Hi all
For today’s article we are taking a quick detour to hit up an interesting implication of the news about Vashtorr. For those of you who are unaware, Vashtorr is the new daemon character which will be featured in the next Arks of Omen book. What makes it so noteworthy is that this is the first non-aligned daemon (aside from Bel’akor) to appear in a long time.
History:
In the early days of 40k GW was eager to emphasize that there were many entities in the warp. They even had a god named Malal who played a nebulous role in the story. On the table top, these units were usually represented by Chaos Furies or converted models and it was quite common to have daemon princes of chaos undivided. I believe it was around the 5th-6th edition switch when GW started to erase this lore. Now, all units on the table had to be aligned with one of the chaos gods (where possible). There are a number of reasons for this change, but I think the biggest was to cut down on 3rd party models and to simplify their own production lines. Thinking of the furies, the models at the time were very old and weren’t worth updating at the time. This did lead to some weird lore implications. Prior to this point, it was always stated that Lorgar and Perturabo were both daemon princes but now they had to walk that back a bit.
Vashtorr:
As stated earlier, what’s really interesting about Vashtorr is that it doesn’t appear to serve any specific god. Now, this might be addressed in the book and stated to be a unique occurrence, but I suspect not. Within the game this opens up a lot of narrative options and some more creative space for the obliterator and daemon vehicle type of units. If/when they introduce the Dark Mechanicus, Vashtorr works well as a centerpiece model and may function as a key leader. Furthermore, GW no longer needs to have all chaos daemons be aligned with specific gods allowing for more nuanced characters and more narrative wiggle room. Unaligned daemons work well in a narrative as potential allies or tools for chaos characters since they lack the resources of the bigger gods. This option also opens up the door to the tabletop appearance of several primarchs:
- Perturabo: The most obvious, Vashtorr’s existence implies something similar could be achieved by Perty. there wasn’t any clear patron for him beforehand to explain how he would get powerful enough to justify whatever insane model GW will give him when he arrives.
- Alpharius/Omegon: One of them might still be alive. The lore is still influx as to what their status is (which, admittedly is pretty fluffy). As above they don’t have a clear patron and might make sense as a non-daemon primarch but one that is still aligned with chaos
- Lorgar: for him, it makes sense to be chaos-undivided as it fits hos backstory and personality. It would be weird if he was aligned with one specific god, and if/when he gets a model he should not favor one deity over the others.
I should note none of these models are confirmed and are nowhere near the horizon. Heck we haven’t even seen Fulgrim yet. However, I believe GW is setting the foundation for their return through these small narrative changes. And I love it!
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