On the nature of Chaos

"The traits which characterise the Chaos Powers are insanity, violence, ambition, greed, and others of a kind which are often felt to typify the worst of human nature. But this is not wholly the case, and Chaos Powers also exist which typify fellowship, charity, law, and other redeeming characteristics. Indeed, no Chaos Power is wholly one sided, for no human or other creature is wholly good or evil, and likewise neither are their shadow-selves. For example, along with violence and bloodshed Khorne has inherited a warrior's sense of  honour and moral virtue. Nurgle may typify decay and disease, but he also embodies the human hope and energy that defies the inevitable" (Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned, (1990) p.7)

The idea that Nurgle does not just represent disease and decay, but is also the embodiment of hope, defiance, and stoicism is repeated through the book. The same is true for the other Powers. The Powers of Chaos, it makes clear, are the product of the combined energies of the shadow-selves of the dead, which retain their most powerful mental traits and flow together to create whirlpools in the Realm of Chaos, and these whirlpools are the Chaos Powers.   

"The four Great Powers of Chaos represent the four largest and most powerful of these many co-joined entities. They are so large that they have achieved a coherent consciousness and will, a mind formed from the collective emotions and beliefs of the countless myriads of shadow-selves that comprise it.

Other Chaos Powers sometimes achieve temporary consciousness, but their existence is less stable because they are smaller; they may be likened to slumbering gods whose dreams sometimes achieve a passing solidity and who will perhaps one day awake to full awareness."

This is much more interesting, to me, than the view of Chaos presented in WFRP2e's Tome of Corruption (2006), which answers the question of why people might worship Nurgle with the, 'Hopeless despair' - the very opposite of the human virtues that Nurgle is taken to embody in Realms of Chaos.

And consider this;

"At this time [the Great War against Chaos] many Chaos Champions took up arms alongside the daemonic forces of their Patron Powers, but others flocked to help the human defenders against the Chaos Hordes. Such is the nature of the Chaos Powers that such willful independence by Champions often amuses rather than angers them, and may even lead to a Power rewarding his Champion for providing good entertainment. In this way, Chaos Champions and their warbands fought on both sides in the Great War against Chaos, both for and against the human nations. Although the presence of Chaos Champions in their ranks may have caused the human defenders some trepidation and even mistrust, their aid was still welcomed at a time when survival hung momentarily in the balance" (Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned, p. 9).

Interesting...  

Oldhammer's Alive!

Orlygg has organised an Oldhammer day at Wargames Foundry in Nottingham, most likely on 24th August. I may well be going; I know a couple of other people planning to make the long trip from the Celtic wilderlands, and so a lift up there should not be a problem. The problem, as always, is choosing (or rolling), collecting, and painting, my warband.

A very dark (and not in a good way) photo of some random (but not random-ised) Chaotics

I have decided to declare 'Oldhammer's Alive!' and collect all new miniatures for my warband. Naturally, I'm only going to choose those that capture something of the classic Warhammer aesthetic, but I'm not going to be bound by this. I am taking my lead from the OSR here; while the old models and books are cool, and are great if you can get them, making the movement about out of production models and books limits participation and makes it a hobby for collectors and old-timers. In the OSR, it is the retro-clones, and the second generation of OSR games that have taken their lead from older play styles (whether near-clones such as Lamentations of the Flame Princess and Crypts and Things, or new games such as my new love, Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG), combined with the ease of publishing that .pdf and print on demand (PoD) offers, that have made Old School gaming accessible to anyone who wants to get involved. Flint-eyed eBay scouring, searching for that Rules Cyclopedia, is not required.

So I have set myself the task of building an perfectly [un]acceptable Realms of Chaos (now, if only Games Workshop would release that as a PoD product, or even as a .pdf - come on, look to dndclassics.com) warband using only in production miniatures. I could trawl eBay, I could rummage through the white metal that is hoarded here, there, and everwhere in our house. But I do not think that the OSR is/should be all about nostalgia, and I do not see why Oldhammer should be either. I will, of course, post pictures of my progress as I acquire the miniatures, and as I slowly and crudely paint them.