Daemon (Warhammer 40,000)

Chaos Daemons, also called Neverborn, are entities native to Warpspace, from the noncorporeal, extradimensional force called Chaos. Daemons exist as discreet entities, though they are heavily influenced by the will of their respective deity. In a very real way, they exist as extensions of their respective God's influence, lacking true free will as most people would think of it.

Daemons are created ultimately from the emotive energy of beings living in the material universe. When an individual god is empowered by mortal actions, they can use fresh power to create more of their daemons by an act of will, or reabsorb daemons into itself during times of lean. Daemons may also be created out of extreme acts that align with their patron deity. A daemon is created as a manifestation of their patron Chaos deity; appearance and character invariably reflect 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.

"Biology"
Chaos Daemons a number of affiliated species created of supernatural substance, so physiology is highly variable. Many daemonic species are humanoid, while others are offshoots or have derivative characteristics.

Daemons do not possess a biochemistry, and possibly neither an anatomy that would be understood in conventional terms. However, given specific tools and means, daemons can have their body altered surgically or reformed into a new state (such as the Soul Grinder). There are known instances of daemons having their blood extracted for mortal use.

Because of the deleterious effects of Chaos on mortals, contamination by the daemonic, either through possession or by introducing daemonic samples into the human body, will cause permanent mutations and insanity. These effects can be mitigated with proper containment and methods (see daemonhosts, below), but these are often temporary or not complete enough to contain the effects entirely. Indeed, daemonic taint has been known to affect an area indefinitely, even long after they leave or are pushed out of realspace. Regions or even entire worlds where daemonic incursions occur are marked with higher birth rates of psykers and mutants; planets that reach critical levels of Chaotic influence have been known to be abandoned, quarantined, destroyed, or lost permanently as a Daemon World.

If a mortal miraculously or artificially survives possession and remains sane, they will become "innoculated" to Chaotic influence, and they become highly resistant to Chaos.

Daemons in realspace
Daemons are fundamentally creatures of Warpspace, so they cannot exist independently in realspace without assistance or specific circumstances. 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 extended periods. Certain circumstances can allow them to incorporate in and interact with realspace, though usually for limited amounts of time.

Daemonic Incursions
Daemons will occasionally gather under the banner of a warlord for a particular military campaign, 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 feast 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, even 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 Overlap
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 temporary, though it can last many years, and oftentimes ambulatory. Being caught in a Warpstorm is typically 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 resigned 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. In other instances, material species, especially humanity, learn to adapt. In populations that survive warpstorms, they can become strange, twisted parodies of themselves or become new societies altogether as they adapt and regrow under the influence of the Warp.

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 warlord 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. This can be as abrupt as a sudden and horrifying transformation, or it can be slow process, stunted by circumstance or the willpower of the possessed entity or as a subtle subversion, Whether sudden or slow, the victim's mind is eventually subsumed by the daemon and its body transformed into a shape of the creature's liking.

Possession is a known risk of the users of psychic abilities. Humans who the liberty to freely explore their powers were possessed, either caused the cataclysmic downturn of society or opened the way for other daemons, were one of the many factors that caused the fall of the first human empire, ending the golden age of the "Dark Age of Technology" and brought about the dark age of Old Night.

Binding and Ritual Possession
Using certain rites and ritual processes, daemons can be summoned into the material world and can be bound to inhabit a material shell of some form to give them at least some permanence in the material world. Though not always the case, this is typically not undergone voluntarily by the daemons in question. Typically, so long as they are free to occasionally exert their will and act on their own desires, a daemon would refuse binding.

Ritual Possession
Ritual possession rites to produce Possessed beings are most iconically associated with the Traitor Legions, Ritual possession allows for a more stable and long term association, sometimes centuries or even millennia, than spontaneous possession, which allows a daemon to run roughshod without being bound to deals and agreements. This is as much an act of worship as it is of empowerment, as it is assumed the daemon will consume the host's soul when their life ends, a fact that is seen as a worthy and a proper act of devotion to the worshippers of Chaos. Whether human, Astartes, or even alien, the possessed of Chaos make for shockingly adept and spiritually fortifying shock troops.

Daemonhosts
Other forms of binding will trap a daemon into a mortal body, creating a Daemonhost. Daemonhosts are ritually bound and imprisoned daemons, and thus are both prisoner and servant to those that create them. Daemonhosts are most typically associated with Radical Inquisitors, particularly of the Ordo Malleus and sometimes of the Ordo Hereticus, who see the chaining of the weapons and agents of the Great Enemy as particularly useful

Daemonhosts are usually nonvoluntary arrangements on the part of Chaos Daemons. Typically, this is seen as a form of containment and even utilization of particularly powerful entities of the warp, such as Daemon Princes or Greater Daemons. Creating daemonhosts has tradeoffs, the more strongly a daemon is bound, the less powerful it is but the more controlled it is; conversely, with weaker bindings, a daemonhost is more powerful and potentially more useful to its master, though more capable of defying and acting against its master's wishes.

Though most associated with Inquisitors who have the loose morality in learning these processes and an interest in caging particular daemons, certain heretical cults, groups, and even Traitor Astartes will create daemonhosts to suit their needs, particularly those who cannot or refuse to hold regular summoning rituals where summoned daemons, if one accepts the greater knowledge and specialist skills to be the tradeoff of greater Chaotic influence.

Daemon Weapons
Sometimes, a favored servant of a Chaos God may be granted a possessed weapon, or a daemon of Chaos may be bound into a weapon. This is usually seen by Daemons as a much less desirable outcome, compared to possessing a mortal creature to influence the world. Daemon weapons are ensorcelled and enchanted things with exotic properties and power greater than their mundane counterparts, but also share in the risk of the thing turning against its master. Daemons bound within these instruments are the most likely to resent their situation, because they can most exert their influence and cause destruction only when being used. Daemon weapons are stereotyped as being melee weapons of some sort, though ranged weapons do exist, and perhaps in even comparable numbers.

Daemon weapons are most associated with Lords of Chaos, and named after the daemon that possess it, Many Chaos Lords wield their own Daemon Weapons, and even Abaddon the Despoiler, the widely renowned Warmaster of Chaos, wields his own daemon sword Drach'nyen alongside his relic weapon, the Talon of Horus. This is not always the case, as some Radical Inquisitors use Daemon Weapons for the same reason as they use daemonhosts, One particular, shining example is Castellan Crowe of the Grey Knights chapter of Astartes. Among a chapter renowned for and purpose built for its purity of heart (though not strictly of "Good"), Crowe was entrusted with the daemon weapon the Black Blade of Antwyr, as no other soul could be trusted with the artifact without risking being consumed by it.

There is also more risk in divorcing the daemon from its daemon weapon. Should a daemon weapon rebel, it could harm or potentially temporarily possess its wielder. A damaged daemon weapon could result in a broken vessel, and thus releasing the daemon, which could either escape into the warp or attack either its previous owner or opponents. Daemon weapons that somehow survive an escaping daemon results in a rune weapon, which is tainted by Chaos to become more than a regular weapon of its type and associated with the daemon that was used to possess it.

Daemon weapons are not harmless unto themselves. Though it was not often used, the Traitor Astartes of the Empror's Children legion fell to Chaos when their Primarch, Fulgrim, started to head the voice given off by a captured daemonsword that had been possessed by a daemon of Slaanesh. This started the slide from their prideful perfectionism to debauched hedonism and prideful arrogance into a bizarre and twisted parody of themselves.

Daemon Engines
Though not seen as preferable to manifestation or possession, being bound into a "daemon engine" is considered a preferred fate for daemons who are bound into the material world/

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 and Nurglings
 * Slaanesh: Daemonettes
 * Tzeentch: Horrors and 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