Questions about Slaanesh

By Letrii, in Dark Heresy

Cheezy said:

Full name: Kaela Mensha Khaine(=Bloody Handed Murder in the Eldar language).

Khaine is the Eldar god of war, murder, slaughter and carnage. Its the warp manifestation of the violent side of the Eldar psyche.

Most of the other Eldar gods were killed in ancient times by the Chaos Gods or by Khaine himself. Some people claim that Khaine is just an aspect or part of Khorne, but the Eldar vehemently deny this.

When fighting with Slaanesh, Khaine was injured badly, and fragments of him were spread through the webway and are used nowadays by the Eldar to transform one Eldar temporarily into an avatar of Khaine: a towering humanoid of molten metal with fresh blood constantly dripping from it's right hand and wielding a huge sword.

They can deny all they want, but the fact is they are puppets of Khorne in his conflict with Slaanesh. The descriptions and behaviors surrounding the avatars make it pretty clear to me that they are at least tainted by Khorne. Maybe they were once seperate entities, but I strongly believe that Khaine is either a face of Khorne or at very (and unlikely) best an unwilling vassal.

The Good God is awesome. Though I follow no religion, I just love mythology. er, no offense by the way.

My patron and matron god/dess respectively are Dagda as Archdruid and Macha as part of the triple goddess of war.

No worries about offending.

N0-1_H3r3 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...

Really? Please, show me where anyone from GW said so? AFAIK GW remains silent on this topic and never said anything about Warhammer Fantasy world being part of WH40k universe. They could be or they could be not the same, in fact it is up to you, and guys from GW left it this way (and probably they are looking at similar topics and make fun from fans arguing on countless forums gui%C3%B1o.gif ).

No way - Khorne aint no honkey space elf.

This ain't no Lord of the Rings, dawg.

****...

Hakken said:

They could be or they could be not the same, in fact it is up to you, and guys from GW left it this way (and probably they are looking at similar topics and make fun from fans arguing on countless forums gui%C3%B1o.gif ).

I totaly agree.

Hakken said:

Really? Please, show me where anyone from GW said so? AFAIK GW remains silent on this topic and never said anything about Warhammer Fantasy world being part of WH40k universe. They could be or they could be not the same, in fact it is up to you, and guys from GW left it this way (and probably they are looking at similar topics and make fun from fans arguing on countless forums gui%C3%B1o.gif ).

I would, but like so many other useful statements (such as "any global campaigns we run will no longer influence the ongoing canon") vanished along with the old GW forums, years ago.

Aureus said:

They can deny all they want, but the fact is they are puppets of Khorne in his conflict with Slaanesh. The descriptions and behaviors surrounding the avatars make it pretty clear to me that they are at least tainted by Khorne. Maybe they were once seperate entities, but I strongly believe that Khaine is either a face of Khorne or at very (and unlikely) best an unwilling vassal.

Or is Khorne a human misinterpretation of the Ancient Eldar God Khaine, given life of its own under the weight of their collective self-delusion? Or something else entirely.

Remember, the Eldar have been around for untold millions of years. They were around when Chaos was created (the emergence of Chaos was one of the reasons for the end of the War in Heaven), and Khaine is suggested to have not only been in existence during that war, but corporeal enough to fight and defeat the C'Tan in single combat.

Personally, I find "Chaos Did It" and "Possibly excluding the Emperor, it's all just the Chaos Gods under assumed names" just as painfully bland and myopic as "The C'Tan Did It". Chaos isn't the big bad in the 40k universe, unlike in Warhammer Fantasy. It's just one of several cataclysmic threats vying for attention.

As I see it, even Khorne is a relative newcomer to the grand scheme of things. Current lore tells us that Chaos has existed for 60-something million years (since the end of the War in Heaven, essentially). Long-established lore (the old Realms of Chaos books) tells us that Khorne came into existence about seven thousand years ago, roughly a millennium after the birth of the Emperor, and that he's the oldest of the four Chaos Gods.

It strikes me as odd that, in untold millions of years (remembering that this is both an infinite, and infinitely small, amount of time in the Warp, but that time does still have some limited meaning within the Immaterium simply through sapient, corporeal understanding of time filtering into the Warp from the minds and souls of living creatures), the same Chaos Gods have always existed. It seems remarkably consistent and permanent for something that identifies itself and is identifies as "Chaos". Thus, bearing in mind the two apparently contradictory notions posted above, there must theoretically have been untold billions of Chaos Gods existing over the millions of years between the 'birth' of Chaos and the present day, rising and falling in power as species ascend and die out all across the galaxy. The Chaos Gods as we know them now are simply the latest batch in a long line of amoral warp-consciousnesses that started before human history and will end long after mankind is little more than the dusty relics of a long-dead civilisation picked over by whatever species are yet to come.

The Eldar Gods, and the Gods of the Krork (now the Orks) and Hrud and all those other species created by the Old Ones millions of years ago are something else... almost.

On the one hand (remembering the background for the 40k Slann and borrowing the Slann/Old Ones links from Warhammer - the Old Ones travelled the stars and the Warp, so they may well have turned up in any number of universes), these ancient Gods could be the remnants of ancient Old Ones - beings of such incalculable psychic might that they can exist not only as conciousnesses within the Warp, but can exert influence upon the material world in such a state... souls so powerful they're almost like Gods in their own right. On the other (borrowing from one of Marijan van Staufer's ideas), those gods may have been created by the Old Ones as protectors and weapons for their child-species, a form of prototype Chaos God, but tightly controlled... the Chaos Gods are ones which came to exist naturally, and are uncontrollable. The answer could easily be anywhere in between those answers - perhaps the Old Ones cast off their physical shells and remade themselves as warp entities of vast power...

Hmm since slaanesh, was basicly created through feelings of the eldar. So would the Emperor upon death become a god of mankind? there are after all trillions of people( and a bunch psychers) who wishes/prays/ ready to sacrifice there souls to make the emperor a god(as if he isnt already), and millions of people are soul bound to him, and that he his possible one of the most powerful beings in the univers aka. able to control speak over half a galaxy and funnel the energies needed for the soritias battle sistes miracles, i would say thats there potential for a new "chaos" god in the immature.

Could khorne have been created by the neccrontyr singel minded wish to kill and destroy the old one?

Just a few thoughts.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I would, but like so many other useful statements (such as "any global campaigns we run will no longer influence the ongoing canon") vanished along with the old GW forums, years ago.

For the benefit of Hakken and others, I can confirm this. While the old GW forums are no longer around, you can still ask any studio member and they'll tell you that both universes have been seperate for a long time, despite common elements.

Of course, this doesn't stop you from using your own interpretation in your games and elsewhere.

Sarius said:

Hmm since slaanesh, was basicly created through feelings of the eldar. So would the Emperor upon death become a god of mankind? there are after all trillions of people( and a bunch psychers) who wishes/prays/ ready to sacrifice there souls to make the emperor a god(as if he isnt already), and millions of people are soul bound to him, and that he his possible one of the most powerful beings in the univers aka. able to control speak over half a galaxy and funnel the energies needed for the soritias battle sistes miracles, i would say thats there potential for a new "chaos" god in the immature.

There are a few inquisitors itching to get their hands on the 'off' switch of the Golden Throne for that very reason.

N0-1_H3r3: In general I fully agree. Neither Chaos nor the C'tan should be the source of everything bad. I simply think that, even if originally pure, the events surrounding Khaine and his nature make me feel that there is no way he has not been tainted or absorbed by Khorne. Also when you consider the Eldar's self-confident blindness (they still think they're better than everyone else even though they've done more damage to the galaxy than every other threat combined... possibly the C'tan aside, though I doubt it), they would never accept that one of their two only surviving gods (I think the Laughing God is the only clean and purely awesome thing about the Eldar) has been tainted or subsumed by their chaos-spawns rival.

It could easily not be the case, but I don't trust the Eldar's judgement and self-questioning enough to believe that their god of murder is different from the other god of murder with a nearly identical name.

I'd sooner follow Gork and Mork... but then I have a soft spot for Ork kulture.

Aureus said:

It could easily not be the case, but I don't trust the Eldar's judgement and self-questioning enough to believe that their god of murder is different from the other god of murder with a nearly identical name.

Well, that's the thing. I interpret contemporary Eldar culture (specifically Craftworlder culture) to be inherently built around the idea of questioning themselves, their limits and so forth. The Path system requires it to function, IMO, and it's understood to be the root cause of the Fall (the Eldar stopped asking questions, and simply sought out self-gratification, never stopping to consider if what they were doing was right or wrong).

I think that eldars simply dont take the aproach of "right or wrong", they just think of consecuences, and being so long-lived only very long term consecuences are considered.

That´s maybe why the Imperium of Mankind doesnt seem to understand them.