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A lot of background material depicts piled up daemon corpses and some models even show heroes with daemon skulls or other body parts as trophies.

However, my understanding was that a destroyed daemon would be banished back to the warp, which I assumed involved the whole thing fading out of reality. Or do their bodies remain in realspace whilst their 'souls' (or whatever) are thrown back into the Warp? The latter seems to contradict the invulnerable save that they get - I thought that this represented attacks sometimes 'phasing through' them since they aren't actually there. Why would that happen if their bodies had a persistent physical presence?

Thoughts?

Yeah, I have always thought like you, but it seems that we are wrong...

The Citadel Skulls kit has daemon skulls so some must persist!

I think it depends. Daemons can enter the physical realm through various methods, and I think in the instance of warp rifts and large scale rituals that they manifest through warp presence rather than a physical medium, like possessed psykers or others acting as a gateway. Its possible that these trophies you mention are from the latter, where the possessed is all but dead and its body has already been reformed to that of a daemons. So when they are slain, the claimed body retains the same daemonic form, but the warp essence of the daemon is gone.

 Grimskul wrote:
I think it depends. Daemons can enter the physical realm through various methods, and I think in the instance of warp rifts and large scale rituals that they manifest through warp presence rather than a physical medium, like possessed psykers or others acting as a gateway. Its possible that these trophies you mention are from the latter, where the possessed is all but dead and its body has already been reformed to that of a daemons. So when they are slain, the claimed body retains the same daemonic form, but the warp essence of the daemon is gone.

I'm pretty sure it's this^^

While larger scale incursions draw their power directly from a Warp rift to sustain their forms, instances in which a mortal is physically possessed by a daemon will likely have their atoms rearranged to suit the daemon. When those daemons are "killed" the warp entity returns to the Warp, while the body retains its form.
Daemons that came to real space via a Warp rift likely just dissipate and leave nothing behind.

Functionally, I don't think either kind of daemon is all that different aside from this. You should play the Space Marine video game. Bloodletters kinda zig-zag real fast for their invulnerable save. Might not be accurate, but it's a different way to visualize it.

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In the original Realms of Chaos books, it describes how the Hellblades of Bloodletters are really just an extension of the daemon itself and dissolve back into formless warp substance before evaporating away upon the daemon being "killed". I would imagine there might be supernatural or mystical ways of "fixing" the daemon's body so that it doesn't dissolve away.

However as others have already said, a daemon that takes form using possession is basically rearranging real matter (and infusing it with some warp energy), so upon the daemon being banished, you are left with a pile of mangled matter.

Invulnerable saves are a reflection of the supernatural defenses and unnaturalness of the daemon. How they visually work seems to vary entirely depending on plot or author fiat. You can have shots and blows pass through them harmlessly, or they might bounce off without inflicting damage. In Lord of the Night, a Night Lords daemon prince takes hits that seem to blow a hole in its side but then the wound heals unnaturally quickly and closes itself before the eyes of the one that inflicted the damage. Such rapid healing could also reflect a successful invulnerable save.

Depends on how fixed the body is in real-space, I'd imagine. Taking a Daemon of Khorne's skull, for example, might allow its skull to remain in real-space as a trophy.

Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. I suppose if a Daemon becomes mortal and is permanently killed, they wouldn't go back to the Warp. On the other hand, if Daemons have too little foothold in the Materium, they would spontaneously disappear.

I think the answer is "both because it's more cinematic that way and the fluff doesn't break no matter what happens"

I think it is a bit of both. The body might fade, but it could stay depending on the situation.

The Grey Knights, and other groups, have trapped more than a few daemons in their corporeal remains and kept them as prisoners.

Given that the Warp is a dimension of pure energy, its well within reason that the bodies that Daemons inhabit when they come here are as much true flesh and blood as any native of realspace. And the ability to be unharmed by attacks phasing through their bodies, or just because they are supernaturally tough, is because of more Warp sorcery. They aren't beholden to the laws of the material plane, but neither do they have to violate said laws either. If matter is created by using warp energy, it doesn't exactly violate any laws since it was created with energy and not just out of "nothing".

It may also have to do with what is convenient to the individuals involved. If someone keep a piece of a daemon as a trophy, it will remain in the physical world because it has meaning. If nobody takes the piece as a trophy, it dissolves because there is no meaning. And the warp is based on human emotions and desires. The daemon's body part remains because someone wanted it to be so.

That results in an interesting potential way to fight Chaos. You lure a daemon into the material plane, defeat it, and bind it to its remaining body parts. Hence trapping it for eternity, or at least as long as you can keep it locked down. And better that daemon be trapped in real space than back in the warp where it could meddle elsewhere.

Daemons don't obey the physical laws of the material universe that work reliably the same way every time. They are beings of emotion and belief, shaped by will. The 'physical rules' they follow are more like dream logic.

If you're hacking your way through hordes of minor daemons, they're going to dissipate straight away as they 'die' because their own will to persist is weak and you're not focusing on them as individual entities. If you fight a single more powerful daemon one-on-one in a challenge that means something in an emotional or metaphysical sense, then if taking that daemon's head as a trophy means something to you, and you're strong-willed enough, you can do it. It might dissipate when you die, though.

At least, that's the impression I've always gotten.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:
That results in an interesting potential way to fight Chaos. You lure a daemon into the material plane, defeat it, and bind it to its remaining body parts. Hence trapping it for eternity, or at least as long as you can keep it locked down. And better that daemon be trapped in real space than back in the warp where it could meddle elsewhere.

That's sort of what the Emperor does to Drach'nyen in Master of Mankind. It also seems to be what Khorsarro Khan did to Doomrider.

Interesting stuff

I managed to find the model that originally got me thinking about this - the Grey Knight Justicar shown in the photographs section of their codex. He is holding a daemonette head and it made me wonder how that was possible. You can see the same model under 'Grey Knights Strike Squad' on the GW site.

Thanks for the information!

If you believe hard enough you've earnt a trophy taken from the corpse of a daemon you get to keep it. Otherwise it just fizzles out.

My headcanon is that daemon bodies decay away in a similar way to mortal remains, but much, much faster.

The slowest to fade are those daemons who were once mortal and were transformed (Princes and Plaguebearers), whose first death after transforming leaves the body for, oh, a few days.

The fastest are lesser daemons who have very little power or will. Brimstone Horrors, for example, aren't so much killed as extinguished - their body persistence is measured in milliseconds. A slain Greater Daemon, on the other hand, may persist for a few hours - but most greater daemons are banished rather than slain, as a mortal wound would cause their tether to realspace to break before they actually die.

As others have said, the significance of the killing also matters a lot. The corpse of a Bloodletter, slain in single combat by the champion of a farming village, would persist far longer than the corpse of an Exalted Flamer slain randomly by a stray lascannon blast, even if the Exalted Flamer would normally persist longer by an order of magnitude.

TL;DR: it depends on the daemon, the circumstances, and the dramatic purpose of the corpse persisting.

It varies on which background you're reading.

Typically, they leave behind what is probably best described as ectoplasm. Their body suffers dissolution.

However, sometimes they don't go all gloopy. Why the difference, who knows? But one could venture it depends on whether their means of entry is now gone. If there's sufficient warp around, it could explain why the bodies remain, at least for a while.

Given what daemons are, I like the idea that the dramatic purpose has a very real in-universe effect on their corporeal effect.