Editing Nobledark Imperium Notes (section)

== The Chaos Gods and their Daemons ==

=== Khorne ===

Khorne often likes to refer to himself as the <span style='color:red;font-size:100%'>BLOOD KING OF THE GALAXY</span>. If you're groaning at how stupid that sounds, good. That's the point. Khorne's title as <span style='color:red;font-size:100%'>THE BLOOD KING OF THE GALAXY</span> is intentionally silly to parody the number of blood-, skull-,  and related silly-sounding names he's often given in regular 40k fluff as well as to emphasize that when you get down to it, Khorne's not really that imaginative. Sure, he can be [[Azariah Kyras|clever]] when he wants to be, but it's not his first instinct. In-universe only Khornates really care for the title, and even when they do use it they tend to drop the "Blood" for the sake of respect. If it ever comes up in interactions between the gods' faithful it would be met with exasperation and groans from the other three sects. If a Khornate wanders into Slaaneshi territory somewhere in Shaa-Dome and gets murderfucked, chances are <span style='color:red;font-size:100%'>BLOOD KING OF THE GALAXY</span> will be written over the body.

==== Khorne and Khaine ====

Khaine’s personality is quite similar to a mortal with bipolar disorder due to his conflicting portfolio that he never really resolved. It’s not actually bipolar disorder as defined by mortals given the massive difference between how gods and mortals work, but the resulting symptoms are close enough as an analogy. [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#Khaine|Even when Khaine tried to reign himself in after he got Eldanesh killed]], his behavior was that of someone who is off their meds and is “totally fine. Seriously. Stop asking”, even though he clearly was not. On the one hand you have Khaine the God of War, who is obsessed with the glory and sensation of war and the rush of battle, while Khaine the God of Murder is self-loathing, depressed, and acutely aware of what he is. [[Mork|Or maybe it’s the other way around]], with Khaine the God of Murder being a bloodthirsty savage while Khaine the God of War is more brooding, thoughtful, and aware that violence is not always the correct answer to a question. The difference between the two is kind of like if the Roman and Greek interpretations of Mars/Ares were seen by the same person. Mars may be likeable and more responsible if a bit abrasive and moody, but Ares is just a [[Eldrad|dick]].

Khorne sees Khaine as a flawed first attempt to his later perfection. [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#The_Rise_of_Khorne|Khorne was created by combining the essence of Khaine, and Gork and Mork, and all the other war gods of the Children of the Old Ones]]. He is the master of a thousand forms of war from hundreds of species, the essence of war distilled, perfected. Each style can cover for the flaws of another, giving Khorne more strength than the sum of his parts, and none of their component weaknesses ([[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#The_Rise_of_Khorne|The thing]] [[Gork|with the]] [[Mork|mushrooms]] was a fluke. [[Bullshit|Honest]]). The fact that Khaine includes murder in his portfolio is seen as evidence of this.

Khaine sees Khorne as being too full of himself and lacking self-awareness. Yes, Khorne may have stripped himself of all the “impurities” that characterized the other war gods, but he seems to have lost something in the process. He treats war like a grand spectacle, but has lost touch with mortals and completely forgotten about why people go to war (or more importantly why most people try to avoid it). He is completely focused on the glory of war, the slaying of enemies, the winning of accolades, and has completely forgot that war is horrifying to those most who are not immortal, invulnerable, or an ork. Yes, Khaine has murder in his portfolio whereas Khorne technically does not, war is murder, and if you forget that you become as bad as the monsters you’re fighting.

=== Slaanesh ===

On the Slaaneshi condition, Slaaneshi chaos eldar needing to stave of being eaten by feeding slaanesh other souls is already the dark eldar's thing, and they're already explicitly serving chaos. Since Slaanesh is weakened because he has to vie with Isha for eldar souls after death it would even make sense for the prince of pleasure to explicitly offer the sadistic but self preserving dark eldar a deal where they hunt for souls and deliver them and their feelings unto Slaanesh to keep their own incredibly Slaaneshi existence free. They're the dominatrix that Slaanesh pays to bust into your house in the night, loosen up your bum, and drag you to the dungeon. 

Eldar worshippers of Slaanesh, the real cultists, are there because they really love the idea of being Slaany's mind bending fucktoy, and a little snuff at the end of a session with the prince/princess is hardly a problem for them. The high echelon of the Slaaneshi cult have been violated and ended in innumerable ways by their master and love, and have done the same to Slaany for their master's pleasure. Because the Slaaneshi chaos eldar have the greatest psychic conceptual influence over Slaanesh and are the most influenced by their god's corruption they essentially become a recursively self-depraving magical realm. Slaanesh and the Slaaneshi eldar love each other and are perfect for each other, and whenever Slaany eats an old favorite it can't help eventually recreating them for more, because it can never get enough.

The Slaaneshi eldar consider the mutability and acausality of the warp the sublimation of the old empire and have made a good run at adapting to it. Some of them have been in the the eye partying since the fall, and claim to have been upon the capital, a layered shellworld engrossed in a great all-spanning orgy, and to have witnessed the birth. Fewer still claim to have taken part in slaanesh's conception, dreaming up the perfect lover that now is their idol, themselves the participants most interested in endless variance of pleasure and perfect beauty, the more self erasing of the parents giddily gobbled up or used to destruction by their child, as they had hoped.

Because they dreamt Slaanesh to be the God of excess that always wants more it can't help but bring back its kinkiest toys and the perfect champions its enjoined ruining by reward though final deadly climax. The pleasure of gobbling up souls, of absolute obliteration, grew insufficient to the prince, as everything must, and the young god was soon inclined by its cult to more subtle perversions. 

Likewise, with Isha free the lordess of excess faced the very real prospect of scarcity, even famine, and was made to squirm within its nature much like Nurgle was. Because it's nature was not so based in stasis as Nurgle the shift had a greater significance. Coming to understand differences in kind, where once it could only understand magnitude.

Slaanesh learned the difference between being the god with the most raw warp influence and being the god with the most canny and capable followers, strongest realspace assets and positions, the widest portfolio extendable to the broadest uses of power. Slaanesh learned to be ok with being the little bitch among the four and the wispiest typhoon of madness in the warp because the other gods don't seem to acknowledge the realspace situation as anything more than pieces on the board. Slaanesh understands that it's cult and realspace define and control it as much as the other way around, and acts on this knowledge. Also, while Isha's freedom has fucked with Slaanesh on a material level, her freedom has reopened the fate of the eldar pantheon of which Slaanesh can claim a part, circumventing the deadlock of the great game. If the situation arises Slaanesh might just leave the other Chaos Gods to [[Nurgle|rot]], setting itself up as the devil figure in the new Galactic pantheon by defining itself as the antithesis of the Emperor and Empress.

tl:dr - reasonable Slaanesh is what happens when you make reasonable eldar, and the Imperium is reasonably fucked

Slaanesh likes to present itself as the most reasonable of the Four Chaos Gods, almost in a Luciferian or Sauron-like fashion. Tzeentch constantly rants about "plans", Khorne constantly rants about "blood", and Nurgle constantly rants about "despair", or at least that's what the Slaaneshis would have you believe. Slaanesh tells you this in a calm, impassionate voice, in a form that looks downright normal, trying to convince you that it is the only reasonable option. And then the mask slips and you realize that, no, this one is just as crazy as all the other, because unlike the other four it is capable of hiding it's madness and monomania beneath a veneer of sanity.

Each of the Chaos Gods has their own long term goals. Tzeentch wants to find out what’s in the Well of Eternity and gain ultimate knowledge. Nurgle thinks the galaxy is rotten to the core and has gone on too long as is and wants to burn it all down so it can start over, a la Dark Souls something he may have been infected by when he at his chunk of Malal. Khorne wants ultimate domination over the galaxy, that which had been denied from him ever since Gork and Mork slipped his grasp during the War in Heaven. And Slaanesh, as god/ess of excess, wants to usurp the other three and become the sole Chaos God. And the other three know it. There’s a reason why the other Chaos Gods don’t like Slaanesh very much. Even Tzeentch, the Chaos God who gets along the best with Slaanesh, doesn’t so much like them is consider them “the most easily manipulatable”. As in canon, because Slaanesh is the god of excess, technically all of the things the other three gods do potentially fall under Slaanesh's portfolio and they know it. This is part of reason for Khorne’s unusual degree of restraint around Slaanesh, despite the well-known hatred between them. Although Khorne wants to kill Slaanesh, if he acts on the urge in anger it means he loses all self-control to his excess and Slaanesh wins, and both of them know it.

There’s a dirty little secret behind the origin of Slaanesh. Slaanesh wasn’t originally conceived as a god/ess of pain and pleasure. He/she was originally supposed to be a god/ess of peace, love, and joy. Some of the more sane among the Old Eldar Empire had proposed creating Slaanesh out of a sense of [[High Elves (Warhammer)|noblesse oblige]] to calm the Warp down for the other, non-Webway using races. Others in power liked the idea of a God of Joy, because it meant never having to worry about the collective grief spiral Eldar societies are vulnerable to (essentially never having to come down off their high). Of course, when it was detailed on how one would actually create such a god, the rest of the hedonistic Eldar just heard "make a sex god through lots of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll, sounds cool", which ruined the whole project. [[Not As Planned|Slaanesh was corrupted from its birth, whatever noble intentions the Eldar might have had in its creation died before it even manifested for the first time and started murdering the rest of their pantheon. Instead of pacifying the Warp, Slaanesh made the Warp worse and galvanized the other three Chaos Gods into action.]]

=== Apep ===

The one and only Daemon Prince of Malal. Pharaoh of Denial.

It is said that in his mortal life, the being who would become Apep was a man who through his own hubris caused the destruction of all that he held dear. But rather than realize his self-inflicted role in this tragedy and accept the consequences of his actions, Apep blamed everyone else, cursing the universe itself for his loss. It was this hatred, and his irrational denial of the fact that he was the cause of own suffering, that drew him to Malal's attention in the first place. The goat-like god came to Apep with a simple offer: "Your old life is gone, there is nothing more for you here. Serve me, and you will have your revenge on the universe".

However, Malal was not the Chaos God he once was. Years of fighting with the four great Ruinous Powers had left him a shadow of the being he once was, and so he had to invest a far greater proportion of his power into Apep. Thus, there could only ever be one daemon prince of Malal. Of course, perhaps this is what Malal intended all along, for if there were more than one Daemon Prince of Malal, one would surely turn on and betray the other.

Despite this, the fact that Malal had to invest so much of his essence into Apep technically makes Apep a god in the flesh, albeit a very pathetic one. As a result, he can't be killed reliably. Oh they've tried. The Grey Knights have killed Apep at least seven times and may have killed it as many as twelve times, the last of which was in 102.M41. After that point the Grey Knights got fed up with Apep and took a page from the Kinebrach, entombing Apep alive in a padded, warded cell on Ganymede. Apep can't come back if he never gets killed in the first place.

I'm imagining Apep as a amorphous and never quite stable cloud of what looks like red and orange sand. It's usually a sort of spider in shape, but mostly because of habit.

Apep's great fuck up that pushed him into the embrace of Chaos was messing around with nano-machines. Possibly his people were one of the early recoveries after the War in Heaven. The nano-bots were salvaged from a Necrontyr tomb.

And that's how the K'nib homeworld was lost.

====Imprisonment====
I'm kinda imagining that there's a ton of weird reverse psychology involved in imprisoning the one Daemon Prince of Malal. Stuff like demanding he leave the vaults of Ganymede and never return, locking him out of his containment cell, and insisting he's the jailor not the prisoner are probably just the start of it. It would probably descend into a level of double negative bullshit like how The Outsider momentarily/eternally became an avatar of Malal by virtue of being the antithesis of Tzeentch, and also by not being Malal.

Oh sweet fucking Jesus that's a beautifully stupid image.

Apep, the one Daemon Prince of Malal, is guarding an empty cell so that it remains empty and because he is free not to.

Also the Outsider is just crazy enough that even if he wasn't the avatar of Malal he would act like Malal to such a great degree that he would be the avatar of Malal by virtue of nobody including both gods involved being able to tell the difference.

This sorry state of affairs would be, I imagine, a source of unending mirth for the Inquisition were it not for the fact that these creatures hopelessly broken as they are are civilization ending disasters waiting for someone to happen to.

Also added to the "List of Thing Inq. Jaq Draco is no Longer Permitted to do on Ganymede" is<br>
>interact with the Prince of Malal

No, no, you see. Apep isn't imprisoned. It's everyone else who's imprisoned. They built a whole prison around the universe, except for one little spot where the guard is supposed to be stationed. It's Apep's job to keep everyone else imprisoned. I mean, if you built four walls to contain an entire universe, [[Grimdark|it must be full of pretty nasty stuff]].  It's a panopticon you see, put the guard in the middle, and nobody looks at the door.

=== Doombreed ===

In this timeline Doombreed is not Genghis Khan, or Atilla the Hun, or any other famous historical conqueror. Here he is the last despot of Ursh, the guy who caused the Imperium so much trouble during the Unification Wars. Having killed more people in the name of mindless slaughter than any other human being on Earth, Khorne found his antics hilarious and raised him as a daemon prince so he could continue doing so for eternity. Raising the person who was such a personal nightmare for the Warlord and many of his primarchs was also a very spiteful move on Khorne’s part, bringing back the person that caused them so much pain.

During the War of the Beast, Doombreed arose and went after the four of the Steward’s primarchs who had caused him so much trouble in life: Magnus the Red, the witch who had stepped out of line and murdered his uncle; Jaghatai Khan, the man who stabbed him in the back; Corvus Corax, the slave who had humiliated him; and Lorgar Aurelian, the man who finally brought him down and swung the sword at his execution. From a combat perspective, as a Khornate Daemon Prince, Doombreed was tailor-made to take down a psyker, a latent psyker, and two warriors who specialized in hit-and-run tactics. The four barely survived Doombreed. However, once they did, they realized that something was up given that such a personal figure from their past had been brought back, and they headed to Old Earth.

Six millennia later, during the Age of Apostasy, the tyranny and cruelty of Goge Vandire brought Doombreed back once more. Magnus, now alone but with two or three divisions of Grey Knights, confronted Doombreed and brought him down. However, the battle was so intense that it ended up causing the Storm of the Emperor’s Wrath and ended up killing Magnus from the exhaustion a short while later.

When Doombreed showed up for the first time, he corrupted a large region of space that was in the process of being integrated into the Imperium. The people in this region eventually ended up becoming the Blood Pact.

It has been suggested that the Helldrakes in this timeline were originally inspired by the Roma, Ursh’s vassal air force. In canon, the Roma were described as having “never touched the ground”, which could be interpreted as them being physically wired into and intermeshed with their planes to some degree. The Chaos Gods took one look at this idea and asked Doombreed “so what do you call this” and Doombreed responded “the Aristocrats!” Of course, the Chaos Gods decided to take this idea up to 11 (like everything Chaos does) by physically fusing the flesh of the pilot into the machine. This would give Chaos a ready supply of Helldrakes from baseline human beings without having to waste precious traitor marines like in canon because there are relatively fewer Fallen.

=== Skarbrand ===

Skarbrand in this timeline was tricked into raise his hand against Khorne by Malal, who sought to use the resulting struggle as a way to escape his status as Khorne's vassal. Unfortunately, Skarbrand found out that while Khorne approves of his followers challenging one another to see who is the strongest, he doesn't approve of the same rules being applied to himself, and Skarbrand got smacked down as per canon. The resulting being, filled with destructive self-hatred and a teamkilling fury that makes him as dangerous to foe and (nominal) friend alike, is exactly what you’d expect of a Khornate daemon with Malalic influences.

=== M'Kar the Thriceborn ===

M'Kar before ascending to daemonhood was one of the Night Lords that was in it just for the shits and giggles instead of Kurze's idea of justice, a real fuck up who ran around the underhives playing mind games on people that drew his attention, distorting their perceptions by means both mundane and exotic, stalking them and appearing only in their peripheral vision, leaving signs of his presence and toying them for a good long while to the point of madness before cutting them up (assuming they don't kill themselves first).

He's been doing this across the Imperium since then, he typically singles people out individually because it amuses him to do so although he can fuck with larger groups if he wants. He is quite a good combatant in a straight up fight as you would expect but it is not his area of expertise.

He's a nutter who thinks the Imperium is the set of his own ever lasting horror-holo and he puts such effort into setting the stage that Tzneetch adopted him and finds his antics quite amusing. Like Ingethel although he is Tzeentchian on paper Slaanesh and Nurgle also supply him with a bit of juice as his antics help fuel them by extension as well. Unlike most Deamon-Princes that arise from The Fallen he has not particular fondness for attacking his old Legion. Not because he has any fondness for them, fuck no, but simply because attacking a bunch of mind-wiped fanatics with limited emotional range isn't as satisfying at going after civilians.