I thought Slaanesh was birthed fairly recently because of Eldar, mid 30'sK? But he is also in WFRPG. Seems odd to me.

Isn't Slaanesh also She Who Thirsts? Is it a male or female entity?

Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000 are two separate universes. They just happen to echo each other.

Oh, I thought 40k was result of vast millenial gap happening to the original world.

In WFB Chaos champions are sometimes gifted with arcane technology, in the form of boltguns and chainswords and the like, so it could presumably take place after.

Also, Slaanesh is a hermaphrodite normally and switches between male and female whenever he feels like it.

Letrii said:

Originally they were the same universe setting, both games evolved however, the Orcs in fantasy were flesh and blood creatures, where as in 40k they were fungoid in origin.

Some things that hang over is the info about the 4 major chaos gods.

Isn't Slaanesh also She Who Thirsts?

Once they were the same. Slaanesh is "recent" by eldar standards, which will still mean incredibly ancient by Imperial standards.

Is it a male or female entity?

The easiest anser to this is Yes.

The deity is the ultimate in sexual depridation, degridation and other things starting with D and ending in Tion no doubt.

Pleasure is pain and pain is pleasure, and both at the same time. You know it hurts but you want more. Even when the daemonette is eating a mouth of bockwurst and you know theres not a deli store for a few miles and she came to the party empty handed.

They're every fantasy pumped up to Eleven and then made Wrong and not in a BadWrongFun kind of way.

I'd go in to more detail but this is a Family Rating board..

So heres something from the Lexicanum Wiki..

Slaanesh is the Chaos god of lust, excess, pleasure, perfection and hedonism. Slaanesh typically appears in a form which is female on the right side and male on the left with two sets of horns rising from its flowing golden hair. It can however assume any form; male, female, hermaphrodite or asexual, but prefers male bodies.

Interesting, a sexually confused primordial.

Letrii said:

Not confused, just wanting to get the most out of everything.

Though i must admit, speaking of the chaos gods..

Some people just see Nergle as a god of decay and rot, but many of his adherants go for the whole Life Eternal thing, much like a vampire would, they run cults dedicated to staving off the decay, and thus become creatures who spread it as they stagnate unable to grow or change, so they do more and more unspeakable things in the name of their god just to get a bit of the old feeling back..

Khorne isnt just a god of slaughter, many hunters have small shrines to him, not that they might know it, but what other god would bless you best to hunt and bring down the powerful beasts on the planet or in the sector? Some of his cults could be likened to Galactic Safari Hunts, with each hunter trying to out do the others on the hunt, bringing down more and more powerful creatures, until they turn on the "most cunning and noble of all creatures", their own kind..

Tzeentch, the god of Change covers a lot of ground. Lies, deceit, sorcery, anarchy and so on. But he can be a god of Small changes as well. Take a domino out of the line up and all the dominoes after that will still be standing, so other than Khorne Tzeentch would be a good deity for Assassins to follow...

*wanders off to write some notes for new cults to spring on players at some point...*

Action_Carl said:

And, more importantly, is the semisentient personification of the desire for sensation, and thus doesn't actually have a defined gender. Like all the Chaos Gods, gender is a trait attributed to Slaanesh by mortals as much as anything else.

Velvetears said:

Tzeentch also covers contradiction and scheming. Indeed, it's been suggested that there is no purpose to Tzeentch's schemes - the Chaos God of Change schemes and plots because it is the essence and embodiment of scheming and plotting, and thus the very acts and notions of conspiracies and machinations are ends unto themselves...

N0-1_H3r3 said:

heh, who knew the High Lords of Terra were a secret cabal of T worshippers, so secret they didnt know that all the others were in on it..

Tzeentch, the god of Change covers a lot of ground. Lies, deceit, sorcery, anarchy and so on.

He is also the god of Hope.

frankthedm said:

As in "I hope Tzeentch gives me the magic powers I asked for, and doesn't turn me into a mewling chaos spawn!"

Velvetears said:

In truth both Warhammer settings have been in seperate universes since day one.

However they do have mirrored similarities when it comes to two things. Racial content and Chaos. The original intent with 40K was to have all the fantasy races represented with unique content added. This was never fully realized. As GW policy changed so did the "shared race" intent. Some things never came to be, some things had limited releases then canned, and some released material was taken out. In the process both games diverged and evolved into their own unique systems, though the racial parallels are still there even if an Eldar has nothing to do with an Elf.

Then there is Chaos. Chaos is eternal, Chaos is always there and is everwhere. Basically chaos touches all worlds and planes. It is the only real "connecting" factor between the two game worlds. One example of representation is 40K and other futuristic weapons ending up in Fantasy.

It's probably best to look at the games as parallels, that said there was some stuff in the early 80's that said the WHF world was a feral world deep in the eye of chaos.

A friend of mine who had an interview at GW HQ, once told me they had a huge galactic map in the foyer showing Imperial space, and in one corner a big arrow saying 'Warhammer World'. All I know for sure is Talisman Timescape had Space Marines in it.

As for Slanessh, not sure if this was retconned, but at one time his/her birth cry was said to be the eye of chaos, and the warp storms caused by it one of the reasons that the golden age of man came to an end. With the currently continuity not sure if this could be held as true any more.

ClockworkGecko said:

Who said so? Look at Liber Chaotica, it begins in WFRP and ends in WH40k. Elves and Eldars got the same pantheon, the same with Orks (and who said that in WFRP they are not fungi?). And these are just examples.
For me personally Old World looks like Slaan Playground.

Hakken said:

Some of the earliest WH books mention villages, and possibly some of the 1st ed WHFRP had such villages in them, oh and the line of figures of Female orcs (as featured in BloodBowl) make me think of them as Meaty critters rather than Fungoidal, not to mention the Night Goblin army (again with its villages of Goblins and not Orcs in the forests), seeing as Goblins are the "lower" form of Orcs as Gretchin are of Orks.

40k goes out of its way to state they are fungoidal, Fantasy does not.

I also like to see Slaanesh being worshipped like a primal fertility god/goddess like Shubb-Nigurath in Lovecraftian lore.

You know, sacrificing virgins to ensure a bountiful harvest.

I also think that the Cenobites in Hellraiser make excellent Slaaneshi devils or Daemonhosts.

Hakken said:

The author of the Liber Chaotica books, amongst others. The inclusion of 40k elements in them was a decision by Black Library so that the books could be sold to 40k and WFB players alike... but the books as a whole are comprised of the ramblings of a scholar whose mind becomes increasingly unstable as he deals with a subject that no mortal should consider. The official line is that both settings are distinct from one another, joined by their respective connections to the Warp and the Chaos Gods within. Essentially, the Immaterium sits in the middle between the two universes...

Also it should be noted that if you wanted the Warhammer world to exist in the 40K universe - it would be fine - cut off by warpstorms etc........as statd there are some cross over elements - Slann, Chaos Champions with Tech,................

Slannash was also very well described over on Dark Reign as "hunger" - trying to fill the emptiness but never succeeding, jaded and seeking the "next sensation"

go here:

http://darkreign40k.com/forum/index.php?topic=1287.0

esepcially the bit by Aureus

I wonder if Games workshop would then consider a sort of cross-over conversion table for having characters from each setting interact with one another in some way. That or convert a few of the fantasy races over to 40K feudal worlds.

Halflings and Dwarves could then be funcionally put in as an abnormal human species (perhaps a higher gravity world which stuanted thier height for the dwarves.) The halflings also seem to have many things in common with the 40K ratlings. (they could both come from similar/same worlds.) Anyone done any homebrew rules for this? I'd love to see them.

Sorry to get off track here. Just brainstorming. I played a Slaanesh cultist in Warhammer Fantasy roleplay once. Loved it. (In the game you can play the forces of choas if you wish heh) I reckon people have covered it: pretty much it's the manifestation of all seven deadly sins multiplied by the infinite reach of the choas storm/warp. Such things this forum can't delve into heh.

Solardream said:

Thank the God Emperor that this forum isn't on the Games Workshop site. I hear that mentioning the SQUATS , even in passing, will get you sneers of derision from everyone who works there.

Solardream said:

For all intents and purposes (at least as initially designed) Eldar are Space Elves, Orks are Space Orks (Gretchin are Space Goblins), Ogryns are Space Ogres, Ratlings are Space Halflings and Squats are Space Dwarfs (the latter three all being forms of Abhuman, rather than Xenos creatures). At the time, 40k and Warhammer were considered to be the same universe (the Warhammer World was, apparently, a single planet in the Eye of Terror)... but the settings have diverged since then, and been made distinct from one another in all regards save for the matter of Chaos.

You want rules for those Space Ogres, Space Halflings and Space Dwarfs - click on the link in my signature, and look for the document called Something Other Than Human - it's a supplement of mine that presents Ogryns, Ratlings and Squats as playable characters, and one which has been quite well recieved judging by the number of people on this and the previous FFG forums who claim to use it in their games.

Thanks NO-1. This is quite wel done and has obviously been discussed heaps.

I may take this PDF to my group and see if a GM will give it a go. You have had one convert join your flock. Thank you.

Solardream said:

While this is quite possible, having a cross-over would be difficult. Due to the Imperiums Xenophobia, anything not human is pretty much wiped off the face of the universe. I guess you could have them as abhumans, but there would be issues.

a) The WHFRP world is full of Xenos, Chaos, and Mutants, at least to the Imperium mind. Crusade worthly at least.

b) Made worse is that the humans of WHFRP worship a false god in Sigmar. I guess you could technically find a way to say the Imperium Emperor was Sigmar, but since Sigmar is a real person in WHFRP, it would get more difficult, and something tells me the Empire would not look kindly in saying that Sigmar wasn't a true god, but just avatar of the true Emperor, or even worse, just a Saint and not worth true devotion.

Its quite possible that the Inquisition would just see the whole world as a wash and declare it Exterminatus, and just bomb the whole thing from orbit, especially since entire sections of the world are pretty much handed over to Chaos.

I can see the two exsisting at the same time, with WHFRP being a fuedal world cut off from the Imperium, but having cross-over interaction would be difficult in my mind.

I think the closest Lovecraftian analog to Slaanesh is Y'golonac.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%27golonac

not to suggest that the Chaos Gods are easily translatable as Lovecraftian horrors, but if you're gonna go looking for Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, then Lovecraft is a good place to start looking for Dark Heresy story ideas.

I think that the best way to think of Slaanesh is that it's a being that says 'just do it'. Pleasure, pain, perversion(s) of mind/body/spirit....it's all the same to Slaanesh. You could be really into cheeseburgers and still be faithful to Slaanesh. the point is extreme sensation, no matter what that sensation is at the moment. To most people, that means sex. But to the more discerning worshipper, it could be intellectual perfection or artistic achievement. A cultists could join a slaanesh cult and be a member for years and never know they're a cultist....in some ways, slaanesh can rival Tzeench for subtle corruption.