Now, in WH40k, the universe has to halves: the materium, or physical world; and the immaterium, colloquially referred to as The Warp. The Warp exists parallel to the materium, and is home to all the strong basic emotions of the psychically attuned races: Men and Elves. If a certain emotion is prevalent and strong enough in the material world, its Warp counterpart will take on a life of its own, and become a powerful psychic being titled a Chaos God, akin to a Lovecraftian Elder Being like Yog Sototh. There are also lesser beings formed the same way, called daemons. There are four Chaos Gods in the Warp presently, and they illustrate well several of the principles of horror.
Khorne was formed from mankind's anger, and illustrate's Carroll's theory of art-horror. His minions(predominantly Bloodletters, pictured above) are physically revolting to look upon, and terrifying to imagine encountering. Their "bodies" used to inhabit the physical world are resistant to conventional weaponry, and their daemonic blades cleave right through armour. The fact that they have "bodies" is a transgression of boundaries and mixing of categories. Psychic beings should stay in the Warp and material beings should stay in the materium, right? Nope, they literally cross the boundary into the physical world and assume a terrifying form, part beast, part man. Khornate beings are primarily more fearsome than disgusting however, which is why we have Nurgle!
Nurgle
The dripping diseased fellow above is a Plague Marine of Nurgle, the chaos god of decay and disease. He shows the more disgusting side of the fearsome/disgusting coin tossed by Carroll. All of Nurgle's followers bear the marks of terrible diseases, they ooze pus and ichor, and their weapons carry deadly pestilences and poisons. The main source of Nurgle's horror comes from the disgusting aspects of his minions rather than a fearsome visage.
Tzeentch
While the premise of the Warp and chaos gods is already Lovecraftian enough, Tzeentch, the chaos god of ambition, trickery, and impossibly elaborate planning best represents Cosmic Horror. While Tzeentch daemons are physically terrifying in there own right (consult the Lord of Change seen above), the particular horror of Tzeentch is the complete alien-ness of his mind and manner of thinking. Unlike us humans, who think in terms of achieving goals, and are frustrated when our plans are foiled, Tzeentch can turn any failure into part of a different plan for victory. While his minions carry out his plans, Tzeentch has all the time in the world to come up with new ones. Even if you win, or think you've beaten him, you've just been an unwitting pawn advancing some other plan towards its completion. While a popular joke among WH40k plans is that any victory against Tzeentch was all part of his plan, in reality this would be no joking matter. Like Yog Sototh or Cthulhu there is ultimately no way to defeat him, just delay him.
Slaanesh
Representing Freudian and Freelantian sexual horror is Slaanesh, chaos god of sensual desire. I'm at a loss for words here, the image speaks for itself. That ugly...thing...oozes transgressive eroticism out of every...you know....*goes to bleach brain*
No comments:
Post a Comment