E.L.F, Extraterrestrial Lifeform

[Shujin]

With the permission given by Shujin, I'm going to be writing a little Layman's guide to the Warp for all the non 40k fans reading this.

So, understand I'm not a complete expert, I'm sure I'll miss 'important' bits that have some vital piece of info from xth edition rulebook or from x character saying x line from x book. This isn't gonna be super comprehensive, it will be a simple summarized version. It's not gonna have everything. There are plenty of videos and sources online that do more comprehensive stuff on the subject, so if you want more info after this, go check those out.

Without further ado, let's start.

THE WARP
Simplest version is that it is an alternate dimension connected to our own. Where thoughts and feelings (both conscious and subconscious) can become real, physical, tangible things. For a normal person, even looking at The Warp would leave you a gibbering mess, and that's if your eyes didn't burn out from it. If you could actually articulate what you saw after looking, your closest description or comparison would be a literally Hell. Because The Warp is Hell. I'm not exaggerating, the whole idea of Hell is from normal people having brief glances and visions of The Warp in dreams and such. And it's everyone's fault that it's like that.
What does that mean? Well take that thing I said about thoughts and feelings manifesting themselves in The Warp, and then remember all those times you've felt, oh I don't know, angry? Euphoric? Apathetic? Devious or Cunning? All the times you've ever felt a negative emotion throughout your WHOLE life.
Now apply that to all of humanity for our ENTIRE history. All of it. Especially the bad parts.
Now perhaps you get an idea of why it is a hellscape. For a normal person, any kind of exposure to the energy from this hellscape would burn out your eyes as previously stated, but it also might just horrifically mutate you or burn you to a crisp. But what about Taylor? Taylor is special, Taylor is a psyker. What's a psyker? They're someone who can use The Warp the same way you'd use a nine volt.
In standard Warhammer 40k, using even the simplest powers is like trying to maneuver a rowboat through a hurricane. While also trying to not get eaten by a herd of frenzied sharks. Here it's different, whether that is because we aren't in 40k or if it has something to do with the entities is for others to speculate. The fact that it isn't a hellish nightmare is the reason why Taylor is so OP PLZ NERF, she isn't having to fight against the 'current', conditions and not nearly as many sharks as the average psyker would normally have to.

DAEMONS
There are daemons in The Warp. Actual, literal, daemons that want to eat your soul (or at least what you could call a soul). Why? It tastes good and gives them a power boost. Double so for normal psykers.
Taylor isn't normal psyker and this makes her the equivalent of the most delicious and expensive dessert that will also grant you three wishes after eating it. Thankfully she doesn't have too much to worry about. Why?
Because, this isn't 40k
In 40k there are 'Gods' in The Warp that all align with certain intensive, raw emotions and concepts, easiest example is Khorne, The Blood God. He aligns with rage, hate, war, and of course bloodshed. Khorne has all sorts of little daemons that sort of leech off his power, the intelligence of these smaller daemons ranges from dog level to human level. The smarter ones being aligned to him, the others being more just random lumps of flesh and teeth, like our friend from the story.
Since, again, this isn't 40k, Taylor doesn't have to worry about anything around human intelligence coming after her, just ones with a dog like intellect.
Mind you, some dogs are really smart. And even the 'dumb' daemons are gonna see in opportunity with burnt out Taylor.

This is an addition help explain what happened at the end of the fight.
GOLDEN
So what's going on with the plane? Simply put, that is what happens when you get exposed to The Warp, you get horrible deforming mutations and you get daemonic possession, the only way to solve it is to do what Scion did and BURN EVERYTHING. And then probably avoid the area for a good long while. Anything coming out of The Warp is hardy, so there is a non-zero percent chance that even with Scion intervention, there may be side effects if people move right back into the area. What those side effects are is hard to say, could range from deformed kids, prophetic dreams, increased sensitivity to The Warp, any combo of the above or literally almost anything else. The Warp is nuts like that.
Now for the ships...
Okay so this is going to involve a bit more 40k stuff than I was hoping to include, I'll try to keep it brief, but I may go into a bit too much detail. Sorry.
So in 40k people travel through The Warp.
Yes you read that right, they travel through hell to get places.
Sometimes however, a ship may go into The Warp but not come out of it. In which case the ship will drift through The Warp for hundreds if not thousands of years and the crew may inevitably just die off from something breaking or running out of food. So as this ship is drifting it may collide with another drifting ship and then those two ships will fuse together, and then those two combined wrecks will drift and collide with a third wreck, then fourth, a fifth, a sixth, etc. etc.. Inevitably you wind up with giant moving ship graveyard drifting though The Warp, like a hulk of some kind. In space. A Space Hulk, if you will.
So after one of these Space Hulks forms, it'll occasionally shift back into our dimension at random times and locations. And this is generally seen as a bad and good thing.
Bad because sometimes the crews of some of those ships won't be dead and instead will be horribly mutated like the plane passengers and they'll WANT OFF of the Space Hulk, or the Space Hulk will have Orks on it, because everything in 40k has Orks on it to some degree. Or there'll be GeneStealers which are there own special nightmare.
Good because there are all sorts of goodies and treasures on board the Space Hulks from hundreds or thousands of years ago, and very often anyone and everyone will want a piece of that action. How well that goes for them varies, but generally they get some shinies in exchange for a couple hundred or thousand dead scavengers. At minimum.
So back to the story, Taylor appears to have sheared off part of a Space Hulk when The Simurgh created a Warp Storm, and now it appears that there are pieces of an Eldar ship laying around. Which is.... big.
Like Huge. Eldar once ruled the galaxy, and their technology is super advanced, Taylor has had a taste of what Eldar can produce. Jetbikes are practically nothing.

This may be edited later to include information or corrections pointed out to me that I've missed, but I think this is comprehensive enough while still being readable to the average person wit no prior knowledge on the subject.

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[Shujin]

With permission granted by Shujin, I will once again attempt to streamline and explain the complex lore of 40k. This is gonna be a multi part one about Eldar history and some of their technology that's been brought up in the past on this story.

With that in mind, let's jump right in.

THE WAR IN HEAVEN

So this conflict was the very first conflict in 40k, but since it's details are sparse and the Eldar are only present for the latter half of it, I'll give a brief summary of the first half.
The War in Heaven was fought between the oldest and most powerful species in the galaxy the (brace yourself) Old Ones, a race of Toadmen with what could be called min/maxed psychic powers and tech to do whatever their powers couldn't. On the other side of the conflict were the aggressors the relatively young race called the Necrontyr, or Necrons for short. The war was started because the Necron's leader wanted to unify the race against an exterior threat in the wake of a number of civil wars and internal power disputes, so what better enemy than the most powerful race in the galaxy?
This went as well as could be predicted.
So with the Necrons being pushed back to the edge if the galaxy they found some new...allies. let's call them that. Yes.
The entities C'Tan a species of space whales 'star gods' who fed on solar radiation and had a variety of reality bending and physics breaking powers were 'recruited' by the Necrons to fight alongside them in the war.
Alongside their new allies the Necrons also converted the whole of their population into SOULLESS UNDEAD ROBOT SKELETONS by removing their souls and then coating them in a new living metal that made them all nigh unkillable.

With these developments the war shifted against the Old Ones and its here where the Eldar enter the story.
The Old Ones, now losing the war, began to alter, and in some cases create entirely new species to fight the Necrons for them. It's not know if the Eldar were outright created by the Old Ones or merely altered to suit the Old Ones needs, but regardless, the Eldar were now involved in the conflict. And at some point in the war the Eldar developed a psychic resonant material which they called wraithbone which was actually turning out to be REALLY good at 'killing' robot skeletons, so once this material was introduced and the Old Ones found methods to start at least nullifying the advantage provided by the C'Tan, the war once again shifted towards the Old Ones/Eldar.

It was at this point the Necrons decided a civil war would be a GREAT IDEA. So they did that and it went as well as expected considering the war they were already losing was still going. Then they said "FUCK IT" and retreated back to the planets they still owned and settled into a bunch of underground tombs for a nice long nap.
So the Old Ones win, right?
Well, yes. But actually, no.
Some sources (Necron Sources) say that the Necron completely annihilated the Old Ones. Other sources say that there are a few Old Ones still in hiding waiting to come back. But as of now, they are gone from the galaxy, either dead or in hiding.

This left the Eldar in a unique position, as they were on a war footing, with no challengers and a LOT of advanced tech left behind by the Old Ones just BEGGING to be used. Which gives me a great segway to the next thing I wanted to talk about in this first part...

WEBWAY

The webway was the Eldar's transportation network, or rather it was the Old Ones transportation network and the Eldar just stole it took control of it when the Old Ones became irrelevant.
The webway itself could be imagined as a series of tunnels that go through to warp interconnected with each other with various exit points all over the galaxy.
It is FAR superior to normal warp travel as you not only wont have to worry about being stuck in the warp for centuries, but there wont be any eldritch horrors constantly hovering outside your ships shields waiting to get in and slaughter you all.
The webway is completely demon proof. Or it was.
More on that later.
Since its still technically in The Warp it's crazy but it is at least consistent in its crazy. Like, certain sections may have their own rules of physics but at the very least those rules will be the same whenever you go there.
The Webway was so huge they actually built a whole fucking city inside of it. Powered and lit by a number of artificial suns. The level of bullshit the Eldar could achieve at this point is nuts.
This city would become known as the port of Commorragh (Com-O-Ra-Gh), which we will be covering later.
Bring hand sanitizer for that one.

So I know this was a bit light on Eldar lore, but this is the early stuff and there isn't a ton of lore about it. I mean, War in Heaven is almost a myth to the Eldar, THAT'S how long ago it was.
So yes, details will be sparse.

But next time we'll be covering the Eldar Empire (mostly size, tech, and progression) and The Fall. So that will be fun.

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Part two, get ready for a ride.

THE ELDAR EMPIRE

In the aftermath of the War in Heaven, and with complete control of the Webway and various other pieces of Old One technology, the Eldar were undisputed masters of the galaxy.
And boy, did their attitude reflect this.
They used (and actually expanded) the Webway in propagating their empire to any world that caught their eye, even if it had a species already on it.
Casual genocide, what can ya do?
Uf it was just some rock that they thought would be a good colony, they'd use their psychic bullshit and advanced tech to make it into a perfect paradise.
They built MOON sized ships and accompanying flotillas of smaller vessels all out wraithbone to act as their merchant fleet, these ships would become known as craft worlds and they'll be VERY important later, but during the empires heyday kinda got treated like trash and were where all the social pariahs lived.
I could go on but it basically was just this for ages and ages, Eldar expanding and developing new tech and cultural stuff. Basically it was just a really good time to have pointed ears and a smug attitude.
Wasn't all sunshine and rainbows though, they did occasionally have to fight. Mostly against Orks, as being the dominant species in the galaxy means dealing with the galaxy's rampant fungus problem. They also had to keep watch on the planets where they knew the Necrons were sleeping, so that if they ever woke up the Eldar would be ready to bitch slap them back to sleep. Then there were several wars against this new upstart race called 'humans' who thought they were the big kids on the block all of a sudden, humans and eldar apparently fought several wars against each other for resources, bit details on these conflicts are practically nonexistent.
All in all the Eldar Empire peaked out at about 10,000 worlds in their empire, all of them being fairly nice to live on. Even in the Warp the Eldar thought they had dominance, as their pantheon of gods had seemed to established control over the chaotic realm, in reality it was just a small section of the Warp calmed and controlled by the Eldar's gods, the rest was still a fucking nightmare.
Still, this fed even more into their ego.
It seemed to the Eldar that their Empire would never fall and would reign eternal.

THE FALL OF THE ELDAR.

So the decline of the Eldar started as their culture stagnated and their tech kept advancing. Automation was the real kicker. More and more jobs became automated until the Eldar left fighting their wars to their artificial servants.
This left a huge portion of the Eldar sitting around with massively inflated egos and nothing to do, so they did what all inhabitants of a galaxy spanning empire with a massive ego, psychic powers, and too much time on their hands does.
They started pleasure cults.
To be fair not ALL of the cults were about kinky sex stuff. Some were chasing after forbidden knowledge and power with maybe only a few ritualistic orgies here and there.
But yes, some of them were entirely about orgies.
All these, ah, 'good feelings' started to have an effect on the Warp, and when the cults were small it was hardly noticed.
But then as it got bigger it became quite hard to ignore. Unfortunately there wasn't anything that could be done by the time it hit this point, as the cults had grown in size and influence to the point where many members were part of the 'upper crust' of Eldar society, which gave them LOTS of leeway to do whatever the hell they wanted.
Eventually Eldar society broke down and public order was a distant memory, with gangs of cultists openly hunting down non cultists to do all sorts of depraved things to, and conflict between cultists and gangs of vigilantes was commonplace.
It was basically The Purge 24/7.
Anyone who could run from the urbanized Eldar homeworld and the surrounding colonies was any way they could, as quickly as they could.
And here the craftworlds come to the rescue, making multiple runs to these worlds and gathering as many refugees as possible and ferrying them to the more rural far flung colonies or accepting them as part of the craftworld's crew.
Then one day it was a very bad time to have pointed ears and a smug attitude.
No one knows what happened. Likely no one ever will. One ritual too many, one orgy too many, hell maybe someone just put something in the wrong spot. Who knows. All that's known is thing very rapidly collapsed and lots of things happened at once, so let's go through the chain of events.
The energy that had been building in the Warp Explodes in spectacular fashion with such force that it TEARS A HOLE IN REALITY. Leaving a gaping wound in existence where the hellish nightmare of the Warp and reality exist as one. This would become known as The Eye of Terror.

This explosion centered around the Eldar homeworld and the core colonies, and one can presume all those on these worlds died in the blast of raw Warp energy. If not, they died in what came next.
From this explosion of raw energy came a new god.
Slaanesh (Slaw-Nesh) the prince of pleasure and excess, or as the Eldar would come to know it, She-who-thirsts. (Quick note, for simplicity, I'll be using female pronouns in reference to Slaanesh, even though in canon the correct terms would be gender neutral and Slaanesh is hermaphroditic from literally head to toe, it's easier, sue me)
With her birth Slaanesh unleashed a great scream that echoed throughout the Warp.
Every Eldar on every world in the immediate vicinity to the Eye died, had their souls sucked out and devoured by Slaanesh. To be tortured in the chaos gods gastro intestinal track forevermore.
Only those Eldar living on the most far flung colonies, the Eldar aboard the craftworlds, and the Eldar city of Commorragh were spared.
Course it didn't end there.
Still hungering for more, Slaanesh moved to consume the entire Eldar pantheon.
And she almost did. Only two gods escaped unscathed by the hungry god.
This event became known as The Fall.
And it shapes the Eldar to this day.

So yes that's Eldar's Empire wrapped up.
Next time I'll go over the two major Eldar factions and the most current happenings with the Eldar (i.e. 8th Edition).

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[Shujin]

Alright everyone, we're almost done.

We're gonna cover the Dark Eldsr first, so grab your lotion, your hand sanitizer, and a brick of space cocaine because we're diving head first into the horrific slave pits of Commorragh.

DARK ELDAR

So the Dark Eldar are essentially the closest thing to a continuation of the Empire. In that their culture is pretty much unchanged from what the Empire was like before the Fall with one difference.

The pre-Fall Eldar did what they did for the hell of it.
The Dark Eldar do what they do because they NEED to. And for the hell of it.

The DE put together that due to just being close to the Warp, Slaanesh was still ever so slightly draining away their souls and would inevitably drain them of life. But, being inventive little knife eared pricks, they found a solution.

Be in close proximity to another sapient being suffering unimaginable amounts of pain.
This is where you get the DE leaving the webway pretty consistently to raid undefended worlds to wreak havoc and bring back slaves to keep their whole society alive a while longer.

Course the Webway is falling apart around them so they might as well enjoy themselves.
Oh yeah, forgot about that.
So the secrets to maintaining and expanding the Webway was lost with the Fall, so when age takes its toll and a crack appears a daemon could slip through, the DE can't actually fix it and the best they can do is place a huge number of automated turrets and traps in front of it and hope that'll dissuade the hell monsters from coming through, which so far has actually worked so I guess they aren't entirely wrong in doing this.

Politically Commorragh is a pit of vipers. I don't need to go into detail here just imagine Game of Thrones but a thousand times more back stabby and poisony. Really only mention I'm gonna make is it is currently more or less run by a guy named Asdrubael Vect who is possibly the oldest Eldar in existence since he was alive for and witnessed the Fall and clawed his way up from the bottom of Eldar society up to where he is now at the top, leaving piles of bodies behind him.

So that's the Dark Eldar, a bunch of ravers and reavers high on life and every drug imaginable partying and torturing in a city that could be gone one day.

Of course the disgusting slaving sweat goblins of Commorragh aren't the only Eldar out there, so let's look at them, shall we?

CRAFTWORLD ELDAR

Difference between Craftworld Eldar and Dark Eldar are night and day.

Those Eldar who survived the Fall on the Craftworlds saw what happened when the Eldar let their emotions and desires control them instead of the other way around, and so they developed a very plain and zen lifestyle so that they may always maintain their self control and calm even in the most perilous of situations. Their society and it's professions are divided into a variety of different paths that all perform different tasks aboard the Craftworld, and an Eldar who chooses a path usually stays on that path until they have perfected whatever profession they have chosen.

Or if an Eldar doesn't want to choose a path they'll either exile themselves or be exiled from their home Craftworld and become a:
A.) Mercenary
B.) Pirate/Corsair
C.) Ranger
An Eldar walking the Path of the Oucast may eventually return to their Craftworld and pick a path that isn't being a murder hobo space elf. Or they'll stay a ranger or go to Commorragh to join in DAT PARTY LIFE.
It would likely not surprise you at all to learn this path is made up of either disgraced eldar or youthful eldar looking for adventure.

One of the most important paths the Eldar have is the Path of the Seer. One guess as to what this one is.
Since the Eldar don't have the population to fight like they did in the old days, they have to make effective use of their limited population and take great care to reduce casualties on their side. They do this by having their Farseers put them ten steps ahead of their opponents, or by not fighting at all and pitting their enemies against each other through misdirection.

Of course don't think just because the Eldar are careful with their lives that they are unwilling to die. They are. In fact the grand plan of the Craftworld Eldar involves them dying. All of them.
What is the plan? Well...

All Craftworld Eldar have a little thing called a soul stone on them. When an Eldar dies with this on them their soul will go into the stone rather than the Warp. Other Eldar will take this stone and transfer the soul into a BIG soul stone on the Craftworld called the Infinity Circuit, which is basically like a purgatory for the Eldar souls where they just kinda... exist. The Plan is that when enough souls have been gathered (literally ALL the Craftworld Eldar by their own estimates) the collective energy and will of these souls will make Ynnead, the god of death, to drop kick Slaanesh into oblivion.
So in summary the Eldar's plan to kill the first god they accidentally made is to make ANOTHER god to kill the first one.
Yes, I know, it's almost TOO brilliant.
At least this WAS the plan, until SOMEONE decided he had a better idea.

8TH EDITION(a.k.a. the most recent stuff in 40k)
BIG SPOILERS AHEAD

So one of the oldest and most famous and respected Eldar Farseers, Eldrad Ulthuan, gets this nuts idea that maybe, just maybe, the Eldar don't all have to die to summon Ynnead. This was scoffed at by most Craftworld leaders because it was their turn with the in universe idiot ball, so they refused to lend Eldrad aid in this endeavor.

Of course Eldrad is kinda the 'beg forgiveness rather than ask permission' type, so he goes ahead with this anyway. He figures all they actually need to make Ynnead is a enough psychic concentration from enough powerful Farseers and enough power, and boom, instant Death God. He got the first by gathering those Farseers loyal to him and also the bones of the most powerful Farseers from each Craftworld. Which he stole. Then he found this moon just on the edge of the 'safe zone' around the eye of terror, covered in these crystals just bursting with energy. Mind you, these crystals were essentially crystallized Eldar remains that had coated the moon when the eye opened and killed about ninety percent of the Eldar population, and you may have noticed this is starting to perhaps sound maybe just a little bit like necromancy. Which it should. Cause it kind of is.
But hey, if you wanna summon a Death God, you gotta do a little necromancy.
So they get to the moon, set up, and get the ritual underway. And Just As Planned, it works.
Then the filthy humans show up and start shooting everything, as is our nature.

This fucks the ritual so Eldrad and co. have to stop it halfway through and run like hell before they get some new holes in their chests. They escape, but then Eldrad has to face all the pissed off Craftworlds who found the IOUs he left in place of the Farseer bones, and they find him guilty of space elf HERESY and throw him in magic prison.

Thing is though, even though the ritual stopped halfway, Ynnead still got summoned. He just wasn't at a power level where he could take on Slaanesh, and since the ritual got fucked by the filthy humans, he was gonna have to power up the old fashioned way, through worship. But for that, he'd need and avatar and prophet to lead the Eldar. So he started looking and found the perfect candidate.

Smash cut to sweat goblin town (Commorragh) and an Eldar named Yvraine is fighting in a gladiator pit with one of the deadliest pirate queens in Commorragh, Lelith Hesperax. And she's not doing great.
Up to this point Yvraine has led a storied life, she was born on a Craftworld, became a dancer, developed a bloodlust and became a warrior, then learned she had talent for psychic shit and became a Farseer, then she said 'Fuck this structured bullshit' and left to become a pirate captain for a while before her crew mutinied and she left for Commorragh for dat party life.
And now she's getting her ass kicked with most of Commorragh watching. She gets really pissed when she realizes Lelith is playing with her and not taking the fight seriously, and goes into a berserker like rage and actually wounds Lelith, which throws off the pirate queen because that wasn't supposed to happen. Lelith retreats to on top of a pile of corpses, Yvraine pursues, loses her footing in charging up the pile, then loses her hand, then gets a sword through the chest.
Then Ynnead swoops in and gives Yvraine a vision/job interview that goes something like this: 'So I've looked over your resume and you're a PERFECT fit for the job. You start immediately and no, you don't have a say in this.'. So Ynnead pours some of his power into Yvraine and this fixes the missing hand and fixes the whole 'sword through the chest' thing. Of course this big burst of psychic shit radiates out and blows up an already weak point in the Webway around Commorragh, so a whole load of daemons storm in to join the party. Vect immediately orders anyone loyal to him in the arena to kill Yvraine. Again.
But in a shocking twist, Lelith sides with the woman she just stabbed, and orders everyone loyal to her to protect Yvraine. What was originally a free-for-all gladiator fight has now turned into a team deathmatch with the whole arena involved.
Never say Commorragh is boring.
Yvraine and co. were still outnumbered and fled the arena, but surprisingly the ship from her pirate days was in Commorragh and let them onboard, you know, despite the fact they'd mutinied against Yvraine. They then flee Commorragh with a portion of the crew who MUTINIED staying behind to hold off Vect's troops while the important characters escaped.
Yvraine returns to her home Craftworld, which has... mixed opinions about her return, and fractures into factions. Some following her, some staying there others saying 'fuck this shit I'm gonna be a pirate.' Then she goes through a WHOLE BUNCH of bullshit to make an alliance with the filthy humans because they've FINALLY realized maybe the two races who have the most to lose against the literal eldritch chaos gods should work together. Finally at the end of all of this, Yvraine declares herself/ is declared the Emmisary of Ynnead, and she seeks to unite ALL Eldar beneath the banner of the Aeldari (which can still be pronounced like Eldar just add a little 'e' sound at the end) with the goal of kicking Chaos's fucking teeth in. Specifically Slaanesh.

Alright. That took a LOT longer to write then I originally planned. I'm very sorry for the delay.

But there's just one more section to cover, it should be short. SHOULD. I won't tell what it's about, but...

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