Personally, I don't think so. But I do see where you're going with this and it is something interesting to think about. Perhaps such emotions are experienced by so few of the population due to their mediocre lives that those gods merely waned and died. Or perhaps they are still around, and all the things in the galaxy attributed to the Emperor did come from him, but he was created by these "angels", or he is a tool of theirs. It all sounds very tinfoil-hatty but it's fun to think about.

 

The chaos gods are the ruling entities in the warp, they embody everything from love, hope, knowledge, honour to destruction, insanity, lust and betrayal and everything in between, if there are other entities then they either too weak to pose a real threat or dead..There are no angels, there isnt a 'heaven' or 'hell' just the warp which now is nothing but pure war..

I think if someone wanted to worship a positive aspect of, say, slaanesh (love, hope, joy, friendship,etc) then you'd be getting a more positive feedback from your god but the problem arises when mortals start digging too deep in the warp (which isnt a place for mortals), they start losing their minds, gathering knowledge they dont quite understand, summoning demons that they cant control and before they know it they are worshipping the chaos gods as a whole, not just an aspect, and submitting themselves to the whims of thirsting gods....

 

The Chaos Gods are formed not just from the 'bad' emotions but all emotions. Khorne is not just mindless butchery but also 'honourable' battle or duels. Tzeentch embodies hope and Nurgle care (the hope for changing circumstances and the care shown to those sick). Obviously more extreme emotions feed the God's more but ultimately all emotions feed them.

One aspect of the Star Child theory does however put forward the idea of man creating a new warp god based off the veneration of the Emperor.

 

The gods represent emotional extremes.

Love for instance, embodied by Slaanesh. But as you take it further, love becomes nothing more than desire. Desire breeds lust and lust breeds perversion.

An honourable warrior empowered by Khorne will gradually be pushed further down the path of anger and hate. The small controlled bursts of fury and rage that made him a formiddable combatant will eventually consume him and turn him into a frothing murderer.

Between them, the Chaos Gods embody every emotional state on one level or another. But it is the absolute extremes that they are known for.

 

Rems and Serpion are spot on. The chaos gods are not not based on "bad" emotion (if there is such a thing) They are simply emotion, which all sentient life expresses


The only way a universe could possibly exist without them is a dead universe, fluff wise this goes back to the eldar tales of the end of days, and the older necron c'tan fluff

 

Warp spawns are called daemons by most because they represent Chaos. For Plague Marines, for example, children of Nurgle are pretty much angelic, for they embody all that Plague Marines care about and love. It's just the matter of point of view.

 

I would add to what Serpion5 said. The reason certain emotions are more "extreme" is that states of being like "content" or "happy" tend to be weaker and more temporary than the desire to pursue those states. Our current society for example is based on a never ending hamster wheel of pursuing "happiness" through material goods, impossible standards and unreachable fantasies, preying on your ego and vanity. Just look at advertising and media. Miracle diets, celebrity homes, instant "get-rich" schemes, plastic surgery TV shows, scam emails of various kinds. You like to feel good don't you? You'd like to be desired and adored? Important and respected? Nothing worse than being bored though. You like spending money? Good food and fine wine? Art? Music? Because you're worth it...


Not all is of course hedonism. Some strong desires can be about change and revolution. It can be for the best of intentions, like overthrowing a tyrant. But there's always a dilemma with revolutions. Revolutions may require violence, but when the smoke has settled and you've won...how are you going to undo the violent anarchy you created? You could always stomp it out, bringing order with an iron fist. Say hello to the new boss, same as the old boss. You're just doing it for their own good, aren't you? Or are you? When did increasing your own power go from securing society to becoming an end in and of itself? Was it all about you to begin with? After all, there was always an element of shaping and bending society to what YOU wanted, wasn't there?


Maybe the desire is for justice not fulfilled. Do you take it into your own hands? After all the guy deserves it, right? You're sure of it. Maybe it should be made sure he can never harm anyone else again? But will it stop there? Or will someone turn up on your doorstep in turn one day (his family member or friend, the blind authorities and their bureaucracies)? Will you take them on too? You were justified! He had to be punished! Right? Also, apply this emotion on a political scale, and what do you know, you're fighting a self-righteous war killing people you never met before because someone told you they're bad (as opposed to you, of course, the embodiment of virtue that you are). Worst of all, you may start liking it. Whip out your mp3 player or iPhone, put some music on and paint the town red. It's not your town, after all, and soon it'll be a ghost town!


Maybe the thought of dying scares you? The very end of your existence is an unthinkable option? After all, there's so much to do and see...so much you'd leave behind. But time is a merciless predator and you're already getting old, your body failing you. Consequences of a life lived carelessly. Lifelong drinking and smoking now means your lungs are full of tar and cancer, your liver is shot. But you can't give up, can you? You'll try anything, including pseudoscience. Hey, after all, if it doesn't work you're done for anyway! Your quality of life has been in the gutter for a long time and going steadily downhill. You'd be willing to compromise, it's not like you remember how it felt to be healthy anyway. You know what? There might just be a way to make a deal...after all, what have you got to lose?

All of these are about seeking some form of contentment. I like a description in Hellboy 2 where it's said that the human heart has a piece missing. A hole that can never be filled.
(I apologise for the excessive editing. The keyboard is acting up causing errors and there were things I wanted to add)

 

I do agree that other emotions are more fleeting (hope, kindness, etc). Also there are no "bad" emotions. I just needed a term to reflect what the chaos gods feed off.

The chaos gods are gods of extreme. Slaanesh, for example, wasn't created by love. He was created far further down the emotional scale, call it lust if you will.
All emotions tend to sit on a sliding scale. Love to desire to lust. It's the one extreme that the chaos gods feed off and were used to create them. Slaanesh can twist love, pervert it, and slide it down the scale to where he can get the most from it.
There is no heaven or hell in 40k, understood. The warp is the fold in space/time where chaos lives.
But looking theologically, all the demons and devils from terra's history were really warp beasts. Demons are just the term used to describe them. They were ancient mankind's way of describing things they couldn't deal with. So thinking along these lines, the "positive" influences. What ancient terran's called angels, they would have existed too.

I guess I'm thinking of it more like how it is portrayed in "Wrath of the Titans": Zeus gains his power from man's love, while Hades gains his from man's fear.

Again, just a theological thought experiment I had.

 

Well, it kind of blurs in the sense that "demon" wasn't exclusively a term used for evil beings in all societies (outside christianity). Gods in old religions on the other hand, while feeding off "love" and worship tended to be horrible egomaniacs, Zeus included. After all, he even ate his first wife. Gods simply weren't as friendly and "new agey" as they are seen today.

While I do agree with you that the chaos gods were primarily born from the baser more extreme emotions and end up warping other feelings to those ends, the other emotions ARE part of them as well. I'm sure they are worshiped in more primitive cultures in much the same way as gods in our ancient history, seen as powerful saviors or allies upstairs against harsh reality, that should not be offended, but may be unpredictable and wrathful. I don't doubt they can be generous occasionally to those societies that worship and portray them favourably. You might disagree with them about the nature of "generosity" of course.

 

The gods represent excess or extremes. They are not love, honor, or hope. They represent what happens when you push the boundaries of emotion which is Chaos. The lack of control. Khorne is what made him. He can never stop thirsting for blood and destruction. The warriors under him believe that they retain honor but that's bullshit.Kharn is one of his most favored warriors and he's a traitor who only looks out for himself. The only reason Kharn likes those who display strong martial prowess is because they make better killers, not out of any sense of nobility. He's insane like the rest.

Tzeentch plots to plot. His plots literally lead nowhere as he has no grand scheme that he's working towards. His purpose is to perpetuate, like the others, what made him which is excess in the extreme. You can go on with Nurgle and Slaanesh. The eldar created Slaanesh because they couldn't come to moderation of the emotions. The desired more and more and this need resonated with the birth of a creature who desires more and more. While the root of the extremes can be seen as love, honor, and hope the truth is the gods represent depravity, savagery, manipulation, and despair. The Gods are insane and to comprehend their true nature is to comprehend insanity. As Malcador told Dorn that Horus is quite mad, he has Chaos in him.

 

I hope I'm not frustrating people too much with my "devil's advocate" posts. I don't even think we disagree as much as it might seem. :grin:

Chaos is certainly harmful in it's current state and it does indeed plot your downfall because that is it's nature. But chaos is just a symptom of the 40k universe, not the cause. It's like nuclear waste...it's toxic and dangerous, but it didn't create itself. Poison is deadly because of what it is, but it didn't make itself. It doesn't mean that that is all the substance is or could be, it just has the notable effect of poisoning you as is.

You could call the chaos gods evil, because they certainly have an evil effect, but they don't really have a choice in what they are...they just are. They are what the material universe makes them into. Hating them will also make them stronger since hate is a thing that feeds them well in the first place in a multitude of ways. They are a sort of sentient karma of the 40k universe (collective karma, not individual). In a different universe it would be different.

About the positive emotions...I'm not saying that Slaanesh is a god of love or that Tzeentch is a god of hope or any such absolutist crap. I'm saying that emotions are complicated and blur into each other...they're not a light switch with on/off. Every action you take can be framed as self serving at it's root if one is cynical enough. Maybe on some level this is even true...but it's not the whole truth nor is it a simple subject to evaluate. Even philosophers and psychologists are struggling with it. Emotions have many facets and bleed into each other.

I think we can agree that the people that fall to chaos worship tend to end up as pretty horrible beings, but the downward spiral can happen for many reasons. EDIT: This is not just to have "sympathy for the devil" but to point out why chaos in the harsh 40k universe is so dangerous.

 

At the risk of both sounding apologetic and continuing a perhaps dead discussion, I thought I'd bring up an aspect I touched on briefly because I think it's sort of important and on topic.

Back when I compared the chaos gods to old gods like Zeus I do think the comparison works to some extent. There are cases in both 40k and fantasy where native cultures honour the dark gods and seem to live fairly harsh but decent lives hunting, trading and fishing. They might of course have some macabre festival involving a human sacrifice (voluntary or otherwise) once or twice a year and some mutated individual may be praised in the community, but usually the madness only really starts when the imperium (or a rival god) arrives to challenge the status quo. This to me seems like any old culture like the aztecs. Basically life can be somewhat dandy until you disobey or piss the entity off and now everyone dies in a flood/daemon attack etc.. Not to say the deity can't demand harsh tasks (even tribal genocide) occasionally...sure they do. Especially if you bargain for power or such.

In the fantasy game we have the northern (and southern) wastes. If you never go to the northern wastes you're likely only going to meet invading chaos warriors and the occasional travelling merchant. However, if you DO go there (and survive) you'll find villages of fishermen, hunters, craftsmen and so forth. They often honour/worship the chaos gods to some extent (though not all I think). Some tribes are warlike by default, but often in calmer places the more dedicated/violent merely leave their village to join an army passing by. Of course there are also genuinely horrific and physically impossible places in the wastes. The chance of encountering these increases the closer you get to the northern pole, as it's the source of chaos flooding the world. From what I understand actually being near the portal itself is even more dangerous and difficult, as reality becomes pretty funky there.

Space marines are made for war and act like it, often with gruesome practises and rituals. It's no wonder that when they turn to chaos their behaviour furthers this path. Militant fanatics and cults obviously have similar tendencies. This (and daemon invasions) is when things get apocalyptically bad, at least for the planet/system.

Does this depend on the nature of the worship? Or the extent of it? I don't know. It may simply be the extent of worship granting more influence in the region, though I don't think that's all there is to it, as some seemingly ordinary villages are located in areas where chaos is relatively strong (even places on some daemon worlds). It could be that the gods simply aren't interested as much...who can say when it comes to such whimsical and insane entities.

DISCLAIMERS: Don't take this the wrong way, though. I think such cultures are harsh and superstitious, but some people may survive this way in an ugly universe (it's 40k after all). All I said earlier about the foul nature of chaos still stands. Because the warp is in the state it's in, the chaos gods are vile and fickle, tainting and trying to gain foothold everywhere. I just thought this aspect needed some attention.

 

It really depends on your individual view on the world, universe and 'spiritual' matters...

Like for instance, I see emotions from a Buddhist perspective and thus distinctly different to how an atheist or Christian may see it. I distinguish between desires (caused by delusion and selfish ego) and universal love and compassion, which are not desires but instead a perception and experiential understanding. However, people with other viewpoints see this differently.
What I am trying to say is that it really depends on how you as an individual see emotions and desires depending on your own world view. Trying to apply your own view to the fictional 40k universe means you are not going to get a definitive answer to your question.
Like for me, Chaos Gods couldn't feed off universal compassion as it's not a selfish desire based on the illusion of permanence in the self and in the universe. Instead they could only feed off selfish desires and delusion.
So my take on it would be that Chaos Gods can only manifest through human desires (and there delusion of permanence).

Of course, my biased Buddhist-like philosophy works in this world (at least in my mind!) and this reality (and works nicely in unison with physics), but when I apply it to the 40k universe, where the laws of physics are totally different, it's impossible to say whether or not this has any validity.

Ultimately, in order to answer the question we'd need to know a lot more about how the 40k works in regards to quantum physics, and it just doesn't have that much detail in the fluff that I know of!

 

I'd like to offer a dissenting view that the Chaos Gods aren't the end all for manifestations of emotion in the Warp. Most don't know about the otherwise incredibly powerful Contentment Gods, little known, but ultimately worshiped by all sentient beings:

Happerion: God of Laughter and Merriment, destined to bring about the Party at the End of the Universe and reveal the Cosmic Joke when he stops laughing long enough to get off the ground where he's been rolling around for untold eons.

Areola: Goddess of Fleshly Passion, willing to do just about anything as long as it doesn't hurt and you respect her in the morning. Was lost to mortal view when she entered her Happy Place in the distant past, but is prophecied to start poking out when the cold winds of change blow once more and she reveals herself to all.

Contentimaticus: God of Contentment and Satiety, guiding all his followers to the balance of need and desire. Has proclaimed he will guide all those who wish to seek him to the Cup of Chamomile, whereupon the Cosmic Sigh will end all war and want. Unfortunately, he has yet to emerge from his battle with the portly, maroon, double-knit sofa suspended in the midst of the Warp when it was first becalmed, as remembranced by the human Prophet Frank Zappa. The war continues while Contentimaticus tries to overcome the nefarious influence of The Remote, first produced from betwixt the cushions of The Sofa, and drawing all the attention and fascination of the god of contentment. When he doest finally rise above The Sofa, verily pulling his ass off of it, all of existence will be enjoined in The Great Nap.

Commodorinus: God of Love and Courvoisier Cognac. When not engaged in the Eternal Still, producing all that makes men happy and a bit sleepy, he can be found in the Garden of Love, thereby embracing all that life and his feminine mortal followers have to give. Immediately prior to The War in Heaven in ages long past, the Warp rang with his great battle cry "Brick House!" upon laying his eyes on the Goddess Areola. The other gods, seeing the danger to all of existence, did band together and enacted the greatest "Get A Room" conjuration before the two could Get the House A' Rockin. Since that time, none of the other Chaos or Contentment gods have dared Come A' Nockin, for fear of being drawn into the conflict prior to the climax, and thereby being lost themselves.

As you can clearly see, it’s not for lack of existence that these positive forces do not appear in the Warp, but more that they have been engaged in an paradoxical struggle against their very nature. It’s been hypothesized that had Commodorinus not taken away Areola before she could engage the Chaos God Khorne, aeons of bloodshed, anger and frustration could have been averted. Likewise, had not Contentimaticus hogged The Remote since the dawn of time, then Tzeench could have contented himself with all the change he wanted, but was otherwise driven to the mortal realm to sate his desire. Finally, it has never been revealed that in the beginning of things Nurgle was actually quite an attractive and happy being until Commodorinus raised The Garden of Love, causing Nurgle unending suffering, swollen red eyes, and a spigot-like dripping nose when The Allerginarius struck, leading him to become a twisted and bitter being desiring to enjoin all of creation in his suffering.

 

For the more serious stuff (fluffyness is serious business) I typed up an answer in my usual short and succinct style and it seems my browser was so struck by my flawless logic that it crashed and I sort of lost the written groundbreaking genius within forever. (Firefox crashed for an unrelated reason, I fumbled the tab closed and I'm too lazy to retype it).

Suffice to say I don't think the chaos gods directly feed on all emotions...at least not to as significant an extent. I'm saying that emotions are connected and complicated, branching in many confusing directions. One can feel many things about something all at once. The chaos gods often pull strings on virtues to get people where they want, because virtues and consequences of good intentions are not isolated IMO. That's why they leak into the more positive things. If you do something for good intentions, you might not be serving the chaos gods, but you could be.

In some ways chaos is imaginary even in the 40k universe, coming from a subjective place of thoughts/fantasies/subconcious etc. To ponder how it reacts with physics is probably pointless, since it outright contradicts it whimsically. I agree with Deadeye776 in so much that completely understanding the madness of chaos is impossible.

Chaos contact itself is damaging both to body and soul (which definitely exists in 40k) and to shield oneself one would need to go as overboard on it as the grey knights. Even they could be compromised I think (they certainly are very afraid of a sword they have), but it hasn't happened yet it seems nor would they make it an easy task.



Egads, the light! So...pure, so...blinding...and now 20% more energy efficient...
I r beaten in the face of such truth.

 

The way I see it is just as the warp is pure chaos there is also an opposite of that in faith i.e. miracles that happen without psykers or sorcery being involved.

To me, this seems like the 'good' emotions being given power, however I don't see the grim darkness of 40k producing enough good emotions to create a full-blown God, I mean, it took the fall of the whole Eldar civilsation into decadence to create Slaanesh so presumably a 'good' God would require a massive civilisation to be 'good', I don't see any civilisation having a chance of that in the 40k universe.

On a side note, there is an angel of some kind in one of the Gothic War novels, can't remember whether it is Execution Hour or Shadow Point though.

 

The following could run counter to something I said earlier about the warp and physics. Or not. It's a bit paradoxical...but that's the warp for you.

I half remembered some old bit and eventually found it in the Tzeentch section of Liber Chaotica. No page numbers, but in the section "Of matters Arcane and Magical" where it explains the winds of chaos/orders of magic in the empire (fantasy), it mentions a language used in Magic, simplified of that used by elves and taught to humans by Teclis. It's said that the origin is the language of the old ones..."a language of gods and daemons" that has precise terms describing every state and process of every thing in the material and almost every state and process of every thing in the Aethyr. The Colleges of magic debate whether the language comes from the old ones or the Aethyr.

This of course is to use magic, but not allowing it "wriggle room" to cause whatever randomness/side effects it wants. I assume it might be related to the dark tongue as well.

Of course the language is hard to pronounce...the original (probably mostly lost or mythical) version unpronounceable to humans and far too vast to catalogue or master. Nor do I think a human mind could survive some of it. Yet it's said there that the Aethyr (warp) doesn't follow rules and structures really, so...hmm? Also there's of course what happened to the warp gates. For some reason the old one magic failed and chaos just tore it's way through the polar gates and into the world. Did they know as much as is thought, or did the Slann screw up down the line? Just the age of the portals causing breakdown? Something else?

I consider it worth mentioning since the book, although for fantasy, mentions through visions Magus the red and his daemon world, Word Bearers, Khorne berzerkers, Noise marines, Lucius the eternal, defilers etc, Abaddon's black cusades (Abandoned one), traitor legions in general, the Eye of Terror, the fall and more.




I personally think the miracles that happen to the imperium probably have something to do with the emperor and faith in him. It could be though, that he merely uses some part/process of the warp that is as you describe. I also think the warp, if used by someone who knows what they're doing (Farseer etc.) can be used as a force for "good". Obviously the Eldar play it very safely for historical reasons. Maybe faith can be used similarly to how orks "make things work" with their latent powers (and maybe that's exactly what they do, unknowingly).

I haven't read Execution Hour or Shadow Point, so that "angel" is completely outside my knowledge and this is the first I've heard of it. Could it be something similar to a saint?