Everyday life on a Chaos ocupied world

[Tandrax218]

So i have been reading a lot of wh40k/50k/60k and one thing got to me...

Apart from the characters and battle sceenes in these works no one ever depicts the every day chorse of a "citizen" of a chaos ocupied world.
For instance , what does life of Averege Joe(turned chaos worshiper) look like??
Does he go to the Chaos manufactorium, ?? Does he have a chaos family to feed?? or is he just fodder for the demons??
But if he is for the demons who gets to be the infantry man of the chaos forces, not counting cultists, astartes and demons...

,,,,,

[Simon_Jester]

I think the answer is "it depends on who's in charge." Chaos offers great personal power over others, so how you're doing in a Chaos society depends on what your overlord does with that power.

If he wants a world of followers who live a roughly normal life, only with the official forms of Chaos-worship observed and occasional orgies or human sacrifices, he can get it. If he wants a planet made of congealed blood where bloodmonsters participate in bloodsports while he watches from a throne of blood and sips bloodwine, well, he can have that too.

[Connor MacLeod]

Your best bets for life on a Chaos world are:

Ian Watson's Inquisition War novels

Barrington J Bayley's EYe of Terror novel.

Ben Counter's "Daemon world" and "hammer of daemons" (Deals with Slaaneshi and Khornate worlds respectively.)

FFG materials (the various books have bits and pieces about daemons and such, but Black Crusade - the recent line released - is more chaos oriented.)

[SpaceMarine93]

Ultramarines novel "Dead Sky, Black Sun", the Iron Warriors' Homeworld of Medrengard within the Eye of Terror. That should give you a very good impression about what life on a daemon world is like.

I would imagine it to be pretty much like Hell.

[Agent Sorchus]

There is a short story out there set in the maelstorm o New Badab. Really not that far out from a more regular world. So there are a verity of differences between the differing Chaos worlds, even those in warp storms. Don't take any of them as definitive.

[Simon_Jester]

Not all chaos worlds are daemon worlds, though.

Daemon worlds are the ones where the 'blood blood blood' example I gave might actually happen because you're dealing with daemons that have a blood fetish and don't actually care about any of the other normal things that human beings are interested in.

[andrewgpaul]

One of the Gaunt's Ghosts novels; Traitor General (part of the The Lost anthology now) has them acting behind the lines on a Chaos-occupied world. That's probably aslo worth a look.

[Bedlam]

One of the Gaunt's Ghosts novels; Traitor General (part of the The Lost anthology now) has them acting behind the lines on a Chaos-occupied world. That's probably aslo worth a look.

I'd second Traitor General and to a lesser extent its sequal the armour of contempt for daily life on a chaos held but not demon world. Its quite a lot like life on any occupied area although the occupiers are turned up to 11 trying to extract as much resource as possible by armour most of the civilian population have been starved to death but in the early parts of the occupation things are tolerable, just there are work camps and curfses but life carries on to a certain extent.

A demon world is literally hell, beyond what humans can really imagine where you can probably be worked to death again and again and just brought back again nothing similar to a normal life is likely to occur there.

[Guardsman Bass]

A demon world is literally hell, beyond what humans can really imagine where you can probably be worked to death again and again and just brought back again nothing similar to a normal life is likely to occur there.

That would explain why they don't just kill themselves rather than facing a whole life-time of non-stop torment and horror.

[White Haven]

I recall one description where there was a sacrificial altar at the edge of an open-air temple, with a long line of sacrifices lined up to be killed at the altar. When killed, they were dumped off into a pit, where they got up again and rejoined the queue. That stuck with me as just emblematic of the horror of a daemonworld, an existence of cyclical bloody, savage sacrifice over and over again, without cease, for ever.

And that's the most straightforward and largely sensible example of the shit that can go down when reality breaks as cataclysmically as it can on a world where the Warp has been dragged over reality's head like a cosmic wedgie.

[DudeGuyMan]

Thankfully, someone thought to do an interview!

http://www.somethingawful.co*/d/news/wa ... dhouse.php

An excerpt...

BS: So you don't take your Khorne worship seriously?

VM: Look, of course I do. All me and my pulping hammer do all day is worship Khorne. He's the best. Hooray frickin' Khorne. When you're planting soybeans one day and a guy with a skull for a head and two chainsaw axes walks out of your barn covered in blood you're going to sign up for whatever he wants. I signed up for Khorne. I got stuck with Gristlewick and this lake of blood.

BS: You don't sound entirely happy.

VM: Some lucky assholes on the other side of the planet got caught by the Perfumed Choir of the Supreme Tempter of Antioxus XI. They signed up for the Slaaneshi legions. Do you know how they're probably gonna die?

BS: No.

VM: Too many orgasms. You know how I'm gonna die?

BS: No.

VM: Not enough blood left in my neck. You see my consternation.

[Companion Cube]

I recall one description where there was a sacrificial altar at the edge of an open-air temple, with a long line of sacrifices lined up to be killed at the altar. When killed, they were dumped off into a pit, where they got up again and rejoined the queue. That stuck with me as just emblematic of the horror of a daemonworld, an existence of cyclical bloody, savage sacrifice over and over again, without cease, for ever.

The real horror there is the endless queuing.

[Zinegata]

A demon world is literally hell, beyond what humans can really imagine where you can probably be worked to death again and again and just brought back again nothing similar to a normal life is likely to occur there.

Not necessarily a place where you get brought back from the dead over and over again. The Daemon world Alaric visited in the last Grey Knight novel didn't have this quality, albeit it was an extremely crappy place to live in as death and murder were constant.

[Ahriman238]

It depends on whose in charge. On some Chaos held worlds, life goes on as normal with maybe a few more mutants and psykers wandering around, and all the aquilas replaced with 8-point stars. On some, every single person is a brainwashed slave of Chaos incapable of any thought or action that does not advance their master's purposes. On some everything withers and dies, the flesh sloughs off your bones and happy daemons wander aorund giving Papa Nurgle's gifts to the suffering.

Which isn't to say everything is misery and suffering. Eldar and rogue traders freguently raid worlds within the Eye for Eldar technology left behind. Plus, atoleast one Ork Warboss got onto a Daemon world of Khorne and died killing a bloodthirster, only to be reborn again and again to face a fresh army each day. He thought it was the best thing that ever happened to him.

[Sinewmire]

There's Straight Silver, as well, where the ghosts make an aerial drop onto a chaos-held refinery city thing. The people there live in common in old warehouses, walk to work through caged walkways, with occupation troopers patrolling on top of the bars. They're ragged exhausted and zombie-like as, if I understand it, there are two shifts, and all the sleep you can grab whilst walking to work. Clearly this can't be the case all the time as they'd kill off their entire workforce in a week or so.

In Execution Hour, the slaves that work in the Planet Killer slave away good and proper, overseen by World Eaters, and are forbidden to look at Abaddon. He has an open lift that goes right through the central work quarters.

I'd agree that Gereon (Traitor General) is probably the best example of life on a Chaos world, as it's the only one not actually under attack that I've read about.

[wautd]

I second/third Traitor General, Armor of Contempt and Straight Silver as examples for Chaos occupied world. In general, you could say Chaos simply uses/depletes a world for all it's recources (water, food, meat, slaves, soldiers). A bit more in detail:

Straight Silver: Shows life if a refinery/hive. Tthink of slave labour death camps during the holocaust. You're treated like shit and your life is pretty much worthless. You work hard or you die. You don't work hard enough, you die. You give a funny look or stand in the way, you die.

Traitor General: shows life on a chaos conquered planet (Gereon). Population lives under a reign of terror. Think of a brutal police state policed by excubitors (some kind of chaos cyborg), glyfs (some kind of sentinal flying around. About as much fun as Dementors from Harry Potter) and Wirewolves (daemon terror weapon). Oh yeah, if you "agree" (what was the word again?) you'll get an implant for better control/show you're willing to cooperate. Civilian housing/farms... don't appear to be maintained. But hey, you get the chance to become a Chaos cultist.
The world is used for all it's recources: water is transferred to other planets, xenocrops are used for food which destroy the ecosystem and soil, human meat is used for God Emperor knows what in meat foundies.

Armor of Contempt: shows Gereon again of few years later. What's left of the human population lives in slavery, malnourished and behaves pretty much feral because all the trauma. Planet's ecosystem is in a really bad state, other xeno plants (pink grass) destroying native plants. Civilian housing/farms... are all turned into slums.

[White Haven]

'Consent' and 'Consented' are the words you're looking for, waut.

[Sinewmire]

Traitor General: shows life on a chaos conquered planet (Gereon). Population lives under a reign of terror. Think of a brutal police state policed by excubitors (some kind of chaos cyborg), glyfs (some kind of sentinal flying around. About as much fun as Dementors from Harry Potter) and Wirewolves (daemon terror weapon). Oh yeah, if you "agree" (what was the word again?) you'll get an implant for better control/show you're willing to cooperate. Civilian housing/farms... don't appear to be maintained. But hey, you get the chance to become a Chaos cultist.
The world is used for all it's recources: water is transferred to other planets, xenocrops are used for food which destroy the ecosystem and soil, human meat is used for God Emperor knows what in meat foundies.

I liked the details about how they let you in to their Chaos club, too. One method was you have to draw the sacred symbols of Chaos, but you can't be shown them. You have a wall, you have paint. Start drawing, we'll tell you when to stop.

If you're a good little cultist, the reward is you're allowed to take a sledgehammer to Imperial devotion icons and chapels.

[wautd]

Traitor General: shows life on a chaos conquered planet (Gereon). Population lives under a reign of terror. Think of a brutal police state policed by excubitors (some kind of chaos cyborg), glyfs (some kind of sentinal flying around. About as much fun as Dementors from Harry Potter) and Wirewolves (daemon terror weapon). Oh yeah, if you "agree" (what was the word again?) you'll get an implant for better control/show you're willing to cooperate. Civilian housing/farms... don't appear to be maintained. But hey, you get the chance to become a Chaos cultist.
The world is used for all it's recources: water is transferred to other planets, xenocrops are used for food which destroy the ecosystem and soil, human meat is used for God Emperor knows what in meat foundies.

I liked the details about how they let you in to their Chaos club, too.

Or how the top brass acted all... well, more or less civilized and polite between each other. Banquets and late night celebrations included.
Somehow it made it all the more chilling when that Blood Pact colonel proudly states something like "As a training excercise, we slaughtered every man, woman and child this town over there. Thousands of kills without even taking a single loss! The men are really anxious to show their skills so I propose we're gonna try a bigger town next time". Like a child telling his parents how good he's been good.

[Rabid]

Or how the top brass acted all... well, more or less civilized and polite between each other. Banquets and late night celebrations included.
Somehow it made it all the more chilling when that Blood Pact colonel proudly states something like "As a training excercise, we slaughtered every man, woman and child this town over there. Thousands of kills without even taking a single loss! The men are really anxious to show their skills so I propose we're gonna try a bigger town next time". Like a child telling his parents how good he's been good.

And now you start wondering if Hitler/the SS were Khorne cultists.

[wautd]

Another important detail worth mentioning is that the population is allowed to grief their deads in graveyards

[wautd]

Another important detail worth mentioning is the influence of the warp taint. When Gaunt's team was inserted on Gereon they soon started suffering from skin rashes and assorted maladies (sort of an allergic reaction to Chaos), as well as having negative psychological effects (increased paranoia, getting short temperered or downright imagining things). It could be combatted by act of will, but it's a good indictation what a general population will go trough.

[wautd]

I also remember some Horus Heresy novels. Not really occupied in the military sense but sure as hell controlled

- "Legion" shows a civilization controlled by Chaos (Tzeentch?). It didn't seem too bad on the surface. Life seemed to go on as normal (people trade, make a living,...). But it was hinted there's more if you scratch the surface (like when a tradesman says something like 'good day to you sir' while the psyker understood what he actually says (something nasty)

- Descent of Angels: on the surface we see a civilization living in a (kind of) utopia. Everything is extremely organized, no pollution, no crime,... no emotions? (they all wear masks but I don't remember the reason). Scratching the surface it becomes evident a large percentage of the population is being regularly sacrified to some chaos daemon underground. Don't remember how far this was done willingly or clandestine.

- The planet were Horus falls (Davin?): tribal, barbarian civilization