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After reading Imperial Creed (spoilers below) I'm interested in a discussion on how the choas gods initiate contact with mortals.

In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities. -Wikipedia

There are different types of revelation, even within the Biblical tradition.

Voice of God heard by prophet

Appearance of God or heavenly messengers

‘dream quest’ style visions, awake or asleep

Spiritual promptings- intuitions and guidance

Spoilers for Imperial Creed


This is a tzeentchian plot, so it makes sense that it starts in whispers. I know that there are myriad ways that chaos can reach for someone, corrupted artefacts, warp radiation touching a mind, forbidden knowledge. I find this case interesting as it shows a spiritual genesis, where a god reaches out to a mind that is receptive, absent any macguffins or outside shenanigans.
A (non psyker!) prophet was identified, contacted and the dark faith was seeded.

Yarrick stated that the priest wasn’t damned for hearing the whispers, he was damned for listening to them.


How do you think the chaos gods reach out to their followers- without brute forcing a daemon into the materium?

 =Angel= wrote:
After reading Imperial Creed (spoilers below) I'm interested in a discussion on how the choas gods initiate contact with mortals.

In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities. -Wikipedia

There are different types of revelation, even within the Biblical tradition.

Voice of God heard by prophet

Appearance of God or heavenly messengers

‘dream quest’ style visions, awake or asleep

Spiritual promptings- intuitions and guidance

Spoilers for Imperial Creed

Spoiler:

A low level preacher of the Ecclesiarchy is disillusioned, loses sustaining fire of his faith and focuses on the unworthiness of his flocks, building resentment towards them. Mortally wounded, trapped alone below ground, starts to hear whispers promising him continued life.

He is restored to health and starts to preach chaos to the barons. A baron takes over the high priest position on the world and kills the priest (with his consent). He sacrifices people to hear self-mutilation instruction from Tzeentch, and as he self mutilates he gains visions of the future.

The rituals eventually summon daemons to the world.

This is a tzeentchian plot, so it makes sense that it starts in whispers. I know that there are myriad ways that chaos can reach for someone, corrupted artefacts, warp radiation touching a mind, forbidden knowledge. I find this case interesting as it shows a spiritual genesis, where a god reaches out to a mind that is receptive, absent any macguffins or outside shenanigans.
A (non psyker!) prophet was identified, contacted and the dark faith was seeded.

Yarrick stated that the priest wasn’t damned for hearing the whispers, he was damned for listening to them.


How do you think the chaos gods reach out to their followers- without brute forcing a daemon into the materium?

All of the above:
Dreams are not unheard of, active voices inside the insane, possesed get used as tarots, oh and don't forget that they don't necesarily need to brute force a daemon into the material realm, chaos worshippers tend to be able to summon smaller daemons which then act as emmisarries.
Subtility of course depends on the god: slaanesh and tzeentch by nature are way more clandestine, nurgle can be both, but also talks to the sick via promising them health if in turn they serve. Khorne on the other hand will just give you an endless rageboner and a chainweapon, if instruction unclear you end up as a chaosspawn.

Not Online!!! wrote:


All of the above:
Dreams are not unheard of, active voices inside the insane, possesed get used as tarots, oh and don't forget that they don't necesarily need to brute force a daemon into the material realm, chaos worshippers tend to be able to summon smaller daemons which then act as emmisarries.
Subtility of course depends on the god: slaanesh and tzeentch by nature are way more clandestine, nurgle can be both, but also talks to the sick via promising them health if in turn they serve. Khorne on the other hand will just give you an endless rageboner and a chainweapon, if instruction unclear you end up as a chaosspawn.

How though? I haven't seen any revelatory experience for the world eaters. They start adopting his sacred number unconsciously and fall further into the grip of the nails but at no point do we see them tempted by whispers or emissaries or make any decisions to follow khorne. Lorgar manages to engineer Angrons ascension and then all of a sudden he is demanding a throne of skulls. The worldeaters never changed, they just started pinning brass symbols on their pre-existing bunny ears, presumably because Angron said so.

I'd like to emphasis insane, in my above comment.
Combine that with the nails and voilà.

 =Angel= wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:


All of the above:
Dreams are not unheard of, active voices inside the insane, possesed get used as tarots, oh and don't forget that they don't necesarily need to brute force a daemon into the material realm, chaos worshippers tend to be able to summon smaller daemons which then act as emmisarries.
Subtility of course depends on the god: slaanesh and tzeentch by nature are way more clandestine, nurgle can be both, but also talks to the sick via promising them health if in turn they serve. Khorne on the other hand will just give you an endless rageboner and a chainweapon, if instruction unclear you end up as a chaosspawn.

How though? I haven't seen any revelatory experience for the world eaters. They start adopting his sacred number unconsciously and fall further into the grip of the nails but at no point do we see them tempted by whispers or emissaries or make any decisions to follow khorne. Lorgar manages to engineer Angrons ascension and then all of a sudden he is demanding a throne of skulls. The worldeaters never changed, they just started pinning brass symbols on their pre-existing bunny ears, presumably because Angron said so.

Lorgar accended Angron, Khorne then claimed him and likely reshapped his soul/body to a pleasing form, as for the World Eaters, after Angron was chained up in the Conqueror his "chaosness" started tainting the ship and all around him making them more aggressive, for all we know some were tempted by whispers, others directly, we didnt see it happen, but that doesnt mean it didnt happen.

Look at Wolf bane, between it and vengful spirit the Sons of Horus have gone full chaos marine, mutations and all, but it wasnt explained how the hell that happened.

 Formosa wrote:

 =Angel= wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:


All of the above:
Dreams are not unheard of, active voices inside the insane, possesed get used as tarots, oh and don't forget that they don't necesarily need to brute force a daemon into the material realm, chaos worshippers tend to be able to summon smaller daemons which then act as emmisarries.
Subtility of course depends on the god: slaanesh and tzeentch by nature are way more clandestine, nurgle can be both, but also talks to the sick via promising them health if in turn they serve. Khorne on the other hand will just give you an endless rageboner and a chainweapon, if instruction unclear you end up as a chaosspawn.

How though? I haven't seen any revelatory experience for the world eaters. They start adopting his sacred number unconsciously and fall further into the grip of the nails but at no point do we see them tempted by whispers or emissaries or make any decisions to follow khorne. Lorgar manages to engineer Angrons ascension and then all of a sudden he is demanding a throne of skulls. The worldeaters never changed, they just started pinning brass symbols on their pre-existing bunny ears, presumably because Angron said so.

Lorgar accended Angron, Khorne then claimed him and likely reshapped his soul/body to a pleasing form, as for the World Eaters, after Angron was chained up in the Conqueror his "chaosness" started tainting the ship and all around him making them more aggressive, for all we know some were tempted by whispers, others directly, we didnt see it happen, but that doesnt mean it didnt happen.

Look at Wolf bane, between it and vengful spirit the Sons of Horus have gone full chaos marine, mutations and all, but it wasnt explained how the hell that happened.

IIRC Vengful spirit said there was some of that happening already, Horus' "ascension" at the end of the Molech campign likely accelerated that.

This got back to primarchs pretty quickly, but yes- from the HH novels account, Lorgar is the only one who seems to have made an active choice to follow the chaos gods. He was brought there by cultists and Erebus et al. but he was seeking the truth behind the veil and got his revelation.

Horus was brought to a corrupted place and they did rituals over him.
Angron got caught up in the ruinstorm's warp influence and Lorgar's shenanigans.
Fulgrim found an evil sword
Magnus made the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals, maybe ever
Mortarion was shouting into the warp for help and got 'help'.
The 'undivided primarchs' seemed to make bad decisions and the lodges corrupted their legions- though who knows what happened to the Alphas.

Corruption from a ritual, physical place or artefact is less interesting to me than revelations of the gods. Primarily because it removes agency- one of the Ghosts got hit with a bit of tainted shrapnel and subsequently turned on his comrades. How do you defend against that? It's like a villain ray.

For Khorne, more subtle avenues to worship I remember reading might start as rituals that a warrior or officer class observe. Ritual blood letting, oaths to never stop fighting the enemy even in the face of grim defeat, perhaps even the ingestion of otherwise banned substances to induce a berserker state (like the ancient Norse warriors did). Over time these native rituals may become more corrupt by the influence of the blood god, becoming less about honor and noble combat and more about blood letting.

I could even see a world with something like gladiator games as an avenue for mass exposure to khornate corruption.

Honestly it doesn’t take much for humans in reality to start collecting the skulls of their enemies even in recent history. See the Marines on their island hopping campaigns, or the atrocities the Imperial Japanese committed in the Rape of Nanking. It isn’t a far stretch of the imagination to consider if we lived in the 40k universe that would be a way in for Khorne.