Drukhari/Dark Eldar during the Great Crusade

[Lord_Caerolion]

20 hours ago, Ripper.McGuirl said:

I think the path system existed at the time, since it's kind of foundational to the Craftworld way of life. The craftworlds were well established by the time of the fall, and some of the furthest flung had been around for quite a while by then. Also, the worship of Khaine and therefore probably the Avatars had existed in the Aeldari pantheon since the early days of their race, I think? I could be wrong on that one.  

The creation of the Avatars is explicitly as a result of the Fall, caused by Khaine being fought over by both Khorne and Slaanesh while the other gods were just devoured (except for Cegorach and possibly Isha), which caused Khaine to “shatter” into fragments that incarnated as the Avatars. 
 

As for the Path, I’m not sure how widespread it would be. We’re shown the early life of both Asurmen and Jain Zar in their Phoenix Lord books, and after the Fall, long after the Craftworlds fled, Asurmen still hasn’t even formed his armour, and the Jain Zar book has them only just finding Maugan Ra. Considering that it’s Asurmen who teaches the Path to the Craftworlders, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the teaching of the Path is a post-Heresy development, or at least the wide-spread acceptance of it. 
 

Really, seeing Howling Banshees and a Wraithlord during the events of Fulgrim should be pretty much impossible. We know Wraiths existed pre-Fall, but they would be almost entirely unrelated to their modern role, given spirit stones were only developed by Iyanden in M33. They’d presumably be more used as a punishment to prevent reincarnation, or perhaps if the act of reincarnation caused the soul to lose memories (which the phrase “dissolved peacefully” could imply) as a way to “lock in” the memories of a great hero. 
 

The way I see it, given the start of the Great Crusade is roughly analogous time-wise to the Fall, most of the Crusade would be spent by Asurmen finding and training both his disciples and himself, forming the Aspects as concepts. By the time of the Heresy, each of the Asurya started taking disciples of their own, and it’s the destruction of the first shrine that causes the Phoenix Lords to begin wandering, and Asurmen not only spreads the training of his Aspect further, but begins teaching the Aeldari Path to the wider Craftworld society. 
The full “species”-wide acceptance of the Path would be happening centuries later at least. 

[The Scorpion]

14 hours ago, Noserenda said:

Yeah the Heresy era craftworlders in the HH novels dont really line up with the ones in other sources, shame really because it was a good chance to show something unique as in Angel Exterminatus.

What are the Eldar of Angel Exterminatus like?

[lansalt]

12 minutes ago, The Scorpion said:

What are the Eldar of Angel Exterminatus like?

IIRC they were all wraith/automated constructs as guardians of Eldar ruins.

About the Aspects,  one of the leaders of the xenos Cabal in Abnett's Legion is an eldar winged Autarch. It's not said if he's mastered Paths or that's just a rank, but the book is set years before the heresy,

[Spacefrisian]

Well Fulgrim met Eldrad who warned him of chaos, there is that.

[Noserenda]

On 8/26/2022 at 1:25 PM, The Scorpion said:

What are the Eldar of Angel Exterminatus like?

From memory its an entirely construct force presumably left over from the Eldar glory days, familiar but different is exactly how they should appear. Eldrad popping up in the Heresy exactly as he is in 40k for example is just awful, especially as he got some excellent character development in Jain Zar in a period sometime between periods (its vague afaik).

[SkimaskMohawk]

A lot of the novels have marine characters reminisce about killing/fighting aspect warriors. Zephon talks about it in master of mankind, and I'm sure I remember some emperor's children or other wannabe sword master want to measure up to howling banshees.

It's been very much the trend to portray both factions of eldar as fully formed by the time of the heresy. Not sure if the fall was originally supposed to be further away from the crusade proper or not.

[Karhedron]

2 hours ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

It's been very much the trend to portray both factions of eldar as fully formed by the time of the heresy. Not sure if the fall was originally supposed to be further away from the crusade proper or not.

The original lore was that the Age of Strife was triggered by Slaanesh gestating in the Warp. The birth of Slaanesh and the Fall of the Eldar blew away the warp storms that had raged for millenia and allowed the Emperor to launch the Great Crusade. The HH novels pretty much line up with this. The Emperor spent the latter yearsof the Age of Strife unifying the solar system and creating his various transhuman soldiers so that the Great Crusade was ready to launch as soon as the Eldar fell.

Master of Mankind implies that speed was essential. The Fall of the Eldar created a vacancy at the top of the galactic pecking order. If Humanity did not fill it quickly, other races would instead. Only by conquering the Galaxy and mastering the webway would humanity have the safe space it needed to evolve into a fully psychic species.

[Noserenda]

Yeah so the Horus heresy is a couple of hundred years after the fall, id expect maybe some of the very first Aspect shrines might be around? Its hard to tell because BL canned the phoenix lord series, which itself had a very vague timeline at points.

[Xenith]

As above, the craftworlds/path didn't begin immediately at the fall - Eldar would have sensed the upcoming apocalypse and been preparing their 'arks' for probably hundreds, if not thousands of years before the actual fall - and these guys would have been seen as weird extremists by the apocalypse denying eldar 

[Noserenda]

Oh yeah the path system as a whole predates the fall, but the path of the warrior does not, and that shapes the entire craftworld military around it, except wraith warriors on their modern form and I suspect their use might not be widespread yet either, simply because most surviving craftworlds had not been pushed that far yet.

[The Scorpion]

On 8/29/2022 at 7:43 PM, SkimaskMohawk said:

A lot of the novels have marine characters reminisce about killing/fighting aspect warriors. Zephon talks about it in master of mankind, and I'm sure I remember some emperor's children or other wannabe sword master want to measure up to howling banshees.

It's been very much the trend to portray both factions of eldar as fully formed by the time of the heresy. Not sure if the fall was originally supposed to be further away from the crusade proper or not.

It makes sense since the Age of Strife lasted thousands of years.

The Eldar would've had quite a lot of time to adapt into their current forme before E Money entered the stage.

[Noserenda]

17 hours ago, The Scorpion said:

It makes sense since the Age of Strife lasted thousands of years.

The Eldar would've had quite a lot of time to adapt into their current forme before E Money entered the stage.

The Fall of the Eldar was what ended the Age of Strife, which was the turmoil caused by all their bad karma birthing Slaanesh so most the modern Eldar kindreds are only just forming as the Great Crusade kicks off 200ish years before the Heresy war. 

[WrathOfTheLion]

Hadn't what became the CWE* broken off long before the Fall of the Eldar? They'd've had time to diverge prior to the event actually occurring.

* Some time before, it's relative there

Edited September 5, 2022 by WrathOfTheLion
addendum

[Noserenda]

It wasnt too long before, several craftworlds either hadnt launched or had only recently launched and therefore dont escape the fallout of the fall. The Exodites certainly left a fair while before though. 

Before getting caught in the weeds however, its important to note that the Path of the Warrior as we understand it only comes about some time after the fall, and by its nature it could not have spread very quickly at first as it was reliant on long personal instruction.  

[MegaVolt87]

1+ for mixing corsair and DE kits for proto DE. Where do Incubi and Drazhar fit in the timeline though? Also some of those corsair leaders encountered by the legions seem very much 1:1 of modern DE Archons we know today, bodyguards like kabalite trueborn etc. 

[Bung]

Incubi were a thing which came later.

Wasnt the father of the Incubi not the first Striking Scorpion Lord or something like that.

 

As for the Corsair Leaders, they are pretty similar to Archons.

Most of Comorragh etc. was ruled by noble Houses before Vect and after that they had to adapt the Kanal system. If you read the DE Trilogy there is one decendant of such a noble House trying to get more power to challange Vect to go back to the old days.