... Hrrmmph? oh uhh... Iz loik dere earz Iz guess. and dere hatz..... .... an dere hair... and dere...well toned thighz... .... An dere... Zog wotz wuz iz talkin about? oh Eldar? ughh... dere allroight iz guess.
"Their arrogance is matched only by their firepower" The combination of extremely intelligent, very high reflexes and stamina, but let down by their own self-control, forcing them into "paths" or be damned. Every eldar would love to live a free life, but Slaanesh would drain their souls. The tragedy that they can see the future, but often can only minimize the damage they will suffer, always outnumbered. The tragedy that they have explored the galaxy, mastered technology and.. now what? Well, exterminating those pesky upstart races would be a good start to rebuilding their Empire. In many ways, they are the only faction that makes sense. (besides the Tyranids...) The Imperium is dying, and has become quite adept at killing other humans. (Craftworld eldar rarely fight one another), is technologically backwards and divided into how many sects of "Inquisition", Guard forces, Mechanicus forces, titan legions, Space Marine chapters etc now? The Orks are.. Orks. The remnants of an ancient weapon system gone wrong. Chaos: Chaos wants the eternal war. Arguably, the title of this game "Eternal Crusade" is a victory for the Chaos gods. Now, I could see playing a legion a la 'The Emperor is a liar and a hypocrite! And now he has become the carrion lord of mankind, the corpse-god to whom thousands are fed daily to sustain him. Serve Khorne, and let everyone be judged on his own skill and fight with honor!" Instead, Khorne is pretty much murder, and killing fellow comrades is cool to Khorne... Tzeentch is the plotting god, where plotting is the end-goal in itself, etc. A cool thing about 40k is there are no "good" guys. But Chaos is quite clearly the "bad" guys. The Tau Empire: Well hello there. We're 99% immune to Chaos lol. We have no psykers, but we can still warp travel! We're this small speck of dust on the map, we are naive, but we've still kicked the imperium's ass in every campaign!--> The plot armor is strong in this one! Our way of warfare is all about efficiency, we don't need no titans, we'll put the big guns on the air caste systems -> Good. Now: Riptide, the new forgeworld suits etc. -> Yuk, nonono. The Necrons: suddenly, ancient undead! Why would they construct their necrons to look like undead humans, exactly? How many background retcons are we going to get? Eldar make sense because: their craft are indeed hi-tech (hover-flight), and at least somewhat aerodynamic. Imperial craft: here's our latest flying brick, we put engines on it. Asymetric warfare: very fast raiding warfare with a few squads to a sudden titan-group deployment. In a universe where Exterminatus is a thing, fortifying a planet can only do so much... In a universe where titans run around, a tactical squad with a missile launcher is.. not so impressive. Specialization, efficient use of manpower,... The eldar are fun because they look great. I would be interested in playing tyranids if it were possible as "main". As it is, I'll probably play all factions, but eldar are a favorite.
Our ancient foe (the Necrontyr) were once as the Mon'keigh are now, long before the Mon'keigh of Terra came to be. In jealousy they struck out at the Old Ones - their creators - who promptly swiped them away with the ease and casual disinterest of a tired mother to a needy child (the War in Heaven). Their very existence on the brink of destruction - their interstellar empire in unrecoverable tatters - their faith crushed - their future doomed: they hated the Old Ones, and were jealous of them in every way. Their jealousy and hatred sang out across the stars - and the Yngir - oblivious to the life between stars until now - took notice. Hatred, and jealousy, and suffering were more delicious to the Yngir than even the stars themselves: and so they came to the Necrons. The C'tan, the Star Gods - set upon that ancient race of Necrontyr, and with their submission - they gave the Necrontyr a Faustian bargain by which their race could survive. In submission, the Necrontyr would continue onward - as undying as the stars themselves and the Yngir who feed upon them - immortal, but endlessly drained of all their races emotions: feasted upon by the Yngir for all eternity. Each moment of their existence, the hatred for the Old Ones who ended them - the jealousy of their perfect existence - the loss of love from the ancient memories of their time as a mortal race long ago - even their hatred of their own C'tan: their star gods. The Yngir feast upon it all, devouring each memory of all emotion, sustaining the Necrontyr race in undying husks, resurrecting them should they fall, cultivating their misery for all time. They are a doomed race. A race who wants to die, but is not able. We mourn our kindred creation - for we too were a creation of the Old Ones - we honor the ancient Necrontyr by killing them. In their brief moments of death, we grant them a short solace from the timeless hunger of the Yngir who feast upon them. It is a penance we perform, for the Necrontyr brought the Yngir - the star vampires - into the politics of the galaxy: and in so doing were enslaved for all time to be devoured endlessly by their mistake. The Yngir then, are as to the Necrons what She Who Thirsts may become to all Eldar: let them serve as a cautionary tale of what awaits us should Cegorach fail. Should you ever meet them, grant them a moments respite from their eternal night.
Mr. Stoat, You write it, I'll read it I hadn't quite seen it in those terms before, but it makes sense. @Yvaelle : beautifully said! This is how I got here. It is long and waffletastic. Maple syrup here for those that can, something sugar-free for those that can't there. You may want to bring your own spoon. Once upon a time, in Liverpool, I started painting roleplaying character models and went in to see what this Games Workshop shop had to offer in terms of shiny things to paint. There were Elves, but they were horribly expensive and though nicely sculpted, massive compared to the dinky Grenadier true 25mm I was used to. I read up on Warhammer Elf lore. It was good but soon ran out. Read up on Dark Elf lore. Ran out again, quickly. I was drawn to the Eldar (Elves in space!), but I didn't like to just paint helmets so I found the Harlequins. (And later found out that there were unhelmed Guardian and Pirate models, but I was hooked by then ) I asked the chaps in the shop where I could find out more about the Eldar and they told me to track down a back issue of White Dwarf 127. Yes, this was a long, long time ago, please don't ask me if I knew the Crone personally. I got it. I read it. I started tracking down all the Eldar lore I could find in old White Dwarves and got a Codex and ended up with a wicked lore craving. Everything about this race appealed, from the aesthetics and architecture to the breadth and depth of culture to the love of mythology and desire to perfect the self. I started collecting and painting unfeasible amounts of Aspect Warriors and Guardians and it is probably better not to mention the number of Dire Avenger Exarchs I now possess. Unfortunately, GW policy at the time was not to do anything except use the other (non-Human) races as targets, and their official writer's guidelines actually said something along the lines of "don't even bother to write about non-Humans, you can't do it it's impossible anyway". Motivational. Time passed, and for lack of support and fellow Eldar fans my interest withered and I took a 'hobby break'. I kept my old stuff. I went back to University. I moved into my first not-student house and unpacked these jetbikes and a Wave Serpent still in their box and an old Armorcast tank and thought "Eh. Never going to paint these. To the charity bag.". ... a scant few months later, I can't remember exactly what triggered it but I opened up my old cases of Aspects (with an almost audible "aaa-aaaah!" sound effect, they were bright, 1993 'Taste the Rainbow' Codex bright). That was it. I was back into Eldar again. Only this time, there was more to do and read, which I truly believe sustains interest better than only being the butt-end of batreps I can't tell you what I said when I thought about the jetbikes and the tanks I'd just given away, but uhm ... hopefully the charity got a nice lot for them. I played an Eldar in Dark Heresy, started running an all-Eldar roleplaying game over IRC, painted a bit more, failed to find an Eldar forum, found a Dark Eldar forum, found this place, and now I'm looking forward to finally being able to run around as one, setting things on fire with my mind and firing shurikens and lightning.
Hi, You write really well. I've enjoyed several things you have written. But, I think you need to check your lore before you write. The Necrons were not created by the Old Ones, so they don't really have any "nice" connection to the Eldar. They are also not devoured endlessly, they were devoured rather quickly actually. Just saying.
I write from memory, and embellish or adjust when it better suits the story. The tale is more important than the history, both equally are lies With that said, while I knew I was off-canon on the endless devouring bit (I wanted to use it as a Slaaneshi fable) - I really thought the Necrons were another Old One creation - it was the parallel that drove my off-canon exploration
