Daemon Weapons. Multiple daemons bound to a single weapon?

[Corrino]

I am writing up a campaign based on a illusive radical inquisitor, not necessarily 'evil' per-say, just uses daemonhosts and weapons. Now I have come to the conclusion that I want him to be over the top, in comparison to a deathwatch marine whom will also be in the campaign.

Anywho to get to the point, is it a feasible idea that two or even more daemons could potentially be bound to a single weapon? If so/not, why so.

[DapperAnarchist]

They'd eat each other... Daemons are not friendly to each other, and when bound, tend to be even more bitter.

Also - I'm wondering where, in 40k-ethics, the line between "evil" and "uses bound daemons" sits...

[Inq Leonite]

It's probably extremely blurry, the line between those who are genuinely evil and those who wish to use bound daemons for not entirely evil reasons. Partly due to the fact power corrupts and partly due to te daemon's being munipulative.

At least, that's the jist of how I'm justifying my Inq not seeing himself as a radical, as he's trying to avoid the latter despite using both a daemon weapon and a daemonhost.

[Alyster Wick]

Multiple daemons in a blade would be somewhat problematic, like putting a spider and a scorpion in a overturned glass. 

Let me present two alternative ideas.  The first (and one that actually resembles you original post) is to have a legion style daemon bound in the sword.  It could be an incredibly powerful warp entity that has/had the capability to possess multiple hosts and at least seems to have multiple personalities.  While it'd be difficult to completely explain this away within the logic of the 40K universe, I think it's fine to leave this ambiguous and sinister.

The other idea is that the inquisitor could have been stabbed by a daemon weapon and gotten a sharp stuck in him.  That shard could act rules-wise like a daemon weapon he is always carrying and result in the daemon being able to speak to the Inq's mind (think the hero at the end of Diablo 1).  In addition to this he could also carry a daemon weapon and this is wear the feuding starts as each daemon fights to exert their influence against both the inquisitor and each other.  This would make for a very difficult character to RP but could be interesting.  It is a little zany and over the top though.

[Inquisitor Cade]

I wouldn't rule out the multiple possession thing. By my understanding the 'legion style' actually is a legion of in tune, but seperate daemons. While there would no doubt be an issue of conflict between the daemons there might be circumstances where this conflict is minimised.
Firstly the daemons could be say, multiple bloodletters. They are seen to work together in packs, and have the same motivation (kill, maim, burn) so while there might be a struggle for dominance, there wouldn't be much of the friction that would be seen if a Tzeenchian and Khornate daemon were stuck together.
Second, if one daemon completely overpowered the other(s) then, to push the analogy way further than it should be, a T-rex wouldn't care much about the spider that it shares a (large) glass with.
I think the best idea though would be if the daemons had a common purpose. Obviously the lower in the daemonic pecking order the better, but they could be forced into a fragile alliance.

Or they could just hate each other. The bindings on daemon weapons prevent the daemon returning to the warp, as well as from escaping into the real realm. If a daemon can't force it'self free I see no reason it could push another out. As for them outright destroying one another, I'm not sure if it is possible, but if it is there would surely have to be a huge power gap between them, and/or a lot of ritual that they wouldn't be able to perform from inside the weapon.

I'm wondering where, in 40k-ethics, the line between "evil" and "uses bound daemons" sits...

Well to referance my personal philosophy, as long as someone truely believes that what they are doing is right, then they are not evil, no matter what they do, and if they do something intending it to be evil then they are evil, even if their act doesn't result in bad things.

[Kaled]

There is a legion-type daemon in one of the books; a Nurgle one if I remember correctly - it manifests as a virus and everyone infected by the virus becomes possessed by it, so there is precedent for one-daemon-multiple-hosts.  However, summoning and binding a single daemon into a weapon is extremely diifficult and dangerous, and I'd suggest that summoning and binding two into the same weapon would be many orders of magnitude more difficult and dangerous.  Personally I'd just give him a couple of daemon weapons and or daemonhosts and show his prowess by the number of daemons he has bound, rather than one weapon with multiple daemons.  The real question for me is, what does the Inquisitor hope to gain by binding two daemons into one weapon?  If it's 'just' to get a powerful weapon, why not bind a more powerful daemon rather than attempt to master two daemons?  If there's some other reason, and it's interesting enough, then I say go for it.

[MarcoSkoll]

At least, that's the jist of how I'm justifying my Inq not seeing himself as a radical...

The Puritan/Radical divide is not one of good/evil. Evil or Good men can exist in either Puritan or Radical philosophies.

Puritan simply means that the character "goes by the book" - they don't do anything that wouldn't be sanctioned by the Imperium. And contrary to the belief of some, a Puritan can use things such as psychic powers or mutants.
A Radical does things which are not sanctioned - attacking the Imperium itself (even if to make it stronger in the long run), or use of Chaos or Xenos (some Xeno are half excepted).

As such, policies such as Amalathianism or Thorianism, while normally Puritan, can be Radical. For example, a Thorian might have a daemonhost in order to study - definitely radical.
And vice versa - Recongregators or Istvaanians are not necessarily Radical... depends on how they go about it. An Istvaanian doesn't necessarily need to perpetrate the strife themselves - imagine an Istvaanian who goes where trouble is, boosting morale and leading the Imperium through the struggle themselves and forging a stronger Imperium in the fires of battle personally.

It's what a character does, not what they believe they're doing (or how necessary they believe it is) or what they believe that marks them as one or the other.
Pretty much all of the policies can be Puritan or Radical - you could even theoretically have a Radical Monodominant who used improper means in their fanatical purge of all that was non-human.

And good/evil is removed once again. A Puritan can do evil things. A Radical could do much good.

Anyway, not the subject of this topic. If you want to talk out the Puritan/Radical thing, start a new thread.

[precinctomega]

Now, I don't have the books any more, so someone who does might correct me, but I do have a vague recollection that the Realms of Chaos books included the possibility of more than one daemon bound to a daemon weapon.

R.

[Kaled]

You're right - it's in Slaves to Darkness.  A Chaos Champion who already has two Daemon Weapons and who is gifted with a third can choose to bind his existing two blades into a single, supreme battle blade making a two-handed sword.  The profiles of the two bound daemons are averaged together, and the resulting htbrid retains all of the special powers and abilities of the 'parents'.

However, those rules are for daemon weapons gifted to a Chaos Champion by his patron as a reward for service - I still think that it would be extremely difficult for a mere mortal to create such a weapon...

[Corrino]

From everyone's suggestions I came up with a couple of ideas on how I may approach this topic.

1. A single blade with multiple daemons bound to it, either all at once or at progressive points in time.

2. A single blade, containing separate shards, each shard having been bound to a daemon. Each shard is a segment of the main sword however none of the shards touch, and various other bounding techniques are used to unsure separation. Think choc-chip cookie

3. A legion daemon, unbeknownst to itself is made up of multiple different personalities which manifest themselves differently.


As for how the effects of multiple daemons in a single weapon would interact.

1. The daemons within the weapon are of equal power (more or less) and hence 'balance each other out'. Although as one would assume weakening each other in the process.

2. One daemon is far more powerful than another/others and has little to know care for it's presence.

3. A legion style daemon's personality state randomly changes.

4. The Inq. may draw out a personality of his choice with effort.

5. Present events change the legion daemon's personality. Giving weight to personalities which are in-line with the events that "turn".


I am liking the idea of a deranged daemon with multiple personalities it does not explicitly know it has. However I can not see it as any particular God. I could always go for a Undivided daemon, but that's a bit dull. If I remeber correctly is there not Another Daemon God, the 5th one which identifies with Chaos fighting itself?

[Kaled]

There are lots of minor powers within the warp - just make one up.

What about a daemon prince who was insane when mortal and who has remained so after being elevated?

EDIT: I'm still curious about the Inquisitor's intentions when he created this weapon - what was he attempting to do?  Answering that question might be the best way to figure out which of your options would work best.  If he's binding multiple daemons, why is he choosing the ones he does?  Are they just the ones he knows enough about to summon and bind?  Or is heactively searching for ones with specific properties?  Was he looking for a daemon with multiple personalities?  Or did he bind the daemon first and then discover that it's personality was fractured?

[Brother_Brimstone]

I am liking the idea of a deranged daemon with multiple personalities it does not explicitly know it has. However I can not see it as any particular God. I could always go for a Undivided daemon, but that's a bit dull. If I remeber correctly is there not Another Daemon God, the 5th one which identifies with Chaos fighting itself?

There are 2 points here;

1) A daemon of chaos undivided is not necessarily boring. In the warp there are many, many differen knds of 'independent' daemons, and manifestations of things which could be considered 'daemons'. For example, strong emotions have a warp presence, and thus as well as the Chaos gods' particular realms, independent daemons can manifest as the expression of another emotion. For example, my daemon, Sarthuul, is the manifestation of manipulation, of tricking others into doing your bidding. In fact, i may go so far as to argue that independent daemons, with their own abilities and agendas, are the most interesting type of daemon!

2) There ARE several 'renegade' chaos gods, but whether or not they are still accepted as cannon is debatable. There was Malal, but Games Workshop ahd a whole copyright nightmare there, and don't own the copyright to Malal (the chaos god of hating chaos), so he CANNOT be used as GW cannon. However, to replace Malal, they brought in Necoho (the chaos god of atheism - yeah, you heard right) and Zuvassin (the chaos god of ruining plans). Whether or not these gods are exclusive to Warhammer Fantasy is also a debatable area, although I personally enjoy the idea of Necoho's existence, and have written one or two inquisitor characters who are daemons of Necoho.

[DapperAnarchist]

Realms of Chaos (which is totally still canon! Especially since huge amounts of it got repeated in Liber Chaotica) has an entire section dedicated to inventing your own Lesser Power - the sample being Kweethul the Rat God, who I believe reappears now in some Skaven background...

How about a Daemon of the God of Insanity? A sort of off shoot of Tzeentch, who might be separate from him, or may simply believe that, etc etc Tzeetch + Warp equals the Principle of Explosion in action...

[Brother_Brimstone]

I agree that it is absolutely cannon, the reason i said it was debatable is that the workers at my local games workshop store (no names mentioned) insisted that Necoho no longer exists in 40K cannon. I've not returned to that games workshop since...

Grudges aside, Kweethul has since been turned into the Horned Rat, the skaven deity, as, if i recall correctly, they rolled a 'bestial face - rat' mutation and then a 'horns' mutation. In fact, i've often wondered if the only reason the skaven exist is as a quirk of fate, simply due to the fact that the people at GW randomly rolled a rat's face for a god, and then decided to make a race of rat men who were his sevrants. However, that's entirely my own theory, and i'm probably very, very wrong. (as an aside, the same people at the same games workshop tried to tell me the horned rat was in no way linked to Kweethul - apparently it's just coincidence that Kweethul was a horned rat chaos god who predated a chaos god known as the Horned Rat!).

[Kaled]

There was Malal, but Games Workshop ahd a whole copyright nightmare there, and don't own the copyright to Malal (the chaos god of hating chaos), so he CANNOT be used as GW cannon. However, to replace Malal, they brought in Necoho (the chaos god of atheism - yeah, you heard right) and Zuvassin (the chaos god of ruining plans).

I see no reason not to use any of these on the grounds that they may not be considered canonical by GW - Inquisitor is the perfect place to resurrect half forgotten ideas that GW have since ignored.  And given that the stated policy of GW is that it's all canon there isn't really any way to write things out of the universe, they're simply ignored and eventually forgotten - even where newer sources contradict older ones, that doesn't necessarily mean that the newer source is more 'true'.