion's and even each other to the point of not usually being able to work together. Not, to mention they can even "squick" Dark Eldar...

It amuses me that their numbers are pretty low because the other legions were so disgusted by their atrocities and so irritated by their behavior, that they all beat the #@%! out of the Emperor's Children.

Well a big part of that was them working with Fabius Bile when he cloned Horus, leading to them getting their kicked by the Black Legion, followed by picking a fight with the World Eaters, leading to both of them getting their kicked by Kharn.

Shortly after the Heresy the Emperor's Children made one bad decision after another.

 CadianGateTroll wrote:
Failbadon's Blacker Legion is the least evil warband. They fail so hard they are harmless.

yup so harmless they blew up Cadia

 fallinq wrote:

 MrVulcanator wrote:

 Sersi wrote:
Well, I don't know about the least evil. But the Emperor's Children are without a doubt the most evil. They'll commit any atrocity just feel something. They also disgust the other Legion's and even each other to the point of not usually being able to work together. Not, to mention they can even "squick" Dark Eldar...

It amuses me that their numbers are pretty low because the other legions were so disgusted by their atrocities and so irritated by their behavior, that they all beat the #@%! out of the Emperor's Children.

Well a big part of that was them working with Fabius Bile when he cloned Horus, leading to them getting their kicked by the Black Legion, followed by picking a fight with the World Eaters, leading to both of them getting their kicked by Kharn.

Shortly after the Heresy the Emperor's Children made one bad decision after another.

As well as their actions a Terra, basically leaving the battle to go pillaging.