In many ways one of the best things to ever happen to the Necrons was the lore re-write that occurred in their fifth edition codex. While they went from a competently inscrutable race led by mysterious gods to one that was mired in internal politics like everyone else. They also became more interesting and complex as their motivations diverged according to their faction. I am not going to argue that the Chaos Daemons faction needs a similar re-write, but I do think it suffers from some similar lore issues as the early Necrons do.
Now, To be fair, we have decent explanations for why the daemons would fight each other, and occasionally their own faction. However, these explanations are never really explored in the lore, narrative campaigns or any other situation (outside their own crusade rules, kinda). In the books released by Black Library the daemon characters are almost always on the same side, conniving and malicious puppet masters. While I think these traits help cement them as true villains in the setting, it also puts them on the same level as the Tyranids. Both are voracious and unstoppable, incapable of diplomacy and seen as forces of nature. Furthermore, while various daemons are portrayed as being accretions of emotion, they rarely seem to suffer from the flaws that such a being would exhibit.
The issue is that it robs them of a lot of character. We know minor chaos daemons are capable of acting against their masters (Skarbrand, and to a lesser degree, the Masque) and that they are capable to elevating themselves to a greater or lesser extent (almost every Warhammer game, though cannonicity is in doubt). What I would love GW to develop a bit more is the internal politics that go within the realm of chaos and between the various chaotic factions.
I admit there are some challenges to this. We know that all daemons are an extension of their masters and so having a plot where a Greater Unclean One is trying to defeat Nurgle wouldn’t work. Additionally, GW has heavily emphasized how mind bending the Warp is and how what goes on barely makes sense to humans. Despite this, I think there is room to explore how daemons rise and fall within their own ranks. How do daemons sense when mortals are reacting out to them? Is it chance? Skill? Or something else? We get a bit of this kind of dynamic within Age of Sigmar where various factions of Slaanesh are dealing with their masters absence in various ways. I think such a dynamic could be really interesting in the 40k realm too.
As I mentioned earlier, in many ways the Chaos Daemons that appear in the stories don’t have many personality traits that distinguish them from each other. Hence why they can appear like a faceless tide like the Tyranids. I think having them become victims of their own core emotion could be a way to achieve this. We know Seekers are captured by luring them with some new item or experience, imagine a story where a Lord of Change is doomed by it’s own curiosity, a Bloodletter by its pride etc. Heck even a story where two daemons from opposing sides are competing with each other with their own human puppets would be cool.
I think GW has been hesitant in the past to develop this side of the lore too much in fear of being labelled demonic, or putting their somewhat “family friendly” label at risk. At the same time, some pretty messed up stuff goes down in the Horus Heresy books so I don’t think this should be a concern. As odd as it sounds daemonic characters make ideal tragic heroes (in the sense of the hero having a tragic flaw that undoes them). Exploring these flaws and giving them more character could be a great way to add more interest flavor and dimenstion to a faction that needs it.
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