Question about chaos gods

[Dr Roberts]

What can they actually do? What abilities have they shown in the books/games?

Also which 40k books would you recommend that focus on Chaos and Others that focus on the Necrons?

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

The Ruinous Power are only vaguely-personified entities conveniently labelled as gods. It's better to think of them as the sum, net force behind a particular portfolio of thoughts and emotions, rather than as discrete entities going about their daily lives. That said, the Chaos Gods do squabble amongst one another, and they do have agendas that they try to carry out.

So, to answer your question, they don't really have any particular "abilities" that directly affect the material world. Rather, they work through those daemons aligned with them (i.e., the manifested emotions associated with the god in question) to effect change in real space.

Really, I think the biggest key to understanding Chaos in 40k is to understand that the language being used is inadequate. "God", "daemon", "psychic" and similar words are just the closest terms we have in English to what is actually going on; daemons aren't actually demons in the sense of magic evil hell-spawn, nor are psychic powers PSIONIC BRAIN POWER or the like, they just very much resemble those things in practice.

[madd0ct0r]

I'd recommend the lost and the damned, and slaves to the darkness.

I hear they're available online.

[Sinewmire]

Well, their names pronounced over louspeakers make deaf Guardsmen shiver. Their notice can cause spontaneous mutation. Other than that, yeah, they're a motivational force. They're concepts rather than entities and don't feature as direct characters or antagonists.

[Dr Roberts]

Thanks guys it's just that I heard they are sentient and one person said that in he warp they could wave battleships in to existence (although they disappear if they try to leave the warp)

[Thinktank]

Stuff I agree with.

You pretty much nailed it.

I'd recommend the lost and the damned, and slaves to the darkness.

I hear they're available online.

I heard that too...

[madd0ct0r]

inside the warp they pretty much can do that yes.

for the big 4, they're not so much as in the warp as BEING the warp, at least the top levels of it that are closest to the galaxy. Think of them as storms so large they're sentient.

a demon is created by the god pouring a little of it's essence into it. While the demon can have varying degrees of intellect and free will, it exists only at it's patrons pleasure and can be snuffed out again easily.

The personality can vary - all of Nurgles Great Unclean Ones seem to be clones of his personality, while Tzeentech and Slaanesh greater demons tend to vary a bit more.

Some very minor gods can form temporarily or around small emotional clusters that aren't hoovered up by the big 4. these MIGHT push all of their power into a single demon, effectively sealing that god into the demon.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Thanks guys it's just that I heard they are sentient and one person said that in he warp they could wave battleships in to existence (although they disappear if they try to leave the warp)

The notion of "waving battleships into existence" is a failure to understand Chaos on a fundamental level. It is ascribing a physical phenomenon to a dimension that is anathema to the physical world and vice versa. Could a Chaos God will a fleet into existence within the confines of the Warp? Theoretically, yes... in the same sense that you can manipulate a lucid dream: What does this accomplish when you wake up? Nothing. The Warp is a realm of thought and emotion; physical concepts like a "battleship" have no meaning there and are so much putty to be played with at the whims of the Warp's denizens. That's why a Gellar field is required to survive in the Warp; otherwise the realness of the ship in question ceases to be relevant.

[Spoonist]

Would it kill you to put a fucking 40k in the title?
There are plenty of chaos gods out there in sci-fi, not to mention the ones in earthly pantheons starting with Tiamat. So that us who couldn't care less about where 40k is going nowadays, can stay the hell out of these topics.

Gets off the soapbox and readies the eviscerator for service on Dr Roberts...

[White Haven]

Thanks guys it's just that I heard they are sentient and one person said that in he warp they could wave battleships in to existence (although they disappear if they try to leave the warp)

The notion of "waving battleships into existence" is a failure to understand Chaos on a fundamental level. It is ascribing a physical phenomenon to a dimension that is anathema to the physical world and vice versa. Could a Chaos God will a fleet into existence within the confines of the Warp? Theoretically, yes... in the same sense that you can manipulate a lucid dream: What does this accomplish when you wake up? Nothing. The Warp is a realm of thought and emotion; physical concepts like a "battleship" have no meaning there and are so much putty to be played with at the whims of the Warp's denizens. That's why a Gellar field is required to survive in the Warp; otherwise the realness of the ship in question ceases to be relevant.

The addendum to that, of course, is the Eye of Terror. That's why the Eye terrifies the Imperium so much. It's an area of realspace that has enough forcible overlap with the Warp that the aforementioned handwave battleship could broadside you to death. Of course things get...fuzzy. Sure that handwaved battleship can't leave the Eye...but what happens if you handwave a factory, feed it actual real raw materials, and use it to build weapons. Can those leave the Eye? Good question, and it's probably a good thing that chaos gods and daemon princes aren't usually of that practical a mindset.

[Simon_Jester]

Call that a general law: any entity deranged enough to become that powerful in the Warp will be too deranged to think much about mundane concerns in the sidereal universe. Chaos entities are creatures of symbolism, emotion, magical thinking, and they don't care very much about the normal scales on which humans judge victory and defeat. Their human minions care more... and are, as a rule, less powerful for it.

Another way of looking at it...

There's a reason Khorne's iconic weapon is an axe, not a Maxim gun. And it's not because the Maxim gun is less effective as an implement of slaughter.

[White Haven]

If there's ever a Chaos god of cold logic, everyone's fucked. He's the guy who'd keep it together enough to run massively parallel virtual forge worlds for a few centuries, then drown the Imperium in more hardware than has ever been produced in its history to date.

[Eternal_Freedom]

If there's ever a Chaos god of cold logic, everyone's fucked. He's the guy who'd keep it together enough to run massively parallel virtual forge worlds for a few centuries, then drown the Imperium in more hardware than has ever been produced in its history to date.

But Chaos Gods are fed from emotions in the Warp. And emotions and logic don't go together, so the Logic God would have to go someplace else (Vulcan, perhaps...)

[lordofchange13]

If there's ever a Chaos god of cold logic, everyone's fucked. He's the guy who'd keep it together enough to run massively parallel virtual forge worlds for a few centuries, then drown the Imperium in more hardware than has ever been produced in its history to date.

But Chaos Gods are fed from emotions in the Warp. And emotions and logic don't go together, so the Logic God would have to go someplace else (Vulcan, perhaps...)

Logic is an emotion in a sense, the real problem with having a logic chaos god would be you need a species that feels logic more then any other state of mind. As far as i know every single race in 40K that has influence in the warp is pretty anti-logic when dealing with stuff.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I wasn't being serious, but you are right. Hence my comment about Vulcan.

[PainRack]

There is the question of how much foresight the Chaos God actually has. We know that they knew the Emperor was out to get them, we know that they forsaw the threat in advance and attacked the Primarchs. We're not too sure whether the plan to corrupt them came due to the fact that their assault failed or it was all preplanned, but the horus heresy books have been pretty........ damming that the corruption of Horus and the other Primarchs were all preplanned and staged......

Pretty impressive sense of foresight if one thinks about it, being able to set in motion a plan lasting centuries to reach its fulfillment.

[Bedlam]

There is the question of how much foresight the Chaos God actually has. We know that they knew the Emperor was out to get them, we know that they forsaw the threat in advance and attacked the Primarchs. We're not too sure whether the plan to corrupt them came due to the fact that their assault failed or it was all preplanned, but the horus heresy books have been pretty........ damming that the corruption of Horus and the other Primarchs were all preplanned and staged......

Pretty impressive sense of foresight if one thinks about it, being able to set in motion a plan lasting centuries to reach its fulfillment.

Given how time works in the warp (or often doesn't work) it might not be entirely foresight.

Prospero Burns suggests that in some cases Chaos could see the outcome and then plan how to get to it even though the same being wasn't entirely sure of the outcome, however that works. Beyond mortal Ken I guess.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Centuries or even millenia-long twisted, convoluted plots are the domain of Tzeentch. Tzeentch isn't necessarily omniscient, mind, or if he is he doesn't necessarily act on it in a rational manner (Chaos being anathema to rationality), but "long game" plotting and manipulation are Tzeentch's bread and butter, so the events of the Horus Heresy aren't really surprising in that light.

[Simon_Jester]

If there's ever a Chaos god of cold logic, everyone's fucked. He's the guy who'd keep it together enough to run massively parallel virtual forge worlds for a few centuries, then drown the Imperium in more hardware than has ever been produced in its history to date.

There are already gods of cold logic in 40k.

They're called the C'tan.

(Or there were before the sideways-quasi-retcon that is the most recent Codex: Necrons. I don't know what changed there.)

[Purple]

If there's ever a Chaos god of cold logic, everyone's fucked. He's the guy who'd keep it together enough to run massively parallel virtual forge worlds for a few centuries, then drown the Imperium in more hardware than has ever been produced in its history to date.

There are already gods of cold logic in 40k.

They're called the C'tan.

(Or there were before the sideways-quasi-retcon that is the most recent Codex: Necrons. I don't know what changed there.)

Only if you define cold logic as: Lets eat one another until we all go butshit insane and than help some dudes launch a genocidal war against a race of aliens becouse they live longer.

[Simon_Jester]

Only if you define cold logic as: Lets eat one another until we all go butshit insane and than help some dudes launch a genocidal war against a race of aliens becouse they live longer.

Nonsense.

The C'tan ate each other because each of them coldly, logically sought to maximize their own power, and that power was limited primarily by the existence of other C'tan. It's a brutal, vicious, inhuman, sociopathic sort of logic, but that doesn't make it non-logical.

The C'tan aided "some dudes" in their genocidal war because they coldly, logically wanted to take advantage of what those "dudes" were willing to do for them- to kill, which the C'tan found that they enjoyed.

Given the C'tan objectives, their actions make perfect sense. And standing as they do in 40k as the total, diametric opposite of the Warp and all it stands for, the C'tan are the best candidates for "gods of logic" to be found in their setting. They neither have, nor use, nor tolerate any form of magic. They make and use the most advanced and powerful technology in the setting. Their ultimate ambition is to abolish the Warp (and its emotion-driven, antinomian defiance of the physical world of which the C'tan are masters).

The fact that they don't do what you wish they would doesn't mean they aren't that setting's closest approximation to gods of logic. After all, that setting's closest approximation to a god of hope, change, optimism, and ambition is the chaos god Tzeentch. Deities in 40k are generally very alien, very hostile, darkly evil, and incredibly dangerous. That's just the way the setting works.

[lordofchange13]

Only if you define cold logic as: Lets eat one another until we all go butshit insane and than help some dudes launch a genocidal war against a race of aliens becouse they live longer.

Nonsense.

The C'tan ate each other because each of them coldly, logically sought to maximize their own power, and that power was limited primarily by the existence of other C'tan. It's a brutal, vicious, inhuman, sociopathic sort of logic, but that doesn't make it non-logical.

Not 100% on the new codex back story, but the old reason for the C'tan eating each other was because the Eldar laughing god manipulated them.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Actually, it was the C'Tan Deceiver who tricked the Nightbringer into eating his fellow C'Tan.

[Purple]

Given the C'tan objectives, their actions make perfect sense. And standing as they do in 40k as the total, diametric opposite of the Warp and all it stands for, the C'tan are the best candidates for "gods of logic" to be found in their setting. They neither have, nor use, nor tolerate any form of magic. They make and use the most advanced and powerful technology in the setting. Their ultimate ambition is to abolish the Warp (and its emotion-driven, antinomian defiance of the physical world of which the C'tan are masters).

Excuse me? Last time I checked necron technology only works the way it does becouse of the C'tan power to bend the laws of physics to make it work. Inertialess drives anyone? The C'tan are anatema to the warp but not to other forms of magical trickery.

[lordofchange13]

Actually, it was the C'Tan Deceiver who tricked the Nightbringer into eating his fellow C'Tan.

My mistake, was their not a story in the Necron 4th edition in which the laughing god messes with Nightbringer causing him to eat several other C'tan;is that no long canon?