Friday, August 30, 2024

Musings on Warhammer Fantasy Law & Chaos, Mutants, Beastmen, and Chaos Gods.

Wrote this in bed waiting to fall asleep. Started with the idea of having law-aligned groups of mutants in the warhammer fantasy world. Not age of sigmar. That shit is boring as fuck. Also I don't know all the lore, I don't feel like I need to know all the lore to make fan stuff like this. Also I can choose to just ignore lore and make up my own stuff lel.


Firstly going to start with personal interpretations of law and chaos. Law is the idea of the one true path, that there is one way of life (or order or law) so strong and powerful it can conquer all. Chaos is the endless possibilities that your life can take, all happening at once and not at all.

Cause of that they naturally oppose each other. Law stopping chaos from making everything into a primordial soup of possibilities. Chaos stopping law from stomping out all novelty in the world until it’s an optimized gruel.

Law & Chaos were born at the exact same moment and have always existed in each other's presence. Thus there are no true chaotic or lawful force or being. Everything is a ratio of both.

To get onto mutants. Mutants, at least in the empire, are beings that should be killed and burned whenever you can. No exceptions, from the baby that was born with mutations to the late bloomer who was a normal person until puberty hit. Determined by the empire as agents of chaos.

However law’s idea of one to conquer does not inherently imply that the conqueror will be humans, elves, dwarfs, a mix and match of the previous, etc. It’s simply the order that wins at the end. Law is a Gu. So these mutants could be an extension of that. Brand new possible paths created by introducing a bit of chaos. 

Now mutants are typically depicted as a random mishmash of body horror or silly shit. Mayonnaise blood comes to mind as a way to describe it, even tho it's from shadow of the demon lord now WHF but whatever gets it across. There's no order in that besides them being human or another species once. 

However I would argue that this only the case with mutants who follow chaos. They want to be every possibility they could be at once. So of course they would be nonsensical. 

The lawful mutant on the other hands follows a stable and replicable mutation. A set of genes that will be past down to offspring. The birth of a brand new species that will either flourish or will be crushed by an existing order. In the eyes of law either outcome is expected if they wish to create the gold path.

And with that reasoning I'm going to see about making a faction or two of law-aligned mutants =w=. I mainly started this thought cause I was reading Gotrek and Felix and it put mutants on my mind. Always thought they got the short end of the stick so want to make something fun with them. 


And now a few side tangents. 

Beastmen.
Given how consistent they are in appearance (big ungulate humanoid), and following the previous line of logic with the lawful mutants, I’ll say that they’re also a result of law producing a new order. But for some reason or another most have fallen into worshiping chaos. 

My guess is that they came from a world that was eventually taken over by chaos. Maybe they had a better understanding of the metaphysics of the world, and understood the general guidelines of law and chaos. Could've been some event that would lead to eventual downfall of their order, and thus the feeling of rejection from law. So in reaction there was an upturn of chaos worship, the worship of a power that would let them exist.

Now that they're in the WHF world, a world where there's still a strong concept of law, it could be possible that some beastmen factions turn away from chaos back to law. Them seeing it as a second chance to win and become the golden path.


Chaos Gods.
Thinking on my interpretation on chaos and law. And I wonder if the big chaos gods (Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh, Tzeentch, etc.) are as strong as they are due to lacking possibilities. Most chaotic beings aren't that strong due to being torn apart in so many directions. While these gods could be described as specific and incredibly dense living concepts. Giving them power over those concepts. 

Interestingly chaos with a bit of constraint from law has seemingly gotten the closest to law's goal of making a supreme order with the chaos gods. The same goes for Law. With it needing to propagate chaos in order to create new paths.

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