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It Belongs to a Museum

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Boney said:
To a Chaos God, the worst case scenario is if an Everchosen succeeds but one of the others benefits more than they do. The second an Everchosen is going to deliver a success that benefits one of the Chaos Gods over the others, the other three will turn their full attention towards changing what success will look like, instead of on making success happen. In theory the reason Archaon was supposed to be such a threat was that he was aware of this dynamic and actively worked to keep the Chaos Gods balanced and therefore on task. In practice this turned him into something of a generic evil guy with zero personality, which IMO is probably a big part of why he failed so hard in Storm of Chaos - the results came from people sending in the results of actual games they played (or claimed to have played) and there just weren't many people excited for Archaon the Everfailure.

Malal was the product of the guys that created Judge Dredd and a bunch of other comic book antiheroes making a comic in the Warhammer universe, the core idea seemingly being a protagonist with Chaos Warrior aesthetics but killing bad guys. That protagonist's name was Kaleb Daark, which kind of says it all. But GW was still new to the copyright game back then and the writers of that comic ended up owned Kaleb, which left a question mark around whether they'd also own Malal, so Malal got excised from canon too. He gets brought up as some secret deep lore when he was just a weird incursion of the era's comic book memes into the Warhammer Fantasy ecosystem. There are more recent incarnations of the same general idea in Necoho, Chaos God of Atheism, and Zuvassin, Chaos God of Foiled Plans, but even they have only ever gotten brief and vague mentions since 1e. Chaos just doesn't need a secret saboteur to explain what keeps going wrong, the four main Chaos Gods are perfectly capable of sabotaging themselves and each other.
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Doesn't help that some of his earlier backstory elements do have the nuggets of something interesting. The idea of a guy who was devout to Sigmar, but found out that he was prophesized to be the anti-christ.

The issue is that they fumbled things with the whole "prayed at Sigmar's statue for a sign, got no response then immediately decided to go full hog into being the anti-chirst" thing.

I feel like they could have gone so many interesting routes with his base backstory. Like having him initially try to reject the prophecy, but others trying to prevent it begin to drive him towards fulfilling it or something.
 
Sinsystems said:
Doesn't help that some of his earlier backstory elements do have the nuggets of something interesting. The idea of a guy who was devout to Sigmar, but found out that he was prophesized to be the anti-christ.

The issue is that they fumbled things with the whole "prayed at Sigmar's statue for a sign, got no response then immediately decided to go full hog into being the anti-chirst" thing.

I feel like they could have gone so many interesting routes with his base backstory. Like having him initially try to reject the prophecy, but others trying to prevent it begin to drive him towards fulfilling it or something.
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IIRC there is something along those lines, involving Belakor essentiually savescumming Archaon into existance but I honestly don't recall where exactly this is coming from source wise and it stinks of "Chaos is all powerful" bs the End Times were huffing.
 
Ironically, wouldn't that be also the in-universe reason why Archaon would have failed? In trying to carefully 'balance out' all Four and focus on his Everchosen task, he'd just be dull/boring to Them. Which, for a Chaos cultist, is kind of the worst thing you can do. So now, instead of one of the Four giving you extra support and the other three hindering you, you have none particularly going against you... but also none particularly invested in your victory. Such is the self-defeating nature of Chaos.

Obviously that didn't happen in 'canon' because of the fourth degree interdimensional warp fuckery known as 'selling toys', but that's bullshit even by Chaos standards.
 
There's a crackfic in SB "Ciaphas Cain, Warmaster of Chaos".
Where the titular Cain, completely by accident, ends up leading a coalition of 3 chaos cults (fuck Nurgle), plus heretic admech.
The cults are toned down, obviously, to make them more comedic, but they are still kinda nuts.
Lot of comedy comes from Ciaphas trying to subtly sabotage the cult coalition, and completely failing, by making them do the opposite of what his Imperial Commissar training tells him should work.

I think something similar(ish) could work for making an Archaeon character work.
Make it comedic, the Warmaster/Everchosen is the one guy trying to make everything work, surrounded by bunch of people who are (literally) gods damned lunatics either trying to sabotage each other, or themselves.
 
It might be 40k or i am mixing some fandom here but doesn't chaos hate people doing the undivided thing like that anyway and would never truly side with someone like that on principle of how they exist even if all powerful?
Or is that view more against the pantheistic warp worship stuff.
 
Problem with trying to make Archaon work today is that Castlevania so thoroughly nailed the depiction and exploration of someone trying to destroy the world out of personal tragedy, including manipulating supporters who have more traditionally evil motivations. I think your best bet might be to have someone kill Isabella von Carstein and hope you can run through the plot before the lawyers catch you.

Impirius said:
It might be 40k or i am mixing some fandom here but doesn't chaos hate people doing the undivided thing like that anyway and would never truly side with someone like that on principle of how they exist even if all powerful?
Or is that view more against the pantheistic warp worship stuff.
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In Fantasy Be'lakor was the first Daemon Prince of Chaos Undivided, and he played the Chaos Gods against each other to grow more and more powerful and eventually made a play to claim the world for himself. After that they're a lot more careful with letting anyone quadruple-dip, only doing it for the Everchosens and even then making them jump through a bunch of hoops and having a lot of the power in artefacts and lieutenants rather than granted directly to the person.

40k sometimes claims to have the same thing happen there in a rare occasion of lore flowing from Fantasy to 40k, but I know it has had other Daemon Princes of Chaos Undivided. And worshipping Chaos Undivided as its own force (instead of just worshipping the four Chaos Gods as a pantheon and calling that Chaos Undivided) is a lot more common in 40k than Fantasy.
 
I like Necoho and Zuvassin, not as secret saboteurs or explanations for the self-defeating nature of Chaos, but as weird little guys who show what sorts of obscure shenanigans can happen in the dusty corners of Chaos, away from the main influences of the Four.

Like, imagine a jaded Norscan warrior thinking "All of the Gods suck, why should we be stuck between their power plays", only for some dude with a shit-eating grin to pop up and go "Now you're getting it".

It's also interesting to see Gods (other than the Four) who are unrelated to any mortal races and operate on pretty alien behaviors, which is a reason I also find the Gods of Law interesting.
 
Boney said:
Problem with trying to make Archaon work today is that Castlevania so thoroughly nailed the depiction and exploration of someone trying to destroy the world out of personal tragedy, including manipulating supporters who have more traditionally evil motivations. I think your best bet might be to have someone kill Isabella von Carstein and hope you can run through the plot before the lawyers catch you.
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You could in theory swap it around, so it's Isabella and buy yourself some more time that way
 
Boney said:
Malal was the product of the guys that created Judge Dredd and a bunch of other comic book antiheroes making a comic in the Warhammer universe, the core idea seemingly being a protagonist with Chaos Warrior aesthetics but killing bad guys. That protagonist's name was Kaleb Daark, which kind of says it all. But GW was still new to the copyright game back then and the writers of that comic ended up owned Kaleb, which left a question mark around whether they'd also own Malal, so Malal got excised from canon too. He gets brought up as some secret deep lore when he was just a weird incursion of the era's comic book memes into the Warhammer Fantasy ecosystem. There are more recent incarnations of the same general idea in Necoho, Chaos God of Atheism, and Zuvassin, Chaos God of Foiled Plans, but even they have only ever gotten brief and vague mentions since 1e. Chaos just doesn't need a secret saboteur to explain what keeps going wrong, the four main Chaos Gods are perfectly capable of sabotaging themselves and each other.
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I do think Malal would have a niche if they actually tried to explore that whole "Self defeating nature" thing that Chaos supposedly has, and don't just keep hitting the "everything gets worse forever" trope. Obviously as an intro point itself, but you could take it further. Mala forces regularly join Chaos forces, obviously to undermine and destroy them at a critical point. And they're happily accepted, since they're almost always more useful to the Leaders than harmful. Because Malal isn't immune to the self-defeating nature either. As a Chaos leader, you already need to be expecting betrayal at any moment anyway, the Malal forces are actually less likely to do so most of the time and a lot more coordinated too. You just need to watch them carefully for when they start infighting (about whether this is the correct moment to betray you) and purge the Betray faction then. Since Malal forces would also be happy to kill other factions, they'd make a terrific secret/military police and tool to keep everyone on line.

And you can even have a rare few successful Malal champions. Those, individually, do manage to do more against Chaos than they serve it. But each one also inspires ten thousand more who will be less successful.

You could do a really nice metaphor for Chaos as organised crime, especially drug crime, on that basis. Where you might start trying to use that power for good (whatever you consider good), and in the very unlikely case you succeed in being more than a drug baron, any structure you build will be inherently tainted and your successors won't care about your goals, just the Chaos money.

There's a lot of potential there! Of course, a lot of that screen space is already taken up by radical inquisitors, but it's not like those two things are incompatible (if you go with Malal the secret police, they're actually doubly compatible. And if you go with the drug crime thing, then there's a pretty big overlap to intelligence officiers too).
So really, there's a ton of potential here if GW just took their world building seriously. Like with quite a few other things.

As for the god of atheism, I think it's an interesting concept, very Pratchett, but it doesn't fit that well, and to actually work it you'd need a setting that isn't a... broad let's say.
 
Sinsystems said:
I am happy that my exhibition plan has been adopted by the other plans. I will continue to think up exhibitions in the future.

One idea I had is that we could make a series of Exhibitions about how various groups fight, both on the high seas and on land. Basically something that acts as a lure to draw in the more military minded folks who want to learn about their enemies.
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There's a lot of potential for comedy with this idea too. I can't decide what would be funnier: people coming to learn about their own tactics, or people coming to learn about the tactics of their enemies while those same enemies are in the next room over. If we weren't careful, we could easily end up running a military academy. At least until Luthor told us to knock it off. Still, I bet it'd be really popular with the Norscans.

We could do a "Sorceries of the Pirate King" exhibit, as a sequel to our Conquests exhibit. It wouldn't be that hard to get together some examples of the Ebony Skulls, a few cursed treasures, and the ghostly implements of a dead Witch. The only trouble is that it wouldn't be that novel to many of our existing visitors, but outsiders would find it suitably spooky, and their awe and terror could only reinforce Luthor's majesty.
 
Dreikanter said:
There's a lot of potential for comedy with this idea too. I can't decide what would be funnier: people coming to learn about their own tactics, or people coming to learn about the tactics of their enemies while those same enemies are in the next room over. If we weren't careful, we could easily end up running a military academy. At least until Luthor told us to knock it off. Still, I bet it'd be really popular with the Norscans.

We could do a "Sorceries of the Pirate King" exhibit, as a sequel to our Conquests exhibit. It wouldn't be that hard to get together some examples of the Ebony Skulls, a few cursed treasures, and the ghostly implements of a dead Witch. The only trouble is that it wouldn't be that novel to many of our existing visitors, but outsiders would find it suitably spooky, and their awe and terror could only reinforce Luthor's majesty.
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Well one way to do it without going full military academy would be to frame it as exhibits about various battles and wars. Like a full exhibit showing the Vampire wars would be rather interesting.
 
Ergosum said:
Ironically, wouldn't that be also the in-universe reason why Archaon would have failed? In trying to carefully 'balance out' all Four and focus on his Everchosen task, he'd just be dull/boring to Them. Which, for a Chaos cultist, is kind of the worst thing you can do. So now, instead of one of the Four giving you extra support and the other three hindering you, you have none particularly going against you... but also none particularly invested in your victory. Such is the self-defeating nature of Chaos.

Obviously that didn't happen in 'canon' because of the fourth degree interdimensional warp fuckery known as 'selling toys', but that's bullshit even by Chaos standards.
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It almost didn't work, and the biggest in-universe reason it did is because Anti-Chaos forces were even more disunited so it was enough.

Friggin' Mannfred.
 
Boney said:
To a Chaos God, the worst case scenario is if an Everchosen succeeds but one of the others benefits more than they do. The second an Everchosen is going to deliver a success that benefits one of the Chaos Gods over the others, the other three will turn their full attention towards changing what success will look like, instead of on making success happen.
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The funny thing is how easily solved a problem this is. The goal is to collectively intervene such that the four of you gain advantage over everyone else, but so that none of the four of you gain or lose advantage relative to one another; this is a cartel question that merchants have been collectively addressing for basically as long as the profession has existed. All you need to do is agree to evenly divide any uneven gains accrued by one member of the cartel. It does, however, require one of the following conditions to hold: either an external enforcement mechanism, like binding contracts, or for there to be mutual trust that nobody will take the opportunity to betray the others and seize an advantage. If you are the sort of entity that keeps its word even when it would locally benefit you not to, either because reputation has value of some kind or you place inherent value on your counterparty or you're just that sort of entity, then you will be able to make advantageous deals you otherwise wouldn't.

The Dragonlance setting has a recurring phrase "Evil turns upon itself." But this is less an issue of good and evil than, well, of law and chaos: their ability to claim victory is sabotaged by their very natures. I find this very aesthetically pleasing.
 
picklepikkl said:
The funny thing is how easily solved a problem this is. The goal is to collectively intervene such that the four of you gain advantage over everyone else, but so that none of the four of you gain or lose advantage relative to one another; this is a cartel question that merchants have been collectively addressing for basically as long as the profession has existed. All you need to do is agree to evenly divide any uneven gains accrued by one member of the cartel. It does, however, require one of the following conditions to hold: either an external enforcement mechanism, like binding contracts, or for there to be mutual trust that nobody will take the opportunity to betray the others and seize an advantage. If you are the sort of entity that keeps its word even when it would locally benefit you not to, either because reputation has value of some kind or you place inherent value on your counterparty or you're just that sort of entity, then you will be able to make advantageous deals you otherwise wouldn't.

The Dragonlance setting has a recurring phrase "Evil turns upon itself." But this is less an issue of good and evil than, well, of law and chaos: their ability to claim victory is sabotaged by their very natures. I find this very aesthetically pleasing.
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Another good reason why I think we should usually fail is at least two of them lose out if the world is changed. the Raven & the Snake lose more than they win from the rest of the world becoming the choas wastes
 
daedalus725 said:
Another good reason why I think we should usually fail is at least two of them lose out if the world is changed. the Raven & the Snake lose more than they win from the rest of the world becoming the choas wastes
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Well, strictly speaking, the "becoming" part is pretty great for the Raven - the "being" afterwards, less so.
 
Chaos's fundamental problem is that it was turned into the Big Bad of the setting, with equivalent expectations about its fundamental competence. Compare it to other classic villains of either WHF or 40k:

1. The Orcs/Orks work great as villains, because their ultimate goal is "have fun fighting." They can cheerfully win, lose, and come back around for another go while remaining menacing throughout a la Grom the Paunch. Their design goal of "murderous English footie riots" (i.e. your average Liverpool fans) doesn't require stomping other factions permanently flat to function.

2. The Skaven, meanwhile, are Saturday morning cartoon villains (Grey Seer Thanquol is so much fun to read). Like the Orks this can sometimes get taken too far, but their basic design of "murderous competence, undermined by chronic backstabbing syndrome" lets them fail on the cusp of total victory without undermining their basic design. Win or lose, they're still a hoot - and always a threat.

3. The Dark Elves resemble Chaos, in that their fundamental (in)capability falls way short of their ambitions. Compare that to 40k's Dark Eldar, who have less galaxy-spanning ambitions that line up a lot more neatly with what they achieve in-universe. Vect's villains set out to be eeeevil pirates and succeed just fine, whereas Malekith's boys and girls are known for repeatedly failing to conquer the one thing they want to own. Not a good look, that.

I would argue that Chaos should've always remained as one of the setting's various baddies instead of the one big bad. The Dark Gods function a lot better as pot-stirrers, distant deities who occasionally poke the puny mortals for entertainment, rather than heavily-involved humanlike entities who pick and choose Everchosens and tell them to conquer the world. If their goal isn't to rule the world but rather to be entertained by it, then the apparently self-sabotaging actions suddenly make a lot more sense.
 
Nuts! said:
function a lot better as pot-stirrers, distant deities who occasionally poke the puny mortals for entertainment, rather than heavily-involved humanlike entities who pick and choose Everchosens and tell them to conquer the world. If their goal isn't to rule the world but rather to be entertained by it,
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Further proof, as if any was required, that our patron Ranald is- as an archetypal Trickster God- the most infuriating wisest of Them all.
 
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Boney said:
Chaos just doesn't need a secret saboteur to explain what keeps going wrong, the four main Chaos Gods are perfectly capable of sabotaging themselves and each other.
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I like the idea of the Malal or etc minor Chaos God not being an explanation for why stuff goes wrong, but being someone trying to extend their domain over the sabotage that the Four will pull on their collective cause, as a way to 'clip the ticket' so to speak. Like, the Four do all the work, but this minor god gets to take the credit and their percentage, and also (in the way that Chaos is in some sense self-defeating) ends up standing in the way of the formation of any minor Chaos God who could do the various 'cartel' stuff needed to keep the Four on track.
 
So, I might be late for this realization, but I only just finished the last updates and this popped in my head:
"Are we playing fantasy Trazyn the Infinite!?!?"
 
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