So, the Chaos Gods sprang into existence sometime in mankind's prehistory, from what I can gather. Since then, they have been elevating their favourite sentient beings to Daemon Prince status. I have a couple of ideas on some of the historical personages they would choose:

Tzeentch: Aleister Crowley (founder of the OTO, the Great Beast 666)

Slaanesh: Gilles de Rais (luxury addict and child killer), the Marquis de Sade (everyone knows this guy!)

Nurgle: Shiro Ishii (biological warfare prodigy), Shoko Asahara (death cult leader)

Khorne: Ivan the Terrible (laid siege to Novgorod, a province in his own country, just for the hell of it)

So, who do think the Chaos gods would have chosen to elevate throughout human history?

The only ones I can honestly think of would be; Hitler or Ghenjis Khan (spell is wrong I know), maybe some other Mongols, Salamanessar III or Sargon II. But that's probably it. I of course tend to think that it is VERY difficult to become a Daemon Prince, and most cruel or "evil" people will at best fit to become infused with Chaotic powers as cultists or be somewhat mutated. You have to be the stuff of nightmares and beyond to reach Daemonhood.

Hitler probably wouldnt. He doesnt qualify for the 3 lesser chaos gods, and for Tzeentch he simply wasnt good enough on the intelligence part.

Genghis Khan might qualify for Khorne, yet for his time was he really that depraved/crude in his acts?

Alexander the Great also had his own people write most of the history, but still there quite a few atrocities commited/ordered by him.

I suggest Wittmann. Hed be the perfect Khorne guy, only he was more intelligent for the average berzerker, and didnt use close combat tactics.

This is actually a problem. Khorne is ONLY close combat killing. But ranged killing is everybodies elses job. Even Nurgle does it well. But to qualify for anyone else, you must either be plagued/depraved(mostly sexually) or an intrigue monster.

Humans rarely fit such a narrow scheme.

Khorne is the God of war.

Berzerk close combat of but one of his facets.

I'm pretty sure someone would "promote" Vlad the Impaler to Daemon Prince. He committed many, many atrocities, just for his own gratification.

Also, there's no reason you can't have a DP who serves Chaos Undivided.

Cheers,

- V.

I think Vlad would be Khorne.

And Ghengis Khan would probably be more likely to be Undivided. He wasn't really bloodthirsty for the hell of it.

Now Atilla the Hun, he would be for Khorne.

Well Hitler had his zeal for his cause, as do for example Word Bearers and I don't see anyone getting jumped over for having a greater cause.

I also agree that the "Khornate berserker" stereotype is very limiting.

There are however a few Assyrian rulers who I could see would be candidates for at least being Chaos champions.

I would imagine the Emperor tried to swat anyone who got too powerful, there couldn't have been too much else to do in the dark history of Terra.

Of course, in the age of horses you can't just rush to the other side of the globe to kill someone, and their murderous legions.

If Vlad is on the list, Bathory can't get out. Slaanesh seems the straightforward option.

Hmmm evil and depraved people in history who would have been elevated...

George W. Bush? Bringing an American economy down for meddling in other nations affairs and didn't even bring home the bacon?

Maybe not I reckon...now if he had Iraqians slaughtered to find these weapons and then annexed their oil in order to "help reorganize security" so that Americans could have cheaper gas? That'd be a bit closer to home.

Aaaahh I'm sure a number of military commanders in Vietnam might have made the list during the war because of taking out whole villages to ensure that the kiddies who were also armed wouldn't shoot sholdiers in the back.

Now Hitler would be sort of like the Warsmith in Storm of Iron who was elevated for gaining his goal in the mission. Now if only his forces had broken the back of the invaders at D-Day or the Battle of the Bulge...

Some great ideas so far. Thanks for reminding me about Bathory Lord Ork - she would work perfectly as a daemon prince of Slaanesh. Thanks to everyone else for reminding me of the Assyrians and others - Assurbanipal and some of the other Assyrian kings would be perfect, given their penchant for flaying and impaling their vanquished enemies and then immortalizing their gory acts in literature and sculpture! Vlad the Impaler is also perfect for Khorne, as is Attila, strange I forgot about them!

Couple more ideas - some of the more sinister of the Roman emperors would probably work. As they appear in the literary sources, Nero and Caligula would be perfect as daemon princes of Slaanesh, and Domitian would work well for Chaos Undivided. The tyrants of Syracuse, especially Philaris (burned people alive in a brazen bull) would also be good for chaos undivided. But surely there are more...

You may want to have a check at the colonialism because there are some candidates invovled there. Cortez and Leopold II would certainly fit as manipulative and evil people in my book.

Rodrigo Borgia a.k.a. Pope Alexander VI = Daemon Prince of Tzeench

Sun Tzu = Daemon Prince of Khorne

Really now? Sun Tzu and Khorne?

Not a chance.

I don't see why Sun Tzu wouldn't have been a Khornate. Seems very reasonable to me, as Khorne is the god of war - not just idiot berserkersr charging with axes against machine guns.

Cortez might qualify as an accidental Nurgle Prince. Afterall the diseases spreading out from his little conquests and thoser of the other conquistadors killed somewhere between 50-70% of the population of the Americas at the times. Entire cultures collapsed and vanished before the Europeans even got there, killed by the advancing waves of disease.

Nurgle - Whoever thought of the idea of the diseased blankets to wipe out indian colonies.

Slaanesh - Marquis de Saad as was mentioned earlier, and any number of artists/musicians noted through history to have been thought to "sell their soul" for their talent (like Elvis... and justin bieber I suppose is evil and androgynis enough for a slaaneshi cultist)

Tzeentch - Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Lincoln, and the chick who started the women's right movement, as these were agents for massive, worldwide change.

Khorne - Vlad the Impaler, Ghadafi, Sadam Hussein and any number of other world leaders who have executed mass numbers of people in a violent orgy of blood and death.

The Emperor - Hitler, the Popes who started the Crusades, Bush (Please remember, chaos is not about Evil vs Good, it is about Law vs Chaos, Hitler was extremely lawful, and you could, by setting, swap "jews/blacks/gypsies with the concept of mutants/xenos/heretics).

Richard Coeur de Lion would fit for Khorne. Most of the time he's portrayed as a figure of chivalry, but he was in fact a brutal war criminal during the crusades.

Voronesh said:

Chinggis Xan (The currently accepted Scholarly way to write the name... I'm in the field, and I hate it too!) was down right benevolent by standards of the times. Didn't kill based on religion, almost all his wars were started by the -other- side when they killed messengers and/or seized caravans. And their infamous siege slaughtering? That was standard procedure in any siege, if you didn't surrender, then you risk death if you don't succeed. And the veracity of a lot of those cities being wiped out completely is a bit iffy given that most of them have primary documents talking about how thriving they were less than a decade after the fact. So it's likely there was some hyperbole in most cases.

Don't get me wrong, the Mongols certainly saw themselves as superior to everyone else. No doubt there! But in the off chance the Great Xan was a Daemon prince, definitely Undivided, since he never would have promoted one religion over another.

Gurkhal said:

Except he's not a god of War, he's a god of slaughter and bloodshed. And Sun Tzu doesn't really endorse massacring your enemies in any of his writings.

Which brings us to Hitler, who was absolutely insane, and only ran an orderly regime because the people around him helped keep things together. Appropriately enough, everyone was scheming against each other, that's why things fell apart at the end with Goering and Goebbels (or was it Himmler?) all trying to sieze control of the Third Reich, though they were hardly the only ones sizing up their colleagues for a knife in the back. Anyway, Hitler being the instigator of so much death would be a perfect candidate for either Khorne or Nurgle.

Q: Except he's not a god of War, he's a god of slaughter and bloodshed. And Sun Tzu doesn't really endorse massacring your enemies in any of his writings.

I disagree. Khorne is very much the god of war. Possibly the god of rage but that's about it. Then again I take a broader view on Chaos so I think I can understand you objections, even if I think that they are wrong.

Q: Which brings us to Hitler, who was absolutely insane, and only ran an orderly regime because the people around him helped keep things together. Appropriately enough, everyone was scheming against each other, that's why things fell apart at the end with Goering and Goebbels (or was it Himmler?) all trying to sieze control of the Third Reich, though they were hardly the only ones sizing up their colleagues for a knife in the back. Anyway, Hitler being the instigator of so much death would be a perfect candidate for either Khorne or Nurgle.

Well Hitler's used of charismatic leadership and feudal anarchy was always due to his choice of method for leadership, and has always been a pretty interesting style. That's always a favorite for me when making a Prince for Vampire . But anyhow I would think that Hitler would be more into the Khornate camp than anything else.

Gurkhal said:

If you actually read "Art of War", you are told that war is something horrible, that brings a lot of suffering to the people, not only for the killing, but also for the work that is not being done and the rising prices of goods. Sun Tzu argues that a governour must prepare for war, because it is inevitable many times, but must work to avoid war to save his people for suffering. I think the book even has a chapter or two about avoiding war. Also, one of the objectives of a general when it must go to war is to minimize the impact of it, and the suffering of the people.

I have to agree with the B Pact that Sun Tzu rarely qualifies as a Khorne follower. There are other medieval european writers that do appraise the killing, and the pleasure of blood spill, that would make better examples, and that they aren't berzerks.

Lord Ork said:

Now you've got me interested. Mind to name a few?

The best argument I could see for Hitler is by a closer analysis of Nazism - basically looking at it at an ideology that is heavily invested in struggle or conflict. That is an ida that Hitler spoke of from time to time - that life is about struggle, that it is inherently competitive, and that the strong are destined to triumph and the weak to be eliminated. I can see these ideas as being Khorney in many ways.

I think that anybody who brought about major changes in the way people think and live could be a candidate for daemon prince of Tzeentch - they don't necessarily have to be mass murderers or even evil really. I would say many Enlightenment Era philosophers might be seen as being servants of Tzeentch in how they changed to world.

As for Daemon princes of Slaanesh, I think that it could include people who not only dedicated their lives to pleasure but those who encouraged similar attitudes among the populace. Guys like Hugh Hefner for example, or even Herbert Marcuse whose flavor of Marxism and writings helped to encourage the free love movement in the 1960's. John Wilmot, the inspiration for the movie The LIbertine might also be a good candidate. Aristippus of Cyrene would be a good candidate as well, he founded the hedonistic cyrenaics : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrenaics

Nurgle is harder. There were massive deaths introduced into the new world by European explorers, though most of that was accidental and the cases where diseases may have been deliberately introduced are hazy. Shiro Ishii, the head of Unit 731, experimented on thousands of people during WWII and Japanese biological warfare is estimated to have killed over 500,000 - making him a pretty good candidate for daemon prince of Nurgle : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

I would like, but I can't recall. I remember reading at my History book the writings of a noble describing the art of war, the pleasures of scream and blood. Like a sport. But I cannot recall the name of the author.

I can recommend you in exchange a much later (XIX, I think) poem of a Spanish writer (Espronceda) who seemed tired of european degeneration and felt attraction to the "savage" people. Quite like Nietzsche. Not to take it literally:

Hurrah! Cossacks of the desert, hurrah! Europe offers ye a splendid booty. Bloody pools may her battlefields become, and vultures on her army feast

www.sacred-texts.com/neu/basque/lbp/lbp13.htm