40K - MALICE/MALAL - THE 5TH GOD OF CHAOS & RENEGADE ASTARTES | Warhammer 40,000 Lore/History

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] well here we all are again having recently spoken about things being Canon and not it seemed to me the most sensible starting point to move on to something safe something less controversial something regularly requested by you all and so that's why I've chosen to talk today about a much celebrated figure for some of the minor chaos God known as malice mercy before anything else it's important to be aware that much like the terms mechanical and mechanicus which are constantly incorrectly placed sometimes even in official material the titles of morale and malice are also regularly confused and misused as either referring to the same thing or as separate entities but mixed up and placed incorrectly likely many of you know this story in the details but I'd expect that just as many do not which is why I decided to include morale in the title so I can hopefully catch all and explain this regardless though today we're primarily talking about malice now I'll expand specifically on the issue of Molalla later but the most critical thing to know is that morale was a figure from the Warhammer Fantasy verse it has never been a thing at any time in 40k nor is it ever likely to be within the galaxy of 40k we speak about the largely unseen a mysterious entity known only as malice now it is also important to address straight out of the gate that many people will consider malice to be something that is no longer stablished and recognized in the law and for my own sanity I will avoid using the r-word however it will probably pleased many of you with less sweating palms to know that I consider this not to be the case and as usual I will hopefully illustrate to you with very clear reference why that is most notably is that despite it not being very explicitly stated malice has been referenced in some form via the third fourth fifth seventh and some of you might be shocked to learn eight a 40k via the suns of malice not only in the novel Kade stands where they are quite literally being described as active not merely mentioned as an aside but they also appear via the 2019 battlefleet gothic armada 2 game which I will now play for you to illustrate the scalar sub sector is located to the galactic West of the eye of terror its capital planet scalars is a feral world and was once the homeworld of the sons of malice wants loyal Space Marines they turned on the Imperium in the years leading to the 13th Black Crusade the original name of the sons of malice has been lost to Imperial record but it is speculated that they were one of the twenty chapters of the ax start hist priestess a founding created with the express purpose of safeguarding the region surrounding the eye of terror the cold and unforgiving wastes of scalers provide the sons of malice no shortage of barbaric recruits indeed the sons foul religious practices trace their origins to those of the tribesmen from which they sprang a scouring conducted by the kadian 330 first was thought to have ended these are isley traditions certainly the natives with Lord exterminated and the sons of malice never known now quite simply what more proof do you require I could poly just leave it there ready but I'll note that the most explicit reference comes from the 2009 fifth edition short story the labyrinth focused entirely on the sons of malice now granted this is only a short story it's only 25 pages long it's part of an anthology but it does give a good amount of background to the sons of malice and even to malice and given all that I've mentioned already it seems that the elder are not the only ones using obscure pieces of law reference from the third edition that are currently forming 8 sedition law and this I would hope makes it immediately clear that it's far more difficult for anyone to make the argument against malice than it is for it in the galaxy of the 42nd millennium I also hope that this adds to my conversation recently about what is and isn't considered established or yes I'll say it can--it now I will also make a note of a relatively common contention that some people claim which is that malice is not in fact a God of any kind and instead malice is something more akin to say a powerful demon now it would be wrong of me to say that this was an impossibility but I personally think it's fairly clear that this is not the intention it's also revealed in the labyrinth that the sons of malice successfully reveal an unusual and disturbing ability that is for malice to appear by being summoned into reality now this obviously creates some problems because with the main gods of chaos they can project other demons and entities into the material space into reality using the walk to do so but they can't actually exist in the material itself or we've never seen any case or example that was able to happen but demons however we know are able to do this albeit requiring a vessel in which to do so which is something like what malice does so this one is definitely something that I replace into the unknown category not to mention there's only a singular reference to it so it is open to interpretation however I base my assessment that malice is a minor god on the greater understanding we have of the story related to morale malice but even within the context of in the galaxy in the universe itself you could still see it as being a god-like entity many because the suns of malice assert that it is we don't have anything really to counter that but as I've said it myself before it's the warp it's all a jumbled mess so who really knows what's real and what's not for the sake of argument though I will continue on my position that malice is what believed to be what's referred to as a minor chaos God we know of course the four main chaos God's corn zinc Nergal and slowness along with these in the warp are many strange entities and spirits which have no particular love for mortal creatures either and who will regularly attempt to assault and prey upon those who enter its realm not to mention things like the insidious enslavers it has also been theorized that there could potentially be more minor chaos gods of what we referred to as chaos now some will consider this completely enviable out of the gate and not establish within the law and this is true when we're talking about minor chaos gods there's not really anything particularly substantial malice really stands out however as I explained in the last video some things are simply more established than others when it comes to chaos and the warp in my opinion almost anything is really up for grabs because it's just about the most uncertain poorly defined aspect of the entire 40 K verse so could there be more weirdo things in the vast vast space of the warp that we barely understand at all there's no way that you could say that there couldn't be and currently I've been thinking about this more I've started to think about overlapping realities mixed timelines different visions of interpretation a lot of people have asked me questions like well if what you're talking about cannon and retcon is true looting how could the 13th Black Crusade have happened in one way and then another way how can that all kind of work together well you know this is getting back into my hold dark origins chaos thing which I have got on the way and the dark origins of chaos thinking about the warp and how it functions and what it means and time and all this kind of stuff you can start to get into things like alternate timelines overlapping reality and all this kind of stuff now I don't think that kind of thing is going to necessarily be applicable at all places at all times because obviously that would be kind of silly but just on a slight tangents here in the context of KBA and we're talking about the warp and time lines in the 13th Black Crusade the way in which the galaxy was torn apart you could certainly imagine that there was some very mixed up things happening there in terms of time and vision and where people are seeing things and what's actually happening so I think there's some sphere some scope for movement there's some suspension of disbelief which can happen there which enables those things to work so my point is just that like I said already when it comes to the warp it's this very shifting moving entity where there's a lot of stuff people don't understand there's a lot of things that you can't possibly understand just by kind of definition and so that enables some leeway when it comes to a lot of details and how things work and again that's not going to sit very well for some people some people hate that some people want to have a nice clearly locked down story this is what happens at this date this is what happens at this date but honesty that just isn't how 40k works but malice itself is an intriguing entity because unlike the other chaos gods who fight against each other but ultimately want to achieve some form of complete domination which is also believed to be impossible for them to achieve hence their unending great game which always continues on unabated malice does not seek this in fact it's not really clear what ultimate go malice has but on a more basic level malice desires like the higher gods to wage war against one another however unlike those higher gods one thing that does seem clear is that malice seeks to just destroy for the pure sink of destruction unclouded and a filtered meaningless wanton destruction be that against chaos or indeed anything else even itself so is malice a good chaos God clearly the answer is no in fact you could almost make the argument that the four major chaos gods are more positive than malice because at least they embody some constructive aspects like the Honorable mortal combat for corn ambition and desire for zinc Hope utter despair for Nergal pleasure and again also desire for sloane ash now to be clear all of those things are twisted to insane extremes but at least at their core basic level they are positive somewhat constructive things whereas there is really nothing positive at all about malice nothing at all unless you want to get into the twisted ideas that I've talked about before in terms of perception of what is good and bad and if you came from one own perspective how that could be distorted in terms of coming out of the war but for malice it's simply self-destructive mindless carnage with no ultimate goal no constructive gain no wider plan it's just meaningless irrational obliteration malice is not seeking destruction of the other chaos God to acquire power or for any moral purpose it represents anarchy and pure - destruction it is the ethereal manifestation of this mentality that humans will demonstrate where they kill and destroy and wreak havoc for no other purpose than just because the emotional impact of such mindless destruction suffering has often been seen to be far more damaging than those caused by war for other reasons pestilence or greed for humans mindless slaughter and destruction of achievements for no reason is one of the most difficult things to rationalize and come to terms with malice also represents something akin to a powerful self disgust a hatred of human nature and moreover a deep hatred of one's self essentially it's meant to comprise all the concepts we consider to be mindless see self destruct it's where people become completely lost souls and spiral down into a deep pit of feeling worthless and maybe leading to physical damage even via slow poisoning with drugs and other excesses as well as physical self-harm even suicide additionally those feelings towards oneself can be accompanied by a complete and total apathy for any consequences for the individual or for the wider impact upon others essentially for a mortal reaching a point where you care so little about anything you no longer care about the wider impact this self-destructive nature may have to some degree this could be seen as being almost emotionless which seems a strange contradiction for a chaos God who we know gain a lot of power from the extremes of emotion so it's possible we don't fully understand how malice feeds off of this it could be that this concentrated apathy almost becomes something like an emotion even though it's not an emotion there are references in the labyrinth that talk about malice is divine gifts of untold power that would send his elite most exalted warriors to walk the dark paths of the galaxy slaying their enemies with cold efficiency this theme of cold efficiency and behaving with no emotion comes up again and again with the sons of malice as I've postulated before I don't believe faith alone is what feeds chaos or the Emperor and this should be especially obvious with the emperor because of how he requires being fed constantly with sacrifice because faith isn't really an emotion it's a committed realization to your belief system now that can still provide you with solace and confidence it can make you feel things but it in and of itself is not a feeling even though it can sort of appear that way if you want to hear my expanded thoughts about this thing go and watch my Emperor part 3 video and the addendum which comes after but where this leads me to is perhaps an understanding of why it is that malice is not a more significant power because although it doesn't seem to represent a specific sphere of emotion it does have other things going on for it as I mentioned already and in knowing that we can know that the other chaos gods represent more like feelings through actions than just pure specific emotion so I think it can well be that the extremity of your actions and how much they're focused toward a specific God does have relevance it's also worth considering that a synonym for malice is also spite which obviously aligns with the actions of its followers and core principles to enact suffering on others intentionally to hurt to upset even when those actions might cause the person who is fighting harm themself as well spiteful actions and words are delivered so that is clear the individual delivering them is doing so only so as to annoy or hurt or upset the individual they're directed toward also it's worth noting that the other chaos gods collect huge amounts of power from humanity in general as well as from those who specifically worship them with more extreme actions whereas something like malice it has very few who follow it from our understanding as well as these wider actions of spiteful behavior - destruction and carnage which are likely happening within humanity malice is though a difficult entity to place because as any number of chaos followers who form chaos undivided will also engage in actions that could be viewed similarly as a way to attract the attention or gain an audience with an entity a demon of the war the knight Lords chaos Space Marines for example may regularly keep people in a state of perpetual agony as a way of utilizing their suffering not completely dissimilar actually to the Dark Eldar except that obviously one is using it to attract chaos and the other is using it to keep them at bay but one night Lord for example in order to connect with the demon was just burning through many prisoners methodically fleeing them to death on a marble slab like raw pieces of meat one after the other until the whole floor the torture chamber was basically an ocean of blood and the bodies were just discarded as gibbering rax nearby this is one reason why malice is an awkward creation and why it sort of sits in between all the other gods because you have other Marines other chapters doing very similar things so how come they don't kind of align it's a difficult entity to frame I think if I had to choose a rationalization I would say that the followers of malice derive some gratification from this continual wanton destruction or even self-destructive attitudes except that this doesn't even seem to have to be physical it could also be similarly to zinc by way of creating disruption and anarchy through surreptitious actions the more I've come to think about it malice to me seems to sit not out side of the main gods but in a way at the center of them it's more a combination of clearly not all but a select group of aspects from the more destructive elements of those gods so in many ways you might say that with their powers combined they can summon malice destroyer of worlds [Music] so now we come to the Space Wing chapter the sons of malice and they are traitors to the Imperium much like chaos Marines but unlike cows Marines they were not immediately designated as traitors but originally referred to as a renegade chapter at least in the eyes of the Imperium this means they are not considered to have been corrupted by chaos now in the more current period for the sons of malice this obviously seems no longer to be the case but this is probably because the Imperium initially did not fully understand what had happened to the sons of malice then later due to their ongoing behavior this became more clarified and now they are most certainly seen as heretics it's also unclear what their original chapter designation was before the sons of malice because such records have long since been purged and before we get into more details about the sons of malice there's a couple of red flags I discovered that we need to cover now the first is that sometimes you might read reference about a sons of malice chapter master by Col Drock now despite this character being on the 40k wiki and disgusting dotted places online as far as I can determine this originates entirely from a fanfiction not from any official material I have trolled through all existing material about the sons of malice these past two days most of which I physically own and I found no mention of this figure anywhere in any shape or form or even alluded to which goes to show as I always say don't believe everything on the wiki many people don't seem to realize that much of but certainly in my experience not all but indeed most material on 40k wiki's are basically verbatim copy pastes from official material so that means usually you're solid however you sometimes get these odd references creep in that have been mentioned somewhere sometime on an obscure forum and then somehow ended up on a wiki in relation to the drug thing hilariously the guy himself who actually wrote the fanfiction even put in his post saying this is hilarious I've seen people quoting this as a real thing now now this is actually very bad because what I'm a 40,000 is confusing enough as it is but when you start having things like this becoming accepted and talked about before you know people are starting to call Bane blade a Scout tank anyway who knows how these things get to happening but in this specific instance what I think has made it more believable for people is that the named McHale Drock is very obviously an anagram of caleb dark and this was the original chaos champion in the actual material for morale now I said this is an anagram it's barely moving a couple of letters but you know anyway on the wiki it also talks about a gene seed origin which also seems to be complete speculation and fan fiction from this same headcanon so in regards to both unless somebody can point me at a specific piece of material where either these things are mentioned I'm adding it on to my pile of unofficial misdirections along with my favorite Bane blade Scout tank and the classic grandfather Nergal people thinking this actually means something when it has absolutely is zero to do with chaos god chronology the only senior figure we see officially mentioned for the Sons of malice and who is very definitely a chapter master is one Lord Castle but wait I'm not done yet there's also another semi common confusion surrounding the Sons of malice where they're designated as being one of 20 spaceman chapters referred to as the starties priestess now apparently the mere mention of the number 20 combined with the word estar T's is enough to make people freak out and start wild assumptions that somehow despite the timelines being totally out of whack they are one of the two missing original 20 legions now it's so obviously not this that I feel stupid even having to state it but for clarity know the Sons of malice were not one of the two missing legions purged from the original 20 estar T's and then all Imperial records were expunged the estar T's precess was simply 20 chapters founded after the heresy to guard the regions surrounding the eye of terror so it has nothing at all to do with the legions themselves at the beginning so with those interesting caveats done we can return to the sons of malice and when it comes to chapters who have turned traitor the numbers who have done this can only be estimated at why they do so is difficult to say though some circumstances of such rebellion can be at least theorized even within the ranks of the adapters mini storm no clerics drawn between two different worlds are going to share the same view of the nature of the god even that they worship the Asafa call debates rage divided in their understanding of the Emperor's divinity we see this in the Inquisition as well but despite they're agreed figure of worship debate is still gonna occasionally turn into division and division into aggression and this happens all throughout the Imperium so a great many worlds are going to express their devotion to the emperor in a relatively unique manner or at least on a sliding scale and this also applies to Space Wing chapters who may choose to revere the emperor and their own pry marks in a manner that's fairly unique to themselves many will adore him not as a god but as a founder and patron of the space moon legions while the beliefs of other chapters may diverge even further these deviations have occasionally led to frictions and even open conflict between us starties themselves and adapt as minister Amun now such a conflict is unlikely to arise from a simple difference of opinion however for no matter how abhorrent a member of the ecclesia key may find the beliefs of a space wing chapter or quizzes for that matter there's no denying that the space winds are the living embodiment of the emperor's divine Roth and their mandate is granted by the Emperor himself now open conflict is more likely to arise from the actions of a clerics a overstepping their bounds of authority it can only be assumed that insanity treachery or worse perhaps demonic or alien intervention with in most cases lie at the heart of the matter but on occasion it may be that an Inquisitor who moves against a chapter for many Astarte such an action would be completely intolerable and for inquisitors this would only be considered in the absolute most extreme of circumstances because an entire chapter of space moines is a foe that a few armies could hope to challenge and upon declaring such a chapter x community artists an Inquisitor will attempt to determine the root cause of the rebellion in order to gauge the potential obstacles there's going to be in neutralizing it should an inquisitors suspect the corruption of chaos as the reason for the chapters fall from grace then grey knights might be mobilized should doctrinal heresy prove the immediate cause then elite to the adapter serratus might be the only force considered capable of prosecuting a war of faith against the wayward chapter in any regard as such an event is of such importance they will likely attract the attention of commander of the Imperium even an Inquisitor would not bring forth such accusations without irrefutable evidence and in saying this actually gaining that evidence against a suspected renegade chapter would usually be near to impossible and reason for this is that even loyal chapters view outsiders with caution but not admit them to their inner sanctum without express rationalization for doing so and in the rare instance of a chapter actually publicly abandoning its vows to the Emperor and obviously no investigation would be necessary as the evidence would be clearly visible and damning in the extreme again it is not recorded exactly how many chapters have been purged in this way as all record of their existence will be expunged upon their defeat but it can be estimated that as many as a dozen chapters have been completely destroyed and subsequently deleted from record while a small number of others have been declared excommunicated and then these are still at large somewhere in the galaxy the bad AB uprising demonstrated that there can in fact exist degrees of rebellion aside from the astral clause three other chapters rebelled against the rule of the Imperium during the conflict the lament 'as executioner's and the Mantis legion who are also known as the Mantis warriors probably to avoid any confusion there these chapters simply found themselves on the wrong side of the conflict and it would seem that hubris rather than heresy kept them fighting for over a decade many notable chapters of fur themselves under investigation were engaged in open conflict against other factions in an area as large as the Imperium grievance and misunderstanding are seen to be unavoidable from time to time the chapters that sided with the astral clause of bad ab were investigated after this was resolved and found to be free from treachery however their homeworlds were forfeited to the loyalists chapters who fought against them and the rebels sent on a penitent crusade as punishment for their crime often the progress of the fall of a chapter goes unseen until the dramatic moment at which it is judged to have crossed the line and turned renegade in fact even the term renegade is only relevant to outsiders a matter of judgment rather than objectivity for example a Space Wing chapter may subjugate a rebel world and be welcomed by the survived populace as saviors and begged to rule over them such a situation is not without precedent for the ultramarines rule an entire realm but this is most deafening outside of the Mandate of a space moon chapter and so the sin of pride may lead a chapter down the road to ruin so as the traitor legions fled to I of terror after their defeat of terror so to have other rebels sought to establish themselves in areas of the galaxy where the Imperium may not easily follow and the sons of malice of one such chapter the sons were founded in order to guard the western reaches of the eye of terror but instead they ultimately fled into the eye itself after an Inquisitor of the order heretic is unveiled their gruesome heretical behavior some space between chapters will fall into disrepute by nature of their station some world's proving to be so difficult to exist in or so strange in their practices that over time this is led to a slow bleeding corruption originally the captain of the first company of the sons of malice Cather was instrumental in the chapters fall from the Emperor's grace Cathal and his company had successfully concluded the cilix two to five campaign in which three sub oceanic hives in the rebellious silic system was scoured of the heretics who were threatening to depressurize them as an expression of their misguided devotion the company's prolonged victory celebrations led by the murderous Cathal were observed by Inquisitor pietà spy itas a senior member of the order heretic as' who was revolted at what she saw as practices verging on cannibalistic Plata's immediately mobilized a strike force of adept a sorority Celestine's who deployed from orbit aboard drop pods making planet fall in the midst of the company at the height of their celebration this Strike Force found Catherine his company a horde of fevered maniacs having worked themselves into a state of animalistic barbarity over the course of their celebrations cathodes armor was splattered with gore and blood ran from his mouth as he presided over the ceremony Cathal and his brethren fell upon the strike force with a savagery the Inquisitor was entirely unprepared for the Celestials fought bravely but the number were far too few and their faith though strong could not overcome the sheer fury rage and unrepentant brutality of Cathal and his men the sons of malice reportedly fight in utter silence and for those who have fought against them this is something that creates a deep disturbing aura surrounding them by the light of the burning torches Cathal cornered the Inquisitor and before his altar alive where she was in horribly ritually sacrificed this heinous deed and the sons of malice excommunication the native tribes were then almost entirely eradicated by the serratus and kadian 330 first in a planet-wide campaign of brutal merciless imperial sanctioned genocide so basically Wednesday for the Imperium Skelos was declared Perdita this designation not specifically explained anywhere but it translates as lost which makes sense captain Cathal is now a truly ancient marine having lived far beyond the age of an immortal human he still remains as the son's current chapter master every century the sons of malice will make a pilgrimage and return to an ancient ship known as the labyrinth this is a huge Imperial ship long since operational it's rotting metal carcass drifts around the warp in the eye of terror it is essentially a space hog but not to be confused with the space Hawks of the Dark Age of Technology the labyrinth serves as a gathering place for the sons of malice and it is considered sacred to them but for any other who enter it is surely a hellscape every century the members of the sons of malice will attend the labyrinth gathering regardless of their current status or with which enemy they're engaged in for some it can take many months to reach the labyrinth but it is also reported that as many as 1,000 slaves of any and all races in the galaxy human or otherwise are brought to the labyrinth for this specific event each brother of the chapter can then isolate themselves or they will proceed to eat alive the slave assigned to them it's also described though that they will gather in groups publicly having discarded their power Armour and congregate to then devour their victim slathered in the blood and occur of their chosen sacrifice they've even been known to consume loyalists as starties keeping them alive as long as possible in the process there's blood curdling screams echo throughout the vast ancient vessel at this gathering some of the Sons of malice will set off into the halls of the labyrinth to compete for a place among the legendary doomed ones only one can make it to the end and escape the rest will either die or be transformed into the beasts and inhabit the ship as the warp slowly corrupts it but for many in the sun's of malice this will not made clear those taking part in the trial were known to have even encountered those who failed but remained trapped within his endless vast corridors presumably existing here for at least over a century and it seemed that while several brothers took part in the challenge only one could then proceed to this final stage something they gradually became aware of this would then leave the rest traps as the chosen few progressed through the labyrinth it suddenly becomes apparent that the mutant Horrors patrolling the labyrinth and killing them are in fact failed sons of malice who did not complete their labyrinth challenge and have slowly become twisted mutated Horrors by the warp itself the symbolism of course of this challenge should be fairly obvious that the renegade authorities are forced to actively fight against one another something which becomes steadily more clear as they discover that then only one of them can ultimately be victorious or so they believed as he neared the portal Agins stopped slowly turning with a smile I'm truly sorry my brothers but it seems I must leave you I wish that something streaked from the dark cutting agon off mid-sentence a huge chitin claw ancient and battered gripped around his waist lifting him five metres into the air agon screamed blood gurgling from his mouth as the claw squeezed tight the two halves of his body fell to the ground in it's spilling onto the hard steel decking then it walked from the shadows for massive limbs carried its great bog forward it was a mass of flesh and steel metal plates cauterized to a body of seething blubber two great claws reached out into the fore and clacked together menacingly but it was the head that was the most hideous the twisted bloated replica of her face that might once have been human but was now so savage and malign as to be almost unrecognizable as brother Invictus watched in horror its great jaws opened and it bellowed forth its incessant call let me out it's cordoned filling the hall with its ear-splitting war it was now all too clear this was no ancient war cry Invictus had been hearing it was simply the maddened ranting of an insane mutant cage for centuries and left to the mercy of the warps corrupting influence and now it was the only thing standing in the way of the during now for an event like the labyrinth even among Kaos Marines such self-destructive horror is not all too common but in such a designated planned fashion anyway ultimately having lied in killing his brother marine anyone would remain brother Invictus and before this final labyrinth the challenge had taken place 10 times previous finally 11 being malice is a sacred number much of what the sons do seems to be dictated around the number 11 with each Victor's body having been stored in caskets until this final champion had been identified brother Invictus saw these caskets being dragged out and finding that he was victorious and would finally be rewarded by malice for his huge effort mysterious chanting echoed through the chamber as chapter master Cathal spoke to him you've proven yourself the best among us Invictus you have proven you without peer for your strength and cunning you're the most potent the latest to prove himself worthy to join the doomed once the 10 other champions surrounding Invictus in the caskets had been interred but were seemingly still alive they were described as their bodies remaining robust but their minds being vacuous suggesting that these had slowly become vegetable eyes having been held captive for so long or else deliberately mined white these along with Invictus who was by now realizing to his horror that he would not be able to gain any special power to allow him to fight onward they would instead all be sacrificed sort of malice could finally appear to them and the sons of malice could begin their crusade to retake their homeworld of skilless as the darkness descended upon them his flesh began to Flay from his bones his entire body becoming consumed all the sons of malice would watch on observing this spectacle in total silence after it was all over all that was left was a dark revenant eyes burning here before them stood the renegade god of anarchy and terror it was malice the world of skele sit self exists from the Imperial perspective as a stark example to any who would test the tolerance of the appointed representatives of the Holy Order the Emperor's Inquisition the Imperium still believed the sons of malice and continued to patrol within the eye of terror where they waged a hate fueled war against anyone and anything that they encountered be that Imperium or indeed more regularly followers of chaos yet it eventually became apparent that the sons of malice had not completely abandoned their homeworld they still venture out from the eye of terror itself specifically seen asked Ellis their former homeworld the reasons for these dangerous incursions or what if any further plans they have within Imperial space are unknown in addition to their unusual habit of fighting near total silence methodically and with no mercy whatsoever the sons of malice are vicious brutal and bloodthirsty in the extreme and this coupled with a habit of capturing living enemy or even just innocent civilians for their strange rituals or to feed upon but their victims are still alive makes them easily as disturbing as any of the other cows Marines such as Knight Lords iron warriors or even the death guard now the true origin of malice and Maillol are perhaps to some degree more interesting than its in-universe iteration although also quite comically the consequences were appropriately self-destructive it's fairly ironic that a fictional figure themed around uncaring self-destruction would lead to it basically making itself unusable for both parties involved thereby destroying itself and this all begins before 40k in fact two years before did even being created we're back in the world at the very early 1980s world of Warhammer Fantasy and in the late 80s Warhammer Fantasy his games workshop's flagship concept was beginning to be expanded upon the four main chaos gods that still exist today had been conceptualized their general core concepts were fleshed out and have remained largely unchanged to this day Games Workshop as it was at the time wanted to expand upon this core base of Gods by creating a number of what were referred to as minor chaos gods and just as with the original rogue trader for 40k these early times were quite experimental with many concepts just being thrown to the wall to see what stuck best and later with the release of second edition it became clear a lot of stuff had been omitted from those original times because they'd cut away the deadwood that wasn't working with the aim of creating stronger core brands for both the fantasy and 40k iteration basically to keep the things that were working and drop the stuff that was not before any of that though came while they were still toying with these ideas about minor chaos gods in Games Workshop brought on board to freelance writers to assist in this development writers whose names you should recognize as they were legends writing considerable material for Judge Dredd John Wagner and Alan Grant now Games Workshop wanted to collaborate on a comic book series for the Citadel journal I said collaborate they wanted them to write it for them that would expand on this idea of the minor chaos gods and this series would center around the figure of Caleb of dark you remember me mentioning that earlier with this comic series the quest of Caleb dark dark was very much what you would qualify as an antihero he was a chaos champion his most notable accessory was a shield that has become very visually synonymous what we recognized as morale and malice the distinctive black and white split pattern so that has actually originated right back from the very beginning so dark was this champion for morale as per the destructive nature of the god and the comics dark is even seen to be self harming as a way to commune with mild god itself because this girl lines with those exhibiting are highly self-destructive nature as Games Workshop was preparing the original realm of chaos books slaves to darkness and the lost and the damned which sidenote also contain material for 40k Games Workshop as it was then wanted to obviously include the narratives related to Caleb dark and morale the problem they encountered was the Wagner and grant had as sensible freelance writers copyrighted their creations that had been sold onto Games Workshop in the comics and this is something that as a freelance creator you're completely allowed to do unless it's otherwise stipulated in your contract because if something is your creation you're basically going to want to prevent that from being exploited later down the line now in modern times this would never happen because any contract these days would explicitly state that whatever you're creating for a company whether you're freelancer or working there becomes the property of that company that you're working for this is just completely standard but back here in the early days it seems that the guys heading up Games Workshop had not immediately thought of this issue these were more innocent days indeed and it's been described later as merely a misunderstanding and a clash of culture at the time but it basically comes down to simply not a properly prepared contract that enable Games Workshop to own the rights to the material that was being made for them you live and learn don't you however it's basically a noble if there was ever any malicious intention behind this in the sense that did Wagner and grant deliberately do this on the sly knowing that if they just bothered to flag it with Games Workshop they'd have been told straight away Wow no way we need to amend those contracts immediately we can't ever really know this it might have just been two writers very actively making sure that they main control their characters they didn't see anything in their contract was said otherwise so it could have just been a very simple misunderstanding and it's so long in the past now that anybody's true intention its total speculation no one could really say otherwise but the key point of this is that as of 1988 there was no further mention of morale anywhere certainly not in the realm of chaos books and since the concept of morale as an entity in Burma fantasy was and is dead more importantly though and this is my opinion I think that this copyright issue had big implications for Games Workshop firstly and it's still wanting to probably get further use out of morale it was quite a good concept but also I think this incident had far bigger ramifications in the sense that Games Workshop from hereon became very aggressive in controlling their copyright for creations right up to the most recent times with primaries in the eldery when it became clear a little while ago that space wounds and Elder were not quite unique enough names it's been constructive for the community in the past ten years the Games Workshop have relax a little bit because it really helps further community creations like say the Astarte series or text-to-speech things that would have simply been unimaginable previously with the way Games Workshop would have approached things years and years ago but what I'm getting out here is that with a do sense of irony the creation that was Malalai malice actually ended up being that's right highly self-destructive force even outside of the law which i think is quite hilarious Games Workshop for some reason that we will likely never know were unable to come to an amicable regarding the use of Millau which it's worth remembering Games Workshop back then was not a very sizeable company as it is today most likely but again my total speculation Ragnar and grant either wanted too much for the use of their characters or perhaps they just outright refused for them to be used maybe they thought they wouldn't wanted to do something with them themselves later on although that would have been very difficult because all the other stuff was owned by Games Workshop so they were never really gonna be able to do anything with those characters seems strange that they wouldn't just sell them make a buck and move on but there you go by the way morale was done in Warhammer Fantasy although it should be noted they were a delight references to renegade chaos followers over the years but this didn't stop it sir tisha Slee bleeding into 40k as the figure known as malice so lastly my final opinion on malice that malice exists within the galaxy of 40k my answer to this is rationalized in two parts first see as we already explored once something is part of the 40k verse it remains part of it rewrites can occur contradictions can occur but once it's out there it has happened maybe in an overlapping reality as I said before or similarly some alternate temporarily merged warp skewed timeline that's really my favorite current rationalization but malice is certainly not just some entity alluded to in one of mentions it's not something which is like Oh has that been overwritten or changed nope it's been repeatedly given a wink and a nod in actual written material also of official publications for many years via the Sons of malice and as recently as last year in 2019 I think the best way to put it is the Games Workshop at the least want to keep malice as an option on the table it's certainly nothing that explicitly goes against it beyond the fact that it's only been mentioned sporadically from time to time over all malice via the sons of malice has more material going for it than some other more obscure things like the sang Primus Porton that I talked about recently in some respects it's referenced even more than the Emperor doing his trip to Moloch and people can't let go talking about that the second part of my thinking is related to a favorite example of mine that demonstrates why obscure law elements not being mentioned often remained relevant and that something not being mentioned is absolutely no reason to discount it and I'm talking of course about innate and the inari now innate who is supposed to destroy slow nation thereby enable the elder to once again be reborn with no fear of death the reason in aired and the inari are important here is because much like malice Aeneid existed formerly as just a single obscure reference in the third edition and then it was not mentioned at all until the most recent times of the eighth edition of 40k where suddenly Aeneid has now become a core part of the 40k narrative it's a massive part of what's happening right now so both these very straightforward easy-to-understand points I feel should quite readily demonstrate that I Diaz mentioned decades previously in the law can not only be reinvigorated but become major parts of the law once again now I will also freely admit that I do think there is some doubt and further evidence required to establish just exactly what malice is in 40k is he a powerful demon or some form of minor god I would also say how do you define well the difference is there just off the top of my head I guess a God can create and do things like that whereas a demon just exists both are immortal in the sense that we understand that definition I think now all that's left to say is how long will it be before we see malice once again what could it mean for the galaxy and indeed the chaos gods in this time of supreme disruption and chaos throughout the galaxy [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Luetin09

Views: 639,917

Keywords: Gaming, Discuss, Channel, Future, 40K, Warhammer 40K, Imperium, Humanity, Mankind, Doom, Fall, Space Marines, Heretic, Heresy, The Emperor of Man, Lore, History, Guide, Warhammer 40000, Warp, Immaterium, Rift, War, Slaughter, Horror, Nightmare, Tabletop, Inquisition, Malal, Malice, Retcon, Canon, Anarchy, Spite, Sons of Malice

Id: TXwMUjqH7mA

Length: 45min 24sec (2724 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 13 2020