Editing Nobledark Imperium Notes (section)

=== 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.]]