Chapter 530: Is Imperium Secundus Loyal?
Just as people might expect, the forces of Chaos weren't united. In fact, they fought among themselves even more fiercely than the Imperium of Man.
If the Warp were a market economy, the Four Ruinous Powers and the many lesser gods would be its major corporations. The Four Chaos Gods were more like multinational conglomerates, while a daemon demigod like Vashtorr could barely count as a well-known little workshop.
Ever since the War in Heaven, after the Old Ones fell and the C'tan were shattered, the Three Gods had seized the opportunity to capture the blue ocean market. They'd established the names Khorne's Army, Nurgle's Army, and Tzeentch's Army, making them veteran enterprises. Their Daemon Boys were fierce indeed, and together they'd become the Warp's three great powers.
Then, after the Aeldari Gods were destroyed, Slaanesh rose like a dark horse and established the name Slaanesh's Army. The god became one of the Four Heavenly Kings of the Warp, and together with the other three was known as the Four Chaos Gods.
Chaos Gods were products of the laws they embodied. Their behavior varied according to the rules they governed. You couldn't exactly expect the Lord of Change to go to Nurgle's Demon Realm and swim butterfly stroke through a pile of shit.
They were all daemons, and they all had a Chaos God backing them. With their incompatible values and tastes, the daemons of the four factions clashed constantly. For millions of years, they'd waged war against one another, eager to beat each other's brains out.
The Warp's civil war had never stopped, even as Chaos Daemons invaded the real world. One had to secure the home front before fighting abroad. Compared with the distant physical universe, the Warp they could see was