# The birth of Slaanesh



## KingOfCheese (Jan 4, 2010)

One thing i don't understand about the birth of Slaanesh...

He was created due to the Eldar and their lust for excess and pleasure.
The more they sought after it, the stronger the power grew, until Slaanesh was born.
But during the birth, Slaanesh basically killed most of the Eldar population.

Question is.... why the hell would you kill the source of your power? 
Its just biting the hand that feeds you....

And secondly, if Slaanesh was born and DIDN'T kill off most of the Eldar and chose to leave them alive and continue their lust, then how would Slaanesh's power differ from what it is with the current fluff?
Could he have possibly overtaken Khorne as being the most powerful God?


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## Samu3 (Sep 19, 2010)

Slaanesh is a chaos god, human logic does not apply to something that is inhuman, E.I "Dont bit the hand that feeds you".

Other then that I dont know an awful amount about the story as I have been meaning to buy the eldar codex for some backround, but that's all I got.


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## cegorach (Nov 29, 2010)

It wasnt slannesh personally going around killing eldar,the birth screams of slannesh tore a whole in space, which killed many eldar. Also i dont much imagine that the other gods would let slaanesh make a sort of farm out of them.
Come to think of it, i dont think slannesh would have the patience/foresight/restraint to not immediatly consume every eldar it possibly could, and I think that if slannesh didnt consume millions of eldar when he was born then he might not have been strong enough to fight the eldar gods and win, then if it could, slannesh would probably die at the hands of khorne or some other god.


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## normtheunsavoury (Mar 20, 2008)

There are some clues in the First Heretic as to why the Eldar were consumed by Slaanesh, I would put them here but I don't know how to do the 'Spoilers' tags bit.

Sorry!


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## KingOfCheese (Jan 4, 2010)

normtheunsavoury said:


> There are some clues in the First Heretic as to why the Eldar were consumed by Slaanesh, I would put them here but I don't know how to do the 'Spoilers' tags bit.
> 
> Sorry!


[ spoiler ] Insert text here.... [ /spoiler ]

(Without the spaces inside the tags)



Example


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## normtheunsavoury (Mar 20, 2008)

Cheers for that, in the First Heretic it says this (roughly)



The Eldar were destroyed because at the moment of Slaanesh's birth they turned away from what they had created. Slaanesh threw a mammoth strop and destroyed them. If they had accepted the existence of Slaanesh then they could have continued living, much like the early Cadians who managed to somehow live alongside Chaos 


I can do the tags thing now, Wooo hooo!


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## D-A-C (Sep 21, 2010)

KingOfCheese said:


> One thing i don't understand about the birth of Slaanesh...
> 
> He was created due to the Eldar and their lust for excess and pleasure.
> The more they sought after it, the stronger the power grew, until Slaanesh was born.
> ...


I think your a little confused in your thinking here, so let me try and clear a few things up.

It's now standard fair that Eldar emotions of excess trickled and then flooded into the warp as they became more and more depraved, eventually giving birth to the God Slaanesh.

So here's where your thinking is a little mixed up, 'why the hell would you kill the source of your power?'.


(1.) Slaanesh to begin with started to become sentient due to the Eldar emotions, but in order to become a fully manifest Diety of the Warp he needed an awful lot of energy. His birth into final existence was only made possible by the fuel of those billions of souls.


(2.) Whilst the souls were needed to bring him/her/it into being, you can also view it as a side effect of that birth. Kind of in the manner of both a cause and effect. Slaanesh needed all those souls to come into existence, but the explosion of his birth also consumed more and more souls, kind of like oxegen and a fire. The souls caused the explosion AND kept it going.


(3.) They are Slaanesh's souls. All Eldar forfeited their souls to Slaanesh upon it's birth. It will and does consume them at will. 'Farming' them is a ridiculous idea when you consider the nature of the Chaos Gods. This isn't the Matrix, Slaanesh isn't going to let them hang around so he can get more and more. If it could, Slaanesh would consume them all and extinguish the Eldar from existence. 

It has been born, it exists and has ascended to the ranks of Godhood along with the other 'Big Three' chaos powers. It no longer needs the Eldar to continue to exist. The Eldar Souls are now to Slaanesh, what a fine wine is to a connoisseur, a very rare delicacy. I'm sure it will be sad when they are removed from the Galaxy, but knowing Slaanesh that is just another experience to enjoy. Slaanesh has more alien followers than the Eldar and humans, the Laer are a perfect example and I bet there are alot more across the stars.


(4.) Just so you know, Eldar souls I'm sure stay with Slaanesh. They are a fundamental part of existence. I would imagine that Slaanesh feels slightly incomplete at not having consumed all the Eldar Souls and Deities, when they are all a part of Slaanesh in the warp I bet it will be a happy/sad moment.


(5.) There is some interesting fluff in _The First Heretic_ that indicates that it was a punishment. But don't put too much stock into that in the literal sense.

It probably was a punishment to an extent, but only a fraction could have continued to survive anyway, as it needed all those souls to fuel its birth. 

Also I'm the biggest Chaos supporter there is, but the Eldar saw what they had done and it was and is horrible. Slaanesh is not a positive thing. It and the other God's are a blight on all existence. 



Anyway, I hope some of those ideas helped clarify the matter for you.

Sorry about my missuse of his/her/it during the post, it can get confusing refering to Slaanesh as it is both male, female and neither at the same time!!!!

Like I said, hope that helps.


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## Child-of-the-Emperor (Feb 22, 2009)

KingOfCheese said:


> Question is.... why the hell would you kill the source of your power?
> Its just biting the hand that feeds you....


See below. But also take into account that the consumption of souls is one major way in which a chaos god gains energy (and therefore power) and influence. Coupled with her inability to show restraint, the Eldar were as good as doomed.



KingOfCheese said:


> Could he have possibly overtaken Khorne as being the most powerful God?


On a side note, Khorne *isn't* the most powerful god.



Samu3 said:


> Slaanesh is a chaos god, human logic does not apply to something that is inhuman, E.I "Dont bit the hand that feeds you".


I second that. But we can at least try and reason with what information we have. But for all we know, Slaanesh consumed the Eldar simply because they were her original and greatest energy source. They seem incredibly irrational to us.



D-A-C said:


> (3.) They are Slaanesh's souls. All Eldar forfeited their souls to Slaanesh upon it's birth. It will and does consume them at will. 'Farming' them is a ridiculous idea when you consider the nature of the Chaos Gods. This isn't the Matrix, Slaanesh isn't going to let them hang around so he can get more and more. If it could, Slaanesh would consume them all and extinguish the Eldar from existence.





cegorach said:


> Come to think of it, i dont think slannesh would have the ...restraint to not immediatly consume every eldar it possibly could


I agree. Slaanesh isn't restrained whatsoever, it isn't in her nature to be. It is even anathema to her. Considering all Eldar souls were forfeit and so attuned to Slaanesh, she couldn't really do much else but consume as much of the Eldar as she could (and therefore also their pantheon gods). Leaving only a few Craftworlds, Exodite worlds and the Eldar inhabiting the Webway (relatively) safe (for now).

Other than that, as _Norm_ said. From _The First Heretic_:



The daemon-thing Ingethel the Ascended does suggest that Slaanesh tore up the Eldar Empire and consumed almost the entirety of it's population because they abandoned her in her moment of ascendance. After conceiving her, and causing her birth, the Eldar then abandoned her. So in return, Slaanesh consumed them.





cegorach said:


> and I think that if slannesh didnt consume millions of eldar when he was born then he might not have been strong enough to fight the eldar gods and win, then if it could, slannesh would probably die at the hands of khorne or some other god.


No, once Slaanesh had taken her place among the gods of chaos she couldn't be truly killed. It would diminish from chaos as a whole if she was destroyed, and that would be heading towards chaos ceasing to exist as well.

Not that it would be possible for a god to be destroyed anyway.



D-A-C said:


> Also I'm the biggest Chaos supporter there is, but the Eldar saw what they had done and it was and is horrible. Slaanesh is not a positive thing. It and the other God's are a blight on all existence.


So not much of a supporter at all then?


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## D-A-C (Sep 21, 2010)

Child-of-the-Emperor said:


> So not much of a supporter at all then?


LOL

No, I'm probably one of the biggest supports of Chaos on the entire site, but what I was trying to convey is the sense that that is how Chaos is viewed by most people in the conext of 40k universe.

They fail to grasp the glory, the splender and the possibilities that are Chaos.

Chaos after all, the only true answer.

And as for sanity, well, sanity is for the weak!!!


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## BrotherArcadius (Jan 3, 2011)

Blood for the Blood God


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## TheSpore (Oct 15, 2009)

one most tend to not notice is that they all feed each other. when a man kills another he spills their blood and feeds khorne, if he enjoys it he feed slaanesh, the corpse changes and rots away feeding bot nurgle and tzeench


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