The Price of Chaos

Within Warhammer 40,000, nothing embodies the nature of the corrupted human society and fractious personal bonds like the Chaos Space Marine. A great ability of its large stable of artists is showing gruesome narratives and conflicts, part Faustian nightmare and part power fantasy. Each of the antagonists or villain protagonists unearth a curious, enjoyable, or underappreciated quality of discipline, philosophy or use of the mind.

The numerology and quiet content building a fortress of Vorx, Fabius Bile indulging research, Ahriman’s quest for self-determination, creativity, the World Eater’s gladiatorial pursuit of action to stave off continuous torture, all activities so infectious that it seeps into the reader enjoying the thoughtscapes and Eye of Terror’s vistas. Sensation, the muscular appeal of destroying enemies with physical power, or the classic allure of wizardry. All these things are Chaos, drawing appeal for many factions, clearly shown to be more experienced, more physically powerful, less stale and inhuman ironically than the average younger Imperial Space Marine.

Treason and mistrust is the drawback of Chaos; not its ugliness or barbarity. In truth, compared to fleeting perceptions of looks for humanistic beings with long lives, what is more of a horror than to be discarded, to trust no brother of centuries or millennia? And 40K revolves narratively for the Astartes as a discussion of fatherhood and paternal bonding. How much pain can be articulated and evil felt from the primal hurt of a father abandoning a child?

The eldritch horror inflicting upon the galaxy, by these warriors and sorcerers stems of psychological scars, unjustifiable yes; but relatable and empathetic pain a reader can more easily comprehend than magic or a populated space-borne galaxy.

In these villains and anti-villains, so much narrative enjoyment in battle reports, lore excerpts and novellas is the idea of building a heaven from a hell, magic and thought becomes reality, much like real philosophy, the planes of Planescape, the law of attraction and so on.

The price is a soul, your soul. To accept measures of evil best denied. But at worst, to invert one’s own nature. Those intended to be called ‘brother’ and ‘cousin’ have fundamentally warped their strength, the essence of their being; which is companionship. It is a wound that will never heal, a fundamental flaw and tragedy all the more potent for being so often self-inflicted, and many potentially aware individuals grist for the mill in the past or present.

And, in this particular century, detached, postmodern, lacking traditions, it has an allure with a sting many can relate to. When a cause is lost power is sought for its own right, each individual striving to carve their own material niches and petty domains, and seek a few small bonds in a competitive and uncaring universe.

Chaos is not a warning not to vices being immediately lethal or ungodly. It goes much further. Into the realms of the lost, the disaffected, the addictive. The high functioning, a physical reality unlike our own, yet perhaps mentally something perfectly relatable to the average retail store or office cubical.

Fortunately, just as we have no literal brass or feathered demons in the sky nor murderous magic, our alliances and ability to avoid upending our nature is still in our own hands.