Thursday, August 30, 2007

Corporealisation and other nonsensical metaphysics

Many people are complaining about the new demon rules in the upcoming chaos codex. While I definitely sympathize and will personally miss my bloodletters, making the greater and lesser demons available to chaos marine forces more neutral and generic makes sense with the fluff they have set up in the past as well as in the new book. They spend a bit more time in the new book talking about the extreme effort involved in demons corporealising from the warp into realspace, and how taxing it is on the demons to maintain themselves in their psychic ectoplasmic manifestations, etcetera, etcetera. It would appear that it is this extreme effort that genericizes and weakens them mildly. Supposedly an all-demon force book will be coming out sometime next year, and will likely differentiate the greater and lesser demons between their various loyalties. I predict that they will try to explain a demon-oriented army by locating them on actual demon planets in the Eye, and/or by making the generals more pure and powerful demonic entities that are able to stabilize themselves and their underlings enough to demonstrate their full capabilities, i.e. demons of different factions being able to exhibit their own varying individual powers. Thus will bloodthirsters and lords of change be able to fly once more, plaguebearers will spread their associated filth, and so on. Another way to set up a more stable and thus more powerful and varied demon army could be through a large, expressly devoted cult of followers creating more suitable conditions for their messiahs through ritual and sacrifice. This could serve as another highlight of the split GW has created between the rogue/pirate marine groups and those more obsessed with the warp or devoted to a particular god. So it would make sense if this demon army book included cultists (and marine sorcerers or cult troops) and was similar to the previously defined demon world army in the EoT book. Overall I think it’s not a bad direction to go in, not to mention it gives the demon and witch hunters out there more to dig into with their own specializations, both in fluff and actual gameplay.

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