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"Khorne, the Blood God, rules on his towering throne of bone and marrow. Nurgle, the Fly Lord, gives his 'blessing' of disease, pestilence, and decay. Slaanesh, the perverse Lord of Pleasure, corrupts from the inside with debased rites and the misguided lure of the flesh. Tzeentch, the Lord of Change, hides his powers the least, transforming all that embrace, or oppose, his reach. All of these Ruinous Powers are mere lies. But to ignore these lies, results in transformation, corruption, and death."

—Magnus Ullersted, Witch Hunter[8a]
Warhammer Chaos Symbols

The Star of Chaos, the most common icon used to represent Chaos and the entities that embody it.

The Chaos Gods, also referred to as the Ruinous Powers, the Dark Gods and the Powers Beyond the Skies by the Dragons,[11a] are Daemonic gods or entities comprised entirely of magical energy that embody the metaphysical force of Chaos. They exist within the Aethyr and their power and very existence derives from and is sustained by the darker emotions and deepest psychological drives of the various intelligent species of the Known World.

There are many minor Chaos Gods extant within the extradimensional Realm of Chaos but the four major Chaos Gods -- Khorne, Tzeentch, Slaanesh and Nurgle -- are particularly infamous and powerful, and possess great influence over the world. Each embodies a particular and very basic aspect of mortal existence, those being wrath, change, pleasure, and death, respectively.

The Chaos Gods are jealous and fickle deities, who constantly compete against each other in the Realm of Chaos and the mortal world to increase their own power and influence, a struggle known as the "Great Game." As part of the Great Game, Daemonic armies are always on the move, seeking to expand their divine patron's territory within the extradimensional Realm of Chaos, even as their mortal counterparts among the Champions of Chaos and Chaos Lords play out their schemes and intrigues in the Chaos Wastes and the more civilised kingdoms of mortals.[12a]

Some scholars of the Old World wonder why the Chaos Gods will choose to "reward" some Humans and other mortals and use them as instruments to do their will when they clearly hate Mankind and all of the other mortal races. The truth is that even unsubtle Khorne realises that his goal of turning the mortal world into a barren wasteland where there is only war and slaughter can be made easier through the machinations of those who wish to turn away from their fellow man.[10a]

Foolish mortals who choose to serve Chaos think that they will be rewarded in the twisted eyes of their new divine liege but the reality is that while some benefits may come to these traitorous beings, the Chaos Gods exist purely to tear civilisation apart and put an end to mortal existence itself. If tempting weak mortal souls to help their cause speeds their plans, then the Ruinous Powers will use the opportunity, despite their loathing of Humanity and other mortals.[10a]

Khorne, the Blood God

Mark of Khorne

Mark of Khorne

Khorne, the Blood God, is the Chaos God of wrath, violence, hatred, murder, war, battle and blood. He is called by many names and titles across the mortal world, including "Blood God," the "Lord of Murder", the "Lord of Skulls," "Hunter of Souls," and "the Hound." He is the embodiment of mortal rage, the desire for vengeance, and the search for the strength needed to conquer one's foes. His followers often possess great strength, berzerk courage, and savage bloodlust, and in return for their service to the Blood God, he bestows upon them great individual power in combat.

Khorne detests magic and all those who make use of it, seeing it as a cowardly weapon to use against one's foes rather than facing them in a straightforward contest with axe or blade. As such, he is a rival of Tzeentch, whose constant scheming and patronage of all magic-users drives the Blood God mad to the point of distraction.

Yet, the true depth of Khorne's infinite rage is directed at Slaanesh, who of all the major Chaos Gods is the most diametrically opposed to Khorne as a patron of the arts and a lover of aesthetically pleasing objects. Slaanesh's focus is inward, acting on his followers through their taste for decadent pleasures. He ingratiates them slowly to his service, their taste for pleasure or pain becoming ever-harder to satiate over time and requiring more and more perverse acts in order that they might feel anything at all. Decadence begets perversion, which begets abomination and eventually utter, amoral depravity. And it is this methodology that is alien and truly offensive to Khorne. The Blood God has no time for pleasure or eroticism; indeed all emotions are wasteful to him save for rage, hate, and the desire for vengeance. Slaanesh corrupts mortals from within, building on their inner thoughts and desires, while Khorne always builds from without, focusing on the pursuit of physical strength and power.

Khorne is the mightiest of the Chaos Gods. Every act of violence and killing empowers him, regardless of whether it was committed by his followers, his enemies or even those ignorant of his existence. There is an age-old saying of the followers of Khorne which illustrates this best: "Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows -- only that it does."

Khornate Daemons

Tzeentch, the Changer of Ways

Tzeentch

Mark of Tzeentch

Tzeentch, the Changer of Ways, is the Chaos God of change, ambition, evolution, destiny, trickery, lies, and sorcery. He is known by an endless multitude of names, but the chief titles he bears are the "Changer of the Ways," the "Master of Fortune," the "Great Conspirator", the "Architect of Fate," the "Raven God," and "the Eagle." He is closely associated with magic, as well as dynamic mutation, and grand, convoluted scheming. He also embodies mortals' ambition, hunger for knowledge, particularly of the forbidden kind, and hope for change.

Tzeentch's primary rival is Nurgle, whose energies are drawn from mortals' despair at their inevitable physical decline and death, which is the very opposite of Tzeentch, who embodies mortals' eternal hopes for a change in their circumstances.

The domains of history, magic, knowledge, destiny, intrigue and plots are Tzeentch's chief interests, and in pursuit of these aspects he listens to the dreams and hopes of all mortals and watches their plans take form. He is not content to merely observe, however, and chooses to interfere in the skeins of fate in order to fulfill his own, unknowably complex schemes.

Tzeentchian Daemons

Slaanesh, the Dark Prince

MarkofSlaanesh2-0

Mark of Slaanesh

Slaanesh, the Dark Prince, is the Chaos God of pleasure, pain, obsession, excess, and amoral hedonism. Slasnesh is known as the "Prince of Pleasure," the "Lord of Excess," the "God of Obsession," "the Serpent," the "Master of Excess in All Things," the "Perfect Prince" and even the "Prince of Chaos." He is the embodiment of mortal greed, lust, desire for gratification, and indulgence in sensation. Slaanesh is the great rival of Khorne, whom he considers his opposite in every way.

Slaanesh is both the youngest and currently least powerful of the major Chaos Gods, for the complex emotions that drive erotic desire, hedonism and decadence can only exist within the minds of intelligent mortal beings. Above all else, Slaanesh guides and directs the mortal inhabitants of the Known World to go ever further in pursuit of new heights of sensation with no concern for the morality of their quest.

Slaanesh can assume any form -- male, female, hermaphrodite or asexual. When looked upon by a mortal, Slaanesh takes on the physical image of that which they find most attractive. Lust, pride, and self-indulgence are the hallmarks of all who follow him.

Slaaneshi Daemons

Nurgle, the Plague Lord

Counter-Corruption-Nurgle

Mark of Nurgle

Nurgle, the Plague Lord, is the Chaos God of disease, decay, death, despair, rot and rebirth. His titles include the "Fly Lord," the "Great Corruptor," the "Master of Pestilence," the "Lord of Decay," "the Crow," and his name in the Daemonic Dark Tongue, Nurgh-leth. He represents morbidity, illness, physical corruption and the despair these engender in mortals. Nurgle embodies the desire of mortals to elude death, achieve immortality and freedom from pain and physical suffering. He is described as a huge, fat, pox-infected creature with antlers and a grotesque body.

Nurgle is considered the most "friendly" of the Chaos Gods, for he is the only god to care about the mortals who follow and worship him. He is considered joyful, kind, and happy in his demeanour toward his worshippers and Daemonic creations.

Nurgle's main enemy among the Chaos Gods is Tzeentch, the Lord of Change, because the two gods' power is derived from opposing sources. Tzeentch embodies the hopes and ambition of mortals to better their circumstances, while Nurgle is their defiance born of the hopelessness and despair at their inevitable decline and death.

Nurglish Daemons

Horned Rat

Skaven vermin lord 01

The symbol of the Horned Rat

The Horned Rat, also known as the "Lord of the World Below," the "Great Horned One," and the "Under-Father," is the supreme god of the Skaven, and he brooks no other gods before him among the ratmen. The Horned Rat is not one of the major Chaos Gods, but a minor deity of Chaos. In this case the Horned Rat is an embodiment of decay, ruin, pestilence, strife, hunger, ambition and all the other ignoble characteristics that represent the sum total of all the Skaven race is and all the ratmen hope to be.

The Horned Rat sees all of the other major Chaos Gods as his foes, for he seeks nothing less than their overthrow and his own supremacy among them. The Horned Rat, in particular, is viewed with a sneering contempt as a mere "godling" by the major Ruinous Powers, one among many minor Chaos Gods they have little time for as they play out the battles of the Great Game. Yet the Horned Rat constantly pushes his Skaven children to prepare for the "Great Ascendancy", the day when they will overthrow the civilisations of the surface dwellers and claim the mortal world as theirs alone. On that day, the Great Horned One, too, shall ascend to become the greatest of the Dark Gods, winning the Great Game in a single, fell swoop.

The greatest temple of the Horned Rat in the Known World is the Shattered Tower, which lies in the subterranean warrens of Skavenblight, the capital of the Under-Empire. Here can be found the Black Pillar of Commandments, inscribed with the 169 commandments of the Horned Rat to his children.

Some Old World scholars believe that the minor Chaos God of ruin and destruction named Kweethul may simply be another name for the Horned Rat.

Horned Rat Daemons

Hashut, Father of Darkness

Warhammer Chaos Dwarf Symbol

The Bull of Hashut is a holy icon and unifying symbol of all the "Sons of Hashut," as the Chaos Dwarfs sometimes refer to themselves.

Hashut, called the "Father of Darkness," is the god of fire, greed and tyranny, the patron deity of the Chaos Dwarfs. A grim and malignant being, often represented as a great, blazing bull wreathed in smoke and shadow, Hashut is most often believed to be a minor Chaos God; some scholars of the arcane would, however, label him as an Archdaemon rather than a Dark God, and others insist he is some other foul entity let loose upon the mortal world during the coming of Chaos in the Great Catastrophe. Whatever the case may be, Hashut is closely associated with tyranny, greed, fire, and hatred, and is a being whose gift of power comes at a terrible price.[13a]

As with much of their origins, just how the Dwarfs of the Far East came to seal their pact with Hashut remains shrouded in the dark times of the great sundering of the world by Chaos, and in truth the Chaos Dwarfs themselves may have only a dim and warped understanding of how they became bound to their nightmarish god.[13a]

The twisted runic cartouches that adorn their fire-temples do however speak of the abandonment of the Dwarfs of Zorn Uzkul by their Ancestor Gods during the Great Catastrophe, their finding of salvation and succour with their new god, and the thirst of Hashut for sacrifice and subjugation in return for his divine patronage. Through the Chaos Dwarfs' bloody devotion, he would ward them from mutation and suffering.[13a]

Over the centuries, in return for flesh and blood, homage and devotion, Hashut has gifted the Chaos Dwarfs with malign secrets and powerful sorcery that merged with their innate mastery of industry and forgecraft to create many Daemon-fused machineries and monstrous engines of war, dominion over the fires of the earth and arcane and malevolent lore that has brutalised their sanity and souls. These masters of sorcery and technology are known as the "Daemonsmiths," and the greatest of their number are the sorcerer-prophets of Hashut, the Father of Darkness' high priests.[13a]

The pact between the Chaos Dwarfs and their dark god has only deepened over time and grown to the point where the tendrils of Hashut's malevolence and the Chaos Dwarfs' own bitter souls have become one.[13a]

Necoho and Zuvassin

Necoho and Zuvassin are two minor Renegade Chaos Gods. They first appeared in the Something Rotten in Kislev adventure, a part of the Enemy Within campaign for the 1st Edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. They made a major return in the Tome of Salvation, a supplement about deities for the 2nd Edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, where they are both described as "aspects of an unknown deity."

Both are actually aspects of Malal, the Renegade God of Chaos, who is no longer present in the Warhammer setting. This is due to a copyright conflict between Games Workshop and the authors of the comic The Quest of Kaleb Daark, which appeared in the Citadel Journal in the 1980s. After that time, Games Workshop lost its rights to Malal and had to substitute Zuvassin and Necoho as the Renegade Gods of Chaos instead.

Chaos Undivided

The term "Chaos Undivided" refers to a faction among the forces of Chaos that serves the pantheon of the major Chaos Gods as a whole rather than owing complete fealty to one of the major Dark Gods over the others. It is often represented by the Everchosen of Chaos, the mortal Chaos Lord who is the greatest champion of all the major Chaos Gods.

Followers of Chaos Undivided venerate the force of Chaos itself, sometimes as an entity that some insane scholars of the Old World name the "Great Beast," in which the major Chaos Gods are seen as a single deity whose four primary constituent parts are to be worshipped equally as different emanations of the same universal force.

At times, this entity sets aside its mad internal struggle, which is otherwise known as the Great Game, to make it possible for the fragmented armies of the major Chaos Gods to gather together under one banner, such as during the various Chaos incursions into the Known World like the Great War Against Chaos and the End Times. These moments cause the Old World to tremble and quake in fear and loathing.

Notable Chaos Gods and Aliases

The following is a list of alternate names for the Chaos Gods, their actual affiliated deities, and their respective spheres of influence.

A

B

  • Blood God (Khorne) — Chaos God of war, rage, murder, wrath, battle and blood[1a]
  • Brass Lord (Khorne) — Chaos God of violence and wrath[1a]

C

D

  • Despoiler (Slaanesh) — Chaos God of pleasure, pain, obsession, excess, amoral hedonism[1a]

E

F

  • Father of Darkness (Hashut) - Chaos God of fire, greed and tyranny, patron of the Chaos Dwarfs
  • Fly Lord (Nurgle) — Chaos God of disease, decay, despair, rot, rebirth[1a]

G

H

K

L

M

  • Malal — Renegade Chaos God of destruction and strife[2a]

N

O

R

S

  • The Serpent (Slaanesh) — Chaos God of pleasure, pain, obsession, excess, amoral hedonism; alias used particularly among Norscans[1a]
  • Shornaal (Slaanesh) — Norscan god of excess[1a]
  • Skull Lord (Khorne) — Chaos God of of war, rage, murder, wrath, battle and blood[1a]
  • Slaa (Slaanesh)Beastmen name for Slaanesh[7a]
  • Slaanesh — Chaos God of pleasure, pain, obsession, excess, amoral hedonism[1a]

T

Z

Sources

  • 1: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition: Tome of Salvation (RPG)
    • 1a: pg. 135
  • 2: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st Edition: Rule Book (RPG)
    • 2a: pg. 210
  • 3: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st Edition: Marienburg: Sold Down the River (RPG)
    • 3a: pg. 123
  • 4: Palace of the Plague Lord (Novel) by C.L. Werner
  • 5: Warhammer Fantasy Armies: Warriors of Chaos (7th Edition)
    • 5a: pg. 38
  • 6: Blood for the Blood God (Novel) by C.L. Werner
  • 7 Total War: Warhammer (PC Game)
  • 8: Warhammer Fantasy Armies: Warriors of Chaos (7th Edition)
    • 8a: pg. 194
  • 9: Valkia the Bloody (Novel) by Sarah Cawkwell
  • 10: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition: Liber Carnagia - The Book of Blood (RPG)
  • 11: The Sundering - Caledor (Novel) by Gav Thorpe
  • 12: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition: Liber Mutatis - The Book of Change (RPG)
  • 13: Tamurkhan: The Throne of Chaos (8th Edition)
  • 14: Realm of Chaos: Lost and the Damned (1st Edition)
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