I’ve spent embarrassing hours in the grim darkness of the far future. Most recently in Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War Definitive Edition, the loving remaster of the 2004–2008 real-time strategy classics. You command armies across worlds that exist for no reason except to be fought over. And presiding over all that bloodshed sits a god named Khorne.
Khorne feeds on blood, the more senseless, the better. He sits on a Throne of Skulls, endlessly demanding sacrifice. “Blood for the Blood God!” his followers scream as they drown galaxies in slaughter. Every kill makes him stronger. Every act of mercy makes him weaker. He cares not whose blood flows, only that it flows without cease.
The god stays with me, because I’d seen him before, not in the game, but in the news.
A weapons maker books a record quarter while a city is in ruins. An insurer widens its margins by denying coverage to the dying. A drug company turns overdoses into recurring revenue. This isn’t accidental; it’s the business model working exactly as intended.
I call the people who run those models the blood money gods, not because of their power, but because we treat them like gods. We build the altars, forgive anything, and feed them our acceptance to keep them immortal.
A society that worships blood money will always have more bodies to spare.
How the blood money god feeds
Blood money flows where human desperation meets a price, and someone profits by keeping that desperation alive.
The healthcare executive whose bonus rises when claims fall, while a family watches a relative ration insulin. The billionaire racing another billionaire to space, on the backs of warehouse workers timed to their bathroom breaks. The gun lobby turning dead children into fundraising emails. The politician stoking a panic he privately mocks, because fear is the cheapest fuel.
Billionaires don’t engineer suffering by accident. They architect it. The suffering is the product. They find the desperation, stand at the register, and avoid eye contact with the customer.
The Throne of Skulls in Our Lifetime
The disturbing part isn’t that these people exist; greed predates the republic. It’s what we do with them that matters.
We treat billionaires as a species of god, and in doing so we’ve built them a Throne of Skulls in real time. We give them temples and call them corporate headquarters. We name buildings after them, put them on magazine covers, and ask them to teach us how to live. They lecture us about freedom while pricing it out of reach. Like Khorne’s followers, we feed the god with our worship, and the god demands more sacrifice. The blood (the suffering) never stops flowing, because we’ve decided it shouldn’t.
Most of all, we grant them immunity. When an ordinary person steals, we jail them. When a blood-money god strips a pension, poisons a watershed, or sells a war on a lie, the worst that usually happens is a fine smaller than the profit. That is not a penalty. That is a license fee. Khorne’s oldest principle already lives in our courts: he cares not from whence the blood flows, only that it flows. Friend or enemy, rich or poor, all flesh bleeds the same, and all wealth tastes the same to those who treat suffering as profit.
This is the slow death of accountability, driven by a cult of personality that teaches us to love the people taking from us. A god doesn’t answer to mortals, and when we stop holding someone accountable, we’ve started to worship them. We become Khornates: believers in endless slaughter, sacrificing the weak at the altar of billionaire wealth, muttering “Blood for the Blood God!” under our breath every time the news reports another bankruptcy from medical debt.
The Altar We Built, and How to Burn It
Here’s the part nobody wants to hear.
The blood-money gods lack armies but thrive on our attention, outrage, loyalty, and money, which keep them rich. We uphold their untouchability by accepting it as normal. Khorne’s followers don’t need force to feed their god; creatures there volunteer for slaughter, thrilled by kills and sacrifices. They see themselves as chosen, not victims, and glory in blood. We, as willing adherents at the Throne of Skulls, feed the god with every dollar, stock share, and unchallenged post.
People don’t get rich by being generous but by exploiting the system for decades, giving little back. Praise isn’t admiration but blessing of extraction. The berserker loves blood; violence is his language and hunger quencher. Billionaires are trapped in endless value extraction from suffering, never satisfied—more wealth, power, blood.
The good news is also the bad: we built the altar to tear it down. Unlike Khorne (a god of the Warp, beyond reach), billionaires are mortal. They have limits, weaknesses, and depend on us: our labor, consumption, and compliance. Remove those, and the throne collapses.
Killing the Gods Before They Kill Us
You don’t kill a god with hatred; it’s just another offering. You kill a god by refusing to worship it. Khorne’s realm sustains itself through warfare; if killing ceased, the god would starve. The blood-money gods rely on suffering and exploitation. Cut off this supply, and they weaken.
It starts small, with us. Stop equating obscene wealth with virtue, loudness with being right. Stop giving your money and vote to those who see your suffering as a quarterly target. Stop chanting “Blood for the Blood God’ when defending billionaires who built fortunes on exploited corpses. See them as mortals who accept suffering as a price for yachts and space flights.
Then it gets bigger. Demand the law applies equally to the powerful, with no settlement cheaper than the crime. Support candidates who can’t be bought and retire the bought. Push reforms that make corruption costly, not profitable. Tax wealth, break monopolies, fund the IRS to chase tax dodgers, force fair pay, and make it costly to sacrifice people for profit. Do the daily work of being a good citizen instead of waiting for the rich to save you. The Throne of Skulls only stands as long as we keep adding skulls to it.
I believe lies have consequences, and blood money can cost more than it earns, but only if enough of us decide no human is a god and no fortune built on bodies can buy into heaven. The Khornate vision of endless bloodshed is seductive: so much power, certainty, and simple rules. But it’s a hunger that can never be satisfied. The blood god eventually demands sacrifice from everyone, including his followers. We don’t have to feed him. We can starve him instead.
The altar and hammer are ours. Unlike the dark future where Khorne reigns, our gods are vulnerable—they need us more than we need them.
If you want a starting point, Save the Republic outlines principles to restore the country. Read them, then be inconvenient to the right people.