Hedonism, Slaanesh, and the Search for Meaning

“That which causes us trials shall yield us triumph, and that which makes our hearts ache shall fill us with gladness. For the only true happiness is to learn, to advance and to improve. None of this could happen without rejecting error, ignorance and imperfection. We must pass out of the darkness to reach the light!” ^[1]

At the beginning of the Great Crusade, Fulgrim and the Emperor's Children were after something good, even holy. They wanted to be perfect. Not for pride. Not for glory. But to honour the Emperor's vision of a united, enlightened, and glorious humanity.

Their quest, considered virtuous. Fulgrim was praised for his refinement, his obsession with excellence, and his search for beauty. They weren't going down. They were going up. But the road to greatness is dangerous, especially when greatness has no end. And when Slaanesh whispered from the edge of consciousness, promising not just perfection, what had once been good turned into something else.

This isn't a story about how dangerous pleasure can be. It's a story about what happens when you forget why you enjoy things. When refinement turns into a need. When seeking turns into worship.

This essay examines that transition via Fulgrim’s demise, Slaanesh’s emergence, and the enduring struggle of philosophy and literature with this distortion. Hedonism, when properly understood, was never about going overboard. But somehow, it always ends there.

What is Being Painted

I'm making these foot soldiers. These blunt weapons of ecstatic war are the first steps on a path that leads to madness. People won't remember them. But without them, the stars have no stage.

We don't start this journey with Fulgrim, Lucius, or the Noise Marines. The Tormentors and Infractors are the first to be put together, the lowest in rank, and the first to die.

We start with the ones who scream loudest and die fastest. They are not brave. They are what it costs to be ambitious.

A Distorted Blueprint of Hedonism

In history, we often find a kind of plan, a framework that came before the problems of a complex society. Philosophy, particularly in its nascent stages, sought to confront life's challenges with lucidity, prior to the entanglement of the world in bureaucracy, status, and spectacle.

Epicurus was the first to talk about hedonism, but it didn't take long for people to get his ideas wrong. Stoics and later Christian moralists described it as a philosophy that encourages gluttony, lust, and self-absorption. They thought that pleasure was always close to sin.

But calm balance doesn't get much attention. Or demons.

It's always been hard to hear what Epicurean hedonism has to say. It's not exciting. It doesn't turn into orgies or craziness. It's about being at peace. About being calm. About not having any physical or mental pain. It is a way of thinking that values being happy over having things.

But in stories and myths, hedonism is never calm. It always ends badly. A play. And what about now? Hedonism is now a brand. Dopamine with a brand name. Shipping right away. Scrolling without end. A thousand voices telling you to want more and more.

This isn't Epicurus. It is hunger that never goes away, sold as freedom. If you read the old texts again, like Epicurus's boring, patient vision, you would never think of Slaanesh. True hedonism, as a philosophy, doesn't make excess look good. It asks if you think about pleasure or not. With intention or neglect?

“When we say, then, that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality, as we are understood to do by some through ignorance, prejudice, or willful misrepresentation. By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul.” ^[2]

The Fall Through Perfection

The Emperor's Children used to be perfect. The Adeptus Astartes' Third Legion. The sons of the Primarch Fulgrim. Proud, noble, and dedicated to perfecting their form, strategy, and self-control. Warriors trained to be disciplined, artistic, and perfect.

The Emperor of Mankind found Fulgrim on Chemos and brought him back to Terra. He was put in charge of only 200 of his Legion's surviving members. He gave everything he had to the Emperor's vision to prove that he and his gene-seed were worthy.

Not just strength, but also grace and overwhelming power. Not just loyalty, but also excellence above all else. Fulgrim and his legion were obsessed with this goal. Their way of fighting became art. They were proud of how beautiful their actions were. After that, the need to be perfect became an obsession. And once the obsession set in, the lines between fun and work started to blur.

The climax came when Fulgrim took a relic blade after defeating the xenos world of Laeran while leading the 28th Expeditionary Fleet's campaign in the Great Crusade^[3]. Slaanesh, the Chaos God, took Fulgrim and whispered to him in the deepest parts of his desire. Not just glory, but also divine perfection. Not just greatness, but going beyond it.

Fulgrim followed.

The Birth of Slaanesh: Aeldari as Civilisational Hedonism

Where did Slaanesh come from if the Emperor's Children are her followers? What kind of god could use pleasure as a weapon?

Slaanesh. The "Prince of Pleasure." The "Lord of Excess." The "Perfect Prince." The Aeldari call her "She Who Thirsts".

The Aeldari were the ones who let the Chaos God into the world. The Aeldari's uncontrolled search for pleasure and excess slowly turned into a psychic presence in the Warp. A growing force that came from their shared excess.

Over thousands of years, this presence grew stronger, feeding on their growing decadence until it caused a disaster. Th eir civilisation fell apart in one night of unimaginable evil. A psychic explosion that killed billions of people, ripped apart the fabric between realspace and the Warp, and made the Eye of Terror gave birth to Slaanesh. Eating the souls of the Aeldari and destroying their empire.

Slaanesh was born out of too much pleasure. Not just hedonism, but the worst kind of it.

Slaanesh would not be welcome in an Epicurean Garden. She would eat the olives, cut down the trees, and turn the fountains into a mirror of how perfect she was. And yet, she is what many people now think of when they think of hedonism.

Not happiness. Not looking back. Not peace. Slaanesh is a need. The end of meaning. And disorder. At the end of the hedonic treadmill, Slaanesh is there. The never-ending search for art, beauty, stimulation, sex, perfection, excess, and breaking the rules.

Fear did not get the best of Fulgrim. He wasn't fooled. He accepted Slaanesh. Fulgrim was gone. Delight became his religion; every feeling, whether it was pain or joy, became his truth.

"Mere killing should never be enough. How much more intense is the feeling of inhaling the mist created when you vibrate a foe's body until he vaporises? How much more completely have you explored all a person can offer you than when you breathe them into yourself, leaving only the memory of them still a part of this world?"

— Gilliax Soundwarden, Warpsmith to the Emperor's Children ^[4]

Slaanesh’s Role in the Warhammer Universe

Slaanesh is more than just a god of pleasure. Of all the gods in the Chaos pantheon, she is the most dangerous. Not because she is strong or unyielding, but because she is the most alluring.

Khorne wants blood as his tithe. Nurgle wraps you up in the false comfort of decay. But Slaanesh doesn't come with a lot of force. Slaanesh whispers what you already want, turning it into its own trap. There is no fight or pressure; the invitation is enough.

The Eye of Terror, a wound in the galaxy, was not opened by war, but by pleasure. Slaanesh was born when the Eldar Empire gave in to too much pleasure. It was an explosion of pleasure so big that it destroyed their souls and their civilisation. Slaanesh doesn't attack people like other gods of Chaos do; instead, he comes from within them. The Eldar didn't fall because they were conquered; they fell because their hunger turned outward and ate the stars.

Slaanesh is different from the other Ruinous Powers not because of lies, but because of recognition. The temptations presented are not alien; they are the recognisable spectres of what already resides within the heart. Khorne turns rage into death, and Nurgle turns fear into decay. Slaanesh, on the other hand, only makes you want to do things that you would do if no one was watching. To fall here is to be drawn in by your own image.

And this is why Slaanesh is the most dangerous of them all. When the other gods come, they bring destruction dressed as destruction. But when Slaanesh comes, they bring beauty with them. The mask is beautiful, the music is intoxicating, and the feeling is heavenly. You can only see what's left after the spell has worn off: a hollowed-out ruin where life used to be, with beauty burned to ash by the same hand that gave it.

As I paint the Tormentors and Infractors, I'm also building the bottom level of her cult. They are not winners. They don't get picked. They are cannon fodder, but you can still see Slaanesh's influence in their gilded armour, curved blades, and exaggerated shape.

I'm holding the manifestation of corrupted hedonism, which is the opposite of Epicurus's peaceful garden, Nietzsche's joyful creativity, and Mill's moral improvement. They serve as a philosophical admonition: when pleasure becomes an end in itself, it consumes the soul that pursues it.

Literary and Cultural Mirrors

This pattern can be seen in more than just the 40K Universe. For a long time, literature has warned us about what happens when we chase pleasure without meaning.

If there were prophets in the 40K universe, Slaanesh would be the high priest of Marquis de Sade. He didn't warn against giving in. He was happy about it. Adored it.

His writing broke down moral pretences and said that pleasure was the only law that mattered.

“I have supported my deviations with reasons; I did not stop at mere doubt; I have vanquished, I have uprooted, I have destroyed everything in my heart that might have interfered with my pleasure.” ^[5]

But aside from the man who coined the term "sadism," not many people really want unlimited pleasure. We see characters who try it and fail more often. Not many people support the idea of always looking for pleasure. We do look into this in literature, where characters look for pleasure as the end goal:

Dorian Grey stays beautiful but loses his soul. Gatsby is always happy and bright, but he is still empty inside. Patrick Bateman has everything the world says we should want, but nothing ever touches him.

These stories are not sermons; they are reflections. They show us what happens when pleasure is not based on truth, love, or meaning. These stories are Slaaneshi, but they don't take place in the Warp; they take place in our own world.

Philosophers and artists often play with the idea of too much, especially when they are upset about strict moral codes. They remind us that freedom is important, that being held back is not always a good thing, and that life is meant to be lived.

To see how beautiful it is. To feel deeply. To risk passion, even though the fire is burning. They remind us that trying to find beauty is an important part of being human. It's not weak to want to feel the world in our short lives; it's what makes us human.

“Pleasure without a goal becomes a need. Beauty that isn't held back turns into rot. And the self, once it is lost in feeling, forgets it was ever whole. That's the cost of too indulgence and excess.”

Philosophical thought throughout the ages predominantly asserts that pleasure is not intrinsically negative, but rather, unrestrained pleasure is.

Epicurus envisioned a life of ataraxia: a constant tranquillity where uncomplicated joys, communal dining, and serene contemplation provided liberation from suffering. Aristotle believed in the middle path and thought that virtue was not found in extremes but in the right balance between them. John Stuart Mill went even further by saying that not all pleasures are equal and that higher forms of the mind and spirit should be valued more than short-lived pleasures.

The same pattern happens over and over again over the years: balance, proportion, and discernment. Pleasure does not have to be bad if it is linked to a goal. But when it becomes its own goal, it falls in on itself and eats itself until there is nothing left.

In modern psychology, the constant search for pleasure is known as addiction. In myth, too much pleasure turns into arrogance. In the 40K universe, the god of Slaanesh has raised the Legion Emperor's Children, who gave up honour for excess and excellence for self-worship.

“It’s in finding that balance that we find purpose.”

Pleasure by itself doesn't give meaning. But repression doesn't work either. Meaning is found in integration, moderation, reflection, and creation. And that brings us back to the painting.

Painting is not a luxury. It's attention. It takes discipline. It is the intentional shaping of something lovely. One stroke at a time. Finding happiness through hard work, not through too much of it.

As I paint, I think about how different it is to celebrate feeling something than to be overwhelmed by it.