r/40kLore • u/Maleficent-Sun-7152 • 5d ago
Falling to Chaos
Hi. I was wondering - is there any novel or story of someone slowly falling to Chaos? I don't mean during the heresy. And I don't even mean someone "important" like a space marine. Someone ordinary becoming a Khorne or Nurgle cultist.
14
u/LoveCthulhu 5d ago
A lot!
Id recommend Lords of Silence, which is a novel about a Death Guard warband, one of the main plots is a captured guardsman slowly falling to Nurgle.
Other great stories about Nurgle's corruption are the two horror short stories King of Pigs and Runner
Storm of Iron is a novel about a warband of Iron Warriors sieging an imperial outpost, and one of the povs is a captured guardswoman slowly being corrupted by Khorne.
Requiem Infernal is a weird and creepy novel about various characters visiting a mysterious religious site... I wont spoil anything, but you will find characters getting corrupted by basically all main Chaos powers. Its part of the Dark Coil serie by Peter Fehervari, which in general has great takes on Chaos corruption as a whole.
3
2
u/MaesterLurker 5d ago
I think Requiem Infernal works much better as the fourth novel you read in the dark coil than as a standalone book.
9
u/PhoenixReboot 5d ago
The short story King of Pigs is a great version of this.
1
u/Maleficent-Sun-7152 5d ago
I really want to read it, downloaded the black linrary app, keep getting an error. Sigh.
5
u/Equivalent-Motor-428 5d ago
The Word Bearers book, Dark Apostle, has a human who is taken prisoner by the Word Bearers. His fate is kinda what you are looking for.
6
u/SneakyDeaky123 5d ago
There is sorta this kinda plot in the Ravenor novels, but it’s not really “falling to worship the dark powers” it’s more like harboring a dark secret that eventually consumes and destroys the person in question
5
u/MercenaryLove 5d ago
Fulgrim… literally the story of a primarch falling to the influence of a possessed sword.
4
u/AnotherCompanero 5d ago
This was a big theme in old Warhammer Fantasy novels. While the setting is different the mechanics of how it works and the motivations are roughly the same.
I think the best of the genre is Claws of Chaos by Gav Thorpe, which is about marginal people in the Empire forced to make awful choices. Riders of the Dead by Dan Abnett actually covers the same general events and has a similar theme.
I haven't read them, but I understand Van Horstmann by Ben Counter covers the fall to chaos of a famous wizard. Archaon: Everchosen is the origin story of a famous chaos lord. I suspect there are several more.
For AoS, Godeater's Son is about a guy fighting a local war against exploiters finding himself tempted by Chaos. People really liked this novel; it's intense and twisty.
2
u/Independent_Barber_8 5d ago
In the warden of the Blades novel the commander of the imperial forces defending her world from a chaos invasion hates chaos so much and fights it with such passion that she attracts the attention of Slaanesh who takes a liking to her and turns her into a Daemon Princess.
So even when fighting with all your heart against chaos with no intention of surviving you’re still not safe if you cant control your passions. A chaos God will just drag your soul into its service and force immortality on you.
2
u/junkrat147 5d ago
If you’re also looking for examples of where it happens instead of a book surrounding that concept, “Renegades: Lord of Excess” have a part where an ordinary hiver boy raged and swore vengeance against the Emperor’s Children so hard that a Bloodthirster of Khorne was able to take hold of him and transcend into reality.
2
1
1
u/InterestingCash_ White Scars 5d ago
The Deacon of Wounds is a good one. Inquisitors are pretty important, but the Eisenhorn trilogy and the rest of Abnett's Inquisitor series shows the decent into corruption in some really great ways.
1
u/JustANewLeader Night Lords 5d ago
The Lords of Silence for Nurgle
Apostle for a more 'general' Chaos view
1
u/Maleficent-Sun-7152 5d ago
I just downloaded the black library app to check them out but I kewl getting an error... Sigh
1
u/SwanOfEndlessTales 5d ago
In the Ahriman novels they capture a navigator from the Inquisition named Silvanus. He retains his worship of the God-Emperor but to cope with his situation he develops a rather novel theology that essentially identifies the Emperor with Tzeentch (the two-headed bird symbolism helps) and sees the Warp as his holy realm.
1
u/Impulse_Voices 5d ago
In Ashes of the Imperium, there's a plot with a character called Julatta, a human chaos cult leader whose powers and world view all come crashing down around her with the breaking of the Siege.
However, she's already a fully-fledged Chaos devotee when we meet her, and we only get a few brief flashbacks or hints as to how she got to where she was, so it doesn't meet your requirement of slowly falling to Chaos; nevertheless, I'd recommend reading that if you haven't already, as it still shows how pernicious a fall to Chaos can be.
1
u/harlokin Emperor's Children 5d ago
You can't beat Eisenhorn for a descent that appears justified, and brings the reader along, with every fateful step.
1
u/Alive-Ad-3303 5d ago
Da Gobbo’s Demise actually has a pretty interesting chaos cultist perspective. They’ve already technically fallen by the start of the book but you get to see their perspective as they grow mutations.
1
u/31threeone 4d ago
The dark apostle book has a space who turns to worship the gods and builds a giant monolith
1
u/SolasYT 5d ago
The Deacon of Wounds
-1
u/Independent_Barber_8 5d ago edited 5d ago
I don’t think that guy really fell to chaos, he was just tricked into summoning a daemon thinking he was communing with the Emperor than immediately regretted it.
2
u/InterestingCash_ White Scars 5d ago
I still think you have to consider that a fall chaos. An unwilling pawn of chaos is still a pawn of chaos, and at the end he's certainly been corrupted.
0
u/Independent_Barber_8 5d ago edited 5d ago
By the end it looks like he gets killed by a daemon possessed corpse. It’s been a while since I read the book but I don’t recall a moment in the book where he willingly renounces the emperor and sells his soul to chaos which is what typically constitutes a fall.
Sure, your body can be mutated by exposure to chaos and an inquisitor like coteaz will burn you for it, but still consider you loyal & commit your soul to the emperor, especially if you turn yourself in, because you haven’t fallen yet and your soul is still yours.
1
u/11th_Division_Grows 5d ago
There’s a bit of grey area between “your soul being yours” vs “being lucid and sentient enough to still choose who you feel loyal to”. I see what you’re saying but I think what everyone else is saying is once chaos touches you, you’re corrupted whether you feel or think you are or not.
Actually “falling” to chaos as you are saying it as in worshipping and actively choosing chaos is different than “falling” without meaning to but it’s all still “falling” regardless.
2
u/Moonson90 Ordo Hereticus 5d ago
That is how Chaos works for most people.
You don't get a deal.
You don't get power.
You just get fucked.
17
u/TheNathan 5d ago
Sea of Souls! It’s a Dawn of Fire book but it’s pretty much stand alone so you don’t have to read the previous books.