Can chaos worshipers be good guys?

Chaos isn't evil. Evil implies a sense of morality. Chaos is inherently amoral. Now that doesn't mean the Imperium at large shouldn't do everything in their power to eliminate it.

If you bothered to read, that's what I was saying.

Let me do a tl;dr for ya: Chaos lures good people in with promises of salvation, freedom, or what have you... Then they turn them into unwitting plague spreaders, psychotic murderers, and daemon vessels. I.E. evil bastards.

Its Warhammer 40k.

There is no such thing as a "good guy." They are all objectively bad, including the Emperor.

The Dark Gods HAVE a sense of morality, and they know their place in it. They actively revel in evil for evil's sake! Betrayal, murder, slaughter, suffering, they love all these things not just for the base benefits but because humanity associates them with evil and thus associates them with the Dark Gods!

The Dark Gods self identify as evil. There's no secret deep down goodness in them. At least not in the current fluff, back in the RT days there was a yin side to their yang.

Ask ADB

He drives Veeky Forums nanners

>can cha-CLAXON
Should have said Choas, user.

Yes. For example, Archaon who is legitimately a good guy and the only dude with a working plan to defeat Chaos.

KYS.

>a working plan to defeat Chaos
And look where he ended up. Being the very thing he sought to defeat. I'd say pottery but in context it doesn't really spin.

>It's like pottery, it's fragile
I don't know user, I'm trying

Its like pottery, its dirty. You might start with clean hands but mud would always dirty it.

The closest you could get would be people like the Xanthites or the Relictors trying to turn Chaos against itself. Maybe Malal worshippers too if you consider them still canon? The problem with chaos is that it is essentially a mental virus, changing everything it gains purchase in into more of itself while destroying the host body. It is inherently destructive and anathema to society, cooperation, free-will and life as a whole. As at least one of these things is held dear by most philosophies it's hard to find a perspective that could possibly view them as the 'heroes'...

Yes, thank you, Dubbed One.
Can't believe I couldn't think of that.

So basically, I guess?

not really, the Thing sounds more like an individual demon. Daemons often spread chaos through temptation or mayhem but by itself chaos is bottled insanity that can be stored in many dangerous forms. Reading proscribed texts can warp your mind into self-destructive and self-replicating behaviour. It's a denial of sanity that spreads coincedentally like a rabid dog infecting others rather than a calculated carrier

There are no good guys. Chaos, however, is an individualist force compared to the collectivist Imperium of Man. If you're not a dirty commie, you better say your prayers to Nurgle.

Are there stories of people turning from chaos back to the light?

Yes. But not high level one.

>prayers to nurgle
>stagnation, pestilence, disease
>not slaanesh
>individualism, ambition, desire, confidence
Amateur.

Nurgle, Slaanesh, Khorne, Tzeentch, Malal, who cares? Either way it's a personal, individual arrangement. You might make a bad deal but it's entirely based on your own ability, not on whether the commissar had a bad day today or not.

Soul Drinkers, although they all then proceeded to die. The Exorcists SM chapter and Harlequin Solitaires are ritually possessed by daemons as part of an initiation ritual before casting them out too I believe, although they don't actually accept chaos during the process. Other than that most people once touched by chaos are far more susceptible to reinfection (Horus) and are usually executed.

You can usually get away with reading a few evil-looking texts or seeing some slightly fucked shit. If you're an inquisitor or other similarly strong-willed characters you get more leeway but as soon as there's any form of physical mutation from it you're pretty much a dead man walking if you don't double down on the chaos kool-aid

>Choosing Chaos over christianity

Uriah must really like having the warp tentacles puppet him through his ass.

Ask ADB.

if you enjoy being buttraped, mindfucked, infected by 17 different types of space aids and torn in half simultaneously, then yes...

yes they are...

In the old version of the 13th Black Crusade, a Tsons Sorcerer realized how far he fell, so he leads a entire fleet to their deaths by crashing them in a barren planet.

In Lord of the Night, Zso Sahaal manages to keep enough discipline to goes nuts like....well, everyone else in his Legion.

There is also the rumors of the loyalist branches of the Traitor Legions becoming chapters.

*to not going nuts.

It's physically impossible. Chaos corrupts you inside and out, and you get more fucked-up than ever.

A lot of people say that ADB really likes Chaos, but he also emphasizes how fucked-up Chaos Space Marines are. The Night Lords, while not as mutated, are already psychotic, literal baby-eating serial killers.

The Black Legion book mentions that Ahriman - for example - is ACTUALLY REALLY MUTATED, to the point that he doesn't even have a face. Just a screaming void. But Ahriman's delusion is that he's not mutated at all.

Sahaal is sort of a negative example, because he's already a nasty piece of work. I really, really like Lord of the Night, by the way. I will never ceased to be amused by how the Night Lords trilogy turns out to be a prequel to LotN.

Well, they could technically be the good guy in specific scenarios, when there is a current greater or at least more powerful evil that endagers the usual good guys as well as the chaos worshippers.

Yes

Necoho could be argued to be good

Tzeentch worshippers could be argued to have a good rate of good people, as his main ideology is hope, not violence or excess, or despair.

There are positive aspects to the Chaos Gods, that is how they get a lot of followers

>Nurgle
patron of the sick, ending of suffering, removal of pain/agony, loving acceptance of you as you are
>Tzeentch
knowledge for the sake of knowledge, no 'forbidden' taboo fanatical puritanism, power to the wise
>Slaanesh
pleasure for everyone, regardless of what you look like, a kink friend for all kinksters, appreciation of beauty in all forms, even the hideous and disfigured
>Khorne
Honour in battle, only against those that can defend themselves, seeking betterment through combat - anger as a motivating component of self-improvement

The Chaos Gods were never meant to only be black and white, they were always intended to be insidious and somewhat redeemable, because that's how you convince good people to fall.

Something something road to hell something good intentions.

This was true but now its more like

>Nurgle
Stinky tentacle zombie lepers with beer gut
>Tzeentch
Who?
>Slaanesh
Seems to have no actual downside; everyone involved seems pretty happy about it
>corn
MAIM! KILL! BURN! MAIM!KILL!BURN!

Only if they eventually get fucked in the ass by their "Gods"

If they just keep advancing the cause of Chaos for it's own sake, instead of a purpose, like sane creatures have, then no. They can never be good.

No one in 40k can be good guys, only lesser shades of asshole.

Jokero

Interex

Harlequins

But the point still stands, some chaos worshippers(typically tzeentch) haven't done anything worse than what the inquisition has done, and the inquisition are the "good guys"

It's all a matter of perspective

I dunno, they just follow the dark gods, work with daemons and want to make everyone eternally miserable.

According to his own point of view, Nurgle is a nice guy. So it's not weird to think that some of his followers consider themselves good too.

This thing of good and evil is relative, especially in a galaxy with things like the warp

>According to his own point of view, Nurgle is a nice guy.
Yes, spreading the Nurgle rot and condemning infected people to 'join me or die an extremely painful death' is so nice.

The gods just do what their nature intends them to do. Saying that they're evil is like saying that a wolf is evil because he hunts and eat other animals

There are a bunch of amoral or true neutral factions in 40k

Jokero, Hrud, Enslavers, Tyranids

As far as I know the harlequins, interex, and the illuminati are the only "good" factions in the setting, as they seem to be willing and able to sacrifice to help people out.

Chaos is not evil, Chaos is smart

Chaos is not evil, Chaos is intelligent

>Chaos
>smart

Why haven't they won yet huh?

But Sahaal isn't a chaosfag.
Traitor does not imply in chaotic, Curze himself despised the gods

Wubba dubba lub lub

But he's a god, mortal moralities does not really apply.
What is good for some can be evil to others

Chaos lives in the warp, where time means shit.
They've Win, won and winned already.

Oh moral relativism begon

Anyone, or thing that removes the most amount of freedom from the most amount of people is bad.

That is why if a serial killer kills someone, they are evil because they are removing that persons freedom.

Likewise chaos is evil because it removes its worshippers freedom and others freedom.

It's why the jokero are good, because they only kill out of self defense, and don't effect anyone that much.

>muh freedoms

Wait it is? I thought the book Zahal is mentioned in happened at roughly the same time as LotN

See removing the ability to choose is the most evil thing you can do.

This isn't to say letting serial killers go free is a good idea. If you remove someone's freedom to prevent them from removing everyone else's freedom, then that is a good action.

This is also why you don't go around handing out drugs, as giving someone a chemical dependency is removing their freedom.

Back on topic, chaos kills tons of people regularly. And each of their worshippers are slaves to the chaos gods. Therefore one can place them in the "evil" box

No, think about it. The Night Lords at the end of the trilogy are planning to attack Eldar maiden worlds. The entire point of Sahaal's emergence was to head off an attack on one of those worlds.

Basically, LotN happens AFTER. More, no-one knows where Sahaal is during the Night Lords trilogy. He's still in the warp.

>>Slaanesh
>Seems to have no actual downside; everyone involved seems pretty happy about it

Well not really, there's the thing where they don't feel anything but the most extreme sensations. Everything else is dull.

>Chaos is inherently amoral

So evil. Thanks for clearing that up. Pro tip: If you're amoral, you're by default evil specifically because you're outside the societal good and anything outside the defined good of the society (and thus not having the morals of said society) is evil by definition. This goes double in game worlds where good and evil are actual divine manifestations of morality and not just concepts.

With Chaos anything is possible, so I believe that them being heroic, just, compassionate makes sense. In fact a Chaos champion could be even more heroic than their Imperium counterparts, treating the people of the worlds they take over fairly. Remember the Reasonable Marines storytimes in old Veeky Forums? Kinda like that.

Reasonable marines exist, they just aren't chaos

Alpha legion, mentors legion, the raptors, etc

When did this ever, ever happen? Chaos are pure cunts.

No I mean the chapter from Veeky Forums quest that believed in science and progress and setting up good governance etc. They also made deals with xenos and even the more rational daemons who wanted to cooperate. It just made much more sense than current 40k storyline.

It's literally impossible. In Gaunt's Ghosts, we see what a Chaos-held world is like. It isn't heavy metal, it's insanely depressing.

Basically, the entire world gradually becomes Silent Hill.

Khorne was only mentioned as honorable in some fucking fringe epic book. In his original iteration he literally supports murdering all your friends. The honorable khorne meme needs to die.

>Chaos are pure cunts.
They have a wide variety of followers from every imaginable background, so statistically speaking some of them must be good guys.

Again I say

The alpha legion does all of that.

No the quest marines were Imperium affiliated, Ultramarine successor chapter iirc.

Chaos is a drug equalivant to LSD

Take a normal Steve and stick him on LSD and see how good he is.

And then the LSD starts telling him to kill people or take more drugs, or despair and spread disease, or plan everything.

And this is 24/7, even the most grounded person would be unhinged.

Most were good guys, but in the 40k universe anything that could help people ends up getting you possessed by demons and hate-fuck everything to death at the same time. It's a shit universe, stop thinking of it in non-shit terms.

I know what the reasonable marines are

I just know that there are canon ones.

Or it becomes Chaos Warrior's in SPACE

>The Black Legion book mentions that Ahriman - for example - is ACTUALLY REALLY MUTATED
No he's not thats bullshit. Atlas Infernal shows him being completely unmutated when fighting the Clowns.

What the fuck was Ahriman doing with those faggots anyway?

>The Black Legion book mentions that Ahriman - for example - is ACTUALLY REALLY MUTATED, to the point that he doesn't even have a face. Just a screaming void. But Ahriman's delusion is that he's not mutated at all.
This assumes you can trust the one talking and he seems to embellish a lot such as him defeating Magnus.

What is a retcon?

>some literal who claims to have defeated the second most powerful psyker in the galaxy
>we should take everything else he says as fact
What is an unreliable narrator?

Wait are you not even shown what hes claiming? Does someone just say thats the case?

Fucking lol what a retard.

Except we don't know the context of their fight with Magnus. So what you are saying is just stupid.

*tips fedora*

Freedom is a privilege, not a right.

I'm going to need some source on that.

Pretty sure all people are born with the ability to choose, even if their circumstances aren't contributive to that ability.

But they enjoy their actions, and they are responsible for literally everything wrong in this bloody galaxy.
Fuck them.
Ha ha fuck off.

Don't be pedantic, user; freedom in this context implies "the capability to live one's life in any way they so desire, without coercion"
Even slicing away all actions that would bring harm or coercion to others (murder, libel, etc etc), we can see that Freedom (with a capital F) is still an unsustainable "right" to afford to most people.
People's goals and desires will naturally diverge, and so it is prudent to allow for some amount of coercion in order to align those goals and desires for meaningful work and progress.
Naturally, those who's goals and desires are already aligned, or who's talents or qualities lead them to increase success in pursuing these acceptable goals and desires, are afforded more freedom to act as they wish.

Freedom is the ability to choose. Not the ability to live a normal life.

A man could have normal and successful life, but still have no choice.

You want people to be able to choose as much as possible, provided they do not interfere with others abilities to choose.

>Get to feed off an eternity of stagnation, scheming, excess, and violence
Seems like Chaos pretty much won.

>the right to do or say what you want without anyone stopping you

For example this is what oxford says.

Now all people who are born sentient have the freedom of thought, as even a paraplegic deaf blind man can choose to be angry or sad.

You want to grant people as many rights as possible.
The freedom of speech doesn't, for instance exist in North Korea, therefore North Korea is less good than America.

This assumes that your freedoms aren't interfering with others freedoms. So no attacking people with a bike lock because you disagree with them.

>Freedom is the ability to choose. Not the ability to live a normal life.
A meaningless definition; there will still be -some- choice or -some- thought in even the most totalitarian of dystopias.

>Not the ability to live a normal life.
I did not say "live a normal life" I said "live one's life in any way they so desire"

>A man could have normal and successful life, but still have no choice.
And? If it is normal and successful, then it can be assumed he is at least content with his life. He nonetheless makes choices on a daily basis, regardless if he is denied Major Choices.

>You want people to be able to choose as much as possible, provided they do not interfere with others abilities to choose.
Why? People choose in accordance with their goals and desires, and if not in synch, conflict is inevitable. Denying some choice to align these goals and desires, or more precisely, actions taken, is perfectly reasonable.

Of course, it can be said that it's also good to maximize freedom within a given context of shared goals, but that is dependent entirely on the level of cooperation required, as well as the responsibility of the individuals in question.

>You want to grant people as many rights as possible.
No. No, you don't. Not at all, not in the slightest. "Rights" should be as few and core as possible, the fundamental basis of your culture and legal system.

>The freedom of speech doesn't, for instance exist in North Korea, therefore North Korea is less good than America.
A rather naive and sophomoric argument, even if the conclusion (the Norks and worse than Burgers) is correct.

You do of course realize that people can live normal lives and still be unhappy with themselves. Many many celebrates have unhappy lives

Also people can disagree and not infringe on each other. For instance, I do not support gay marrage. However having two dudes get married effects me in no ways, so I really don't care.

>Other than that most people once touched by chaos are far more susceptible to reinfection (Horus) and are usually executed.
No. Once possessed people can't be possessed again.

>You do of course realize that people can live normal lives and still be unhappy with themselves. Many many celebrates have unhappy lives
I wouldn't call those "successful" lives, then. Generally, it is considered a successful life is one that the person does not regret living, while also being useful and/or valuable to greater society in some way.

>Also people can disagree and not infringe on each other.
A perfect example of my point! Goals and desires differ from person to person, but some are coerced (weather explicitly by law, or implicitly by society).

You're under the assumption that having any freedom limited is tantamount to having all freedom limited, regardless of the practical social benefits of saying "No, you can't do this, even if it doesn't harm anybody, or even society, directly or indirectly" in order to maximize the energy and work a population is capable of through cooperation.

By that same demon according to dark heresy.

The only people who can't be effected by chaos are the illuminati, who cast demons out by willpower alone.

The possessed certainly have a vast resistance to chaos, but only the IL are immune.

>Like the Dark Gods they serve, the Daemons are generous with their gifts, whether the recipient wishes to receive them or no. Nurgle’s minions spread plague not to bring suffering and despair, but because they are driven to do so by the dark spark of divine essence within them. They cannot conceive of why their diseases should cause such dismay amongst their victims, for a Daemon of Nurgle finds nothing more joyous than to be afflicted by pox or pestilence. Daemons of Slaanesh revel in excess, and the torment they bring is — as far as they are concerned — the most philanthropic of blessings. Similarly, Tzeentch’s Daemons subvert and mutate the natural order not out of cruelty, but are motivated by a combination of their own easily provoked boredom and the assumption that their victims must similarly be driven to ennui by their static and staid existences — something instantly cured by the mutating gift of change. Only Daemons of Khorne are truly selfish, ever seeking to claim skulls for the Skull Throne and so rise to higher status in their dread master’s eyes.

>In this way, Daemons are akin to malicious children who possess a box of fascinating toys that are fragile by nature but unlimited in number. After all, in its own way, the mortal world is as resilient as the Realm of Chaos. A city humbled by plague or broken by war will inevitably recover; a mortal army torn to bloody ruin by fang, blade and claw or blasted apart by sorcery will soon be replenished or replaced. This may take hundreds of years and cost untold thousands of lives along the way, but Daemons don’t reckon time as mortals do, and inevitably find something else to draw their interest in the meantime. If the Daemons even comprehend the harm they are causing, they most certainly do not care.

-Chaos daemons army book 8th ED

Chaos is not evil. Chaos is just...is. So get your heads out of your asses.