Daemon (Warhammer 40,000)

Daemons, also called Neverborn, are entities of Chaos, entities of the Chaos that are both discreet entities and subentities of the Chaos Gods, native to Warpspace. They are formed by the will of the Chaos Gods and act as extensions of the gods' wills, lacking real free will as most people would think of it. Most sapient creatures empower the Chaos Gods with their emotions and feelings, empowering the Chaos Gods and allowing them to create daemons. Specific notable daemons can be created out of mass-acts that align with their deity, but broadly speaking, wide events and general movements across the many worlds that mortals inhabit can empower Chaos deities to enable them to create daemons from their gathered power. A daemon is created as a manifestation of their patron Chaos deity. appearance and character reflectinh those of the god that created it, leading to rumors that Chaos daemons may be the souls of those who best aligned with a specific God, willingly or not. Daemons can be spawned and reabsorbed into the god at the deity's whim.

Daemons in realspace
Daemons cannot exist independently in realspace for very long, as they are fundamentally creatures of the Warp. They can, however, access realspace in a variety of ways, some which allow them a more permanent foothold.

Manifestation
Daemons are unable to exist in realspace for long periods, but through acts of will or power, they can incorporate into realspace, though usually for limited amounts of time.

Daemonic Incursions
Daemons will occasionally gather under the banner of a warlord for a particular military camoaign, even that of a daemon of rival gods, and the gathered power will allow daemons to manifest in realspace. These hordes are usually temporary, and their formation often linked to a specific goal. Daemons can leverage pacts and obligations to draw in representatives or rival gods, or promises of furthering their patron's interests, or simply the promise of destruction or mortal souls to feat on. Daemonic incursions are typically inscrutable to outside forces, as they focus on their own arcane and esoteric goals.

Summoning Rituals
Daemons can be summoned into realspace through ritual actions that heavily invoke the spirit of their patrons. This is usually deliberate, but can occur by incidence, especially if a particular group is heavily corrupted and influenced by a Chaos God before they become aware of it.

A ritual does have a particular spiritual resonance that can be tailored to summon specific daemons, or can summon relatively large numbers of nonspecific lesser daemons of a specific God at once. Rituals such as these require large numbers of mortal sacrifices, so building a military organ from these daemons can be incredibly effective for Chaos-aligned organizations or individuals, but it can leave a world or other population highly depopulated as a tradeoff.

Daemonic summoning rituals is most iconically reserved for minor cults and practitioners reaching a milestone of summoning a representative of their deity, and they sometimes have means of prolonging a daemon's presence in realspace for some time. However, more seasoned and eldritch practitioners either have an entire heritage soaked in daemonic lore or generations worth of study to call upon within an extended human lifetime, and can summon numbers of lesser daemons with little issue, provided that they have the ritualistic "fuel" for such endeavors.

Realspace-Warpspace Oerlap
Arguably the most common means, wherever Warpspace breaks through and overlaps Realspace, daemons who travel to the corresponding location in Warpspace can manifest and maintain a presence in these areas with roughly the same difficulty as crossing a threshold. Two instances of this happening are Warp Storms and Warp Rifts.

Warp Storms are a type of exotic space weather of the Warp breaking through into realspace. It is typically temproray, though it can last many years, and oftentimes ambulatory. Being caught in a Warpstorm is typcially accepted as certain death. Even without direct daemonic influence, mortals will mutate and go insane; those that don't become homicidally mad will often become deranged Chaos-worshipers, and even then, they are typically designated to a swift extinction. Complicating and mitigating matters is that Warp Storms are typically impossible to navigate or communicate out of, making it impossible to escape, but also serving to quarantine those caught within. When a warpstorm dissipates, lingering effects are noted: planets are depopulated and left as eldritch, haunted wastes, sometimes having corpses in unusual conditions or circumstances, or sometimes not present at all.

Warp Rifts are sections of space with a stable Warpspace overlap. Many times, these are considered as difficult-to-impossible to escape, and impossible to navigate without knowledge that would have one deemed a heretic; they are a natural prison and refuge for Chaos-aligned mortal entities, up to the moment that they come spilling forth from the anomaly with banners of their warloard held high. Unlike Warp Storms, Warp Rifts typically are stable and just gentle enough to maintain a population of Realspace entities, typically human or human-derived populations. These are also the sites of Daemon Worlds, which serve as daemonic holdings, depending on what entity holds position as hegemon over a particular world.

Daemons Worlds are known to change hands between daemonic authorities, usually after a lengthy military campaign. Daemon Worlds are also known to exist outside of Warp Rifts, and can pose a substantial threat to nearby star systems if left unchecked, though they are also known to be resistant to Exterminatus, world-wrecking measures held by the Imperium.

Possession
Daemons can infiltrate the minds of psychically sensitive mortals. Initially, this starts off as a slow and subtle subversion, but eventually the victim's mind is subsumed by the daemon and its body transformed into a shape of the creature's liking.

Daemon Princes
Daemon Princes were once the most powerful mortal servants of Chaos. As a reward for their service, they have been transformed into true daemons of great power. Each Daemon Prince is a unique entity with its own set of powers.

Greater Daemons
Greater Daemons are extremely powerful daemons that occupy the upper ranks of Chaos. Greater Daemons serve as guardians of their god's domain, as commanders of great daemonic hordes, and as sometimes even as avatars of their gods. Greater Daemons are beings of such might that they cannot simply enter the physical world, and require a possessed host body to manifest themselves.
 * Bloodthirster, Greater Daemon of Khorne
 * Great Unclean One, Greater Daemon of Nurgle
 * Keeper of Secrets, Greater Daemon of Slaanesh
 * Lord of Change, Greater Daemon of Tzeentch

Lesser Daemons
Lesser Daemons form the backbone of Chaos' armies as its foot soldiers. They are generally vaguely humanoid in appearance, if monstrous in form, and cruelly intelligent. Lesser Daemons are much more able to enter realspace than more powerful daemons, and consequently are the most common variety of daemon to find there.
 * Khorne: Bloodletters
 * Nurgle: Plaguebearers, Nurglings
 * Slaanesh: Daemonettes
 * Tzeentch: Horrors, Flamers

Daemonic Creatures
Daemonic Creatures are the same sort of entity as other daemons, but they are animalistic and non-sapient. They can be further divided into Daemonic Beasts and Daemonic Steeds.

Daemonic Beasts
Daemonic Beasts are animal-like daemons, generally used for hunting or for warfare.
 * Khorne: Flesh Hound
 * Nurgle: Beast of Nurgle
 * Slaanesh: Fiend
 * Tzeentch: Screamer

Daemonic Steeds
Daemonic Steeds are daemons used as mounts either by mortal servants of Chaos or other daemons.
 * Khorne: Juggernaut
 * Nurgle: Rot Fly
 * Slaanesh: Mount of Slaanesh
 * Tzeentch: Disc of Tzeentch