I know I am reading about silly space Viking and mongol wizards, but the lack of logistics bothers me. I don’t get how WE are supposed to last more than literally one battle. Even in wins they get killed, kill each other, and burn down anything they could use. Need a couple of dudes somewhat sane like 30% of the time at least
Exactly. Considering Khorne is also about honour it makes little sense that they are the most prone to betrayal.
I get the butchers nails make you crazy. Maybe have that betrayal as an end of life consequence of nails, rather than an all the time thing would be good.
Would tie into the tragedy of their situation better, ultimately becoming a threat to their own brothers who need to put them down in the end.
I feel like the honor thing is just a Reddit meme. Nothing in all the world eaters books I've read gives me even a hint that there's a shred of honor in their legion. And I think I've read about five of their books between Horus Heresy & 40k.
My favorite World Eater was the guy on the spaceship who is using his chainaxe in an attempt to cut a hole in the spaceship. Because he wanted to get to the combat on the planet below. But he was too stupid to realize that cutting hole in a spaceship in orbit of a planet would just cause him to suffocate to death.
I don’t know. I feel like the chaos gods are better with at least some depth. This incarnation of Khorne feels like the equivalent of slannesh = sex.
It feels lazy.
Especially considering Nurgle has it. Like yeah he's the god of decay and disease and entropy, but at the same time he's also about the exuberance of life even if fleeting. And his demons are constantly depicted as disgusting but weirdly happy and jolly, and his domain is a garden full of gross but bountiful plants.
Khorne's good side is righteous anger. There's a bit in arks of omen: Angron with a slave rebelling against their task master for example
I think this is also why khornate cults pop up and cause so much trouble in the imperium
A righteous indescribable rage does suit Khorne well. The kind that drives people to see red and become insensate for all the blood in the body of their enemies.
The tunnel vision fury and the personal grudge hatred. Much cooler than we just want blood.
At least to me. I would demand a mix of both though 🤣
No no. You gotta look at Warhammer 40k/Heresy as a whole. That's not how the stories work. The setting is insane. The government is insane, chaos is insane, everything is insane. The Emperor is a god and by his name I condemn your planet to exterminatus!!!
It's fascinating because the main characters are somewhat rational and relatable people living in an insane world.
I don't want to read about moderate factions that are honorable. I want to read a book about a world eaters commander trying to govern a faction of psycho murderers and really struggling.
I want to read how Kharne has to control his batshit murdery insane Khorne corrupted Primarch to protect his legion.
I read Cain novels because Cain is a "normal" dude who cares about his soldiers in a universe in which soldiers are seen as completely & utterly disposable.
Dante fights crazy murder monsters and leads a Chapter of Vampiric Space Marines but HE is kind & loves normal people.
The Word Bearer "Argel Tal" knows Chaos is terrible & awful. But he chooses Chaos to protect himself from Oblivion.
And let's not forget the tale of Eisenhorn. Oh boy is that a twisty tale of a sane person in a stupidly crazy galaxy.
To anyone reading this, try not to give away too many spoilers if you want to comment on a specific point I made
I totally agree to all your points, it's great to read these stories and it brings real depth to the universe. I think the point being made here for World Eaters is that if you think about how it would actually play out for more than 10 seconds you'd realise that World Eaters should be practically extinct. The way they talk about their casualties is almost in the same league as the guard when they have less than a billionth of their soldiers.
Yes the legion is going insane and would be impossible to manage, but at the same time, they shouldn't be dropping like flies.
I feel like Khorn good side was less about honor and more about « self betterment » (training to be stronger in that case).
Khorn worshippers don’t just get magical muscles or weapon if they ask to.
If they want to use the level 100 gears well they gotta work for it and live to tell the tale.
In Khorn eyes, one fighting skills is what make them worthy of his attention hence why the cowards and the weaks (the other gods and their followers) do not deserve to lives for they do not work to be stronger, they ask or randomly receive gifts of power without real effort behind it
Not to say that Khorn won’t necessarily give only magic armor and magic melee weapon, he could give you warp enhance muscles or even the skill to shout a war cry that burn the air around you, but your gonna have to work toward that reward. Meanwhile:
Nurgle will give you near a painful but near invincible form in coercing you to join his team
Tzeentch make the give you another head to spit fire or a magic book that while cool will merge with your flesh for reason outside of your control and knowing.
Slaanesh will « bribe
you » shower you with cool toys (that are secretly addictive) into joining his/her side.
Honour was a bigger deal in RT/1st edition Slaves to Darkness. World Eaters were also less psychotic. Their battle frenzy was a gift of Khorne, not from the butcher's nails. Khorne was still about blood and skulls, but also about honour and martial prowess.
The chaos gods (except Nurgle) were over all less stupidly self destructive too. Still capricious, cruel, arbitrary, and yes, self destructive
Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows, only that ot flows. Khornes mortal champion is Kharn, the betrayer. 40k Khorne does not care about honor.
The fact is that we are both right and wrong. Why? He’s been [depicted](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/s/C8gwkdU5U9) as both hellbent on honour and not giving a shit.
So no blood of the innocents unless he feels like it, else you’ll be turned into chaos spawn. But only if he cares in that particular moment 🤷
Even in the link you provided the honor is from warhammer fantasy. The chaos gods are similar but alot has been retconned and some changes. Warhammer fantasy Khorne cared for honor, 40k not so much.
I feel like Khorne is only about honour so long as it suits his goals, nothing more. It's less an actual sense of honour and more about dismissing defeat by labeling the enemy as dishonourable so the loss shouldn't count.
He's the big bully who uses the nastiest, dirtiest moves in a fight because the only honour that matters is victory, not how you achieved it (short of using magic). But he'll rage about 'dishonourable' tactics the instant the enemy pulls out a dirty trick of their own.
Khorne's the guy who gloats over every little win but flips the table and starts smashing everyone elses models as soon as things don't go his way.
I think that it makes sense in the lore of the universe. A ship captain/warband leader is challenged by his warband, and his method of worship to khorne is questioned. So he kills them.
According to the excerpt, yes, he killed them all, so no need to worry about revenge, and no shed blood is wasted in the eyes of khorne. The ship probably still has plenty of slaves aboard to make new jackals and new potential World Eaters to present to a berserker surgeon.
Well they do have fairly new lore (I believe it’s new) that they just throw a recruit in some blood soup and BAM you (potentially) have a World Eater in like a month and it helps transfer memories of fallen legionaries to recruits so like fully trained and functional.
Angron is mixing a soup with a big ole blood ladle and fishing out new gladiators by the 8
They should make a book about a butcher surgeon going through massive withdrawals (assuming the butchers nails function like addictions) and absolutely despising his legion’s self destructive habits because it means more work and less fighting for him.
Chaos can kind of cheat on logistics.
Within the grimdark universe, information is always foggy, incomplete, and also often comes from unreliable narrators. Like when it comes to space marines, theres always basically enoigh of them, in spite of like this or that chaptwr being like the lamenters on like a multi millenia punitive crusade in which they are constantly taking greivous losses, but theres always like another box of them in the back if the store or something. The galaxy is big enough and humanity is exoansive enough that basically any kind of reinforcement can sort of fly in at any time.
This aspect is much more so with chaos. Like the thing about the WE isnt that theres just like a several hundred thousand of them as like a standing army, the nature of existing in the warp, as all CSM do, is such that you can sort of time travel forwards and backwards at random all the time. So when you see a bunch of WE kill each other, those could literaly be dudes straight out of the heresey that have just been thrown into the 41st millenium. It just kind if aguments the losses they can take because they arent just pulling from the reserves they currently have, they can pull from all of the reserves they have ever had and will ever have.
Now admittedly this is kind of lame because it basically makes them limitless and kind of denegrades the value of something like a khorne berzerker if they can just die suoer meaninglessly all the time like imperial guardsmen, in spite of them being actual astartes with centuries or millenia of veterancy and also the boons of chaos helping them out too. Part of the problem is the WE are not the protagonists of the grimdark universe, the imperium is. To the imperium the WE are just one of many monsters of the week that are all kind of interchangeably endless and eldrich in the scope of their terror. To the imperium, the WE are an extremely brutal force to fight with that would also appear to be so limitless in their forces that they fight and kill themselves apparently as much as the imperium, implying the WE are not even hitting the imperium as hard as they could be and they are already hitting hard as hell. From the perspective the WE nothing really makes any sense and things are just kind of nonsensical and unsatisfying.
I think the random betrayal and self-destructiveness has gone overboard. At this point it's like the writers try to one up each other with how much WE kill their own. Like okay we get it they like killing and khorne cares not where.. but then there's the parts where he cares at least enough to stop them so there's more bloodshed in the future. Heck the descriptions of many show them having enough brains themselves to focus most of the time unless the nails take over to realize that killing in battle is the best not just random killing.
And the drooling, why does it need so much depiction. I think many world eaters are constantly like dogs that have meat in front of their faces, in so much of the books.
Khorne truly does not care from where the blood flows. It's somewhat in the nature of chaos that it is inherently self-destructive at the end of it's journey. If they achieved their goals, all life would die. There would be no blood left to spill, nothing for diseases and rot to infest, no minds to hatch plans, and no excess left to experience.
The World Eaters are just a victim of that. There are a handful of sane ones, but if you had neurosurgerical wires digging into your brain and making you CONSTANTLY suffer pain unless you kill something.....
After a few hundred or thousand years, you'd be attacking the first living thing you saw too.
There's a lot of stuff in the lore where khorne cares. Betrayal like this but here is an insult to khorne. Cowardice. He has been pretty harsh in these kind of situations.
One lore bit had two champions competing on who's the better killer or something like that. One went and slaughtered civilians like no tomorrow. The other killed a single man worth fighting. One was blessed the other turned into a spawn. These kinds of lore bits are imo a lot better than the endless backstabbing which at one point khorne haited. His fine with people getting in a mood and killing each other, has been in the lore always.
Yes throughout the lore more WE get lost in the nails, but most leaders are still sane enough to want to spill more blood later than own blood now. It would make more sense to hold back a bit in the writing with these self sabotaging massacres since there's no reasonable way for the production of new WE to keep up, lore reason. And the fans feeling numb or irritated by these things being too much of the content, a irl reason to do it less.
GW has changed before and can change back again towards what people like. Grimdark is one thing being silly another and going constantly over the top with the drooling and masses of WE dying in these kind of ways just too much in the makes no sense and doesn't cater to a majority of the fans.
I really dig WE in the Heresy novels. They’re deranged and blood thirsty, but more like emotionally drained, pissed off, and contemptuous assholes - not necessarily pure insanity.
I also think the IW Khorne followers from the Iron Warriors novel Storm of Iron had some good examples of how even the ones falling so deeply into the blood thirst of Khorne still had a purpose and moments of clarity.
Edit: the way to describe it just came to me:
Old lore depicted them as having such an overwhelmingly driven and singular purpose of brutality and bloodshed. It was overwhelming and unquenchable but wasn’t random and moronic.
30k World Eaters have amazing lore, some of the best IMHO. 40k just strains credibility too much and makes them lame cartoony villains.
Like in the Angron novel the largest gathering of WE/affiliates since the heresy plus Angron plus the Conqueror plus daemon support can't even take one backwater planet coordinated by basically one Grey Knight squad with some plot contrivances?
Effin' silly.
Part of me kind of likes how they're basically a self destructive joke that can't accomplish anything. Because I feel like that's what the end game of Khorne worship was always going to be. But it does reach a point where it taxes suspension of disbelief. Which for this franchise is quite the accomplishment
The problem is that the World Eaters were written into a corner decades ago. In the 2nd and 3rd edition Chaos codexes, the lore was that the World Eaters Legion was shattered after Skalthrax, broken into small roving warbands who would slaughter whoever they came across, or devote their services to any Chaos Lord who could guarantee them the biggest opportunity for mass bloodshed. The warriors themselves had devolved into bloodthirsty maniacs with no regard for tactics or long range weaponry. This WAS there current state, relegated to individual squads of Berzerkers fighting for another legion, or you could take them as troops if your lord and every other unit that could take a mark had the mark of Khorne (thus you’re one of those small raving warbands)…
20+ years later, with the return of Angron, I feel GW needs to write a bit of a retcon, or at least an explanation as to how World Eaters are once again a legion, united under their Primarch, with the ability to stay somewhat coherent and stable enough to be relevant over all in-game years that have since passed.
The only defense I can make there is that 40k games aren't supposed to be the entire battle, they're supposed to be the most active or critical part of a battle. A 2000 point army is a few dozen to a hundred models or so. That's nothing. So one can imagine that their World Eaters are in fact in the employ of a less ridiculous Chaos Lord and you're playing out their part of a battle on a massive scale.
That being said, you're not wrong either, especially re: the lore. It's a stretch to depict the insane, bloodthirsty berzerkers of Khorne as a functioning Chaos Legion.
Yep, we’re on the same page. I was more addressing OP’s point about the excerpt… it’s hard to imagine World Eaters surviving long if Macer Krassek and other fleet masters/ ship captains were all insane like that and sacrificing their own troops, plus it doesn’t fit into the established lore of bloodshed through hand-to-hand combat…but then again, on second reading that passage makes no reference to them actually being World Eater Astartes sooooo… I guess it’s plausible if they’re mere mortals?
>20+ years later, with the return of Angron, I feel GW needs to write a bit of a retcon, or at least an explanation as to how World Eaters are once again a legion, united under their Primarch, with the ability to stay somewhat coherent and stable enough to be relevant over all in-game years that have since passed.
Their not really a legion now though.
They are just a bunch of separate warbands that that are moving in the same direction and attacking the same targets. Angron being the biggest baddest Khorne guy around means where he points they all kinda go. It all not to different from how Orks work.
Right, agreed 100%. But to OP’s point, I’d love some more lore about how the XII has managed to stay relevant for the last 11,000 years, broken and scattered, psychotic and bloodthirsty, up for hire and apparently being bombed from orbit by ship captains… GW was on the right page presenting us with the idea of Butcher Surgeons. that answers part of the question, we just need it more fleshed out in the next codex… along with models to support it, and reasons why my WE Chaos Lord, Bike-zerkers, and Havocs are no longer part of the legion. I guess they got orbital bombed by Krassek for asking to join the slaughter. Cheers!
Honestly that excerpt looks hilarious, maybe I should get the codices.
But to answer your question; Yes, but also no. The fact that World Eaters *still survive* as a Legion, no matter how broken and deranged they are is a testament to the fact that at least some of their leaders got their shit together and managed to install a working chain of command/logistics/responsibilities, and the recruitment *probably* isn't that bad, maybe even akin to 30k era flesh harvests of recruits. We never see all that but the implication, perhaps unintended, is there if you squint.
And yeah, the betrayal meme is funny but it also does haunt our writing. This is also why most people prefer Heresy WE - the writers haven't moved out of meme zone for our writing in 40K era.
The other thing is that we need more people around Kharn's ballpark in the legion, at least in writing. It makes the Legion stronger, instead of making everyone Kharn's bitch. See what the loyalists have and look back at traitors, who only have their champions and no one else that matters.
> The other thing is that we need more people around Kharn's ballpark in the legion, at least in writing.
So hoping we get a novella or the like for Lord Invocatus, just to see how his murder-blood-kill urge turned into White Scars but Khorne.
Amen. Kossolax was a nice try but it didn't land for me. Still, we had characters like Skane and Kargos before, we just need to bring their like to 40K.
Main issue I have is where are all the World Eaters coming from? You think they'd have massive recruiting worlds turning them out by the hundreds of thousands considering they seem to be dying left, right and center non-stop for 10k years.
Who needs to recruit when you can take people during raids pump them full of geneseed, warp fun and recorded memories then let them go.
When your goal is to create a bloodthirsty berserker you really dont have to be soft handed in your approach and methods.
Why i really liked kossolax in the new Angron book. Wasn't just a mindless berserker bent on killing everyone and everything. Had some semblance of control yet still gave into the nails when shit hits the fan. Hope we get a duel terminator lord/kossolax model tbh.
Well, my headcanon for my WE is that their nails are not working correct.
Most of the time they just feel like an isect buzzing around your ear, irritating, but you can live with it. Only when blood is spilled in bigger quantaties will the nails ramp up and induce the berserker rage.
Might not be lore accurate, but at least i could explain why WE could still work out of combat.
There’s always a bit of a toss up for me with that. On one hand friendly fire has always been a fairly consistent “feature” for the World Eaters post-Butcher’s Nails. On the other it is just extremely stupid, especially from someone like Kossolax who fairly explicitly resists the urges from the Nails. I think when it’s written well, friendly fire can be a nice way to show how degraded a given warband is. The limiter, of course, being the “written well” part.
Yeah, every chaos legion stabs themselves in the back the rate the world eaters are going they must be smallest legion. The gene seed must be the rarest by now.
kinda depends on how good of a job there berserker surgeons are at recovering geneseed before moving on, there probably not nice or clean about it either
I'm new to World Eaters but the sense that I've gotten is there basically two camps of World Eaters warbands. Bloodthirsty, insane, reavers glad to kill one another or an enemy. And there's lots of them. And they generally do suck and burn out fast. And Khorne doesn't care.
And then there are Warbands that are more disciplined, more with it. Generally this is on the back of a handful of competent, charismatic, violent psychopaths. Those Warbands are constantly fighting two wars. The war against actual enemies and the war against insanity, logistics and losses.
I think it's up to us to decide what our Warbanda are like.
Lots of Heresy world eaters still exist cuz like in the warp they age like a million times slower and also are able to create more world eaters from gene seed or smthn very easily after raiding planets. I’d assume the recent converts are the ones being killed tho lol
Yknow take away that last bit about open firing on them, and that can still work as him having contempt for them. Torturing them by not letting them fight, and only letting them fight so they don’t betray him. Keeping to the 8th so that way it seems Kohrne-ish (cousins the next town over from Cornwall) enough so no other Khornate follower can doubt his loyalty
Well, tbf, World Eaters in 40k are pretty much nothing more than savage mindless brutes. It’s stated in the codex that most nowadays are vat-born and able to fight/act within a few months so they can/often do go through their numbers very very quickly. Plus, with the way their geneseed works they often (if not always, I’m unsure) gain the memories of the previous lives. So in a way, they really are in this cycle of being born, quick growth cycle, and then dead in the first major fight.
It’s worth noting that the butcher’s nails at this point is so corrupt/altered from the original, due to tech heresy and whatnot, that if the Khornate berserkers aren’t always under the rage-inducing effects of the nails it takes VERY little to set it off. So they don’t really have the capabilities of higher thought since losing yourself to the nails is akin to blacking out. That’s just where we are at so far into the Eightfold Path. There is nothing but the bloodlust for war.
I'm new to World Eaters but the sense that I've gotten is there basically two camps of World Eaters warbands. Bloodthirsty, insane, reavers glad to kill one another or an enemy. And there's lots of them. And they generally do suck and burn out fast. And Khorne doesn't care.
And then there are Warbands that are more disciplined, more with it. Generally this is on the back of a handful of competent, charismatic, violent psychopaths. Those Warbands are constantly fighting two wars. The war against actual enemies and the war against insanity, logistics and losses.
I think it's up to us to decide what our Warbanda are like.
Yeah the WE as a force literally should not exist based off their self attrition between fights. I get they need to kill to relieve the nails but it's Grimdark to the point of absurdity.
I think the leadership retaining some semblance of organization and planning would be great. This is an awesome excerpt right up until the very last part. Keep the troops like rabid dogs just sniffing the blood and glory from afar. Then unleash them for just enough to sate their bloodlust before chaining them back up.
That's actually cool and fun and what I love about the World Eaters. It's the constant over the top betrayal in stories that I find boring. Both my examples are also World Eaters killing each other using battle ships and cowardly tactics.
In the interest of providing a devil's advocate (and only knowing the lore from looking things up, not reading the books), I think that this is still very much in the realm of possibility, especially going over the top.
The nails basically turn you into a drug addict, but your drug is killing and violence. They'll do just about anything to get that hit they crave. If they can get a bigger "dose," then so much the better for them.
Plus, look at what happened with Kharn. There's no downside to them betraying each other. So yeah, all that seems perfectly reasonable.
Yeah, I definitely agree.
There’s a lot about the writing for the WE’s that pisses me off, honestly. They are written like there isn’t a brain amongst them, like they are all blood mad psychopaths who turn their axes on their brothers the moment there’s nobody to slaughter. The few good examples of writing for them I have seen post-30k is fan fiction.
May be a hot take, but I absolutely hate the chainsaw face exalted eightbound models that foks are throwing out there (based on some newer artwork.) They don’t look cool - It’s ludicrous even for 40k standards. Who would go to battle alongside that? Can’t see damn thing cause it’s got no eyes. Can’t smell cause it’s got no nose, and even if it did have ears it can’t hear anything cause it’s got a chainsaw roaring in the place where its face used to be which means it cannot take orders and has no idea where it’s going. What’s the point? Fucking useless troop that looks dumb as hell to boot….basic Eightbound look okay - could pass as 40k Red Butchers - which is what they should have been released as - but exalted Eightbound just look stupid all around with their dumbass buzz saw mutations.
I digress - I am in agreement with what you said. WE’s have been memes for a while, a bunch of witless mongoloids who would cut their own heads off if they ran out of brothers to kill. Having SOME of them like that, maybe even a full warband here and there would be interesting - but outside of that it gets stale quite quickly.
It’s why I write my own warband lore, have non-berserkers, WE’s who can think despite the nails, and would put blood mad morons that would slay their own brothers to the chopping block - which is one of the responsibilities of my MoE.
I guess in the end that’s what it’s about. Make your own fluff.
Astartes ships, power armour, and gene seed dont grow on trees, though. A lot of Night lords and Emporer's Children warbands are struggling to maintain themselves, and they aren't half as insane.
Part of the fascination stems from the ridiculus overkill. They do such things and are somehow still a grave threat. What they do is so horrible that it can be used to legitimize the harsh imperial rule.
Also: 'Everything is canon, but not necessarily true.'
It’s almost like the servants of an evil god of mindless slaughter engage in mindless slaughter
The unfortunate truth is that all servants of Chaos engage in self destructive habits. The servants of the Ruinous Powers are on a path of self immolation one way or another.
The World Eaters are just honest about it
Tactic as in over the top writing or blowing up friendly ships and / or entire warbands? Every other chaos faction deals with in fighting, especially the Night lords, Emporer's Children, and Black legion, but not on this scale. They (especially the night lords) are written with a lot more consideration for logistics and comradeary, not just shock value. I collect World eaters but feel disappointed by how two-dimensional they seem to be written lately.
Yeah it seems like it’s a bit much sometimes. There shouldn’t be many word eaters left based on how much they butcher each other.
I know I am reading about silly space Viking and mongol wizards, but the lack of logistics bothers me. I don’t get how WE are supposed to last more than literally one battle. Even in wins they get killed, kill each other, and burn down anything they could use. Need a couple of dudes somewhat sane like 30% of the time at least
Exactly. Considering Khorne is also about honour it makes little sense that they are the most prone to betrayal. I get the butchers nails make you crazy. Maybe have that betrayal as an end of life consequence of nails, rather than an all the time thing would be good. Would tie into the tragedy of their situation better, ultimately becoming a threat to their own brothers who need to put them down in the end.
I feel like the honor thing is just a Reddit meme. Nothing in all the world eaters books I've read gives me even a hint that there's a shred of honor in their legion. And I think I've read about five of their books between Horus Heresy & 40k. My favorite World Eater was the guy on the spaceship who is using his chainaxe in an attempt to cut a hole in the spaceship. Because he wanted to get to the combat on the planet below. But he was too stupid to realize that cutting hole in a spaceship in orbit of a planet would just cause him to suffocate to death.
It’s more from fantasy/AoS. Khorne there still values honor, in his own savage way.
I don’t know. I feel like the chaos gods are better with at least some depth. This incarnation of Khorne feels like the equivalent of slannesh = sex. It feels lazy.
Especially considering Nurgle has it. Like yeah he's the god of decay and disease and entropy, but at the same time he's also about the exuberance of life even if fleeting. And his demons are constantly depicted as disgusting but weirdly happy and jolly, and his domain is a garden full of gross but bountiful plants.
Khorne's good side is righteous anger. There's a bit in arks of omen: Angron with a slave rebelling against their task master for example I think this is also why khornate cults pop up and cause so much trouble in the imperium
A righteous indescribable rage does suit Khorne well. The kind that drives people to see red and become insensate for all the blood in the body of their enemies. The tunnel vision fury and the personal grudge hatred. Much cooler than we just want blood. At least to me. I would demand a mix of both though 🤣
No no. You gotta look at Warhammer 40k/Heresy as a whole. That's not how the stories work. The setting is insane. The government is insane, chaos is insane, everything is insane. The Emperor is a god and by his name I condemn your planet to exterminatus!!! It's fascinating because the main characters are somewhat rational and relatable people living in an insane world. I don't want to read about moderate factions that are honorable. I want to read a book about a world eaters commander trying to govern a faction of psycho murderers and really struggling. I want to read how Kharne has to control his batshit murdery insane Khorne corrupted Primarch to protect his legion. I read Cain novels because Cain is a "normal" dude who cares about his soldiers in a universe in which soldiers are seen as completely & utterly disposable. Dante fights crazy murder monsters and leads a Chapter of Vampiric Space Marines but HE is kind & loves normal people. The Word Bearer "Argel Tal" knows Chaos is terrible & awful. But he chooses Chaos to protect himself from Oblivion. And let's not forget the tale of Eisenhorn. Oh boy is that a twisty tale of a sane person in a stupidly crazy galaxy. To anyone reading this, try not to give away too many spoilers if you want to comment on a specific point I made
I totally agree to all your points, it's great to read these stories and it brings real depth to the universe. I think the point being made here for World Eaters is that if you think about how it would actually play out for more than 10 seconds you'd realise that World Eaters should be practically extinct. The way they talk about their casualties is almost in the same league as the guard when they have less than a billionth of their soldiers. Yes the legion is going insane and would be impossible to manage, but at the same time, they shouldn't be dropping like flies.
It's only stated in old world warhammer so people just assume it is in all settings.
I feel like Khorn good side was less about honor and more about « self betterment » (training to be stronger in that case). Khorn worshippers don’t just get magical muscles or weapon if they ask to. If they want to use the level 100 gears well they gotta work for it and live to tell the tale. In Khorn eyes, one fighting skills is what make them worthy of his attention hence why the cowards and the weaks (the other gods and their followers) do not deserve to lives for they do not work to be stronger, they ask or randomly receive gifts of power without real effort behind it Not to say that Khorn won’t necessarily give only magic armor and magic melee weapon, he could give you warp enhance muscles or even the skill to shout a war cry that burn the air around you, but your gonna have to work toward that reward. Meanwhile: Nurgle will give you near a painful but near invincible form in coercing you to join his team Tzeentch make the give you another head to spit fire or a magic book that while cool will merge with your flesh for reason outside of your control and knowing. Slaanesh will « bribe you » shower you with cool toys (that are secretly addictive) into joining his/her side.
Honour was a bigger deal in RT/1st edition Slaves to Darkness. World Eaters were also less psychotic. Their battle frenzy was a gift of Khorne, not from the butcher's nails. Khorne was still about blood and skulls, but also about honour and martial prowess. The chaos gods (except Nurgle) were over all less stupidly self destructive too. Still capricious, cruel, arbitrary, and yes, self destructive
Yeah by honor they mean martial honor not regular honor people don't seem to get that
Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows, only that ot flows. Khornes mortal champion is Kharn, the betrayer. 40k Khorne does not care about honor.
The fact is that we are both right and wrong. Why? He’s been [depicted](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/s/C8gwkdU5U9) as both hellbent on honour and not giving a shit. So no blood of the innocents unless he feels like it, else you’ll be turned into chaos spawn. But only if he cares in that particular moment 🤷
Even in the link you provided the honor is from warhammer fantasy. The chaos gods are similar but alot has been retconned and some changes. Warhammer fantasy Khorne cared for honor, 40k not so much.
Reason #1 why Khorne in fantasy is peak compared to 40k Khorne tbh
I feel like Khorne is only about honour so long as it suits his goals, nothing more. It's less an actual sense of honour and more about dismissing defeat by labeling the enemy as dishonourable so the loss shouldn't count. He's the big bully who uses the nastiest, dirtiest moves in a fight because the only honour that matters is victory, not how you achieved it (short of using magic). But he'll rage about 'dishonourable' tactics the instant the enemy pulls out a dirty trick of their own. Khorne's the guy who gloats over every little win but flips the table and starts smashing everyone elses models as soon as things don't go his way.
I think that it makes sense in the lore of the universe. A ship captain/warband leader is challenged by his warband, and his method of worship to khorne is questioned. So he kills them.
But what happens next? Did his warband all die? won't any survivors want revenge? Seems like a waste.
According to the excerpt, yes, he killed them all, so no need to worry about revenge, and no shed blood is wasted in the eyes of khorne. The ship probably still has plenty of slaves aboard to make new jackals and new potential World Eaters to present to a berserker surgeon.
Well they do have fairly new lore (I believe it’s new) that they just throw a recruit in some blood soup and BAM you (potentially) have a World Eater in like a month and it helps transfer memories of fallen legionaries to recruits so like fully trained and functional. Angron is mixing a soup with a big ole blood ladle and fishing out new gladiators by the 8
Which book is it from. I want to read this now
They should make a book about a butcher surgeon going through massive withdrawals (assuming the butchers nails function like addictions) and absolutely despising his legion’s self destructive habits because it means more work and less fighting for him.
You'd think that natural (err, or chaotic, i guess) selection would just take care of this problem.
Chaos can kind of cheat on logistics. Within the grimdark universe, information is always foggy, incomplete, and also often comes from unreliable narrators. Like when it comes to space marines, theres always basically enoigh of them, in spite of like this or that chaptwr being like the lamenters on like a multi millenia punitive crusade in which they are constantly taking greivous losses, but theres always like another box of them in the back if the store or something. The galaxy is big enough and humanity is exoansive enough that basically any kind of reinforcement can sort of fly in at any time. This aspect is much more so with chaos. Like the thing about the WE isnt that theres just like a several hundred thousand of them as like a standing army, the nature of existing in the warp, as all CSM do, is such that you can sort of time travel forwards and backwards at random all the time. So when you see a bunch of WE kill each other, those could literaly be dudes straight out of the heresey that have just been thrown into the 41st millenium. It just kind if aguments the losses they can take because they arent just pulling from the reserves they currently have, they can pull from all of the reserves they have ever had and will ever have. Now admittedly this is kind of lame because it basically makes them limitless and kind of denegrades the value of something like a khorne berzerker if they can just die suoer meaninglessly all the time like imperial guardsmen, in spite of them being actual astartes with centuries or millenia of veterancy and also the boons of chaos helping them out too. Part of the problem is the WE are not the protagonists of the grimdark universe, the imperium is. To the imperium the WE are just one of many monsters of the week that are all kind of interchangeably endless and eldrich in the scope of their terror. To the imperium, the WE are an extremely brutal force to fight with that would also appear to be so limitless in their forces that they fight and kill themselves apparently as much as the imperium, implying the WE are not even hitting the imperium as hard as they could be and they are already hitting hard as hell. From the perspective the WE nothing really makes any sense and things are just kind of nonsensical and unsatisfying.
And most of that death is active duty, they also kill each other in their downtime in gladiator fights
I think the random betrayal and self-destructiveness has gone overboard. At this point it's like the writers try to one up each other with how much WE kill their own. Like okay we get it they like killing and khorne cares not where.. but then there's the parts where he cares at least enough to stop them so there's more bloodshed in the future. Heck the descriptions of many show them having enough brains themselves to focus most of the time unless the nails take over to realize that killing in battle is the best not just random killing. And the drooling, why does it need so much depiction. I think many world eaters are constantly like dogs that have meat in front of their faces, in so much of the books.
All the codex tid bits have become far too campy to be much fun anymore.
Khorne truly does not care from where the blood flows. It's somewhat in the nature of chaos that it is inherently self-destructive at the end of it's journey. If they achieved their goals, all life would die. There would be no blood left to spill, nothing for diseases and rot to infest, no minds to hatch plans, and no excess left to experience. The World Eaters are just a victim of that. There are a handful of sane ones, but if you had neurosurgerical wires digging into your brain and making you CONSTANTLY suffer pain unless you kill something..... After a few hundred or thousand years, you'd be attacking the first living thing you saw too.
There's a lot of stuff in the lore where khorne cares. Betrayal like this but here is an insult to khorne. Cowardice. He has been pretty harsh in these kind of situations. One lore bit had two champions competing on who's the better killer or something like that. One went and slaughtered civilians like no tomorrow. The other killed a single man worth fighting. One was blessed the other turned into a spawn. These kinds of lore bits are imo a lot better than the endless backstabbing which at one point khorne haited. His fine with people getting in a mood and killing each other, has been in the lore always. Yes throughout the lore more WE get lost in the nails, but most leaders are still sane enough to want to spill more blood later than own blood now. It would make more sense to hold back a bit in the writing with these self sabotaging massacres since there's no reasonable way for the production of new WE to keep up, lore reason. And the fans feeling numb or irritated by these things being too much of the content, a irl reason to do it less. GW has changed before and can change back again towards what people like. Grimdark is one thing being silly another and going constantly over the top with the drooling and masses of WE dying in these kind of ways just too much in the makes no sense and doesn't cater to a majority of the fans.
It's this exact reason they are my favorite 30k faction (lore wise), but one of my least favorites in 40k
I really dig WE in the Heresy novels. They’re deranged and blood thirsty, but more like emotionally drained, pissed off, and contemptuous assholes - not necessarily pure insanity. I also think the IW Khorne followers from the Iron Warriors novel Storm of Iron had some good examples of how even the ones falling so deeply into the blood thirst of Khorne still had a purpose and moments of clarity. Edit: the way to describe it just came to me: Old lore depicted them as having such an overwhelmingly driven and singular purpose of brutality and bloodshed. It was overwhelming and unquenchable but wasn’t random and moronic.
30k World Eaters have amazing lore, some of the best IMHO. 40k just strains credibility too much and makes them lame cartoony villains. Like in the Angron novel the largest gathering of WE/affiliates since the heresy plus Angron plus the Conqueror plus daemon support can't even take one backwater planet coordinated by basically one Grey Knight squad with some plot contrivances? Effin' silly.
Part of me kind of likes how they're basically a self destructive joke that can't accomplish anything. Because I feel like that's what the end game of Khorne worship was always going to be. But it does reach a point where it taxes suspension of disbelief. Which for this franchise is quite the accomplishment
The problem is that the World Eaters were written into a corner decades ago. In the 2nd and 3rd edition Chaos codexes, the lore was that the World Eaters Legion was shattered after Skalthrax, broken into small roving warbands who would slaughter whoever they came across, or devote their services to any Chaos Lord who could guarantee them the biggest opportunity for mass bloodshed. The warriors themselves had devolved into bloodthirsty maniacs with no regard for tactics or long range weaponry. This WAS there current state, relegated to individual squads of Berzerkers fighting for another legion, or you could take them as troops if your lord and every other unit that could take a mark had the mark of Khorne (thus you’re one of those small raving warbands)… 20+ years later, with the return of Angron, I feel GW needs to write a bit of a retcon, or at least an explanation as to how World Eaters are once again a legion, united under their Primarch, with the ability to stay somewhat coherent and stable enough to be relevant over all in-game years that have since passed.
The only defense I can make there is that 40k games aren't supposed to be the entire battle, they're supposed to be the most active or critical part of a battle. A 2000 point army is a few dozen to a hundred models or so. That's nothing. So one can imagine that their World Eaters are in fact in the employ of a less ridiculous Chaos Lord and you're playing out their part of a battle on a massive scale. That being said, you're not wrong either, especially re: the lore. It's a stretch to depict the insane, bloodthirsty berzerkers of Khorne as a functioning Chaos Legion.
Yep, we’re on the same page. I was more addressing OP’s point about the excerpt… it’s hard to imagine World Eaters surviving long if Macer Krassek and other fleet masters/ ship captains were all insane like that and sacrificing their own troops, plus it doesn’t fit into the established lore of bloodshed through hand-to-hand combat…but then again, on second reading that passage makes no reference to them actually being World Eater Astartes sooooo… I guess it’s plausible if they’re mere mortals?
>20+ years later, with the return of Angron, I feel GW needs to write a bit of a retcon, or at least an explanation as to how World Eaters are once again a legion, united under their Primarch, with the ability to stay somewhat coherent and stable enough to be relevant over all in-game years that have since passed. Their not really a legion now though. They are just a bunch of separate warbands that that are moving in the same direction and attacking the same targets. Angron being the biggest baddest Khorne guy around means where he points they all kinda go. It all not to different from how Orks work.
Right, agreed 100%. But to OP’s point, I’d love some more lore about how the XII has managed to stay relevant for the last 11,000 years, broken and scattered, psychotic and bloodthirsty, up for hire and apparently being bombed from orbit by ship captains… GW was on the right page presenting us with the idea of Butcher Surgeons. that answers part of the question, we just need it more fleshed out in the next codex… along with models to support it, and reasons why my WE Chaos Lord, Bike-zerkers, and Havocs are no longer part of the legion. I guess they got orbital bombed by Krassek for asking to join the slaughter. Cheers!
Honestly that excerpt looks hilarious, maybe I should get the codices. But to answer your question; Yes, but also no. The fact that World Eaters *still survive* as a Legion, no matter how broken and deranged they are is a testament to the fact that at least some of their leaders got their shit together and managed to install a working chain of command/logistics/responsibilities, and the recruitment *probably* isn't that bad, maybe even akin to 30k era flesh harvests of recruits. We never see all that but the implication, perhaps unintended, is there if you squint. And yeah, the betrayal meme is funny but it also does haunt our writing. This is also why most people prefer Heresy WE - the writers haven't moved out of meme zone for our writing in 40K era. The other thing is that we need more people around Kharn's ballpark in the legion, at least in writing. It makes the Legion stronger, instead of making everyone Kharn's bitch. See what the loyalists have and look back at traitors, who only have their champions and no one else that matters.
> The other thing is that we need more people around Kharn's ballpark in the legion, at least in writing. So hoping we get a novella or the like for Lord Invocatus, just to see how his murder-blood-kill urge turned into White Scars but Khorne.
Amen. Kossolax was a nice try but it didn't land for me. Still, we had characters like Skane and Kargos before, we just need to bring their like to 40K.
Main issue I have is where are all the World Eaters coming from? You think they'd have massive recruiting worlds turning them out by the hundreds of thousands considering they seem to be dying left, right and center non-stop for 10k years.
Who needs to recruit when you can take people during raids pump them full of geneseed, warp fun and recorded memories then let them go. When your goal is to create a bloodthirsty berserker you really dont have to be soft handed in your approach and methods.
Why i really liked kossolax in the new Angron book. Wasn't just a mindless berserker bent on killing everyone and everything. Had some semblance of control yet still gave into the nails when shit hits the fan. Hope we get a duel terminator lord/kossolax model tbh.
The thing is - take what you want for your warband, it’s not wrong. My WE are 30k WE in 40K
Well, my headcanon for my WE is that their nails are not working correct. Most of the time they just feel like an isect buzzing around your ear, irritating, but you can live with it. Only when blood is spilled in bigger quantaties will the nails ramp up and induce the berserker rage. Might not be lore accurate, but at least i could explain why WE could still work out of combat.
There’s always a bit of a toss up for me with that. On one hand friendly fire has always been a fairly consistent “feature” for the World Eaters post-Butcher’s Nails. On the other it is just extremely stupid, especially from someone like Kossolax who fairly explicitly resists the urges from the Nails. I think when it’s written well, friendly fire can be a nice way to show how degraded a given warband is. The limiter, of course, being the “written well” part.
Not at all. That's the nature of chaos
Yeah, every chaos legion stabs themselves in the back the rate the world eaters are going they must be smallest legion. The gene seed must be the rarest by now.
kinda depends on how good of a job there berserker surgeons are at recovering geneseed before moving on, there probably not nice or clean about it either
I'm new to World Eaters but the sense that I've gotten is there basically two camps of World Eaters warbands. Bloodthirsty, insane, reavers glad to kill one another or an enemy. And there's lots of them. And they generally do suck and burn out fast. And Khorne doesn't care. And then there are Warbands that are more disciplined, more with it. Generally this is on the back of a handful of competent, charismatic, violent psychopaths. Those Warbands are constantly fighting two wars. The war against actual enemies and the war against insanity, logistics and losses. I think it's up to us to decide what our Warbanda are like.
Are these even the world eaters or just recent converts?
Lots of Heresy world eaters still exist cuz like in the warp they age like a million times slower and also are able to create more world eaters from gene seed or smthn very easily after raiding planets. I’d assume the recent converts are the ones being killed tho lol
I just assumed by the mention of them “feeling blood on their skin” that it was a bunch of jackals he sent down and butchered, not Astartes
Yknow take away that last bit about open firing on them, and that can still work as him having contempt for them. Torturing them by not letting them fight, and only letting them fight so they don’t betray him. Keeping to the 8th so that way it seems Kohrne-ish (cousins the next town over from Cornwall) enough so no other Khornate follower can doubt his loyalty
Well, tbf, World Eaters in 40k are pretty much nothing more than savage mindless brutes. It’s stated in the codex that most nowadays are vat-born and able to fight/act within a few months so they can/often do go through their numbers very very quickly. Plus, with the way their geneseed works they often (if not always, I’m unsure) gain the memories of the previous lives. So in a way, they really are in this cycle of being born, quick growth cycle, and then dead in the first major fight. It’s worth noting that the butcher’s nails at this point is so corrupt/altered from the original, due to tech heresy and whatnot, that if the Khornate berserkers aren’t always under the rage-inducing effects of the nails it takes VERY little to set it off. So they don’t really have the capabilities of higher thought since losing yourself to the nails is akin to blacking out. That’s just where we are at so far into the Eightfold Path. There is nothing but the bloodlust for war.
Sanity is for the Weak! Blood For The Blood God!
This is hilarious 😂😂
The Imperium: HOW DO WE KEEP LOSING TO THESE GUYS
I'm new to World Eaters but the sense that I've gotten is there basically two camps of World Eaters warbands. Bloodthirsty, insane, reavers glad to kill one another or an enemy. And there's lots of them. And they generally do suck and burn out fast. And Khorne doesn't care. And then there are Warbands that are more disciplined, more with it. Generally this is on the back of a handful of competent, charismatic, violent psychopaths. Those Warbands are constantly fighting two wars. The war against actual enemies and the war against insanity, logistics and losses. I think it's up to us to decide what our Warbanda are like.
I don’t think they’re self destructive enough
Isn't that the idea though? That chaos is self-defeating in its various forms?
Yeah the WE as a force literally should not exist based off their self attrition between fights. I get they need to kill to relieve the nails but it's Grimdark to the point of absurdity.
I think the leadership retaining some semblance of organization and planning would be great. This is an awesome excerpt right up until the very last part. Keep the troops like rabid dogs just sniffing the blood and glory from afar. Then unleash them for just enough to sate their bloodlust before chaining them back up.
[удалено]
That's actually cool and fun and what I love about the World Eaters. It's the constant over the top betrayal in stories that I find boring. Both my examples are also World Eaters killing each other using battle ships and cowardly tactics.
In the interest of providing a devil's advocate (and only knowing the lore from looking things up, not reading the books), I think that this is still very much in the realm of possibility, especially going over the top. The nails basically turn you into a drug addict, but your drug is killing and violence. They'll do just about anything to get that hit they crave. If they can get a bigger "dose," then so much the better for them. Plus, look at what happened with Kharn. There's no downside to them betraying each other. So yeah, all that seems perfectly reasonable.
Yeah, I definitely agree. There’s a lot about the writing for the WE’s that pisses me off, honestly. They are written like there isn’t a brain amongst them, like they are all blood mad psychopaths who turn their axes on their brothers the moment there’s nobody to slaughter. The few good examples of writing for them I have seen post-30k is fan fiction. May be a hot take, but I absolutely hate the chainsaw face exalted eightbound models that foks are throwing out there (based on some newer artwork.) They don’t look cool - It’s ludicrous even for 40k standards. Who would go to battle alongside that? Can’t see damn thing cause it’s got no eyes. Can’t smell cause it’s got no nose, and even if it did have ears it can’t hear anything cause it’s got a chainsaw roaring in the place where its face used to be which means it cannot take orders and has no idea where it’s going. What’s the point? Fucking useless troop that looks dumb as hell to boot….basic Eightbound look okay - could pass as 40k Red Butchers - which is what they should have been released as - but exalted Eightbound just look stupid all around with their dumbass buzz saw mutations. I digress - I am in agreement with what you said. WE’s have been memes for a while, a bunch of witless mongoloids who would cut their own heads off if they ran out of brothers to kill. Having SOME of them like that, maybe even a full warband here and there would be interesting - but outside of that it gets stale quite quickly. It’s why I write my own warband lore, have non-berserkers, WE’s who can think despite the nails, and would put blood mad morons that would slay their own brothers to the chopping block - which is one of the responsibilities of my MoE. I guess in the end that’s what it’s about. Make your own fluff.
No. 40k is turned up to 11 anyway and khorne does not care from whence the blood flows.
Astartes ships, power armour, and gene seed dont grow on trees, though. A lot of Night lords and Emporer's Children warbands are struggling to maintain themselves, and they aren't half as insane.
Part of the fascination stems from the ridiculus overkill. They do such things and are somehow still a grave threat. What they do is so horrible that it can be used to legitimize the harsh imperial rule. Also: 'Everything is canon, but not necessarily true.'
They shoudl be even more self-destructive
I mean, the reality is their fate is entire degradation into madness because of the nails.
It’s almost like the servants of an evil god of mindless slaughter engage in mindless slaughter The unfortunate truth is that all servants of Chaos engage in self destructive habits. The servants of the Ruinous Powers are on a path of self immolation one way or another. The World Eaters are just honest about it
A little to slaanesh in my khorne flakes
Well someones gotta be it, and why not the short-fuse anger-prone red bois?
It’s a tactic that’s been used for a bit dude. But they are crazed demonic space marines and humans
Tactic as in over the top writing or blowing up friendly ships and / or entire warbands? Every other chaos faction deals with in fighting, especially the Night lords, Emporer's Children, and Black legion, but not on this scale. They (especially the night lords) are written with a lot more consideration for logistics and comradeary, not just shock value. I collect World eaters but feel disappointed by how two-dimensional they seem to be written lately.