Kyrel wrote:1st:
Specifically I would change the focus from Slaanesh to Atharti. Arguably this is controversial, but I don’t think that it would be without merit for several reasons.
That indeed is controvertial.
Details below.
Kyrel wrote: Going by the Liber Chaotica books, the elves as such don’t worship gods in the sense that their gods are individual beings with their own goals and ideals. Rather they worship the concepts that the different gods represent. Khaine thus represents war, murder, aggression etc., and Atharti represents a variety of pleasure providing things like art, music, dance, creativity, philosophy etc. Worshipping in this way allows the elves to arguably worship what one could say is chaos gods, without actually worshiping them. That sounds a little strange, but think of it this way: One can appreciate the Ten Commandments from the Bible (i.e. Do not kill & Do not steal), and live in accordance with them, but one can do this without having to believe in what the rest of the bible says (i.e. Jesus walking on water and raising the dead).
The difference here being that Ten Commandments won't be angry with you if you break them.
I see that we do differ in interpretation of LC fluff. My POV on it:
- firstly, god's biger power=more consciousness as a being - this comes outside of LC is given as objective info rather than in-world view and used to be (still is I assume) GW view on it.
- having that in mind I see following fragments of LC:
"In this way, the simple deities that the elder races had developed for themselves across millenia of evolution, suddenly stopped being mere concepts or items of faith, and became actual beings with immense power and independent identity - they truly were the first daemons, gods and angels of Empyrean."
and
"Without even realising what they were doing, the Asur began to impose their will and expectations onto some of these greater entities, forging them into benign deities that personified various aspects of the Asur's ideals, hopes and aspirations."
as showing that elven god such as Atharti do have their own personality, goals and ideals. And just like any other warhammer god this personality&goals come from god's nature - one that has been formed by elven ideas & beliefs in that case.
And - what is important - elves are aware that their gods (since the fall of the Old Ones) are no longer mere concepts. To what level and how they worship them is one thing, but they are aware they worship concious, powerful enties.
- IMO as an elf god ('limited Chaos god' and not 'general Chaos god') both Atharti's sphere of influence and interest are smaller than Slaanesh's.
- Unless we take it that Atharti is Slaanesh's aspect (which I'm against, as this is contrarty to the reason she and other new DE gods have been introduced to the fluff), I agree that relation is similar to that of Khorne and Khaine:
* each is independent deity with indepented conciousness
* worshipping of one supports the other to some level
- I agree that by worshipping Atharti an elf might bring Slaanesh's intrest upon him. But I believe that would head toward turning individual to Slaanehs's way rather than 'you worship me, but unwillingly, so I'll limit to gifting you just a little bit'.
- So if Atharti follower (and to remain one) is to get Mark-like bonus it would have to come from Atharti herself. Looking at known history of elves and their gods, I'd say she might, but only for a truly exceptional individual (like Asuryan gifted Aenarion), not on a more common base (which would be needed to field marked units).
- ItP psychology effect might of course be given to a unit in other way. 'no fear of anything whatsoever' is IMO debatable, but simple ritual drugging oneself before battle would suffice.
Kyrel wrote:But if Slaanesh does not or can not directly gift the elves of the Cult of Pleasure with boons, and if the Druchii actually worship Atharti, why are there then Daemons of Slaanesh in the Cult army? Well, Daemons of Slaanesh basically represent some of the aspects of Slaanesh given physical form. Some of the aspects being represented by the Daemons, can easily be concepts that are mirrored within the worship of Atharti, and thus a follower of Atharti gains the ability to summon up Daemons that represent these concepts. Incidentally, since the concepts are the same, the Daemon that comes out of the summoning, is also identical.
Ok, that's were our points of view go wide and afar.
- Slaaneshi and Atharti's concpets are
not identical; if they would they would be same deity or at least one would be aspect of the other
- Their concepts are similar, so their daemon servants might take on a similar form. Similar being the key. No reason why Atharti's servants should have crab-like claws, is there? They should evoke pleasure with their outlook but that can be achieved in many ways.
- So saying 'Oh, these are... umm... Atharti's Succubusses. No, not Slaaneshi Daemonettes. Really.' is IMO going by a far stretch. I would accept it on battlefield perhaps. Like, playing with a friend at home, I may use Waywatchers as DE Shades should I need more miniatures of them than I have... we do even sometimes use empty base or goblin wolfriders as Wild Riders, should we need more.
Still, on 'theoretical', AB and background level I would not accept such idea.
- Another thing is that 'benign', 'civilized', 'limited Chaos' or however you choose to call gods created by specific beliefs of a race (be it Sigmar, Morr, Asuryan or Khaine), all have one thing in common - they rarely send their daemonic servants to mortal realm, lest in bigger numbers, to help mortal followers in battle.
- One might say that DE, with all their daemon-dealings, might have it diffrently. But should that be the case, why don't we see Khainite daemons in regular DE army? Surly 'War god' is more likely to send his servants to battle than 'Pleasure god'?
So all in all:
1. Yes, having elves worship only Atharti in place of Slaanesh is closer to GW's idea (by words of Gav on his Mechanical Hamster blog)
2. No, having then a link in the form of almost-Slaaneshi daemons is IMO not defendable.
3. Yes, it would stop Cult of Pleasure being "Chaos Elves". Which I believe would be totally wrong.
- The 6th ed list's name is Cult of Slaanesh, to start with.
- The whole idea of it is about elves who turned to worshipping of Slaanesh - a Chaos god
- Slaanesh, until recently, used to be prominent part of HE/DE background. It is unlike Chaos Dwarfs, who, at least since developement of fluff in 4th ed had their own god, Hashut.
- IMO the whole difference is to give this idea a unique flavour, not to allow CoS to be "Chaos Warriors with pointy ears". Something, which 6th ed list already did I believe.
This has a big preference aspect, which has been discussed at the begining of rewrite. To put is short:
A) some people like their 6th ed CoS with Daemons, Marauders, Warriors and Anointed
B) some people think CoS should be Dark Elves and Daemons only
C) some poeple think than in light of 7th ed fluff, we should leave Slaanesh behind and make Atharti/Pleasure Cult list with DE simply
The last option got little of support. First two got more each, with A) option being the leading one (especially looking at recent posts in rewrite topic)
Today's Cult, Lustria expedition and Flesh&Blood campaignI'd look at present day of CoS with above fact in mind - so do it in such way as to keep the general idea of 6th ed list
As for Lustria, AFAIK the end result was a draw between Lizardmen and DE, which translated into following events (taken from summary by one of SoC's paricipants I found on the net):
17th Sigmarzeit (4th month):
SoC Day 6: Dark Elves, with their barbaric allies, attack jungles of Lustria and Lizardmen.
30th Sigmarzeit (4th Month):
SoC Day 19: In Lustria Druchii, Dark Elves, sack the ruins of the temples surrounding Tlanxla and Quetza. Disturbed from their efforts by these distractions, the Realm of Chaos has grown further, and occurrences of Daemonic intrustions are increased. The Dark Master Be’Lakor is rising.
27th Sommerzeit (5th month):
SoC Day 49: Lizardmen are beating the Dark Elves back.
33rd Sommerzeit (5th month):
SoC Day 55: Lizardmen finally defeat the Dark Elves. Remaining forces of Dark Elves escape to their Black Arks.
So no lizardmen items.
As for Civil War campaign, first short summary from druchii.net forums:
Short version -
During the Storm of Chaos, Morathi brought the Cult of Slaanesh out of hiding and launched her raid into Lustria. Upon returning home, Hellebron ordered the Temple of Khaine to purge the "infidels". The Civil War erupted.
The Cult's Chaos allies attacked Naggaroth from the North. Almost every race sent invaders to take advantage of the chaos and confusion. First among them were the High Elves, who attempted and nearly succeeded in building a counter-fortification between Arnhelm and the Wrath Gate in the Blackspine mountains.
The war raged for several months with no clear victor. But as time went by, control of key areas were slowly being regained by the Temple of Khaine loyalists. The Cult and Chaos Hordes were slowly repulsed in the North after crashing through the Watchtowers and threatening the High Temple in Ghrond.
Throughout the entire conflict, Malekith remained absolutely silent. Not a single word on the conflict was heard from the Black Throne. Then, without warning, Shadowblade appeared to the major faction leaders. His mission - put an end to the Civil War. Malekith's thoughts on the war may never be known, but the Civil War was brought to a close by his will alone.
Morathi and Hellebron were spared. Their seconds in command were, alas, not so fortunate. The Cult was not officially suppressed and did not return to hiding. The Temple of Khaine is ostensibly still the state religion in Naggaroth. However the Cultists now openly walk the streets and the tensions that brought about the Civil War in the first place are still simmering.
There is no official storyline on the Cult after Storm of Chaos. The last we heard of Morathi's playthings was that they were returning to Naggaroth from Lustria after a modest success in raiding Lizardmen temples for magical trinkets. Civil war was a distinct possibility, as the Cult was definitely considered heretical by the Temple of Khaine.
Druchii.net ran a campaign to reflect that civil war - the War of Flesh and Blood. It is pretty much canon for most of us, particularly those members that participated. We are currently in the process of chronicling this in the Druchii Herald (volume 1 is in the summer issue, volume 2 is in the works).
The Cult lost that war, but are not entirely disbanded. Indeed, Malekith simply declared the war over and ordered a stop to the fighting. He never ordered the Cult to be purged, though he did order the Chaos mortals to be enslaved. So the Cult would still exist in some form or another.
But even if they were purged by the Temple, they would still exist in the shadows as they have for millenia. The Cult has been around since before the Sundering. They surely won't disappear just because their military power base was broken.
And I do have mixed feelings about it:
1. It seems (haven't got time to read through all of it now) an interesting piece of fluff; unofficial, but is still there.
2. It does rip, or at least limit our possibilty to make a Khaine vs Slaanesh 'Campaign pack', as it already happend.
3. Most of all, it seems to imply that Marauders are now slaves and therefore not available as part of army, inclusion of Anointed also seems problematic if we marry that with 7th ed fluff
So my view on it is:
- If it can be included without altering whole idea of army list, then superb. We might try to make a campaign for following events
- If it can't, stop timeline just after SoC and leave future as possibilites - then we could have campaign for alternate version of Khaine-Slaanesh conflit, without having the outcome decided for all (as each group of players could play it out individually). This I believe would also be in line with current 'setting, not a timeline' perspective GW takes - which while irritating in ignoring what already happend in - supposedly - official fluff, has one good point: army rules don't become unfitting in time due to happening events.
Ok, have to go, so that's all for now.