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The big Four are constantly playing the great game and sometimes come together in alliances, with the biggest one being the Horus Heresy where they all gathered together to prevent the Emperor's plan from working out. At the end though, in the End and the Death, it seems like the Khorne reneges and provides the Emperor with material aid, via various 8-numbered things hidden in offhand comments and marginalia. Given the result is 10,000 years of war, it seems like Khorne had some incentive since It's a bit of an explorer game-player rather than a competitive type that has to win at all costs.

What do you think? Also, do we need to use spoiler tags for the particulars of this discussion?

I'd need to re-read it to figure out an answer to that question.

The Pantheon never planned to "win" the Heresy in the same way Horus did.

Their goal was originally to punish the Emperor for betraying them and ruin humanity's chance of becoming immune to their influence.

As per the newer books they were pushing the Emperor to abandon reality and ascend to become the newest member of the Pantheon, the Dark King.

When it became clear this wouldn't happen, the Gods went back to their usual confusing "I do what I want" actions.

Ultimately every single part of the Heresy that was important to the material beings, didn't matter to the Gods because the great game just goes on. At some point the Emperor will ascend and join the Pantheon or will be removed from the board.
The Game is all that matters.

We can also look to Age of Sigmar to see this in action.

First came the Age of Legend, in which all was well. But over time, the Chaos Gods and their followers found their way in. Despite Sigmar’s Pantheon being pretty, but not completely, unified, they were held at bay for a good time, but won out eventually, leading to Sigmar sealing off Azyr, and leaving the other Realms to their fate.

But, the destruction wasn’t total. Whilst Chaos absolutely won? Their total victory was squandered, as Only One Can Truly Win. And so, instead of finishing off the survivors, they fell upon each other in the struggle for final supremacy.

And so, when the time was right? Sigmar’s counter offensive had at least some willing allies straight off the bat.

What does that mean for the Galaxy? Well, it suggests that even if the Chaos Gods win, there’ll still be some chance of redemption, as they busy themselves with their Great Game, instead of keeping their eyes on the prize.

I think one difference is that in 40K the Gods are playing with the whole playground. Far as we know they don't exist outside of the Milky Way Galaxy so its all or nothing to play for.

In Old World and AoS there's much more a sense that there are other places out there; we are just focused on one area and the Gods can thus absolutely (and did once) Win. They can tear the Mortal Realms to bits and there is still life and so forth out there for them to feast upon.

From what I recall of the Age of Chaos it was building up toward victory. A few areas were being marked to be moved into the Chaos Realm by powerful magics; the Chaos followers were pushing out any who opposed them. Even if it fell into infighting it would be more a case of fighting between the gods as to who got what parts and at a lower tier between different greater demons fighting each other for more of a personal share.

But ultimately I absolutely think that they would have torn the Mortal Worlds apart entirely and then just moved on.

If chaos or one aspect of it "wins" the game - the game ends and they have to reset the board or play a new game elsewhere - there is little incentive for them to win - when the Warhammer world was destroyed - they moved on to other realities.

That's one of the elements of the warhammer universe for me - the mortals and some immortals are playing in a game that the main players don't really want to end

 Overread wrote:
I think one difference is that in 40K the Gods are playing with the whole playground. Far as we know they don't exist outside of the Milky Way Galaxy so its all or nothing to play for.

They do. In Dead Sky, Black Sun, Uriel Ventris has a vision of galaxies that have been stripped of life due to Khorne's wars.

I have never read any of the HH books (or in fact any fiction derived from GW's fluff), but I like the idea of Khorne sabotaging whatever the Chaos powers were doing behind the scenes in the heresy. I have to say, all this stuff about Chaos powers being engaged in some kind of games just emphasises how derivative the Chaos fluff is - it's really just a re-tread of Michael Moorcock's fiction.

Well, I think that chaos gods didn't plan Horus to win this war at all. They would achieve almost nothing this way, because Horus was a bit skeptical about this whole chaos stuff, as seen in Fulgrim when demon says he possesed his brother. I think that trick about Heresy is "Let's make it so that half of the legions need us". I think chaos gods would like to win the war with the imperium now, when every one of them has its own army, wich depending on him and won't leave faith in chaos gods after victory

 Snord wrote:
I have never read any of the HH books (or in fact any fiction derived from GW's fluff), but I like the idea of Khorne sabotaging whatever the Chaos powers were doing behind the scenes in the heresy. I have to say, all this stuff about Chaos powers being engaged in some kind of games just emphasises how derivative the Chaos fluff is - it's really just a re-tread of Michael Moorcock's fiction.

I don't think they have ever denied taking from Moorcock - I seem to recall recent White Dwarf stating it....as they should

Never forget the chaos gods are insane. Their plans and aims needn’t make any sense to us mere mortals.

They also exist out of time as we understand it. So even if their plans are linear by our reckoning of such things? Who knows when the end game is intended. It could be millions or billions of years ahead. They may have forgotten it entirely.

I find it also helps to think of them as Nations, only loosely allied. Think Russia, USA and Britain in the Second World War. Soon as Germany and Japan were defeated? Rivals of varying intensity once again. And the gods are always in competition. Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh and Tzeentch all want to expand their power and holdings. They don’t want Chaos to win. They want to win outright for themself.

So we do of course see periods of relative cooperation, where opportunity presents. But all the time they’re looking out for further opportunities to one up and gain specific, selfish advantage, even (especially?) if it means disadvantage to a godly rival.

 Mr Morden wrote:
I don't think they have ever denied taking from Moorcock - I seem to recall recent White Dwarf stating it....as they should

Agreed - I’m not saying it was plagiarism. GW wear their influences in their sleeve, for the most part. I’m just saying that I don’t find the whole Chaos thing very original or interesting. As far as the Heresy is concerned, I prefer it when the Chaos stuff is more behind the scenes, playing I’m existing rivalries and resentments.

Sorry, going OT.

Well we can always resurrect Chaos in the Old World and do it as Chaos in the Heresy (Awesome game by the way...)

I would posit that each of the Four "threw" the Heresy in their own way.

Like petulant toddlers fueled by basal emotions...

I suggest that whilst the Emperor and humanity can view Chaos as the enemy and can therefore visualise "victory", the Chaos gods don't see humanity as an enemy to defeat, but a plaything to subdue. Only whilst the Emperor was threatening their actual existence was there any need to actively act against humans. The rest of the time we are their TV, radio and XBox all rolled into one, so actually achieving victory over us would be self-defeating.

 Fifty wrote:
I suggest that whilst the Emperor and humanity can view Chaos as the enemy and can therefore visualise "victory", the Chaos gods don't see humanity as an enemy to defeat, but a plaything to subdue. Only whilst the Emperor was threatening their actual existence was there any need to actively act against humans. The rest of the time we are their TV, radio and XBox all rolled into one, so actually achieving victory over us would be self-defeating.

Exactly, warp without humans would be empty as damn

I don't know if it's still up to date after the Cicatrix, but I always thought the outcome with the 10.000 years of war was the end goal for the gods. That's the future the cabal apparently saw and tried to change with swaying the Alpha Legion to Horus, so he could Alexander the Great his empire right after winning.
The outcome we got is the perfect hatching ground for the emotions the gods thrive on. They don't need a galaxy of followers for that either as long as some do the killing and scheming and people are affected by it.

I was moreso referring to stuff like the 888 collection in the Hall of Leng, the athame claiming an 8th life, the Anabasis assault ending up at 888 coordinates, that sort of thing.

8 is also the sacred number of the Chaos as a whole. The Octed and all that.

I just think that Khorne saw Magus the Red screw up the webway for the Emperor, assumed the whole thing was part of Tzeentch's plans-and he couldn't have that, so he decided to sabotage the whole endeavor.