Monday, January 24, 2011

Characters: Warhammer 4000 part 4

The Forces of Chaos
This is our galaxy. Ours to corrupt, our to enslave. The gods will not be denied their prize.
The Immaterium, or Warp, is a parallel dimension where the thoughts, desires, and emotions of sentient creatures are made manifest in the form of psychic entities labelled Daemons. There was a time in the distant past where the Warp was a calm and even benign place, but eons of constant warfare have corrupted it so that it is now a twisted mirror that accentuates the negative - the gods of Bravery, Hope, Acceptance, and Love are also the gods of Rage, Mutation, Decay, and Lust. The Warp is a realm of primordial Chaos, where the laws of nature and causality do not apply, where dark thoughts congeal and evolve into diabolical gods, a nightmare realm that occasionally spills forth into the Materium, leaving behind madness and desolation.
Humanity has an intimate relationship with Chaos - after all, their minds are feeding it. Chaos is the source of the mutation that wracks the Imperium, from inhuman monstrosities to the psychically-gifted Navigators. Chaos is the key to interstellar travel, as ships traveling through it move much faster than they would in a rational universe (assuming they are not lost to the storms and eddies of the Empyrean or devoured by daemons). And among humans, there are always those who turn to Chaos for various reasons: bored nobles looking for a new thrill by dabbling in the occult, radical daemonhunters hoping to turn the weapons of the enemy against him, ambitious individuals making dark pacts in exchange for power, cults and cabals plotting to turn their homeworlds over to the dark gods, or bitter souls and traitors seeking revenge.
Collectively, these followers are known as the Lost and the Damned, faithless traitors who have abandoned their humanity and forfeit their souls. Entire regiments of the Imperial Guard or Naval fleets have gone renegade, while disaffected mutants and abhumans sometimes turn to Chaos as well. But by far the worst Chaos threats are the Daemons themselves, and the heirs to a betrayal ten thousand years ago that almost destroyed the human race...
    Daemons Of Chaos 


Chaos can not be denied.
The Daemons of Chaos are mankind's every vice and failing given form and freedom to murder. Their numbers are limitless and malice infinite, their very presence deforms the universe, machines that do not obey physical laws, childhood nightmares and reflections of primal emotions all have a place in a daemon army. Greater that their physical presence is their influence over the minds of mortals, power, immortality and all manner of immorality is offered - for a price.
Though not universal, most daemons are alinged with one of the four great gods of Chaos -
  • Khorne, the Blood God, the Brass Lord of Battle, Arkhar, Kharnath. Khorne is the God of conflict and rage and hate in its most extreme forms. He is the personification of mortal desire to harm one another, and his followers are some of the most dangerous individuals in the galaxy - Khorne cares not from where the blood flows, just that it flows.
  • Slaanesh, the Dark Prince, the Serpent, Lashor. Slaanesh is desire and need for pleasure personified, he is love taken to the point of obsession, want becoming addiction. No one is truly immune from the temptations of the Dark Prince.
  • Nurgle, the Fly Lord, Neigel. Nurgle is both despair and the ultimate rejection of despair, he is the fact of decay and the mortal rejection of it and their will to live. The will to live is never stronger than when slowly rotting to disease, and in that desperate cry for life lurks Nurgle.
  • Tzeentch, the Changer of Ways, the Great Conspirator, the Architect of Fate, Tchar. Tzeench represents change in its most extreme forms, he is moral rejection of the status quo and hope for something better taken far past the point of sanity, the only thing in the universe that does not change is change itself, and that constant is Tzeentch.

Chaos Daemons recently (and inexplicably) got their own Codex, and play unlike any other army. Their forces suddenly appear out of thin air, deploying via Deep Strike, and are all fearless and supernaturally warded against enemy attacks. Save for the daemons of Tzeentch, they don't have much in the way of ranged attacks, but their unrivaled ferocity in close combat, combined with the speed with which they engage the enemy, makes them a potent threat. The only good news for their enemies is that daemons have little in the way of corporeal armor, and are relatively few in number, especially since half the army starts the game in reserve. They also have the unique feature of being almost completely reusable in Warhammer Fantasy, which got its down Chaos Daemons codex at around the same time.

Notable Daemonic tropes include:


    Chaos Space Marines 


Let the Galaxy Burn!
At the height of the Emperor's Great Crusade, when humanity was entering a second golden age, a shocking betrayal nearly destroyed the human race. Horus, Warmaster of the Imperial forces, Primarch of the Luna Wolves, and the Emperor's most beloved son, led fully half of the Space Marine legions and a third of the Imperium's conventional armiesinto the embrace of Chaos and rebelled against the Emperor. During the Siege of Terra, Horus was finally cast down by the Emperor, but at a terrible price, and the battle left the Emperor confined to the life-support systems of the Golden Throne. The rebel Space Marines fled into the Eye of Terror, a gateway into the Warp itself, where they licked their wounds and planned terrible revenge on their foes. Ten thousand years later, these original traitor legions remain, granted unnaturally long life by their patrons as a reward for their faith, or perhaps as a punishment for their failure.
The Chaos Space Marines are very dangerous enemies, who were already superhuman warriors before they sold their souls to the Dark Gods for more power. Veterans of thousands of years of battle, they know every trick in the book, and may have helped write it in the first place. They still use the formidable wargear of the Adeptus Astartes, but it has been enhanced and twisted by the powers of the Warp into more lethal and hideous forms, and they can call upon the power of the Warp directly in battle by summoning units of daemons to the field. Chaos Space Marine heroes are both Chaos' greatest champions and its favorite playthings, who have been marked by their gods with powerful daemonic gifts that will either take them on a path to daemon princedom, or tear their bodies and minds apart as they degenerate into Chaos spawn. They once helped build the Imperium, but now they want nothing more than to see the galaxy that cast them down burn.
The tabletop Chaos Space Marines army plays very similarly to conventional Space Marines, for obvious reasons. But while the Space Marines are an army of generalists, Chaos Marines have access to units dedicated to the powers of the Warp, giving them fantastic assault troops in the form of Khorne Berserkers or deadly ranged units such as Slaaneshi Noise Marines. Chaos leaders are some of the most frightening opponents in the game, thanks to the daemonic gifts available to them, and units of daemons can be summoned for surprise assaults. The main drawback is that these upgrades come at a price, so a Chaos Space Marine army will likely field fewer models than even loyalist Space Marines.
Like the Space Marines, they can be split in terms of style among their founder legions:
  • Iron Warriors (steel-gray) - Anarchically Fortified (Perturabo, Primarch)
  • World Eaters (red) - Anarchically angry (Angron, Primarch)
  • Death Guard (putrid green) - Anarchically diseased (Mortarion, Primarch)
  • Thousand Sons (blue-yellow) - Anarchically Methodically manipulating (Magnus the red, Primarch)
  • Emperor's Children (purple) - Anarchically hedonistic (Fulgrim, Primarch)
  • Alpha Legion (blue) - Anarchically loyal (?) (Alpharius, Primarch)
  • Night Lords (dark blue) - Anarchically terrorising (Night Haunter, Primarch)
  • Word Bearers (blood red) - Anarchically religious (Lorgar, Primarch)
  • Black Legion (black) - Anarchically organised (Horus, Primarch)

There are also regenade Space Marines — marines who turned on the Empire after the heresy. These are derived from the loyalist chapters, listed above.

Notable Chaos Space Marine tropes include:


  • Arm Cannon - Obliterators are Chaos Marines with a daemonic virus that fuses their bodies and armor, but also lets them "grow" whatever weapons they want.
  • Attack Attack Attack - The only strategy the Khorne Berserkers know, since they are...
  • Axe Crazy - ... as they voluntarily undergo lobotomies to better focus on bloodshed. Though technically they're Chainaxecrazy Special mention must be made of Kharn the Betrayer, berserker of the World Eaters legion who, when a battle against the rival Emperor's Children legion was halted when the combatants took shelter from a blizzard, personally burned down an entire city and butchered everyone he could find. He's also the new commissar and a pretty swell guy.
  • Black Knight - Not all members of the Black Legion are former Sons of Horus - some have joined from other renegade Space Marines and renounce their old loyalties.
  • Boisterous Bruiser - Most followers of Nurgle are like this, although in the twisted kind of way only the forces of Chaos can make them.
  • Cain And Abel - The Primarchs versus the Traitor Primarchs, loyalist Marines vs Chaos Marines.
  • Catch Phrase - Khorne's followers are well known for their Battle Cry "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!". Kharn himself has a thing for the phrase "KILL! MAIM! BURN! KILL! MAIM! BURN!"
  • Chaotic Evil - Almost every single chaos space marine chapter, obviously, since they follow literal gods of chaos. Notable exceptions includes many followers of Tzeentch, who employ a lot more lawful and methodical methods, and the followers of the mostly-ignored but still somewhat canon Malal, who is more often seen fighting chaos itself instead of any other force in the galaxy.
  • The Chessmaster - Tzeentch's followers have some degree of foresight on their side, while the Alpha Legion is known for elaborate covert campaigns, misdirection, and propaganda.
  • Clothes Make The Maniac - Wargear touched by Chaos has a (further) negative effect on the user's mind.
  • Complete Monster - Many, many of the faction as a whole. Especially Fabius Bile.
  • The Corruption - "The filth of their visage is as nothing to the filth in their hearts."
  • Cult - The Alpha Legion makes extensive use of cultists as part of their guerrilla war against the Imperium. So do many Chaos Space Marines, but the Alpha Legion is special for actually training their cultists, rather than employing them as cannon fodder.
  • The Dark Side Will Make You Forget - After ten thousand years, some members of the Traitor Legions have forgotten why they rebelled in the first place, which doesn't dampen their hate in the slightest.
  • Demonic Possession - Some traitor marines volunteer to act as daemonhosts, gaining supernatural powers at a terrible price.
  • Enemy Civil War - Fortunately for the rest of the galaxy, the Traitor Legions have their own rivalries and grudges going nearly as far back to the Horus Heresy.
  • Evil Counterpart - When Space Marines fall from grace, they fall farther and hit harder than most.
  • Evil Sorcerer - Chaos Sorcerers, naturally enough. The most famous of their number is Ahriman of the Thousand Sons, a formidable psyker who was exiled for accidentally(?) turning most of the legion into walking suits of power armor.
  • Fallen Hero - Most Chaos Space Marines either defected during the Horus Heresy or joined up afterwards.
  • Friend Or Foe - The World-Eaters don't much care which side you are on, once they start fighting.
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: They will be untouched by plague or disease, no sickness will blight them. Tell that to the Death Guard.
  • General Failure - Despite being the heir to Horus and a force of darkness capable of banding the Traitor Legions together into multiple Black Crusades, Abaddon the Despoiler has yet to topple the Imperium. However, somewhere along the way he wised up and started playing the long game, directing his later Crusades towards the secret objective of seizing various artefacts of doom. This appears to have paid off; as of the 13th Black Crusade his forces have smashed through the Cadian Gate and are on a rampage around Segmentum Obscurus.
  • Haunted Technology - Chaos is capable of possessing or warping weapons, armor, even vehicles. The Defiler is essentially a walking tank with a demon spirit sealed inside.
  • I Am Spartacus - The Alpha Legion's members shape their appearance to that of their Primarch and adopt his identity. This combined with the fact that Alpharius had an identical twin brother casts doubts on the Imperium's claims of killing him.
  • Lawful Evil: Some of the saner-or at least, ones with insanities that allow them to think logically-Chaos Space Marines are this. The Thousand Suns are a good example.
    • Justified in that Tzeentch, ironically, is the most orderly of the chaos gods, relatively speaking. Also fitting in that they have a major grudge against the Chaotic GoodSpace Wolves for attacking their homeworld during the Horus Heresy.
    • Honorable mention also goes to the Alpha Legion, who when they (covertly via cultists) take power tend to enact legislation that favors very strong rule of law, but also very harsh rule of law. If the Imperium's laws could be described as "tough but fair", then the Alpha Legion's laws can be described as "brutally unfair".
  • Like A Badass Out Of Hell - Surprise attacks from the Eye of Terror, especially the Black Crusades.
  • Mad Scientist - Fabius Bile of the Emperor's Children has earned appellations such as the "Clone-Master" for his work providing the Traitor Legions with new recruits. When he's not making loyalist Space Marines' entry criteria look tame, he enjoys creating his breed of "new men" through gene-therapy, most of which turn out into homicidal maniacs he gleefully looses onto the Imperium. Bile also likes to tinker on himself to the extent that in early Chaos Codices his stats were determined by dice rolls. And as we must remind you in every article, his lab coat is made of human skin.
  • Meaningful Rename - Several legions were renamed by their primarchs; the Sons of Horus was renamed again, to the Black Legion, by Abaddon.
  • Mecha Mooks - The Thousand Sons legion was suffering from high levels of mutation, leading one sorcerer to cast a spell to remove the problem. It succeeded too well, for now the rank-and-file are little more than animate suits of power armor containing a bit of dust and the trapped souls of their wearers.
  • Memetic Molester: Anything associated with Slaanesh. Lucius the Eternal being the most well known example.
  • Musical Assassin - Some servants of Slaanesh become Noise Marines, who have overindulged their senses so much that only extreme cacophony has any effect on them. In battle they wield deadly sonic weapons that in earlier editions resembled electric guitars.
  • Off Screen Villain Dark Matter - Ten thousand years later, the Traitor Legions have yet to run out of boltgun rounds. Justified with Chaos forge worlds, supply raids, and the fact that the Warp sneers at concepts such as "causality" and "logic."
  • One Winged Angel - Chaos Lords have two possible fates: the strong-willed and successful leaders collect enough daemonic gifts from their patrons to eventually ascend as Daemon Princes themselves. The others' physical forms collapse from the mutations being bestowed upon them and revert to mindless, mewling Chaos Spawn.
    • Also possibly the reason why bog standard Chaos Space Marines tend to be outmatched by loyalist Astartes in combat; their minds have been so warped by milennia of servitude to Chaos that, even if they maintain the ability to think coherently, they're still at a disadvantage.
  • Orcus On His Throne - Of the surviving Traitor Primarchs, only Angron of the World Eaters has actually left his Daemon World to wage war on the Imperium.
  • Parental Issues - A possible explanation for some of the Primarch's falls from grace. All were scattered by the Chaos gods across the galaxy as infants, leaving some of them to effectively raise themselves. Horus was the first Primarch recovered and always his favorite, and some of the later Primarchs barely spent any time with their father at all, especially the last one to be found, Alpharius of the Alpha Legion.
  • The Pig Pen - Painting guides for Nurgle's Plague Marines involve tips on how to make shiny pustules and exposed organs, or achieve a proper filth-encrusted look through layers of washes and inks.
  • Powered Armor - Festooned with spikes, trophies, and sometimes daemonically-possessed to boot.
  • Rage Against The Mentor - Horus versus the Emperor, underhanded Alpharius against honourable Roboute Gulliman of the Ultramarines, siege expert Perturabo of the Iron Warriors versus fortifications expert Rogal Dorn of the Imperial Fists. Abaddon the Despoiler also has a hatred of his mentor Horus, and has sought to one-up the original archtraitor ever since the Heresy.
  • Religion Of Evil - Lorgar, Primarch of the Word Bearers, was chastised by the Emperor for spending so much time building cathedrals rather than campaigning. In response, Lorgar began worshiping the Chaos gods as a pantheon, and today his legion is known for being darkly devout.
  • The Remnant - The Black Legion in particular prides itself as the heirs to Horus' rebellion.
  • Ret Con - The Chaos god Malal, representing Chaos' tendency to defeat itself, was quietly put on a shelf since Games Workshop was unsure who owned the copyright for him. The previous edition of the Chaos Codex, however, hints that he has not been entirely forgotten. Sadly, the current edition does not (among its other failings).
  • Space Pirates - Some of the Traitor Legions turn to piracy as a way to acquire vital supplies and/or cause mayhem.
  • Spider Tank - Defilers are spider-like walking tanks crewed by a bound daemon, a Soul Grinder is an unbound daemon fused with Defiler bits, while the Brass Scorpions of Khorne are mecha with a "sting" that can vaporize entire squads of infantry with a hail of bullets.
  • Start Of Darkness - The copious backstory provides explanations for why the Traitor Primarchs went rebel, often stemming from a sympathetic Freudian Excuse or otherParental Issues:
    • Horus was the first to be discovered by the Emperor, and enjoyed many years of being his only child. He remained the favored son afterward, but upon appointment to Warmaster he began to crack under the immense preasure, and was stung by the Emperor taking credit for Horus' hard-fought victories. Pride did the rest.
    • Angron was discovered in the midst of making a last stand after leading a Gladiator Revolt. Instead of coming to the rescue, the Emperor teleported Angron off the battlefield, leaving the Primarch to watch helplessly from orbit as his men were butchered. Angron never forgave him.
    • Magnus the Red used his foresight to warn the Emperor of Horus' treachery, but used forbidden magicks to send the message, inadvertantly damaging the Emperor's work on a Webway Gate. The Emperor refused to believe him and sicced the Space Wolves on the silver spires of Magnus' homeworld. Having been cast out despite the best intentions, Magnus sided with Horus.
    • Mortarion joined Horus after being promised a new order in which the strong would rule the weak.
    • Fulgrim was a perfectionist and aesthete who became corrupted by a daemon sword, allowing Horus to convince him that the Emperor was preventing humanity from reaching its full potential.
    • Lorgar was one of the first to view the Emperor as a divine being, but was chastized after spending more time building cathedrals than conquering new worlds. The Chaos Gods provided a new focus for worship.
    • Perturabo gained such a reputation for siegecraft that he fell victim to typecasting and had his legion regulated almost entirely to garrison duty, in some cases with a single squad of Iron Warriors expected to keep order over millions. To add insult to injury his homeworld revolted, leading the Primarch and his legion to vent their frustrations in an act of genocide that sealed their fate as murderous rebels.
    • Konrad Curze was plagued by visions of a dark future and his death at the Emperor's orders. During the Great Crusade his Night Lords were used to terrify worlds into compliance, even as the Emperor rebuked them for their brutal tactics.
    • Alpharius/Omegon was the last Primarch to be rediscovered and barely spent any time with the Emperor at all, there's considerable debate over if he even turned to Chaos at all, or what his motives in doing so might be.
  • Time Abyss - Many of the Chaos Space Marines encountered today were present at the Siege of the Emperor's Palace ten thousand years ago.
  • The Unfettered - For all their superhuman power, Space Marines live in strict self-denial. When one goes renegade and gives in to his selfish, baser urges, the results can be terrifying.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity - "Sanity is for the weak!"
  • Woobie Destroyer Of Worlds: The Thousand Sons.
  • You Have Failed Me - An actual rule for Abaddon in Battlefleet Gothic. If a friendly ship fails a command test, his flagship will fire upon it.

See also Night Lords, Word Bearers, Iron Warriors
     The Lost And The Damned 


Fear not Chaos, for it is our salvation! Praise the sun that brings the dawn of our final doom, for is not destruction simply creation reversed in slow motion?
The Imperium... is not a happy place. It has been at war for the last ten thousand years, it has grown accustomed to think in apocalyptic terms: what is the value of life when faced with threat to their immortal souls? "We are at war for our very survival," goes another Imperial slogan, "No sacrifice is too great, no treachery too small." There are threats everywhere: cults fester in the hives, claiming dozens of planetary rulers in their membership, mutants and rogue psykers run for their lives from fanatical witchhunters, and humans in general hope for a better future.
As such, Chaos has no shortage of wretches for use as cannon fodder. The ranks of chaos are vast: traitor regiments of Imperial Guard, renegade Admirals of the the Imperial Navy, Jaded Nobility forming cults for thrills, abhuman and mutant underclasses living in the ghettos of Imperial cities, slave soldiers raised in hell worlds, hordes of reanimated zombies, fallen clerics of the Ecclesiarchy, entire Xeno races fallen to Chaos, vast mobs of peasants desperate for food, freedom fighters and revolutionaries who do not truly understand the price of their new, dark allies... they are all now the Lost and the Damned.
The Lost and the Damned is a curious army: despite being the most commonly encountered form of Chaos fought in the game's lore, players cannot actually field it in tournaments, nor do they have a fully-developed model range. It received an army list during the previous Eye of Terror campaign, but unfortunately this has not been updated for the most recent edition and it is classified as an unofficial army. The Lost and the Damned play similar to the Imperial Guard, and indeed feature traitorous guardsmen as troop choices, but lack the loyalists' volume of heavy weapons, armor, or even morale. To make up for this, mobs of low-cost mutants and other rabble can be used to soak up enemy fire or swamp troop formations, while other Chaos abominations can serve as assault troops. Overall, this makes them a gimped version of the Imperial Guard, but a characterful army nonetheless and a force of extreme (evil) underdogs.

Notable Lost and the Damned tropes include:


  • Army Of Thieves And Whores
  • Body Horror - Horrible mutants are a common sight in the Lost and the Damned.
  • Corrupt Church - One of their HQ choices is a heretic leader.
  • Cult - Many Lost and the Damned are essentially Chaos cultists. In truth, the entire army list is an expansion of the Cultist choice available to Chaos Space Marines.
  • Demoted To Extra - Lost and the Damned didn't get an army codex for Fifth edition - unless you buy the Imperial Armour books
  • Everything's Deader with Zombies - One of the troops choices is a 'plague zombie horde' fielded in units of up to 50 making it possible to field up to 300 in a normal army. Given the right support they prove suprisingly effective.
  • Evil Is Not A Toy - Something many of these people should have remembered.
  • Jumping Off The Slippery Slope - Many of the Lost and the Damned were not once evil and had no idea what they were getting into until it was far too late.
  • Large And In Charge - Another HQ leader choice is a Chaos Space Marine overseeing the rabble.
  • Zombie Apocalypse - Nurglite Plague Zombies are a troops choice.
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