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At times like this I really, really wish we had taken webway key.
A Different Breed (Warhammer 29K)
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- Utrecht
yea, looked it up. Apparently, 500 space marines are all it takes to destroy the nobility of comorragh. The other wiki has numbers.
I call bullshit.
6000 years surviving post fall comorragh cutthroat culture, and they were taken down in a single engagement?
None of their contingencies kicked in?
My sense of disbelief died when the crew of a single, dsabled cruiser was able to withstand the might of a noble house in the heart of their power long enough for them to decide to cut their losses.
Sounds like the law of conservation of ninjutsu.
Professor Vesca
Good News Everyone!
Do you really think that would happen? That someone would go into the Imperial Archives and just tell lies like that?
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
I think it's more likely in the "Everything is canon but not everything is correct" was "It was a whole ass Space Marine Crusade but those were the only ones who got out, and so propaganda just said "Yeah about 500 space marines broke the Dark City's back because RAH RAH BY JINGO"
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I'd add that they caught the city in the middle of an internal fued as well. There is no way even a crusade could have gotten all of them if they had organized a unified defense.
MagnificentMind
To Live is to Suffer
Consistency in 40K is legendarily bad, and it's even worse when it comes to the Aeldari and non-Imperium factions in general. Which is why I have made it a habit of taking any material as being written from the Imperial point of view and thus heavily biased against anything, not them. Being Imperial propaganda as much as they are AARs and intelligence reports
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I'm pretty sure both those weapons could work on Slaanesh thanks to their associated narrarives, not necessarily any intrinsic properties, so I'm afraid it will not be as simple as "kill soneone with it and let Avatar loose with it against Dark Prince".
Something to note is that their pain feeding isn't specifically pain feeding.
It seems that one of inherent psychic powers that Eldar have without drawing on the warp is psychic vampirism. They can feed on emotions and souls for energy.
That can be any emotion, the stronger the better, but it's easy and quick to induce strong emotions of suffering in others via hurting them than it is others like joy or awe, so that's what the Webway Eldar resort to when they realise they need to recharge their souls to replenish the energy Slaneesh drinks from them.
Craftworld Eldar choose not to use that ability, probably because it's incompatible with their Parhs, but can change their mind if they leave the Paths, and the reverse is also true.
I think it's probably pretty hard to persuade them not to use that ability, given that they can not only use that energy to replenish what Slaneesh takes, but they can also use it to reverse their aging; regenerate their bodies, and super-charge their physical abilities.
Indeed, I think it might be hard to persuade the Vulkari not to use it. If eating the souls and emotions of the orks you're fighting in battle can make you better at fighting them, why wouldn't you? If it's been something the Eldar could always do, it might just be seen as a natural and normal thing to do to your enemies. The Dark Eldar have just taken it to extremes by eating worlds worth of non-combatants.
Depends on if Khaine can also duplicate their narratives; I suppose.
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- Utrecht
it's still a shitty story.
Vect's master stroke was to sic a couple of companies of space marines on his rivals. Wow, what a genius move!
Truly the work of millenia.
"vect schemed for a thousand years and outwit the entrenched nobility at their own game" would have been preferable.
Instead, we get this Gros display of incompetence, where a ruling noble house can't utterly destroy the crew of a single ship that is trapped in their web and have no idea about Astrotelepathic communication.
Somehow, vect managed to spin letting a strike force of the imperium into the city as a genius move.
What if they had shot a cyclonic torpedo instead of engaging in glorious melee combat?
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Crackpot theory time: The drukhari are to psychic vampirism, what the ishari are to biomancy.
The fact that Eldar can (repeatedly, I think) switch between the Paths, the Exodite lifestyle, Dark Eldar style psychic vampirism* and none of the above (and any of them can become a Harlequin, although I don't know if they can switch back form that), strongly suggests it's not.
Experienced Dark Eldar may become more skilled at psychic vampirism over time, but that's quite different. There's no transformation involved, it's just a choice of how to and which of their use their innate powers they use. Some use ritual self-mind control to suppress most of their personality/psyche/soul to adopt a Path to block the Thirst. Others use psychic vampirism* to eat emotions and souls. These may usually be incompatible, as the Paths may generally require suppressing the part of the psyche/soul used for psychic vampirism.
* And some may combine the approaches. I think Incubi are simultaneously on a divergent version of the Path of the Warrior and super-charge themselves with psychic vampirism. That may be Arya's heretical innovation, working out how to combine the two approaches for maximum power, cutting off the leak of energy by being on a Path while retaining the ability to eat energy. Possibly because Striking Scorpions embody where Khaine and Kurnous touch, the Warrior as Hunter, and Hunting is conceptually adjacent to eating what you kill, and Arha took that one step further to develop an Aspect that didn't suppress the part of the Eldar soul and psyche that permitted psychic vampirism.
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Didn't the dark Eldar remove their psychic potential with genetic engineering though?
I don't believe so. They're just taught from childhood to rigorously suppress their talents, and cloned Eldar have this particularly bad.
And I think that's not anything directly to do with Slaneesh's Thirst or resisting it. It's because Post-Fall Webway Realms are fragile. Uncontrolled or too much use of psyker powers can let daemons bypass the wards using the psyker as a gate, and invade (which makes sense, as using a psyker power means drawing power from the Warp). As a result, the Dark Eldar leadership think anyone developing their psyker potential is too dangerous, and universally ban it.
That's why Dark Eldar kill their peers who try to recruit non-Dark Eldar psykers into their retinue, including in one case where an Archon invited an allied Farseer into the Dark City before. iIRC, a joint operation.
Dark Eldar are, I believe, generally fully capable of learning to be psykers, it's just that their peers would gladly use it as an excuse to murder them if it's discovered, so doing so means you basically have to defect to another faction.
Also, living in the Webway slows the rate of Slaneesh's Curse, so being a Dark Eldar psyker who lives permanently in real space so they can use their talents is probably very expensive in terms of victims, and being an Eldar psyker is very dangerous without the techniques and tools that the Craftworlders on the Path of the Seer use.
There may be some out there, like there are Corsair psykers, but they're rare enough never to have shown up.
By contrast, Craftworlders defecting to become Dark Eldar is apparently relatively common because the Paths are that hard to walk. It's one of the reasons for their declining population IIRC.
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If we go by the wiki (and the 5 edition codex), most of the dark Eldar psychic abilities got atrophied to the point that the dark eldar kind of don't have psykers anymore ?
But that again is something for the QM to rule on.
Dark Eldar kind of just run on chaos logic, so what they can/can't do is pretty damn arbitrary.
I personally read that reference to mean on an individual rather than sub-species level. Having suppressed those abilities all their lives, they're hard to recover, and the Dark Eldar have lost the knowledge of how to train psyker abilities as well.
Professor Vesca
Good News Everyone!
Well as they are all collectively doing it then if every individual cannot be a psyker anymore then that becomes a species-wide trait for the Drukharii. It kinda feels like trying to split hairs on the fact that humans dont have two ears, its just that every individual human just so happens to have two ears and all their children will have two ears et c.
Also, learning to be a Psyker purely by self-studying and trial-and-error is bound to be orders of magnitude more dangerous than learning it from a tutor and under careful supervision. Since it's already very dangerous, you'd have to be suicidal or very desperate to attempt it.
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I headcanon that there are currently eldar factions that have taken a variant of the –8 point option, and now have to complete a faction quest to remove their connection to the warp, forever freeing them from the attached curses.
Of course, if isha is freed, she won't be able to bless them again.
Of course, if isha is freed, she won't be able to bless them again.
But a Dark Eldar who defects can, it seems, reawaken their psyker talents and become a Craftworld Eldar and Harlequin, using psytech devices and potentially becoming an active psyker.
There's a reason the Dark Eldar have laws against developing their psyker talents, and that's because they can still do it*
It's much more like being in a culture where people are coach potatoes leading to your muscles atrophying not meaning that you can't become an athlete if you move to a different culture and take one up. It's an acquired, contingent culturally determined trait not an essential one.
Sure, you're less likely to become a great athlete if you start late, but that doesn't mean you can't try.
* and some defy Vect's laws. There are Dark Eldar fortune tellers know as crones who sell black market psyker divinations to other Dark Eldar prepared to break them. An example is Angevere, although she spends most of the novel she's in as a severed head sustained by her psyker powers.
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Do you have a cite/quote/general source for the (born) dark eldar being able to just switch over to being a craftworld Eldar/following the paths and getting their psychic powers "back" ?
Because the only thing I found there is that the craftworld Eldar can switch around when they leave the path system and then later can switch back to following the paths.
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There's an ex-Incubi in Path of the Warrior who becomes a Striking Scorpion and can use their psytech equipment. It's mentioned he's not unique and it's never suggested that he or others like him are blocked from taking the full range of paths in future.
And there's an example of a Dark Eldar psyker and mentions of others like her in Path of the Renegade:
Article: The manifold gifts of the eldar extended to very considerable psychic prowess and their ancient civilisation had been built as much with thoughts as with hands. But after the Fall the use of psychic powers became a sure way to attract daemons, effectively signing the sorcerer's death warrant along with any other unfortunates in the vicinity.
It was a hard vice to resist, akin to losing a limb, but the eldar kindred of Commorragh and its satellites soon learned to shun their psychic gifts, and to destroy those that pursued them despite the consequences. Now every scrap of their mental training focused on internalising their powers and hiding their presence from She Who Thirsts. The few that still pursued such knowledge, like Archon Ysclyth, usually came to a sticky end however clever they thought they were. Some still dabbled in the meaner warp-arts, using cards and grimoires and other fetishes to protect themselves. Rune-casting to see the future was another crime replete with its own set of horrid punishments for anyone involved in it.
And:
Article: "A warp-dabbler casts runes or cards or bones to tell the future. This one has no hands."
...
"Had you pursued your arcane studies sufficiently you would know those are only safeguards – psychic fuses, if you will. Angevere can peep beyond the veil all on her own with sufficient inducement."
Angevere is a Dark Eldar.
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Professor Vesca
Good News Everyone!
Yeah.
My understanding is that while the Drukharii can stop feeding on the souls and suffering of others, there are certain things that are going to be beyond their ability to recover. Their psychic powers is one thing. You see this with the Ynnarii. You also see this with various corsairs where Drukharii escape Commorragh to become corsairs. But you never see them regain their psychic abilities.
My understanding is that while the Drukharii can stop feeding on the souls and suffering of others, there are certain things that are going to be beyond their ability to recover. Their psychic powers is one thing. You see this with the Ynnarii. You also see this with various corsairs where Drukharii escape Commorragh to become corsairs. But you never see them regain their psychic abilities.
Should have gone with switching the FTL drive and going for blanks. It's not like warp drive is the only FTL method in the setting - there are at least three others and possibly more.
That's rather contradicted by what I posted above demonstrating that Dark Eldar can develop and use their psyker powers while remaining Dark Eldar, it's just inherently dangerous and the Dark Eldar leadership lethally disproves of it.
As Dark Eldar can be psykers and remain Dark Eldar, there's no reason they can't while adopting another lifestyle.
It's not something they've lost in the first place, just something they've put effort into suppressing so it takes work to build back up.
Yes, their powers atrophy from disuse. No, that doesn't mean they can't exercise them to get them back up to strength.
Angevere is an example of one who did. Most Dark Eldar warp-dabblers (psykers) are dependent on tools to protect herself, but she strengthened her powers enough to directly look into the Warp to foresee the future.
Even the other warp-dabblers she's contrasted to strengthened their powers from fully suppressed to be able to manifest what for a human are fairly decent psyker divination powers, as human psyker diviners usually use tools as well.
Another quote showing that it's active suppression that needs maintenance:
Article: Like all Commorrites he had a deep repugnance spiced with a mixture of terrible fascination and atavistic fear when it came to the warp-touched. All eldar possessed an intuitive psychic ability; it built their first golden empire and almost destroyed them by creating She Who Thirsts. Most in Commorragh used drugs and intensive training to seal off the dangerous psychic conduits in their minds. Some broke Vect's laws by embracing their gifts and flirting with them briefly – typically to the great woe of anyone in the vicinity – before being consumed by She Who Thirsts, if Vect's castigators didn't find them first. Only a bare few survived long enough to gain any true insight.
The same happens for Post-Fall Eldar who recklessly use psyker powers. They get eaten if they don't have the right tools and knowledge.
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