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Author Topic: Undivided's new form.  (Read 1847 times)

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Offline Awfully Dandy

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Undivided's new form.
« on: October 19, 2012, 11:50:29 AM »
I was looking at another thread and a poster wrote this.

Quote
Chaos Undivided is a very confusing concept, especially due to the way one particular edition made it a little "gamey" and changed the lore quite a lot. That was in a very expansionist phase of the hobby, so a lot of players came into 40K seeing it as the truth, but there's a pretty simple way to view the Warp in moments like this.

The Four Powers are Chaos.

There's no Chaos Undivided, and references to Undivided as a "thing" are rarer and rarer. No more Mark of Chaos Undivided, for example. No more references to daemons of Chaos Undivided (not that there were many, anyway). The Warp essentially is the Four Powers, and the millions and billions of lesser entities aligned with them, composed of them, born from them, and so on.

The worship of Chaos Undivided is the worship of Chaos as a concept, made manifest in the presence of the pantheon. It's the worship of all four gods equally, or the ignorance of all of them, not realising that they're The Truth of the warp. They can say they pray to the concept of Chaos itself, and that's all fine and good. But Chaos, in real terms, is the Four Gods and everything that comes from them. In this example, a follower of Chaos Undivided will still be getting mutations and blessings from the Four Gods (or their lesser manifestations) he'll just view it in different terms. The pantheon blesses him, or the warp itself reaches out to exalt him. It's not as simple as just seeing your left arm become a tentacle and going "Hmm, this makes me cost 3 more points and is clearly from Slaanesh."

As editions roll out, and as Black Library gets edited tighter with delicious, beloved fact-checkers, a lot of year 2000-style / 3rd-Ed holdovers seem to be mentioned less and less, or simply never again.

Chaos Undivided confusion... - The Bolter and Chainsword : A 40k Space Marine

That post is written by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, who writes for the Black Library.

If true that heralds a really big change for Chaos.

So what do people think about this? Is it a change for good?

IMHO it is a bad move. The big four always were simply a facet of Chaos. I think that saying they are all there is, actually make Chaos as a whole seem smaller. 


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Re: Undivided's new form.
« Reply #1 on: October 19, 2012, 01:08:04 PM »
There's a notion in the Radical's Handbook supplement for Dark Heresy that there are simply "[beings] of Chaos, undedicated to any particular patron". While this could just amount to Furies and Dispayres (which we knew about anyway), it does present us with the idea that Chaos Undivided is still sort-of-there exactly as ADB indicates.

Oddly enough, this is more or less how the 3.5th Edition Codex: Chaos Space Marines presented the notion of Chaos Undivided -- it could just as easily be "specifically worshipping all of the Big Four" as it could "revering Chaos as a whole" -- though from a game mechanics viewpoint, it did need to go because there's more to a Mark of Chaos than a physical icon, and the Mark of Chaos Undivided itself made little sense from that perspective.

Offline Sir_Godspeed

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Re: Undivided's new form.
« Reply #2 on: October 19, 2012, 01:54:54 PM »
I've always had a dislike for going and saying "this is how it is, x + y equals z" when it comes to a number of things in 40k. I think it's unfortunate that they're writing themselves into this position and not offering fans the possibility to perhaps create an alternate interpretation of Chaos.  This is especially relevant when it comes to Chaos, since Chaos is so often said to be unknowable and mutable and multi-faceted. Not that I especially buy into all of the Chaos-hype, as it were, but it'd be nice to see a more "diffuse" or ambiguous presentation of it.

It's not as bad as when they published the Daemons codex, where the Chaos Gods were essentially reduced to Greek god knock-offs with very little mystery around them (it's especially odd hearing the Chaos Gods referred to as though they actually had physical bodies and were intelligences similar to a human mind and see it presented as some kind of objective truth. I much prefer nebulous, open-to-interpretation stories openly admitted to be only allegories.)

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Re: Undivided's new form.
« Reply #3 on: October 19, 2012, 02:00:21 PM »
If true that heralds a really big change for Chaos.

I'm not so sure that it is much of a change.  It just seems as though that there might be a shift in emphasis or interpretation coming up, but that's hardly a major change in the background for Chaos.

To me, it just seems as though Undivided is going to be viewed through a different spectrum, but there's nothing there to say that you cannot still choose to interpret it differently.  What's more, there are already sources which indicate that Chaos Undivided is very much as the author you've cited defines it.  You only need to look at Black Crusade for examples of this.

Where I disagree with the author is over his point that somehow Chaos Undivided is confusing.  It's not confusing, it's interesting, and because it cannot be explained in such clear terms as the concepts underpinning the four named Chaos Gods, it gives Undivided players a more flexible and mysterious narrative to work with.  It would be a shame to lose that, but I'm still not certain that this is precisely what he's suggesting will happen.
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Offline The GrimSqueaker

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Re: Undivided's new form.
« Reply #4 on: October 19, 2012, 02:05:08 PM »
It's not as bad as when they published the Daemons codex, where the Chaos Gods were essentially reduced to Greek god knock-offs with very little mystery around them (it's especially odd hearing the Chaos Gods referred to as though they actually had physical bodies and were intelligences similar to a human mind and see it presented as some kind of objective truth.

The Black Crusade books are looking to be heading in that direction as well I'm afraid. We get glowing descriptions of where Tzeentch supposedly lives in the Warp and details of what happens to people who try and visit It. I'm with you where I prefer the Chaos gods to be very nebulous and not some guy you might run into down at the pub.
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Offline Bumbles

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Re: Undivided's new form.
« Reply #5 on: October 20, 2012, 10:32:56 PM »
It makes sense from a gaming perspective if not a fluff one IMO.
For game mechanics, a "Mark of Chaos" would dictate the "feel" of the wider army, having one that make vanilla Chaos is just an extra game mechanic that can be trimmed.

Offline Benis

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Re: Undivided's new form.
« Reply #6 on: October 20, 2012, 11:11:35 PM »
I really do not see the conundrum he tries to present. I also dislike the limited nature of Chaos that he presents, the idea of a thousand gods and conflicting forces being distilled into "just four, never more than four!" seems a bit simplistic to me.

I prefer to view the gods as nexus-manifestations of energies in the warp and those energies can flow back and forth between different nexuses or even pool into new ones. What we perceive as gods are simply the dominant expression of a certain nexus and while being eternal it is also ever-changing. So not a bloke you can meet down at the pub in other words.

Offline Lachdonin

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Re: Undivided's new form.
« Reply #7 on: November 3, 2012, 09:38:45 PM »
It's not as bad as when they published the Daemons codex, where the Chaos Gods were essentially reduced to Greek god knock-offs with very little mystery around them (it's especially odd hearing the Chaos Gods referred to as though they actually had physical bodies and were intelligences similar to a human mind and see it presented as some kind of objective truth.

The Black Crusade books are looking to be heading in that direction as well I'm afraid. We get glowing descriptions of where Tzeentch supposedly lives in the Warp and details of what happens to people who try and visit It. I'm with you where I prefer the Chaos gods to be very nebulous and not some guy you might run into down at the pub.

The current generation Daemons of Chaos codex (though outdated a bit) and the Grey Knight codex both imply that they nature of Chaos is still very much the spanning nebulous entities, and that the images and temperments associated with them are less their true nature, and more the human minds vain attempt to rationalise them. We SEE Nurgle as a fat old man sitting over a giant cauldron because we cannot cognitivly understand what he (or more appropriately, IT) really is. I haven't read the Black Crusade books however, so i can't say how much of that explination continues to hold up.

If they are going more towards the literal, rather than interpretive perspective on Chaos, then i can't say it's a particularly attractive approach. With luck, they'll have a moment of clairity, like Bethesda did after Oblivion, and being the metaphysical shenanigans back.

But i digress... Regardless of the approach, i think the move away from the whole 'Chaos Undivided' approach is a good one. 'Undivided' represents the 4 powers working in concert, but because of their individual natures, and the natures of their champions, them all blessing individuals with their power has always been unlikely. Instead, i think it more appropriate that Chaos Undivide be represented by forces of each God, working together but remaining evidently seperate. The obvious exception, of course, being imensely powerful champions of Chaos, like Abbadon, but their in another weight class altogether.

The idea of Chaos functioning as a working pantheon which can be worshiped in its entirety has also never, in my mind, really meshed with the nature of how one falls to Chaos. Worshiping 'Chaos Undivided' would have to be a concious decision, but people fall to chaos before even realising it. By the time they are aware of the actual circumstances of their damnation, their individual temperments have already brought them in line with a particular God. This is how individuals like Angron, Magnus and Fulgrum fell to their respective gods without even knowing it.

Worshiping Chaos is less of a choice and more a reflection of an individuals own nature, and that nature enevitably pushes one towards a particular god before any willful decision is made, rendering the notion of Chaos Undivide inherently moot.

Of course, that doesn't change the fact that there are still other types of warp entities not nessessarily born of the 4 powers. And we know certian types of Daemon are independant and willful enough to change alegiences over time. Still, thats all an issue more for the nature of the Warp and less about the religious implications of Chaos.
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