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Like all things Chaos there's a huge amount of variety. Some will be bound like slaves or wild rabid animals - as likely to turn on their summoners as their foes. The kind of creature you keep locked up until unleashing it upon your foes in a wild gamble that the thing kills enough of them and then gets killed or recaptured before it turns around and kills your side as well.
All the way through to a tame pet that obeys command, seemingly, easily.
A powerful Psyker is likely a necessity though for any form of standard control by a mortal. However someone who has been on the path to chaos, might themselves be possessed without fully realising it and thus have control over a spawn, though in reality its the demon within them that the spawn is truly obeying.
Don't "chaos spawn" include everything from completely bonkers formerly-mortal shoggoths to Frank who accumulated a couple too many goofy mutations?
As others have pointed out, it probably varies. If you can, you probably shove them all into one convenient area and then deploy them as shock troops. Maybe a few are able to behave themselves or can be lead around via sorcery.
That said, I imagine that most chaos spawn are probably more the result of mutations/warp exposure that happen post-planetfall. They just seem too inconvenient (logistically) to deploy intentionally. Like, imagine trying to herd a bunch of them into a shuttle. I picture spawn being used as mid-travel diversions for marines or as boarding deterrants (That occassionally eat crew members.)
ATTENTION. Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios
I'm sure you might be able to have a small mutated used-to-be-a-dog spawn that you could keep as a pet of sorts. A deranged utterly rabid pet.
Best you could hope for is wrangling them into a container till you can open it in the vague direction of the enemy. Or hope you have a sorceror that can employ some more direct input.
Spawn are more of a coincidental thing that happens in the proximity of Chaos forces than something that is deliberately used with purpose.
Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines
Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
Overread wrote: Well there's one Chaos Spawn being kept as a pet in a Warhammer+ Hammer and Bolter episode
You can even see it being born
I think that one comes down to uncommonly potent sorcery given what else happens in that episode.
ATTENTION. Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.