According to Lexicanum, Slaanesh is, among other things, the chaos god of Perfection. Which brings an interesting question to mind:

Take someone who is obsessed with creating a perfect {thing}, where the quality of a {thing} is diminished if it is tainted by the warp. After that persons obsession causes him to fall to Slaanesh, can he still create a {thing} that isn't tainted by the warp ?

I'd say no. Corruption is inevitable. The irony here is that this person would not realize the effects on the work he creates. At some stage, he wouldn't mind his art being tainted by the warp. In fact, he would revel in it, his understanding of perfection being changed and twisted together with his morals (and perhaps even his body). Chaos worshippers are rarely born with the mindset they have; they are being shaped into it. Artists are no different from any other kind of cultist.

Alternatively, the artist might simply despair when he sees that it's impossible to arrive at his beloved perfection.

Insanity ensues...

Right, now that you mention it, there was something about it "never being enough" - a corrupted being will never be satisfied with what he has and will continually seek "the next step" ...

I don't have access to my books right now, or I would look it up. There was a "perfect work" heresy listed in, I want to say Disciples of the Dark Gods. I involved an artist/scholar being infected with an obession to work toward a perfect truth, only to have it cause a warp incursion when complete. If I am remembering this incorrectly, then I offer my apologies.

Alpha Chaos 13 said:

I belive it is the heresy of Ateanism you are speaking of, and it does indeed spark a warp incursion when a work (either of art or of science I belive) is completed, using the calculations and formula from the "eris transform", usually an incomplete one.

Though chances are I am completely wrong, it's been known to happen.

Lynata said:

Slaanesh is also the god of excess, so I was planning that the next step would always include "make it bigger".

Nightsorrow said:

That was it!

Bilateralrope said:

I'd say it goes like this: Perfection is absolute, so the number of details you have to take into account (the number of perfectly crafted details you have to have in one perfectly crafted item) is actually infinite.

So when you set upon doing your Perfect thing you find, for example 10, imperfect details you must make perfect for the whole piece to be perfect. But when you start to make that one imperfect detail perfect you find that it consists of 10 smaller imperfect details, which each consist of 10 smaller imperfect details... and so on. Its like a fractal. The more you try to make it "perfect" the more and more "imperfections" you find to fix. The irony of it all being, of course, that the deeper you dive into trying to make it perfect the MORE imperfect everything seems.

Did you pass the sanity check yet?

Bilateralrope said:

Sure you can, trust me. Just sign here and you'll be ready to go.

You signed up?

Alex

The novel 'Fulgrim' addresses this idea quite well, the pursuit of perfection. The artists perception of perfection, obsession, and corruption. So in short, I'd say no...anything touched by Slannesh will be corrupted in the pursuit of perceived perfection.

Polaria said:

The joys of clinical insanity: not more sanity checks! Yipee for Tzeench and his convoluted- LOOK AT THE PURPLE BUNNY WITH FANGS RIPPING OUT MY THROAT!!! ITS SO CUTE!!!

I thought Slaanesh was the chaos god of nipples?

msears said:

Among other things.

Insanity. Definitely insanity, since chaos is in and of itself inherently imperfect ('perfection' being a aspect of Order).

40k runs into a LOT of problems, both philisophical and logical anytime they trot out chaos on it's little leash and get saps like us to spend money on more 40k trash. The first is that they should have gone for the full enchilada when stealing Moorcock's cosmology instead of just the lords of Chaos. It would make a lot more sense. The writers now have to ram aspects of both chaos and order into the four (five) chaos gods. This leads to obvious paradoxes such as Slaanesh being the god of perfection (from a certain point of view). 'True' perfection is impossible in the grimdark future of 40k, as the warp underlays everything. This has some serious ramifications if people ever thought about it (for example, how does anything ever crystalize then? Or protine's fold? Living humans would be impossible if the underlaying principles of the universe were as 40k claims they are)

Second: the idea of corruption as a willing surrender of self (even when it would be directly opposed to the goals of the person being corrupted) I know FFG had to coem up with soemthing other then Slaanesh = sex, but Ateanism ignores...well... even a lot of the internal logic of 40k. The main problem is that the 'Lovecraft Approach' to the sanity blasting horror of the truth revealed falls flat in 40k because the idea that simply knowing something will turn you tenticaled and insane is more funny then squick at this point. Call of Cthulhu really beat this concept to death years ago and it just doesn't work anymore.

Despite WH Chaos ideas being inspired from Moorcock's works, I don't think the first concept would be the same as the latter.

That is, WH Chaos, being quite chaotic, are not the primordial force of desorder, opposed to the primal force of order/law.

Chaos entities on Warhammer are embodiment of powerful emotions. That's why they're irrational. But having traces of order or stasis is not a contradiction to the concept, I think.

Lord Ork said:

IIRC, the individual lords of chaos were manifestations of various powerful emotions and concepts in Moorcock as well, though this isn't ruminated on much, it is mentioned in passing at one point. And the warp *is* the primal force of disorder (or at least, change) in the WH universe. The first war in warhammer is a battle between the Ancients, supreme masters of the warp who spend their time creating life and mixing things up, and the Necrontyr, who embrace system and order to the point of abandonment of self.

Well if the Ancients were anything like the Old Ones of Warhammer Fantasy, they weren't in to chaos at all, and were rather very ordered.

It was the war with the Necrons, that led to them uplifting many new races and gifting them with powerful psyches, that let to all the turbulence in the warp and the coming of the Chaos Gods.

Also, the Warp doesn't really have an underlying effect on everything. Most inanimate objects and nonsentient animals don't even register as a blip in the Warp, with just as little (if not less) flowing the other way. That's what makes Psykers so special, they're a great big conduit for power that would otherwise have little to no access to the material universe, outside of areas where the two overlap, like the Eye of Terror.

So Chaos isn't playing hell with crystals, or the evolution of lifeforms, and so on. You won't just land on an unexplored planet and find places where the warp leaks in to reality, without someone (something) having done something to put it there. Even if it's just from the raw malevolent intelligence of some being or another.

Lord Ork said:

Which is why one of the fundamental aspects of Nurgle is stasis and entropy, and resistance to change.