The methodology of Khorne...

[Denzark]

Blood for the Blood God, Skulls for the Skull Throne.

In another post about balance, the subject of Khorne and the World Eaters came up, along with debate about how being psycho-surgeried loonies naturally attracted the legion to the Brass throne.

The fact is, Khorne cares not from whence the skulls come, nor from whence the blood flows - as long as it does in his name. His only moratorium is that it must be done with martial prowess and skill, rather than slinking magic. Hence no spell-casting/psykers.

If you look at Realm of Chaos - Slaves to Darkness, it is mentioned in the fantasy bit that Khorne isn't against magic per se - its the use. Fantasy used to include the award of daemon weapons, including Chainswords and Autoguns - this was highlighted as being magical items, as are Brass collars of Khorne and Bloodstones etc. Using magic items good, using magic itself and separating the warrior from the kill wwith skill, bad.

In the same way, the Worldeaters army list mentioned how the devastators were just as honoured for the long range death they could bring. This was perfectly acceptable. So to answer the question, a chaos codex could represent worldeaters easily, with devs/havocs having MoK, the translated tac marines being CSM squads with MoK and banners of rage (or is it wrath) and the real teeth of the legion, the assault squads, as being the berzerkers.

This can/could be done with probably the last 3-4 codexes.


The old fluff mentioned how the legion retained its librarians, who went backtotheir role of battlefield comms and recording the chapter history, ie the amount of kills tallied - relinquishing the psychich powers. You could argue this (and the fact they maintained chaplains and techmarines) has been retconned, but unlike 6th ed SM codex ensuring characters are specific to chapters, anyone can take a dark apostle, no?

So to sum up, equally acceptable to Khorne/World Eaters to use long or close range, the latter being preferred. The World Eaters did not have a massive loss of IQ upon entering the EoT and instantly drop a legion's worth of heavy kit to retian only assault loonies, and even post Skalathrax warbands would not have changed, using mainly assaulters but with a healthy mix of long range where necessary.

[DWest]

I always saw it as World Eaters not using long-range fire now because, as you say, they care not whence the blood flows, and who wants to get shot in the back? Conversely, lagging behind the vanguard seems like a sure way to end up low man on the kill-count totem pole. Also, the "martial skill" part of the equation pretty much rules out indirect-fire artillery. So I always assumed that over time, they morphed into a homogeneous force of close-assault troops as everybody pushes to the front to get the glory. Admittedly, I don't have anything very solid to base this upon.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

I agree that there's no good reason you shouldn't build a more varied World Eaters army. Maybe your army managed to retain more of their sense of self and didn't all become Berzerkers. The point I made aboutnthe surgeries in the kther thread was this: the Butchers Nails are only how they got started down Khorne's road. A Khorne Berzerker is more than just a World Eater (and also much less). And I'm afraid that it simply is a major part of the background that the World Eaters shattered and descended into packs of blood hungry, close assault cultists. That happened. There's no denying it. You can't pretend that the Traitor Legions didn't become Chaos Space Marines. Slaves To Darkness is also an old, old book. Things have come a long way since then; when slaves to darkness was around, Tigurius was half-eldar, remember.

What you can deny, however, is that it happened to them all, and tha tit happened tomthe army you want to play.

I'd totally support World Eaters armies with varied selections. It's our game, we can do what we like with it. It's not going to be the World Eaters norm, but whomsays you have to play by the norm?

On librarians: we know now that all the World Eaters librarians were wiped out in the Heresy. But that's okay, because Sorcerers are not Librarians. And just because there are no Sorcerers of Khorne doesn't mean there are no Sorcerers in Khornate warbands. :)

BFTBG! SFTSTOK!

Also apologies for ipad typing!

[Katharon]

No one ever said a Khorne World Eater Berserker was stupid, but there are times when their cultists followers -- in their fervor to attract the attention of Khorne and his favor -- might choose to despise long range combat or allow their bloodlust to override their common sense. World Eaters, in my opinion, are deadly because they use their bloodlust to enhance their abilities and don't let it blind them, as lesser warriors would.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

That's a fair interpretation, I think. Nobody's saying the World Eaters are stupid; I mean, they've become the most terrifying shock assault troops in the entire galaxy. That's not exactly a bad thing.

Here's a neat snippet from the afterword of Betrayer:

"The World Eaters of Warhammer 40,000 are warriors at the end of a long, agonising journey. They're devolved, degenerate, berserk brutes glorying in their strength and enslaved by their own allegiance to the Blood God. They stand at two minutes to midnight, when the Age of Man is coming to an end.

But they weren't always like that. I wanted to show them on the first steps of that path. Not necessarily at their strongest, but perhaps at their most complex and divided."

-ADB

This is what I mean when I say that it's important to distinguish between what the World Eaters Legion was like, and what the 40k World Eaters Khorne Berzerker Warbands are like now. They are not what they once were; where once they were driven to battlefield excesses by the implants in their skull and the genetic legacy of their Primarch, they are now Khorne Berzerkers. Which is all of the above, ramped up to eleven and articulated through the need to please an evil god of excessive, face-to-face slaughter.

[phreakachu]

not necessarily face to face, Cap'n. Once again, Martial Prowess and bloodletting in all its forms being the key. Repeated claims of the opposite are little different than the jackhole kid @ my flgs trying to tell me me World Eaters couldnt possibly be World Eaters because they arent wearing red armor.
Outside of flinging spells (P*SSIES!),the Blood God doesnt care how it flow, only that it does.

[Nabterayl]

Once again, Martial Prowess and bloodletting in all its forms being the key.
As I believe either the recent CSM or daemon codex said (can't find the citation just now, so perhaps I'm making this up), Khorne cares not whence the blood flows, but he does care whose skull is taken. Khorne loves the murderer, but he loves the warrior more. He cares that you fight with skill. He cares that you fight intelligently (so long as you don't fight cowardly). A true professional in the art of war is more unstoppable, and more beloved of Khorne (those two things are probably related ...) than a psychotic butcher.*

I think of it like this: Khorne is absolutely pleased when a mighty warrior stomps in the skull of an infant. However, Khorne is more pleased when a mighty warrior stomps in the skull of another mighty warrior. Khorne is pleased when a mighty warrior is shot and killed with a .22 cal bullet in a freak ricochet. However, Khorne is more pleased when a mighty warrior is stalked over a period of days and killed with a .22 cal bullet. Khorne is pleased when his followers take up the might of the lasgun. However, Khorne is more pleased when his followers take up the might of the bolter.

If you can, kill a space marine. If there aren't any space marines to hand, sure, you can kill babies - Khorne is still pleased, though less than he could have been. If you can, kill with consummate skill. If you don't have consummate skill, sure, you can kill by dumb luck - Khorne is still pleased, though less than he could have been. If you can, kill with the most devastating weapon you can lay your hands on. If you don't have a devastating weapon, sure, you can kill with a puny weapon - Khorne is still pleased, though less than he could have been.

* This reminds me of a story from my historical German martial arts experience ... a friend of mine is studying under a different teacher - a big, burly dude with an enormous voice and big beard. He looks like a barbarian. This teacher spent the first four years of his life as a swordsman believing that he won fights because he was huge and powerful. One day he came up against another fencer who simply took him apart. After the fight, my friend's teacher asked, "Okay, I have to know - how come nothing I tried worked on you?" His opponent said, "Simple - I'm not afraid of you." What my friend's teacher realized was that he hadn't been winning because he was huge and powerful - he had been winning because he was huge and intimidating. And of course, that only works while you are fighting people who are intimidated by you. Now my friend's teacher looks like a barbarian, but he fights like a scholar, and is a far more fearsome swordsman because of it.

[YorkNecromancer]

I was reading an article last night which got me thinking about Khorne. To whit, this quote:


The psychologist Thomas Gordon posited that anger is never a primary emotion. It is a secondary emotion, experienced after an earlier feeling. He says that anger is:

...a posture deliberately and consciously assumed … for the express purpose of blaming, punishing, or teaching a lesson. … Whenever you get angry at another you are putting on an act, playing a role to affect the other, to show him what he has done, teach him a lesson, try to convince him he shouldn’t do it again. I’m not suggesting that the anger isn’t real. It is very real and makes people boil or shake inside. I am suggesting that people make themselves angry.

So I want to submit that what we ACTUALLY feel is fear, disappointment, isolation, sadness, resentment, and self-doubt. Anger is just the outermost layer, like an onion’s skin. You have to peel the first layer, and then the next, to find out what’s buried at the center.

Which raises the interesting question - what is Khorne hiding? The whole 'God of Honour' thing suggests that something about the nature of war changed, and he just became depressed and turned into the blood-drenched lunatic he is today; that he's given up on some level, and just decided that violence for its own sake is all that matters, because his anger allows him to hide from his pain.

What if he was the God of Protection? How many soldiers join the army to protect things? All of them bar the murderers. What if Khorne was originally the anthropic principle of the need to protect and defend? As more and more soldiers join up to do just that, then realise they're not defending a thing, they're just being used to maintain the parasitic empires of plutocrats and bankers, does their misery at that betray slowly distil through Khorne, until he shifts, giving up on protection because the whole idea is a lie? He just decides: "Well, if they want me to kill, then I will. I'll kill and kill and kill until they're all gone, until none of it matters any more, until I never have to think about what I've lost or how I've failed."

That'd make him pretty much the most tragic Ruinous Power of the lot. The idea that he's not truly the God of Slaughterous Rage, but the God of Impotent Powerlessness; that his rage is nothing but the mask worn by every soldier betrayed by his orders.

[phreakachu]

As I believe either the recent CSM or daemon codex said (can't find the citation just now, so perhaps I'm making this up), Khorne cares not whence the blood flows, but he does care whose skull is taken.

ah, truth: the more fearsome the skull, the better. theres a spot of fluff in CSM about the lord of a World Eaters band pledging to bring a skull from every xenos warrior in the galaxy. He's rolled up now in a long, protracted war against an ever-evolving Hive Fleet. good stuff

[Kaptain Badrukk]

That'd make him pretty much the most tragic Ruinous Power of the lot. The idea that he's not truly the God of Slaughterous Rage, but the God of Impotent Powerlessness; that his rage is nothing but the mask worn by every soldier betrayed by his orders.

There are several semi-tagic stories in Khorne's pantheon already too. Like his strange and untenable romance with Valkia the Bloody, or Slaanesh's gift off the top of my head.
He's got depth.

[Nabterayl]

What if he was the God of Protection? How many soldiers join the army to protect things? All of them bar the murderers. What if Khorne was originally the anthropic principle of the need to protect and defend? As more and more soldiers join up to do just that, then realise they're not defending a thing, they're just being used to maintain the parasitic empires of plutocrats and bankers, does their misery at that betray slowly distil through Khorne, until he shifts, giving up on protection because the whole idea is a lie? He just decides: "Well, if they want me to kill, then I will. I'll kill and kill and kill until they're all gone, until none of it matters any more, until I never have to think about what I've lost or how I've failed."

That'd make him pretty much the most tragic Ruinous Power of the lot. The idea that he's not truly the God of Slaughterous Rage, but the God of Impotent Powerlessness; that his rage is nothing but the mask worn by every soldier betrayed by his orders.
I don't know where this comes from, but a much older Warhammer fan than I once told me that the oldest fluff regarding the Ruinous Powers is that they were responses to the horrors of life. Essentially, life sucks, and ...

Tzeentch says, "That's true, but things can change!"
Nurgle says, "That's true, but it only hurts you if you let it."
Slaanesh says, "That's true, but you can still take care of yourself."
Khorne says, "That's true, and it's okay to get angry about it!"
I don't know if this is super old fluff or something my grognard friend made up, but I've always liked this view of Chaos because all of these are intuitively acceptable responses to the horrors of life. That's what makes Chaos so attractive, particularly when juxtaposed against an Imperial Creed that tells you that this is the best of all possible worlds, and if you think things are bad it's essentially because you lack faith. Sometimes things are broken, and it is okay to get mad about it. The tragedy of the four Ruinous Powers, in this view - the reason their most advanced disciples end up gibbering impotent idiots - is that none of them can accept any response other than the one that birthed them. It doesn't matter what the evil is; if the Chaos gods' response is the only one you have to evil, you end up a monster.

Suppose the evil you're reacting to is something as clearly evil as institutionalized racism. The Imperium tells you that there is no racism here. Khorne tells you that yes there is, and furthermore, it is right and good for you to be angry about it. But if you are only driven by your anger, you end up knee-deep in the corpses of white people, frothing at the mouth and screaming, "I AM CORRECTING INSTITUTIONALIZED RACISM!!!!!!!" That's true no matter what you are responding to, be it Imperial bureaucracy, the fact that your wife left you and your dog died, or the fact that the dark eldar are raiding your settlement and there's nobody but you standing between them and your wife and kids.

The other thing I like about this "mono-response to life's horrors/evils" view is that it makes Abaddon's project seem more sensible. None of the Chaos Gods present a viable alternative philosophy by themselves, but taken together, and balanced in moderation, they pretty much are the intuitively correct response to life's horrors and evils. A sufficiently vain man could think (or be tempted into thinking) that if only a strong-willed individual could hold the philosophies of the Chaos gods in balance, he would have a humane, humanist alternative to the morally bankrupt dreck that the Ecclesiarchy and the space marine chapters peddle.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

not necessarily face to face, Cap'n. Once again, Martial Prowess and bloodletting in all its forms being the key.

Oh, I agree. It's why they still have pistols and tanks, afterall (although I expect the latter have a penchant for RAMMING SPEED!). I mean, Kharn still has his Plasma Pistol.

There's a definite preference for getting up close and personal, though. Khorne doesn't care, but he still has favourites.

[YorkNecromancer]

The other thing I like about this "mono-response to life's horrors/evils" view is that it makes Abaddon's project seem more sensible. None of the Chaos Gods present a viable alternative philosophy by themselves, but taken together, and balanced in moderation, they pretty much are the intuitively correct response to life's horrors and evils.

If Abbadon was played as being closer to a character like Bane (as envisaged by Gail Simone), that would go a long way to making Chaos cool for me. A whole shtick of refusing the Ruinous Powers because "I will bow to no will except my own." would be pretty cool. It would then neatly tie into the concept you describe above.

I've always liked the idea that the Imperium and Chaos are just Not So Different; they're both fascists, where the Imperium are slaves to faith and duty, while Chaos are slaves to ego and self.

I had a Deathwatch campaign in mind where one of the factions was a group of ultra-orthodox Inquisitors who felt that the Imperium had been consecrated to Khorne by the Emperor from its inception. Their whole justification was that in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war. Which, let's be fair, is a pretty solid argument, given that Khorne cares not where the blood flows. It was never resolved whether they were right or not (because the ambiguity is better than knowing) but that always struck me as an interesting idea.

[mathhammer]

The best answer to what is Khorne is in Liber Chaotica.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Liber_Chaotica

This book is a must (and i mean must) for anyone that really wants to dwell into Chaos.

The second best book lately on khorne was the Horus Hersey book Betrayer, In summary long range weapons are just a way to get up and close and personal. When you consider even there space ships like to fight in hand to hand combat.

[Denzark]

That'd make him pretty much the most tragic Ruinous Power of the lot. The idea that he's not truly the God of Slaughterous Rage, but the God of Impotent Powerlessness; that his rage is nothing but the mask worn by every soldier betrayed by his orders.


I'm not convinced about this. Yes we talk about Khorne in terms of wrath and rage. But, I have seen some particularly sincere interviews with soldiers who have served in Afghanistan, that state, one of the reason they do what they do is, its fun. It is fun to drive tanks, it is fun to fire 10k of anti tank missile into a mud hut just because you took a single round of small arms fire from it. It is fun to chuck grenades at people, firing on automatic gets your juices flowing.

I think Khorne is this writ large. Its about getting your rocks off in a big bloody orgy of destruction. I see ntohing tragic about it - that is why noble blood spilling (Eldar, Khaine) is closely linked. Khorne may be socio/psychopathic - but I think he just thinks its all fun. Any rage may beself induced, but only to maximise the fun.

[YorkNecromancer]

Any rage may beself induced, but only to maximise the fun.

A reading that posits that Khorne's an emotionally illiterate manchild? That metaphor works for me too.