The First Heretic

[Nabterayl]

Well, even that wouldn't really defeat Chaos in the sense that Cactus is saying. It would go a long way towards making the armies pledged to Chaos easier to hunt down, and thus a less relevant military threat. But most of the Chaos forces that the Imperium faces aren't from a safe haven like that - they're just plain old people who come into conflict with the imperial authority for plain old imperial reasons, and are co-opted by the Ruinous Powers. The Chaos gods themselves don't require a permanent rift in realspace to interact with mortals. If you want to defeat "Chaos" itself, and not just the mortal armies of Chaos, you've got to find a way to un-make the Dark Gods themselves. Which may be possible, but I don't think humanity has ever had the ability to do it.

[Katharon]

Well, even that wouldn't really defeat Chaos in the sense that Cactus is saying. It would go a long way towards making the armies pledged to Chaos easier to hunt down, and thus a less relevant military threat. But most of the Chaos forces that the Imperium faces aren't from a safe haven like that - they're just plain old people who come into conflict with the imperial authority for plain old imperial reasons, and are co-opted by the Ruinous Powers. The Chaos gods themselves don't require a permanent rift in realspace to interact with mortals. If you want to defeat "Chaos" itself, and not just the mortal armies of Chaos, you've got to find a way to un-make the Dark Gods themselves. Which may be possible, but I don't think humanity has ever had the ability to do it.

See this post...

[url]http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?26666-The-First-Heretic&p=337304&viewfull=1#post337304[/url]

[Nabterayl]

Does anybody know what the state of the lore is on the origin of the Chaos gods? Back when Khorne, Nurgle, and Tzeentch were the spawn of rage, despair, and hope, what Katharon describes wouldn't work. In fact, the Imperium as currently instantiated is pretty well set up to cut the gods off from those fonts of power.

[Katharon]

Does anybody know what the state of the lore is on the origin of the Chaos gods? Back when Khorne, Nurgle, and Tzeentch were the spawn of rage, despair, and hope, what Katharon describes wouldn't work. In fact, the Imperium as currently instantiated is pretty well set up to cut the gods off from those fonts of power.

The origins of the Chaos gods so far stems from the 4th edition CSM codex -- or at least that is one of the most reliable imho; although the new Chaos Daemons codex may have more (I've yet to read it). From what I do know, they began as the collective pooling of emotions into sentient immaterial beings, gaining more power as they began to exert their influences into the material universe.

Mankind as we know it and the Emperor in particular were not even in existence when the Chaos Gods (primary 3) were spawned. It's likely that they formed around the same time that the Old Ones and the Necrontyr were alive and well, fighting their ancient war of annihilation; when new races were born out of Old One mastery of science. I can see a galaxy wide war of annihilation such as that being more then adequate to feed emotions into the Warp and birth the original pantheon of gods.

By the time the Emperor was born/created from the shamans on ancient Terra, the Chaos pantheon had been in existence for a long, long time. So even if the Emperor had wanted to, he wasn't around at the inception of the Chaos Gods to prevent their coalescence into what they became.

The Imperium as it is now is hardly capable of doing what the Emperor had designed. I would argue that the Chaos Gods are in far greater ascendance now than they were when the Emperor and Horus fought their duel.