Sleep-Deprived OSSR: Warhammer 40k Slaves to Darkness

[Chamomile]

I've been on a 40k kick recently. I'm about to board a three and a half hour flight in coach. I've been operating on insufficient sleep for the past 36 hours as it is, and a coach flight means that sleep isn't happening. This is as close to drunk as I'm ever going to get, so I'm pulling up some really old 40k fluff and reading it. This is kind of outside the wheelhouse of your standard OSSR because I am specifically ignoring the mechanics. I don't care enough about the mechanics of 1e 40k to even learn them, let alone mathhammer them to the point where I can provide insightful critique, so we are purely taking a crack at the fluff. Which should work out fine, because the fluff is atrocious.



So we're setting the Wayback Machine to 1988. Warhammer 40k came out last year and was pretty much entirely about Space Marines fighting Orks, with Eldar mercenaries as a wildcard third faction, and the main premise of gameplay was that a GM would run scenario-based cooperative or competitive campaigns rather than just setting up your minis and going at it with some other guy's army. Someone at Games Workshop gets the bright idea to co-opt Moorcock's Chaos into their settings and they release this idea in Slaves of Darkness. After the table of contents, we get a brief piece of fluff in which an Inquisitor who has just cleansed a Space Marines chapter of Chaos taint is himself possessed by a daemon, turning into some kind of Hell wolf bug thing. It's not very good, but it's also very short, and it makes me chuckle that the "weak psykers must be killed for the safety of everyone around them" line of thought has already been proven dead wrong right here, in like the third 40k book ever released, wherein an Inquisition psyker checked off as totally resistant to Warp influence for real you guys gets possessed anyway.

And then we have two hundred pages of Warhammer Fantasy Battle Chaos stuff. I'm not reviewing that because I don't care, but it took me a bit to realize that we weren't talking about 40k anymore. I don't know why they didn't put this piece of fluff in front of the 40k section 203 pages later.

We're taking off now and I don't know if I'll have web access in the air, so I'm calling it here. Next time: Chaos and Warpspace, which is mostly about the Illuminati and the Sensei, who are neither Chaos nor Warpspace, and who are also the stupidest Jedi rip-offs I've ever heard of.

Including this one

[Chamomile]

I've got airborne wifi, so let's keep slamming this stuff out before I get some rest and realize what a terrible idea it is.

Chaos and Warpspace opens up by telling us that Chaos Powers are formed by the Warp more or less at random as warp storms and the like. So, Khorne and Tzeentch and them are warpstorms so massive and so stable that they have achieved sentience. I don't know if current fluff concurs with or contradicts with this, but if it's the latter they're idiots. Related: All four Chaos Powers are named and their basic portfolios appear to be established, even though only Khorne and Slaanesh get thoroughly explored (all the cool Chaos Powers get their own book a year or two later). I think this is notable mostly because it means that the idiotic rivalry between Khorne and Slaanesh was brought about not out of necessity of the fact that there were only two Chaos Powers to work with and so the more sensible Khorne/Tzeentch and Slaanesh/Nurgle rivalries couldn't happen, but because the authors apparently just thought that Khorne and Slaanesh made sense as natural enemies. They already had all four Powers sketched out, they could've just shuffled Tzeentch into this book and Slaanesh over into the next one.

In any case, some enduring 40k lore gets established here, including the stupid justifications for the Inquisitions brutal (and explicitly ineffective, since Chaos cults keep proliferating) psyker-hunting, the Fall of the Eldar turns the Eldar into more than just mercenaries with a track record of betrayal, and the Black Library hiding inside the Webway (it's not called that, but it's totally the Webway), a repository of the lost lore of the Eldar accessible only to the Harlequins and the Illuminati.

And that brings us to the Illuminati. Perhaps fearing that their setting didn't quite resemble Paranoia IN SPACE enough, GW introduced these guys, a double-secret conspiracy of absurdly committed anti-Chaos types who are trying to make sure that Big Emps lives long enough to protect humanity during their transition to a fully psychic race. And the Black Library is totally helping out because the Eldar are not yet total dicks. In any case, their plan is to find the immortal but sterile sons of the Emperor, called the Sensei, and feed them into the Golden Throne (again, not yet called the Golden Throne, but conceptually it's already there). Being the son of the Emperor gets you more than just immortality (until the Illuminati catch up with you, at least). They also get awesome combat powers, the ability to sense "disturbances in the Warp," and you get to join a super-secret club of chainsword wielding dudes called the Sensei Knights. So they're Jedi, but kind of stupid, because they're all secret pawns of the Illuminati, who are trying to make sure the Emperor (who at this stage in the fluff is immobile but still talks to people) never finds out for fear he'll just give up early before they have enough Sensei to feed him (what? Why? Does he not want to eat his children? That would make sense, but it never says) and that the Sensei don't find out they're being abducted for a Hail Mary sacrifice (for reasons which are more obvious).

And I'd like to point out that sacrificing psykers to the Emperor is pretty much exactly the same as sacrificing psykers to daemons as currently described.

Next time (which could seriously be like 45 minutes from now, because what else am I going to do): Daemons in Warhammer 40k and maybe also some other chapters because this one looks kind of short.

[Chamomile]

On page 1 of Summoning, we are informed that when the previous chapters said that a possessed psyker may not be physically altered even after being fully possessed, their psyche annihilated and replaced with that of the daemon, they were lying. Actually, a daemon's form is always a "twisted echo" of its form in the Warp by the time it's finished getting its possession on. Now, later on they will clarify that actually a daemon who is summoned into a host body is different from one who possesses a host body, and maybe it's just the sleep deprivation talking, but they really should've made that clear from the word go.

On the same page, it informs us that the rules presented for daemons in the earlier Warhammer Fantasy section "apply in full." Then on page 2 it tells us that none of that was true, and actually they are not subject to those rules and are instead subject to some other rules given on that page (weapon immunities, fear immunities, hatred of certain models, etc. etc.). There are seriously like 500 words separating these statements. I'm pretty sure what they mean here is that the rules given in WFB apply except when overruled, but that is not what "apply in full" means.

The chapter on Possession clarifies some things and confuses others. For starters, it tells us what the difference between Possession and Summoning actually is, which is really something they should've led with when both of them involve the demon being summoned into realspace using a body which they then possess control over.

The chapter on Possession also has a couple of rules for possession, including telling us that possession never happens during combat, even though back in the Daemons in Warhammer 40k chapter there totally was a table about how psykers from an army can be randomly possessed by a hostile daemon.

The next chapter is on Renegades, and is basically just a million function calls to the WFB sections of the book. I guess I'll end up reading them after all. The big noteworthy thing here is that the book has a Chaos klansman in it. Seriously, look at this guy:



I can't tell if that klan hood is something new because he's Chaos now or if it's just a holdover from when he was Imperium like his Inquisition habit. Either way, who the Hell thought this was a good idea?

Another thing about the Renegades chapter: What little new content it does have is the new followers chart, since the WFB one obviously doesn't use 40k lists. And in this chart you get a couple of function calls back to the 40k book and also a function call to the Lost and Damned book. The trouble here, on top of splats making function calls to other splats being bad practice in general, is that this book isn't out yet. It won't be released until 1990. I know this kind of thing was standard back in the primordial age of RPGs, but was it really considered acceptable in 1988? Are people still pulling this bullshit where they say "if you rolled a 23-41 for follower generation then start counting the days because you won't have actual stats for your new followers for two years, bitch."

And Warhammer 40k's 1st edition had a serious hard-on for random tables. You can't go three pages without stumbling over another random table in this thing. In any case, the GM running a campaign structure is evident throughout the Renegade chapter, as models are slowly upgraded in a way that is clearly meant to persist from battle to battle. Now, the point cost of the Renegade does increase over time, but as the book itself makes explicitly clear, it goes up 30 points per reward even though the rewards vary wildly in utility, so without a GM to at least ensure that the rewards were properly rolled for, someone can show up with an absurdly overpowered and undercosted Renegade with all the best rewards and none of the bad ones and claim that he got them while playing an all-weekend long marathon with his Canadian girlfriend.

Next up is traitor legions, but I'm pretty sure my wifi is about to cut out, so I'll post what I've got now.

[Red_Rob]

Weird, I was just flicking through Slaves to Darkness at my brother's yesterday and thinking about how it would be great material for an OSSR. So much janky 80's weirdness and throw-shit-at-the-wall design, plus the beginnings of a whole load of lore that still survives today.

Seeing as you aren't interested in the mechanics side of things, would you mind if I chimed in with a rules-focussed look at things? I can grab my old copy tonight.

[Chamomile]

Greetings from a place that is different from the place I took off from.

@Red_Rob: Please feel free. Since I did end up collapsing about an hour after I lost wifi, I'm moderately well-rested and well into the "I knew I would think this was a terrible idea when I was coherent why did I do it anyway" stage. I'm going to finish out the rest of the fluff because I don't like leaving things unfinished, but first I want to revisit the Sensei Knights, because I called them stupid and they are but I was too tired to do a very good job of articulating why.

The Sensei Knights are lifted wholesale from Star Wars, but everything that actually made them work has been stripped away. They're zealously opposed to Chaos...Because. They're feared and hunted by the government as part of an extremely poorly explained plot by the Mary Sue double-secret Illuminati, which I suspect started with two bad ideas, first that a super-speshul conspiracy would be awesome and second that Jedi should be in 40k despite the severe tonal clashes with the grimdark tone (most of which is codified in this very book), and then they haphazardly combined them together in order to give the Sensei their "hunted by the government" thing that they need in order to be perfect clones of the Jedi. Also, that name. Sensei is already word, and it does not mean anything similar to Jedi. I guess they were seriously okay with anything that sounded vaguely mystical, but wasn't 1988 after the big Karate craze had swept the western world? Maybe it was just an American thing, but I am reasonably certain that 40k's target audience knew exactly what Sensei actually means and why it is a stupid name for a Jedi expy.

Anyways: Traitor Legions. We get the fluff for the Horus Heresy here. This isn't the first time it's been mentioned, it was briefly stated in the Wolftime mini-campaign book released earlier in 1988 that a dude named Horus rebelled against the Emperor, but this is where we get the real story that's persisted today, with Horus being the awesomest space marine ever who is turned to the worship of Chaos and leads a rebellion and wounds the Emperor, thus necessitating that he be interred in the Golden Throne (and it's here that it actually gets called the Golden Throne for the first time, even though earlier chapters in the same book were referring to Big Emps' life support through description). They talk about how a third of the Emperor's host defects to Horus because the Emperor is Jesus, but at this point the fluff about the 20 Space Marine legions being divided into 1000 Space Marine chapters hasn't been written yet. In the current fluff, they say that either five or nine chapters defected to Horus and also that he had a third of the Emperor's forces, but it's not really clear if that's because there were only 15 or 27 chapters at the time or if it's because all of the Adeptus Mechanicus defectors made up a third of the Imperium's forces even though only a paltry number of the chapters defected to Horus.

Next up: The continuing adventure of grimdark Mary Sue in the introduction of the Grey Knights. I had kind of hoped that they might have had some good origins before turning awful, like Wolverine, but no, they always sucked.

[Username17]

The Klan hoods are actually a British thing. It's not just Chaos Cultists and Imperial Redemptionists, the Death Eaters in Harry Potter wear the same fucking thing. British people are referencing some religious thing from their island. They have no idea how amazingly offensive that shit is in the United States.

-Username17

[Ancient History]

Nor do they care. "Realms of Chaos" was actually a two-part series, and was the sort of meeting point of Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40K until they decided to develop the lines more independently. They're rather highly regarded by the fanbase even to this day, and aspects of the fluff and rules in those two books can still be found in modern products - I think the mutation rules were last rehashed in Tome of Corruption for WFRP 2nd edition, for example. Also, the Ian Miller art is wonderful.

[Koumei]

The Klan hoods are actually a British thing. It's not just Chaos Cultists and Imperial Redemptionists, the Death Eaters in Harry Potter wear the same fucking thing. British people are referencing some religious thing from their island. They have no idea how amazingly offensive that shit is in the United States.

I figured it was a Catholic thing (the Spanish penitents, not just a blanket "all Catholics are Klansmen" statement). Slightly less plausible is that they were thinking of spooky ghosts. That said, I'm not going to blame them for not being American (or indeed, forgetting that "countries not called the United Kingdom" exist). I just have too many other things to blame them for.

[TheNotoriousAMP]

The Klan hoods are actually a British thing. It's not just Chaos Cultists and Imperial Redemptionists, the Death Eaters in Harry Potter wear the same fucking thing. British people are referencing some religious thing from their island. They have no idea how amazingly offensive that shit is in the United States.

I figured it was a Catholic thing (the Spanish penitents, not just a blanket "all Catholics are Klansmen" statement). Slightly less plausible is that they were thinking of spooky ghosts. That said, I'm not going to blame them for not being American (or indeed, forgetting that "countries not called the United Kingdom" exist). I just have too many other things to blame them for.

Ironically enough (considering how fucking anti-Catholic the second (which is actually the KKK most people think about) Klan was) the hooded robes and everything do come from Catholicism and Catholic rituals concerning processions. It's a tradition that was really developed in Spain, where during the feast days of a saint, as the priest and the congregation took out the relics from the church and paraded them through town at night, the priest would wear robes like that to completely obscure his face, so that he may be scene merely as a porter for the saint him/herself rather than as a man in his own right.

[Omegonthesane]

The Klan hoods are actually a British thing. It's not just Chaos Cultists and Imperial Redemptionists, the Death Eaters in Harry Potter wear the same fucking thing. British people are referencing some religious thing from their island. They have no idea how amazingly offensive that shit is in the United States.

-Username17

See, I always figured the Death Eaters uniforms were a deliberate evocation of the KKK, since both factions are evil and racist.

[Laertes]

It's not a traditional British thing. However, it might be a traditional thing from the pages of 2000AD, which is like the next best thing to that.

[Red_Rob]

@Red_Rob: Please feel free.

Thanks Chamomile!

Right, so Realm of Chaos. Hoo, boy. Where to start? Firstly I should probably come clean and admit that living in the UK my first (and for a long time only) experience of wargames was through Games Workshop. It started with Heroquest and Space Crusade, before graduating to Space Hulk, Tyranid Attack, the original Epic and later 40K. Games Worksop was my first real foray into the world of fantasy gaming and a lot of their mid-80's output has taken root somewhere deep in my brain. Also I was a major Chaos fanboy from early on largely due to these baroque and atmospheric books. Although I have many fond memories, reading them today is like undertaking an archaeological expedition to a prehistoric age of game design. Expect to see lumbering dinosaurs and evolutionary dead ends aplenty.


How come D1000 tables never took off?

Anyway, an overview. Realm of Chaos : Slaves to Darkness was originally conceived and written in 1983, however the printing of the 2nd edition of Warhammer meant it was delayed until the mechanics could be updated. Then Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay was released in '86 and it was decided that the book would be altered to suit both games, with statistics separated by a slash. More rewriting followed with the 3e revision of Warhammer, so when 40K was released in '87 and proved a hit it was an obvious decision to go back and add in support for it aswell. Thus in 1988, after a 5 year gestation and multiple rewrites, GW released the first Realm of Chaos as a mainly WFB book with some additional sections about WHFRP and WH40K kind of tacked on here and there. From a purely physical standpoint these books were insane by modern standards. Two 300-page hardback books given over to the game rules for one faction? In today's world of 100-page codexes that seems unthinkable, and quite rightly so. There is so much information in here that I guarantee noone remembered it all at the table, which lead to much flicking through the books mid-game hunting for that one rule about Daemonic Magic Resistance. Although the detailed 3-page table of contents is helpful, there was no index and with 300 pages of material it was impossible for everything you need to be listed together. Mastering a Chaos army was a matter of combing through the books to find the bizarre and hidden rulings that, after following 3 page citations and cross referencing the equipment rules with the Daemon Weapon subrules, lead to you discovering that each Bloodthirster's Axe contained the bound form of another Bloodthirster that could be released in battle. This type of shit was everywhere in Realm of Chaos and got you some very cold looks when you pointed it out during a game.

Something to note about RoC is that it was obviously playtested by the designers putting armies of Chaos together and having them fight each other. I assume this was to save time by allowing twice as much testing to take place, but it lead to some really strange assumptions that permeate the books. Firstly, although it mentions Chaos rampaging across the world and fighting against the Gods of Law (Yeah, they get mentioned once on page 10 and never again, ever), all the actual fluff and rules assume that Chaos will be fighting... Chaos of a different colour. Seriously, the idea that the armies of Chaos might do anything other than beat each other up is given scant attention. Chaos warbands get special rewards for killing other Chaos champions, Daemons of other gods, and enemy warbands, but nothing about defeating the forces of Good. Apparently the greatest enemy of the Judean People's Front really is the People's Front of Judea.


Also, this insular focus meant that back in the early days of Warhammer Chaos was the biggest Mary Sue faction in the game. From a fluff perspective it leads with the revelation that the coming of Chaos was "the catalyst that stimulated the development of the human race" just to bring home that literally everything good or bad was due to Chaos somehow. From a rules perspective everything Chaos had was just better. They had better units, better weapons, better magic and more special rules than you. Apparently the Chaos Gods were simply more powerful than anything the wimpy Gods of Law Forces of Good could offer and fought each other because it was the only way to find any meaningful challenge.

And now the TV has blown up, so diving into The Powers of Chaos will have to wait till next time.

[tussock]

In Britain it's almost certainly a reference to how Spanish Catholics are evil, there's a bit of history there with fleet battles and so on, seeing who would conquer the world first. It was neither of them and now they both suck for wasting all that capital in trying, but old wounds and such.

[Chamomile]

I'll go ahead and finish off my fluff review so I can get out of Red_Rob's way.

Before I dive into the Ordo Malleus chapter, I want to back up to something that wasn't quite right (besides the Chaos klansman thing, although it is nice to know that this is just someone not knowing about the Klan rather than looking at them and deciding that this is totally a thing they should put in their space fantasy game). I said in the first book that the fluff in this book is atrocious, but that isn't really true. The Horus Heresy and the Fall of the Eldar are actually pretty good, even if the Horus Heresy is little more than the Christian War in Heaven IN SPACE at this point. My sleep deprived brain just sort of glossed over that when I was starting this review, because I've heard both those stories a million times before (especially the Horus Heresy, Games Workshop just will not shut up about that one), so it felt like recycled fluff, but of course the truth is that this is where a lot of that fluff was written, and it's pretty good. So rather than being atrocious, the fluff in this book is actually really hit and miss, and the Illuminati and Sensei were both written out (thank God).

But the Grey Knights weren't! The Grey Knights are the second super double-secret Mary Sue organization in just the 40k section of this book. The Grey Knights are introduced here as the space marine branch of the Ordo Malleus, a branch of the Inquisition supposedly dedicated to rooting out corruption within the Inquisition itself but actually dedicated to rooting out Chaos everywhere, because at this point in the fluff the mere existence of Chaos is such a huge secret that even the rest of the Inquisition isn't allowed to know about it. And that's kind of stupid all by itself because if you look at the growing Chaos Cult problem they talk about earlier in the book, clearly the peasants are getting their hands on knowledge of Chaos, because your psyker lockdown isn't going as planned at all. And in fact this problem is only going to get worse, because the fluff of 1988 (and also 2014, but I think they've gone back and forth on it in between) is extremely clear that humanity is heading towards a pyschic revolution which means daemons are going to be making contact with random humans at higher and higher frequency, and meanwhile your containment plan is to never tell anyone about Chaos unless they are a part of a super-secret club inside the already exclusive Inquisition organization which is itself inside the exclusive Adeptus Terra which sits apart from the filthy peasants (technically on the organization charts they say that the Inquisition isn't part of the Adeptus Terra because they only answer to the Emperor himself, but in the sense of being part of the aristocratic class of the Imperium, they are pragmatically speaking a part of the Adeptus Terra). So psykers are more common every day and you leave solving the problem in the hands of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the population.

But while that is absolute nonsense in terms of setting consistency, Warhammer 40k is a wargame and even in this plot-heavy era it is mostly about smallscale conflicts whose repercussions across the galaxy are pretty much nil. So while it is irritating that the Ordo Malleus have so many high-level problems, it isn't really relevant to the stories that this game actually expect you to tell. No, the task of messing with those is given to the Grey Knights specifically.

So the Grey Knights are already a part of this super double-secret conspiracy. On top of that, they regularly requisition troops with which to fight Chaos. And then execute them, because now they know about Chaos. Frank's talked about this before, but it was like six years ago so I think it's worth restating that they talk all the veterans who 1) have experience fighting Chaos and 2) are demonstrably capable of successfully repelling Chaos and before making use of that experience or reliability even once they immediately execute them. And later on we'll get stuff like the Cadians holding the line against the Eye of Terror and they get to keep holding that line even though they fight Chaos literally every day, but right now this extra-stupid policy has exactly one exception: Space Marines don't get executed. No, they get "brainscrubbed" which eliminates their memory of the encounter and sometimes renders them incapable of ever fighting ever again. So from a pragmatic perspective it is at least occasionally exactly as bad as the executions.

I have taken a brief glance through the army lists, mostly reading the fluff (nothing someone moderately familiar with 40k Chaos doesn't already know, and nothing stupid enough to jump out and demand mockery), and I notice that practically every list contains something like "0-D6 Chaos Spawn" or something. So, like, the number of Chaos Spawn you can bring is determined by die roll. And while I actually think it would potentially be really cool if both players didn't know exactly which forces they'd be able to bring to any given match, thus requiring that they keep their armies a bit more flexible, this isn't really like that at all. Like, if there were an orbital drop mission where two random squads get destroyed or delayed, that could be cool. You'd still run into problems where it's possible for one side to have their Terminator squad get whacked while the other loses nothing but packs of Gretchin, but even that would be better than just randomly being completely screwed by the dice such that you are just not allowed to deploy almost any of your daemon squads because nearly all of them require you to roll a die to determine how many you're allowed to have. For no reason at all except "because Chaos."

[Voss]

The Klan hoods are actually a British thing. It's not just Chaos Cultists and Imperial Redemptionists, the Death Eaters in Harry Potter wear the same fucking thing. British people are referencing some religious thing from their island. They have no idea how amazingly offensive that shit is in the United States.

-Username17

See, I always figured the Death Eaters uniforms were a deliberate evocation of the KKK, since both factions are evil and racist.

You're giving Rowling far too much credit for being observant. Or even aware of the world around her.

[Chamomile]

To my knowledge, Rowling had nothing to do with the design of the Death Eaters we see in the movies.

[Whipstitch]

I guess they were seriously okay with anything that sounded vaguely mystical, but wasn't 1988 after the big Karate craze had swept the western world? Maybe it was just an American thing, but I am reasonably certain that 40k's target audience knew exactly what Sensei actually means and why it is a stupid name for a Jedi expy.

Well, it does take time for things to blow over and Hollywood was still trying to wring money out of Mr. Miyagi and Daniel-san in 1989. More importantly, it's practically beside the point, because while the US fascination with Japanese martial arts is relatively recent, the UK actually has quite a long history of such things (principally judo and jujutsu) and so it'd be quite reasonable to expect many people to know what sensei means. I mean, for god's sake Sherlock Holmes apparently practiced bartitsu.

[Laertes]

The British craze with martial arts really kicked off with Judo in the 1960s. By the time Games Workshop started kicking off with this stuff in the late 80s it was already played-out and cheesy. That's possibly why they used that word, thinking about it - early Games Workshop revelled in its cheesiness.

[Red_Rob]

So, after a slight hiatus it's onto the first Chapter: The Powers of Chaos. As an aside, this starts with a nice fluff piece accompanied by an Ian Miller drawing. Ian Miller is really the perfect artist for a book like this. Everything he draws looks warped and unnatural anyway, so all the Chaos Landscapes in this book set the mood perfectly. Anyway, here we get an overview of the two Chaos Gods covered by this volume, Khorne the Blood God and Slaanesh the Lord of Pleasure. Right away I have to question the logic in making one of your Gods the Lord of War when you are writing this as background for a Wargame. That just seems like a bad idea, given you are going to want all the Chaos gods to be fielding armies and fighting most of the time. It also goes into the rivalry between the Chaos Powers, leading with the revelation that the Magic-hating Khorne gets his panties in a bunch over... Slaanesh. I guess that must have been Tzeentch's greatest trick?

After a brief rundown of their portfolio and accoutrements it dives into the rules for Daemons. Here we get the first super-secret special Daemon rule (but not the last!). Greater Daemons can call on "pact-allies" when in danger. This requires a roll on a table and a D6 turn wait, but allows you to bring in a load more Daemons. This rule was so obscure I honestly never saw it used in an actual game, ever. This also highlights one of the main disconnects this book suffers from. At this stage Warhammer was still written as if most games were going to be run more like an RPG scenario using an impartial Gamesmaster than a competitive wargame between two players. There are caveats about calling Pact Allies that basically amount to "fellate ask your GM", but what if there is no GM? By Warhammer 4th edition this thinking had pretty much gone by the wayside but here it still expects three players at every game table. There is also a full page table listing the 11(!) special rules all Daemons follow, but given the first is "Invulnerability to Normal Weapons" you don't really care about the other ten. Yep, every Daemon from a Nurgling upwards used to be immune to anything that wasn't magic. Did I mention Chaos was bah-roken?

Apparently immune to Greatswords

Onto the actual Daemon roster. Each God gets a Greater Daemon, Lesser Daemon, Daemon Mount and Daemonic Beast. Straight away you notice that all the Daemons have pretty outrageous stats and costs. Being a Daemon in this book meant you were just better than any normal troop could be, and this is particularly true of the Greater Daemons. Right up front the Bloodthirster comes in at 1150 points in a game where 1500 points was considered a standard battle. Aswell as the aforementioned Immunity to anything that isn't magical it has Toughness 7 and 10 Wounds, meaning they can ignore most attacks that come their way. A 5+ save helps with this, oh and they also Regenerate. Y'know just in case they did manage to somehow suffer a wound. Flying, With 10 attacks per round and weilding an Axe of Khorne with it's own page of special rules these things were almost an army by themselves. There was no real chance of actually killing one, so your opponent just had to hope they couldn't manage to make back their exhorbitant points cost before the battle ended. The Lesser Daemons are somewhat more sane, but still rank among the best troops in the game.

Reading through them now it strike me how thematically unfocussed these things are. The Bloodletters, Lesser Daemons of Khorne are described as having wiry, serpentine bodies with a poison bite and disease-causing claws. Hello? What part of that screams "Embodiment of war"? Oh, and they also regenerate because apparently the Lord of Skulls hates it when any of his followers die in battle. Juggernauts are a decent idea, and Fleshhounds are a pretty safe choice (Who doesn't love a daemonic doggie?), but when we get to Slaaneshi daemons it all goes to pot again. Apparently the best the designers could come up with for the Servants of the God of Pleasure was "Stick a tit on it". The Keeper of Secrets is a 4 armed Minotaur, with a tit stuck on. Daemonettes? Claw footed, crab clawed daemons, with a tit stuck on. Mount of Slaanesh are 2 legged horsies, with a... well you know the drill by now. Fiends? "An unholy mixture of scorpion, reptile and human" is the description, but I see a fairly generic four legged monster with a row of tits. I mean, is that really the best the Unholy Lord of Seduction could come up with? And why the obsession with crab claws? On a more removed note it seems kind of sexist to equate Pleasure = Female sexuality. The description of Slaanesh itself always mentions an androgynous quality, whereas the daemons seem to be styled to be feminine. It just seems a very male-focussed view of what decadence and pleasure would look like, which seems a rather base view for a God to take.

Sexy beast

From a rules standpoint this is pretty standard 80's era design, which is to say terrible. Simply allowing these creatures onto the battlefield opens up a bevy of random rolls and percentage chances for magic items which bring the game to a screeching halt. I assume you are supposed to generate these pre-battle, but good luck convincing your opponent you actually rolled those 3 Daemon weapons for your Keeper of Secrets fairly. A particular clusterfuck is the instruction that every Daemonette has a 10% chance of a random magic item, or "one roll can be made for an entire regiment and the result applied to all the unit's models". Do ya feel lucky, Punk? Once you get past the random rolls it quickly becomes apparent that each category of Daemon has a particular stat line and only minor deviations are made from it. Thus the Bloodletters of Khorne are actually less skilled than the Daemonettes of Slaanesh in battle, and the thin and willowy Mount of Slaanesh is as resistant to gunfire as a living brass Juggernaut. Seems legit...

And that's the chapter. Join me for the next thrilling installment, where we learn about the stealth new game they tried to ship with Realms of Chaos!

[JigokuBosatsu]

Please also note as this OSSR continues that this book has an official soundtrack. AND IT'S AWESOME.

[Red_Rob]

Followers of Chaos

One of the interesting things about this book is it doesn't go about things the way you'd expect. Being essentially an army book for a wargame you might think it would have a section of fluff for the faction, a section of game stats for the model range, and finally an army list to allow you to use them in games. Well, early GW preferred to do things differently. They even released the first 40k Ork book with no game stats or rules included at all, and made you wait a year before printing anything with an actual army list in. So it isn't entirely surprising when Slaves to Darkness out of nowhere spends a large chunk of the book providing in depth rules and random tables (so many tables!) for running a mini-campaign themed around competing Chaos Champions and their warbands. The next chapter is named "Followers of Chaos" and pretty much straight away lays out it's stall. It begins with the warning that whilst "Warhammer Fantasy Battles presents five formal character profiles for Chaos Warriors and Sorcerers... in keeping with the other intelligent races given in the rules" that "Realm of Chaos makes no attempt to use the system of profiles and advances given in WFB". Got that? Every other faction in the game might have to make do with the normal way of doing things, but Chaos is extra-speshul for no damn reason. As you might have noticed, this is something of a theme.

An 80's gaming trope that has (thankfully) fallen away in recent years is the deeply ingrained idea that more random = more fun. I think this reached it's zenith in this book and the early 40k Ork books (I still have trouble believing someone had the balls to print the Madboyz series of nested insanity charts), but 80's and early 90's GW products always had some kind of chart to roll on. Now, a certain amount of random determination between equivalent options can add a fun element of uncertainty, but as we'll see this book sometimes expects you to stop playing Warhammer and start playing Chart Inception to determine the results of an action. Seriously, you roll on a chart that tells you to roll on a chart and as a result you have to roll on another chart that generates D6 rolls on the original chart. It's fucking MADNESS. When those results can be anything from "You become a living God" to "You lose the use of your arms" it removes any skill or tactics from the game. You are effectively playing a more time consuming version of craps. There's even a handy flowchart showing all the chart rolling you have to do:


Just look at that shit!

Anyway, this chapter details the process by which you generate a random Chaos Champion and his retinue. Rather than simply reading through a list of units and picking them like you might expect in a points based wargame, instead you randomly roll your prospective champion's starting stats and bonuses for experience like he was an RPG character. You might think this is a little bit TOTALLY INSANE aswell as incredibly hard to balance against more traditional list-generated armies, and you would not be wrong. Where you would be wrong, however, is if you thought the authors gave two shits about any of that rubbish. Chaos means random and random means fun. So fucking roll your units like a man and stop whining! I know you got a Goblin with an arse for a face and a limp and the other guy got a Minotaur with Iron Skin and a Lascannon for an arm, but that's Chaos for you. In the section "Points Values And Followers Of Chaos" it makes no bones about this. "The points value of a Champion of Chaos is not directly related to his powers" it opens with, as if this makes everything okay. "The points value of a Champion's retinue is calculated at 10 points per model" is stated, without reference to the fact that a retinue can consist of anything from Hobgoblins to a Hydra or Jabberwock (Yes, it's not only D&D that ripped of Carroll in the early days). Playing against a Chaos army at the time you had no idea if it would be a cakewalk or an unwinnable massacre until the opposing army hit the table.

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[/img]
Vorpal sword my ass!

Now, while this does fall down as a method for generating a balanced army in a competitive wargame it works a lot better in the context it was obviously intended for. The main thrust of this book is dedicated to the idea of everyone rolling up a random Chaos Champion and their retinue and then having them fight each other over the course of a Mordheim-style campaign. After each battle your champion gains Chaos Rewards and mutations, gains or loses followers, and makes progress towards becoming either a Daemon Prince (Good!) or a degenerate Chaos Spawn (Not so good!). Whilst this is a perfectly good idea for a game, and indeed our gaming group got a lot of mileage out of these books for exactly that purpose, it amazes me that they didn't just section this part off and have the WFB Chaos army work in a more traditional way. That would have worked much better than having to randomly roll the stats for every unit in your army.

So, first you need to generate your Champion of Chaos. There's a handy table shown here:



It's weighted heavily towards Humans, but with a smaller chance of a Chaos Dwarf or Dark Elf and a 5% chance of something wacky like a Werewolf or Zoat. The highest chance is of a baseline human, but roll well and you could start with a WS6 S4 T4 W4 badass with four attacks right from the start. Any prospective Champion immediately receives two Chaos Rewards, a pre-set Gift from their chosen God and a random Chaos Attribute. Chaos Rewards were a big part of this book, and they come in the form of, yes, a random table. These are basically exp advancements and are granted through winning battles, performing deeds in keeping with your chosen God and through defeating enemies of the opposing God. Winning a roll on the Chaos Reward table might result in a Gift, such as a Daemon Weapon, stat boost or a reward directly from your God, or it might result in a random Chaos Attribute. Chaos attributes could be good or bad, and getting too many means risking becoming a Chaos Spawn. Rolling 91% or above on the Reward table brings "The Eye of God". This meant that your Champion has been judged by his chosen Patron, and depending on his number of Gifts vs. Attributes received could be elevated to Daemonhood or cast down as a Spawn. It's interesting that performing well in the game only gives more rolls on the table, and these could be good or bad. This meant that it really was pretty random whether a given Champion was rewarded or punished, which I guess fits with the Chaotic aesthetic. Campaigns of Chaos Warbands tended to be wildly unpredictable, with a runaway leader suddenly having a powerful champion turned into a spawn with no real warning. This was lots of fun in a beer'n'pretzels "What will happen next?" way when we were teenagers and we would spend hours rolling up random Champions and seeing what ridiculous combinations we could produce.


Hey, look what I rolled up!

Aswell as generating your Champion this chapter also included rules for their Retinue. This involved rolling on another chart to see what followers your champion received. There was no rhyme or reason to the results, and you were as likely to get D6 Goblins as you were D4 Ogres or a Chaos Sorcerer. In addition even the number of rolls you got on the table weren't fixed but were randomly generated. I swear Jervis Johnson can't get a hard on unless he rolls on a chart every 10 fucking minutes of his life. Every two rewards gave you a chance of a roll on the table, although if you were lucky you might get two rolls, so Fuck You extra hard if you got none! The retinue was basically a small adventuring party, and in WFB was smushed into one big unit with hilarious conseqences given the lack of rules for such mixed-model units in the base game.

A fun thing about the warbands campaign system was that your Chaos God effectively only contributed a list of Daemons you could summon, a starting Gift and a customised Reward chart. This meant that generating your own Chaos powers was pretty easy, and the second volume The Lost and the Damned even included a randomised God and Daemon generation system. Generating a random Chaos Power and their Daemonic servants and then rolling up a bunch of Chaos Champions to serve them was endlessly entertaining. There was also the option of using a previously graduated Daemon Prince as the Patron for subsequent Champions, although I don't think any of our campaigns ever went on that long.

There are also some gonzo additions hidden away in this chapter, like the option to raise your Champions from the dead and have them come back as a Skeleton Champion. The mechanism for doing this is to roll a D100 for their "God's favour" and then roll another D100 and try to get under the first score. I'm not even joking. There's also a brief page with rules and ideas for Champions of Chaos in WHFRP, which bascially amounts to "lolno" given the normal scope of the game involves rat-catchers and office clerks.

As you can probably tell I have fond memories of the Warbands campaign frame presented in this book, despite it's awfulness and insane addiction to random tables. It was our group's first exposure to the kind of gaming that would later emerge more successfully in Necromunda and Mordheim and looking back I think it could still be fun if you toned down the wild power disparity and reigned in some of the randomness. But maybe that would dilute the essence of the thing, the gonzo 80's weirdness that attracted the early players that made GW the powerhouse it is today.

So that's the end of the chapter, next up we take a look at the Magic of Chaos...

[Chamomile]

That little "how to Chaos Champion" chart doesn't really clarify things at all. Someone at Games Workshop really needs to have it explained to them that you need to label your arrows before they'll help anyone. The information as to what all those arrows actually means does exist in the book, but most if it is after the part where that diagram is printed. It does at least have page references, but I was reasonably well-rested by the time I got to backtracking through the WFB sections of the book, and I still spent about ten minutes scrutinizing that image and the various references before I actually got it. Partly this is the problem with things being given very similar and sometimes misleading names, like with daemon possession vs. daemon summoning, so that it took a while for the difference between a Chaos Reward and a Chaos Gift to sink in.

Also: Having now read the Lost and the Damned, I can say that the Illuminati and the Sensei Knights both get fairly significantly retconned into things that don't completely suck in that book. The Grey Knights are still awful and, so far as I have heard, remain so to this day, but they do show up in a fluff piece that was pretty okay.