Competent Chaos cultists, are there examples? Besides the ones in the employee of either the Iron Warriors or Alpha Legion?
Because from most of the fiction I've read with them in it, they seem unlawful stupid at best (yeah they're cannon fodder, I get it, despite that you think some sort of self preservation would kick in at some point?!) to down right blind and suicidal at worst.
So any better representations?
The leaders of the blood pact and the sons of sek, and their soldiers are pretty competent. Outside of that I don't remember any normal human cultist. Oh, almost forgot warmaster Varan, the best cultist leader in 40k lore ever.
Didn't realize that Warmaster Varan was that strong a dude, I'll look into his exploits.
Astelan, a Fallen Dark Angel, takes over a planet and strengthens the native planetary forces. There is a civil war going on, and he takes over one side's army and wins. If you consider the Fallen heretics, then this is another example of competent chaos cultists.
I think (it's been a while since I read Angels of Darkness, the novel where this happens) that the Dark Angels are surprised by how effective the planet's forces are when they arrive to capture Astelan.
Also, one of my favorite pieces of 40k fluff has competent cultists. From the 3.5 edition Chaos Codex:
"I was born the sixth son of Kaschada, hetman of the Tabor on the day that the Great Prophet came among us. The Tabor were the outcasts of the world, condemned because we were faithful to the Gods of the Four Winds: the Blood Wind that fired the warrior’s soul, the Plague Wind that purged the weak, the Wind of Change that brought the gifts of the Gods to men and the Scented Wind that roused the passions.
Our enemies were the Otman, men of the cities who served the Sky God. For centuries they had scoured the grasslands, hunting us down, but with the coming of the Prophet that all changed.
In my fourteenth year, I was part of the horde that swept into the city of Jaghann and put the inhabitants to the slaughter. Those were the great days; the Tabor were masters of the wide grasslands, raiding and plundering at our pleasure. I owned four gold-chased pistols and a fine Qaseen sabre. I flew my hawks, wore robes of silk and accepted no insult from any man. One by one the cities of the Otman fell before us and great caravans of slaves stretched across the plains to the mountain of the Prophet, for sacrifice to the winds.
The Prophet was a man like no other; taller than any of the Tabor, he wore armour of jet and gold, his great gauntlet could shatter any barred gate and his blade could cut even Qaseen steel. No man could meet his burning gaze and the hetman of the clans learned from him of the true nature of the Gods and how to bring death to our enemies.
Finally, our host met with the Otman army on the Red Grass. Standing with the enemy were twenty Storm Giants, heroes of the Otman who it was said had travelled beyond the winds to the citadel of the Sky God and had now returned to save their people from our wrath. The Prophet told us that immortality would be the reward for those who bested them."
continued
"My soul called for the blood of these warriors and I charged gladly into battle. Over that long day I charged five times, each time I fired every pistol but to no effect—the Storm Giants’ armour was proof against my bullets. In each charge I saw their guns cut through our squadrons, piling great heaps of men and horses before their lines. The evening sky turned blood red and the air stank of death. The great horde of the Tabor, the sons of the Prophet, was all but destroyed, my father was dead, my brothers were dead. I was wounded and my fine sabre broken yet my hatred for my enemies was greater than ever. We prepared for one more charge, no longer in squadrons but a scattering of bloodied individuals, awaiting a sign from the Prophet.
Instead of raising the banner to signal another charge he pointed to the crest of the hill at his back as the moon rose behind it. Over the ridge came daemons with blood-soaked skin bearing huge axes and swords. They rushed at the Storm Giants and we followed them. The Warriors of the Gods clashed and normal men were hurled about by the power they unleashed. I staggered into the press clutching a broken lance. Flaming winds cast me down but I pressed on and thrust my lance into the first of the Storm Giants I could reach. I struck him where his armour was twisted and melted. He fell and as he did the Prophet leapt upon him and with glowing blade cut him open and pulled the organs from his body. He held his bloody prizes aloft and told me that immortality beckoned me."
Final paragraph
"Scarcely a hundred Tabor had survived the battle. The Prophet asked me what I felt. I told him that I wanted vengeance, vengeance against the giants who had killed my father and brothers, against those who had shattered my clan, vengeance against their kin and their young, that I wanted to tear down their God and make them regret raising arms against the Tabor. The Prophet was pleased with my answer and said that I would travel beyond the winds with him and that I would also be a warrior of the Gods."
Isn't one of the reasons they're as successful as they are because they model themselves off the Imperial Guard? I distinctly remember the Sons of Sek having not!commissars in Traitor General.
>space marines jobbing to some daemons and literal feudal worlders by fighting in an open field
I bet it was those Lamenter cucks too.
Storm Giants, actually.
Also, in that codex, Bloodletters had a 3+ save, strength 5, and power weapons, so jobbers or badasses, they could easily smack around space marines.
That, and using sorcerers sensibly, more or less like a sanctioned psyker. They must have some competent mechanicus too because they have some tanks never seen anywhere else. They have kind of stormtrooper teams for special ops, backed with a competent sorcerer that instead of trying to do a big ass ritual sacrifice, supports the team and it is not that crazy. I like that take on a cultist warband, to say the truth. I don't remember much about the sons of sek, but chaos commissars sound a bit weird
WD 282, 283. Battle for the Basilica. It's a big multi-table battle report that took place at the kickoff of the old Eye of Terror campaign.
There are two narrators for the opening and closing. Haz Loker (a stormtrooper sergeant), and Elkanah Orrmayne (a chaos cultist). Brief, but nice.
I mean I can't see it being done, chaos is not an reliable opposition to the imperium or a unified ideal to charge for, its the mindless fuckery of the chaos gods and corruption. The complete anarchy of the members of chaos makes it naturally stupid. For a chaos force to be competent they gotta be distancing themselves from the gods a bit.
Or not. A slaaneshi squad of snipers obsessed with the perfect shot and eidetic memory, that only kills officers and interchange those memories through drug induced warp fuckery. There you have it, deranged and fucked but still tactically useful and plausible.
Abnett tends to make Cultists fairly competent. They use human wave attacks a lot, but they still tend to have cores of well trained soldiers supporting them and pull of tricky ambushes and such.
Also, there are guys like Zygmunt Molotch and Pontius Glaw who are basically cult leaders that are masterminds who can run rings around the Imperium.
No, that would be the Night Lords
Nurglite Cabal working on delivery methods of new and improved contagions. Of course they would be the first test subjects.
They do, in Salvation's Reach they described furnace lords of sorts that would create and enhance weapons, aswell as the odds and few that create abominations.
They described the abhorence of a human remodelled into the shape of a dog-thing.. it was not pleasant.
dudes that Gaunt fights in first book
Names don't ring a bell, care to tell about them?
They're villains in the Eisenhorn/Ravenor series of books. Iirc, Glaw is a super genius sorcerer who was the head of a noble house, and winds up with his mind trapped in a weird little orb thing that grants him immortality but limits his mobility. He eventually gets a robot body. He spends a lot of time doing a Hannibal Lecter routine, being Eisenhorn's captive but giving him advice/subtly manipulating him into doing stupid shit that lets Glaw escape.
Molotch was a product of the Cognitae, basically a parasitic, Chaos version of the schola progena. He was partially a eugenic creation if I remember right, but was basically a super genius when it came to sorcery and was also extremely subtle when he needed to be. He was trying to develop "Enuncia", a Chaotic language that gave the speaker extreme power at the cost of damage to their bodies.
Both of them eventually met messy ends, but they were smart, subtle dudes who were good at manipulating people, good at long term planning, and had competent, loyal underlings.
This is ridiculously cool
Enuncia was Warp-related but it didn't damage the speaker because it was Chaotic. It was just never meant for mere mortals to use by the Old Ones who developed it.
Don't forget that Glaw nearly obtained near chaos god powers at the tomb of the big ass demon who dueled with Tzeentech for a billion years
The Blood Pact are pretty competent, though most of their art is done by some edgy teen.
Awesome. I forgot about that. I just remember Enuncia being a really cool concept. I wish Abnett would finish Pariah, but I guess we need another 18 "HONOR OF THE SPACE MARINES" novels first.
I forgot that bit. I mostly remember the weird aliens in the first book who were dealing with Glaw's people, weren't they?
Yeah, weird Warp-tainted aliens were the first book but Glaw's end game didn't take off until the third. He was just a brain in a box until some time before then.