40k Lore: The Trickster gods, Cegorach and the Deceiver

Let’s take a look into the murky confusion that surrounds and blurs the line between the greatest trickster gods of 40k…

One tricky (haha) proposition in the 40k universe is distinguishing between the legends of the devious C’Tan Deceiver and the enigmatic Eldar deity Cegorach, the Laughing God. Each of them have their own set of very distinct mythologies and actions which can clearly be attributed to them. 

Cegorach is best known through the myth-histories of the Eldar Harlequins as the only member of the Eldar pantheon to escape unscathed from the Fall and the predations of Slaanesh. Indeed, according to Eldar myth Cegorach openly defied and taunted She-Who-Thirsts and was yet able, through guile cunning and audacity, to escape its wrath and conceal himself in the depths of the Webway and act as the patron to the Harlequin order. While this is undoubtedly the single most famous event in Cegorach’s legend – many other acts of trickery and deception are attributed to him across the ages – it is said that to this day Cegorach, alone among all beings in existence, dares on occasion to defy Slaanesh directly and wrest from its possession the lost souls of some of his servants. 

The C’Tan Deceiver (known by innumerable names to many species and cultures) is also known for a vast number of legendary acts of trickery and, well… deception, ranging back into the vast reaches of time when the C’Tan first emerged, earning him the name of “Jackal God” to the Eldar, and many of its most devious acts will probably never be known to anyone but himself.  It has been said that it was the Deceiver’s words that first stirred the Necrontyr to renew their war with the Old Ones, rekindling their resentment of the Old Ones effortless might and nigh immortal lives.  It was the Deceiver that convinced them to give over their minds and wills and become the deathless Necrons, promising them eternal life and power, and instead trapping them in a fugue of half-life or undeath without will, thought, or hope for escape.

Its thrall-food were the most numerous, many giving themselves willingly to him because of its honeyed words and gilded lies, leading them into a blissful hell of self-deception as willing food for its thirsts, and it traded and bartered the morsels of their lives with other C’Tan to secure their allegiance or stave off their wrath. Always the weakest of the C’Tan in personal power the Deceiver wielded perhaps the greatest influence among its kind, playing one rival against another and even frequently giving aid to its ostensible foes and profiting from the suffering of C’Tan and Old Ones alike.  In recent times after awakening it has orchestrated many schemes and caused untold misery in pursuit of its own goals, plunging the Gothic Sector into a crucible of war to destroy the Blackstone fortresses, and countless other deeds of Machiavellian complexity.

However, the identity of these two beings has crossed in myth on some occasion, so much so that (despite the impossibility) they almost seem to be the same entity on occasion, and in one case most notable of all; the cannibalism of the C’Tan. Ancient myth-history tells of how, in the vast and ancient gulfs of time, during the War in Heaven between the unknowable Old Ones and the malevolent C’Tan Star Gods, when the C’Tan were in their ascendance and the Old Ones and their children species were driven back to the utmost edge of their defenses, it happened that to the C’Tan were convinced by a being of trickery that the essence of other C’Tan made the sweetest and greatest of feasts.  So the C’Tan, once numerous, fell upon each other and consumed one another until only four were left; the Nightbringer, the Void Dragon, the Outsider, and the Deceiver, and these four were the greatest of them all and had gained vast power from consuming their fellows.

But to some this power seems to have come at a terrible hidden cost, it led to instability and a dilution of self, only through great will could those who remained hold onto their minds, and the Outsider at least lost its and was driven to madness by the power of those of its brethren it had feasted upon. The identity of this trickster is unclear, though it would fit with the habitual strategy of either. Some accounts say it was the Deceiver, ever the most cunning and ruthless, that first discovered the profit of feasting on the essence of its fellows and told the others of its discovery so that they would destroy one another and he could use their distraction to his own advantage.  Other accounts tell that it was the Laughing God of the Eldar that deceived the Star Vampires into feeding upon one another and tearing themselves apart in a lust of hunger. What is interesting to note is that the effects of this cannibalism seem to have varied radically, some C’Tan gather great strength from it and grew powerful beyond belief, while others were driven to madness and destruction by it. It is possible that this fact offers another interpretation, that two separate entities, that while the Deceiver turned its kind against each other so that it could pick up the pieces as they devoured one another, the Laughing God simultaneously spread a similar idea amongst them, but corrupted the technique so that those that followed it’s advice were poisoned by it.

If this is the case, then it poses yet another question regarding the exact time when the Eldar Gods came into being and their nature.  If they are in fact the Old Ones then Cegorach was and is an Old One, yet this offers problems for their later fate and clear identification as (mostly) benevolent beings of the Warp.  If they were in fact created by Eldar belief as beings of the Warp essentially willed into existence through the racial faith of a species then their origins go back far further than might otherwise have been believed and they were coexistent with the Old Ones.  And finally, if the origins of the faith and belief that created the Eldar Pantheon were their racial memories of their original creators the Old Ones (sort of psychic similes for the originals) then the Cegorach of this legend was in fact an Old One whose deeds inspired the Eldar god to come later. 

Perhaps in this case we are fated never to know for sure which of these cosmic tricksters were responsible, as the truth is far too shrouded in their own deceptions to ever be revealed…