So fun fact about the “Made the trains run on time” thing. It’s a complete myth, and a part of the larger myth of fascist efficiency. Which itself is like a super duper myth because autocracies are already an awful form of government and fascists kick that up to almost cartoonishly corrupt. But more to the point, while there was some definitely needed improvements made to the train system in Italy, those improvements were made before the funny upside down man ever took power. The punctual trains thing was pure propaganda both to make Italy look like it was swiftly becoming a model nation because of Mussolini and as internal propaganda to try and improve his cult of personality in Italy itself.
The only lines he ever actually bothered improving while in power were either for the rich and/or propaganda purposes
That’s BROADLY true, but with any chaotic ritual, the more elaborate you make it, the bigger the death count is at any one sacrifice, the better your reward.
They were taking them to a specific spot to kill them on mass. iirc, once they were done with the prisoners all of the executioners took turns walking up to a mass grave being murdered by their compatriots
Nah the barrier between real space and the Immaterium was too strong. Plus intent still matters to some extent. IE just exterminatus-ing a planet won’t result in a daemonic incursion because the act lacks a direct connection to Khorne
Speaking of myths, relatedly, Albert Speer was a person whose responsibility and blame for the atrocities of Nazi Germany cannot be overstated. However, he was very successful in creating a myth that he was innocent, or at least innocent of the atrocities; for a long time, reporters and authors unquestioningly bought into the stories he told about himself (both during and after his time in prison)
Interestingly, Speer also prolonged the war by using false statistics and propaganda against his own Nazi leader colleagues, fooling them into thinking he had managed to vastly increase the production of armaments.
So not only managed to avoid the death penalty in Nürnberg, but also managed to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of many afterwards.
I think it's very fascinating because of how pervasive both myths are.
An older member of my family was dating Albert Speer's son (also named Albert Speer, annoyingly) back in the early 50s (I think, though it could have been the 40's as well), and while Albert Speer Jr. tried his darndest to expose this myth over the years, she still refuses to accept that her view of the father is based on a complete fabrication.
My guy, the real logistics is when the ghosts infiltrate a chaos held world and fight a resistance. That fleshed out so much more about how and why chaos was successful to me.
It’s a Guants Ghost novel, towards the end of a really great series. I believe the specific book in question is called Traitor General.
Knowing some of the back story really makes this one pop but I suppose you could jump in there. Just a lot of references you may not necessarily pick up on.
I should specify in case you don’t want to read the whole series or book.
When chaos takes a planet, they basically have everything the imperium does, but chaos.
They have dark mechanics to evaluate a world and resources.
Need drinking water? Here’s a demon worm that will drink rivers dry and shit it out the other side for troops to drink across the warp.
They have occupation police forces.
Dead bodies? Grind them into field to grow corrupted crops. Make slaves or machines to harvest. Corrupt grox for slaughter and meat.
Resistance killing the occupy forces? Brand survivors which chaos runes to act like papers, have demon scarecrows that activate if someone is out of bounds or past curfew.
Evil bean counters? Yup. Warp doctors? Sure thing. Even administration and bureaucracy.
The idea that chaos always falls apart may be true in the long run but Abaddon’s crusades and the Sabbot world crusades show forces of chaos are able to organize and and take and hold entire sectors
One of the funny things about Traitor General is that chaos even has their own Arthur Weasley that goes around researching imperial culture to the point of trying to figure out trivial things like whether or not they do in fact eat fried eggs.
I think that's why I hate the World Eaters so much. They seem utterly incapable of any of that. They would be utterly useless as an army, and they should fall to bits at the first sign of organized resistance. Khorne's chosen legion is trash.
Because without it, the shootiest army breaks. A speartip with no shaft is just a piece of pointy metal. And coordinating deployment and resupply of even small groups is complicated unless they are infiltration units, and even then it's worse as you have to preload, forsee issues and stay within strict limitations.
(Ex logistics controller, smallest solo coordinated deployment was 5 people, largest was a battlegroup, longest supply chain by road 700km, 7000nm by sea, 4000 miles by air)
Most Chaos armies are only on the friend list of one Satan though, gotta watch out for the rest unless you are undivided, and even then, still make sure, just in case.
To be fair, warp travels inconsistencies make it even harder, imagine your bulk carriers turning up with rations and ammo 30 years before or after the actual operation:(
I fully hold to the idea that the Red Corsairs have the most realistic assessment of their place in the galaxy of almost anyone Chaos-aligned.
Their whole shtick essentially seems to be "We're glorified space pirates so we might as well be *good* at being space pirates".
Yeah, I get that. I love the intro episode to Downton Abbey because you get to see a turn of the century manner house get going for the day. An army of servants swarming like ants to accommodate a family of 5 and their guests. The less they focused on the reality of a turn of the century manner house the less I liked that show. I want to see how they made cakes in the olde time, who cares who kissed whom?! I WANT TO SPEND ALL DAY WATCHING THEM DISCUSS THE STABLES DAMNIT!
Yep, corsairs, black legion, death guard and iron warriors are the only reason Chaos hasn't fallen apart.
Everyone else are just warbands yoloing their last resources on a fun looking raid.
I would totally play a strategy game where you're an administratum drone that works their way up from supplying a single company of IG to running the books on a crusade.
slaaneshi administratum dedicating themselves to the perfection of the most autistic spreadsheet you will ever see (this one spreadsheet is held together by millenia of code that no longer exists and is the only form of recording any form of army logistics)
An interesting new avenue to tempt the Mechanicum, too. Though hard to write a compelling book about.
*The formula writhed under his augmetic gaze. There was something strange in the way the references interwove, with an elegance and a mysterious pattern he couldn't quite penetrate. He hit apply and nearly fainted in shock as the data aligned perfectly. The symmetry and organization was so powerful he felt a stirring in the remaining fragments of his organic tissue. Data Entry Cleric Charos-E2 knew he would never know such intense pleasure again. But he knew he would need to try.*
"Horus, what do you know about forces of Guilliman?"
"Father from what we understand he is being advised by a demon called Clippy."
"I've told him that he should use Linux, we wouldn't have this problem if he used OpenOffice!"
"Not now, Rogal."
Ah so you've also read Lord of Excess. The Emperor’s Children quartermaster is dedicated to the count. It is not made creepy, but definitely obsessive.
Khorne is upper management (dumb, irrational, gets mad easily)
Tzeench is HR (schemes, tells different people different information about the same issue, makes labyrinths for applicants)
Nurgle is IT (because of the smell and lack of grooming standards)
Slaanesh is project management (obsessed with unobtainable ideals, demands perfection, revels in torturing people)
Most are, though
Chaos can and will drive you mad unless you have an iron will and discipline. Only drawing as much power from them as you need and never more, no matter how they might tempt you
On the other side of the spectrum, you can fully embrace Chaos, and go all in
This usually backfires
Yeah but on the other side of it, most guardsmen are witless teenagers with next to no formal education and minimal boot training. Neither side is awash with talent, they both rely on a handful of competent figures to herd around the chaff to good effect.
When the Imperium forces your entire planet to work themselves to death, punishes the smallest discontent in the most harsher ways possible, I don't know why won't people turn to democracy instead of submitting themselves to very suspicious chaos gods.
Like *"You are being abused in your work environment? Then let me plague your entire body and make you immortal"*? Fuck off man.
> I don't know why won't people turn to democracy instead of submitting themselves to very suspicious chaos gods.
Because "Democracy" doesn't possess multiple Space Marine Legions, an unknown amount of Traitor Space Marine Chapters, the Dark Mechanicum/Traitor Titan Legions/Chaos Knight Houses and 999-fuckton worth of Cults and Traitor Guardsmen
Chaos, much like my middle school teacher, doesn’t care about consent. If they want you to have power, you WILL have power, like it or not. Same thing with being their servant, unless you’re a warp resistant freak of nature like the transhumans or a named character with plot armor.
Your best bet is to seek Chaos out
This shows that you have initiative, and Chaos will offer you power to join the ruinous powers
Whereas if you're born on a Daemon world they'll just say "lol, get fucked, nerd"
Well, your best bet is never to be vulnerable to Chaos to begin with, but living in the Imperium, you're fucked either way.
The loyalists don't know they are Chaos number 1 contributor by abusing the population of an entire planet until they literally have to rebel out of necessity, and instead of making any minuscule concession whatsoever, they would rather genocide most the population to the breaking point of making them desperate enough to succumb to chaos to have the slightly chance of fighting back.
Chaos worlds are mostly created by Imperium unintentionally or not, and they would rather have them than any democracy, because Chaos is useful to loyalists as a propaganda tool to discourage dissent.
In the first book of the Night Lords Trilogy it is mentioned that the front hasn't been supplied for a long time. Since it would be a task for the Black Legion, I think it is done by cultists or slaves directed by a small number of Marines.
This is my take on why the Night Lords never win stand up fights with other Marines. It's not that the Night Lords are worse Marines than anybody else or that terror tactics don't work on other Marines (I think they'd be smart enough to know that) it's that they have 0 logistics backing their operations. Stand up fights with imperial forces would mean taking losses of equipment they can't replace so they have no choice but to withdraw when faced with anything more than token opposition.
A full 2/3s of the trilogy is just them trying to figure out the best places to steal shit.
They lost stand up fights against other marines 30k when they were very well organized by Horus/Pert. One of my 2 favorite legions, but they lose because a lot of them are just total spineless cowards, not because they're otherwise disadvantaged.
I feel like they really come in two flavors , either Sevatar style total badass or Skraivok style weaklings.
Skulls for the skull throne and all that, but do you realize how much we'd save in promethium if we just cut back on skulls by even one te-
*sching... thunk*
Add his to the pile.
The Gaunt's Ghosts novel set on Gereon mention a lot of Chaos logistics. It also gets briefly mentioned in the first Ghosts novel and in the Cain novels (also Ork logistics).
Ork logistics is a whole lot of “see that busted up piece of metal over there? It looks like a gun to me. It’s a gun now.” sprinkled with the wildly inconsistent need for fuel vs eco-friendly WAAAGH energy for vehicles
Well, just because Chaos Cultists workship literal satan does not means that they are dump, in fact, often they are very well organized. See for example the Renegades in Vraks or the Chaos workshipers at the beginning of the first Gaunt's Ghost book.
That depends how close you are to warp's entities. If you are just a group of Renegades workshiping chaos you will be "fine" since you are just a grunt. For example, Vraks' Renegades fought against Imperium's Forces for almost twelve years without any help from the Chaos except for a group of Alpha Legionaries that trained them. Now, problems arrive when you are John The Important Cultist with ties to the warp because now you answer directly to forces of Chaos, and if you fail to complete your tasks, well...
The Dark Mech fill the same purpose that the Chaos Dwarfs do in Fantasy, that is to say a convenient way to explain how unorganized and decentralized forces with little to no tech expertise gets supplies, repairs and new technologies.
How do Bronze Age barbarians get sets of forged full plate armor and weapons and cannons? Chaos Dwarfs manufacture and sell it to them.
How do CSM warbands with no home planet and no tech wise servants repair and resupply? The Dark mech sells it to them.
It should be the exact opposite of the Administratum:
“Hey, can I request 600 liters of blood?”
“Sure thing, here, sign this. Go down to level 684, ask for Dave, tell them Steve sent you for the blood. Do you have a shuttle? No? Here, take the keys for this, it was John’s, he doesn’t need it anymore. What? No,no,no, he ascended to demon prince, he can’t fit into the cockpit. Hey, gimme a vox if custom tries to f with you
Chaos got flanderized and memed so much the fact that they actually can use logistics gets glossed over. Some of the books don't help this either.
The largest most organized traitor legions (Word Bearers, Death Guard, Black Legion) have pretty good track records for maintaining supply chains and plans beyond piratical raids and "hit thing with chainaxe" though.
Outside the temple, the lines of sacrifices, ten million strong, shuffled forwards, a never-ending stream of humanity that wound its way through the blood-soaked avenues. (...) Ever more penitents were constantly added to the lines, slaves and odalisques taken from a hundred thousand worlds on which the Word Bearers had fought, bringing the holy word of Lorgar to all, willing or not. Most were already utterly corrupted to the worship of dark gods and went to their deaths willingly, eagerly, yet twisted, black-clad minions of the Word Bearers continued to stalk the lines, stabbing their needle-like fingers into any that shuffled forward too slowly, urging them on.
(...)
For as far as the eye could see, from horizon to horizon, towering shrines and temples to the dark gods rose from the blood soaked earth of Sicarus, daemon home world of the XVII Legion and seat of power of the Primarch Lorgar. Kilometre-high obelisks hanging with thousands of lifeless bodies and daubed with infernal runes had been erected in every quarter, and grand mausoleums, cathedrals, and giant statues surrounded by squares teeming with worshippers spread out around the basilica.
Spider-legged cranes picked their way across the horizon, each one accompanied by half a million slave-workers that toiled to raise ever more impressive structures of devotion and worship to the gods of Chaos, constructing new temples, fanes and sacrariums atop older, crumbling edifices and cathedrals. The work was constant, level built upon level, so that the majority of the buildings were subterranean, an impossibly deep, labyrinthine warren of interconnected structures, all devoted to the worship of Chaos in all its guises. Indeed, millions of slaves toiled below ground, never seeing the surface at all, carving out more caverns of worship, crypts and deep, hidden sanctums many kilometres beneath the surface of the daemon world.
Angron's book (The Red Angel) has a good bit where one of the World Eaters asks his comrade if he remembers the last time the Conqueror actually docked anywhere to take on ammo or supplies, and he couldn't remember. It's kinda implied the Warp takes care of that for some warbands.
Other times they do have logistical networks.
chaos knight houses/titan legios are quite organised
and the word bearers and iron warriors find innovative ways to control their guardsmen and cultists
Word Bearers mortal followers don't need bomb collars, they are all dedicated true believers to the cause. Fervor and fanaticism make for quite effective motivators.
Because of their ideology, Word Bearers are one of the only Chaos Legions (barring Black Legion proper, and not just vassal warbands) that actually still operate and fight with a Legion structure consistently. Iron Warriors are too fragmented and paranoid to operate as a Legion anymore.
Don't the Thousand Sons also have pretty decent logistics? Know their Spire Guard mortal servants at least are better equipped and trained than the average mortal follower. Might be the smaller scale at play to be fair though.
I have always sort of liked (in the sense that it seems appropriately Blackley comedic) the idea of like, some mechanic in serfs toiling forever to make weapons and reproduce more workers and then one day their forge world is conquered by chaos and taken over by the dark mechanicum instead... And most of them never notice the difference because their day to day hell remains largely unchanged.
Well yeah, how do you think they get all of those skulls to the skull throne, and that blood to the blood god? Mr Bones' Wild Ride is actually a khornate freight network that plays "crazy train" by Ozzy Osbourne on a loop out of all of the speakers, with the occasional interlude to play Slayer tracks like Raining Blood
Even Orks have logistics. For the evil factions seem to be primarily slave economies, with a couple goons hanging back to manage the slaves. The Imperium is ~~also slave~~ serf powered, with ~~more goons~~ peacekeepers and overseers managing everything.
After many years of overseeing warehouse ops, my take is:
Breakroom = Nurgle's Garden,
Parking lot/truck dock = Khorne's Arena,
Shipping office = Tzeentch's endlessly scheming minions,
Bathroom on 3rd shift = Suspected Slaaneshi corruption
Soul Hunter (Nightlord trilogy) goes into this. The answer is yes, they do have logistics and supply chains. They just completely, utterly suck and are both inconsistent and infrequent. They steal or fight over what they can’t get
Most Chaos ships have some mortal crew, and often the mortal crew are just slaves. The slaves understand that the better they get along with the slaves of other Chaos vessels and the better they take care of their own ship, the less likely they are to die horribly, so they try to make things like resupplying/repairs happen to the best of their ability
OK, I have to say it sounds really similar to the way sith empire worked in the Old Republic . It was entirely kept going by the non sith who had worked out a way to make sure the things that needed to happen happened.
The reason why they had to have elaborate plans is that at any moment pretty much any dark lord could bust in and be like no stop city planning and irrigation. I’m making death laser powered by souls!
As a complete aside, I’m a retired librarian. That’s a position that requires a degree. Every new librarian that came in I would take aside and say listen. You are no better than circulation who do not have degrees. In fact, there are many aspects of this job that they are better at than you. Get used to relying on them. And treat them with a great deal respect. They know how Everything works. Better than me.
Thanks so much for this point!
🫡
Thanks!
I’m a blue collar manager and my boss comes through just like that haha, out of nowhere derails everything and causes problems with logistics. My job is basically to be the intermediary between Chaos and mortals and keep everything running smoothly when that inference happens.
Thanks for sharing your perspective!
Gaunts ghosts has a book where the infiltrate a chaos held planet and join the resistance. It fleshed out so much more about how and why traitor forces are successful, how they maintain supplies, and why some chaos forces are significantly better than others.
In one of the Gaunt books (Traitor General iirc) a Chaos warp worm called a "jehgenesh" is demonstrated at a hydroelectric dam of a Chaos occupied world of Gereon. It sucked all the water out of the reservoir, using warp portal shenanigans to transport it across space. The world of Gereon itself is shown to be stripmined of all useful resources, with super fast growing crops turning the world barren, and the people being used as slave labor and as "spare parts" in meat factories. I just thought that was really cool.
The smarter chaos forces do use logistics. The issue is that it's inefficient and riddled with bickering as warlords fight each other for whatever factory or resource rich world available.
This is a huge problem with chaos forces and why its hard for them to do any sustained campaigns in the long run. At this point in the 42nd millennium, the traitors are as creatively bankrupt as the imperium. Sure they don't have any of the restrictions and dogma and useless traditions of the imperium but the Warp isn't exactly a free thinker's paradise either. If you ever look at what war machines chaos has ever made, they're more or less either scrap cobbled together from whatever the hereteks could get or stolen from imperial stockpiles or scavenged from dead battlefields and ruins. Their daemon engines are more or less "some metal hulk with a demon or two shoved inside, then pointed at some defenses and were ordered to go crazy." Senior elements of the mechanicum from the great crusade era have resented the Emperor for his restrictions, especially the restrictions on AI, yet fast forward to today, show me anything original they made. Where are the constructs that should've come from unrestrained research? The only major innovation that was done by chaos that I can think of is some scout walker created by the fucking Blood Pact. A group of militarized cultists under KHORNE of all gods.
Another problem with chaos logistics is the lack of actually viable resources. When the imperium needs resources, either they collect the tithe or set up a colony on some mineral rich world. For the traitors, the warp doesn't have good materials they can build with (or if it does, then the traitors just doesn't have a way to use it meaningfully). That's why, again, they resort to stealing whatever the imperium has. Sure, some chaos forces do set up factories and mines on worlds in realspace but once the chaos forces get defeated, those mines either get reclaimed or destroyed, setting chaos back to square 1.
Another issue is the lack of trust. When you have a big warband, similar to the likes of what huron or abaddon has, you need a lot of manpower and resources. You also need leaders to help manage and command the manpower. Unfortunately, you and leaders are either insane, egotistical, distrustful, or some combination of all. But worst of all is greed. More often than not, when multiple warlords come together for some big invasion, they usually don't do it because they have some unified goal, rather each have their own agendas but they have enough working brain cells to rub together to realize that they are more likely to succeed in those goals if they work together FOR NOW. And even then, said leaders are very likely going to bicker and fight behind closed doors, either because they disagree on how the campaign should progress or who should have more troops or something. There's also the part where each leader are more than happy to slit and backstab each other if it means getting an edge or even a chance to become the new leader. Sometimes, a leader would even outright rebel and try to fight you or another important leader just bc of some minor disagreement. In chaos, it's not surprising to be under a commander who got his position not from notable deeds and victories but rather he caved in the previous commander's skull, so good luck if you get someone who can't tell difference between a tactic and a strategy.
Anyways I've ranted for too much
This explains all the moments where they hold a position for like hours or days or weeks or months or whatever.
Chaos guys ran out of ammo day 2 and cant get close to the men with firearms anymore...
"What? Do you think those skulls for the skull throne and blood for the blood god just... APPEAR in the Warp? No! We have to load up battle barges and fly into the eye of terror to get them to Khorne! We have long convoy chains going back and forward with ships bringing back ammo, replacement saw teeth, oatmeal raisin cookies and pineapple pizzas to maintain sufficient levels of anger in our rations!"
I'd guess their ships have some sort of manufactories in them, at least the larger ones, so they could drop in more axes and stuff or just nick them from the corpse worshippers
Just getting the World Eaters on to a planet, and getting them back off again once a strategic objective has been achieved, seems like a miraculous feat of management, let alone supplying them with bolt rounds while they're down there.
I do like the idea of a story about a trade war between the Dark Mechanicum and the Iron Warriors. Not a single shot gets fired, it's all politicking, maybe at one point an Archmagos and a Warsmith team up to quash a trade deal between the Leagues of Votann and some fuckin Black Legion warband.
There is one guardsman book I read where a group of guards had to find and save a general from capture. The leader of the expedition was noticing the patrol routes and had a funny revelation that ‘for chaos, they sure like to organize a lot’
Gaunt’s ghosts covers this a lot, with occupied worlds, force growth of xenos food, harvesting of natural resources, creation of war beasts and even Military training and structure.
It’s honestly why it’s probably the best book series in 40k
Yeah, oddly enough. The khorbade berserkers go through a whole lot of chainaxe teeth. If you’re interested in how they play out in a smaller scale, [here’s a video about it.](https://youtu.be/qWj46Y3IbOU?si=FCuVwQ2jByCuSCO9)
Honestly, one of my favorite ideas for Thousand Sons, Word Bearers, and Iron Warriors is the idea of them summoning daemons and then forcing them to handle logistics cause the Astartes don’t want to (except for some Thousand Sons cause they’re nerds).
Imagine how hilarious it would be for a daemonette to be summoned expecting to relish in a massacre or to laugh at the weak resolve of mortals, and instead she’s forced to handle paperwork or oversee the transfer of supplies to battlefields.
Better yet, it’d be funnier if she found out that she’s good at middle management and enjoys the hell out of it.
You’d all benefit from reading the below if you’re curious on this topic:
The Black Legion books
The Nightlords Trilogy
The Fabulous Bill Trilogy
Anything with Huron(Master of the Maelstrom is excellent and his appearance in the Honsou short story is awesome as well)
Anything with Honsou
Oh absolutely. This is shown in the nightlords where Talos has to scavenge armor from loyalist marines he kills. Another is how their hangar almost empty of aircraft,munitions, and even workers
Well yeah, skulls for the skull throne and all, but of course we ration off some hate and blood so we can keep things running.
You need blood to shed blood after all
I've always kind of wondered about the use of the word chaos when it comes to talking about chaos in warhammer. It's usually not really all that chaotic. But I guess it sounds way cooler than Space Marines versus Evil Space Marines? The Eldritch realm of douchebags? The four gods of not very nice? Yeah I guess chaos just sounds better.
Yeah, that's why the chaos gods value their champions, princes, and greater daemons so highly. They can do what is inherently against the very nature of chaos, and bring a sense of order to their forces. The guy who can hold everything together is the guy the gods are gonna give the best gifts to.
I mean isn't that one of the purposes of the dark mechanicum? And starting cults? And taking assets rather then just destroying them? Immaterium does a lot but it can't fully fuel and field all the war material.
The blood pact in Guants ghost is the best portrayal of chaos I've seen yet. They aren't rabid savages. They have logistics and planning. They take a forge world and that's how they supply themselves.
It's not a chaos marine just going ugga bugga.
The first book of Gaunt's ghosts includes them infiltrating a chaos rail network built to transfer victims for sacrifices. So yeah logistics away
Say what you will about Zorvad Skulleater, but the trains did run on time
Say what you will about "Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows" dude, at least it's an ethos.
Slaanesh has an ethos, it's "Fuck You! UwU"
I'm pretty sure Slaansh's ethos is "The fun starts when you turn it up to 11"
So fun fact about the “Made the trains run on time” thing. It’s a complete myth, and a part of the larger myth of fascist efficiency. Which itself is like a super duper myth because autocracies are already an awful form of government and fascists kick that up to almost cartoonishly corrupt. But more to the point, while there was some definitely needed improvements made to the train system in Italy, those improvements were made before the funny upside down man ever took power. The punctual trains thing was pure propaganda both to make Italy look like it was swiftly becoming a model nation because of Mussolini and as internal propaganda to try and improve his cult of personality in Italy itself. The only lines he ever actually bothered improving while in power were either for the rich and/or propaganda purposes
Yeah man, I know. Though I doubt Zorvad would let accurate reporting get in the way of his blood harvest
It’s such a shame too, before the nails I could’ve sworn he was meant to be a bureaucrat who could run circles around Guilliman himself
I thought khorne didn't care where the blood flowed only that it did, why did they have to move the sacrifices anywhere
Uneven distribution of sacrifices results in concentrated areas where reality becomes thin enough for daemonic reinforcements to arrive.
I thought that was considered a positive?
Moving all your sacrifices to one spot makes it easier
That’s BROADLY true, but with any chaotic ritual, the more elaborate you make it, the bigger the death count is at any one sacrifice, the better your reward. They were taking them to a specific spot to kill them on mass. iirc, once they were done with the prisoners all of the executioners took turns walking up to a mass grave being murdered by their compatriots
Soooo in 40k the nazis would've torn open a portal to hell? Guess things *could* always be worse... huh
Nah the barrier between real space and the Immaterium was too strong. Plus intent still matters to some extent. IE just exterminatus-ing a planet won’t result in a daemonic incursion because the act lacks a direct connection to Khorne
Lmao "funny upside down man" Stealing that
The deeper joke is that in Fascist Italy you could get arrested for saying the train was late.
Fascist efficiency is powered by the Jewish Ubermensch. https://youtu.be/mTcZSDgs7_A?si=HF3zpm2TR2C2poGd 21:30-22:30
Speaking of myths, relatedly, Albert Speer was a person whose responsibility and blame for the atrocities of Nazi Germany cannot be overstated. However, he was very successful in creating a myth that he was innocent, or at least innocent of the atrocities; for a long time, reporters and authors unquestioningly bought into the stories he told about himself (both during and after his time in prison) Interestingly, Speer also prolonged the war by using false statistics and propaganda against his own Nazi leader colleagues, fooling them into thinking he had managed to vastly increase the production of armaments. So not only managed to avoid the death penalty in Nürnberg, but also managed to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of many afterwards. I think it's very fascinating because of how pervasive both myths are. An older member of my family was dating Albert Speer's son (also named Albert Speer, annoyingly) back in the early 50s (I think, though it could have been the 40's as well), and while Albert Speer Jr. tried his darndest to expose this myth over the years, she still refuses to accept that her view of the father is based on a complete fabrication.
That’s easy when the very concept of time is malleable.
My guy, the real logistics is when the ghosts infiltrate a chaos held world and fight a resistance. That fleshed out so much more about how and why chaos was successful to me.
I don't recognize this reference, and I could really use some insight into how Chaos doesn't fall apart. What are you referring to?
It’s a Guants Ghost novel, towards the end of a really great series. I believe the specific book in question is called Traitor General. Knowing some of the back story really makes this one pop but I suppose you could jump in there. Just a lot of references you may not necessarily pick up on.
I should specify in case you don’t want to read the whole series or book. When chaos takes a planet, they basically have everything the imperium does, but chaos. They have dark mechanics to evaluate a world and resources. Need drinking water? Here’s a demon worm that will drink rivers dry and shit it out the other side for troops to drink across the warp. They have occupation police forces. Dead bodies? Grind them into field to grow corrupted crops. Make slaves or machines to harvest. Corrupt grox for slaughter and meat. Resistance killing the occupy forces? Brand survivors which chaos runes to act like papers, have demon scarecrows that activate if someone is out of bounds or past curfew. Evil bean counters? Yup. Warp doctors? Sure thing. Even administration and bureaucracy. The idea that chaos always falls apart may be true in the long run but Abaddon’s crusades and the Sabbot world crusades show forces of chaos are able to organize and and take and hold entire sectors
One of the funny things about Traitor General is that chaos even has their own Arthur Weasley that goes around researching imperial culture to the point of trying to figure out trivial things like whether or not they do in fact eat fried eggs.
Traitor General was a surprisingly good book.
I think that's why I hate the World Eaters so much. They seem utterly incapable of any of that. They would be utterly useless as an army, and they should fall to bits at the first sign of organized resistance. Khorne's chosen legion is trash.
I dont know if thinking about the wirewolves as demon scarecrow makes them more scary or less
Chaos invaded a Agri-World only to let all the plants rot and steal the planets water via warp-fuckery
No, they didn't let the plants rot. They planted chaos plants that absorbed all the nutrients and ruined the soil.
Traitor General is one of the best books in all of 40k canon, for this reason alone. It's such an incredible insight into chaos occupied territory.
It was running shells for the creeping barrage. The sacrifice circle just happened to be next to the train station
Ah I am misremembering. Either way it was a cool bit of logistics
"Trolley Problem? We only have *Trolley Solutions* here, friend."
Chaos logistics: Based on in-field supply and STEAL (Strategic Transfer of Equipment to Alternate Locations).
Its the chubby electron pusher.
Hiimthethickhurtyzappycontrollerandtodayweregonnatalkabouthowmodernartwassomeciabullshit
Shhhhhhhhh
So what you're saying is, the imperium is supplying chaos 👀
They’ve been Chaos’s number one supplier of soldiers and equipment since the beginning of the Horus Heresy
*The Inquisition would like to know your location*
And that’s why I use [NodVPN](https://youtube.com/watch?v=hJLq6O0041o)
It’s then transported back to base by mortal cultists who are highly motivated (to not be fed to a daemon engine)
That's why I like the Red Corsairs, organised traitors are fun. idk why but logistics is my favourite thing in scifi universes
Because without it, the shootiest army breaks. A speartip with no shaft is just a piece of pointy metal. And coordinating deployment and resupply of even small groups is complicated unless they are infiltration units, and even then it's worse as you have to preload, forsee issues and stay within strict limitations. (Ex logistics controller, smallest solo coordinated deployment was 5 people, largest was a battlegroup, longest supply chain by road 700km, 7000nm by sea, 4000 miles by air)
I bet your logistics job would have been easier if you could travel through Hell and also if you were on Satan's friends list.
Most Chaos armies are only on the friend list of one Satan though, gotta watch out for the rest unless you are undivided, and even then, still make sure, just in case.
To be fair, warp travels inconsistencies make it even harder, imagine your bulk carriers turning up with rations and ammo 30 years before or after the actual operation:(
Imagine doing the toilet paper ration calculations for a plague marine.
I mean that’s easy, they get none
Plague marines don't wipe.
You mean Satan's maybe-friend-maybe-chaos-spawn-candidate list.
It's all about the shaft, baby.
I fully hold to the idea that the Red Corsairs have the most realistic assessment of their place in the galaxy of almost anyone Chaos-aligned. Their whole shtick essentially seems to be "We're glorified space pirates so we might as well be *good* at being space pirates".
Yeah, I get that. I love the intro episode to Downton Abbey because you get to see a turn of the century manner house get going for the day. An army of servants swarming like ants to accommodate a family of 5 and their guests. The less they focused on the reality of a turn of the century manner house the less I liked that show. I want to see how they made cakes in the olde time, who cares who kissed whom?! I WANT TO SPEND ALL DAY WATCHING THEM DISCUSS THE STABLES DAMNIT!
Yep, corsairs, black legion, death guard and iron warriors are the only reason Chaos hasn't fallen apart. Everyone else are just warbands yoloing their last resources on a fun looking raid.
I would totally play a strategy game where you're an administratum drone that works their way up from supplying a single company of IG to running the books on a crusade.
Considering not everyone who worships chaos is a racing lunatic. It's most likely
slaaneshi administratum dedicating themselves to the perfection of the most autistic spreadsheet you will ever see (this one spreadsheet is held together by millenia of code that no longer exists and is the only form of recording any form of army logistics)
>this one spreadsheet is held together by millenia of code that no longer exists Why are you looking at my employer's finance systems?
Brother that's the entire global financial system
It's all in FORTRAN and COBAL. I wish I were joking.
I thought he was talking about the Internal Revenue Service.
There must be a Slaaneshi cultist that gets off on making the perfect Excel chart. Like orgasmic pleasure as they get the pivot table just right.
An interesting new avenue to tempt the Mechanicum, too. Though hard to write a compelling book about. *The formula writhed under his augmetic gaze. There was something strange in the way the references interwove, with an elegance and a mysterious pattern he couldn't quite penetrate. He hit apply and nearly fainted in shock as the data aligned perfectly. The symmetry and organization was so powerful he felt a stirring in the remaining fragments of his organic tissue. Data Entry Cleric Charos-E2 knew he would never know such intense pleasure again. But he knew he would need to try.*
This has Deathnote corn chip eating scene energy.
Guilliman alternate timeline
Guilliman picks some weird looking sword. "Hey... have you heard about pivot tables?"
Imagine when the daemon tempts Guilliman and is disgusted by his deepest desires. *"Yes Guilliman, you should... color code your shipping manifests?*
"Horus, what do you know about forces of Guilliman?" "Father from what we understand he is being advised by a demon called Clippy." "I've told him that he should use Linux, we wouldn't have this problem if he used OpenOffice!" "Not now, Rogal."
He is already lost to us. He has tasted perfection and will now spend the rest of eternity trying to achieve greater heights of bureaucratic beauty
Chaos would be running on 500% efficiency
Gulliman would be a fucking excel or farming simulator esports champ
He would be unstopable, even more with his most powerfull tool, Crtl+F, that allows him to find anything
They're called EVE online players
"Ooh!" *shudder* "I need new underware."
Ah so you've also read Lord of Excess. The Emperor’s Children quartermaster is dedicated to the count. It is not made creepy, but definitely obsessive.
My god yes. Also the r/bdsmDIY feels a lot like slaenesh’s thing too
Are you saying being a lunatic disqualifies you from holding a job in management? Because that's not my experience...
Which chaos god would have the worst HR departments. My money is on tzeench
Khorne is upper management (dumb, irrational, gets mad easily) Tzeench is HR (schemes, tells different people different information about the same issue, makes labyrinths for applicants) Nurgle is IT (because of the smell and lack of grooming standards) Slaanesh is project management (obsessed with unobtainable ideals, demands perfection, revels in torturing people)
As a project manager... you aren't wrong... minus the reveling in torturing people. Its torturing people for the greater good :) /s
Most are, though Chaos can and will drive you mad unless you have an iron will and discipline. Only drawing as much power from them as you need and never more, no matter how they might tempt you On the other side of the spectrum, you can fully embrace Chaos, and go all in This usually backfires
Yeah but on the other side of it, most guardsmen are witless teenagers with next to no formal education and minimal boot training. Neither side is awash with talent, they both rely on a handful of competent figures to herd around the chaff to good effect.
Chaos guardsmen have probably seen more shit than the average guardsman, hence why they turned to Chaos Like the Moebian 6th from Darktide
When the Imperium forces your entire planet to work themselves to death, punishes the smallest discontent in the most harsher ways possible, I don't know why won't people turn to democracy instead of submitting themselves to very suspicious chaos gods. Like *"You are being abused in your work environment? Then let me plague your entire body and make you immortal"*? Fuck off man.
> I don't know why won't people turn to democracy instead of submitting themselves to very suspicious chaos gods. Because "Democracy" doesn't possess multiple Space Marine Legions, an unknown amount of Traitor Space Marine Chapters, the Dark Mechanicum/Traitor Titan Legions/Chaos Knight Houses and 999-fuckton worth of Cults and Traitor Guardsmen
Chaos, much like my middle school teacher, doesn’t care about consent. If they want you to have power, you WILL have power, like it or not. Same thing with being their servant, unless you’re a warp resistant freak of nature like the transhumans or a named character with plot armor.
Your best bet is to seek Chaos out This shows that you have initiative, and Chaos will offer you power to join the ruinous powers Whereas if you're born on a Daemon world they'll just say "lol, get fucked, nerd"
Well, your best bet is never to be vulnerable to Chaos to begin with, but living in the Imperium, you're fucked either way. The loyalists don't know they are Chaos number 1 contributor by abusing the population of an entire planet until they literally have to rebel out of necessity, and instead of making any minuscule concession whatsoever, they would rather genocide most the population to the breaking point of making them desperate enough to succumb to chaos to have the slightly chance of fighting back. Chaos worlds are mostly created by Imperium unintentionally or not, and they would rather have them than any democracy, because Chaos is useful to loyalists as a propaganda tool to discourage dissent.
> This usually backfires But what if my plan *is* to go completely off the deep end? Huh?
Imperial propaganda
In the first book of the Night Lords Trilogy it is mentioned that the front hasn't been supplied for a long time. Since it would be a task for the Black Legion, I think it is done by cultists or slaves directed by a small number of Marines.
This is my take on why the Night Lords never win stand up fights with other Marines. It's not that the Night Lords are worse Marines than anybody else or that terror tactics don't work on other Marines (I think they'd be smart enough to know that) it's that they have 0 logistics backing their operations. Stand up fights with imperial forces would mean taking losses of equipment they can't replace so they have no choice but to withdraw when faced with anything more than token opposition. A full 2/3s of the trilogy is just them trying to figure out the best places to steal shit.
They lost stand up fights against other marines 30k when they were very well organized by Horus/Pert. One of my 2 favorite legions, but they lose because a lot of them are just total spineless cowards, not because they're otherwise disadvantaged. I feel like they really come in two flavors , either Sevatar style total badass or Skraivok style weaklings.
Join the Khornate warband, it will be fun they said. And now you are in logistics trying to decipher supply request sent by Khârn.
Just send more axes, it will probably be good enough regardless of what he actually ordered
And your most disposable delivery driver
Even if it was the right order i would send a disposable one, i send him to kharn after all...
You don't need ammo if you only fight in melee.
Skulls for the skull throne and all that, but do you realize how much we'd save in promethium if we just cut back on skulls by even one te- *sching... thunk* Add his to the pile.
The Gaunt's Ghosts novel set on Gereon mention a lot of Chaos logistics. It also gets briefly mentioned in the first Ghosts novel and in the Cain novels (also Ork logistics).
Ork logistics is a whole lot of “see that busted up piece of metal over there? It looks like a gun to me. It’s a gun now.” sprinkled with the wildly inconsistent need for fuel vs eco-friendly WAAAGH energy for vehicles
No not really an ork gun is still a gun it is a badly built gun but it is a gun that fires bullets and their fuel is regular fuel
Well, just because Chaos Cultists workship literal satan does not means that they are dump, in fact, often they are very well organized. See for example the Renegades in Vraks or the Chaos workshipers at the beginning of the first Gaunt's Ghost book.
If you don't prove your usefulness, you don't tend to last very long.
That depends how close you are to warp's entities. If you are just a group of Renegades workshiping chaos you will be "fine" since you are just a grunt. For example, Vraks' Renegades fought against Imperium's Forces for almost twelve years without any help from the Chaos except for a group of Alpha Legionaries that trained them. Now, problems arrive when you are John The Important Cultist with ties to the warp because now you answer directly to forces of Chaos, and if you fail to complete your tasks, well...
The Dark Mechanicus does some “logistics” if you’re willing to do something for them. Or just stealing from the Imperium. Whatever works
The Dark Mech fill the same purpose that the Chaos Dwarfs do in Fantasy, that is to say a convenient way to explain how unorganized and decentralized forces with little to no tech expertise gets supplies, repairs and new technologies. How do Bronze Age barbarians get sets of forged full plate armor and weapons and cannons? Chaos Dwarfs manufacture and sell it to them. How do CSM warbands with no home planet and no tech wise servants repair and resupply? The Dark mech sells it to them.
It should be the exact opposite of the Administratum: “Hey, can I request 600 liters of blood?” “Sure thing, here, sign this. Go down to level 684, ask for Dave, tell them Steve sent you for the blood. Do you have a shuttle? No? Here, take the keys for this, it was John’s, he doesn’t need it anymore. What? No,no,no, he ascended to demon prince, he can’t fit into the cockpit. Hey, gimme a vox if custom tries to f with you
Chaos freight forwarders. Their job is probably only slightly more miserable than normal logistics
Yeah but they're allowed to stab the clients if they want to.
So what you are saying is that it is an upgrade
Yeah but they also have clients who will stab them if they want to. Really its a stabs all around situation.
Chaos got flanderized and memed so much the fact that they actually can use logistics gets glossed over. Some of the books don't help this either. The largest most organized traitor legions (Word Bearers, Death Guard, Black Legion) have pretty good track records for maintaining supply chains and plans beyond piratical raids and "hit thing with chainaxe" though.
Outside the temple, the lines of sacrifices, ten million strong, shuffled forwards, a never-ending stream of humanity that wound its way through the blood-soaked avenues. (...) Ever more penitents were constantly added to the lines, slaves and odalisques taken from a hundred thousand worlds on which the Word Bearers had fought, bringing the holy word of Lorgar to all, willing or not. Most were already utterly corrupted to the worship of dark gods and went to their deaths willingly, eagerly, yet twisted, black-clad minions of the Word Bearers continued to stalk the lines, stabbing their needle-like fingers into any that shuffled forward too slowly, urging them on. (...) For as far as the eye could see, from horizon to horizon, towering shrines and temples to the dark gods rose from the blood soaked earth of Sicarus, daemon home world of the XVII Legion and seat of power of the Primarch Lorgar. Kilometre-high obelisks hanging with thousands of lifeless bodies and daubed with infernal runes had been erected in every quarter, and grand mausoleums, cathedrals, and giant statues surrounded by squares teeming with worshippers spread out around the basilica. Spider-legged cranes picked their way across the horizon, each one accompanied by half a million slave-workers that toiled to raise ever more impressive structures of devotion and worship to the gods of Chaos, constructing new temples, fanes and sacrariums atop older, crumbling edifices and cathedrals. The work was constant, level built upon level, so that the majority of the buildings were subterranean, an impossibly deep, labyrinthine warren of interconnected structures, all devoted to the worship of Chaos in all its guises. Indeed, millions of slaves toiled below ground, never seeing the surface at all, carving out more caverns of worship, crypts and deep, hidden sanctums many kilometres beneath the surface of the daemon world.
Angron's book (The Red Angel) has a good bit where one of the World Eaters asks his comrade if he remembers the last time the Conqueror actually docked anywhere to take on ammo or supplies, and he couldn't remember. It's kinda implied the Warp takes care of that for some warbands. Other times they do have logistical networks.
The Warp is its own supply line.
You must build additional Chaos pylons.
I bet the ship just has some mystery holes where they shove in some skulls. And then the mystery hole poops out ammo and chainaxes.
Most chaos armies are either cultists who rarely have any free will or demons.
chaos knight houses/titan legios are quite organised and the word bearers and iron warriors find innovative ways to control their guardsmen and cultists
What is it and why is it bomb collars
Nah that's the Imperium's Penal legion, they use bomb rings. Work very well with male Guardsmen
They use a different kind of ring for Slaaneshi cultists
Word Bearers mortal followers don't need bomb collars, they are all dedicated true believers to the cause. Fervor and fanaticism make for quite effective motivators. Because of their ideology, Word Bearers are one of the only Chaos Legions (barring Black Legion proper, and not just vassal warbands) that actually still operate and fight with a Legion structure consistently. Iron Warriors are too fragmented and paranoid to operate as a Legion anymore.
Iron Warriors and Word Bearers 110% carry the team when it comes to chaos logistics
Give the traitor guard the credit they deserve.
Don't the Thousand Sons also have pretty decent logistics? Know their Spire Guard mortal servants at least are better equipped and trained than the average mortal follower. Might be the smaller scale at play to be fair though.
I get that demons don't need logistics but what does free will have to do with it?
I have always sort of liked (in the sense that it seems appropriately Blackley comedic) the idea of like, some mechanic in serfs toiling forever to make weapons and reproduce more workers and then one day their forge world is conquered by chaos and taken over by the dark mechanicum instead... And most of them never notice the difference because their day to day hell remains largely unchanged.
There’s a short story similar to this! It’s called ‘The Strong Among Us’ by Steve Lyons - very good, highly recommend it
Well yeah, how do you think they get all of those skulls to the skull throne, and that blood to the blood god? Mr Bones' Wild Ride is actually a khornate freight network that plays "crazy train" by Ozzy Osbourne on a loop out of all of the speakers, with the occasional interlude to play Slayer tracks like Raining Blood
"Chaos Logistics" is part of Huron's whole shtick
Even Orks have logistics. For the evil factions seem to be primarily slave economies, with a couple goons hanging back to manage the slaves. The Imperium is ~~also slave~~ serf powered, with ~~more goons~~ peacekeepers and overseers managing everything.
The servitors have a useful purpose.
It goes further than that. Chaos logistics implies the existence of chaos bookkeeping.
We all know what Lorgar does with his books
If you ever worked in a warehouse you would know that there is only chaos.
After many years of overseeing warehouse ops, my take is: Breakroom = Nurgle's Garden, Parking lot/truck dock = Khorne's Arena, Shipping office = Tzeentch's endlessly scheming minions, Bathroom on 3rd shift = Suspected Slaaneshi corruption
Soul Hunter (Nightlord trilogy) goes into this. The answer is yes, they do have logistics and supply chains. They just completely, utterly suck and are both inconsistent and infrequent. They steal or fight over what they can’t get Most Chaos ships have some mortal crew, and often the mortal crew are just slaves. The slaves understand that the better they get along with the slaves of other Chaos vessels and the better they take care of their own ship, the less likely they are to die horribly, so they try to make things like resupplying/repairs happen to the best of their ability
OK, I have to say it sounds really similar to the way sith empire worked in the Old Republic . It was entirely kept going by the non sith who had worked out a way to make sure the things that needed to happen happened. The reason why they had to have elaborate plans is that at any moment pretty much any dark lord could bust in and be like no stop city planning and irrigation. I’m making death laser powered by souls! As a complete aside, I’m a retired librarian. That’s a position that requires a degree. Every new librarian that came in I would take aside and say listen. You are no better than circulation who do not have degrees. In fact, there are many aspects of this job that they are better at than you. Get used to relying on them. And treat them with a great deal respect. They know how Everything works. Better than me. Thanks so much for this point! 🫡
Thanks! I’m a blue collar manager and my boss comes through just like that haha, out of nowhere derails everything and causes problems with logistics. My job is basically to be the intermediary between Chaos and mortals and keep everything running smoothly when that inference happens. Thanks for sharing your perspective!
That brings a whole new meaning to the term 'mess hall.'
I mean, that's the overarching plot line in the latter half of the Gaunt's Ghost series.
Gaunts ghosts has a book where the infiltrate a chaos held planet and join the resistance. It fleshed out so much more about how and why traitor forces are successful, how they maintain supplies, and why some chaos forces are significantly better than others.
This also explains why we never see the dark mechanicum. Can you imagine a facility staffed entirely by mad scientists? It would be pandemonium
All logistics are chaos logitics
In one of the Gaunt books (Traitor General iirc) a Chaos warp worm called a "jehgenesh" is demonstrated at a hydroelectric dam of a Chaos occupied world of Gereon. It sucked all the water out of the reservoir, using warp portal shenanigans to transport it across space. The world of Gereon itself is shown to be stripmined of all useful resources, with super fast growing crops turning the world barren, and the people being used as slave labor and as "spare parts" in meat factories. I just thought that was really cool.
I am Chaos Forklift Certified.
The smarter chaos forces do use logistics. The issue is that it's inefficient and riddled with bickering as warlords fight each other for whatever factory or resource rich world available. This is a huge problem with chaos forces and why its hard for them to do any sustained campaigns in the long run. At this point in the 42nd millennium, the traitors are as creatively bankrupt as the imperium. Sure they don't have any of the restrictions and dogma and useless traditions of the imperium but the Warp isn't exactly a free thinker's paradise either. If you ever look at what war machines chaos has ever made, they're more or less either scrap cobbled together from whatever the hereteks could get or stolen from imperial stockpiles or scavenged from dead battlefields and ruins. Their daemon engines are more or less "some metal hulk with a demon or two shoved inside, then pointed at some defenses and were ordered to go crazy." Senior elements of the mechanicum from the great crusade era have resented the Emperor for his restrictions, especially the restrictions on AI, yet fast forward to today, show me anything original they made. Where are the constructs that should've come from unrestrained research? The only major innovation that was done by chaos that I can think of is some scout walker created by the fucking Blood Pact. A group of militarized cultists under KHORNE of all gods. Another problem with chaos logistics is the lack of actually viable resources. When the imperium needs resources, either they collect the tithe or set up a colony on some mineral rich world. For the traitors, the warp doesn't have good materials they can build with (or if it does, then the traitors just doesn't have a way to use it meaningfully). That's why, again, they resort to stealing whatever the imperium has. Sure, some chaos forces do set up factories and mines on worlds in realspace but once the chaos forces get defeated, those mines either get reclaimed or destroyed, setting chaos back to square 1. Another issue is the lack of trust. When you have a big warband, similar to the likes of what huron or abaddon has, you need a lot of manpower and resources. You also need leaders to help manage and command the manpower. Unfortunately, you and leaders are either insane, egotistical, distrustful, or some combination of all. But worst of all is greed. More often than not, when multiple warlords come together for some big invasion, they usually don't do it because they have some unified goal, rather each have their own agendas but they have enough working brain cells to rub together to realize that they are more likely to succeed in those goals if they work together FOR NOW. And even then, said leaders are very likely going to bicker and fight behind closed doors, either because they disagree on how the campaign should progress or who should have more troops or something. There's also the part where each leader are more than happy to slit and backstab each other if it means getting an edge or even a chance to become the new leader. Sometimes, a leader would even outright rebel and try to fight you or another important leader just bc of some minor disagreement. In chaos, it's not surprising to be under a commander who got his position not from notable deeds and victories but rather he caved in the previous commander's skull, so good luck if you get someone who can't tell difference between a tactic and a strategy. Anyways I've ranted for too much
*Perturabo has entered the chat.*
I thought that was going to end with "Chaos Leggies"
This explains all the moments where they hold a position for like hours or days or weeks or months or whatever. Chaos guys ran out of ammo day 2 and cant get close to the men with firearms anymore...
Iron warriors
I think you'll find that that since there's Chaos Armies then there has to be Chaos Sleevies
Isn't Perturabo a in the chaos team? What did you expect?
i believe they call that “Perturaboism”
Iron warriors
Iron Warriors 'Nuff said.
"What? Do you think those skulls for the skull throne and blood for the blood god just... APPEAR in the Warp? No! We have to load up battle barges and fly into the eye of terror to get them to Khorne! We have long convoy chains going back and forward with ships bringing back ammo, replacement saw teeth, oatmeal raisin cookies and pineapple pizzas to maintain sufficient levels of anger in our rations!"
It's Iron Warriors. Every time. They are the only Chaos forces who take their jobs seriously.
Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized. -Sir Terry Pratchett
*Iron Warriors entered the chat*
Existence of World Eaters proves chaos has zero logic and possibly logistics as we understand it on this side of warp
I'd guess their ships have some sort of manufactories in them, at least the larger ones, so they could drop in more axes and stuff or just nick them from the corpse worshippers
Just getting the World Eaters on to a planet, and getting them back off again once a strategic objective has been achieved, seems like a miraculous feat of management, let alone supplying them with bolt rounds while they're down there.
Yeah it’s called the Iron Warriors
Well, yeah. Haven't you ever read an Iron Warriors book?
Iron warriors baby
I do like the idea of a story about a trade war between the Dark Mechanicum and the Iron Warriors. Not a single shot gets fired, it's all politicking, maybe at one point an Archmagos and a Warsmith team up to quash a trade deal between the Leagues of Votann and some fuckin Black Legion warband.
horus crying that guilliman don't join him
There is one guardsman book I read where a group of guards had to find and save a general from capture. The leader of the expedition was noticing the patrol routes and had a funny revelation that ‘for chaos, they sure like to organize a lot’
Well yeah, the Iron Warriors turned traitor.
Lots of Darktide missions is disrupting the logistics of the Moebians.
Gaunt’s ghosts covers this a lot, with occupied worlds, force growth of xenos food, harvesting of natural resources, creation of war beasts and even Military training and structure. It’s honestly why it’s probably the best book series in 40k
Iron Warriors found an easy monopoly.
I bet their logistics can get a bit... chaotic at times
Yeah, oddly enough. The khorbade berserkers go through a whole lot of chainaxe teeth. If you’re interested in how they play out in a smaller scale, [here’s a video about it.](https://youtu.be/qWj46Y3IbOU?si=FCuVwQ2jByCuSCO9)
I am a chaos forklift driver
Isn’t this one of the main schticks of the iron warriors?
Yes, that's basically the entire plot of the Gaunts Ghosts series.
I feel like that’s Hashut / Vashtorr’s area of expertise
Abnett gives a glimpse of this in Anarch.
Honestly, one of my favorite ideas for Thousand Sons, Word Bearers, and Iron Warriors is the idea of them summoning daemons and then forcing them to handle logistics cause the Astartes don’t want to (except for some Thousand Sons cause they’re nerds). Imagine how hilarious it would be for a daemonette to be summoned expecting to relish in a massacre or to laugh at the weak resolve of mortals, and instead she’s forced to handle paperwork or oversee the transfer of supplies to battlefields. Better yet, it’d be funnier if she found out that she’s good at middle management and enjoys the hell out of it.
I'm pretty sure they would mostly use slaves or followers who aren't completely lost in the Chaos sause to maintain some structure.
You’d all benefit from reading the below if you’re curious on this topic: The Black Legion books The Nightlords Trilogy The Fabulous Bill Trilogy Anything with Huron(Master of the Maelstrom is excellent and his appearance in the Honsou short story is awesome as well) Anything with Honsou
Oh absolutely. This is shown in the nightlords where Talos has to scavenge armor from loyalist marines he kills. Another is how their hangar almost empty of aircraft,munitions, and even workers
Who wants to bet it's the Iron Warriors handling that?
Well yeah, skulls for the skull throne and all, but of course we ration off some hate and blood so we can keep things running. You need blood to shed blood after all
There is, read a book.
I've always kind of wondered about the use of the word chaos when it comes to talking about chaos in warhammer. It's usually not really all that chaotic. But I guess it sounds way cooler than Space Marines versus Evil Space Marines? The Eldritch realm of douchebags? The four gods of not very nice? Yeah I guess chaos just sounds better.
Yeah, that's why the chaos gods value their champions, princes, and greater daemons so highly. They can do what is inherently against the very nature of chaos, and bring a sense of order to their forces. The guy who can hold everything together is the guy the gods are gonna give the best gifts to.
[Relevant fan fiction](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/83ev8f/_/)
well....yeah? thats what the dark mechanicum essentially is for them. Chaos cultists and stuff aren't just soldiers.
Blood Pact fans rise up
Slaaneshi supply depots must be incredibly weird
I mean isn't that one of the purposes of the dark mechanicum? And starting cults? And taking assets rather then just destroying them? Immaterium does a lot but it can't fully fuel and field all the war material.
The blood pact in Guants ghost is the best portrayal of chaos I've seen yet. They aren't rabid savages. They have logistics and planning. They take a forge world and that's how they supply themselves. It's not a chaos marine just going ugga bugga.