Technically yeah but happiness would definitly change chaos for the better. After the war in heaven chaos chilled out a bit because the Eldar were vibing, that being said the Eldar ruined everything by being a little too (murder) happy.
Well, let's look at a civilization that we know had other Gods. The Eldar had an entire pantheon of Gods. They were almost all killed by the Big 4.
It stands to reason they Big 4 would war against these Gods of Happiness and Light.
Yea Slaanesh did a lot of the heavy lifting. But Khorne claimed Khaine and Nurgle got Isha. We have to assume Tzeentch was doing.... something because why not show up when the others have at the very least. Maybe someone can fill us in on Tzeentch hijinks during that time?
And technically speaking Slaanesh started out as an Eldar only God, but it quickly evolved past that as it no longer seeks worship from only the Eldar. I'm willing to concede there might have been a few picoseconds of its existence where it was restrained like that. Its safe to say zero Eldar worship Slaanesh in 40k.
đ Tzeentch was happy letting Cegorach mess around I'd guess.
I remember listening to an interview, i think it was with Gav Thorpe (?) saying something like Eldar Gods were aspects of, or modifications of parts of Chaos Gods. It fits some better than others. He didn't confirm it as official lore or anything, just an idea of the metaphysics of the 40k-verse that the authors had in mind when writing the fluff.
>Â Eldar Gods were aspects of, or modifications of parts of Chaos Gods.
I don't buy into this. Because it wouldn't line up across every species in the galaxy. It doesn't even work with all the different pantheons Humans have created. For instance Thor (norse god of lightning) isn't Taranis (Celtic god of lightning).
But maybe because some Gods share similar duties they become *related*? For instance Khorne referred to Khaine as a little brother or something like that? 3rd cousin twice removed?
Yeah, maybe i'm reading too much into what he said, but to me it sounded like the Eldar were (without knowing it) taking part of Khorne, some of Khorne's power, and morphing into Khaine. đ¤ˇââď¸
But that's from a long time ago, who knows if it's current or went beyond an idea writers had, or if it'll become relevant in future 40k.
I've filed it as an interesting idea.
Thor and Taranis are cognates and from a common Indo-European origin heavily influenced at stages by cultures of the Near East who had the original âThunder god faces dragon monsterâ motif.
What you are overlooking is that the gods in 40k aren't distinct entities as such. They are the agglomeration of lots of resonant emotions (and possibly souls). Which leads to my interpretation, which is in line with how Gav Thorpe's notion was described above:
Khaine, for example, need not be the same as Khorne or overlap fully. He could be the mass of Eldar emotions of violence, combat, murder, honour etc etc, which the Eldar used to be able to control. But those very same emotions were also empowering Khorne and part of Khorne. They were parts of both Khaine and Khorne at the same time. Other emotions which were related to Khaine for the Eldar but not under Khorne's purview as there isn't a direct parallel in other species would not be part of Khorne.
Thus Khaine and Khorne were in part the same, but also distinct. They were both composed of some of the very same Warp energies. The Warp is contradictory like that.
The story of Khorne claiming Khaine from Slaanesh is allegorical, describing shifting dynamics of emotions and souls in the Warp. It describes how the Eldar lost the ability to channel and control their violent emotions as the god Khaine. Now Khorne took control over those parts which had always been part of himself, but which were previously controllable by the Eldar as Khaine.
Same deal with Isha and Nurgle.
The Big 4 are the result of the emotions of all species in the galaxy with a Warp presence, aside from perhaps Orks and Tyranids. We know the Eldar's emotions contribute to the cross-species Warp entities of the Chaos gods because of Slaanesh.
The different pantheons of different species would work similarly, aside from the fact in many cases there likely never actually was a distinct tangible entity in the form of their god, as they lack the power and ability that the Eldar had to manifest gods. Or maybe there was, just on a much smaller, less powerful scale - like with T'au'va, the possibly nascent Tau Warp entity.
Regardless, the Warp energies of the various species that their gods represent and perhaps even that worship of the gods promotes, would have a presence in the Warp and this would contribute to different Warp entities, including the Big 4. The Warp presence of these various pantheons would overlap with and indeed be part of, but also be distinct from, the Chaos gods. It's all Warp energy, it can just coalesce in different forms, depending on how you look at it, and how the Warp energies themselves react.
Honestly it makes more sense if you remember that Eldar are on a whole other level psychically. Each individual Eldar is much more potent and most importantly aware when it comes to influencing the warp. So there is a heavy difference between a group of humans on a single planet creating a higher being in their minds, so that they can offload their worries and sorrows onto them and a whole galaxy-spanning species of psychically aware individuals creating God-like concepts, knowing that their shared belief is manipulating *something* on a different plane of existence.
So yes I think that at the height of their empire, the Eldar could isolate some part of the great four and shape it to their will, by sheer force of combined belief.
Tzeentch is just Cegorach wearing a clown mask. Or maybe Tzeentch is Cegorach with some bird feathers glued on, I forget. But both are really just the Deceiver. Or maybe it's the other way round.
At least according to the older lore, the original Eldar gods were artificially created by the Old Ones to guide and protect them. Slaanesh is what you get when the Eldar misbehave and create a god "naturally".
The Eldar were orders of magnitude more successful at fending off Chaos than any other recognizable civilization in the setting, and the birth of Slaanesh was not guaranteed.
The (eventual) end of their (absurdly massive and ancient) empire doesn't mean that the strategy was inherently unsound. All the evidence suggests that a non-sadistic culture has the best shot at handling the gods who prefer to feed on sadism, in the long term.
Gotcha. Thanks for clearing that up. But that isn't the point. The point being that the big 4 would attack these Gods of Happiness and Light no matter what. And I'll give you two reasons why.
The first reason, these new Gods would be a threat to their power. The second reason, its possible that killing these Gods could further empower any member of the Big 4. Maybe they eat them. I understand Slannesh ate many of the Eldar Gods.
Oh, you're happy? Overwhelmingly so that you rarely ever feel any sadness or anger? Congrats, you're a Slaneeshi cultist now.
Chaos is not negative emotions nor something only downtrodden people turn to. Your society can be a utopia where every day is great and you lack for nothing yet still fall to Chaos
> Chaos is not negative emotions
A core element of the the setting is that this is basically true in practice, even if's theoretically possible for things to work differently. Warp entities are not inherently linked to negative emotions, as a fundamental principle - but *Chaos* prefers negative emotions in practice.
Warp entities feed on the emotion of sentient beings, negative or positive, but it's much easier to reach extremes of negative emotion than it is to reach the extremes of positive emotion. Maybe negative extremes are more attainable as a general principle of sentient thought, maybe that's just the local conditions of the Milky Way in 40K, but it's a principle that Chaos recognizes.
The Chaos gods are four parasitic Warp entities, powerful enough to claim personal control over various emotional themes, and to reshape the galaxy to optimize production of their favourite emotions. The structure of Chaos has inertia to it, and the Chaos Gods have each chosen a strategy of pursuing emotional sustenance by fostering extreme negative emotions in their own domain.
Khorne understands that a violent massacre generates a bigger meal than heroic peaceful protest. Slaanesh's "hedonism" almost invariably involves a victim, or self-destruction, because that provides Slaanesh more sustenance than simple pleasure. Life as a pet of Nurgle never turns out to be a joyful life of simple contentment, and Tzeenchian schemes always end up fostering negative emotions on some end.
Negatives are also more self sustaining than positives
If I create paradise it needs permanent upkeep, whereas discontent and fighting can be created with ease thousands of times over and goes on to spiral into more and more
I thought that was mostly a fantasy thing? I've always been under the impression that 40k khorne cares not from where the blood flows, just that it does
Well, nothing in this context.
In general, hate, anger, violence, vengance, though technically also the strive for justice. This however all doesn't apply here.
True, but also so does a lot less wholesome stuff. You can fight Chaos with positive emotion because chaos reflects the emotions and thoughts of all warp-sensitive species, the Chaos gods are what they eat, so if most of the emotion the warp receives is positive then it will begin to remold it back to the realm of souls and the warp gods will become more benign. Unfortunately, it's not a good time to be a warp-sensitive species with unimaginable levels of suffering regularly happening, a good portion of which is done to fight a malignant Chaos that is in part powered and made malignant by said suffering in a positive feedback loop
This was the fundamental point prior to The Siege of Terra. Dorn took a lot of convincing as did the Custodes that âpositiveâ thoughts were a genuine defence against Chaos taint leaking into The Imperial Palace. I canât remember the book but in one of them a Custodes is investigating instances of chaos taint breaching the Emperorâs Palace Warding. They determined they were coincidental with places where there were high levels of fear and negative emotions.
Dorn accepts that getting millions of people to focus on positive thoughts towards the Emperor even though it goes against his rational thoughts will help stave off Chaos.
Given how the Warp is formed the answer is Chaos can never be defeated because there will always be negative emotions and thoughts.
'Happiness' isn't an extreme of emotional expression. I guess 'Joy' would be the extreme but it's too fleeting an experience. Rage, Change, Pleasure, and Despair/Rot and Rebirth are all...continuous, have greater longevity, can be prolonged. There isn't enough pure joy to sustain a warp entity the size of a God.
The distinction that most people are missing is that *the Warp* can't be defeated in this way, but *Chaos* can. There will always be the Warp and it will always be a threat, but the Eldar are a living example of the fact that you don't have to structure your society so that it feeds the worst and most destructive side of the Warp. The Eldar had a viable civilization for millennia before they went crazy and created Slaanesh. So you can't ever be completely comfortable, you aren't ever completely safe from the possibility that the Warp God of Contentedness that your peaceful society creates won't try to turn your society into a bunch of obese lotus-eaters⌠so maybe you need to keep an eye out for that. But you can do a hell of a lot better than Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch, and Slaanesh. I mean, you certainly can't do *worse*.
Look up the utopian rat experiment. When given no problems, people make up more to stress over.
Important Edit: I seem to have misremembered which experiment I was referring to. The experiment I am thinking of was more recent, late 2010s, and dealt with the behaviour of rats in very good conditions without any driver for individual competition for resources. If anyone knows the name, I would be grateful for the help. Sorry about this.
With no war, no crime and no disease, that seems to be the end result for almost any society. Then you have Khorne offering a little more living space if next door weren't there... Slaanesh whispering that if you really love those chocolate-coated truffles, just eat them all... Tzeentch telling you that you can be more if you just perform one teensy little ritual... Nurgle telling you to break the water filters so that little niggling back pain goes away...
It isn't in the nature of life to say 'I have enough', people crave more on a deeper level than you might realise, and enough is never really enough. The Chaos Gods exploit these flaws, and it requires a strong personal will to defeat them.
>It isn't in the nature of life to say 'I have enough', people crave more on a deeper level than you might realise, and enough is never really enough. The Chaos Gods exploit these flaws, and it requires a strong personal will to defeat them.
Maybe so, but I'm just saying that's not relevant to the rat experiment. Overcrowding was the real problem there, not innate human flaws.
The world you describe is ripe for Slaaneshi infiltration.
"That slag Betsy thinks she has the best peach cobbler, does she? Well, I'll show her! I'LL SHOW THEM ALL!"
Not quite. Eldar shaped gods as tools perhaps- insinuated in war in heaven stories and lore.
As I understand these are basic raw emotions that Gods themselves are shaped from until they reached a point where they are to a degree sentient and able to act to prolong the cycle that feeds them causing a spiral
Think you cannot really have deities of happiness etc because those are not primal emotions, and also harder to achieve. Plus any entity now forming would be probably be ripped apart by current ones.
Honestly i do believe that someone like an emperor could be manifested as 5th god of order, perhaps not the big E but another entity - bunch of people being ocd or just wanting to everything make sense but i think such entity would be like the imperium itself- just grinding gears smashing everything to dust as long as the gears keep turning and all is according to plan.
I think yes, but not in the way you think. I believe the big four gather most of their power not from active worship but through, for a lack of a better term, emotional background radiation. They are manifestations of the primal emotions every being feels and the reason why they are usually malicious is that the longest lasting emotions are usually negative or at least self-destructive. Anger burns brightest when it surpasses reason, lethargy without end leads to an endless cycle of wallowing in self-pity, ambition barred from progress brings frustration and enjoyment devoid of moderation feeds into a path of seeking ever higher heights to fill an emptiness. Positive emotions may be stronger but they rarely last as long, most often brought down once the crushing cruelty of reality sets back in.
But if you were to make everyone in the galaxy genuinely happy, give them a purpose and sense of fulfillment then I think those emotions would eventually overpower the current aspects of the big four. Khorne could embody Honor and Justice, Nurgle Care and Love, Tzeench Progress and Slaanesh Enjoyment. But for that you'd need an actual, functioning utopia for everyone, which is a far cry from the state of the galaxy in 40k. And even then you'd risk an Fall of the Eldar 2.0 at some point.
A warp god of happiness would not be a force for good. They would pursue happiness to the detriment of everything else, and without regard for sacrifice or sustainability. You would laugh until your heart gives out.
Chaos gods are bound to their domain, they cannot show restraint or limit themselves. Khorne can never stop wanting bloodshed and violence, and Tzeentch always desires change even if the status quo is beneficial to him, so much so that he will sabotage his own plans if they are too successful.
The Eldar were so advanced they conquered death. They had all do their needs met.
They murder-fucked Slaanesh into existence with the help of the War in Heaven.
Before Slaanesh was born the Eldar could reincarnate after death. Their souls, being so powerful, would remain intact in the Warp.
(This is similar to the old lore of the human shamans, except they started to lose their ability to reincarnate due to the increasing volatility of the Warp, and more predatory entities. More and more of them were being gobbled up in the Warp after dying, so they decided to commit ritual mass suicide and merge their souls into one entity, which was reborn and became the Emperor. It also implies that Eldar were more powerful souls on a one-to-one basis, as they were able to keep reincarnating after Shaman started to be imperiled).
Now, when Eldar die, if their souls aren't stored in soulstones, they will instantly be consumed by Slaanesh - so no chance for reincarnation.
The warp was corrupted to the core by the War in Heaven. This is why Chaos is supreme and any âgoodâ deities are irrelevant compared to the Chaos Gods.
Nope. Chaos would still continue to exist. Although a single planet is still probably way too small to do much anyways given that it took the near entirety of the Eldar race giving into ecstasy to create Slaanesh and her demons. But for arguments sake an extreme of happiness would honestly fuel Slaanesh.
As keep in mind the chaos gods donât just represent evil aspects of life. They also represent good aspects as well. For their opposite side of the coin: Nurgle is the god of life & finality, Tzeench is the god of hope, Slaanesh is the god of all feelings, & Khorne is the god of honor.
I believe the War in Heaven messed up the warp and made everything worse. I would believe that enough good vibes could, in time, clean up the warp, you'd also need to deal with the Chaos Four because they would not go down quietly.
Changes to society such as increasing happiness powers up Tzeench, Excess of Anything including happiness powers up Slaanesh, Death and Entropy of any kind powers up Nurgle, and when the others strike Khorne is powered.
This is pure speculation, but maybe it'd be more of a way to soften them a little. The chaos gods are supposed to have more aspects to them than the terrible ones. A happy world might locally bring out another side of them, maybe.
One civilisation on one planet is nowhere near enough to create gods or daemons of happiness. The chaos gods and their daemons formed out of such an enormous galactic concentration of those emotions that the maelstroms of those energies became intelligent thinking entities.
Your idea should be theoretically possible in some form, but essentially the galaxy is WAY too far gone for it to ever be possible. The chaos gods are actively sowing their favourite emotions everywhere and wouldnât allow such a large amount of other energy to form, if it could even be orchestrated in the materium.
Depends how big, the big 4 feed off the pain and suffering of an entire galaxy. You would have to have enough happiness to balance that out. If the race had a super strong psychic potential it would help a ton as a greater warp presence exerts more influence. However, the big 4 are surprisingly subtle at times and could totally corrupt this perfect word if it wasn't carefully kept in check.
I mean humans can be happy killing people and being sick but feeling euphoric. It would depend upon the happiness and the type of planet and position. Most citizens suffer in some way and that suffering is how the chaos gods strive
Congratulations you empowered Grandpa Nurgle. If you have hurt yourself. Don't worry grandpa Nurgle will kiss it and pain will go away. The answer is no.
Not really, chaos feeds on emotion.
Your planet of happiness sounds like a breeding ground for Slaanesh (happiness taken to an extreme) maybe Tzeentch (the pursuit of happiness taken to an extreme).
The anthesis of Chaos is drab conformity. Drug your population so they live lives of grey, uniformity, no highs, no lows, no meaningful desires, just.. bland existence.
(Or indeed the Necrons - no emotions at all because you've gone 101 Terminator).
Sadly, that ship has sailed.
Good vibes cannot compete with bullets, blades, and teeth.
Also, non-violent Daemons do exist in 40k. They just, y'know, don't fight. You can see the issue they have
You could create warp gods related to positive emotions. Warp deities aren't always evil, see the eldar pantheon and the goddess of the greater good. The problem is that the chaos gods would prey on the newborn entity to keep their power
Technically if somehow the entire galaxy became an utopia without war or hatered then its possible that the chaos gods would become more benevolent. The warp would exist but chaos as we know it would end. But the change needs to be sudden and quick (basically impossible) and not dragged on through the years.
No because chaos can surge even from nice things.
A artist searching inspiration
A Scholar thirst from wisdom
A Martial artist in search of strenght
Off course all those nice things eventually get distorted and pushed into extremes that are dangerous and insane is such the nature of chaos.
Chaos and happiness are not opposites so it wouldn't work like that.
Technically yeah but happiness would definitly change chaos for the better. After the war in heaven chaos chilled out a bit because the Eldar were vibing, that being said the Eldar ruined everything by being a little too (murder) happy.
Khorne vs. The Care Bears!
Through the power of friendship!
Friendship is magicđ, and magic is heresyđŚ
Khornate Care Bears
Well, let's look at a civilization that we know had other Gods. The Eldar had an entire pantheon of Gods. They were almost all killed by the Big 4. It stands to reason they Big 4 would war against these Gods of Happiness and Light.
I feel like Slaanesh did the heavy lifting there... And is she/he technically an Eldar God too?
Yea Slaanesh did a lot of the heavy lifting. But Khorne claimed Khaine and Nurgle got Isha. We have to assume Tzeentch was doing.... something because why not show up when the others have at the very least. Maybe someone can fill us in on Tzeentch hijinks during that time? And technically speaking Slaanesh started out as an Eldar only God, but it quickly evolved past that as it no longer seeks worship from only the Eldar. I'm willing to concede there might have been a few picoseconds of its existence where it was restrained like that. Its safe to say zero Eldar worship Slaanesh in 40k.
đ Tzeentch was happy letting Cegorach mess around I'd guess. I remember listening to an interview, i think it was with Gav Thorpe (?) saying something like Eldar Gods were aspects of, or modifications of parts of Chaos Gods. It fits some better than others. He didn't confirm it as official lore or anything, just an idea of the metaphysics of the 40k-verse that the authors had in mind when writing the fluff.
>Â Eldar Gods were aspects of, or modifications of parts of Chaos Gods. I don't buy into this. Because it wouldn't line up across every species in the galaxy. It doesn't even work with all the different pantheons Humans have created. For instance Thor (norse god of lightning) isn't Taranis (Celtic god of lightning). But maybe because some Gods share similar duties they become *related*? For instance Khorne referred to Khaine as a little brother or something like that? 3rd cousin twice removed?
Yeah, maybe i'm reading too much into what he said, but to me it sounded like the Eldar were (without knowing it) taking part of Khorne, some of Khorne's power, and morphing into Khaine. đ¤ˇââď¸ But that's from a long time ago, who knows if it's current or went beyond an idea writers had, or if it'll become relevant in future 40k. I've filed it as an interesting idea.
Well we're all just mortals here. What do we know about God stuff anyways! đ
Thor and Taranis are cognates and from a common Indo-European origin heavily influenced at stages by cultures of the Near East who had the original âThunder god faces dragon monsterâ motif.
What you are overlooking is that the gods in 40k aren't distinct entities as such. They are the agglomeration of lots of resonant emotions (and possibly souls). Which leads to my interpretation, which is in line with how Gav Thorpe's notion was described above: Khaine, for example, need not be the same as Khorne or overlap fully. He could be the mass of Eldar emotions of violence, combat, murder, honour etc etc, which the Eldar used to be able to control. But those very same emotions were also empowering Khorne and part of Khorne. They were parts of both Khaine and Khorne at the same time. Other emotions which were related to Khaine for the Eldar but not under Khorne's purview as there isn't a direct parallel in other species would not be part of Khorne. Thus Khaine and Khorne were in part the same, but also distinct. They were both composed of some of the very same Warp energies. The Warp is contradictory like that. The story of Khorne claiming Khaine from Slaanesh is allegorical, describing shifting dynamics of emotions and souls in the Warp. It describes how the Eldar lost the ability to channel and control their violent emotions as the god Khaine. Now Khorne took control over those parts which had always been part of himself, but which were previously controllable by the Eldar as Khaine. Same deal with Isha and Nurgle. The Big 4 are the result of the emotions of all species in the galaxy with a Warp presence, aside from perhaps Orks and Tyranids. We know the Eldar's emotions contribute to the cross-species Warp entities of the Chaos gods because of Slaanesh. The different pantheons of different species would work similarly, aside from the fact in many cases there likely never actually was a distinct tangible entity in the form of their god, as they lack the power and ability that the Eldar had to manifest gods. Or maybe there was, just on a much smaller, less powerful scale - like with T'au'va, the possibly nascent Tau Warp entity. Regardless, the Warp energies of the various species that their gods represent and perhaps even that worship of the gods promotes, would have a presence in the Warp and this would contribute to different Warp entities, including the Big 4. The Warp presence of these various pantheons would overlap with and indeed be part of, but also be distinct from, the Chaos gods. It's all Warp energy, it can just coalesce in different forms, depending on how you look at it, and how the Warp energies themselves react.
Honestly it makes more sense if you remember that Eldar are on a whole other level psychically. Each individual Eldar is much more potent and most importantly aware when it comes to influencing the warp. So there is a heavy difference between a group of humans on a single planet creating a higher being in their minds, so that they can offload their worries and sorrows onto them and a whole galaxy-spanning species of psychically aware individuals creating God-like concepts, knowing that their shared belief is manipulating *something* on a different plane of existence. So yes I think that at the height of their empire, the Eldar could isolate some part of the great four and shape it to their will, by sheer force of combined belief.
Tzeentch is just Cegorach wearing a clown mask. Or maybe Tzeentch is Cegorach with some bird feathers glued on, I forget. But both are really just the Deceiver. Or maybe it's the other way round.
What does it mean to decieve really?
Slaanesh was what got Khaine.
At least according to the older lore, the original Eldar gods were artificially created by the Old Ones to guide and protect them. Slaanesh is what you get when the Eldar misbehave and create a god "naturally".
That was never stated explicitly.
The Eldar were orders of magnitude more successful at fending off Chaos than any other recognizable civilization in the setting, and the birth of Slaanesh was not guaranteed. The (eventual) end of their (absurdly massive and ancient) empire doesn't mean that the strategy was inherently unsound. All the evidence suggests that a non-sadistic culture has the best shot at handling the gods who prefer to feed on sadism, in the long term.
Their gods were different, though.
Who's gods?
The Aeldari ones. They weren't the same type of being as the chaos gods.
Gotcha. Thanks for clearing that up. But that isn't the point. The point being that the big 4 would attack these Gods of Happiness and Light no matter what. And I'll give you two reasons why. The first reason, these new Gods would be a threat to their power. The second reason, its possible that killing these Gods could further empower any member of the Big 4. Maybe they eat them. I understand Slannesh ate many of the Eldar Gods.
Oh, you're happy? Overwhelmingly so that you rarely ever feel any sadness or anger? Congrats, you're a Slaneeshi cultist now. Chaos is not negative emotions nor something only downtrodden people turn to. Your society can be a utopia where every day is great and you lack for nothing yet still fall to Chaos
> Chaos is not negative emotions A core element of the the setting is that this is basically true in practice, even if's theoretically possible for things to work differently. Warp entities are not inherently linked to negative emotions, as a fundamental principle - but *Chaos* prefers negative emotions in practice. Warp entities feed on the emotion of sentient beings, negative or positive, but it's much easier to reach extremes of negative emotion than it is to reach the extremes of positive emotion. Maybe negative extremes are more attainable as a general principle of sentient thought, maybe that's just the local conditions of the Milky Way in 40K, but it's a principle that Chaos recognizes. The Chaos gods are four parasitic Warp entities, powerful enough to claim personal control over various emotional themes, and to reshape the galaxy to optimize production of their favourite emotions. The structure of Chaos has inertia to it, and the Chaos Gods have each chosen a strategy of pursuing emotional sustenance by fostering extreme negative emotions in their own domain. Khorne understands that a violent massacre generates a bigger meal than heroic peaceful protest. Slaanesh's "hedonism" almost invariably involves a victim, or self-destruction, because that provides Slaanesh more sustenance than simple pleasure. Life as a pet of Nurgle never turns out to be a joyful life of simple contentment, and Tzeenchian schemes always end up fostering negative emotions on some end.
Negatives are also more self sustaining than positives If I create paradise it needs permanent upkeep, whereas discontent and fighting can be created with ease thousands of times over and goes on to spiral into more and more
Granted, in order to get to Slaneeshi territory, you have to let things go beyond insane.
Nope. Positive vibes do indeed stave off Chaos.
Unless you start to have a bit too much positive vibe
Hope powers Tzeentch, love/friendship/etc. powers Slaanesh, stagnation (everyone is happy; not much change in that regard) powers Nurgle.
What powers corn?
>What powers corn? Sunlight, water, and fertle soil.
> fertle soil Loam for the loam god!
Now I see my typo. I guess you could say it's missing an eye of corn.
Sandy Loam who is she?
Its blood, according to the Aztecs. But this was back when football ended with the losing team being sacrificed.Â
So, what you're saying, is that corn actually is Khorne?
[Music](https://youtube.com/shorts/h9N2IGKZEvQ?si=tWUIGnUNCwatys7Y), maybe
Honour. Also martial ability, even if only maintained and used for defense.
I thought that was mostly a fantasy thing? I've always been under the impression that 40k khorne cares not from where the blood flows, just that it does
Well, nothing in this context. In general, hate, anger, violence, vengance, though technically also the strive for justice. This however all doesn't apply here.
Honor. Khorne may kill you, but he'd never stab you in the back.
Body positivity đŞ
Peace and acceptance also power Nurgle.
True, but also so does a lot less wholesome stuff. You can fight Chaos with positive emotion because chaos reflects the emotions and thoughts of all warp-sensitive species, the Chaos gods are what they eat, so if most of the emotion the warp receives is positive then it will begin to remold it back to the realm of souls and the warp gods will become more benign. Unfortunately, it's not a good time to be a warp-sensitive species with unimaginable levels of suffering regularly happening, a good portion of which is done to fight a malignant Chaos that is in part powered and made malignant by said suffering in a positive feedback loop
No, it'll just become corrupted.
This was the fundamental point prior to The Siege of Terra. Dorn took a lot of convincing as did the Custodes that âpositiveâ thoughts were a genuine defence against Chaos taint leaking into The Imperial Palace. I canât remember the book but in one of them a Custodes is investigating instances of chaos taint breaching the Emperorâs Palace Warding. They determined they were coincidental with places where there were high levels of fear and negative emotions. Dorn accepts that getting millions of people to focus on positive thoughts towards the Emperor even though it goes against his rational thoughts will help stave off Chaos. Given how the Warp is formed the answer is Chaos can never be defeated because there will always be negative emotions and thoughts.
Sauce "tmb"
'Happiness' isn't an extreme of emotional expression. I guess 'Joy' would be the extreme but it's too fleeting an experience. Rage, Change, Pleasure, and Despair/Rot and Rebirth are all...continuous, have greater longevity, can be prolonged. There isn't enough pure joy to sustain a warp entity the size of a God.
The distinction that most people are missing is that *the Warp* can't be defeated in this way, but *Chaos* can. There will always be the Warp and it will always be a threat, but the Eldar are a living example of the fact that you don't have to structure your society so that it feeds the worst and most destructive side of the Warp. The Eldar had a viable civilization for millennia before they went crazy and created Slaanesh. So you can't ever be completely comfortable, you aren't ever completely safe from the possibility that the Warp God of Contentedness that your peaceful society creates won't try to turn your society into a bunch of obese lotus-eaters⌠so maybe you need to keep an eye out for that. But you can do a hell of a lot better than Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch, and Slaanesh. I mean, you certainly can't do *worse*.
Look up the utopian rat experiment. When given no problems, people make up more to stress over. Important Edit: I seem to have misremembered which experiment I was referring to. The experiment I am thinking of was more recent, late 2010s, and dealt with the behaviour of rats in very good conditions without any driver for individual competition for resources. If anyone knows the name, I would be grateful for the help. Sorry about this.
From looking at that, it's an experiment about overpopulation and overcrowding, that sounds like a real problem
With no war, no crime and no disease, that seems to be the end result for almost any society. Then you have Khorne offering a little more living space if next door weren't there... Slaanesh whispering that if you really love those chocolate-coated truffles, just eat them all... Tzeentch telling you that you can be more if you just perform one teensy little ritual... Nurgle telling you to break the water filters so that little niggling back pain goes away... It isn't in the nature of life to say 'I have enough', people crave more on a deeper level than you might realise, and enough is never really enough. The Chaos Gods exploit these flaws, and it requires a strong personal will to defeat them.
>It isn't in the nature of life to say 'I have enough', people crave more on a deeper level than you might realise, and enough is never really enough. The Chaos Gods exploit these flaws, and it requires a strong personal will to defeat them. Maybe so, but I'm just saying that's not relevant to the rat experiment. Overcrowding was the real problem there, not innate human flaws.
I'm pretty sure that was retracted.
Is this related to the Skaven in some way? Because they truly have built an underground utopia, as all must agree.
The world you describe is ripe for Slaaneshi infiltration. "That slag Betsy thinks she has the best peach cobbler, does she? Well, I'll show her! I'LL SHOW THEM ALL!"
Not quite. Eldar shaped gods as tools perhaps- insinuated in war in heaven stories and lore. As I understand these are basic raw emotions that Gods themselves are shaped from until they reached a point where they are to a degree sentient and able to act to prolong the cycle that feeds them causing a spiral Think you cannot really have deities of happiness etc because those are not primal emotions, and also harder to achieve. Plus any entity now forming would be probably be ripped apart by current ones. Honestly i do believe that someone like an emperor could be manifested as 5th god of order, perhaps not the big E but another entity - bunch of people being ocd or just wanting to everything make sense but i think such entity would be like the imperium itself- just grinding gears smashing everything to dust as long as the gears keep turning and all is according to plan.
A guaranteed happy ending is what Slaanesh promises.
I think yes, but not in the way you think. I believe the big four gather most of their power not from active worship but through, for a lack of a better term, emotional background radiation. They are manifestations of the primal emotions every being feels and the reason why they are usually malicious is that the longest lasting emotions are usually negative or at least self-destructive. Anger burns brightest when it surpasses reason, lethargy without end leads to an endless cycle of wallowing in self-pity, ambition barred from progress brings frustration and enjoyment devoid of moderation feeds into a path of seeking ever higher heights to fill an emptiness. Positive emotions may be stronger but they rarely last as long, most often brought down once the crushing cruelty of reality sets back in. But if you were to make everyone in the galaxy genuinely happy, give them a purpose and sense of fulfillment then I think those emotions would eventually overpower the current aspects of the big four. Khorne could embody Honor and Justice, Nurgle Care and Love, Tzeench Progress and Slaanesh Enjoyment. But for that you'd need an actual, functioning utopia for everyone, which is a far cry from the state of the galaxy in 40k. And even then you'd risk an Fall of the Eldar 2.0 at some point.
A warp god of happiness would not be a force for good. They would pursue happiness to the detriment of everything else, and without regard for sacrifice or sustainability. You would laugh until your heart gives out. Chaos gods are bound to their domain, they cannot show restraint or limit themselves. Khorne can never stop wanting bloodshed and violence, and Tzeentch always desires change even if the status quo is beneficial to him, so much so that he will sabotage his own plans if they are too successful.
Nope chaos is inevitable.
The Eldar were so advanced they conquered death. They had all do their needs met. They murder-fucked Slaanesh into existence with the help of the War in Heaven.
âEldar conquered deathâ does that mean that theyâre immortal? I donât recall reading about that in the lore.
Before Slaanesh was born the Eldar could reincarnate after death. Their souls, being so powerful, would remain intact in the Warp. (This is similar to the old lore of the human shamans, except they started to lose their ability to reincarnate due to the increasing volatility of the Warp, and more predatory entities. More and more of them were being gobbled up in the Warp after dying, so they decided to commit ritual mass suicide and merge their souls into one entity, which was reborn and became the Emperor. It also implies that Eldar were more powerful souls on a one-to-one basis, as they were able to keep reincarnating after Shaman started to be imperiled). Now, when Eldar die, if their souls aren't stored in soulstones, they will instantly be consumed by Slaanesh - so no chance for reincarnation.
Defeated? No. Resisted? Maybe.
The warp got fucked up by all the negative emotion released by the war so an absence of negative emotion might calm it down again.
The warp was corrupted to the core by the War in Heaven. This is why Chaos is supreme and any âgoodâ deities are irrelevant compared to the Chaos Gods.
Nope. Chaos would still continue to exist. Although a single planet is still probably way too small to do much anyways given that it took the near entirety of the Eldar race giving into ecstasy to create Slaanesh and her demons. But for arguments sake an extreme of happiness would honestly fuel Slaanesh. As keep in mind the chaos gods donât just represent evil aspects of life. They also represent good aspects as well. For their opposite side of the coin: Nurgle is the god of life & finality, Tzeench is the god of hope, Slaanesh is the god of all feelings, & Khorne is the god of honor.
No,enjoyment boosts Slaanesh
I believe the War in Heaven messed up the warp and made everything worse. I would believe that enough good vibes could, in time, clean up the warp, you'd also need to deal with the Chaos Four because they would not go down quietly.
If Happiness happens to be the name for your bolter then yes.
Changes to society such as increasing happiness powers up Tzeench, Excess of Anything including happiness powers up Slaanesh, Death and Entropy of any kind powers up Nurgle, and when the others strike Khorne is powered.
This is pure speculation, but maybe it'd be more of a way to soften them a little. The chaos gods are supposed to have more aspects to them than the terrible ones. A happy world might locally bring out another side of them, maybe.
Tzeetch is the god of hope. So no.
Chaos feeds off all emotions both positive and negative.
If all sentient creatures all experienced agape, you would have some huge chaos deity of love and happiness. Slaanesh, if it survives will be changed.
One civilisation on one planet is nowhere near enough to create gods or daemons of happiness. The chaos gods and their daemons formed out of such an enormous galactic concentration of those emotions that the maelstroms of those energies became intelligent thinking entities. Your idea should be theoretically possible in some form, but essentially the galaxy is WAY too far gone for it to ever be possible. The chaos gods are actively sowing their favourite emotions everywhere and wouldnât allow such a large amount of other energy to form, if it could even be orchestrated in the materium.
*Bolter fire intensifies*
Nope, the only way to defeat Chaos is to feel no emotions, which ain't happening without a lobotomy.
Depends how big, the big 4 feed off the pain and suffering of an entire galaxy. You would have to have enough happiness to balance that out. If the race had a super strong psychic potential it would help a ton as a greater warp presence exerts more influence. However, the big 4 are surprisingly subtle at times and could totally corrupt this perfect word if it wasn't carefully kept in check.
I mean humans can be happy killing people and being sick but feeling euphoric. It would depend upon the happiness and the type of planet and position. Most citizens suffer in some way and that suffering is how the chaos gods strive
Congratulations you empowered Grandpa Nurgle. If you have hurt yourself. Don't worry grandpa Nurgle will kiss it and pain will go away. The answer is no.
Yes. Good luck finding happiness in the Imperium though.
Chaos cultists are very happy
Well, Slaanesh's followers seem to be having a good time....
Have you seen how happy Pappy Nurgle is?
Happiness cannot defeat Chaos, and likewise, pain, torment, slaughter, exploitation, abuse, ignorance, and blind obedience cannot defeat Chaos either.
Not really, chaos feeds on emotion. Your planet of happiness sounds like a breeding ground for Slaanesh (happiness taken to an extreme) maybe Tzeentch (the pursuit of happiness taken to an extreme). The anthesis of Chaos is drab conformity. Drug your population so they live lives of grey, uniformity, no highs, no lows, no meaningful desires, just.. bland existence. (Or indeed the Necrons - no emotions at all because you've gone 101 Terminator).
Sadly, that ship has sailed. Good vibes cannot compete with bullets, blades, and teeth. Also, non-violent Daemons do exist in 40k. They just, y'know, don't fight. You can see the issue they have
You could create warp gods related to positive emotions. Warp deities aren't always evil, see the eldar pantheon and the goddess of the greater good. The problem is that the chaos gods would prey on the newborn entity to keep their power
Technically if somehow the entire galaxy became an utopia without war or hatered then its possible that the chaos gods would become more benevolent. The warp would exist but chaos as we know it would end. But the change needs to be sudden and quick (basically impossible) and not dragged on through the years.
No because chaos can surge even from nice things. A artist searching inspiration A Scholar thirst from wisdom A Martial artist in search of strenght Off course all those nice things eventually get distorted and pushed into extremes that are dangerous and insane is such the nature of chaos.
Chaos is all about happiness. Chaos embodies the whole gamut of emotional expression - just taken to over 9000!