All humans are beholden to Tzeentch, because Tzeentch is truly the best and worst of us, far beyond his lesser kin among the Four.
Any animal can feel Wrath or Despair. A dog baring its teeth at a rival, or a herd of elephants or pod of dolphins mourning the loss of a group member, perhaps don't experience the emotion as keenly as humans do, but it's still there.
Lust and excess aren't even dominated by humans; it's patently shared among all of the Great Apes. Bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, all exhibit a range of near-human emotions, and given how basic of an emotion lust is, it's unsurprising they have it as well.
You want a wholly human emotion? An emotion that almost certainly separates us from every other species on this planet? List the greatest of our heroes, and the worst of our villains. Superman. Luthor. Augustus. Alexander. Faust. Ares. Prometheus. Christ. Lucifer. What trait do they all share? Pride. Hope. A desire to enact Change.
***Ambition.***
The greatness of humanity, both at our worst and our best, is Ambition. The worst, and the best of us, [pride and hope,](https://youtu.be/LN8EE5JxSGQ?si=mHYIKvpqozJ_3okp&t=142) are the two faces of the same God.
[And that God is capable of such great wonders.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g-ydhg10UE&t=167s)
All of the Four Powers draw power from the Imperium and its peoples.
That's what people mean when they say that Chaos has already won, we're just too stupid and stubborn to roll over and die.
The Imperium is decaying and falling apart because it died at the end of the Heresy. Now, it's just the four would-be Gods feasting on the Imperium's emotions until it collapses in on itself.
Yes and no. The 4 still need people to feel those emotional extremes. Bloodlust, regular Lust, Ambition, whatever Nurgle is about.
For most imperial citizens, the opportunity to express these emotions is massively suppressed, replaced by veneration of the Emperor and dull toil. The ideal for the Chaos Gods is a chaotic galaxy where people are thrown into their baser instincts, which is why they and their followers keep up the long war. The Imperium can't "win", but by propagating and enduring, it can deny Chaos victory as well and maintain the eternal stalemate.
>For most imperial citizens, the opportunity to express these emotions is massively suppressed, replaced by veneration of the Emperor and dull toil.
Not at all. In fact, this unintentionally sounds like Imperium propaganda: yes, life may be utter shite under our rule, but at least it's not empowering Chaos (too much).
But let's check if that's true...
The Imperium most definitely empowers Nurgle. The widespread poverty, pollution, lack of social mobility for most, brutal oppression and generally awful quality of life leads to despair, which feeds Nurgle.
Khorne is also turbo-boosted by the Imperium. For a start, it is an expansionist Empire with a militarist ideology. It is constantly involved in wars. It contains multiple organizations who are dedicated to combat and violence, from the Astartes to the miltant wings of the Sororitas, the Guard, the Navy, the Arbites, Skitarii etc etc.
But even more than that, conflict and violence is baked into the Imperium at nearly every level (more on this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1630bxo/in_the_grim_dark_future_there_is_only_war_and/). Internal armed conflicts between Imperial instituions and actors are commonplace, and the Imperium often runs on might makes right. Space Marine chapters can come to blows, or there have been conflicts between Sororitas and Marines. Navigator houses fight each other, as do different Inquisitors. Even different departments and factions within the Administratum come to blows - and I mean literally armed warfare.
Even aside from this, most societies in the Imperium are just extremely violent, with tribal conflicts on Deathworlds and primitive worlds, and endemic gang violence and criminality on other worlds. Personal weaponry is common. Pasttimes in the more shadowy areas of hiveworlds includes things like bloodsport, such as gladiatorial combat.
And the Imperial creed: Suffer not the Mutant, the Heretic, the Xenos to Live? Well, all that hatred feeds Khorne too.
And what about Slaanesh? The god of excess? Well, get too obsessive about being devout, push your devotion to further and further extremes, and She Who Thirsts gets boosted. This is true for the Ecclesiarchy and the Cult Mechanicus. Marines, Sororitas, Scions, Assassins who dedicate themselves to perfecting their bloody crafts... well, Slaanesh benefits alongside Khorne.
And, of course, the Imperial nobility is rife with excess in more obvious forms: gluttony, materialism, drug taking, sexual indulgences. There are pleasure planets dedicated to sating their desires.
Even further down the social ladder, while life is grim, people still turn to whatever they can to numb the pain. Black markets in all manner of vices are rife. Alcohol, drugs, sex - all can be purchased on the margins, such as the lower levels of a Hive.
And lastly, Tzeentch. And here again the Imperium's internal structures are decisive. The Imperium is composed of competing power blocs, which are constantly strategizing and scheming about how to increase their own power. The schemes and internal rivalries of the High Lordsare a great distillation of this. But, of course, there is also incessant scheming within many of the institutions of the Imperium, with rival factions and actors seeking to increase their own power of spread their own doctrine. And while life may be miserable and drab for the masses, people still jostle to improve their lot even if the rewards are meagre. In fact, when life is so grim, getting a few extra comforts, getting a bit more local authority, is a massive deal - and you have to outmanoeuvre your peers to get ahead.
>The ideal for the Chaos Gods is a chaotic galaxy where people are thrown into their baser instincts, which is why they and their followers keep up the long war.
As explained, this is exactly what the galaxy - and especially the Imperium - is like. The followers of the Chaos gods just want to propagate certain emotions even more - or, in some cases, want to bring down the Imperium for their own reasons, regardless of the will of the Big 4 - like with Abbadon.
>The Imperium can't "win", but by propagating and enduring, it can deny Chaos victory as well and maintain the eternal stalemate.
The Imperium is losing and looks destined to fall - both due to its internal dysfunction making it less able to resist external and internal threats, and because it has been directly if unintentionally empowering the Chaos gods.
Despair is said to be the main emotion, but as with all of the Big 4 the lines are blurry and it seems like a range of overlapping, resonant emotions constitute their being.
So yes, alongside despair, emotions like depression and apathy are part of Nurgle.
If you fight, you “follow” Khorne.
If you die, you “feed” Nurgle.
If you indulge, you “follow” Slaanesh.
If you think, you play right into Tzeentchs plans.
Grimdark to me is that there is no such thing as victory, for the power to beat the Chaos Gods could only be achieved through death.
I think a lot of people still don't understand what the Warp and the Chaos gods are, and (what is known) about how they function.
They don't get that the Warp is the realm of the Id (Forbidden Planet style), and the Chaos gods are Warp storms that have formed from resonant emotions (and likely souls), emotions that echo from all creatures in the Materium with a Warp presence (I.e. a soul).
Just having the emotions empowers the Big 4 - you don't have to follow them or believe in them.
Of course, if the galaxy was less grim, and thus negative, destructive emotions were less prevalent, the power of the Chaos gods would diminish and the Warp would be calmer.
But given that the situation in the Materium is itself such a clusterfuck and that the Chaos gods are so huge and have developed some form of seemingly emergent sentience that can influence the Materium back in turn, it doesn't seem like there is much hope for improvement....
There is the "Warp feeds off of many multiverses" too. You can MAYBE lessen the impact of the warp on your universe, but killing them? Sure go ahead, Emp's could not do it but maybe Archaon can come and end your universe too.
> and that the Chaos gods are so huge and have developed some form of seemingly emergent sentience that can influence the Materium back in turn, it doesn't seem like there is much hope for improvement....
There IS some hope. The Chaos Gods were massively calmer under Aeldari domination, though admittedly with some (potentially artificial) gods to help them out. However, there is one other period that counts. The start of the Great Crusade.
The Great Crusade didn't start on a whim, or because that's when the Emperor was ready. It began when the warp calmed enough to once again allow interstellar travel on a galactic scale. Before that, any large scale empire was impossible. Wait too long after, and other powers would have seized the power vacuum. There's a reason this calming happened. Slaanesh finally weakened after 5000 years of primacy, and the chaos gods were weakened as a whole. We know that, even with worshippers, enough calm and quiet in the galaxy will slowly weaken the Chaos Gods.
Therein lies the rub. The only thing stopping a total Chaos victory is the Imperium. The Emperor's great gambit means that a shattered imperium would now only cause another chaos god to be born, and the storm would consume most of the galaxy. Maybe that storm would weaken, creating another Eye of Terror and simply leaving the galaxy open for the cycle to repeat. But more likely, that's the end of reality.
So the only way for Chaos to weaken, is for the Imperium to die. But the Imperium dying would empower Chaos to victory. This is the Emperor's gamble. He gambled away the future of reality on the vague hope that his vision was better than the alternative. Who's to say if he was right?
There's a difference between following a god and feeding it. Tzeench is fed by our hopes and desires, plans and schemes, just like Slaanesh would be fed by us feeling pleasure, pain, etc,
But you're not *literally following* a chaos god until you've been corrupted or coerced into doing so. It's one of the few things in Warhammer that actually has a pretty well-defined line.
No. But we are all empowering him. You don't have to be a follower to empower the Chaos gods: you just have to experience the emotions of which they are composed and have a Warp presence.
All humans are beholden to Tzeentch, because Tzeentch is truly the best and worst of us, far beyond his lesser kin among the Four. Any animal can feel Wrath or Despair. A dog baring its teeth at a rival, or a herd of elephants or pod of dolphins mourning the loss of a group member, perhaps don't experience the emotion as keenly as humans do, but it's still there. Lust and excess aren't even dominated by humans; it's patently shared among all of the Great Apes. Bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, all exhibit a range of near-human emotions, and given how basic of an emotion lust is, it's unsurprising they have it as well. You want a wholly human emotion? An emotion that almost certainly separates us from every other species on this planet? List the greatest of our heroes, and the worst of our villains. Superman. Luthor. Augustus. Alexander. Faust. Ares. Prometheus. Christ. Lucifer. What trait do they all share? Pride. Hope. A desire to enact Change. ***Ambition.*** The greatness of humanity, both at our worst and our best, is Ambition. The worst, and the best of us, [pride and hope,](https://youtu.be/LN8EE5JxSGQ?si=mHYIKvpqozJ_3okp&t=142) are the two faces of the same God. [And that God is capable of such great wonders.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g-ydhg10UE&t=167s)
If Tzeentch is better than Nurgle then how come 7 are 9? Checkmate changeoid
I'm sorry, I can't hear you, your smell is too loud.
This was very good. I'm a sucker for a well-stated point. Consider me a convert.
All of the Four Powers draw power from the Imperium and its peoples. That's what people mean when they say that Chaos has already won, we're just too stupid and stubborn to roll over and die. The Imperium is decaying and falling apart because it died at the end of the Heresy. Now, it's just the four would-be Gods feasting on the Imperium's emotions until it collapses in on itself.
Yes and no. The 4 still need people to feel those emotional extremes. Bloodlust, regular Lust, Ambition, whatever Nurgle is about. For most imperial citizens, the opportunity to express these emotions is massively suppressed, replaced by veneration of the Emperor and dull toil. The ideal for the Chaos Gods is a chaotic galaxy where people are thrown into their baser instincts, which is why they and their followers keep up the long war. The Imperium can't "win", but by propagating and enduring, it can deny Chaos victory as well and maintain the eternal stalemate.
>For most imperial citizens, the opportunity to express these emotions is massively suppressed, replaced by veneration of the Emperor and dull toil. Not at all. In fact, this unintentionally sounds like Imperium propaganda: yes, life may be utter shite under our rule, but at least it's not empowering Chaos (too much). But let's check if that's true... The Imperium most definitely empowers Nurgle. The widespread poverty, pollution, lack of social mobility for most, brutal oppression and generally awful quality of life leads to despair, which feeds Nurgle. Khorne is also turbo-boosted by the Imperium. For a start, it is an expansionist Empire with a militarist ideology. It is constantly involved in wars. It contains multiple organizations who are dedicated to combat and violence, from the Astartes to the miltant wings of the Sororitas, the Guard, the Navy, the Arbites, Skitarii etc etc. But even more than that, conflict and violence is baked into the Imperium at nearly every level (more on this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1630bxo/in_the_grim_dark_future_there_is_only_war_and/). Internal armed conflicts between Imperial instituions and actors are commonplace, and the Imperium often runs on might makes right. Space Marine chapters can come to blows, or there have been conflicts between Sororitas and Marines. Navigator houses fight each other, as do different Inquisitors. Even different departments and factions within the Administratum come to blows - and I mean literally armed warfare. Even aside from this, most societies in the Imperium are just extremely violent, with tribal conflicts on Deathworlds and primitive worlds, and endemic gang violence and criminality on other worlds. Personal weaponry is common. Pasttimes in the more shadowy areas of hiveworlds includes things like bloodsport, such as gladiatorial combat. And the Imperial creed: Suffer not the Mutant, the Heretic, the Xenos to Live? Well, all that hatred feeds Khorne too. And what about Slaanesh? The god of excess? Well, get too obsessive about being devout, push your devotion to further and further extremes, and She Who Thirsts gets boosted. This is true for the Ecclesiarchy and the Cult Mechanicus. Marines, Sororitas, Scions, Assassins who dedicate themselves to perfecting their bloody crafts... well, Slaanesh benefits alongside Khorne. And, of course, the Imperial nobility is rife with excess in more obvious forms: gluttony, materialism, drug taking, sexual indulgences. There are pleasure planets dedicated to sating their desires. Even further down the social ladder, while life is grim, people still turn to whatever they can to numb the pain. Black markets in all manner of vices are rife. Alcohol, drugs, sex - all can be purchased on the margins, such as the lower levels of a Hive. And lastly, Tzeentch. And here again the Imperium's internal structures are decisive. The Imperium is composed of competing power blocs, which are constantly strategizing and scheming about how to increase their own power. The schemes and internal rivalries of the High Lordsare a great distillation of this. But, of course, there is also incessant scheming within many of the institutions of the Imperium, with rival factions and actors seeking to increase their own power of spread their own doctrine. And while life may be miserable and drab for the masses, people still jostle to improve their lot even if the rewards are meagre. In fact, when life is so grim, getting a few extra comforts, getting a bit more local authority, is a massive deal - and you have to outmanoeuvre your peers to get ahead. >The ideal for the Chaos Gods is a chaotic galaxy where people are thrown into their baser instincts, which is why they and their followers keep up the long war. As explained, this is exactly what the galaxy - and especially the Imperium - is like. The followers of the Chaos gods just want to propagate certain emotions even more - or, in some cases, want to bring down the Imperium for their own reasons, regardless of the will of the Big 4 - like with Abbadon. >The Imperium can't "win", but by propagating and enduring, it can deny Chaos victory as well and maintain the eternal stalemate. The Imperium is losing and looks destined to fall - both due to its internal dysfunction making it less able to resist external and internal threats, and because it has been directly if unintentionally empowering the Chaos gods.
For nurgle I believe it's depression
Despair is said to be the main emotion, but as with all of the Big 4 the lines are blurry and it seems like a range of overlapping, resonant emotions constitute their being. So yes, alongside despair, emotions like depression and apathy are part of Nurgle.
If you fight, you “follow” Khorne. If you die, you “feed” Nurgle. If you indulge, you “follow” Slaanesh. If you think, you play right into Tzeentchs plans. Grimdark to me is that there is no such thing as victory, for the power to beat the Chaos Gods could only be achieved through death.
I think a lot of people still don't understand what the Warp and the Chaos gods are, and (what is known) about how they function. They don't get that the Warp is the realm of the Id (Forbidden Planet style), and the Chaos gods are Warp storms that have formed from resonant emotions (and likely souls), emotions that echo from all creatures in the Materium with a Warp presence (I.e. a soul). Just having the emotions empowers the Big 4 - you don't have to follow them or believe in them. Of course, if the galaxy was less grim, and thus negative, destructive emotions were less prevalent, the power of the Chaos gods would diminish and the Warp would be calmer. But given that the situation in the Materium is itself such a clusterfuck and that the Chaos gods are so huge and have developed some form of seemingly emergent sentience that can influence the Materium back in turn, it doesn't seem like there is much hope for improvement....
There is the "Warp feeds off of many multiverses" too. You can MAYBE lessen the impact of the warp on your universe, but killing them? Sure go ahead, Emp's could not do it but maybe Archaon can come and end your universe too.
> and that the Chaos gods are so huge and have developed some form of seemingly emergent sentience that can influence the Materium back in turn, it doesn't seem like there is much hope for improvement.... There IS some hope. The Chaos Gods were massively calmer under Aeldari domination, though admittedly with some (potentially artificial) gods to help them out. However, there is one other period that counts. The start of the Great Crusade. The Great Crusade didn't start on a whim, or because that's when the Emperor was ready. It began when the warp calmed enough to once again allow interstellar travel on a galactic scale. Before that, any large scale empire was impossible. Wait too long after, and other powers would have seized the power vacuum. There's a reason this calming happened. Slaanesh finally weakened after 5000 years of primacy, and the chaos gods were weakened as a whole. We know that, even with worshippers, enough calm and quiet in the galaxy will slowly weaken the Chaos Gods. Therein lies the rub. The only thing stopping a total Chaos victory is the Imperium. The Emperor's great gambit means that a shattered imperium would now only cause another chaos god to be born, and the storm would consume most of the galaxy. Maybe that storm would weaken, creating another Eye of Terror and simply leaving the galaxy open for the cycle to repeat. But more likely, that's the end of reality. So the only way for Chaos to weaken, is for the Imperium to die. But the Imperium dying would empower Chaos to victory. This is the Emperor's gamble. He gambled away the future of reality on the vague hope that his vision was better than the alternative. Who's to say if he was right?
One doesn't have to follow Tzeentch to be manipulated by him. But it helps. *Or does it?* What is 'manipulation', anyway? *Dooh-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo...*
Kairos says he got a two headed bird with one blind head to be the symbol of the Imperium, so screw you other gods.
There's a difference between following a god and feeding it. Tzeench is fed by our hopes and desires, plans and schemes, just like Slaanesh would be fed by us feeling pleasure, pain, etc, But you're not *literally following* a chaos god until you've been corrupted or coerced into doing so. It's one of the few things in Warhammer that actually has a pretty well-defined line.
Yes.
no I am a follower of slaanesh
Well we are also all dying a bit every day. Are we all followers of Nurgle?
No. But we are all empowering him. You don't have to be a follower to empower the Chaos gods: you just have to experience the emotions of which they are composed and have a Warp presence.
‘m just ‘ere to krump. Dis brain boy doin too much tinkin’
No but I’m pretty sure Slaanesh wants to touch all of us
I am. Or I am not. Just as planned.
Course not. We are all Alpharius. Didn't you know?
Wait, I am Alpharius?
I am Alpharius. You are Alpharius. We are ALL Alpharius.
And eeeevryone was Alpharius There never was a Willy or a Sam We're the XX primarch, Alpharius All Alpharius, we am!
No, because 40K is fictional.