The Mystery Of The Daemon King EXPLAINED! | Warhammer 40k Lore

this video is sponsored by squarespace if you're at all familiar with the forces of chaos within the warhammer 40k universe then you're most likely familiar with a creature known as a demon prince but have you ever heard of a demon king as that's apparently a thing but admittedly there's really not a lot of information on them today we're going to look at one such entity a demon that was said to be so powerful that he came incredibly close to overthrowing one of the chaos gods but before we get into him i want to take a few minutes to talk about the demonic hierarchy within the realm of chaos the four chaos gods nergal lord of plagues corn the blood god slaanesh the prince of pleasure and zinc the architect of fate stand at the top each ruling over a portion of the warp that they have carved out for themselves now beneath them are their lords and generals greater demons hateful entities gifted enormous power by their patron gods each is sick and twisted reflection of the spiteful entity they are bound to now these creatures are often given a certain level of independence and time and time again we have seen them act against their lord's will now it is to be noted that this is a rather rare occurrence but it demonstrates that they are not just mindless drones like the vast hordes of lesser demons controlled by the gods and beneath the greater demons are the demon princes normally mortals that have ascended to demon hood by the will of the chaos gods or such as with bellacor the very first demon prince created in tandem by all of the gods contributing a portion of their enormous power to create an unholy blasphemous entity of intense destructive capabilities who would then be withholden to all of them equally now for the mortal followers of chaos achieving demon hood and becoming a demon prince is the ultimate goal and actually making it all the way to becoming a demon prince is incredibly rare it's achieved only by a select few individuals and most that would follow the eight-pointed path are more likely to be turned into a gibbering slabbering chaos spawn even if they've done everything in their pursuits absolutely correctly the gods can be fickle like that it is said that the sacrifices these individuals would lay at their god's feet are on planetary scales butchering their way across the stars and offering figurative and sometimes literal oceans of blood and mountains of skulls to their dark masters in exchange for their service the demon prince would be granted a whole bunch of blessings including an enormous boost in power their own demon planet and an army of demons to command and most importantly of all immortality now just like all demons if a demon prince was ever to be killed in the physical universe they would be reborn in the realm of chaos now sometimes this immortality and serving their god for all time is exactly what a chaos worshiper would want and other times it ends up being a hellish existence that there's no escaping from but if i'm being honest it's normally a little of column a little of column b regardless there is no doubt that demon princess are incredibly powerful champions of the gods now way down at the bottom of the hierarchy you have the numerous and varied entities known as lesser demons these take thousands of different forms from the blood letters of corn to the tiny and voracious nerglings and not to mention the various menagerie of hellish warp spawn in between these form the bulk of the armies of the chaos gods the foot soldiers set with a task of waging unending war upon their lord's siblings and the denizens of the physical universe the hierarchy seems simple enough but when you start to dive into the deeper lore it starts to become a lot more malleable since before time there have been entities that have swelled the power levels so inconceivable that they have sought to challenge the gods themselves there are entities that are far more powerful than a greater demon but aren't quite on the same scale as a chaos god a name that i've seen kicked around for them a couple of times is that of a primordial demon one such entity is known as the prisoner of the emerald cave a horrifying demon of nurgle that is locked away deep in a mountain and under constant surveillance and guard by the grey knights and when it comes to primordial demons like this there really isn't much information on them often only serving as a plot device for a single novel so we don't know the full scale of what they exactly are but with the prisoner in particular we can see that it's basically a massive great unclean one just vastly more powerful and with the ability to spawn its own demons however we'll do a more in-depth video on him at some point in the future because this video is all about something far more terrifying in my reading i've come across one entity that has a different title altogether a demon king an entity known as isai real but before we dive into that here's a quick 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can make some pretty cool stuff with just your smartphone and if owning your very own website sounds appealing to you then you can go to squarespace.comwesthammer and use the code west hammer to get 10 off your first website or domain thanks again to the awesome people over at squarespace for sponsoring this video and let's get into the grim dark in my 15 years of reading 40k lore esai real is the only entity i've ever encountered with the moniker of demon king and needless to say information on this creature is incredibly scarce the bulk of which coming from the final book in the eisenhorn trilogy hereticus and don't worry i'm gonna tread carefully here as to do my absolute best not to spoil any major plot lines from the series as the eisenhorn trilogy by dan abbott is as far as i'm concerned quintessential reading for 40k fans it's some of his best work and i'd be doing a massive disservice by spoiling it but there will be a few mentions of a particular book and a place of importance to the demon king now in the story eisenhorn an inquisitor and his team are trying to track down the fabled nation of ghoul they study a book known as the malleus codicium a demonic grimoire of dark and terrible secrets and detailed within the pages of the grimoire are detailed depictions of powerful sorcerous rituals and a catalogued history of the warp and its denizens the book itself is said to be thousands of years old and by what means a person was able to learn the secrets that they jotted down within its pages is a complete mystery in the wrong hands the knowledge in this tome could be used to devastate entire worlds but most peculiar of all is the depiction of isaril the demon king supposedly this demon king was an incredibly powerful demon of zeitge so much so that the normal title of greater demon or demon prince doesn't really do him justice now whether through giving into his own hubris or having become disillusioned with his master's teachings the demon king turned against zinc he had swelled in power to such ludicrous proportions that he actually had the ability to usurp him and isaiah's influence must have been of a pretty insane magnitude as he managed to turn countless demons into his service and take up arms against the lord of secrets now when it comes to his followers whether or not he was able to make his own demons in his own image had demons of the other four chaos gods believe in his cause and choose to follow him of their own free will or he had the ability to dominate demons that were beneath him they're just described here as his followers and it's most likely a combination of all three things his army's numbers and strength were enough to at the very least match that of a literal chaos god isaiah's ultimate goal was to cast down zitch and take his place as the new god of magic and treachery it is said that the two entities and their armies warred against each other for a billion years neither side gaining ground over the other when the demon king fought he would take to the battlefield riding atop his chariot a massive war machine said to be the size of an imperial hive city a weapon of apocalyptic destructive potential east ideal in his army carved a bloody path across the realm of chaos fighting countless battles against zinch and his forces now timelines get a little bit muddy here but it's stated that this war took place when there were only three chaos gods so this was before slanash existed and i know the lore also says that from the gods perspective slaanesh had always existed and never existed at the same time despite the fact that we here in the physical universe have a literal date when they were created time in the warp gets pretty weird but from the history listed in the malleus codicium slaanesh didn't exist so we have to do our best to kind of place an order to these events so this would indicate to me that this billion-year war took place before the shattering of zinch's crystal staff is said to be one of the most powerful relics in any universe you see at one point zinc had gotten far more powerful than any of the other gods this resulted in corn nergal and slanesh joining forces to overthrow their brother he feared that their combined power at the very least could interfere with his plans regardless of whether they'd be able to kill him or not so in a battle against all three zinch made a real big show of his staff being shattered into millions of pieces each of which flew across space and time each representing a different spell and thus introducing magic to the physical universe so if the demon king's revolt happened before the shattering then that would mean he was fighting a fully empowered zinch which just imagine how powerful zinch is in the story right now that's him after he's lost the vast majority of his power and for any demon to even be able to come close to matching one of the gods for even a minute let alone a billion years is an unbelievable feat for example scarbrand a bloodthirster of corn and one of the most powerful playable demon characters in the 40k tabletop game also attempted to usurp his patron god corn this took the form of him swinging at him when corn had his back turned he threw all of his might into a single axe swing a blow that was said to be so powerful that it could level entire planets and all it managed to do was corn's armor corn enraged less by the act of betrayal and more so by the absolute cowardice of the attack got so angry he grabbed scarbrand by the throat he shook his personality out of him and threw him across space and time for eight days straight like a burning comet that left an inconceivable trail of destruction in its wake now scarbrand survived but he was left as a shell of his former self all of his ambition having been stripped away until there was nothing left but endless rage now the fact that he survived is pretty impressive but the battle was over in moments before it even really began he didn't fight against corn for a billion years now that being said the demon king's revolt was ultimately unsuccessful and in a great and terrible climactic battle he was killed by zinch his followers fled the warp in terror and sought refuge in the physical universe there they established the capital of gol and six fledgling colonies and the world they would end up settling on was actually a planet-sized mausoleum made to house the body of their lord and his great chariot what ended up happening to the demons that followed him is a complete mystery but the fact that they were able to exist in the physical universe at all let alone long enough to build a thriving empire is also pretty impressive as normally demons can't exist outside of the immaterium without an incredibly powerful sorcerer summoning them or some form of extreme act of blasphemy being sustained for a long period of time this demonic world floated there in space untouched by mortal hands holding within its depths one of the most powerful relics the physical universe would ever see but unfortunately this is where our knowledge of the demon king ends it's a creature shrouded in mystery now the material universe in 40k is one that has enormous gaps in it countless records have been lost or purged during its timeline so its long history of events can be difficult and downright frustrating to piece together but the history of the warp is on an entirely different level we're only given small glimpses here and there and its history is written with enigmas instead of syllables and metaphors instead of facts and those that seek to define its secrets are often driven mad by the attempt a single syllable of the demonic tongue being spoken aloud it contains enough power to shatter minds and topple empires needless to say the truth of isaiah will likely always remain a mystery to us but this illustrates that there are creatures out there strong enough to challenge the gods themselves and if one such individual rose to power before it could certainly happen again in the future and whether or not this demon would seek to usurp one of the chaos gods or become an entirely new one altogether the cascading series of events that would follow this would have apocalyptic consequences for the entirety of our universe if you enjoyed this video it would mean the world to me if you dropped a like on it it helps out my channel a lot and helps to push this video even further and go ahead and subscribe and ring the bell if you want to see more content like this i also have a patreon listed down in the description of this video it's because of the support people have shown me over there that me and my friends were able to invest in an entire podcast setup not to mention some rental space to record in so we're gonna have a public podcast coming soon we've already got a few episodes up on the patreon so if a bunch of nerds getting drunk rambling about 40k is something that you're interested in consider checking us out over there and thanks again for watching my video all the way through it seriously means the world to me and that's it i'll catch y'all in the next one

Channel: WesHammer

Views: 595,406

Keywords: warhammer, warhammer 40k, warhammer 40k lore, lore, daemon, daemons, daemons lore, chaos daemons, chaos gods, nurgle, tzeentch, slaanesh, khorne, daemon prince, chaos space marines, chaos lore, chaos space marines lore, space marines, primarch, imperium of man, demons facts, demon story, demon legends, demonic, realm of chaos, chaos gods lore, warhammer chaos gods, tzeentch daemons, 40k lore, warhammer 40k story, eisenhorn, 40k inquisition, ordo malleus, 40k inquisitor

Id: 3uM8TpTHg2U

Length: 13min 0sec (780 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 30 2022