Humanity's encounters with the Aeldari pre-Fall question

[MillionsSons]

Hello and sorry if this is not the right place to ask this question. My question is about general lore of 40k, but not specific to any black librairy book. I couldn't find the right place to post such a question/topic

 

 

The question is:

Two facts in  the 40K general story line seems conflicting to me:

 

1. Eldar dominated the galaxy until  the fall (i.e. until M30), and since aeons ago.

 

2. But at the same time, Mankind had spread so much everywhere in the galaxy during the period just before the long night.

 

How was it possible while the Eldar were supposed to dominate the whole galaxy?

Thanks to anyone who can help reconciliate .1 and .2  

[Closet Skeleton]

1. Dark Age of Technology of mankind was really powerful, they could hold their own to take territory if the Eldar as a whole weren't arrayed against them. The Eldar weren't unchallenged before the fall and every species (excepting Tau) is past their prime.

 

2. 40th Millenium mankind rule the entire galaxy but their empire is pretty thin and there's loads of space for other species so Eldar domination would be the same.

 

3. Pre-fall Eldar were concentrated around what later became the eye of terror, not evenly spread out.

 

4. Eldar presence outside of the later Eye of Terror was mostly in the form of maiden worlds, which were terraformed but not fully colonized for some not clear reason. With their long perspective on time the Eldar preferred to slowly build fully to specification worlds from barren rocks than take the first place with breathable atmosphere. The Eldar were not interested in picking fights over worlds that they hadn't called dibs on.

 

5. The fall was the result of the Eldar having turned inwards for millennia earlier. The Eldar relied increasingly on automated weapons (AI driven prototypes of what became Wraithlords and Wraithguard) and didn't pay attention.

[Kenzaburo]

I agree, the Eldar seemed to be akin to what the PC game Stellaris calls Fallen Empires - vastly advanced civilizations, that might have been larger once, but might have crumbled under their own weight and then decided to stick to their core worlds. 

 

The Eldar might have done the same with their core worlds around the area of the current EoT. The lore sometimes shows that they might have colonized a far greater part of the galaxy but that had already been lost and decrepit for a good while before M30. 

 

That's why mankind might have found enough space uncontested to build their first stellar empire. Also: The Aeldari were never as far spread as mankind was in M30 or even M41. Powerful, yes, covering every little backwater planet with parts of their civilization - no.

[Karhedron]

There is no fluff suggesting large-scale conflict between the DAOT humanity and Eldar but fluff is hazy on the DAOT anyway. Fluff for the pre-fall Eldar suggests that they took a relatively benevolent attitude to other races. So many species had been exterminated during the War in Heaven that they preferred to ignore more primitive species (apart from keeping the Orks under control).

 

What conflicts did occur were probably localised and won by the Eldar. Even with fully working STC tech, I doubt humanity could have threatened the Eldar at the height of their power. Also humanity was not a unified faction at the time but consisted of factions ranging from a single planet to small stellar empires and federations.

 

Later on, as the Eldar sank into the decadence that preceded the Fall, they probably simply did not care. Why worry about some primitives running about when there is a really cool party/booze-up/orgy going on down the road?

[GreenScorpion]

1 - From what I have seen and read, Eldar controlled the galaxy but had not actually colonised everything, as has already been said.

They had a great amount of planets connected through the webway and they could effectivelly control the actions of the local populations, humans included.

No space empire can cover the entire set of planets, as some systems are just too dangerous for certain species, which obviously doesn't mean they are not colonised by some sentient race.

 

2 - Humans spread through the planets that were not colonised or forced their way into planets that were colonised, but they focused mostly on those that had some sort of value first, meaning lots of other planets and systems were free for other races.

 

Lets use a real example, Rome secured the provinces of Brittannia, but even within the provinces there were pockets of population not under the control of the romans, yet in the macro-scale Britain was theirs (at least up to Hadrian's wall, supposedly).

[Closet Skeleton]

Lets use a real example, Rome secured the provinces of Brittannia, but even within the provinces there were pockets of population not under the control of the romans, yet in the macro-scale Britain was theirs (at least up to Hadrian's wall, supposedly).

 

Roman population control method was forcing tribes to urbanise so their leadership could  be easily found, that's not applicable to space. They didn't allow completely unaffiliated tribes to hide out in the wilderness, only small areas that could easily be mined were annexed but the rest of the territory was under 'allied' clients.

 

I don't see the Eldar as being that interested in either the fealty or the extermination of 'lesser' races.

[MARK0SIAN]

The answer to this kind of thing always: The Galaxy is massive and can contain everything the story needs.

 

There’s estimated to be 100 Billion planets in the Milky Way galaxy. If even only 1% of them are suitable for colonisation that’s still 1 Billion Planets. Mankind currently is said to rule the galaxy (Imperial propaganda I know) but even they only have 1 million worlds at most, so less than 0.1% of 1%.

 

There’s plenty of space for both elements of the lore to be true and not contradict each other.

[redmapa]

I think when talking about the Eldar empire a lot of people tend to miss how Eldar do things, they are a manipulative race that would rather have others do their dirty work and with that in mind Eldar supremacy doesnt mean they were spread across the galaxy like Humanity but that they were unchallenged in terms of power and may have had a lot influence in other empires.

[Panzer]

Yeah, it doesn't they were everywhere but rather that they could have gone anywhere and pushed around whoever is there if they really wanted to. 

[Marshal Rohr]

For some reason, and please correct me if I am wrong, I thought the Eldar fall used to occur somewhere around right now, with the zenith of the Empire millions of years ago, being the catalyst for the birth of more and more psychic humans. This was changed during the Heresy series to having occurred a thousand years before the Great Crusade, which causes questions like these.

[Lexington]

For some reason, and please correct me if I am wrong, I thought the Eldar fall used to occur somewhere around right now, with the zenith of the Empire millions of years ago, being the catalyst for the birth of more and more psychic humans. This was changed during the Heresy series to having occurred a thousand years before the Great Crusade, which causes questions like these.

The Fall of the Eldar has been the kickoff point for the Great Crusade since just about forever, certainly at least since 2nd Ed, and likely since the whole concept was introduced in WD127. I’ve got a copy sitting around, can check later tonight.

 

On the general topic, I’ve wondered the same thing, but it’s never been explained AFAIK, and I think it’s just an artifact of 40K’s early, ad hoc development. You can definitely try and work it out from a background standpoint, tho. I just sorta assume the Eldar were never too numerous, and their hold over the galaxy was more implicit than anything else. Humanity definitely has dominion over Earth’s land masses, fr’ex, and even if we’re mostly constrained to relatively small areas in practice, there’s not a lot that, like, some ants can do if humanity wants to come stomping in to take over an area.

[karden00]

This may not be here nor there but....

I never liked the idea that the fall happened in m30. I’m hazy on the old fluff, but I preferred the idea that The Fall was A Really Long Time before the current day imperium.

But then, I like old Necron lore, art-scale Titans. I remember reading through TFH and Aurelian and thinking huh, I always thought the fall was a prehistoric thing, not something that only preceded the Great Crusade by a day or two.

[MillionsSons]

There is no fluff suggesting large-scale conflict between the DAOT humanity and Eldar but fluff is hazy on the DAOT anyway. Fluff for the pre-fall Eldar suggests that they took a relatively benevolent attitude to other races. So many species had been exterminated during the War in Heaven that they preferred to ignore more primitive species (apart from keeping the Orks under control).

 

What conflicts did occur were probably localised and won by the Eldar. Even with fully working STC tech, I doubt humanity could have threatened the Eldar at the height of their power. Also humanity was not a unified faction at the time but consisted of factions ranging from a single planet to small stellar empires and federations.

 

Later on, as the Eldar sank into the decadence that preceded the Fall, they probably simply did not care. Why worry about some primitives running about when there is a really cool party/booze-up/orgy going on down the road?

 

I'm not sure we can call human of that age primitive, they are probably more advanced than 30k-40k folks... they have titans (including Imperator...), land raider, everything lol. 

I agree with the small federations thing though, that's a good point.

[MillionsSons]

This may not be here nor there but....

I never liked the idea that the fall happened in m30. I’m hazy on the old fluff, but I preferred the idea that The Fall was A Really Long Time before the current day imperium.

But then, I like old Necron lore, art-scale Titans. I remember reading through TFH and Aurelian and thinking huh, I always thought the fall was a prehistoric thing, not something that only preceded the Great Crusade by a day or two.

 

I couldn't agree more. I always thought it was like aeons ago, like before Jesus Christ... before mankind. When I read it was in M30 I was like, golly gee, is it a mistake ?

Then all the Slaanesh daemons are little kids in M30, like 200 hundred years old only (people then argue that they are never born, time in the warp is different, etc...) 

[MillionsSons]

The answer to this kind of thing always: The Galaxy is massive and can contain everything the story needs.

 

There’s estimated to be 100 Billion planets in the Milky Way galaxy. If even only 1% of them are suitable for colonisation that’s still 1 Billion Planets. Mankind currently is said to rule the galaxy (Imperial propaganda I know) but even they only have 1 million worlds at most, so less than 0.1% of 1%.

 

There’s plenty of space for both elements of the lore to be true and not contradict each other.

 

I think that makes sense. 

a good example is the Macharian adventure. At the end of the great crusade, everyone is like " we reconquered the galaxy". Then you read about Macharian who "conquered new territory in the galaxy, adding another 1,000 words to the imperium". Perfect illustration to what you said.

[Lexington]

I never liked the idea that the fall happened in m30. I’m hazy on the old fluff, but I preferred the idea that The Fall was A Really Long Time before the current day imperium.

But then, I like old Necron lore, art-scale Titans. I remember reading through TFH and Aurelian and thinking huh, I always thought the fall was a prehistoric thing, not something that only preceded the Great Crusade by a day or two.

 

I like those things, too, but I think people are just misremembering the old background. I just flipped through WD127, the Eldar text from which all other Eldar material is derived, and while it doesn't give exact dates for the Fall or connect it to the Great Crusade's beginning as it does now, it does say it occurred "over ten thousand years ago," which at least seemingly puts it where it's supposed to be today.

 

Other relevant tidbits from Ye Ole Eldar Ur-Text:

 

• The Eldar empire was actually only about as big as the Eye of Terror, at least as far as the Eldar can tell (this is from before silly things like "Eldrad's as old as the Fall," so the Eldar's history is noted as being kind of fragmented and half-forgotten)
• There is actually a mention of humans - the original Exodites are noted as having occasionally been caught up in their wars. Probably unintentional, but I guess one could now take this to mean the big conflicts of the DAoT.

[MegaVolt87]

Yeah, I always remembered the Eldar's fall as the beginning of the Great Crusade even in the old 3ed ed lore, as Slaneesh's birth created the EoT, devastated the core/ crone (?) worlds and calmed the warp storms, which allowed the Emperor to take his armies outside of the Sol system as a result. Which book did Eldrad meet Fulgrim? I want to read about that again, was that an extensive bit? Don't remember. I think Eldrad met Fulgrim first, but also Sanguinius, Alpharius and Vulkan ? How many primarchs did he end up seeing ? Did the Emperor meet him ? 

 

Edit- so Great Crusade only begun after the Emperor led his armies out of Sol. 

[karden00]

Eldrad met Fulgrim in Fulgrim. I remember that part quite well, but I don’t recall if Eldrad was like “So we just had a big mofuggin FALL, I wanna talk to you about this big FALL that we just had a few years ago.”

But I could be way wrong and Eldrad said something like “We just fell, like, Just Now, and I sense that you’re about to fall super quick, so uh, don’t do that.”

I dunno. I’m not about to reread Fulgrim.

[Marshal Rohr]

Well, if the Fall was a thousand years before the Great Crusade that would be a long time, objectively. Just maybe not to Eldar. Humans would understand it as the collapse of a big alien empire and the Eldar would think of it the way we think of last year.

[Closet Skeleton]

 

I never liked the idea that the fall happened in m30. I’m hazy on the old fluff, but I preferred the idea that The Fall was A Really Long Time before the current day imperium.

But then, I like old Necron lore, art-scale Titans. I remember reading through TFH and Aurelian and thinking huh, I always thought the fall was a prehistoric thing, not something that only preceded the Great Crusade by a day or two.

 

I like those things, too, but I think people are just misremembering the old background. I just flipped through WD127, the Eldar text from which all other Eldar material is derived, and while it doesn't give exact dates for the Fall or connect it to the Great Crusade's beginning as it does now, it does say it occurred "over ten thousand years ago," which at least seemingly puts it where it's supposed to be today.

 

Other relevant tidbits from Ye Ole Eldar Ur-Text:

 

• The Eldar empire was actually only about as big as the Eye of Terror, at least as far as the Eldar can tell (this is from before silly things like "Eldrad's as old as the Fall," so the Eldar's history is noted as being kind of fragmented and half-forgotten)
• There is actually a mention of humans - the original Exodites are noted as having occasionally been caught up in their wars. Probably unintentional, but I guess one could now take this to mean the big conflicts of the DAoT.

 

 

The version of that article that ended up in the Blood Angels cover White Dwarf Compilation differentiates between the slow 'fall' and the final birth of Slaanesh and has the Eldar aware of the sleeping unborn Slaanesh. While the Eldar Empire is stated to be around the later Eye of Terror the article also calls the Eye of Terror only 'the largest' of the areas of warp-real space overlap created by the fall and talks about the Eldar spreading 'across the galaxy/universe".

 

The Slaves to Darkness version of the fall of the Eldar has the planetary bound Eldar explicitly corrupted by Chaos before the craftworlders leave. The Black Library (probably the first mentioned) is given the full name "The Black Library of Chaos" and it contains all the warp knowledge of the corrupted Eldar.

 

The other Realm of Chaos Book, The Lost and the Damned had a different version of the fall. In this version the Eldar rather than the result of a decadent society Slaanesh was formed of the repressed shadow of the Eldar psyche. The birth of Slaanesh was slow and gradual with the warp becoming increasingly unsafe until the start of the full Age of Strife. It mentions that the stormy warp also reduced the ability of the other chaos powers to act. The Eldar became decadent as Slaanesh grew in power by feeding on the repressed parts of dead Eldar souls but rather than giving into corruption the Eldar fell into a vicious cycle where they would fight harder to reject the dark side of their nature.

 

The Catharsis of Slaanesh's birth blows away the Warp Storms isolating humanity. As well as the creation of the Eye of Terror, smaller areas of warp-tainted space are mentioned. The Emperor is stated to have begun uniting Earth just over a century before the Birth of Slaanesh with the Primarchs being spirited away and the Space Marine legions created instead while the birth pains were still building. This is the first source I know to state that the Great Crusade is a result of the fall but has the fleet ready to go by the time the warp storms end.

 

The Space Marine armour article from White Dwarf 129 (September 1990) and the White Dwarf Compilation also has the Great Crusade preparations predate the calming of the warp storms and blames those warpstorms on the growth of Slaanesh throughout the 5000 year age of strife with earth fully collapsing into civil war in the 28th millennium.

 

If you're used to things being more vague then that's probably because third edition had a more mysterious in universe take on fluff writing.

[Quantum]

The Fantasy Flight Games Rogue Trader RPG specifically mentions that the 'Screaming Vortex' warp storm is located in a region of space the Eldar/Aeldari once held, but which was destroyed during the fall in the same way as the Eye of Terror was formed.

 

As such, I generally assume that at least some of the warps storms & warp rifts scattered across the galaxy (before the coming of the Great Rift) were outlying enclaves of the Aeldary Empire, separate but still part of the bulk that was located at the current Eye of Terror. In these enclaves (strongholds?) they were probably completely unchallenged by any other power, including DAOT Man at the height of its power. But since they had already started their spiritual decline, they probably had turned mostly isolationist, leaving the rest of the galaxy for Mankind to expand in.  

 

For a civilization having power and projecting power are not the same thing.

[Schlitzaf]

Why couldn’t DAoT Man And Pre-Fall Aeldari Superpowers be “equal”? To better say, just because one could be argued as just ‘better’ or otherwise. No one today would say Russia or China, even EU depending how one sees it (or Soviet Union if you want to go back a couple decades), argue aren’t a modern superpower, even if USA is the “undisputed” top dog.

 

Pre-Fall Aeldari and DAoT Humanity could easily have a much similar relationship to one another. Which makes the real question. Who is the Russia/China/EU and who is the USA (in this weird comparison of sorts).

 

Both DAoT Humanity and Pre-Fall Aeldari, have similar characteristics to superpowers of our own history. Pre-Fall the turn to insular wouldn’t be inaccurately compared to classical China. While humanity own collapse and later reuniting is analytical to Rome. With Charlemagne representing the brief return of the Emperor. And it’s later division to collapse of Carolingian Empire, with Ultramer representing Byzantium. Now I am gonna stop here before things get too political.

 

But nothing here says we cannot have both Pre-Fall and DAoT both be coexistence superpowers. I think what also important/relevance is what there relationship would had been and by extension how might informed the modern outlook of power (or how Emperor might see the Aeldari during his own conquests).

 

Food for thought.