Daemon Prince - History: In order to attract the attention of their patrons amongst the Ruinous Powers, Champions of Chaos are required to achieve dark and terrible ends. They willingly sacrifice both foes and friends in service to their ambition for power and willingly risk their lives at the hands of both the enemies of Chaos and their own fickle masters, who do not suffer failure gladly.Few Chaos Champions avoid either death, or the mutation into Chaos Spawn that awaits all those mortal servants of Chaos who fail their dark patrons. Those who succeed at the tasks set for them by the Ruinous Powers are transformed into immortal entities of the Warp. They leave all the trappings of mortality and simple Human feelings far behind.Daemon Princes are incredibly powerful entities of the Warp, vast and nightmarish beings whose essence is the immortal hellstuff of the Immaterium given form. No two Daemon Princes are truly alike, although many maintain a roughly humanoid shape when incarnate in the material realm. Their exact forms are fashioned from congealed horror and marked with the signs and stigmata of whichever great Chaos God they ultimately serve.Whilst other Daemons are simply fragments of their master's psyche, a Daemon Prince retains much of their own personality and the thirst for power that drove them in their mortal existence. Eager to carve out a realm of their own, many lead the mortal armies of Chaos, the massacres unleashed in their name sustaining them in the realm of reality.The oldest and most powerful of Daemon Princes are even worshipped as deities in their own right on some worlds. Most Daemon Princes eventually discard their material form altogether and pass beyond mortal concerns to join the ranks of their patron's Daemons, only to come back and haunt the galaxy an age later at the head of a Daemonic host.While Daemon Princes come in as wide a variety of shapes and sizes as there are facets of Chaos, most are massive beings composed of hulking muscle and thick sinew, displaying traditionally Daemonic characteristics like horns and bat-like wings. All Daemon Princes save those of Khorne wield potent sorcerous powers that originate in the Warp's psychic energies, and that are representative of the sphere of influence of the Daemon Prince's patron Chaos God. What little that a Daemon Prince retains of his or her Humanity is usually only the caustic ambition and ruthless cunning which helped them earn their Chaos reward in the first place.In the 41st Millennium, most of the Daemon Princes known to the Imperium hail from the ranks of the Chaos Space Marines, as these often ancient warriors possess the capability and desire needed to successfully serve the interests of Chaos well and long enough to earn Daemonhood. However, the oldest of the Daemon Princes may actually have ascended to their immortal stature during the savage age long before Mankind left Terra to explore and settle the stars.When a Daemon Prince conquers a world in the physical universe using the mortal forces of Chaos that serve them, their patron Chaos God or the Chaos Gods as a whole if they serve Chaos Undivided bestow the world upon them as their own personal realm. The conquered planet is absorbed into the Immaterium. It becomes what the Imperial Administratum has deemed a "Daemon World," a sub-reality of the Warp in which the ruling Daemon Prince has complete control over reality, having essentially become a minor Chaos God within the boundaries of their own realm.Like all Daemons, Daemon Princes much prefer the environment of the Warp to the physical universe, and only rarely do they deign to actually leave the Empyrean and reenter the material universe. Daemon Princes are prized by the Ruinous Powers of Chaos because unlike true Daemons or even the Chaos Gods themselves, they are former mortals.As previous denizens of the Materium, Daemon Princes still have a deep knowledge of the material universe and how mortals think and act. Despite this, many Daemon Princes continue to crave more power and further ascent within the ranks of the forces of Chaos and so they often choose to join the retinue of a Greater Daemon of their patron Ruinous Power.To their surprise and anger, Daemon Princes often discover that other Daemons, particularly the Greater Daemons who outrank even them amongst the servants of the Ruinous Powers, regard Daemon Princes as inferior beings because of their mortal origins, seeing them as tainted by their heritage as natives of the physical universe.Despite this attitude, Daemon Princes are still often put to use in the Daemonic legions, leading formations of Lesser Daemons on the battlefield. As always, even Daemon Princes are no more than tools of Chaos, albeit extremely powerful ones, to be used and discarded as the situation demands it.