Emotional attachments, friends, family...the "fluff" of life...

By Blefuscu, in Dark Heresy General Discussion

I really like the definition of Slaanesh as the extreme selfish, Nimsim.

This reasoning is supported in the lore, too. In one of the DH1 supplements there's a Chaos artifact, a book, that contains a formula explaining the perfection of reality along with a story of its creator. The author's quest for perfection is explicitly Slaanesh-inspired.

Honestly, the chaos gods can all be interpreted through the lens of a satire of Margaret Thatcher's Britain. Slaanesh is those **** kids with their sex, drugs, and rock & roll. Nurgle is the teeming hordes of immigrants with their strange cultures and damned vibrancy . Tzeench is the machinations of the Communists, Unions, and University Elite with their careful knowledge and planning to overturn British culture. Khorne is view of right-wing warmongering and sabre-rattling.

Honestly, the chaos gods can all be interpreted through the lens of a satire of Margaret Thatcher's Britain. Slaanesh is those **** kids with their sex, drugs, and rock & roll. Nurgle is the teeming hordes of immigrants with their strange cultures and damned vibrancy . Tzeench is the machinations of the Communists, Unions, and University Elite with their careful knowledge and planning to overturn British culture. Khorne is view of right-wing warmongering and sabre-rattling.

:P

(And unions)

Edited by LordPasty

Well, Khorne is satire how the military side of Thatcher's regime was viewed and the other chaos gods are all satire of how Thatcher's regime viewed other people/enemies of the state.

Keep in mind that I endorse none of these viewpoints, other than the ones poking fun at Thatcher.

Yep. The appeal of roleplaying grim darkness of the 41st millenium is that it's NOT a world I want to live in. So what they're satirizing makes sense.

Well... What they were satirizing. GW doesn't make much sense to me these days.

Edited by LordPasty

The best part of satire is that people always think it's about projecting some terrible future to be prevented rather than being a direct analogue to the here a now. See: Idiocracy.

Since the Chaos gods were borne of extremes as well as extreme emotions, would it be unrealistic to say that gods of order don't also exist somewhere? Just a philosophical thought.

What i want to know is why there is no chaos god of fear? After all:

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear ." -H.P.Lovecraft.

All the imperial creed does is fan the fires of fear of the alien the witch and the mutant. Humans live in constant fear of violence, death, decay, alien invasion, witches and mutants in their midst, the wrath of the god emperor, and...taxes. The eldar fear slaanesh, even the necrontyr feared death. (once again it's the Orks who are comming out the best of all races) Alos chaos daemons and tyranid biohorrors are scary buggers...

So why is there no god of fear? Maybe it still needs to be born in the warp.

That's the thing, while Slaneesh certainly does appreciate carnal physical acts I personally think he appreciates depravity with a bit more...substance. I think it was WFRP that described the chaos god's realms Slaneesh's was a palace that you had to go through 6 fields to get to. Each one representing a sin that Slaneesh followers could represent. Sure there was the lust one, but there was also sloth, and greed, and plenty of other things.

That's what I meant with "multitude of domains and associations" - and the 6 fields was mentioned in the 40k Daemons Codex, too. But I stand by my opinion that sexuality is still the most straight-forward and most powerful of his/her domains.

A lot of people may be greedy, a lot of people may enjoy to eat a lot. But almost universally everyone enjoys sex. It evokes a much stronger response from our bodies and plays a much more prominent role in our society. How many people would you manage to wrap around your little finger with some nice food, as opposed to an attractive body? The urge to procreate is genetically coded into our bodies, much like the urge to feed when we're hungry. But whilst we aren't hungry all the time, our bodies do respond to sexual stimulation almost 24/7.

Hence I think it would be .. weird to discard it as if it was just some minor adjunct that would play a very small role. I am convinced that this is Slaanesh's strongest card, and how its cultists manage to infiltrate most worlds and cultures.

Especially given how, y'know, Slaanesh's daemons look like and how they act. They are mere aspects of the patron deity, after all. And I have yet to see something like a Daemon of Sloth.

The reel creep and horror of slaanesh is not so much the sex and excess but the fact that you quickly get jaded and used to it and keep searching for new and more depraved stimuly untill you find yourself doing things that you once abhored and filled you with revulsion. It starts all fun and games with the sex orgies but a few years later you find yourself humping a genestealers corpse while contemplating "doing" a live one.

the whole sex thing was what made me wonder what the tome of slaanesh would be called (before it came out.)

I would have gone with "tome of bowcikkabowwow", "tome of Huah!!!", or "tome of orgasms" :)

Since the Chaos gods were borne of extremes as well as extreme emotions, would it be unrealistic to say that gods of order don't also exist somewhere? Just a philosophical thought.

There were gods of "Law" in the first edition of WFRP.

That's the thing, while Slaneesh certainly does appreciate carnal physical acts I personally think he appreciates depravity with a bit more...substance. I think it was WFRP that described the chaos god's realms Slaneesh's was a palace that you had to go through 6 fields to get to. Each one representing a sin that Slaneesh followers could represent. Sure there was the lust one, but there was also sloth, and greed, and plenty of other things.

That's what I meant with "multitude of domains and associations" - and the 6 fields was mentioned in the 40k Daemons Codex, too. But I stand by my opinion that sexuality is still the most straight-forward and most powerful of his/her domains.

A lot of people may be greedy, a lot of people may enjoy to eat a lot. But almost universally everyone enjoys sex. It evokes a much stronger response from our bodies and plays a much more prominent role in our society. How many people would you manage to wrap around your little finger with some nice food, as opposed to an attractive body? The urge to procreate is genetically coded into our bodies, much like the urge to feed when we're hungry. But whilst we aren't hungry all the time, our bodies do respond to sexual stimulation almost 24/7.

Hence I think it would be .. weird to discard it as if it was just some minor adjunct that would play a very small role. I am convinced that this is Slaanesh's strongest card, and how its cultists manage to infiltrate most worlds and cultures.

Especially given how, y'know, Slaanesh's daemons look like and how they act. They are mere aspects of the patron deity, after all. And I have yet to see something like a Daemon of Sloth.

The reel creep and horror of slaanesh is not so much the sex and excess but the fact that you quickly get jaded and used to it and keep searching for new and more depraved stimuly untill you find yourself doing things that you once abhored and filled you with revulsion. It starts all fun and games with the sex orgies but a few years later you find yourself humping a genestealers corpse while contemplating "doing" a live one.

the whole sex thing was what made me wonder what the tome of slaanesh would be called (before it came out.)

I would have gone with "tome of bowcikkabowwow", "tome of Huah!!!", or "tome of orgasms" :)

The "Tome of Orgasms" would sell like hotcakes, with or without having anything to do with WH40K.

lol

Edited by LordPasty

What i want to know is why there is no chaos god of fear? After all:

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear ." -H.P.Lovecraft.

All the imperial creed does is fan the fires of fear of the alien the witch and the mutant. Humans live in constant fear of violence, death, decay, alien invasion, witches and mutants in their midst, the wrath of the god emperor, and...taxes. The eldar fear slaanesh, even the necrontyr feared death. (once again it's the Orks who are comming out the best of all races) Alos chaos daemons and tyranid biohorrors are scary buggers...

So why is there no god of fear? Maybe it still needs to be born in the warp.

Wouldn't that be the domain of Tzeentch. Madness and fear seem relevant.

What i want to know is why there is no chaos god of fear? After all:

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear ." -H.P.Lovecraft.

So why is there no god of fear? Maybe it still needs to be born in the warp.

Wouldn't that be the domain of Tzeentch. Madness and fear seem relevant.

Well since you mentioned that: I was making up a chaos prince of Halloween (Called Samhain ofcourse) and i was wondering to wich god he'd be aligned: which god has fire, pretending to be something else, tricks (!) and masks? Right, Tzeentch!

More halloween chaos: Nurgle would give out lots of "treats". Khorne would put daemon-razorblades in apples, and Slaanesh is the chaos god of dressing up in drag and eating all your candy till you barf.

Edited by Robin Graves

What i want to know is why there is no chaos god of fear? After all:

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear ." -H.P.Lovecraft.

So why is there no god of fear? Maybe it still needs to be born in the warp.

Wouldn't that be the domain of Tzeentch. Madness and fear seem relevant.

Well since you mentioned that: I was making up a chaos prince of Halloween (Called Samhain ofcourse) and i was wondering to wich god he'd be aligned: which god has fire, pretending to be something else, tricks (!) and masks? Right, Tzeentch!

More halloween chaos: Nurgle would give out lots of "treats". Khorne would put daemon-razorblades in apples, and Slaanesh is the chaos god of dressing up in drag and eating all your candy till you barf.

Khorne would go around smashing pumpkins and vandalizing places.

Nurgle: (rotten) egg cars and (used) TP houses

Tzeetch: two words: Devil's Night.

Slaanesh: making out on a cemetery

And the Emperor is that one house where the people are home with the lights off because they don't want to give candy.

Since the Chaos gods were borne of extremes as well as extreme emotions, would it be unrealistic to say that gods of order don't also exist somewhere? Just a philosophical thought.

Search for Musings of a Madman in the Dark heresy forums, there's a good long discussion about just that.

You raise a good point on the variety of daemons Lynata. Over time the powers of the warp seem to have become very homogenous for each of the four Chaos powers and by default a bit boring and uninspired.

Coming up with different types to represent the 6 aspects of Slaanesh would actually by quite interesting and add to the diversity of countenance and powers of daemons of Slaanesh that you could expect to face. This could work for other powers to, the wild diversity of the daemonic forces of Tzeentch should be completely mind shattering for a mortal to even contemplate instead of the same old pink horror, blue horror, changer of ways and what not.

And that's not even mentioning all the unaligned daemonic powers that they've retconned out of the game......

I think you may have inspired me to add a bit more life into the stale ol' daemonic status quo.

I think this is the main reason chaos gods turn some champions into daemon princes: have some mortals with a fresh take bring in some new ideas. Take Nurgle for example: great unclean ones: big, fat, jovial. Mortarion: gaunt, skeletal, morose.

You can have daemons in hundereds of diffrent shapes but GW hasn't gotten around to make all the models yet. :)

Or they assume standard forms in our reality.

Kor'na'k-tar bloodletter of khorne: "ka-zar-karght!, is that you? don't you have 20 scorpion tails and 3 heads in the realm of chaos?"

ka-zar-karght bloodletter of khorne: "no time! standard form! kill kill kill blood for the blood god!"

Edited by Robin Graves

Slaaneshi Demon ideas:

Massive disgustingly obese blob shoving food into its mouth from a table carried by a bunch of emaciated attendants.

Giant flesh-framed mirror surrounded by and held onto by corpses who died staring into it.

Extremely fit (e.g. ballet dancers and gymnasts) torsos gracefully dancing about with no heads and limbs stretching out to embrace others, ala Freddy Krueger

Oroboros-like creature of ambigous gender forever undulating and feeding parts of its body into indistinct orifices on itself

Where's my money, GW?