Allo all.

This is going to get pretty confusing pretty quickly ... as it's not Morty, (It's the other one and no I still haven't gotten my login info yet.)

Me and Lord have been having this conversation and he reckoned it might be worth opening it up to discussion. As he couldn't be bothered lifting a finger to the keyboard I'm doing it.

We where wondering whether we've been taking the whole Chaos is evil thing a bit too literally and here's why:

All the Chaos gods potentially have alter-egos or "good" sides this is why -

Khorne - Yeah we know know he's the god of blood, and murder and killing and general violent gribblyness. Thing is he's also the god of battle. This means he's the god of warriors, honorable combat and martial pride. As honorable combat and evil don't sit very nicely together could that mean he has a good side?

Slannesh - The god off excess and pleasure in pain. Which ever way you want to see it pleasure is pleasure ... if you take out the excess and the pain bit this god isn't looking so nasty anymore either.

Nurgle - Okay we've gpt the god of decay ... this also means we've got the god new life and rebirth. The whole point of decay is to allow for new life ... this could probably be considered a good thing ... can we see a pattern forming here?

Tzeench - The god of change ... now the last time I looked change didn't need to be for the evil ends. As change is change things will probably also alter for the better.

The big point is that these are the gods of Chaos not the gods of Evil. The whole point of Chaos is that anything can come out of it and really great things can come from it.

As a conclusion to this me and Lord were left wondering whether there are two aspects to each of the Chaos gods, one good, one evil. Therefore, you could potentially have good aligned Chaos worshippers who adhere to the "good" aspect of the god.

What do you lot think?

*AHEM* Lord ere, sorry about that, these bloody gorillas get everywhere, but it does have a point... what do you guys think, also, i aint sure if this is in the right area, so move if ya have to move it im sorry...

Looking over the memories of fluff that I have, it is my humble opinion that in the 40k universe, there is no good or evil. Chaos is described in several of the novels, the term Chaos is very limited to describe what lives in the warp. When you consider that the Warp is nothing but pure emotion given form, the level of intensity would become madness to the mortal human. Those capable of surviving the madness could invariably see more clearly than anyone else in the universe, and thereby take actions that could be deamed evil. For instance, the age old adage, If you could go back in time and kill Hitler before he came to power, would you... Most of us would say yes, definitely, but if we did, the people of that time, not knowing of the atrocities that would come from Hitler might deam his killer to be evil indeed.

Conversely, given that the warp is pure emotion, the strongest emotions might be used by the denizens of the warp to power their manifestations in the materium. Most of the strongest emotions, at least on face value, we can debate the power of love some other day, would be classically negative, Hate, Anger, Pain, Fear... You may see where Im going here.

So I dont think Chaos is necessarily Evil, but that their acts are percieved as evil by mortals who have a broad spectrum for definition for negative personal affectation. But, since most of the actions of Chaos do negatively affect mortals of the materium more often than not, they could in fact be classified as such. And even if there were chaos cults and fluffy daemons that were "Good", thats when the Evil the permeates the Imperium would take over, lumping them all together anyway, because as you all know, there is but one true god, and non-believers cannot be tolerated. So the outcome is really just the same.

Cain

Sorry I'm here now, I've managed to find my own body and stop manifesting myself through Lord.

Just to add to the point about "good" deamons and chaos creatures being refered to as deamons in general.

Surely the word deamon directly links itself to something of evil nature.

If we follow your theory that these are manifestations of emotion and, therefore, not evil we can't really call them deamons because again there would have to be some "good" manifestations of as you say love, hope, trust, honor etc etc etc.

Maybe warp entities would be the best explanation for them if they have no true alignment other than that of chaos.

Dunno just a thought.

Ah, but thats not what I said, I put in that the negative emotions would be the strongest in toto, so the vast propensity would be negative entities. The term daemon is ascribed to creatures that resemble what humans classical view as Demons. As for whether or not there could be an entity of a good persuassion is possible, but the negative connotaion attached to the supernatural in the imperium would still make it a daemon in the eyes of mortals, as we all know the devil can be masked in beauty as well as vileness.
Besides, the only times daemons of the warp have been ascribed with good traits, at least in novels, was in the soul drinker novels, and those were a bunch of shite...(My opinion only, if you fans, take no offense, plz)

actually no the word Daemon derived from diamon do describe a being or spirit which is somethign more than human but less than a god they can either be good or evil or nutral much like humans.
the evil creature you refer to are actually the judao-christian Demons.

The terms good and evil are entirely subjective. They are labels granted by the general opinion of society.

So in a strict sense, yes chaos is evil, because the society we live in defines them as evil.

If you were to remove the rest of society's opinions from the equation, it's pretty easy to shift good and evil around. If you change your perspective of things, you can begin to say things like Hitler is good and Jesus is evil. Ok so those are extreme examples, but it's just to make a point.

They way I read False Gods, the lords of kaos are no more or less 'evil' than the Emporer.

Remember they promised him the power to create his primarchs in return for some form of payment.

The Emperor then welched on the deal and that is why they convinced Horus to go after him. Horus had to decide if what the Emperor had done in his 'quest' to become a diety was more of a threat to humanity than the lords of the rift.

He apparently agreed to turn over the emperor to the kaos gods, in return for kaos leaving humanity alone.

So granted the Sons of Horus may nowbe depicted as puss riddled, tenticle waying berserkers, but originally they were fight for a cause they thought just.

If I remember rightly Alpharius had good motives as well. Something about if humanity was destroyed then Chaos would be wiped out as a result because there was nobody left to worship them.

Actually thinking about it Mortirion probably did it to save his men. ... weren't they riddled with some horrible plague when he swore allegiance to Nurgle?

This does work with Angron to be honest I think he just wanted a good excuse to kill as many people as physically possible.

A connection was once drawn between Chaos in 40K/WHFB and Chaos in the Nemesis The Warlock strip from 2000AD.

Basically the connection was this; in Nemesis The Warlock Chaos is Neutral, but in GW's universes it's evil.

Khorne is related Khaine, Khaine being the Eldar/Elf god of war. And he's not the nicest of gods.
If there is a 'god of warriors' then it has nothing to do with Chaos; it might dwell in the Warp, but that doesn't mean it's a Chaos power.

The 40k fluff is very very clever with its subtext. Everything can be likened to one thing or another depending on how you look at it.
The original Space marines for example, the good guys, set out to 'unite' mankind across the universe and crushed anyone who tried to refuse this. He also deemed all life that was not human to be exterminated. Hitler did exactly the same thing. If a nation wouldnt join him, he crushed them into submission and he veiwed the jewish people as less than human.
The Tau is seen as somewhat neutral, wanting to unite the universe for the greater good. Again however they exterminate those that go against them, but unlike the space marines they do have tolerance for other races, and even allow worlds that wont join the fold to exsist so long as they dont interfere with tau. The whole greater good concept is very much communism, which, when you think about it, is exactly what Jesus was. Preaching that all men were equal, and if you had two coats you should give one to someone who had none.
Modern day space marines and chaos are a different breed to what they were in 30k. In fact the fallen dark angels and the alpha legion may well be the only two 'good' forces left. But with imperial dogma and propaganda, they are painted with the same brush that all chaos receives.

As for the chaos gods, they arnt good and evil, they are conflicted, just as we ourselves are conflicted. Slaanesh, You cannot feel love without feeling obsession and jealousy to a certain extent. Khorne, You cant inflict pain and rage on someone without feeling a little guilt or compassion to your victim. Tzeentch, is fate and destiny and our limitless potential. Nurgle, death brings life and rebirth, and to be fair, he's never been shown as evil at all, he loves his children and its just unfortunate he shows his love by giving them a plauge!

I could go on but ive waffled enough for 6am in the morning!

Psychopaths can, and probably sociopaths as well.
And a psychotic rage will block out other emotions.
After all one of the definitons of evil is a lack of empathy.

When it comes to going berserk, there are more than a couple of routes to that state, and once you're there most of the parts of the higher brain, like the bit with empathy, are not involved.

The gods of chaos, as with most of their type of warp entity, are created from and draw on one particular emotion and its energy, like Rage for Khorne and Lust for Slaanesh.
With the four powers these tend to be dark, selfish and destructive emotions. Such emotions lead people to not caring for the consequences, only for themselves and their own gratification which tends to be very bad for empathy.