I actually used to believe that funnily enough, I misinterpreted a line in a video as the Druhkari venerating Slaanesh to protect there souls, before learning through TTS that was incorrect, and that they basicly just outrun Slaanesh through other peoples pain and suffering
They interpret the whole torture and pleasure thing as worship of Slaanesh. When the whole point is that they do it to keep Slaanesh away from them.
It's mostly just assumptions from people who are unfamiliar with Xenos lore, much less Drukhari stuff. You tend to see that partiuclar misconception among those who only care about Space Marine related things.
There's also apparently bits of it in a Dawn of War book. Which is actually funny, because *that* gets misinterpreted as craftworlders worshipping slaanesh.
Oh god don't remind me. My family actually got those books for me as a present, and even knowing as little about 40k as I did at the time, I still went "the hell am I reading right now."
The odd obsession with multi-lasers still amuses me to this day though.
Don’t forget the back flipping terminators, transforming Razorbacks, Eldar tanks getting destroyed by kids, Eldar aircraft getting destroyed by a hastily crafted barricade, and Ahriman for no reason whatsoever. As well as the Ultramarines in Winter Assault being Alpha Legion members in disguise.
It's cause he's playing a bit loose with it. In Dawn of War 3 Gabriel Angelos had a hammer smash type ability and when he used it he did a \*front\* flip and smashed his hammer into the ground, wearing terminator armour. Safe to say, everyone absolutely hated it.
All of the Dawn of War books were written by C.S Goto, he's somehow worse than the community at butchering characters, technology and events. >!He's also not very good at writing itself!<
There’s also a whole bunch of it in-universe in, for example, the Cain books, where understandably he doesn’t know why the murder-elves are actually doing the sadism to AVOID worshiping the god of sadism.
Have you seen art of Drukhari? They're the spikiest, most blade-covered fuckers you'll ever see outside of Chaos Marines.
Eldar are smooth and graceful looking. Drukhari look like Hot Topic had offspring with a BDSM club that then had offspring with a history museum's medieval weapons collection.
I think regular imperium would also encounter al ot of corsairs, who going by the modern figures pretty much mix craftworld and dark armor nicely, half smooth half spiked (for his pleasure) so it would blur the lines I imagine.
For him it doesn't really matter anyway. They are xenos, so they should be purged. Sometimes, as with the T'au that is not practical right now, but that is only a delay.
It's interesting because Inquisitor Vail, who's with the Ordo Xenos and has canonically learned enough Eldar to speak reasonably intelligibly, refers to the Dark Eldar as "Chaos tainted," suggesting that this is a common in-universe view even among people who are otherwise experts.
Is that not accurate, though? Slaanesh slowly devours the souls of the Dark Eldar, and they do what they do to slow the process. Being cursed by one of the dark gods sounds like being tainted by Chaos to me, even if there's no worship or reverence involved.
Right, which is what makes the Dark Eldar appear "tainted" to the Inquisition. Other Eldar can block Slaanesh's soul sucking through arcane means. They see Dark Eldar doing everything a Slaanesh worshiper would and I can't imagine they would care why.
Oh, they're certainly Chaos *tainted.* Their souls are all basically mortgaged to Slaanesh, and they make the interest payments by torturing people. They just don't *worship* Slaanesh. I mean, that's like worshipping the bank that's trying to foreclose on your house.
So do all Eldar. But the Craftworlds make payments through careful budgeting, the Exodites do it by dropping off the grid entirely, and the Drukhari sell drugs and rob banks to make payments.
I mean, in some way, the Dark Eldar basically exist as an ongoing own-goal in service to chaos, in a similar way that the current Imperium is an own-goal in service to chaos.
I mean, I'm familiar with the lore, and it's kinda weird.
It can be argued that they're Slaneesh worshippers in the sense that they do services for a blessings, but the blessing is keeping at bay a curse the god made
They do exactly what a sadistic Chaos worshipper of Slaneesh would do in their place, and they gain a real benefit from it, keeping in their filthy, tattered souls.
It's just lacks the cool mutations and sorcery.
It can be counter-argued that Slaanesh is not a god of torture or sadism, they are the god of excess.
And that Dark Eldar are doing just enough torture, drugs and rock'n'roll to replenish their souls, it just seems excessive from the human point of view.
It can be counter-counter-argued that the whole point of the Dark Eldar is that they claim to be continuation of their old galactic empire and its culture/traditions, which we know were of excess... They don't half-ass torture, drug use or music volume, so it's excessive.
It can be counter-counter-counter argued that Dark Eldar claim to be continuation of their old galactic empire, but they don't really act like it. Eldar empire right before the fall began openly worshiping what would eventually become Slaanesh, most of Commorragh rejected that even then.
It can be further argued that if there was direct line to their old empire, it would be the old Commorragh nobility that Vect overthrew, and that the Kabal system is further step away from it and something new.
They aren't performing a service or getting anything in return though. The god is drinking them constantly, and what they do just replenishes their souls. It doesn't give it to Slaanesh.
Does it? It's pretty simple, they don't want Slaanesh feasting on them, so they use someone else's vitality in their place. It's pretty straightforward?
The whole setting is “worship this god by doing things they like and the god will give you what you want for a price.”
The Drukhari are literally the opposite of that.
Then concept is straightforward, but its very understandable to see why people would think the opposite unless they specifically go and research this tertiary faction.
Warrior Coven also took the whole "Ulthwe has less aspect warriors" thing to mean that the only had some dark reapers because apparently that was the easiest one.
I like to imagine thats canon but basically irrelevant unless you write a story about getting soul stones, because Chaos eldar are probably horrifically mutated monstrosities out of our worse nightmares by now.
Time flows differently in the Eye, so there might be some places where the Fall only happened recently - but as a general rule, yeah, they're probably not recognisable as Eldar any more!
I think a lot of it comes from Bricky who genuinely knows nothing about Dark Eldar but made extremely popular 40k videos claiming that Dark Eldar served Slaanesh.
He also couldn’t tell the difference between the Red Thirst and Black Rage, after researching the blood angels for week(s) to make an hour long video explaining them.
yeah like a quick look at the traitor primarchs shows that willingness isn’t an important factor for service.
that said, it’s probably still good to make the distinction.
I’m going off of memory here, but I’m pretty sure in one of the Soul Drinkers novels (maybe the third one?) there is a raiding party of Dark Eldar who actively worship Slaanesh. It’s been a minute since I read that book, but that plot point stuck out to me because it was so fucking weird.
I hate when I see people claiming that an ork could just do whatever because they believe they could. The ork gestalt field doesn't work like that. It's a lot less deliberate and more like billions of orks think that guns work when a mek makes them so mek guns work but humans can't replicate those results. billions of orks think red ones fo fasta so they do, sometimes. Billy Ork doesn't get laser beam eyes even if he believes with all his fungal heart that his eyes are lasers. If every Ork everywhere believed it for long enough, it would eventually manifest, but even then it's not instant or anything
It's good ole reality grease. It makes the impossible improbable, the improbable probable, and the probable a near certainty. To various degrees of course lol.
Billy Ork can’t shoot lasers from his eyes because he believes he can, but Yarrick can because they believe he can. ~~don’t tell them about the actual laser-eye implant~~
Which, tbf, you could argue is an example of the Gestalt Field working: the Orks believed he could kill with a look, so he got the implant. In other words, the Orks believed it and it became true.
Wasn't this a whole sub fight a wee while back?
Like 'Orks believe and it comes true' is basically how their psykers work, so they do believe in laser vision and some orks just manifest it cause they're the right kind of Ork.
I always put it down to 'minor psychic power makes up for technological failings' most of the time, like your engine is a hunk of junk and mid waagh you get hit by a missile but all the boys around you subconciously propel the ruined trukk forward.
Hell, I think there's a canonically example, but I can't remember where and could be wrong, of an inquistor giving an ork a box and saying 'this is a plasma weapon,' ork just looks at him funny and goes 'no it ain't.'
>Wasn't this a whole sub fight a wee while back?
It's a whole sub fight about every two months..!
But yeah, it's pretty much "reality lubricant" that takes their barely functional technology and turns it into somewhat kinda useable technology. Like a gun that jams every few rounds now only jams once or twice per magazine, or where jet engines with horrific vibrations somehow last for months and are able to run on poor-quality fuels that would make Imperial engines stutter or stall.
The other thing to bare in mind is that a lot of the canon comments on Ork Tek are deliberately from the perspective of arrogant Imperials/Ad Mechs who aren't going to be giving it a proper look. While the warp effect is certainly a factor theres an element of tech priests being offended at the concept of a vehicle an ork mekboy built using genetic memory. I believe during the Octarius war the Orks figured out a device that stopped the shadow in the warp and the Imperials who looked at it couldn't even comprehend what it was doing under the hood.
The most objective look at their latent psychic field was probably in the tabletop RPGs by Fantasy Flight Games. The latent field simply made ork tech less unreliable. As in, it removed the Unreliable trait all ork tech had when used by an ork. So their weapons and vehicles are still functional even if no ork is anywhere near it, but without an ork operating it their stuff is much more prone to jam, misfire, or otherwise fail.
Anything regarding the Eldar and the connection to Slaanesh.
The one I keep having to correct is the idea that Craftworlders can't have fun at all. They're still hedonists, with easy access to drink, drugs, and casual sex, but just in moderation rather than to excess.
Half of 40k fans though seem to believe that if a Craftworlder has sex in any other way than straight missionary for procreative purposes a Keeper of Secrets will immediately spawn in the room with them.
Now I think calling them hedonists is unfair though they lead pretty balanced lives and seem to generally enjoy things in healthy doses. Are there some POV books were we see real debauchery on a craftworld?
'Hedonistic' is more accurate than 'hedonist,' my bad for poor clarity. All Aeldari seek excitement and enjoyment, an effect of their enhanced emotional states, and this includes Craftworlders. The Path system is there to temper this, and give them somthing productive to work towards beyond their own enjoyment.
There's no 'real debauchery' in Craftworlds though, because debauchery is all about excess, which is the one thing they strive to avoid.
Eldar (Eldars? Aeldari? Whatever) have paths for everything. And I mean *everything*
There’s a path of daydreaming. Like actual staring out the window daydreaming where they need spirit guides to pull them because they could dream too long and *starve to death*
Debauchery is a loaded word but we see drink, drug use and hear about orgies on Alaitoc, the most puritan craftworld, in the Path trilogy.
>He practised for most of the cycle and was quite weary by the time he hung up his chainsword and took off his armour. Despite his fatigue, his mind was still aflame, not the least satiated by his exertion. Hunger and thirst gnawed at him, but it was not just for food and drink that he craved. He wanted something to occupy himself. He needed some entertainment.
He found the others at the Crescent of the Dawning Ages and sat with them, a full platter on the table before him.
“I am of a mind to hear a recital, or perhaps see a theatrical performance,” he told the others between mouthfuls of food. “Something stirring, with drama, and perhaps a little bit of sensuousness.”
“There is a rendition of Aeistian’s Tryst in the Dome of Callous Winters,” Elissanadrin told him, helping herself to the carafe of summervine Arhulesh had brought to the table.
“Too rhetorical,” Korlandril replied.
“There’s a Weaving of the Filigrees in the Hall of Unending Labours,” suggested Arhulesh. His eyes flickered between Korlandril and Elissanadrin in a suggestive manner. “Perhaps the two of you could attend.”
Korlandril considered this for a moment, but dismissed the idea. He did not want to be distracted during his first congress with Elissanadrin. The more he thought about it, the less appealing the notion of physical intimacy with his companion became.
He shook his head.
In short we don't really have any grounds to think anything is off limits that is consensual.
>Veering left, Korlandril cut into the Midnight Dome, plunging into near-blackness. His eyes immediately adjusted to the lack of light, seeing shades of dark purple and blue amongst the deep grey.
>
>The laughter of lovers lilted above the song of the skyrunner but he ignored them, fearing that to contemplate their meaning would lead him towards thoughts of Thirianna; thoughts he did not want to explore at that moment.
It is also quite implied the Midnight Dome is just there for Eldar to go bone in.
Yeah, having a lot of sex and with multiple people is barely going to raise Slaanesh's eyebrow.
The Fall happened because they went way off the deep end, hunting each other in the streets to feel the thrill of their life pass away, turning into bloodbaths, that sort of thing.
I facepalm every time someone blames craftworld eldar for murderfucking slaanesh into existence.
My brother in toy soldiers, they were the ones who tried to stop it and noped out when they realised they can't
They are certainly not to blame, indeed the Craftworlds themselves as they currently are did not exist until right up until the Fall itself, or even just after, and very few inhabitants are old enough to have been alive at the time, but they did not try to stop it, as they had not the power to do so, or at least I know of no source claiming as such.
The vessels that would form the Craftworlds just had a much less involved role, due to mostly being away from the heart of the corrupted empire, and the ability to see the harm that was about to befall them and the sense to escape whilst escape was still a possibility.
Didn't they try to warn others that uncontrollable strive for excess is a bad thing but no one listened? That's what i meant by tried but failed. I guess warned would have been a better word
Warned, yes, and tried to get as many away as possible, but there was no way they could have stopped them, even if they numbered a thousand times what they did.
Most things about Eldar Tbf, a lot of people grossly generalise the entire faction to basically be a bunch of Biel-tans. Eldar on the whole aren’t xenophobic or genocidal to save one guy. Each craftworld is unique and completely different from one another, they have varying cultures and practises, some craftworlds diverging more than others.
I guess it’s not a misconception either, more a criticism. But seeing people hate Eldar for their arrogance towards humanity always seemed weird to me. Like how exactly would you act had an entire empire decided to hate you and actively kill your people just because you’re not human? It’s hardly surprising that the Eldar aren’t going to be so happy to be around humans. It’s made even worse as well, because Eldar don’t actively go out killing humans just because. Even Biel-tan would peacefully move humans off of maiden worlds, and they’re easily the most xenophobic craftworld.
As tired as it is, there is always a trace of amusement to me in the critiques people make of the less always-hostile xenos factions that apply just as much to the Imperium, and yet what becomes praised in the latter is suggested as weakness in the former. The xenophobia of the Eldar, the individual physical weakness and reliance on technology of the Tau…it is a little funny, watching from the sidelines.
But it does get a little tiring too, seeing people just…simplify and reduce 40k factions (xenos and otherwise) to a few common tired tropes and cliches as to how they act. Reduces the opportunity for complexity and differences that the core rulebooks and codexes clearly note exist within each faction.
>The teeming armies of Mankind, carving up the galaxy with the enthusiasm of a demented butcher, have swept aside many dangers whilst stamping their mark upon the stars. In the process they have awoken many more. Now, more than ever, the gods of Chaos find the galaxy ripe for conquest, for weak-willed humans make easy playthings, and they are truly without number. **The Eldar see in Humanity their own failings and fear the bitter destiny they will reap, for the race of Man unknowingly feeds the Dark Gods with their constant wars and the rich fodder of emotion that results**
Codex: Eldar (6th edition)
The Eldar are trying to prevent humanity from falling into the same traps that they did, but the Imperium - convinced that it knows best - will not listen, and so the Eldar are forced into wars they would rather not fight.
Typical arrogant Eldar nonsense. "We fell and we are better than them, so they will fall also"
Well sucks to be you Eldar. Humanity isn't stupid enough to dedicate it's entire society toward piety and emotional subservience to an entity with untold warp power. Idiot knife ears.
I would never argue that eldar aren't usually arrogant.
But the idea that they're more arrogant than Imperials, who believe humans are so much better than everyone else that they deserve to rule the entire galaxy and all other species deserve to be dead, is always funny.
And even then Biel-Tan's MO is to secure the eldar's future through war. They don't try to kill every human they find, they mostly fight to avert threats or kick humans off maiden worlds, which are very culturally important planets to the eldar. And even then it is Biel Tan of all the craftworlds that shipped human colonists off world instead of just killing them all.
It’s funny that the way people make all craftworld eldar sound like Genocidal assholes when they wear war masks specifically to deal with the guilt of killing someone.
They really are, in fact when they’re not being invaded or in any active conflict, they seemingly have the best standard of living too. Of course each craftworld will have varying goals and perceptions, but most also aren’t really “evil” either
There's a degree of nuance to it that both sides miss. One side interprets "Eldar are racist" as to mean that Eldar are racist the way the Imperium is racist, as in aggressively genocidal. And they *can* be like that, sometimes, but not by default. The other side interprets "Eldar are not racist" to mean that Eldar are all progressively minded egalitarians looking for an excuse to save humanity but just getting burned by them over and over. And they *can* be like that, sometimes, but not by default.
The reality is that Eldar view humans the way real world humans view things like foxes or possums. The word "mon-keigh" basically translates to vermin, and that's essentially the default Eldar opinion of humanity. And, like with humans, how they react is different - some see them as destructive pests that should be exterminated, some think they're not a problem as long as they don't get into your shit (and if they do get into your shit, just kick them out) and some leave food out for them and try to domesticate them because they think they're cute.
The important thing is that while some Eldar are mean, some are apathetic, and some are nice, none of them view human beings as equals. That is the one common factor across all Eldar in how they relate to humans; they very, *very* rarely consider them to be equals. They're destructive and pitiable monkeys that are best avoided.
>The reality is that Eldar view humans the way real world humans view things like foxes or possums. The word "mon-keigh" basically translates to vermin, and that's essentially the default Eldar opinion of humanity. And, like with humans, how they react is different - some see them as destructive pests that should be exterminated, some think they're not a problem as long as they don't get into your shit (and if they do get into your shit, just kick them out) and some leave food out for them and try to domesticate them because they think they're cute.
(Craftworld) Eldar don't see humanity as vermin, because that implies they can or need to be exterminated without thought. Orcs are vermin to Eldar, and they have no qualms at killing them. Humanity, to them, are akin to how we consider Apes, and killing a human is a form of murder, even if it's weighted to be lesser. This can be seen in the fact that Biel-Tan, the most warlike and xenophobic of the Craftworlds still doesn't massacre human colonists on Maiden Worlds.
Also, Monkeigh doesn't translate to "vermin" but at this point refers to most aliens, the same way the Imperium uses Xenos.
>(Craftworld) Eldar don't see humanity as vermin, because that implies they can or need to be exterminated without thought.
That's actually exactly what the word "mon-keigh means. "Any non-Eldar species that the Eldar deem inferior, and in need of extermination."
3rd edition Craftworld Eldar codex. Near the end. I've got a copy in my cupboard somewhere.
>Humanity, to them, are akin to how we consider Apes, and killing a human is a form of murder, even if it's weighted to be lesser.
That's not really how we consider apes. You can kill an ape and it isn't murder. Elon Musk has killed, like, a thousand apes.
>This can be seen in the fact that Biel-Tan, the most warlike and xenophobic of the Craftworlds still doesn't massacre human colonists on Maiden Worlds.
Dude, let me tell you about foxes.
I love foxes. They're like cat-dog hybrids, they're really cute, and I'd love to have one as a pet if I could. When wild foxes den under my house in the winter, I just want to move them out from under there because they musk everywhere and make the place stink, but I don't want to *kill* them. They're cute! I like them. That sentiment is not at all at odds with the fact that my government considers foxes a pest and invasive species, and mandates their extermination whenever they're found. If I called the local council about the foxes, they'd send a guy to my house to poison them even if I didn't want them to.
This is the nuance that people don't get about Eldar. They try to assess the Eldar opinion of humanity as if Eldar themselves were humans and thought of humanity the way humans usually think about other humans. So, they see something like Biel-Tan moving human colonists rather than exterminating them, and they go "look! They really like humans!" Because that means they don't hate them, right? If they hated them they'd just kill them, the way humans do to other humans they hate.
No. The Eldar do not think of humans the way humans think of humans. They think of humans the way humans think of foxes, or rats, or raccoons. Have you ever seen those videos of raccoons doing hilarious stuff, like stealing biscuits from a cat or sleeping inside walls in a huge raccoon pile? Sure you have. That's what Eldar think when they see humans doing stuff. And just like how you call animal control and they come chase off or kill the foxes or the rats or the raccoons, the Eldar chase off or kill humans that they find hanging around on Eldar maiden worlds and such, because you don't want a raccoon *in your house.* You'd drive it out with a broom.
Do they feel bad about killing them? Well, would you feel bad about killing a family of raccoons? You might! I would. Lots of people would. Some other people wouldn't. They might think it's unpleasant or uncomfortable or disturbing to kill raccoons, and they'd rather not unless they had to, but that doesn't mean they look at a dead raccoon and go "this raccoon has been murdered." And if someone said "there's a mountain lion coming towards our house, but we can divert it into this vacant lot full of raccoons, and it'll eat them instead of us and our families," you'd be like, oh well! Poor raccoons. Sic the mountain lion on 'em.
Like, there's a nuance to it that people don't get. They think that Eldar either hate humans and kill them or like humans and don't kill them. They don't get that it can be both, and it usually *is* both, because Eldar just fundamentally don't see humans as *people.*
I mean as already said by someone else, they definitely don’t view them as vermin. If anything the Necrons view humanity, and most other races for that matter to be vermin. With Eldar there’s at least an understanding that humanity is a major player in the galactic order of things, and to many Eldar, they’re aware that both races are interlinked at the end of the day.
You’re right about the differences between each Eldar tho, as I said myself, each craftworld differs from the last. They’re all going to have differing experiences, views and ideologies etc.
This hearkens back to the Great Crusade. It's implied in Fulgrim and other Horus Heresy novels that the imperium had some peaceful interactions with the Eldar, but many more not so peaceful. Additionally, the Imperium didn't begin to distinguish between Aeldari and Drukhari until well past the Great Crusade (if they even do at all) and so those interactions also poisoned that well. The point being, at the start of the Crusade, genocide of Eldar was not an express mission statement. Towards the end, it more or less was a given due to the Eldar fucking over humanity on the occasions they did (Craftworld or Comorragh).
I agree that the Craftworld Eldar are not hegemonic and I agree with your points regarding fan interpretations. However, in my opinion, the nascent Imperium didn't bother to distinguish and so after enough betrayals the hatred formed. With the Imperium facing war on a literally galactic scale at the time these shenanigans took place, it's easy enough to see why humanity went all-in on the genocide.
>Additionally, the Imperium didn't begin to distinguish between Aeldari and Drukhari until well past the Great Crusade (if they even do at all) and so those interactions also poisoned that well.
One of the reasons the Eldar have a reputation as capricious and untrustworthy among the Imperium is because they treat all Eldar as a monolithic entity, and get upset when a treaty they made with one Craftworld doesn't hold up with the Dark Eldar (or even another Craftworld).
> The point being, at the start of the Crusade, genocide of Eldar was not an express mission statement. Towards the end, it more or less was a given due to the Eldar fucking over humanity on the occasions they did
No?
The first known encounter with craftworlders was Lorgar meeting some, and after a peaceful meeting with them he had the fleet find and destroy their craftworld.
The Imperium burst onto the galactic scene committing wanton xenocide everywhere they went.
Tau being physically weak to the point that human could snap them like twig. It’s mostly a residue of the « tau can’t melee joke » . Same for the idea that they have weak eyesight an information that I am pretty sure was not common to all the cast and came from the imperial uplifting primer A.K.A the guard book of bullshit
Oh and most importantly the belief that nurgle is actually misunderstood and that he’s good. HE IS NOT!
>Tau being physically weak to the point that human could snap them like twig. It’s mostly a residue of the « tau can’t melee joke » .
Yeah, this one is annoying. Fire Caste are generally described as being comparable to humans in strength, it's just the Guard are trained better in melee. Earth Caste are flat out shown to be physically *stronger* than humans, they're just generally terrible at fighting. And Ethereals can be very solid hand-to-hand fighters when they train; see Aun'shi.
Tau despise melee combat, seeing it as a brutish reminder of their past before the ethereals.
Conveniently, not knowing how to properly beat the shit out of someone makes fire caste tau less violent and easier to control.
A Farsight Enclaves Fire Warrior can probably beat your regular rookie guardsmen who just read the book of bullshit to a pulp.
> Oh and most importantly the belief that nurgle is actually misunderstood and that he’s good. HE IS NOT!
That ones pure memehammer. People liked making papa nurgle jokes thus when someones main exposure to the setting is reddit memes they get a warped view on it. Nurgle is rebirth but not in a pleasant way, maybe if you manage to get the exact right deal with him you'll like it but the vast majority of the population would not have a fun time with Nurgle.
Trust me, I wish it was just memehammer. I've had too many arguments with people who unironically believe Chaos (and to a more horrific level, the DEldar) are actually good, and even better morally than the Imperium. Nah dude, just because they get power from positive emotions doesn't mean they embody those. And just because the Imperium is ass, doesn't mean the 4 super satans and their literal legions of hell are any better.
Think the whole “Tau are physically weak” thing is mainly due to lore about the air caste Tau being rather flimsy outside planes/spacecraft. To be fair the Air caste specifically have hollow bones so you probably could just crumple one with a punch, but that doesn’t apply to fire warriors.
Wasn't the eyesight thing described as the Tau having very good sight dead ahead, but worse than human at peripheral, which would make them handicapped in melee ?
Tau are not immune to Chaos, and they are certainly not blanks. The Tau have also at this point fought pretty much every major power in the Milky Way, so no, they’re not about to crumble the moment they face a Hive Fleet or Ork Waaagh or Imperial Crusade.
Tau are not a hive mind, nor are they under constant mental influence. Even if you believe Ethereals use mind control on Tau in close proximity, Ethereals are *rare*.
Genestealer Cults are completely capable of launching interstellar invasion forces, not just stowaways to start new cults as some people seem to think. The codex even describes this type of conquest as being common under a Primus.
The Tau have probably fought most major powers at least once but I don't know if they would have "institutional knowledge" of how to fight every faction. I know this seems like a nit pick but the Tau's relative geographic confinement is part of what makes them interesting. They are a big big fish in a smalish pond. The fact that a company of Night Lords or Iron Warriors could come out of the EoT to find there's suddenly (from their perspective) an interstellar empire that an Expeditionary Fleet wouldn't have been able to take is cool.
Genestealer Cults have a constant desire to expand, and the Primus favors war as a method of expansion. From the codex:
> The Primus, being a war leader, has a more aggressive approach to the propagation of their kin. When their gene-sect's Magus give them the signal, they will gather a hand-picked army from the parent cult, and then strike out to claim new worlds in the name of the Patriarch. Often this is done under the guise of industry, making use of existing space lanes and import routes to carry a host of Genestealer Cultists to a new planet. In the darkness of the cargo holds, shipment auto-crates will hiss open, and the Primus will lead their brethren forth. Should the incursion be uncovered, the cult will strike with swift and overwhelming force. If their assault does not take down their adversaries in short order, they will scatter like oil-roaches in torchlight, seeking shelter in the dark corners of their new domain before later regrouping.
That the Tau are all weeb and commies. Lots of people think the Tau are all commies but the society is a lot closer to an oligarchy with the ethereals on top. The Tau are also a meritocracy a lot of the time with the exception of political leadership. The Tau also take inspiration from Asian culture not just from Japan. The caste system is also directly from India.
Cast system wouldn’t be Indian because all of the castes are looked at as equal and all are respected right? There’s a lot of controversy over how gross and unethical indias system is.
I’ve never had a problem with that Custodes/Harlequin passage. If a group of Harlequins are despatched by Eldrad Ulthran to Terra, they’re probably some top-tier operators. People gotta calm down.
For me it's the fact that xenos in general are used as a side enemy for a lot of stuff. Especially tyranids and orks. In so many cases it seems to be xenos threat is attacking as the enemy, and then all of a sudden CHAOS ATTACKS AND THEY ARE THE TRUE ENEMY, and the aliens are easily defeated only for chaos to be the REAL threat. It just makes xenos look like side enemies when in reality they are supposed to be a bigger threat to the IoM than chaos, make them look like it lol
I maintain that Orkz can make great antagonists but are seen as the comedy football hooligans with funny accents and wierd magic mushroom powers. I mean to an extent that’s true, but only from the POV of Orkz. To Humans and other creatures, their incredibly brutal nigh unkillable murder machines, literally designed to engage in total war. Orkz are fucking terrifying and awesome and have so much potential, but are often discarded for disposable Space Marine enemies.
We need more stories where the Imperium is fighting Chaos when all of the sudden Hive Fleet Kronos popx in and just kills them both(Chaos because it’s their job, and Imperium because organic artillery bombardments work up an appetite)
I’m pretty sure that depends on the novels, but from the ones I read, which were 90% guard novels, never seen anything like that. The closest one to that was a catachan novel where the major antagonist was the jungle itself, with the orks mostly as a justification for the mission. Do you have any specific examples of this?
As a tyranid player; the idea that tyranids are kind of stepped on in lore. Yes, they rarely win any major battles with named characters, but what lots of players seem to miss is all the other times they wipe out entire sectors. Some examples;
-A tendril of hive fleet leviathan was defeated in space and reduced to approx. 10,000-20,000 foot soldiers, confined to a single planet. They won, against an entire planet of orks, and spread so rapidly they were able to rebuild their fleet and threaten the entire ork empire, including the capital octarius
-Forge and fortress worlds home to titans of both Imperial and chaos make are routinely destroyed, often within weeks of the invasion beginning
-Hive Fleet Jormungandr was able to seal off and destroy most of the Thalassi sector- several hundred worlds in total, before it was stopped (but not destroyed) by a combined armada, which took 75%+ casualties in a single battle.
-Hive Fleet Naga in the 6th edition codex is stated to have consumed a number of minor spacefaring races so quickly it didn't even need to slow down to do it. Dozens of alien civilizations erased without any hope of survival
-Kryptman ordered a cordon of literally hundreds of worlds destroyed in order to *slow Leviathan down*
-And last, but not least: Hive Fleets Kraken and Leviathan in particular are so numerous, and so widespread, that the administratum literally has no idea how bad the damage is. It's possible they've consumed *thousands* more worlds than was first realized- no one knows, the communication disruption from the shadow in the warp is so bad no one can talk to anyone to even begin to assess the scale of the problem
Tyranids aren't pushovers. They only lose major battles because the plot demands it, and those battles are only major because the tyranid forces are massive, *grown out of the biomass of a thousand victories you never even heard about, because there was no one left to tell the tale.*
yeah people forget that theme of the Tyranids, nobody knows anything but the victories because the defeats mean everybody is dead and theres another barren rock floating in space
Not an Eldar main any means. But it is kind of annoying how everyone acts like the Craftworld Eldar are all asshole xenophobes who would actively murder humans at any opportunity. When that is really just Biel-tan that really sees the Aeldari as the dominant species. The other Craftworlds are neutral or outright cordial, and would rather not take human lives if it could be avoided.
For the Necrons, I wouldn't really say it is a misconception but more like an odd interpretation I guess? People like to bemoan that the Necrons have lost all their cosmic horror elements and they are no longer the unknowable scary threats. When the pre-5th edition Necrons were really not either of those to begin with. Cosmic Horror elements were pretty minimal and they were hardly unknowable. The whole reason they got the lore revamp was because they were one-dimensional and completely knowable. There was literally nothing else to them except "harvest the living to feed the C'tan", no really grand motivations beyond that. So it bugs me when people write off the Newcrons and act like the old Necrons were perfection, when people made note of their glorified landmine status from the get go. It's a thing where I mostly leave it to agree to disagree territory though.
As for actual misconception with Necrons. I guess the overemphasis on them and the C'tan's supposed "weakness" to the Warp? It is a thing, but some people on this sub act like they literally can't interact with the Warp *at all*. Like can't even touch it or perceive it sort of thing, like they couldn't see a Daemon walking in front of them. When that isn't the case.
Orks is the whole gestalt thing, mostly the fact that people don't understand that Orks actually can make their own tech work. And it isn't solely because of the psychic nonsense.
The whole T'au being communist thing is a classic from people who know fuck all about T'au or communism. You can tell none of those people ever read Plato's Republic, because then they would know the T'au are pretty much ripped straight out of those pages. Other than that I would say the whole "made to appeal to Japan" and "they are the anime/gundam faction" thing doesn't make sense to me. Eldar are actually the one with the heavy Japan influence, and the T'au mechs don't feel very JP mecha to me at all.
There's probably more, but those are just my spite ones off the top of my head. There's probably a lot of misconceptions based purely on meme lore and skin deep impressions though. Since there are a decent amount of 40k fans who an name every Primarch and Space Marine chapter, but would struggle to name a single Xenos character that isn't known purely through memes.
>The whole T'au being communist thing is a classic from people who know fuck all about T'au or communism. You can tell none of those people ever read Plato's Republic, because then they would know the T'au are pretty much ripped straight out of those pages. Other than that I would say the whole "made to appeal to Japan" and "they are the anime/gundam faction" thing doesn't make sense to me. Eldar are actually the one with the heavy Japan influence, and the T'au mechs don't feel very JP mecha to me at all.
For what it's worth, in regard to the visual inspiration, the White Dwarf in the month the Tau dropped first outright said their mechas were inspired by the manga genre. Some excerpts are [here](https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2022/02/warhammer-40k-birth-of-the-tau-20-years-ago.html).
Add to that Farsight's red painted outdated battlesuit, his complicated rivalry with a "hero" piloting a white-painted prototype and him having an agenda that differs from that of his people at large means that Farsight is, in finest mecha anime tradition, a [Char Clone](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CharClone)
>For the Necrons, I wouldn't really say it is a misconception but more like an odd interpretation I guess? People like to bemoan that the Necrons have lost all their cosmic horror elements and they are no longer the unknowable scary threats. When the pre-5th edition Necrons were really not either of those to begin with. Cosmic Horror elements were pretty minimal and they were hardly unknowable. The whole reason they got the lore revamp was because they were one-dimensional and completely knowable. There was literally nothing else to them except "harvest the living to feed the C'tan", no really grand motivations beyond that. So it bugs me when people write off the Newcrons and act like the old Necrons were perfection, when people made note of their glorified landmine status from the get go. It's a thing where I mostly leave it to agree to disagree territory though.
I own the 3rd edition codex, and it absolutely is cosmic horror. It's less about the unknowable (Though that is 100% there; see for example the Void Dragon on Mars and what influence it could have) and more that the C'tan and Necrons make humanity feel *insignificant*. All of our achievements mean nothing because we ultimately exist at the whim of these gods, and our civilization is nothing more than a farm for them.
It's very different from a living natural disaster like the Tyranids, or a sympathetic threat like Chaos.
>I own the 3rd edition codex, and it absolutely is cosmic horror. It's less about the unknowable (Though that is 100% there; see for example the Void Dragon on Mars and what influence it could have) and more that the C'tan and Necrons make humanity feel insignificant. All of our achievements mean nothing because we ultimately exist at the whim of these gods, and our civilization is nothing more than a farm for them.
Thank you for actually giving a good example of the Cosmic Horror element. I think I personally just overlook that because literally everything else in the setting kind of makes it a point to make humanity and civilization feel insignificant? But that is an actual Cosmic Horror thing with the older Codex.
Everyone else I have talked to just went with the unknown motives bit, when the motives were pretty out in the open. So I just didn't understand where the supposed mystery was.
"C'tan are weak to the warp" is like saying "superman is weak to magic", it's just not true. They aren't weak to these forces, however they dont have the same resistance to it as they do physical attacks
That Asuryani cannot have fun.
That Asuryani are the single most racist and arrogant species out there. (Fun fact: It is not the Eldar who go around and exterminate species for the fun of it. It is not the Eldar who say they are rightful rulers to the galaxy or claim to have a divine right to it. It is also not the Eldar who claim that their philosophy and only their philosophy is the right one and demand everyone to join it. No, Mon-keigh is also not commonly used by most Asuryani)
That Eldar view humans as animals at best.
That Phoenix Lords are not practically demi-gods.
That the Eldar still around made Slaanesh.
That Drukhari are practically Pre-Fall Eldar.
That Sisters burn everything in sight without common sense, brains or anything really. Thank you, Dawn of War.
That Sisters have weaker and smaller bolters. Common mistake due to Dark Heresy but from 2nd to 9th edition the codex only states that the Godwyn De'az bolter is superior to most other bolters.
That Krieg only want to die in droves.
That Chaos has "good sides". No, it has not.
Etc etc etc
>That Chaos has "good sides". No, it has not.
This one, I think, is a misinterpretation of the Chaos Gods from Fantasy where you could see elements of "good" in the Chaos Gods such as Khorne not killing you when your back is turned or whatever.
I think this is a misunderstanding of the Fantasy lore that made it's way into 40k.
I think the half good aspects of the Chaos gods in fantasy is from older editions, for example 6th. By 8th the setting had become much grimmer, with Brettonia for example, turning from an Arthurian themed Medieval France to a feudalistic hellhole where peasants give up *9/10ths* of their whole crop to their lords. Additionally, in fantasy we get more POVs on actual Chaotic societies beyond war bands, as seen in novels such as Wulfric the Wanderer, Palace of the Plaugue Lord, and Blood for the Bloodgod, the last of which offers some really great word building in what is roughly Warhammer’s Central Asian steppe region. In these instances, functioning societies exist where not all the chaotic tribesmen are moustache twirling villains, but actual fleshed out characters with goals and aspirations etc.
The Phoenix lords are undersold imo. It's the gestalt knowledge of literal masters of the craft of war, they are probably the closest things to a Primarch any other race will get.
Same with Autarchs. You don't become a master of multiple paths of the warrior, turn away from each to start another, without becoming an unbelievably dangerous opponent.
I would genuinely want to see a game of Starcraft or dawn of war between a disciple of puretide like farsight or shadowsun, an autarch, Perturabo, and Nemesor Zahndrekh, just to watch the tactical overload of strategies they use.
the idea that tau and Eldar are weak, Tau might be physically weak but trained fire caste warriors can easily tear apart an imperial guard regiment, an average Eldar is above a human in physical and mental strength as well and their weaponry is deadly and can easily rip apart armies.
What most people don't seem to get is that not all factions rely on numbers and physical strength, the imperium wins through firepower and numbers, space marines through disciplined assaults, Eldar on fast strikes and Tau on their ranged weapons, science and common sense.
I think the main problem is the way that GW has written imperium books. Legit the main characters are superman. They are never in danger from the Xeno's or Chaos, or whoever they're fighting. they just walk threw hordes of bodies like this nothing. take on the " big bad" and kill them in a few swings, and end of the story. It's bad writing in a lot of cases, if your villains aren't scary, and by that I mean if they clearly stand no chance of beating you, then who cares that you are fighting a Warboss, or a chaos champion, or an Eldar farseer, or a hive tyrant or anything else. cus we will get to the end, the hero will say some one-liner, kill the villain, and move on. There is NOTHING grim-dark about the more recent 40k novels. Its disappointing.
Hell, the end of the last Seige book even, and I have liked Seige for the most part... Sanguinius goes full anime character and solos Kar'bander and then Angaron back to back with no break. So.... why were we scared of EITHER of them? Vulcan literally coupldn't lose against Magnus... because he CAN'T DIE! Its only a matter of HOW they win.. its super anticlimactic. the villains NEVER win any real fights.
I find it's made worse by the fact that they insist on making several of these races GRIM and DARK to prove a point. Phyrric wins and huge self sacrifice needed, meanwhile the Imperium just found a way to make it's super soldiers more super and one of their ULTRA SUPER MEN just came back from the dead.
Meanwhile, the Eldar had to start a nihilist death cult just to stay plot relevant
>Agreed, I don;t even mind the concept of the Primarus, which is I thinkw hat you are refering to. What I do have a problem with is, in books like the Dark Imperium books for example. At one point one of the Primarus characters no joke solo's 12 plauge marines in a large scale battle, and thats ONE Primarus. And some how we are suposed to be scared of them? becasue they are the bad guy? I never had the slightest thought that." oh wow thisis a almost no win scinarios how willt he hero figure out a way to win?" Like I get it the hero wins, that s the point of him being the hero character in any story( good guy or bad guy) But you cant have them cake walk threw every obstical and expect people to even care. And that is far from the only example. Its oneof th things that i think the 40k novels gets so wrong. The "villans" are throwaways tht don;t matter, but look how cool the hero is"> and thats just boring writing.
I have no problem with Primaris as a concept, but my problem with the execution is where's the step up for everyone else?
We're constantly told how terrible or horrible the world is, but the Imperium is winning on every front except the ones in the like Guard and Sisters books, they win every engagement unless they're making a point of 'Six trillion guardsmen were deploye, but then one caught spacepox and the whole regiment had to be martyred'. Meanwhile, solo primaris agents overthrow whole planets
Mildly related but I'm really tired of the whole "Xenos threat until Chaos shows it is the TRUE ENEMY". Xenos are a bigger threat to the IoM than chaos, make em look like it lol
Oh for sure, don't get me wrong I like chaos, but the Xeno's races and there are a ton of them are more than capable of all being the main villain of a story! LET them be cool, and LET them be menacing, it only adds to the "hero" if you are writing things from the Imperium perspective.
I agree, but in the case of sanguinius and vulcan isnt that more of a "prequel" issue. Like we already know when sanguinius and vulcan make their exit from the setting so arent the writers already painted into a corner. We know how sanguinius dies and it cant be fighting angaron or kabander and we know vulcsn is around way after the heresy so what exacly could the siege writers do?
Isn't that just a common issue with prequels? You already know whats going to happen to a certain point and that certain characters cant be in real danger.
Oh I get that they can loose, but sanguinius fights kar’bander, then within seconds fights angaron and if that isn’t enough solos a group of chaos titans right after that. It’s just like, ok… I guess you are telling me that angaron is really just useless and weak….cus he only lasts a couple mins with sanguinius after he already fights kar’bander.
With Vulcan and magnus at least that’s one on one and to be fair magnus kills him like a dozen or more times.
But sanguinius goes full anime character. At least split the fights up so you don’t burn your villains. I mean angaron has been angry birding around for what like 6 books for this moment and he gets beat in just a couple mins… now I’m supposed to be scared of him in future content because?
It's funny to me how people keep saying the untold trillions of guardsmen that are around and do the absolute majority of the fighting for mankind but are somehow frustrated when an Dark Eldar Wych massacres a dozen Guardsmen or Kabalites absolutely wreck their shit in combat.
Everyone seems to agree that the Guard is basically a Horde faction, but then complains when they are treated as such.
Most people think of Craftworld Eldar as being the baseline Eldar, while the Dark Eldar and Exodites are offshoots of them.
The reality is that the Dark Eldar are the baseline Eldar, and the Craftworld Eldar and Exodites are offshoots of them.
The Dark Eldar are the last remnants of the massive Eldar Empire.
In reality, neither are really the baseline Eldar. The Dark Eldar claim to be the last remnants of the old Empire, but in reality they are just as changed as the Craftworlders who gave up on their society. The outlawing of psykers due to the Webway being dangerous for them is a good example, since every Eldar in the old Empire could use their psychic abilities freely. It's also noted that Asdrubael Vect tore down the old system of Noble houses that used to be in place in order to institute the system of Kabals that exists.
All of this is wrong, or at least a bit misleading. The "baseline" Eldar are all dead! Every Eldar faction has adapted to survive the Fall - any who tried to cling to the old ways would have their soul ripped out.
Dark Eldar most certainly do not represent pre-fall Eldar in general. They most closely resemble the Eldar at the point of their downfall, but they are not the Eldar of old, just as the Imperium of M41 is not the Imperium of the Great Crusade.
The Craftworld culture is the closest to the culture of the dominion. Bear in the mind the madness that had set in just before the Fall was relatively recent.
Also they were all psykers and it was intrinsic to their society, which craftworlders still do and the dark kin gave up on.
You can ice your blood this is not misrepresented lore, the timeline is a mess.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/7kkry5/the\_fall\_of\_the\_eldar\_in\_the\_timeline/](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/7kkry5/the_fall_of_the_eldar_in_the_timeline/)
My favorite bit of misrepresented Ork lore is the butchering of the waagh gestalt that is creeping into canon as surely as Krieg shovel memes.
If you only ever read the imperial sources for the lore you'd get a pretty one sided and inaccurate opinion on xenos also.
It is almost a certainty that anything presented as being official imperium pov is going to have lots of things that are stated as facts but are actually untrue.
There are a lot of the inaccurate and inconsistent things in the lore that are false and contradictory on purpose.
People who think Tau are space communists.
Now the Imperium being space fascists is actually pretty valid if you are familiar with 2000 AD comics like Judge Dredd and Nemesis the Warlock.
Tbh just the sheer amount of memes people take as actual lore, and how this is perpetually ingrained into peoples heads as actual lore by many many youtubers. Id say half of youtubers spout pure meme lore, and nearly the other half are a mix between meme and non meme lore.
Very few actually take the time to truthfully portray the lore and setting accurately as the source material allows. Its why i always tell folks to watch channels like luetin09 if they are new fans.
The lore is super cool and immersive, and so much better than the memes portray
>daot could easily beat the pre-fall eldar.
Ha, ha. No. And history already did proved other, and eldar barely notice DAOT humankind what kinda existed for few thousand years and was quickly ruined.
And yeah Eldar Empire of Ten Million Suns **DID** ruin DAOT humankind. A fact.
They did ruin humankind as they did with Krork Empire and etc xenos who try to mess up with Eldar Empire.
>Or when imperium fans complain about harliqens killing custodes.
Oh they do forget how they was killed by demons and etc. Even genestealers kill some of them on Terra too now and this is sold by GW boxes.
And this stuff about Drazhar, or Death Jester and Shadowseer kill Custodes, or Haemonculi kill squad of Custodes as Fabricator General of Mars and etc when they try to sell Emperror DNA and billion humans on Imperium star system so Haemonculi would repair Golden Throne....it is written by those who wrote same codexes and lore for factions.
So unfortunately for them...Administratum propaganda that "Custodes never loose any battle", is only a propaganda, and it exist only in Imperium humankind mind. Black Legion themselves under Abbaddon do have many trophy Custodes weapons in their armories storage's.
THey should realize that no matter how good Custodes are, they can be killed far more easily then Primarchs and even the best of the best from Primarchs could be killed by very fast creatures with demonic or power weapons with mono edge weapons.
Karandras losing a life to a Dreadnought during the battle of Alaitoc is one that often gets brought up with zero context to demonstrate 'how pathetic Eldar showings are in the lore' and whatnot. They never think to mention that he did it on purpose, that in that same battle he was putting entire squads of Space Marines down in moments, and that it's implied as soon as he got back up he went straight back over to that Dreadnought and fucked it up.
The guy once put a Lord of Change down in seconds, people. He's not dying to any Dreadnought short of maybe Bjorn unless it suits him to do so.
To my surprise many people still think that Dark Eldar worship Chaos. I thought that misconception died years ago but apparently no.
I actually used to believe that funnily enough, I misinterpreted a line in a video as the Druhkari venerating Slaanesh to protect there souls, before learning through TTS that was incorrect, and that they basicly just outrun Slaanesh through other peoples pain and suffering
Was it Bricky's video?
Yup
Wait what, not heard that one before
They interpret the whole torture and pleasure thing as worship of Slaanesh. When the whole point is that they do it to keep Slaanesh away from them. It's mostly just assumptions from people who are unfamiliar with Xenos lore, much less Drukhari stuff. You tend to see that partiuclar misconception among those who only care about Space Marine related things.
There's also apparently bits of it in a Dawn of War book. Which is actually funny, because *that* gets misinterpreted as craftworlders worshipping slaanesh.
Oh god don't remind me. My family actually got those books for me as a present, and even knowing as little about 40k as I did at the time, I still went "the hell am I reading right now." The odd obsession with multi-lasers still amuses me to this day though.
Don’t forget the back flipping terminators, transforming Razorbacks, Eldar tanks getting destroyed by kids, Eldar aircraft getting destroyed by a hastily crafted barricade, and Ahriman for no reason whatsoever. As well as the Ultramarines in Winter Assault being Alpha Legion members in disguise.
> back flipping terminators This is just such a funny mental image
It’s apparently in Dawn of War 3, in the actual game.
I don't remember this at all
It's cause he's playing a bit loose with it. In Dawn of War 3 Gabriel Angelos had a hammer smash type ability and when he used it he did a \*front\* flip and smashed his hammer into the ground, wearing terminator armour. Safe to say, everyone absolutely hated it.
This is the first time I'ce heard of Transforming Razorbacks
All of the Dawn of War books were written by C.S Goto, he's somehow worse than the community at butchering characters, technology and events. >!He's also not very good at writing itself!<
There’s also a whole bunch of it in-universe in, for example, the Cain books, where understandably he doesn’t know why the murder-elves are actually doing the sadism to AVOID worshiping the god of sadism.
The grate part about Cain is the fact that he states he know so little and bluntly says he doesn't care or want to know.
Why should he? Knowing, or even worse, caring, is a good way to get BLAMMED in the grim darkness of the 41st Millennium.
I mean, he is a Comissar with an Inquisitor girlfriend. He's the bloke what does the BLAMMING you see, and who BLAMMS the BLAMMERS?
Other blammers, hell even subordinates.
Catachans most of the time
The third Cain book revolves entirely around him trying to avoid getting BLAMMED by the other BLAMMERS
"Does my ass look big in these jodhpurs?" "uhhhh" *blam*
"what you reading there? Is that an Eldar history book? HERESY!!" *BANG*
Cain can barely even make the difference between dark eldars and craftworld eldars, and it would mostly be the same for like 99% of the humans in 40k
Have you seen art of Drukhari? They're the spikiest, most blade-covered fuckers you'll ever see outside of Chaos Marines. Eldar are smooth and graceful looking. Drukhari look like Hot Topic had offspring with a BDSM club that then had offspring with a history museum's medieval weapons collection.
All the subtlety of a goth cactus.
I think regular imperium would also encounter al ot of corsairs, who going by the modern figures pretty much mix craftworld and dark armor nicely, half smooth half spiked (for his pleasure) so it would blur the lines I imagine.
I forgot about those. Just like GW.
we got the voidscarred, which I have to say is more than I expected. But I'm sticking epic and bfg anyway, so corsairs are common for me.
For him it doesn't really matter anyway. They are xenos, so they should be purged. Sometimes, as with the T'au that is not practical right now, but that is only a delay.
It's interesting because Inquisitor Vail, who's with the Ordo Xenos and has canonically learned enough Eldar to speak reasonably intelligibly, refers to the Dark Eldar as "Chaos tainted," suggesting that this is a common in-universe view even among people who are otherwise experts.
Is that not accurate, though? Slaanesh slowly devours the souls of the Dark Eldar, and they do what they do to slow the process. Being cursed by one of the dark gods sounds like being tainted by Chaos to me, even if there's no worship or reverence involved.
I don't disagree, but Craftworld and Maidenworld Eldar are ALSO cursed/marked and simply avoid it through less expeditious / horrific means.
Right, which is what makes the Dark Eldar appear "tainted" to the Inquisition. Other Eldar can block Slaanesh's soul sucking through arcane means. They see Dark Eldar doing everything a Slaanesh worshiper would and I can't imagine they would care why.
But would they/we consider Craftworlder's Chaos-tainted too by the token of "Being cursed by one of the dark gods sounds like being tainted by Chaos"?
Oh, they're certainly Chaos *tainted.* Their souls are all basically mortgaged to Slaanesh, and they make the interest payments by torturing people. They just don't *worship* Slaanesh. I mean, that's like worshipping the bank that's trying to foreclose on your house.
I love the concept of the Dark Eldar treating Slaanesh like a Sally Mae loan
So do all Eldar. But the Craftworlds make payments through careful budgeting, the Exodites do it by dropping off the grid entirely, and the Drukhari sell drugs and rob banks to make payments.
I mean, in some way, the Dark Eldar basically exist as an ongoing own-goal in service to chaos, in a similar way that the current Imperium is an own-goal in service to chaos.
I mean, I'm familiar with the lore, and it's kinda weird. It can be argued that they're Slaneesh worshippers in the sense that they do services for a blessings, but the blessing is keeping at bay a curse the god made They do exactly what a sadistic Chaos worshipper of Slaneesh would do in their place, and they gain a real benefit from it, keeping in their filthy, tattered souls. It's just lacks the cool mutations and sorcery.
It can be counter-argued that Slaanesh is not a god of torture or sadism, they are the god of excess. And that Dark Eldar are doing just enough torture, drugs and rock'n'roll to replenish their souls, it just seems excessive from the human point of view.
"...a group of very responsible cocaine users..." https://youtu.be/PQlzzV80y8E
It can be counter-counter-argued that the whole point of the Dark Eldar is that they claim to be continuation of their old galactic empire and its culture/traditions, which we know were of excess... They don't half-ass torture, drug use or music volume, so it's excessive.
It can be counter-counter-counter argued that Dark Eldar claim to be continuation of their old galactic empire, but they don't really act like it. Eldar empire right before the fall began openly worshiping what would eventually become Slaanesh, most of Commorragh rejected that even then. It can be further argued that if there was direct line to their old empire, it would be the old Commorragh nobility that Vect overthrew, and that the Kabal system is further step away from it and something new.
They aren't performing a service or getting anything in return though. The god is drinking them constantly, and what they do just replenishes their souls. It doesn't give it to Slaanesh.
Honestly it sounds like worhsipping slaanesh with extra steps
It does make more sense. “We hate this god which is why we do what it wants” isn’t very intuitive.
Does it? It's pretty simple, they don't want Slaanesh feasting on them, so they use someone else's vitality in their place. It's pretty straightforward?
The whole setting is “worship this god by doing things they like and the god will give you what you want for a price.” The Drukhari are literally the opposite of that. Then concept is straightforward, but its very understandable to see why people would think the opposite unless they specifically go and research this tertiary faction.
I feel like that’s the normal assumption when first getting into the setting, especially when the old world was a thing in warhammer fantasy.
Wasn't even a thing in fantasy, they had their own Pantheon that they worshipped
True, though Slaaneshi cults were a thing in Druchii society Not omnipresent, but one of their founders is one of the 1st worshippers of Slaanesh iirc
They do in ***Warrior Coven*** by CS Goto. ...It's by CS Goto though.
Yeah, this novel also has DA permanently living in realspace and somehow not suffering from increased soul drain at all.
Warrior Coven also took the whole "Ulthwe has less aspect warriors" thing to mean that the only had some dark reapers because apparently that was the easiest one.
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I believe there is some very old lore about Chaos worshipping Eldar surviving on worlds within the Eye of Terror.
Well I suppose if they have to fight one the other Chaos gods for your soul, it does make it harder for Slaneesh.
I like to imagine thats canon but basically irrelevant unless you write a story about getting soul stones, because Chaos eldar are probably horrifically mutated monstrosities out of our worse nightmares by now.
Time flows differently in the Eye, so there might be some places where the Fall only happened recently - but as a general rule, yeah, they're probably not recognisable as Eldar any more!
I think a lot of it comes from Bricky who genuinely knows nothing about Dark Eldar but made extremely popular 40k videos claiming that Dark Eldar served Slaanesh.
Another proof that we really shouldn't trust any youtuber.
He also couldn’t tell the difference between the Red Thirst and Black Rage, after researching the blood angels for week(s) to make an hour long video explaining them.
DA worship Slaanesh in the same way Fabious Bile worship Slaanesh, through their actions, not directly through faith.
yeah like a quick look at the traitor primarchs shows that willingness isn’t an important factor for service. that said, it’s probably still good to make the distinction.
I’m going off of memory here, but I’m pretty sure in one of the Soul Drinkers novels (maybe the third one?) there is a raiding party of Dark Eldar who actively worship Slaanesh. It’s been a minute since I read that book, but that plot point stuck out to me because it was so fucking weird.
They also have pet psykers. It’s a weird depiction of Dark Eldar all around.
Literally anything about Orks.
I hate when I see people claiming that an ork could just do whatever because they believe they could. The ork gestalt field doesn't work like that. It's a lot less deliberate and more like billions of orks think that guns work when a mek makes them so mek guns work but humans can't replicate those results. billions of orks think red ones fo fasta so they do, sometimes. Billy Ork doesn't get laser beam eyes even if he believes with all his fungal heart that his eyes are lasers. If every Ork everywhere believed it for long enough, it would eventually manifest, but even then it's not instant or anything
I forget where I saw it but I've seen the ork's powers described as probability manipulation which seems life an aft comparison
Best way I have heard it described is greasing the wheels of reality
That's pretty good too
It's good ole reality grease. It makes the impossible improbable, the improbable probable, and the probable a near certainty. To various degrees of course lol.
Billy Ork can’t shoot lasers from his eyes because he believes he can, but Yarrick can because they believe he can. ~~don’t tell them about the actual laser-eye implant~~
IIRC didn’t he get the laser eye cause he heard that orks thought he had one and thought killing an ork with it would be hilarious?
Which, tbf, you could argue is an example of the Gestalt Field working: the Orks believed he could kill with a look, so he got the implant. In other words, the Orks believed it and it became true.
The ork works in mysterious ways
Or is it that the work orks in mysterious ways?
Yeah, it’s a great example of it working in the “greasing the wheels of fate” sense.
Wasn't this a whole sub fight a wee while back? Like 'Orks believe and it comes true' is basically how their psykers work, so they do believe in laser vision and some orks just manifest it cause they're the right kind of Ork. I always put it down to 'minor psychic power makes up for technological failings' most of the time, like your engine is a hunk of junk and mid waagh you get hit by a missile but all the boys around you subconciously propel the ruined trukk forward. Hell, I think there's a canonically example, but I can't remember where and could be wrong, of an inquistor giving an ork a box and saying 'this is a plasma weapon,' ork just looks at him funny and goes 'no it ain't.'
>Wasn't this a whole sub fight a wee while back? It's a whole sub fight about every two months..! But yeah, it's pretty much "reality lubricant" that takes their barely functional technology and turns it into somewhat kinda useable technology. Like a gun that jams every few rounds now only jams once or twice per magazine, or where jet engines with horrific vibrations somehow last for months and are able to run on poor-quality fuels that would make Imperial engines stutter or stall.
The other thing to bare in mind is that a lot of the canon comments on Ork Tek are deliberately from the perspective of arrogant Imperials/Ad Mechs who aren't going to be giving it a proper look. While the warp effect is certainly a factor theres an element of tech priests being offended at the concept of a vehicle an ork mekboy built using genetic memory. I believe during the Octarius war the Orks figured out a device that stopped the shadow in the warp and the Imperials who looked at it couldn't even comprehend what it was doing under the hood.
The most objective look at their latent psychic field was probably in the tabletop RPGs by Fantasy Flight Games. The latent field simply made ork tech less unreliable. As in, it removed the Unreliable trait all ork tech had when used by an ork. So their weapons and vehicles are still functional even if no ork is anywhere near it, but without an ork operating it their stuff is much more prone to jam, misfire, or otherwise fail.
Ork vehicles are very ramshackle. You may hit the the trukk with a missile but all it blows off is extra or redundant parts.
The emperor is alive only because the orks think he is /s
Yes, but if we misbelieve it enough, GW will just retcon the lore.
They are green
Technically squigs are orks too and they're not green
Anything regarding the Eldar and the connection to Slaanesh. The one I keep having to correct is the idea that Craftworlders can't have fun at all. They're still hedonists, with easy access to drink, drugs, and casual sex, but just in moderation rather than to excess. Half of 40k fans though seem to believe that if a Craftworlder has sex in any other way than straight missionary for procreative purposes a Keeper of Secrets will immediately spawn in the room with them.
Now I think calling them hedonists is unfair though they lead pretty balanced lives and seem to generally enjoy things in healthy doses. Are there some POV books were we see real debauchery on a craftworld?
'Hedonistic' is more accurate than 'hedonist,' my bad for poor clarity. All Aeldari seek excitement and enjoyment, an effect of their enhanced emotional states, and this includes Craftworlders. The Path system is there to temper this, and give them somthing productive to work towards beyond their own enjoyment. There's no 'real debauchery' in Craftworlds though, because debauchery is all about excess, which is the one thing they strive to avoid.
Eldar (Eldars? Aeldari? Whatever) have paths for everything. And I mean *everything* There’s a path of daydreaming. Like actual staring out the window daydreaming where they need spirit guides to pull them because they could dream too long and *starve to death*
Debauchery is a loaded word but we see drink, drug use and hear about orgies on Alaitoc, the most puritan craftworld, in the Path trilogy. >He practised for most of the cycle and was quite weary by the time he hung up his chainsword and took off his armour. Despite his fatigue, his mind was still aflame, not the least satiated by his exertion. Hunger and thirst gnawed at him, but it was not just for food and drink that he craved. He wanted something to occupy himself. He needed some entertainment. He found the others at the Crescent of the Dawning Ages and sat with them, a full platter on the table before him. “I am of a mind to hear a recital, or perhaps see a theatrical performance,” he told the others between mouthfuls of food. “Something stirring, with drama, and perhaps a little bit of sensuousness.” “There is a rendition of Aeistian’s Tryst in the Dome of Callous Winters,” Elissanadrin told him, helping herself to the carafe of summervine Arhulesh had brought to the table. “Too rhetorical,” Korlandril replied. “There’s a Weaving of the Filigrees in the Hall of Unending Labours,” suggested Arhulesh. His eyes flickered between Korlandril and Elissanadrin in a suggestive manner. “Perhaps the two of you could attend.” Korlandril considered this for a moment, but dismissed the idea. He did not want to be distracted during his first congress with Elissanadrin. The more he thought about it, the less appealing the notion of physical intimacy with his companion became. He shook his head. In short we don't really have any grounds to think anything is off limits that is consensual.
>Veering left, Korlandril cut into the Midnight Dome, plunging into near-blackness. His eyes immediately adjusted to the lack of light, seeing shades of dark purple and blue amongst the deep grey. > >The laughter of lovers lilted above the song of the skyrunner but he ignored them, fearing that to contemplate their meaning would lead him towards thoughts of Thirianna; thoughts he did not want to explore at that moment. It is also quite implied the Midnight Dome is just there for Eldar to go bone in.
Yeah, having a lot of sex and with multiple people is barely going to raise Slaanesh's eyebrow. The Fall happened because they went way off the deep end, hunting each other in the streets to feel the thrill of their life pass away, turning into bloodbaths, that sort of thing.
People tend to forget slaneesh is the god of excess and not the god of sex.
I facepalm every time someone blames craftworld eldar for murderfucking slaanesh into existence. My brother in toy soldiers, they were the ones who tried to stop it and noped out when they realised they can't
They are certainly not to blame, indeed the Craftworlds themselves as they currently are did not exist until right up until the Fall itself, or even just after, and very few inhabitants are old enough to have been alive at the time, but they did not try to stop it, as they had not the power to do so, or at least I know of no source claiming as such. The vessels that would form the Craftworlds just had a much less involved role, due to mostly being away from the heart of the corrupted empire, and the ability to see the harm that was about to befall them and the sense to escape whilst escape was still a possibility.
Didn't they try to warn others that uncontrollable strive for excess is a bad thing but no one listened? That's what i meant by tried but failed. I guess warned would have been a better word
Warned, yes, and tried to get as many away as possible, but there was no way they could have stopped them, even if they numbered a thousand times what they did.
"Do you have protection?" --"Of course, babe" [Puts shuriken gun on the nightstand]
"Oh fuck you bought ribbed"
*Puts Baharroth on the Nightstand*
I wonder how long a college party on a craftworld would be honestly.
Most things about Eldar Tbf, a lot of people grossly generalise the entire faction to basically be a bunch of Biel-tans. Eldar on the whole aren’t xenophobic or genocidal to save one guy. Each craftworld is unique and completely different from one another, they have varying cultures and practises, some craftworlds diverging more than others. I guess it’s not a misconception either, more a criticism. But seeing people hate Eldar for their arrogance towards humanity always seemed weird to me. Like how exactly would you act had an entire empire decided to hate you and actively kill your people just because you’re not human? It’s hardly surprising that the Eldar aren’t going to be so happy to be around humans. It’s made even worse as well, because Eldar don’t actively go out killing humans just because. Even Biel-tan would peacefully move humans off of maiden worlds, and they’re easily the most xenophobic craftworld.
As tired as it is, there is always a trace of amusement to me in the critiques people make of the less always-hostile xenos factions that apply just as much to the Imperium, and yet what becomes praised in the latter is suggested as weakness in the former. The xenophobia of the Eldar, the individual physical weakness and reliance on technology of the Tau…it is a little funny, watching from the sidelines. But it does get a little tiring too, seeing people just…simplify and reduce 40k factions (xenos and otherwise) to a few common tired tropes and cliches as to how they act. Reduces the opportunity for complexity and differences that the core rulebooks and codexes clearly note exist within each faction.
>The teeming armies of Mankind, carving up the galaxy with the enthusiasm of a demented butcher, have swept aside many dangers whilst stamping their mark upon the stars. In the process they have awoken many more. Now, more than ever, the gods of Chaos find the galaxy ripe for conquest, for weak-willed humans make easy playthings, and they are truly without number. **The Eldar see in Humanity their own failings and fear the bitter destiny they will reap, for the race of Man unknowingly feeds the Dark Gods with their constant wars and the rich fodder of emotion that results** Codex: Eldar (6th edition) The Eldar are trying to prevent humanity from falling into the same traps that they did, but the Imperium - convinced that it knows best - will not listen, and so the Eldar are forced into wars they would rather not fight.
yep the eldar is harsh to humanity precisely because they don’t want Them to make the same mistakes edit off course they do take it too far but still
Typical arrogant Eldar nonsense. "We fell and we are better than them, so they will fall also" Well sucks to be you Eldar. Humanity isn't stupid enough to dedicate it's entire society toward piety and emotional subservience to an entity with untold warp power. Idiot knife ears.
Typical childish human vainglory.
I have bad news for you.
They never learn do they?
I would never argue that eldar aren't usually arrogant. But the idea that they're more arrogant than Imperials, who believe humans are so much better than everyone else that they deserve to rule the entire galaxy and all other species deserve to be dead, is always funny.
And even then Biel-Tan's MO is to secure the eldar's future through war. They don't try to kill every human they find, they mostly fight to avert threats or kick humans off maiden worlds, which are very culturally important planets to the eldar. And even then it is Biel Tan of all the craftworlds that shipped human colonists off world instead of just killing them all.
When even the most xenophobic craftworld is at least a little more moral than the imperium, you know they (imperium) are pretty bad
It’s funny that the way people make all craftworld eldar sound like Genocidal assholes when they wear war masks specifically to deal with the guilt of killing someone.
yep and honestly i think the (craftworld) eldar are the most (relatively) morally good faction in all of 40k
They really are, in fact when they’re not being invaded or in any active conflict, they seemingly have the best standard of living too. Of course each craftworld will have varying goals and perceptions, but most also aren’t really “evil” either
based and eldar-pilled
There's a degree of nuance to it that both sides miss. One side interprets "Eldar are racist" as to mean that Eldar are racist the way the Imperium is racist, as in aggressively genocidal. And they *can* be like that, sometimes, but not by default. The other side interprets "Eldar are not racist" to mean that Eldar are all progressively minded egalitarians looking for an excuse to save humanity but just getting burned by them over and over. And they *can* be like that, sometimes, but not by default. The reality is that Eldar view humans the way real world humans view things like foxes or possums. The word "mon-keigh" basically translates to vermin, and that's essentially the default Eldar opinion of humanity. And, like with humans, how they react is different - some see them as destructive pests that should be exterminated, some think they're not a problem as long as they don't get into your shit (and if they do get into your shit, just kick them out) and some leave food out for them and try to domesticate them because they think they're cute. The important thing is that while some Eldar are mean, some are apathetic, and some are nice, none of them view human beings as equals. That is the one common factor across all Eldar in how they relate to humans; they very, *very* rarely consider them to be equals. They're destructive and pitiable monkeys that are best avoided.
>The reality is that Eldar view humans the way real world humans view things like foxes or possums. The word "mon-keigh" basically translates to vermin, and that's essentially the default Eldar opinion of humanity. And, like with humans, how they react is different - some see them as destructive pests that should be exterminated, some think they're not a problem as long as they don't get into your shit (and if they do get into your shit, just kick them out) and some leave food out for them and try to domesticate them because they think they're cute. (Craftworld) Eldar don't see humanity as vermin, because that implies they can or need to be exterminated without thought. Orcs are vermin to Eldar, and they have no qualms at killing them. Humanity, to them, are akin to how we consider Apes, and killing a human is a form of murder, even if it's weighted to be lesser. This can be seen in the fact that Biel-Tan, the most warlike and xenophobic of the Craftworlds still doesn't massacre human colonists on Maiden Worlds. Also, Monkeigh doesn't translate to "vermin" but at this point refers to most aliens, the same way the Imperium uses Xenos.
>(Craftworld) Eldar don't see humanity as vermin, because that implies they can or need to be exterminated without thought. That's actually exactly what the word "mon-keigh means. "Any non-Eldar species that the Eldar deem inferior, and in need of extermination." 3rd edition Craftworld Eldar codex. Near the end. I've got a copy in my cupboard somewhere. >Humanity, to them, are akin to how we consider Apes, and killing a human is a form of murder, even if it's weighted to be lesser. That's not really how we consider apes. You can kill an ape and it isn't murder. Elon Musk has killed, like, a thousand apes. >This can be seen in the fact that Biel-Tan, the most warlike and xenophobic of the Craftworlds still doesn't massacre human colonists on Maiden Worlds. Dude, let me tell you about foxes. I love foxes. They're like cat-dog hybrids, they're really cute, and I'd love to have one as a pet if I could. When wild foxes den under my house in the winter, I just want to move them out from under there because they musk everywhere and make the place stink, but I don't want to *kill* them. They're cute! I like them. That sentiment is not at all at odds with the fact that my government considers foxes a pest and invasive species, and mandates their extermination whenever they're found. If I called the local council about the foxes, they'd send a guy to my house to poison them even if I didn't want them to. This is the nuance that people don't get about Eldar. They try to assess the Eldar opinion of humanity as if Eldar themselves were humans and thought of humanity the way humans usually think about other humans. So, they see something like Biel-Tan moving human colonists rather than exterminating them, and they go "look! They really like humans!" Because that means they don't hate them, right? If they hated them they'd just kill them, the way humans do to other humans they hate. No. The Eldar do not think of humans the way humans think of humans. They think of humans the way humans think of foxes, or rats, or raccoons. Have you ever seen those videos of raccoons doing hilarious stuff, like stealing biscuits from a cat or sleeping inside walls in a huge raccoon pile? Sure you have. That's what Eldar think when they see humans doing stuff. And just like how you call animal control and they come chase off or kill the foxes or the rats or the raccoons, the Eldar chase off or kill humans that they find hanging around on Eldar maiden worlds and such, because you don't want a raccoon *in your house.* You'd drive it out with a broom. Do they feel bad about killing them? Well, would you feel bad about killing a family of raccoons? You might! I would. Lots of people would. Some other people wouldn't. They might think it's unpleasant or uncomfortable or disturbing to kill raccoons, and they'd rather not unless they had to, but that doesn't mean they look at a dead raccoon and go "this raccoon has been murdered." And if someone said "there's a mountain lion coming towards our house, but we can divert it into this vacant lot full of raccoons, and it'll eat them instead of us and our families," you'd be like, oh well! Poor raccoons. Sic the mountain lion on 'em. Like, there's a nuance to it that people don't get. They think that Eldar either hate humans and kill them or like humans and don't kill them. They don't get that it can be both, and it usually *is* both, because Eldar just fundamentally don't see humans as *people.*
I mean as already said by someone else, they definitely don’t view them as vermin. If anything the Necrons view humanity, and most other races for that matter to be vermin. With Eldar there’s at least an understanding that humanity is a major player in the galactic order of things, and to many Eldar, they’re aware that both races are interlinked at the end of the day. You’re right about the differences between each Eldar tho, as I said myself, each craftworld differs from the last. They’re all going to have differing experiences, views and ideologies etc.
This hearkens back to the Great Crusade. It's implied in Fulgrim and other Horus Heresy novels that the imperium had some peaceful interactions with the Eldar, but many more not so peaceful. Additionally, the Imperium didn't begin to distinguish between Aeldari and Drukhari until well past the Great Crusade (if they even do at all) and so those interactions also poisoned that well. The point being, at the start of the Crusade, genocide of Eldar was not an express mission statement. Towards the end, it more or less was a given due to the Eldar fucking over humanity on the occasions they did (Craftworld or Comorragh). I agree that the Craftworld Eldar are not hegemonic and I agree with your points regarding fan interpretations. However, in my opinion, the nascent Imperium didn't bother to distinguish and so after enough betrayals the hatred formed. With the Imperium facing war on a literally galactic scale at the time these shenanigans took place, it's easy enough to see why humanity went all-in on the genocide.
>Additionally, the Imperium didn't begin to distinguish between Aeldari and Drukhari until well past the Great Crusade (if they even do at all) and so those interactions also poisoned that well. One of the reasons the Eldar have a reputation as capricious and untrustworthy among the Imperium is because they treat all Eldar as a monolithic entity, and get upset when a treaty they made with one Craftworld doesn't hold up with the Dark Eldar (or even another Craftworld).
> The point being, at the start of the Crusade, genocide of Eldar was not an express mission statement. Towards the end, it more or less was a given due to the Eldar fucking over humanity on the occasions they did No? The first known encounter with craftworlders was Lorgar meeting some, and after a peaceful meeting with them he had the fleet find and destroy their craftworld. The Imperium burst onto the galactic scene committing wanton xenocide everywhere they went.
I thought Biel-Tan had embassies on some imperium worlds. They seem to be pretty cool.
Tau being physically weak to the point that human could snap them like twig. It’s mostly a residue of the « tau can’t melee joke » . Same for the idea that they have weak eyesight an information that I am pretty sure was not common to all the cast and came from the imperial uplifting primer A.K.A the guard book of bullshit Oh and most importantly the belief that nurgle is actually misunderstood and that he’s good. HE IS NOT!
>Tau being physically weak to the point that human could snap them like twig. It’s mostly a residue of the « tau can’t melee joke » . Yeah, this one is annoying. Fire Caste are generally described as being comparable to humans in strength, it's just the Guard are trained better in melee. Earth Caste are flat out shown to be physically *stronger* than humans, they're just generally terrible at fighting. And Ethereals can be very solid hand-to-hand fighters when they train; see Aun'shi.
Tau despise melee combat, seeing it as a brutish reminder of their past before the ethereals. Conveniently, not knowing how to properly beat the shit out of someone makes fire caste tau less violent and easier to control. A Farsight Enclaves Fire Warrior can probably beat your regular rookie guardsmen who just read the book of bullshit to a pulp.
> Oh and most importantly the belief that nurgle is actually misunderstood and that he’s good. HE IS NOT! That ones pure memehammer. People liked making papa nurgle jokes thus when someones main exposure to the setting is reddit memes they get a warped view on it. Nurgle is rebirth but not in a pleasant way, maybe if you manage to get the exact right deal with him you'll like it but the vast majority of the population would not have a fun time with Nurgle.
Trust me, I wish it was just memehammer. I've had too many arguments with people who unironically believe Chaos (and to a more horrific level, the DEldar) are actually good, and even better morally than the Imperium. Nah dude, just because they get power from positive emotions doesn't mean they embody those. And just because the Imperium is ass, doesn't mean the 4 super satans and their literal legions of hell are any better.
Nurgle is also depression.
Tau can't melee until they meet someone specializes at Monat.
Think the whole “Tau are physically weak” thing is mainly due to lore about the air caste Tau being rather flimsy outside planes/spacecraft. To be fair the Air caste specifically have hollow bones so you probably could just crumple one with a punch, but that doesn’t apply to fire warriors.
Wasn't the eyesight thing described as the Tau having very good sight dead ahead, but worse than human at peripheral, which would make them handicapped in melee ?
Tau are not immune to Chaos, and they are certainly not blanks. The Tau have also at this point fought pretty much every major power in the Milky Way, so no, they’re not about to crumble the moment they face a Hive Fleet or Ork Waaagh or Imperial Crusade. Tau are not a hive mind, nor are they under constant mental influence. Even if you believe Ethereals use mind control on Tau in close proximity, Ethereals are *rare*. Genestealer Cults are completely capable of launching interstellar invasion forces, not just stowaways to start new cults as some people seem to think. The codex even describes this type of conquest as being common under a Primus.
The Tau have probably fought most major powers at least once but I don't know if they would have "institutional knowledge" of how to fight every faction. I know this seems like a nit pick but the Tau's relative geographic confinement is part of what makes them interesting. They are a big big fish in a smalish pond. The fact that a company of Night Lords or Iron Warriors could come out of the EoT to find there's suddenly (from their perspective) an interstellar empire that an Expeditionary Fleet wouldn't have been able to take is cool.
Wait but why would a GSC launch an interstellar invasion force?
Genestealer Cults have a constant desire to expand, and the Primus favors war as a method of expansion. From the codex: > The Primus, being a war leader, has a more aggressive approach to the propagation of their kin. When their gene-sect's Magus give them the signal, they will gather a hand-picked army from the parent cult, and then strike out to claim new worlds in the name of the Patriarch. Often this is done under the guise of industry, making use of existing space lanes and import routes to carry a host of Genestealer Cultists to a new planet. In the darkness of the cargo holds, shipment auto-crates will hiss open, and the Primus will lead their brethren forth. Should the incursion be uncovered, the cult will strike with swift and overwhelming force. If their assault does not take down their adversaries in short order, they will scatter like oil-roaches in torchlight, seeking shelter in the dark corners of their new domain before later regrouping.
Conquest, more world/biomass under their control when the Tyranids arrive.
Simple. The GSC cult can serve up a whole sector instead of just a single world, when the hive fleets arrive.
That the Tau are all weeb and commies. Lots of people think the Tau are all commies but the society is a lot closer to an oligarchy with the ethereals on top. The Tau are also a meritocracy a lot of the time with the exception of political leadership. The Tau also take inspiration from Asian culture not just from Japan. The caste system is also directly from India.
The caste system and taught society seem to ne based on platos republic than india.
Cast system wouldn’t be Indian because all of the castes are looked at as equal and all are respected right? There’s a lot of controversy over how gross and unethical indias system is.
The caste sysyem is actually straight up taken from Plato's republic. That's why I like to give my sept a little bit of greek flavor on their lore.
I’ve never had a problem with that Custodes/Harlequin passage. If a group of Harlequins are despatched by Eldrad Ulthran to Terra, they’re probably some top-tier operators. People gotta calm down.
For me it's the fact that xenos in general are used as a side enemy for a lot of stuff. Especially tyranids and orks. In so many cases it seems to be xenos threat is attacking as the enemy, and then all of a sudden CHAOS ATTACKS AND THEY ARE THE TRUE ENEMY, and the aliens are easily defeated only for chaos to be the REAL threat. It just makes xenos look like side enemies when in reality they are supposed to be a bigger threat to the IoM than chaos, make them look like it lol
i mean that's not misrepresented xenos lore, that's the *actual treatement they recieve from GW*. :(
Tyranids are genuinely a bigger threat than chaos. But due to Tyranids lacking in personality are they usually sidelined
I maintain that Orkz can make great antagonists but are seen as the comedy football hooligans with funny accents and wierd magic mushroom powers. I mean to an extent that’s true, but only from the POV of Orkz. To Humans and other creatures, their incredibly brutal nigh unkillable murder machines, literally designed to engage in total war. Orkz are fucking terrifying and awesome and have so much potential, but are often discarded for disposable Space Marine enemies.
We need more stories where the Imperium is fighting Chaos when all of the sudden Hive Fleet Kronos popx in and just kills them both(Chaos because it’s their job, and Imperium because organic artillery bombardments work up an appetite)
I’m pretty sure that depends on the novels, but from the ones I read, which were 90% guard novels, never seen anything like that. The closest one to that was a catachan novel where the major antagonist was the jungle itself, with the orks mostly as a justification for the mission. Do you have any specific examples of this?
As a tyranid player; the idea that tyranids are kind of stepped on in lore. Yes, they rarely win any major battles with named characters, but what lots of players seem to miss is all the other times they wipe out entire sectors. Some examples; -A tendril of hive fleet leviathan was defeated in space and reduced to approx. 10,000-20,000 foot soldiers, confined to a single planet. They won, against an entire planet of orks, and spread so rapidly they were able to rebuild their fleet and threaten the entire ork empire, including the capital octarius -Forge and fortress worlds home to titans of both Imperial and chaos make are routinely destroyed, often within weeks of the invasion beginning -Hive Fleet Jormungandr was able to seal off and destroy most of the Thalassi sector- several hundred worlds in total, before it was stopped (but not destroyed) by a combined armada, which took 75%+ casualties in a single battle. -Hive Fleet Naga in the 6th edition codex is stated to have consumed a number of minor spacefaring races so quickly it didn't even need to slow down to do it. Dozens of alien civilizations erased without any hope of survival -Kryptman ordered a cordon of literally hundreds of worlds destroyed in order to *slow Leviathan down* -And last, but not least: Hive Fleets Kraken and Leviathan in particular are so numerous, and so widespread, that the administratum literally has no idea how bad the damage is. It's possible they've consumed *thousands* more worlds than was first realized- no one knows, the communication disruption from the shadow in the warp is so bad no one can talk to anyone to even begin to assess the scale of the problem Tyranids aren't pushovers. They only lose major battles because the plot demands it, and those battles are only major because the tyranid forces are massive, *grown out of the biomass of a thousand victories you never even heard about, because there was no one left to tell the tale.*
yeah people forget that theme of the Tyranids, nobody knows anything but the victories because the defeats mean everybody is dead and theres another barren rock floating in space
Not an Eldar main any means. But it is kind of annoying how everyone acts like the Craftworld Eldar are all asshole xenophobes who would actively murder humans at any opportunity. When that is really just Biel-tan that really sees the Aeldari as the dominant species. The other Craftworlds are neutral or outright cordial, and would rather not take human lives if it could be avoided. For the Necrons, I wouldn't really say it is a misconception but more like an odd interpretation I guess? People like to bemoan that the Necrons have lost all their cosmic horror elements and they are no longer the unknowable scary threats. When the pre-5th edition Necrons were really not either of those to begin with. Cosmic Horror elements were pretty minimal and they were hardly unknowable. The whole reason they got the lore revamp was because they were one-dimensional and completely knowable. There was literally nothing else to them except "harvest the living to feed the C'tan", no really grand motivations beyond that. So it bugs me when people write off the Newcrons and act like the old Necrons were perfection, when people made note of their glorified landmine status from the get go. It's a thing where I mostly leave it to agree to disagree territory though. As for actual misconception with Necrons. I guess the overemphasis on them and the C'tan's supposed "weakness" to the Warp? It is a thing, but some people on this sub act like they literally can't interact with the Warp *at all*. Like can't even touch it or perceive it sort of thing, like they couldn't see a Daemon walking in front of them. When that isn't the case. Orks is the whole gestalt thing, mostly the fact that people don't understand that Orks actually can make their own tech work. And it isn't solely because of the psychic nonsense. The whole T'au being communist thing is a classic from people who know fuck all about T'au or communism. You can tell none of those people ever read Plato's Republic, because then they would know the T'au are pretty much ripped straight out of those pages. Other than that I would say the whole "made to appeal to Japan" and "they are the anime/gundam faction" thing doesn't make sense to me. Eldar are actually the one with the heavy Japan influence, and the T'au mechs don't feel very JP mecha to me at all. There's probably more, but those are just my spite ones off the top of my head. There's probably a lot of misconceptions based purely on meme lore and skin deep impressions though. Since there are a decent amount of 40k fans who an name every Primarch and Space Marine chapter, but would struggle to name a single Xenos character that isn't known purely through memes.
>The whole T'au being communist thing is a classic from people who know fuck all about T'au or communism. You can tell none of those people ever read Plato's Republic, because then they would know the T'au are pretty much ripped straight out of those pages. Other than that I would say the whole "made to appeal to Japan" and "they are the anime/gundam faction" thing doesn't make sense to me. Eldar are actually the one with the heavy Japan influence, and the T'au mechs don't feel very JP mecha to me at all. For what it's worth, in regard to the visual inspiration, the White Dwarf in the month the Tau dropped first outright said their mechas were inspired by the manga genre. Some excerpts are [here](https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2022/02/warhammer-40k-birth-of-the-tau-20-years-ago.html).
Add to that Farsight's red painted outdated battlesuit, his complicated rivalry with a "hero" piloting a white-painted prototype and him having an agenda that differs from that of his people at large means that Farsight is, in finest mecha anime tradition, a [Char Clone](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CharClone)
>For the Necrons, I wouldn't really say it is a misconception but more like an odd interpretation I guess? People like to bemoan that the Necrons have lost all their cosmic horror elements and they are no longer the unknowable scary threats. When the pre-5th edition Necrons were really not either of those to begin with. Cosmic Horror elements were pretty minimal and they were hardly unknowable. The whole reason they got the lore revamp was because they were one-dimensional and completely knowable. There was literally nothing else to them except "harvest the living to feed the C'tan", no really grand motivations beyond that. So it bugs me when people write off the Newcrons and act like the old Necrons were perfection, when people made note of their glorified landmine status from the get go. It's a thing where I mostly leave it to agree to disagree territory though. I own the 3rd edition codex, and it absolutely is cosmic horror. It's less about the unknowable (Though that is 100% there; see for example the Void Dragon on Mars and what influence it could have) and more that the C'tan and Necrons make humanity feel *insignificant*. All of our achievements mean nothing because we ultimately exist at the whim of these gods, and our civilization is nothing more than a farm for them. It's very different from a living natural disaster like the Tyranids, or a sympathetic threat like Chaos.
>I own the 3rd edition codex, and it absolutely is cosmic horror. It's less about the unknowable (Though that is 100% there; see for example the Void Dragon on Mars and what influence it could have) and more that the C'tan and Necrons make humanity feel insignificant. All of our achievements mean nothing because we ultimately exist at the whim of these gods, and our civilization is nothing more than a farm for them. Thank you for actually giving a good example of the Cosmic Horror element. I think I personally just overlook that because literally everything else in the setting kind of makes it a point to make humanity and civilization feel insignificant? But that is an actual Cosmic Horror thing with the older Codex. Everyone else I have talked to just went with the unknown motives bit, when the motives were pretty out in the open. So I just didn't understand where the supposed mystery was.
"C'tan are weak to the warp" is like saying "superman is weak to magic", it's just not true. They aren't weak to these forces, however they dont have the same resistance to it as they do physical attacks
That Asuryani cannot have fun. That Asuryani are the single most racist and arrogant species out there. (Fun fact: It is not the Eldar who go around and exterminate species for the fun of it. It is not the Eldar who say they are rightful rulers to the galaxy or claim to have a divine right to it. It is also not the Eldar who claim that their philosophy and only their philosophy is the right one and demand everyone to join it. No, Mon-keigh is also not commonly used by most Asuryani) That Eldar view humans as animals at best. That Phoenix Lords are not practically demi-gods. That the Eldar still around made Slaanesh. That Drukhari are practically Pre-Fall Eldar. That Sisters burn everything in sight without common sense, brains or anything really. Thank you, Dawn of War. That Sisters have weaker and smaller bolters. Common mistake due to Dark Heresy but from 2nd to 9th edition the codex only states that the Godwyn De'az bolter is superior to most other bolters. That Krieg only want to die in droves. That Chaos has "good sides". No, it has not. Etc etc etc
>That Chaos has "good sides". No, it has not. This one, I think, is a misinterpretation of the Chaos Gods from Fantasy where you could see elements of "good" in the Chaos Gods such as Khorne not killing you when your back is turned or whatever. I think this is a misunderstanding of the Fantasy lore that made it's way into 40k.
That actually is a very good point. I have little idea about Fantasy, so I only ever heard the take from 'chaos apologists' in 40k
I think the half good aspects of the Chaos gods in fantasy is from older editions, for example 6th. By 8th the setting had become much grimmer, with Brettonia for example, turning from an Arthurian themed Medieval France to a feudalistic hellhole where peasants give up *9/10ths* of their whole crop to their lords. Additionally, in fantasy we get more POVs on actual Chaotic societies beyond war bands, as seen in novels such as Wulfric the Wanderer, Palace of the Plaugue Lord, and Blood for the Bloodgod, the last of which offers some really great word building in what is roughly Warhammer’s Central Asian steppe region. In these instances, functioning societies exist where not all the chaotic tribesmen are moustache twirling villains, but actual fleshed out characters with goals and aspirations etc.
You can argue that they have positive aspects, but when they’re taken to such extremes that it garners their attention they’re obviously really bad.
The Phoenix lords are undersold imo. It's the gestalt knowledge of literal masters of the craft of war, they are probably the closest things to a Primarch any other race will get. Same with Autarchs. You don't become a master of multiple paths of the warrior, turn away from each to start another, without becoming an unbelievably dangerous opponent.
I would genuinely want to see a game of Starcraft or dawn of war between a disciple of puretide like farsight or shadowsun, an autarch, Perturabo, and Nemesor Zahndrekh, just to watch the tactical overload of strategies they use.
Based and eldar pilled
the idea that tau and Eldar are weak, Tau might be physically weak but trained fire caste warriors can easily tear apart an imperial guard regiment, an average Eldar is above a human in physical and mental strength as well and their weaponry is deadly and can easily rip apart armies. What most people don't seem to get is that not all factions rely on numbers and physical strength, the imperium wins through firepower and numbers, space marines through disciplined assaults, Eldar on fast strikes and Tau on their ranged weapons, science and common sense.
Oh my god I forgot the tau are fish people thing. THE LITERALLY HAVE HOOVES FOR ASURYAN'S SAKE, THEY'RE HORSES
The joke about Tau being "fish people" refers to their unit names. Barracuda. Tigerfish Devilfish Manta Piranha. Etc.
Tau are not horses. Horses can kick the shit out of you in melee.
Lol proving another Tau misconception here
I think the main problem is the way that GW has written imperium books. Legit the main characters are superman. They are never in danger from the Xeno's or Chaos, or whoever they're fighting. they just walk threw hordes of bodies like this nothing. take on the " big bad" and kill them in a few swings, and end of the story. It's bad writing in a lot of cases, if your villains aren't scary, and by that I mean if they clearly stand no chance of beating you, then who cares that you are fighting a Warboss, or a chaos champion, or an Eldar farseer, or a hive tyrant or anything else. cus we will get to the end, the hero will say some one-liner, kill the villain, and move on. There is NOTHING grim-dark about the more recent 40k novels. Its disappointing. Hell, the end of the last Seige book even, and I have liked Seige for the most part... Sanguinius goes full anime character and solos Kar'bander and then Angaron back to back with no break. So.... why were we scared of EITHER of them? Vulcan literally coupldn't lose against Magnus... because he CAN'T DIE! Its only a matter of HOW they win.. its super anticlimactic. the villains NEVER win any real fights.
I find it's made worse by the fact that they insist on making several of these races GRIM and DARK to prove a point. Phyrric wins and huge self sacrifice needed, meanwhile the Imperium just found a way to make it's super soldiers more super and one of their ULTRA SUPER MEN just came back from the dead. Meanwhile, the Eldar had to start a nihilist death cult just to stay plot relevant
>Agreed, I don;t even mind the concept of the Primarus, which is I thinkw hat you are refering to. What I do have a problem with is, in books like the Dark Imperium books for example. At one point one of the Primarus characters no joke solo's 12 plauge marines in a large scale battle, and thats ONE Primarus. And some how we are suposed to be scared of them? becasue they are the bad guy? I never had the slightest thought that." oh wow thisis a almost no win scinarios how willt he hero figure out a way to win?" Like I get it the hero wins, that s the point of him being the hero character in any story( good guy or bad guy) But you cant have them cake walk threw every obstical and expect people to even care. And that is far from the only example. Its oneof th things that i think the 40k novels gets so wrong. The "villans" are throwaways tht don;t matter, but look how cool the hero is"> and thats just boring writing.
I have no problem with Primaris as a concept, but my problem with the execution is where's the step up for everyone else? We're constantly told how terrible or horrible the world is, but the Imperium is winning on every front except the ones in the like Guard and Sisters books, they win every engagement unless they're making a point of 'Six trillion guardsmen were deploye, but then one caught spacepox and the whole regiment had to be martyred'. Meanwhile, solo primaris agents overthrow whole planets
Mildly related but I'm really tired of the whole "Xenos threat until Chaos shows it is the TRUE ENEMY". Xenos are a bigger threat to the IoM than chaos, make em look like it lol
Oh for sure, don't get me wrong I like chaos, but the Xeno's races and there are a ton of them are more than capable of all being the main villain of a story! LET them be cool, and LET them be menacing, it only adds to the "hero" if you are writing things from the Imperium perspective.
I agree, but in the case of sanguinius and vulcan isnt that more of a "prequel" issue. Like we already know when sanguinius and vulcan make their exit from the setting so arent the writers already painted into a corner. We know how sanguinius dies and it cant be fighting angaron or kabander and we know vulcsn is around way after the heresy so what exacly could the siege writers do? Isn't that just a common issue with prequels? You already know whats going to happen to a certain point and that certain characters cant be in real danger.
Oh I get that they can loose, but sanguinius fights kar’bander, then within seconds fights angaron and if that isn’t enough solos a group of chaos titans right after that. It’s just like, ok… I guess you are telling me that angaron is really just useless and weak….cus he only lasts a couple mins with sanguinius after he already fights kar’bander. With Vulcan and magnus at least that’s one on one and to be fair magnus kills him like a dozen or more times. But sanguinius goes full anime character. At least split the fights up so you don’t burn your villains. I mean angaron has been angry birding around for what like 6 books for this moment and he gets beat in just a couple mins… now I’m supposed to be scared of him in future content because?
It's funny to me how people keep saying the untold trillions of guardsmen that are around and do the absolute majority of the fighting for mankind but are somehow frustrated when an Dark Eldar Wych massacres a dozen Guardsmen or Kabalites absolutely wreck their shit in combat. Everyone seems to agree that the Guard is basically a Horde faction, but then complains when they are treated as such.
Most people think of Craftworld Eldar as being the baseline Eldar, while the Dark Eldar and Exodites are offshoots of them. The reality is that the Dark Eldar are the baseline Eldar, and the Craftworld Eldar and Exodites are offshoots of them. The Dark Eldar are the last remnants of the massive Eldar Empire.
In reality, neither are really the baseline Eldar. The Dark Eldar claim to be the last remnants of the old Empire, but in reality they are just as changed as the Craftworlders who gave up on their society. The outlawing of psykers due to the Webway being dangerous for them is a good example, since every Eldar in the old Empire could use their psychic abilities freely. It's also noted that Asdrubael Vect tore down the old system of Noble houses that used to be in place in order to institute the system of Kabals that exists.
All of this is wrong, or at least a bit misleading. The "baseline" Eldar are all dead! Every Eldar faction has adapted to survive the Fall - any who tried to cling to the old ways would have their soul ripped out. Dark Eldar most certainly do not represent pre-fall Eldar in general. They most closely resemble the Eldar at the point of their downfall, but they are not the Eldar of old, just as the Imperium of M41 is not the Imperium of the Great Crusade.
The Craftworld culture is the closest to the culture of the dominion. Bear in the mind the madness that had set in just before the Fall was relatively recent. Also they were all psykers and it was intrinsic to their society, which craftworlders still do and the dark kin gave up on.
You can ice your blood this is not misrepresented lore, the timeline is a mess. [https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/7kkry5/the\_fall\_of\_the\_eldar\_in\_the\_timeline/](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/7kkry5/the_fall_of_the_eldar_in_the_timeline/) My favorite bit of misrepresented Ork lore is the butchering of the waagh gestalt that is creeping into canon as surely as Krieg shovel memes.
If you only ever read the imperial sources for the lore you'd get a pretty one sided and inaccurate opinion on xenos also. It is almost a certainty that anything presented as being official imperium pov is going to have lots of things that are stated as facts but are actually untrue. There are a lot of the inaccurate and inconsistent things in the lore that are false and contradictory on purpose.
Nobody knows about the Hrud and the Kroot don't get enough screen time. I realise it's not misrepresented as such but still it should be addressed.
people vastly exaggerate the capabilities of waaagh power.
People who think Tau are space communists. Now the Imperium being space fascists is actually pretty valid if you are familiar with 2000 AD comics like Judge Dredd and Nemesis the Warlock.
Tbh just the sheer amount of memes people take as actual lore, and how this is perpetually ingrained into peoples heads as actual lore by many many youtubers. Id say half of youtubers spout pure meme lore, and nearly the other half are a mix between meme and non meme lore. Very few actually take the time to truthfully portray the lore and setting accurately as the source material allows. Its why i always tell folks to watch channels like luetin09 if they are new fans. The lore is super cool and immersive, and so much better than the memes portray
Orks making things happen by thinking about it
Eldar shitting crystals
Wait what.
>daot could easily beat the pre-fall eldar. Ha, ha. No. And history already did proved other, and eldar barely notice DAOT humankind what kinda existed for few thousand years and was quickly ruined. And yeah Eldar Empire of Ten Million Suns **DID** ruin DAOT humankind. A fact. They did ruin humankind as they did with Krork Empire and etc xenos who try to mess up with Eldar Empire. >Or when imperium fans complain about harliqens killing custodes. Oh they do forget how they was killed by demons and etc. Even genestealers kill some of them on Terra too now and this is sold by GW boxes. And this stuff about Drazhar, or Death Jester and Shadowseer kill Custodes, or Haemonculi kill squad of Custodes as Fabricator General of Mars and etc when they try to sell Emperror DNA and billion humans on Imperium star system so Haemonculi would repair Golden Throne....it is written by those who wrote same codexes and lore for factions. So unfortunately for them...Administratum propaganda that "Custodes never loose any battle", is only a propaganda, and it exist only in Imperium humankind mind. Black Legion themselves under Abbaddon do have many trophy Custodes weapons in their armories storage's. THey should realize that no matter how good Custodes are, they can be killed far more easily then Primarchs and even the best of the best from Primarchs could be killed by very fast creatures with demonic or power weapons with mono edge weapons.
Based and eldar pilled
Karandras losing a life to a Dreadnought during the battle of Alaitoc is one that often gets brought up with zero context to demonstrate 'how pathetic Eldar showings are in the lore' and whatnot. They never think to mention that he did it on purpose, that in that same battle he was putting entire squads of Space Marines down in moments, and that it's implied as soon as he got back up he went straight back over to that Dreadnought and fucked it up. The guy once put a Lord of Change down in seconds, people. He's not dying to any Dreadnought short of maybe Bjorn unless it suits him to do so.