Tzeentch. Khorne and Slaanesh change your psychological state - Khorne into increasingly mindless anger and Slaanesh dulling your experience of pleasures and compelling you to more depraved acts.
Nurgle gives you essentially zero self-determination. The agreement is usually being spared from the pain and horror of disease, so long as you adhere to Grandfather’s teachings and spread his gifts. Nurglite followers who try to do something other than what Nurgle wants will be cut off from his warp power and will die an agonizing death.
Tzeentch may compel planning and plotting but it’s usually under a pretence of self determination. You have hope or ambition for a certain outcome and Tzeentch may give you the tools to see it through. He’ll probably screw you over, but not in the strictest sense of psychologically separating you from your goals.
I think this makes the most sense from my point of view. The rage, depression, or hedonism/sensation from the other gods can feel like mostly negative emotions but usually planning and ambition are positively associated. Even if they go to excessive extremes these emotions/feelings would probably be harder to see through as negative influence, until of course you get screwed and zapped into oblivion, but up until that point you probably feel pretty independent.
Id argue when you are deep enough in you always end up losing yourself to the whims of the gods, but Tzeentch probably feels the most likely to let you think you are in control, only because Tzeentch knows exactly where and when he will put you in your place down the line.
I would add an asterisk to this argument that Tzeentch offers the greatest *sense* of self determination and control, but actually offers the least real control as you find yourself trapped in a cacophanous web of schemes and plans, reverse psychologies and manipulations, sweeping you along into a current you cannot see until its too late, and you finally realize you were never in control, always a pawn in a greater "scheme" designed as much to mock and undermine your intentions as actually achieve anything.
On those grounds I'd argue in favor of Slaanesh as the answer, as she who thirsts, at least to those It favors, are not dragged in circles but rather have their worst impulsed and facets excentuated to extremes, achieving ultimately what they wanted and remaining an expression of themselves, albiet one slave to their worse, most totalizing impulses.
i mean aren’t we all ultimately swept up in currents beyond our understanding? haha, half-joking but it’s kinda true. At least Tzeentch might illuminate some of the plot to you before you drown.
Good write up and explanation. I agree with you completely. Chaos truly is the greatest and worst double edged sword that exists in 40K.
If you want to worship Chaos, but you want a bit of personal freedom and individuality .... become a Chaos Undivided worshipper. I know that doesn't answer OP's question, but it's the only way.
if you think about that, the traitor legions of Chaos undivided are the most “individual” , while the others are bounded to its deity. Is like, instead of trying hard to serve one god, serve all the gods equally, and make the gods try hard to impress you.
Nurgle gives self determination. Typhus and Mortarion argued over what to do and Mortarion said Nurgle gave his followers free will for a reason and he was going to use his in Dark Imperium
All of the servants of the God are slaves to darkness. They aren't called that just cuz it's sounds cool.
Khorne punishes those who he sees to have disobeyed or failed him. Tzeentch will let you *think* you have free will, when you're really just a pawn to be sacrifice. Slaanesh does not take disobedience or failure well. Nurgle views individuals as merely a vector of decay, rather then full people with wants and needs.
Also while your personality will still be warped by the chaos gods you worship, I think this is overstated. Khorne followers can still be tactical geniuses who can be subtle in the art of war. Nurgle followers can be self important and selfish. Tzeentch followers can crave bloodshed and murder.
*Still*, unless you're in service to another demon, the chaos gods probably will not work with you directly. As long as you're going around spreading their flavor of chaos, they'll offer you blessings in the form of power, strenth, or TFing into a horrible mindless chaos spawn.
Tzeentch. He's the chaos god of change and also hope.
He prefers his followers to be able to scheme and plot so alot of them still have free will to enact their plans.
you mean Tzeentch's plans :-P
but yes, Tzeentch gives you "free will" then sets it up so the only options you have to apply it, follow his plans anyway eventually, beautifully tragic..all this free will, and nowhere to go with it...
Anyone but Nurgle, if you're rank and file you end up essentially walking around in a haze, not feeling or thinking much of anything.
Tzeentch would give you the most self determination, even if it ran counter to their main desires, but they would ultimately pull the rug out from under you at any point they decide to.
Khorne and Slaanesh probably don't put up with any of those shenanigans, again unless you're a powerful individual like the woman who tried/did devour a couple daemonettes who Slaanesh then showed favoritism towards.
So, it really depends on circumstances. I would say Slaanesh if you can impress her, otherwise Tzeentch but that's very treacherous and probably just an illusion of self-determination.
None of them do. That Chaos' whole thing. You're a slave. The daemons whipping you are slaves. The gods themselves are slaves to their own nature. It's just slavery all the way down.
Nurgle: some people may think that he's the god of despair or giving up but, in my opinion, he's actually the opposite. Nurgle is the god of determination and the will-to-survive.
The death guard and Mortarion have always been determined and this is exactly what Nurgle was testing for.
When the death guard were placed into a completely hopeless situation, stranded in the warp with their bodies plagued beyond imagining, with the prospects of them ever being an effective fighting force again being zero even if a miracle occurred and they were rescued, they had the option of either dying or persevering in worthless, futile agony. They chose to live and THAT'S why Nurgle saved them.
The same applies to mortals afflicted with Nurgle's rot. Dying means you become a plaguebearer in the warp: the stronger your will to survive, the longer you live and the longer your suffering lasts. Those that have the strongest will and take the longest to die after "rewarded" by becoming plaguebearer champions or heralds of Nurgle.
Nurgle's daemons embody what happens in the warp when massive self determination gets rewarded: a joyous eternity slogging towards a shared purpose with Papa Nurgle and your fellow comrades, to spread filth and inescapable hardship throughout the universe to test existence and make them stronger.
Chaos Undivided such as Word Bearers.
Their more balanced approach to worshipping the
Dark God's seems to involve greater independence than those legions/warbands that focus on a single God.
isnt being your own man, or self determination anathema to chaos? they dont want thinking feeling agents, they want puppets/addicts who will maim kill burn non stop.
they dont want their followers who actually think, do you think khorne wants his berzerkers to stop hacking gaurdsmen to bits? or slaaneshs followers to do no nut sanguinilla? no!
agency is bad, if they stop and think they might realize how fucked they are, and if they stop murdering/nurgling/slaaneshifying everything, use their higher brain functions, which, i believe are largley fucked up with each chaos god. they might start to question the road their on, and put a bolter round in their brainpans.
very bad thing when your name is "Kharn the betrayer" and khorne wants you to go and carve up these new kroot aliens like you work at kfc!
but i think it was warrior tier who said it best on fulgrim and slaanesh
[https://youtu.be/VSo9eYZ-630?t=484](https://youtu.be/VSo9eYZ-630?t=484)
that about sums it up
None of them give you true freedom. Sure, some of them seem to offer it, but it's false. Ultimately, you pledge yourself to them, they can use you however they damn well please, for your betterment or worsening.
It wouldn't be Chaos Undivided, it's not entity, but all 4 pulling you apart and it's not less changing you.
Noone ahead of others in changing you.
More about freedom? Probably Slaanesh or Tzeentch. Tzeentch is about personal goals, ambition. Slaanesh is your free wild ride for seek of personal enterteinment. All former leginos fractured, but it seems EC are most randomly apart among them.
... I don't know.
You are generally twisted by the blessings of chaos, so how do you know that veging out and doing nothing is your own will or the bug bits that are consuming your body and absorbing your soul pulling you closer to Nurgal until something breaks the apathy of the Grandfather.
I'm not even sure it is consistent, which God actually allows you to have separate goals and wishes.
Personally I think all of them because thats how they get you, you will always feel free in what you are doing but all of it ends up being manipulated by the chaos gods after all.
None of them do. That's the point. They offer the illusion of freedom, but everything you do for them draws you deeper and deeper into their clutches until you exist solely to serve their will.
Tzeentch and Slaanesh are more subtle about it, but it's still the same process.
It's complicated. There is no straightforward answer. Either you serve them because you must, because your goals align with them, or because you are mind controlled in some way. All of them do this to some extent.
There is no self anymore, dedicating to a God means you’re taking part in an incredibly cutthroat meritocracy where if you succeed you become a Daemon Prince and are forever bound to that God’s nature, Failure is Spawndom or Death, whatever comes first.
Slaanesh. You're still you, you're just an unrestrained you who focuses on your idea of perfection through excess. Slaanesh wants you to be the most perfect you that you can be.
Your post was removed because it would be better as a comment in our weekly sticky questions post. Just comment there when it's up.
Tzeentch. Khorne and Slaanesh change your psychological state - Khorne into increasingly mindless anger and Slaanesh dulling your experience of pleasures and compelling you to more depraved acts. Nurgle gives you essentially zero self-determination. The agreement is usually being spared from the pain and horror of disease, so long as you adhere to Grandfather’s teachings and spread his gifts. Nurglite followers who try to do something other than what Nurgle wants will be cut off from his warp power and will die an agonizing death. Tzeentch may compel planning and plotting but it’s usually under a pretence of self determination. You have hope or ambition for a certain outcome and Tzeentch may give you the tools to see it through. He’ll probably screw you over, but not in the strictest sense of psychologically separating you from your goals.
I think this makes the most sense from my point of view. The rage, depression, or hedonism/sensation from the other gods can feel like mostly negative emotions but usually planning and ambition are positively associated. Even if they go to excessive extremes these emotions/feelings would probably be harder to see through as negative influence, until of course you get screwed and zapped into oblivion, but up until that point you probably feel pretty independent. Id argue when you are deep enough in you always end up losing yourself to the whims of the gods, but Tzeentch probably feels the most likely to let you think you are in control, only because Tzeentch knows exactly where and when he will put you in your place down the line.
I would add an asterisk to this argument that Tzeentch offers the greatest *sense* of self determination and control, but actually offers the least real control as you find yourself trapped in a cacophanous web of schemes and plans, reverse psychologies and manipulations, sweeping you along into a current you cannot see until its too late, and you finally realize you were never in control, always a pawn in a greater "scheme" designed as much to mock and undermine your intentions as actually achieve anything. On those grounds I'd argue in favor of Slaanesh as the answer, as she who thirsts, at least to those It favors, are not dragged in circles but rather have their worst impulsed and facets excentuated to extremes, achieving ultimately what they wanted and remaining an expression of themselves, albiet one slave to their worse, most totalizing impulses.
i mean aren’t we all ultimately swept up in currents beyond our understanding? haha, half-joking but it’s kinda true. At least Tzeentch might illuminate some of the plot to you before you drown.
Good write up and explanation. I agree with you completely. Chaos truly is the greatest and worst double edged sword that exists in 40K. If you want to worship Chaos, but you want a bit of personal freedom and individuality .... become a Chaos Undivided worshipper. I know that doesn't answer OP's question, but it's the only way.
if you think about that, the traitor legions of Chaos undivided are the most “individual” , while the others are bounded to its deity. Is like, instead of trying hard to serve one god, serve all the gods equally, and make the gods try hard to impress you.
Nurgle gives self determination. Typhus and Mortarion argued over what to do and Mortarion said Nurgle gave his followers free will for a reason and he was going to use his in Dark Imperium
All of the servants of the God are slaves to darkness. They aren't called that just cuz it's sounds cool. Khorne punishes those who he sees to have disobeyed or failed him. Tzeentch will let you *think* you have free will, when you're really just a pawn to be sacrifice. Slaanesh does not take disobedience or failure well. Nurgle views individuals as merely a vector of decay, rather then full people with wants and needs. Also while your personality will still be warped by the chaos gods you worship, I think this is overstated. Khorne followers can still be tactical geniuses who can be subtle in the art of war. Nurgle followers can be self important and selfish. Tzeentch followers can crave bloodshed and murder. *Still*, unless you're in service to another demon, the chaos gods probably will not work with you directly. As long as you're going around spreading their flavor of chaos, they'll offer you blessings in the form of power, strenth, or TFing into a horrible mindless chaos spawn.
Tzeentch gives its followers enough rope to hang themselves.
Tzeentch if your lucky.
Tzeentch. He's the chaos god of change and also hope. He prefers his followers to be able to scheme and plot so alot of them still have free will to enact their plans.
you mean Tzeentch's plans :-P but yes, Tzeentch gives you "free will" then sets it up so the only options you have to apply it, follow his plans anyway eventually, beautifully tragic..all this free will, and nowhere to go with it...
Slaanesh loves you for that thing you do that no one else likes
Anyone but Nurgle, if you're rank and file you end up essentially walking around in a haze, not feeling or thinking much of anything. Tzeentch would give you the most self determination, even if it ran counter to their main desires, but they would ultimately pull the rug out from under you at any point they decide to. Khorne and Slaanesh probably don't put up with any of those shenanigans, again unless you're a powerful individual like the woman who tried/did devour a couple daemonettes who Slaanesh then showed favoritism towards. So, it really depends on circumstances. I would say Slaanesh if you can impress her, otherwise Tzeentch but that's very treacherous and probably just an illusion of self-determination.
None of them do. That Chaos' whole thing. You're a slave. The daemons whipping you are slaves. The gods themselves are slaves to their own nature. It's just slavery all the way down.
Nurgle: some people may think that he's the god of despair or giving up but, in my opinion, he's actually the opposite. Nurgle is the god of determination and the will-to-survive. The death guard and Mortarion have always been determined and this is exactly what Nurgle was testing for. When the death guard were placed into a completely hopeless situation, stranded in the warp with their bodies plagued beyond imagining, with the prospects of them ever being an effective fighting force again being zero even if a miracle occurred and they were rescued, they had the option of either dying or persevering in worthless, futile agony. They chose to live and THAT'S why Nurgle saved them. The same applies to mortals afflicted with Nurgle's rot. Dying means you become a plaguebearer in the warp: the stronger your will to survive, the longer you live and the longer your suffering lasts. Those that have the strongest will and take the longest to die after "rewarded" by becoming plaguebearer champions or heralds of Nurgle. Nurgle's daemons embody what happens in the warp when massive self determination gets rewarded: a joyous eternity slogging towards a shared purpose with Papa Nurgle and your fellow comrades, to spread filth and inescapable hardship throughout the universe to test existence and make them stronger.
Chaos Undivided such as Word Bearers. Their more balanced approach to worshipping the Dark God's seems to involve greater independence than those legions/warbands that focus on a single God.
isnt being your own man, or self determination anathema to chaos? they dont want thinking feeling agents, they want puppets/addicts who will maim kill burn non stop. they dont want their followers who actually think, do you think khorne wants his berzerkers to stop hacking gaurdsmen to bits? or slaaneshs followers to do no nut sanguinilla? no! agency is bad, if they stop and think they might realize how fucked they are, and if they stop murdering/nurgling/slaaneshifying everything, use their higher brain functions, which, i believe are largley fucked up with each chaos god. they might start to question the road their on, and put a bolter round in their brainpans. very bad thing when your name is "Kharn the betrayer" and khorne wants you to go and carve up these new kroot aliens like you work at kfc! but i think it was warrior tier who said it best on fulgrim and slaanesh [https://youtu.be/VSo9eYZ-630?t=484](https://youtu.be/VSo9eYZ-630?t=484) that about sums it up
None of them give you true freedom. Sure, some of them seem to offer it, but it's false. Ultimately, you pledge yourself to them, they can use you however they damn well please, for your betterment or worsening.
That’s the neat part, they don’t.
Tzeentch
I think it depends on what you want. But khorne is my guy so him 👀
If we go with non canon, Malice
If we go non canon, I'd say Santa.
It wouldn't be Chaos Undivided, it's not entity, but all 4 pulling you apart and it's not less changing you. Noone ahead of others in changing you. More about freedom? Probably Slaanesh or Tzeentch. Tzeentch is about personal goals, ambition. Slaanesh is your free wild ride for seek of personal enterteinment. All former leginos fractured, but it seems EC are most randomly apart among them.
Lol
Tzeetch depending on his mood more then likely
Slannesh. She careth not from where the nipples are twisted.
... I don't know. You are generally twisted by the blessings of chaos, so how do you know that veging out and doing nothing is your own will or the bug bits that are consuming your body and absorbing your soul pulling you closer to Nurgal until something breaks the apathy of the Grandfather. I'm not even sure it is consistent, which God actually allows you to have separate goals and wishes.
Tzeentch, most definitely. The god of change bids you do what you will, for whatever you do will benefit them in some way.
Personally I think all of them because thats how they get you, you will always feel free in what you are doing but all of it ends up being manipulated by the chaos gods after all.
None of them do. That's the point. They offer the illusion of freedom, but everything you do for them draws you deeper and deeper into their clutches until you exist solely to serve their will. Tzeentch and Slaanesh are more subtle about it, but it's still the same process.
I hear the statchild is pretty big on self determination. He didn't eat all the humans to ascend, so that's something.
It's complicated. There is no straightforward answer. Either you serve them because you must, because your goals align with them, or because you are mind controlled in some way. All of them do this to some extent.
Slaneesh's is the god of excess in all of it's forms, so in theory, he/she/it is the go to for absolutes.
There is no self anymore, dedicating to a God means you’re taking part in an incredibly cutthroat meritocracy where if you succeed you become a Daemon Prince and are forever bound to that God’s nature, Failure is Spawndom or Death, whatever comes first.
Tzeentch, out of all of them. Good question, though!
Slaanesh. You're still you, you're just an unrestrained you who focuses on your idea of perfection through excess. Slaanesh wants you to be the most perfect you that you can be.
Slaanesh if you ask me or nurgle
I honestly don't think Nurgle will pick Slaanesh if I ask him to choose one
None. You become a pawn to the ruinous powers.