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Again due to paracausality, the moment a given God awoke it had then always existed and would forever exist. Technically, on a timeline, Slaanesh only came into existence in M30 with the Fall of the Aeldari but also existed in the myths and legends of a thousand civilisations across the galaxy and had done for millennia because it is not a linear being.

The Chaos Gods are like the Prophets from Star Trek. Inscrutable and like to mess around in linear matters but also don't really care about them at the same time.

 Hellebore wrote:
Consider also that humanity is not the only species to influence the warp.

Slannesh was an eldar warp god.


Just because the rage identity khorne woke up in 800 ad doesn't mean rage gods created by other species didn't exist.

The 3 chaos gods are humanity's imprint on the roiling warp but rage, despair and hope existed before them.


Khorne is just the human flavour of the eternal warp storm that is sentient rage.

This is the most sensible take yet on what is otherwise a weirdly human-fixated origin story for several Chaos Gods in the official background.

Yes, human aspects awoken make a great deal more sense than three of the Dark Gods themselves gestalting during the Middle Ages, when humanity was only found on Terra and its numbers were low.

I reckon that's more or less it. To expand on that in that vein. A good way of looking at it is that the four Chaos gods are avatars of human emotion and we see them as how humans in 40k see them and react with them. Other races likely see them in a different way and are tempted by them in different ways. Slaanesh might present itself very differently to a race of asexual troglodyte frog aliens that don't have any sexual lust but might really really like shiny gems.

I don't think there's been much lore (that I've seen and that's a bit patchy between the years 2009 - 2019 ) regarding precisely how other races see the Chaos gods.

Each god presents itself in a certain way to its potential victim, Khorne might whisper about honour and a warriors code to a noble soldier who has a deep bloodlust they desperately try to keep in check. Once they have them, then it's a different matter. Blood and skulls all the way until the victim is a shell of their former self.

Each avatar is just a facet of the whole god and some facets might take control for longer, depending on which galactic civilisation is on top/ the most prevalent.

So the RoC descriptions of the birth of the Chaos gods being in the middle ages and whatever might be more or less still "accurate". As humanity begins to germinate and grow, so do these versions of the gods of Chaos. Each birthing in a certain order due to the tendencies of a particular race.

To get REALLY meta- since the Chaos gods were based off of Michael Moorcock's books, in them he states that (his) Chaos Gods are manifestations of a higher plane of existence. Elric and some of his other guises are travelling around the multi-verse and they come up against Beelzebub- and on our Earth, he looks like a big, giant fly. They go to a higher dimension to try and escape.. and Beel looks more like something from Giger.
So- the Chaos Gods could be in fact, their own state of existence or plane of existence. This would explain why they can't exist in real space, and their "Emissaries" of other Daemons can't exist outside the warp for long periods of time. Individual daemons may just be an amount of power or influence of their God. Best example is Nurgle, where nurglings and Great unclean ones are similar.
Best analogy I can think of come from a New 52 Superman comic: we're on one dimension, and to us something from a higher dimension may appear as multiple individuals, but it's all the same. As an example, in a 2d plane (piece of paper) a 3d fork gets poked into it. To us, it's one fork- to the 2d paper it's 4-5 holes. And so, the Chaos Gods may just be all their regular Daemons- various manifestations of themselves. (Except Daemon Princes/ Primarchs, who have been filled with warp spaghetti.)

Unsupported passing thought: maybe some of the chaos gods really did awaken due to human activity, but only because the Emperor was around to see it.

Like, maybe the super-psychic Emperor seeing the effects of the Black Plague caused the vaguely-Nurgly energy in the warp to coalesce into Nurgle proper. The Emprah is sooooo psychic that his stray thoughts had a similar effect to that of the eldar as a whole during the Fall.

Because yeah, the story is weirdly human-centric. Maybe the Emprah can be the excuse for why that is.

(Not that this is a hill I want to die on. Just a fun passing thought.)

It could be that as man evolved, the pre-existing Gods were able to start interacting with us.

I mean, if your soul is Tau like, and all dim? You’re just not going to attract the same attention as an Eldar soul. But, if overtime your species’ souls increase in intensity, you’ll bring greater attention as a result.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It could be that as man evolved, the pre-existing Gods were able to start interacting with us.

I mean, if your soul is Tau like, and all dim? You’re just not going to attract the same attention as an Eldar soul. But, if overtime your species’ souls increase in intensity, you’ll bring greater attention as a result.

true, but Tau are now at the stage of attracting the attention of the Chaos gods, Tzeench and Khorne respectively, so while they are dimmer than any other race we know of bar Necrons, they are still worthy of notice.

just conjecture on my behalf but it may be down to them reaching a critical mass of some sort within the warp, billions of little souls are now making for a tempting target.

It could be that Humies just have more overall potential for different emotions. Some species, like the Tarellian Dog Soldiers seem tailor-made for specific gods like Khorne- But, if that's all you're about,it won't give much power to Chaos (like Orks). It's a question of choice vs. your upbringing and Chaos wants those that choose to worship or add to their power over those that it's second nature to.

 TheChrispyOne wrote:
It could be that Humies just have more overall potential for different emotions. Some species, like the Tarellian Dog Soldiers seem tailor-made for specific gods like Khorne- But, if that's all you're about,it won't give much power to Chaos (like Orks). It's a question of choice vs. your upbringing and Chaos wants those that choose to worship or add to their power over those that it's second nature to.

if that were true then no chaos god would have formed because they woke up based on events, not on worship. The non linear aspect of them didn't even come into it. Humanity wasn't collectively worshiping them, nor were the eldar when they created slannesh. it was simply a tipping point of accumulated emotion.

Chaos is the mirror of reality, every emotion goes into the warp whether people want it to or not. The 4 chaos gods are the nodes of primordial emotion vortices, an accumulation of millions of years of sentient emotion.

The reason chaos can't be defeated is because it's created by the existence of life, especially sentient life. Rage, despair, desire, ambition are considered metaphysical building blocks of sentience in 40k, as real and inevitable as atoms in reality. They repel one another, only attracted to energy of a similar type, hence their accreting into massive warp storms.

Just as sentience itself is an emergent property of a highly complex reactive learning neural network, the chaos gods are emergent properties of the condensing of trillions of sentient souls and emotions in the warp. They are beings of pure ID - albeit an id that only has one instinctual intrinsic desire based on the limitations of its creation.

over the decades as they've expanded out the universe, added the necron war in heaven etc, this has remained more or less true, it's the emphasis has shifted. in modern 40k humanity is the main feeder for the chaos gods and they reflect human versions of those emotions, but it would change if they weren't.


The following are excerpts from the lost and the damned where the origin of the chaos gods was fleshed out. You can see that the idea of humanity creating the 3 chaos gods is not entirely correct, nor that the eldar were solely responsible for slannesh.

The reason it is said that the first 3 chaos gods awoke during the war in heaven is because before the war in heaven the realm called to warp was not the realm of chaos it is now, by which I mean it was calm and not stormy and full of demons.

The old ones were master is using the energy of the warp in their lives, technology and warfare.

I think the war with the necrons has the resulting impact in changing warp space to a realm of chaos creating an environment where the gods can manifest.

 Formosa wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It could be that as man evolved, the pre-existing Gods were able to start interacting with us.

I mean, if your soul is Tau like, and all dim? You’re just not going to attract the same attention as an Eldar soul. But, if overtime your species’ souls increase in intensity, you’ll bring greater attention as a result.

true, but Tau are now at the stage of attracting the attention of the Chaos gods, Tzeench and Khorne respectively, so while they are dimmer than any other race we know of bar Necrons, they are still worthy of notice.

just conjecture on my behalf but it may be down to them reaching a critical mass of some sort within the warp, billions of little souls are now making for a tempting target.

Likely a combination. It took the first human psykers emerging (not you, Uri Geller. You fraud) for the Gods to be able to affect our race. Before they may have been able to nudge stuff along in a way they found favourable, but only in really subtle ways.

The Tau are possibly a different matter, because man is out and about in vast numbers, waging war against the Tau. Now, we saw in Arks of Omen that Tau can be affected by the Gods. Farsight himself fell under the murder rage, but was able to regain his mental stability. He was at least partially aided by a Hexagrammatic Ward, but I think it’s also arguable the Tau having dim souls made the job easier all the same. Mental image is of handholds on a cliff. The smaller the handhold, the harder it is to grip. The Hexagrammatic Ward acting as grease on the handhold.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also worth keeping in mind in terms of Tasty Soul Snacks, the Eldar and other species were around pre Great Crusade, and indeed pre-Golden Age.

If fresh Lobster is plentiful, you may favour that over a plate of winkles.

mrFickle wrote:
The reason it is said that the first 3 chaos gods awoke during the war in heaven is because before the war in heaven the realm called to warp was not the realm of chaos it is now, by which I mean it was calm and not stormy and full of demons.

The old ones were master is using the energy of the warp in their lives, technology and warfare.

I think the war with the necrons has the resulting impact in changing warp space to a realm of chaos creating an environment where the gods can manifest.

This contradicts the bit about Khorne and Nurgle waking up during the time of the black plague on Earth though, right? Pretty sure the War in Heaven canonically occurred much earlier than that.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

mrFickle wrote:
The reason it is said that the first 3 chaos gods awoke during the war in heaven is because before the war in heaven the realm called to warp was not the realm of chaos it is now, by which I mean it was calm and not stormy and full of demons.

The old ones were master is using the energy of the warp in their lives, technology and warfare.

I think the war with the necrons has the resulting impact in changing warp space to a realm of chaos creating an environment where the gods can manifest.

This contradicts the bit about Khorne and Nurgle waking up during the time of the black plague on Earth though, right? Pretty sure the War in Heaven canonically occurred much earlier than that.

I think the stuff that links the chaos gods to specific human events has evaporated now. It was written at one point that Ww1 and WW2 created Khorne. But if you think about the size of the galaxy and at that time earth was a speck of dust compared to all other life in the galaxy. Something. Grander was needed to create a chaos god I think

Khorne, Nurgle, and Tzeentch (henceforth abbreviated to KNT) are the racial gods of humanity in the way that the Orks have their gods, the Eldar have theirs, and now even the psychically active species of the Tau Empire have their own god of the Greater Good. The original Realms of Chaos never gave the exact dates or events that awakened KNT, but only hints as related to the rise of human civilization. Khorne was the first and his awakening is described as causing wars to sweep across humanity (Bronze or Iron Age?). Tzeentch was described as awakening as ever more complex societies led to intrigues (Perhaps the rise of ever larger empires in the Classical age?). Nurgle was described as the last to awaken during a time of great plague. This is often hypothesized though never explicitly confirmed to be the Black Death.

However, initially KNT would have been weak and localized gods, just as humanity was a weak and localized species. They would have grown in stature gradually though as humanity spread across the stars. We see parallels in how the god of the Greater Good is a localized warp god that so far has only appeared and interfered with a few specific events, all pertaining to the Tau. The power of the warp gods depends on how much "worship" (intentional or unintentional) they receive. That is why the Eldar pantheon weakened as the Eldar delved into hedonism and abandoned traditional values.

Since virtually every Ork aside from a few rare aberrant ones like Stormboyz of Khorne is a believer in Gork and Mork, these 2 Ork deities are immense in power due to the sheer size of the Ork population across the galaxy.

Slaanesh is an interesting case as it started off as an Eldar god, exploding from zero to being a peer of KNT in one fell swoop. However with nearly all the Eldar population consumed already or in hiding, Slaanesh would not have had any source to feed on in the long term if it had not established a base of worship among humanity. Humanity has the dual advantage of immense galactic numbers and being susceptible to the temptations of vice and luxury that Slaanesh offers and feeds off of.

A way to think about it is Slaanesh "jumped" pantheons or civilizations from the one that originally birthed it. Isis was worshipped by the Romans. Astarte derived from the Mesopotamian Inanna/Ishtar.

Iracundus wrote:
Khorne, Nurgle, and Tzeentch (henceforth abbreviated to KNT) are the racial gods of humanity

It's an interesting thought, but is there much lore to support it? Concepts like war, disease/death, or the various things Tzeentch is associated with all seem like they would have been relevant to most of the intelligent species we see in 40k. I could see humanity eventually becoming populace enough for KNT to reach critical mass as a result of human expansion, but is there any reason they wouldn't/couldn't have come from another source? Like, Slaanesh was an eldar god that went universal. Why didn't Khaine or Cegorach make a similar jump if war/murder and trickery are strong enough concepts to produce Khorne and Tzeentch? And while orks are weird, you could maybe ask a similar question of Gork/Mork.

Not to muddy the waters, but weren't the necrontyr implied to have some amount of psychic ability too (but just really, really dislike warp shenanigans)? Even if they were only as psychically active as a species like the tau, you'd think their galaxy-spanning civilization would have been sufficient to produce some warp gods given that the tau have already done so.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Iracundus wrote:
Khorne, Nurgle, and Tzeentch (henceforth abbreviated to KNT) are the racial gods of humanity

It's an interesting thought, but is there much lore to support it? Concepts like war, disease/death, or the various things Tzeentch is associated with all seem like they would have been relevant to most of the intelligent species we see in 40k. I could see humanity eventually becoming populace enough for KNT to reach critical mass as a result of human expansion, but is there any reason they wouldn't/couldn't have come from another source? Like, Slaanesh was an eldar god that went universal. Why didn't Khaine or Cegorach make a similar jump if war/murder and trickery are strong enough concepts to produce Khorne and Tzeentch? And while orks are weird, you could maybe ask a similar question of Gork/Mork.

Not to muddy the waters, but weren't the necrontyr implied to have some amount of psychic ability too (but just really, really dislike warp shenanigans)? Even if they were only as psychically active as a species like the tau, you'd think their galaxy-spanning civilization would have been sufficient to produce some warp gods given that the tau have already done so.

The Eldar were an insular society and their empire by the time of the Fall was maintained by autonomous constructs that fought their wars and did the work. The actual living Eldar kept to their settled pleasure worlds. Think of the Vorlons from Babylon 5. No lesser races were permitted to get near and any that tried were obliterated.

Khaine is an Eldar god of bloodshed. The Eldar saw no need to spread their ways among those they considered inferior races, and perhaps neither did their gods. Eldar souls are individually bright and powerful compared to other less psychically gifted races, so from their gods' perspective, why put in effort for scraps? Slaanesh was forced to broaden out because after its gluttonous feast there were no more significant Eldar populations to steadily feed from. It was proselytize or starve. In the 2nd edition Eldar Codex, it says the Eldar empire had been so fabulously wealthy and luxurious that some of the names of places of that empire still managed to leak out to non-Eldar. So an Eldar god of luxury would have I would imagine "brand name" value if it were selling the promise of pleasure and luxury.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Iracundus wrote:
Khorne, Nurgle, and Tzeentch (henceforth abbreviated to KNT) are the racial gods of humanity

It's an interesting thought, but is there much lore to support it? Concepts like war, disease/death, or the various things Tzeentch is associated with all seem like they would have been relevant to most of the intelligent species we see in 40k. I could see humanity eventually becoming populace enough for KNT to reach critical mass as a result of human expansion, but is there any reason they wouldn't/couldn't have come from another source? Like, Slaanesh was an eldar god that went universal. Why didn't Khaine or Cegorach make a similar jump if war/murder and trickery are strong enough concepts to produce Khorne and Tzeentch? And while orks are weird, you could maybe ask a similar question of Gork/Mork.

Not to muddy the waters, but weren't the necrontyr implied to have some amount of psychic ability too (but just really, really dislike warp shenanigans)? Even if they were only as psychically active as a species like the tau, you'd think their galaxy-spanning civilization would have been sufficient to produce some warp gods given that the tau have already done so.

A couple of points, they would be species specific gods not racial. The gods of homosapiens.

Secondly we have see encamped of non humans worshipping the first full pantheon. I remember Khorn worshipping orks and the Laer that the emperors children found worshipping slaneesh. I’m sure there are other examples but I can’t think of them

But certainly humans worship slaneesh that would be the eldar species specific god.

I like the idea of humans that believe in Mork and Gork and can join a waaaagh but I assume there are specific psychic frequencies required and belief so ingrained that it creates truth

The chaos gods being species - specific is partly true.

The sentient emotion of rage generated by all species is produced with a slightly different flavour, so although they're attracted to each other in the warp, they are attracted to self even more.

So you could say that the warp storm of rage is actually made up of billions of unique species-specific rage storms that combined represent the reflection of rage in the warp.

As different species rise and fall, their warp storm rises and falls within the storm. Hence why the human storm is currently the most dominant.

The warp is one continuous thing, so all the gods are overlapped within it, ork, eldar etc.

Khaine is the representation of eldar rage, so it was the dominant storm in the warp for millions of years. When slannesh tried to eat him, Khorne refused to let his essence be consumed and the result was the shattering of khaine.

The ork gods are also spread throughout the immaterium and ork flavoured rage is a part of khorne as well.

There is nothing special or segragatory for any species, if you are sapient and you emote, the warp is full of your psychic excretions.

I’ve always figured that the Eldar, Orks and Humans were made (along with other warp sensitive species) to perform various tasks (mostly martial) for the old ones during the war in heaven. I’d guess that humans never really worked out for the old ones and were abandoned.

But either way that’s why their warp presence all interacts. Gork and mork might be the ork warp gods but they still exists along side the others we know of and they are happy to give khorn a good kicking every now and then

Humanity were just monkeys, and the Old One's plans had no design for them.