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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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I think the biggest distinction between Chaos Gods and Order ones are that Chaos Gods are atemporal, they don't have a beginning or an ending, and just kind of float around and do shit like "Invent my own race that uses me as their patron deity", while most Order ones have a clear beginning point where their influence doesn't reach past.
 
SuperSonicSound said:
Well Sigmar the god wouldn't exist with out it as he only became divine long after he was dead and the accumulated veneration of him created a god now you can pretend that he was always divine but that's pretty much bollocks given that he didn't start granting miracles until after he died.
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Wasn't the first Grand Theoginist given a vision of Ulric crowning him with godhood the same way the Ar-Ulric crowned him emperor? Couldn't he have become a god via Ulric granting Sigmar divinity? Serious question here.
 
SuperSonicSound said:
Well Sigmar the god wouldn't exist with out it as he only became divine long after he was dead and the accumulated veneration of him created a god now you can pretend that he was always divine but that's pretty much bollocks given that he didn't start granting miracles until after he died.
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There is no evidence at all saying that he died. The story of Sigmar Heldenhammer doesn't end with his death, it ends with him going off east with a wolf, a boar, and his dwarf best friend. Dogma says that he was ascended to godhood by the other gods, not that he died.

In fact, the only divine origin stories I'm aware of in all of Fantasy is that of Sigmar and Ranald. Sigmar's story (at least the one told by Sigmar's priesthood) is that he was a mortal and the gods made him into a god (not after death, just that they made him a god). Ranald's story is that he was a mortal who became a god by tricking Shallya into letting her drink from her chalice of immortality.

In both cases, the story is that the gods were once mortals who ascended to godhood through gifts, not worship.
 
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Re: Horned Rat created skaven;

That is more likely to be a classic "fuck everyone up" Tzeentch scheme than Horned Rat being a time-traveller, tbh.

Horned rat being some sort of an exceptional beastman or a daemon that later was exalted by worship of his children is also likely.
 
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Andres110 said:
I think you should stop thinking this through your own perspective. Ulric does not share your personality, your way of thinking.
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I'm not trying to apply my own perspective, just the simple fact that with the way the Empire is progressing Ulric is dying and it's the worship of Sigmnar that's killing him more with every year society and technology advance. Ulric is fundamntally a god of barbarian tribes (like the one Sigmar was born to). Sigmar is the god of city-building steel-forging late medieval equivalent civilization.
 
The source for all gods being warp entities of collated emotions and beliefs, Chaos or order, is from the fourth volume of the Lieber chaotica. It is all of very dubious truthfulness even in universe as it is being told to the audience by a mad tzeenchian cultist who was told it by a tzeentchian daemon to break his will and turn him to chaos.

There is a lot of levels of unreliable narrator going on there. This source does not draw any distinction between Chaos gods and order gods other than the universality of their themes and the size of their worship pool.

The broad strokes of this have their roots in the old realm of chaos books from the 80s and have been carried through the warhammer fantasy chaos army books. However, it's never been explicitly confirmed by gw as the literal truth. In fact the end times and age of Sigmar heavily imply that it's not true due to how the incarnates become gods via completely different metaphysics.

I'm a bit busy right now but I will be back with page numbers later.

Sent from my iPhone.
 
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DragonParadox said:
No matter how you dress it up it's still self-destructive and for gods who are atemporal, knowingly so. I would not say self-preservation is the sole province of merchants and politicians.
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We're are you getting the idea that the Warhammer gods are atemporal? The 40K Chaos cards are definitely atemporal and the fantasy chaos gods might be. But the human dwarf and elf pantheons are pretty much explicitly not atemporal.
 
Lupercal said:
The source for all gods being warp entities of collated emotions and beliefs, Chaos or order, is from the fourth volume of the Lieber chaotica. It is all of very dubious truthfulness even in universe as it is being told to the audience by a mad tzeenchian cultist who was told it by a tzeentchian daemon to break his will and turn him to chaos.

There is a lot of levels of unreliable narrator going on there. This source does not draw any distinction between Chaos gods and order gods other than the universality of their themes and the size of their worship pool.

The broad strokes of this have their roots in the old realm of chaos books from the 80s and have been carried through the warhammer fantasy chaos army books. However, it's never been explicitly confirmed by he as the literal truth. In fact the end times and age of Sigmar heavily imply that it's not true due to how the incarnates become gods via completely different metaphysics.

I'm a bit busy right now but I will be back with page numbers later.

Sent from my iPhone.
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As editions went by the broad stokes became thinner and thinner. At least that's what I've noticed, I might be wrong.
 
spiritualatheist said:
My understanding is that the Skaven were crated bc of a cloaked figure tricking a Tilean city into building a belltower for him; on the thirteenth toll, every human in the city became a Skaven, and the city has since become Skavenblight. I always thought that the mysterious figure was the Horned Rat either acting through a mortal minion or that he ascended when the transformation happened.
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Remember that Warhammer gods live outside of time. A god can create itself. by retroactively manufacturing the circumstances of its worship.
 
So this took less time then I thought.

Liber Chaotica Vol 4 - Tzeentch 2004 p 1-3 said:
And so it was that my play was answered and a Messenger appeared before me. Both terrible and Wanderers was he to be hold: his eyes were twin hollows that burned with sapphire flame, and great wings rose from between his shoulder blades to stretch high above his head, the surface shimmering like mother-of-pearl. 'he stretched out his hand and lead me follow him into the Aethyr, and follow him I did, along paths that never were, to a place that should not be.

Far to the north he led me, to where the Gates of the End had stood since before the rise of men. There I looked into the Immortal Realms and saw four great thrones within the endless planes of oblivion. I asked the messenger, " 'whos thrones are these?" and the messenger said, " they are the thrones of the ancient powers; the spirits of fornication, wrath, despair and inconstancy. Both thrones and dominions are they - brother guards and Princes of mortal hearts."
...

I stepped back from him then, forI believed that surely he spoke untrue, and I told him as such. " If this is the only realm," I said, " where then is Solkan's Palace, or the healing pools of Shallya? Where are Taal's hunting grounds and Mannan's azure citadel? Where are the celestial temples of the gods of man? For before me I see only the thrones and dominions of chaos."

And then the messenger seemed to grow in size so that his head eclipsed the pale sun, and his shimmering wings seemed to fill the vaults of the sky. " there is only one gate," he said once more, " and only one realm lights beyond it. it is true that the planes of darkness stand open before you, but also, and at the same time, The endless tears of light stretch up above you."
...
just because these fools believe they saw Tzeentch does not mean it actually happened. Tzeentch is the great manipulator and the father of lies, and his daemonic servants take their lead from their master.
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The rest comes from an in universe article on pages 66-70 called riding the avalanche or embracing the great gods which is four A4 pages long and I'm not typing it all out. In summary, it claims the standard all gods are conglomerations of emotions and belief in the walk from human souls explanation.

The conceit of the book is that it is being written by a professor at the University of Altdorf as a resource against Chaos cults. At the end of the book it is revealed that he has become a Tzeentchian cultist, or he always was one, which had become increasingly clear to the reader as the volumes had progressed.
 
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Andres110 said:
Is there a source for all this "Gods are moulded by their worshippers and slaves to their nature" thing? To my knowledge, the nature of the gods in Fantasy and 40k has always been a mystery whenever you step outside Chaos. I can't remember anything definitive being said in canon, just a bunch of forumgoers saying stuff in a definitive way.
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The Liber Chaotica books have a good description of the nature of warhammer gods and how they're formed and die.
 
Alratan said:
Remember that Warhammer gods live outside of time. A god can create itself. by retroactively manufacturing the circumstances of its worship.
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Again sources please. I can't find any evidence for this and a hell of a lot that disputes it.

Alratan said:
The Liber Chaotica books have a good description of the nature of warhammer gods and how they're formed and die.
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And the Liber Chaotica are not reliable, they were writen by a Tzeentchian cultist based of information provided by a being claiming to be a daemon of Tzeentch. They are wonderful setting books, I own all of them, but they are not objective fact.
 
Lupercal said:
And the Liber Chaotica are not reliable, they were writen by a Tzeentchian cultist based of information provided by a being claiming to be a daemon of Tzeentch. They are wonderful setting books, I own all of them, but they are not objective fact
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They're also consistent with the information in Realms of Sorcery that were taught to the Colleges by Teclis.

I also think it's more hinted that he fell at the end due to staring too long into the terrible truths of the abyss, but that's personal implication.

The original Realm of Chaos books are also consistent, and clearly in some ways, I think.
 
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What I am getting from this is that Mathilde should get her hands on her own original copy of the Liber Chaotica and study it.

Make our own restricted library, ya know?
 
The only instance of potential atemporal gods I can think of is the story of skavenblight, and I always read that as a high-power magic user hijacking a ritual to ascend and gain worshippers at the same time rather than time traveling horned rat.
 
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