Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Every Chaos God has their portfolio of what they inspire and what type of followers the attract.

Throughout the Heresy, I kept reading about people being afraid of the Emperor becoming a Chaos God.

But I never could find our what the Emperor was supposed to be the God of?

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Every Chaos God has their portfolio of what they inspire and what type of followers the attract.

Throughout the Heresy, I kept reading about people being afraid of the Emperor becoming a Chaos God.

But I never could find our what the Emperor was supposed to be the God of?

No idea, but the only thing he was apparently good at was being a dick.

It’s still debatable whether godhood was ever part of the initial plan, or just something which since he got nuggeted, he’s making the best of a bad situation.

If whatever is providing power to the Sisters of Battle is The Emperor. Could be a warp entity coalescing via the worship of the Imperium’s masses.

But whatever is happening and whomever it’s happening to? He could become the God of Humanity. If so? You’re possibly looking at Gork and Mork levels of power.

I mean, consider it. Mankind is the second most numerous species, though it may even outnumber the Orks.

Only a small fraction of those numbers actively worship the Chaos Gods.

If a single entity received the majority of those thoughts and prayers? How powerful might they be?

Given the Imperium's vast bureaucracy, I would have (unironically) said he would become the god of order and control. Similar to how a Drow or Duergar city is "orderly". So very strict, maybe nonsensical rules that get punished severely and seemingly arbitrarily.

@Mad Doc Grotsnik
Orks are believing in Gork and Mork on a genetic level, aren't they? As in they will believe into exactly them even without ever hearing of them from an outside source?

That might make the difference in why more individuals are worshipping them, even if the Emperor became a god.

That’s very hard to say.

Every single Greenskin absolutely believes in Gork and Mork. They know their Gods exist, and they know they’re Ded ‘Ard.

During a Waaagh!, it seems to be Gork and Mork driving it. Reaching into the minds of the Greenskins, having a quick scrabble about and getting them really excited for a really, really big fight.

But that could be entirely cultural. Every Ork society believes in Gork and Mork. And so ever Greenskin born into that society will believe in Gork and Mork.

I’m not entirely persuaded genetics has owt to do with it, so much as the Orky Gestalt Psychic Potential, and the irrefutable fact their Gods absolutely do exist, and that same Psychic Potential provides a direct line between the two.

The God Of Intolerance

The canonical answer is ruin.

I never understood that, since the Emperor or his Imperium obviously isn't motivated by "ruin"; and for that matter Nurgle already has that fairly well covered. I always thought "Tyranny" is be a much better description of what the Imperium is actually doing, and it also doesn't really overlap with any of the existing Chaos gods.

I'm wondering if they just wanted symmetry with the ascension of the Great Horned Rat as a proper Chaos God of Ruin in Age of Sigmar.

What the Imperium was doing and what the Emperor was to become if he ascended as the Dark King are two different things.

The Emperor became a dark orb of pure destruction, annihilation in its true state. Everything he touched died and he sapped the life from his Companions until they were nothing but skeletons in damaged armour.

This is where the current GW metaphysics of chaos starts to fall apart.

MvS' Liber Chaotica and the warp venn diagram explain any 'version' of a chaos god that appears as overlapping circles within the greater 4 circles of primordial emotional storms that are the 4 chaos gods.

GW have been going down the far more boring and derivative gods with portfolios and just inventing more gods.


The emperor would simply be usurping some of the rage, decay, hope and excess of the 4, forming a conceptual entity at the boundaries of the other 4. Which every other warp entity would be, because the 4 represent basic sentient emotion and are a permanent fact of the warp while sentient species exist.

They are the 4 basic elements of warp chaos and all 'gods' are just different mixtures of those. This is why Khaine was fought over by Khorne, because it is mostly a part of the greater storm of Khorne.


So it's very easy to describe the emperor's potential godhead in this metaphysical framework.

These days GW just says what's cool make it a magic god dude.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gert wrote:
What the Imperium was doing and what the Emperor was to become if he ascended as the Dark King are two different things.

The Emperor became a dark orb of pure destruction, annihilation in its true state. Everything he touched died and he sapped the life from his Companions until they were nothing but skeletons in damaged armour.

Annihilation isn't an emotion though, it's just a state of matter. To be a chaos god you're supposed to be formed of souls and emotions. But as I say in this post, GW is playing pretty loose with its own metaphysics.

The well-known emotion of "decay". Truly amazing worldbuilding that is being usurped by millennial freaks!!!

Also Chaos is called the Primordial Annihilator.

The Dark Gods aren't just emotions, especially Mr Tricksy Squid himself.

And what about everyone's favourite Chaos God, Malal? What emotion does anti-the rest of Chaos come from.
The Gods are concepts born from a variety of natural processes, emotions and actions. The Pantheon is not permanent and new Gods can rise while the old fall.

BL authors called it the primordial annihilator in HH books because it sounds cool. They also invented names like 'neverborn' to describe daemons etc again purely for aesthetic.

Chaos isn't inherently annihilatory and if it was primordially so, there would be no universe because chaos would have... annihilated it during the times we call primordial beforehand...

Chaos gods are the dark reflection of sentience. Without life, there are no chaos gods. That's been baked into warhammer cosmology since the beginning. You can't truly defeat chaos without removing all life.

The gods are coalescences of sentient ripples in the warp. A concept is formed by a sentient mind and is inextricably linked to the emotions of the mind that thought it. It's some pretty basic psychological stuff they were playing with 40 years ago when they developed this, the different emotions and how they are attached to all conscious and unconscious thought.

The 4 chaos gods are eternal, the idea that they aren't permanent is at odds with the history of warhammer. They are eternal because they reflect the 4 basic emotions of sentient life, which is what causes the most disruption in the warp.

The warp is timeless and the 'birth' of slannesh is no more special than anything else. Slannesh was the face of the eldar portion of the chaos storm of obsession, but there was always a storm of those emotions, because those emotions have always existed in the galaxy.

For one shining moment, the eldar coalesced the brightest face of it. But Slannesh is now a human god more than an eldar one, because humanity makes up the greater portion of its sustainment.

Triscksy squid has always been hope for change, desire for power to rise above the vagaries of life. His actions are in service to his fundamental nature of the sentient desire to control the world around them.

I think people conflate the conscious actions of the chaos gods with what created them. Khorne is formed from sentient rage and fury, but its actions are conscious warfare, strategy and duelling. Because those things are how rage is cultivated.

they are emergent consciousnesses formed from primordial sentient emotion and while able to make complex decisions, they do so purely in the service of what they comprise of. Khorne can no more act to generate calm than a fish can fly through space. But the more complex their structure the more complex their abilities are.

New versions of the 4 can rise depending on what type of sentient species is fuelling them, but they will still be beholden to the intrinsic elemental nature of consciousness that exists in 40k. Which is that rage, despair, obsession, and hope are 4 basic elemental components of consciousness. While life exists, chaos is going to be mostly those 4 things, in the same way stars are always mostly hydrogen and helium.

Decay and excess are not emotions. Rephrasing decay as despair is not successful because decay is not synonymous with despair (nor has Nurgle been portrayed as actually representing despair in any tangible way). Rephrasing excess as obsession is not successful because obsession is not an emotion either.

Identifying basic or primal emotions and then leaving out fear is patently ridiculous. As is leaving out the positive emotions.

All of this to say: the old version of Chaos "cosmology" or "metaphysics" was not well-written or consistent and did not work to begin with. It was actually probably inferior to the new one, because its limits as they were defined made no sense, whereas the new version simply doesn't establish those limits.

Creating a cosmology consisting of exactly four neverchanging, timeless, and well-defined principles and then calling it "Chaos" is also inherently silly, but now we are getting so close to criticising the fundamentals as accusing a Space Marine of not actually being a superhuman warrior, but actually just a 32mm piece of plastic.

BorderCountess wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Every Chaos God has their portfolio of what they inspire and what type of followers the attract.

Throughout the Heresy, I kept reading about people being afraid of the Emperor becoming a Chaos God.

But I never could find our what the Emperor was supposed to be the God of?

No idea, but the only thing he was apparently good at was being a dick.

So the god of..."but akshually...."????

Racerguy180 wrote:

BorderCountess wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Every Chaos God has their portfolio of what they inspire and what type of followers the attract.

Throughout the Heresy, I kept reading about people being afraid of the Emperor becoming a Chaos God.

But I never could find our what the Emperor was supposed to be the God of?

No idea, but the only thing he was apparently good at was being a dick.

So the god of..."but akshually...."????

Bad parenting, mostly.

Surely it’s what is empowering him that matters most. Specifically, the prayers of the faithful.

The Chaos Gods are dangerous because they originated from emotions. Fairly base, fairly primal emotions. But as they’ve grown in power, they’ve some capacity to influence realspace.

They can reach out, usually via Daemons (which are fragments of the parent god’s consciousness) to corrupt mortals. They can also encourage conditions which lead to worship.

Nurgle is a solid example. Those who turn to Father Nurgle are the sick, who ask that he relieve their suffering. Nurgle does that. Not by curing you, but by making you enjoy your symptoms and diseases. To do that? He concocts new plagues and unleashes them on realspace.

The Emperor, so far, doesn’t seem to have quite that much power. Miracles can be manifested, yes. And it could be that rather than relying on the supplicant’s psychic potential, it’s their sheer faith which provides a conduit for Him to say, nudge some bullets aside, reknit flesh etc.

But either way? Whatever, and whoever, is manifesting as a result of mankind’s worship hasn’t started as the reflection of emotions in the warp. It’s arguably more complex than that.

And so it’s shaped less by general concepts, and more by what its worshippers are asking for.

That in turn raises the question of whether, should it achieve true godhood, it would be insane.

Because the Chaos Gods are insane. They were never mortal. And being largely shaped by emotions, which can often be entirely irrational, they’re limited in perspective and flexibility.

The Emperor? Well again could be more like Gork and Mork. They care about their lads. They actively want their lads to get into the best fights they can find. Because it makes everyone Big And Strong.

With full Godhood, and the ability to play an active influence? What might The Emperor do? Despite online conspiracy theories, we’re told his intent was to unify mankind, and pacify the galaxy that all future generations of mankind might live in peace and prosperity.

Would any of that goal remain? Or are the demented preachings of The Ecclesiarchy shifting his perception and position? Both want mankind to dominate, and see all threats dealt with permanently. Yet the Ecclesiarchy has also introduced ritual and superstition to things. Could that limit the perception of a Proper Full On God Emperor?

I think the Emperor ascending would be most similar to the Eldar gods (pre-fall), as they were the result of explicit and codified worship, whereas Gork and Mork are to a different extent wired directly into the psyche of Orks. One difference is that the Eldar gods may not ever have been mortal, or at least non-divine - I'm not sure the Emperor was ever truly mortal. I agree with your assessment that the rather torturous circumstances of His ascension in the 41st millennium are unlikely to result in a particularly sane entity, although who knows how things would have shaken out if he had ascended during the Siege, before He spent ten thousand years on the pain chair.

Well the part of the Emperor that was cast off to prevent his ascension as the Dark King is still out there.

It's been a plot point in the Dawn of Fire series where an Inquisitor is hunting down leads on the Starchild prophecy.

It won't go anywhere of course but the idea of the Emperor Enthroned, this monstrous corpse god without an ounce of humanity remaining, being united with the part of his soul that would return him to the grand conquerer and enemy of the Pantheon he once was is an interesting one.
Two beings in the same form, one truly devoid of humanity and the other desperately trying to return to its old glory.

If the Emperor had fallen for the ascension trap during the Heresy, then I suspect he would have ascended into a Dark King over all Chaos, leeching aspects of the other Four he would then direct to the goal of ruinous tyranny. For example, The Dark King would have aspects of Nurgle's unyielding stagnation, the oppressive excesses of Slaanesh, the warmongering conquest of Khorne, and the manipulative machinations of Tzeentch all directed towards the greater concept of Ruinous Tyranny.

The Dark King would be probably the major chaos god of Encroaching Ruin.

This is under the assumption that the Aetheric Dominions shown in the Horus Heresy Exemplary Battles: The Burning of Ohmn-Mat are 8 flavors of chaos that align with the 4 big powers of chaos and 4 other ones that are more obscure/undefined.

This same 8 flavors of chaos diagram lists Malevolent Artifice as one which seems clearly to describe Vashtorr's domain.

The other 2 dominions that aren't accounted for are Ruinous Dissolution, opposite Encroaching Ruin, that people speculate may be the domain of Malice/Malal. And Formless Distortion, which doesn't really have any great clues.

The general vibe for the Aetheric Dominions seems to be the following:

- Heedless Slaughter = Khorne
- Putrid Corruption = Nurgle
- Rapturous Sensation = Slaanesh
- Formless Distortion = Tzeentch
- Infernal Tempest = Nobody knows, some sort of Chaos Undivided. The rules don't really do much to help make a decision
- Malevolent Artifice = What will become Vashtorr
- Ravenous Dissolution = Everyone's favourite anti-Chaos edgelord, Malal
- Encroaching Ruin = Chaos Undivided

I for one am partial to the concept that the Emperor was intended to be the representation of Chaos Undivided. A part of a Pantheon with no ties to any of them.
The Pantheon gains a new player, one they can use against every other member of the Pantheon without any of the others feeling cheated.
The Dark King itself doesn't care. It neither hates nor cares about any of its siblings above the other, only the game and the ruination of all matter.
In the same way the other Gods push and pull at their rivals, the Dark King is both pulled all directions and pushes in all directions.
It is the epitome of the Great Game, always playing but never winning. However, that would require some sort of overarching plan by the background writers and we all know they just do what they want and cram all the shapes into the square hole because "technically" it fits.

 Gert wrote:
The general vibe for the Aetheric Dominions seems to be the following:

- Heedless Slaughter = Khorne
- Putrid Corruption = Nurgle
- Rapturous Sensation = Slaanesh
- Formless Distortion = Tzeentch
- Infernal Tempest = Nobody knows, some sort of Chaos Undivided. The rules don't really do much to help make a decision
- Malevolent Artifice = What will become Vashtorr
- Ravenous Dissolution = Everyone's favourite anti-Chaos edgelord, Malal
- Encroaching Ruin = Chaos Undivided

I for one am partial to the concept that the Emperor was intended to be the representation of Chaos Undivided. A part of a Pantheon with no ties to any of them.
The Pantheon gains a new player, one they can use against every other member of the Pantheon without any of the others feeling cheated.
The Dark King itself doesn't care. It neither hates nor cares about any of its siblings above the other, only the game and the ruination of all matter.
In the same way the other Gods push and pull at their rivals, the Dark King is both pulled all directions and pushes in all directions.
It is the epitome of the Great Game, always playing but never winning. However, that would require some sort of overarching plan by the background writers and we all know they just do what they want and cram all the shapes into the square hole because "technically" it fits.

Great Horned Rat erasure!

Encroaching Ruin does indeed fit, with the term "Encroaching" alluding towards the tyrannical aspect.

Nurgle isn’t about corruption though. He’s a God of Fecundity. One that treats all life, from the most basic microbe to the most advanced sentient being as exactly equal.

His Plagues take a single being, and through their death? Provide a biome for billions upon billions of organisms. His worshippers/followers are blessed to live in a sort of equilibrium with those same microbes and bacteria, the better to share His bountiful blessings.

Slaanesh is simply the God of Excess. Any and all excess. His worshippers/followers are driven to seek out ever more experiences, and to take them as far as they can.

Tzeentch is the God of Hope at the end of the day. That one can change one’s fate, and come out on top in any situation with careful and possibly subtle interventions and that.

Where Slaanesh is so dangerous to the other Gods is that every single one of their followers is driven to Excess. So for every banquet of vile acts dedicated to a God? Slaanesh at least gets a Doggy Bag from it. Even from Slaanesh’s defeats there are still exquisite scraps to be had.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Where Slaanesh is so dangerous to the other Gods is that every single one of their followers is driven to Excess. So for every banquet of vile acts dedicated to a God? Slaanesh at least gets a Doggy Bag from it. Even from Slaanesh’s defeats there are still exquisite scraps to be had.

You could say the same for Tzeentch. After all, aren't Khorne's followers changing mighty warriors into headless corpses?

Klapaucius wrote:
Decay and excess are not emotions. Rephrasing decay as despair is not successful because decay is not synonymous with despair (nor has Nurgle been portrayed as actually representing despair in any tangible way). Rephrasing excess as obsession is not successful because obsession is not an emotion either.

Identifying basic or primal emotions and then leaving out fear is patently ridiculous. As is leaving out the positive emotions.

All of this to say: the old version of Chaos "cosmology" or "metaphysics" was not well-written or consistent and did not work to begin with. It was actually probably inferior to the new one, because its limits as they were defined made no sense, whereas the new version simply doesn't establish those limits.

Yeah if you actually read my post you'd see i didn't make that claim at all. People use those terms as short cuts for what those gods DO, but it's not the emotions they represent. Rage, Hope, Despair and Obsession are the emotions that have been linked to the 4 chaos gods. Fear is part of despair.

The original writers were looking at it from an evolutionary perspective - where positive and negative emotions don't exist, only reactions to the environment. Happiness is a reduction in cortisol to encourage behaviour repeatability, fear is an increase to encourage fleeing a danger. These map to intrinsic animal behaviours as part of their survival. All life reflects in the warp, as does all matter in general. Life though reflects in a unique way that creates ripples rather than the calm of rock.

They were going for the emotions of species survival are intrinsically environmentally combatative - life by its very existence struggles and their emotions reflect that. All human emotions are highly derived survival behaviours to propagate genes, self sacrifice included.

As for your argument on the sensibiltiy of the cosmology - none of 40k is sensible and currently what I've described is the ONLY cosmology they've actually printed. None of the modern information actually contradicts this so it's still canon. Just as the emperor being born of shamans is still canon.

 BorderCountess wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Where Slaanesh is so dangerous to the other Gods is that every single one of their followers is driven to Excess. So for every banquet of vile acts dedicated to a God? Slaanesh at least gets a Doggy Bag from it. Even from Slaanesh’s defeats there are still exquisite scraps to be had.

You could say the same for Tzeentch. After all, aren't Khorne's followers changing mighty warriors into headless corpses?

This is why the Venn Diagram is the only one that makes sense. They are all over lapping each other in chaos undivided. Only the absolute outer edges of each is 'pure' to their emotional core. Each warp god formed from emotion sits within this. reflecting different parts like colour and element mixing. Asuryan reflects aspects of all the emotions as he's balance, Khaine is more rage. Isha is more hope and obsession and so on.

 Hellebore wrote:

Yeah if you actually read my post you'd see i didn't make that claim at all. People use those terms as short cuts for what those gods DO, but it's not the emotions they represent. Rage, Hope, Despair and Obsession are the emotions that have been linked to the 4 chaos gods. Fear is part of despair.

The original writers were looking at it from an evolutionary perspective - where positive and negative emotions don't exist, only reactions to the environment. Happiness is a reduction in cortisol to encourage behaviour repeatability, fear is an increase to encourage fleeing a danger. These map to intrinsic animal behaviours as part of their survival. All life reflects in the warp, as does all matter in general. Life though reflects in a unique way that creates ripples rather than the calm of rock.

They were going for the emotions of species survival are intrinsically environmentally combatative - life by its very existence struggles and their emotions reflect that. All human emotions are highly derived survival behaviours to propagate genes, self sacrifice included.

As for your argument on the sensibiltiy of the cosmology - none of 40k is sensible and currently what I've described is the ONLY cosmology they've actually printed. None of the modern information actually contradicts this so it's still canon. Just as the emperor being born of shamans is still canon.

lol absolutely not.

Fear is far more fundamental than despair, although you could make an argument that despair is a subtype of fear. Never the reverse. And again, obsession is not an emotion, nobody would describe it as such outside of being compelled to in order to fit it into a rigid, retroactive valorization of old lore that was never watertight, neat and tidy, or deeply-considered to begin with.

All of that stuff about evolutionary behaviour is an insane larp. Do you think "hope" is an animal emotion? It's about the most human thought pattern possible. Which makes sense, because the relationship between the warp and emotions was always connected to sapient creatures, not animals. Khorne does not get high off of sharks and wasps.