The Chaos Gods and Chaos Daemons of Warhammer 40,000 are completely fictional creations. They are meant to represent a creat evil in the setting and are manifestations of evil intent and concepts. They are not connected to any real-world religion or myths.
There are actually cases of there being other Gods in the Warp that stand for Order and Goodness, yet in the current setting they are few and far between in this grimdark Age. I will discuss those that remain in another post... Let's focus on Daemons...
A Daemon is a manifestation of the will of the Chaos Gods. They are spawned by the Chaos Gods to act out their will, to set forth into the Materium - Real space and do their bidding.
This is not always to kill things. It may be to spread corruption or to infiltrate society and start a cult that subverts the cultures and religions of mortal races.
Chaos Gods are the massive coagulated manifestations of thought of uncounted trillions of psychic beings or races that have at least a glimmer of soul that is represented in the warp as innumerable points of light. Strong souls/psykers represent large lights.
The Emperor on the Golden Throne is a Beacon that can be seen from the other side of the galaxy.
Because they are thought and emotion and based on those concepts, the Chaos God themselves are nothing outside the Immaterium. They therefore cannot step outside the Warp themselves. Thus they create Daemons to do their bidding.
The Great Four
Just a refresher on the Chaos Gods in the picture above (And these are basically concepts of those Gods for to gaze upon these Gods is to know madness!), from left to right we have:
Tzeentch - The Changer of Ways, God of Mutation and Magic
Nurgle - The Father of the Plague and Pestilence
Khorne - The Blood God, God of War and Murder
Slaanesh - The Prince of Excess, God of Depravity and too much of everything.
So each one of these has a hierarchy of Daemons. There are armies of Daemons that fight at the command of the Chaos Gods. Therefore, if you were a human fighting in the name of the Imperium of Mankind, there might be Chaos Cultists, Chaos Space Marines AND Chaos Daemons in the armies that you have to battle!
Each Chaos God has foot troops, Heralds, Lesser and Greater Daemons. These are all basically smaller versions of each of the Gods.
For example:
This is a Great Unclean one, Greater Daemon of Nurgle, God of the Plagues... seems quite fitting does it not? Seems quite similar to what is depicted of the God.
In the Immaterium however, this Daemon has no defined shape. It is said that Daemons gain their shape due to the collective thought and perception of the mortals that are observing it... to an extent.
But minor details might differ as long is the Daemon epitomizes the thing that this Chaos God and Daemon most represent to those mortals. Perhaps a certain wound or disease carries more horror to a viewer than another, then likely this will be what they see.
A whole Host of Khorne Daemons are pretty much focussed on close combat and bloodshed! They are brutal and they just want to kill - No surprise there.
There is also a case of Chaos Cults sprining up on a world where the Church of the Emperor - the Minostorum, does not manage to keep the faith of the populace strong.
The problem with this is that often this results in Cults summoning Daemons or becoming vessels for Daemonic Possession.
This would be a good example of cultists and possessions.
Like most factions in 40k, there is A LOT of information about Daemons and all that is involved and I shall discuss them as we go through it all. I am trying to keep the lore posts to around 5mins of reading!
I hope you enjoyed this!
Cheers!
@zakludick
14/365 hobby posts done!
