When did Chaos get tame?

[Fimm McCool]

When I started playing Warhammer in the 90s our club had a copy of WFB3 and we almost exclusively used that until I bought 5th Ed. All our background was drawn from the rulebook and we rarely afforded Armies books, Realm of Chaos books were way out. Recently I've been flicking back through earlyish WDs and was surprised at how the depiction of chaos differed from what I remembered from 5th.

From WD 119, an excerpt from Lost and Damned:

"The living know they will die, and many know that they will live with disease or other torment, yet they drive this knowledge into a corner of their minds and keep it pinioned there with all manner of dreams and activity. Nurgle is the embodiment of that knowledge and of the unconscious response to it, of the hidden fear of disease and decay, and the power of life which that fear generates"

Then, from WD 120:

"...Dreams of change are not limited to the impoverished or the powerless, for even rich men dream of greater wealth, or perhaps an end to the responsibilities which their money brings. And while some people scheme with real intent, others lay their plots in a perpetual world of wishful thinking, but most dream for the sake of dream without real intention of change. From the impulse and the ideal fantasy, the schemer's plan and plotter's dream, Tzeentch gathers his strength. He is the Changer of Ways... whether petty or profound".

In these two snippets we see the real danger of chaos, that it lies within and underneath all human behaviour. You don't have to take up the sword or scheme to overthrow the crown to serve Nurgle or Tzeentch, you merely have to be inventing ways to cope with the pains of mortality or fantasising about how things could be better. And which of us are not guilty of that? Chaos depicted in this way is prevalent in all aspects of society and a 'cult' which may be totally ignorant/innocent of the darker forces is never that far away from the status quo.

Fast forward a few years to 1994's Warhammer Armies Chaos:

"Nurgle is the Great Lord of Decay who presides over physical corruption and morbidity... For his amusement he devises foul contagions which he inflicts upon the world... His passion is to unleash ghastly pestilences upon the world."

"Tzeentch is the Great Sorceror... the one who directs the fate of the universe. Tzeentch guides unwitting mortals along paths destined to increase his own power, though they may never realise their part in his plan... He takes delight in the plotting and politicking of men."

Here we see the threat of Nurgle not as a subtle mindset but as an external force pouring rot upon the world in the form of sickness. Tzeentch [reserves some degree of subtlety, but with clear suggestion that his desire is for power and so the political plays of humans are his main focus, that and magic because, after all, there has to be a battlefield dynamic for Tzeentch followers.

Is this change perhaps indicative of that need to represent the chaos gods on the tabletop? Whilst the RoC gods may be perfect for the subtleties of a roleplay system they don't give armies much to work with. Or maybe there's a shift away from the 'human nature' aspect of chaos towards an 'apocalyptic' vision- War (Khorne), Famine (Slaanesh- emphasis on desire and need), Pestilence (Nurgle) and Death (Tzeentch- in many cultures Death is seen as transformative not destructive)? In any case the result is something that can be injected more easily into a statline but, to my mind anyway, loses a lot of the true horror of chaos- the fact that it lies very close to where we each are....


What are your feelings on the development of chaos as an entity? Is there as marked a shift here as I claim? What reasons might there be for abandoning the subtler dynamic? Do you prefer the covert or overt manifestations of chaos? And do you think there was ever a way that the subtle, haunting, hidden-in-plain-view threat of chaos could be represented on the battlefield? A more scenario-focused less rule-focused approach maybe? Thoughts please.

 

[Asslessman]

I strongly prefer the older version when Nurgle was the god of decay and all it entails as opposed to just being the lord of illness. In terms f game it could have been more subtle starting from this point, you could imagine any army could worship Nurgle and become decadent to a point it no longer cares about anything so weapons would rust, uniforms would get stained and torn but you can also leadership would be reduced,while cool augmented...

Tzeentch is far more understandable as an arch enemy to Nurgle in the old references as the will to change is the exact opposite to the will do do nothing but wait.

Khorne also become more symbolic in that they are both pain and pleasure.

In the RoC books they clearly state that the gods were born from those emotions and that those emotions came from everywhere. Even the emperor was playing Tzeentch's walz by trying to fight them with his schemes and he was playing's Khorne's game when fighting too.
As ou said the nature of each chaos gods lies in every single one of us and it's what makes it all so terrifying because you can't escape it.

 

[Protist]

In terms of a clear, well defined 'brand' for wargaming miniatures I think it makes sense to have created a more obvious factional distinction within Chaos, and is the same as making a distinction between High, Dark and Wood Elves - clearly define the factions to make life simpler for everyone and create more marketable products. I've no idea how many times i've read "I'd really like a Nurgle army, its so gory and gross its fantastic!" or "Khorne is obviously the best; blood crazy warriors in a wargame - its the only one that makes sense. Red is always better too!" This I don't have an issue with, personally.

However, this doesn't address the issue with the fact that the early chaos gods were very much derived from the intelligent races not imposed upon them (I'm going to avoid restricting it to humans since any intelligent creature could have hopes and fears). I think this fact is sort of tied to the recent discussion on the boards about the End Times and WFB having a narrative. Any good narrative needs protagonists and antagonists and the chaos gods were developed to better fill the bad guy role. In every format the blockbuster war/action titles have a good guy, usu. with wit & ingenuity, some crafty weaponry and perhaps some quirky side kicks, goes up against bad guy who has big guns, limitless resources and a bunch of ugly side kicks. The 'cult classics' deal with the good guy who is also the bad guy type of thing, but these aren't typical war/action films. GW make war games so, whether it was a design choice or was simply developed on these lines as a matter of course, the chaos gods became the malevolent bad guys in the Warhammer narrative. This makes them more marketable as a blockbuster title in this particular industry. I think it must have worked!

 

[Zhu Bajie]

Interesting observation Fimm.

If you look at the 1st Ed. stuff (citadel journal, flyers, Regiments of Renown) Chaos is rather more wacky and bizarre, swords-and-sorcery strangeness without that element of horror.

It could be that RoC was intended to be used with WFRP, and there was much more of a "Renaissance Call of Cthulhu" thing going on with the filler text, literally focussing on "The Enemy Within" and all that might suggest, from cults infiltrating society to Cronenburgian body horror and Jungan archetypes gone bad. IIRC the treatment of Chaos in the first few GW novels (Drachenfels springs to mind) is definitely more of that psychological horror. I think that was entirely Bryans doing, he wanted a 'serious' rpg to appeal to the hardcore rpgers, perhaps being aware that they would be the ones left after the boom finally died down. I think he was right, RoC a TEW are still well regarded in the rpg community today.

The basic 'story arc' of RoC campaign is the harrowing loss of humanity, while gain more 'power', ultimately the champion is on the road to Spawndom or Daemonhood - at either point it's game over. There is no hope, no victory. RoC is really quite dark and to my mind says something quite Nietzschen, and, in a fantasy way about how violence changes people. I'm not sure many gamers read it on that level, and end up house-ruling it to death for 'balance' and other such concerns. A shame.

I'd look in the direction of Kingdom Death, it seems to do quite successfully the kind of extremely overt, yet still unsettling thing that Khaös could be.

 

[Scalene]

I'm only familiar with the original RoC, but revisiting recently as my son has pored over it, I was surprised at how dark and complex it was, as quoted by Fimm above. I remembered more of the "Let's make a warband" and the wacky mutations, but there are some really quite disturbing images and tropes. The path of Chaos seems very much like the X-factor - everyone that goes down that path thinks that they are on the path to glory (Daemonhood), but we all know that of those countless thousands only a handful will ever make it, and all the rest will be cast aside, trodden under foot and humiliated; their dreams are just self-deception and hubris, which is the real tragedy of it. The Chaos gods are the embodiment of the worst parts of the human condition - they are not alien warp entities from another dimension, but the enemy within.

 

[weismonsters]

their dreams are just self-deception and hubris, which is the real tragedy of it.

Yes this is how i see the chaos champions too.

But it can also be humourous, if their conceit is particularly inappropriate or naive, a non-wizard who genuiney thinks he is a wizard or something like that.