Eldar during the Horus Heresy (spoilers?)

[Valkyrion]

There's not loads of overt Eldar involvement in the Horus Heresy - I can think of the Cabal and the two Primarch vs Avatar fights (Lorgar in Aurelian, and Fulgrim in Angel Exterminatus I think), but there has been over 50 novels and all of the black books so I might've skimmed past some of their more pertinent parts - so, have I? Not stuff like the Cabal, but a three paragraph fight scene or something that I might've missed, or Eldrad sticking his nose in in a book I've overlooked?

[SlickSamos]

During the Great Crusade the SW (I think) destroy a Craftworld which is mentioned in either A Thousand Sons or  Prospero Burns.  Actually in looking it up and trying to figure it out I found this (un-cited) list: 

 https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/gjpdzp/did_the_imperium_destroy_any_eldar_craftworlds/

 

[Karhedron]

Fulgrim also meets Eldrad in Fulgrim and fights an Avatar there I think.

[bushman101]

There is some Salamaders vs Eldar in Born of Flame

[Noserenda]

I vaguely recall Ahriman dealing with some too? 

[Lord_Caerolion]

The Eldar didn’t really take part in wider events during the Heresy/Crusade era, as their race was still reeling from the species-defining literal apocalypse that was the Fall. 
 

Despite McNeils (incorrect) depiction in Fulgrim, the Craftworlds at the time are quite literally just refugee vessels, filled with a terrified population trying to come to terms with the fact that 99% of their species has died, their homeworlds annihilated, their pantheon literally consumed and torn apart. To top it all off, despite death culturally being more benign, as their souls would reincarnate and be reborn, now upon death their souls are torn apart by She Who Thirsts and similarly consumed after being consigned to endless torment. 
They haven’t properly adopted the Eldar Path at this time, it’s still being developed by Asurmen and taught to the original Phoenix Lords. 
30k Craftworlds would be incredibly different to 40 Craftworlds. 
 

The extent of their involvement is mainly raiders/pirates, who could be regarded as the proto-Drukhari, who are the ones who attacked Vulkan’s homeworld, and also featured in a short story with the Space Wolves. 
 

There’s been the odd reference to Craftworlds in the Black Books, but these tend more towards “once you actually find and catch them, they just get massacred”. 

[lansalt]

That's how it should have been, but Legion and Fulgrim already show Farseers, Autarchs, and several types of Aspect warriors before the war started, barely 200+ years after the Fall. It's another case of 40k anachronisms in 30k, but it forces the Paths to have been developed much faster than it's said in other sources.

[BadgersinHills]

A Dark Eldar (not explicitly called as such) fleet attacks the combined forces of the Word Bearers and World Eaters during the Shadow Crusade trying to kill Angron but from my recollection they don't expect Lorgar there. 

[Ripper.McGuirl]

Promethean Sun has a bunch of Exodite action in it, and Vulkan lives has a lot of Vulkan beating down Dark Eldar before the emperor comes and finds him. I am fairly sure Eldrad shows up again in Old Earth, as well.

[The Unseen]

There was also a Craftworld destroyed by the Blood Angels Legion; Magc'Sithraal

Was a craftworld that had gone mad from the fall, and were wanton marauders and pirates. Sanguinius and 1/3 of the Blood Angels legion was brought in, and was also one of the few showcases of the Titans of the Ordo Sinister, who had not 1, but 3 titans come in to kill the giant psychic wraith construct leading the warhost. After it was dead, Sanguinius had the shattered craftworld sent into the systems sun. One of my favorite bits of 30k lore, and I use it for some of the foundational lore for my own chapter.

 

Spoiler

The second time the Ordo Sinister would take to the field would be a far bloodier and more terrible affair, as part of a protracted series of battles that has since come to be known as the Defence of Helioret.

The Helioret Sector had, since the opening years of the 960s.M30, been under escalating attack from Aeldari Corsairs and marauder forces based upon a half-shattered Asuryani craftworld known as Magc'Sithraal.

These Aeldari were by any example of their species who had been encountered insane, tortured creatures, still reeling from the fall of their ancient power, driven by grief and suicidal with bitter hate for all other intelligent species of the galaxy.

They had fallen upon the worlds of the Helioret Sector with merciless violence, burning planet after planet, unleashing strange synthetic plagues that fused flesh into bloodied crystal, and fractured moons and orbital void stations to tumble down upon worlds below.

The Imperium's response to the onslaught soon escalated until scores of regiments of the Imperialis Auxilia had been mobilised against it, with them Mechanicum Taghmata forces from Anvilus and Incaladion, supported by a demi-Legion of the Tiger Eyes Titans who contested bitterly to hold the line against the splinter-bone Phantom Titans of the Magc'Sithraal Aeldari at Luxor and Ratep.

Utter loss of those key worlds was only averted when a full third of the strength of the Blood Angels Legion took to the fray with their Primarch Sanguinius at the fore.

Not even this apocalyptic force could win outright victory though, but instead it saw the Aeldari forced back to a defensive ring around their sundered and debris-trailing craftworld.

It was as the angelic Primarch girded his forces for an all-out attack against the Magc'Sithraal craftworld that he was unexpectedly joined by a squadron bearing the Seal and Writ of Terra and the Imperial Household.

With it were a dozen Black Ships carrying within them cohorts of the Silent Sisterhood and with them a trio of unmarked Titan conveyors with the Warlords of the Ordo Sinister within their holds.

The battle which followed was shocking in its intensity, with the barbed, swift hulls of the Aeldari warships set burning across the void as they fought both the steel-grey war-barques of Anvilus as well as the proud, white-hulled battleships of the Armada Ultima.

As the void battle raged, the sleek Black Ships and the crimson predators of the Blood Angels fleet dove straight on to their quarry.

Crashing through the decaying spires and force-domed atmosphere of the desolate Craftworld, the invaders were met by Magc'Sithraal's army of the dead; thousands of Wraith war constructs ranging from swift-footed assassins to towering warriors and Titan-walkers, all powered and animated by the vengeful souls of that haunted realm.

Reality rippled and shuddered as the Aeldari distortion weaponry rent the air, tearing crimson gunships from the skies, while below, ancient colonnades and towers that had stood for centuries toppled, hammered by remorseless shellfire -- and as missiles rained down in detonating waves, the landing was forced.

A score of Aeldari Titans rose up from the depths of their ancient vaults, and at the head of them was a Warlock Titan, filled with the souls of Magc'Sithraal's fallen seers and prophets.

The Imperium had encountered it before and named it the "Witch-Idol," and where it had walked, no Imperial victory had yet been won.

Against this massing of force, the Imperial assault first faltered and was checked, as even the Titans of the Legio Fureans landing with the second wave were swiftly torn apart by the "Witch-Idol" and its kinsmen, though it is said that Sanguinius destroyed one of their number himself, tearing open its head with his bare hands and sending it crashing to destruction before being struck a grievous blow by the Warlock's Psi-Lance from which none other would have survived.

It was then that the three Titans of the Ordo Sinister made their landing, and at their footfalls the very fabric of the craftworld was said to have shuddered as if in revulsion.

From their carapace weapons poured volleys of rocket fire and searing Turbo-Laser blasts as might have been expected from any Battle Titan, while their right hands were vast Arioch Power Claws which twitched in expectation of the close-quarters kill, but from the baroque and strange weapons that served as their left arms, there spat a silent darkness.

These bolts of black nothingness slammed through the ranks of the Wraith-constructs, devouring everything they touched. While in the aftershock of their detonation, scores more Wraith-kind simply fell like severed marionettes, never again to stir.

Howling a great chorus of grief and outrage, the Aeldari Titans rounded on the newly arrived giants and let fly, Pulse Lasers cutting the sky apart between the two while the "Witch-Idol" conjured forth a tempest of eldritch Warp-lightning, its coruscating wave of destruction suddenly met by an ice-white blaze of force emanating from the god-engines of the Ordo Sinister and shattered.

The backlash of the forces negating each other shook the craftworld like an earthquake, tumbling Space Marine and Wraithguard alike to the ground like toys. Empyreal force had been met with empyreal force and it was clear to every spectator to this clash of colossi how; the god-engines of the Ordo Sinister were Psi-Titans.

The conflict that followed was a true battle of the gods, and the recovering Primarch Sanguinius had wisdom enough to withdraw the warriors of the Legion to give the Titans a wide berth for what was to ultimately follow.

For three solar hours the Psi-Titans fought, unleashing destructive forces on a scale enough to break a dozen cities; Pulse Laser slashed metre-thick ceramite Warlord armour, only to have it melt and reform whole in the wake of the destruction, though not even such occult protections could hold back the lethal strike of a gigantic Aeldari Power Blade plunged deep into the reactor-fuelled heart of one of the Ordo Sinister's number.

Ghostlike holo-fields flickered and shuddered as the Aeldari Titans danced the dance of death with impossible grace, and fusillades of screaming rockets found only empty air, but not even such mastery of speed and confusion could stop the ravaging darkness of the Warlord-Sinister 's baleful primary weapons.

Slowly but surely for the Aeldari Titans, four became three, became two, became only the wounded "Witch-Idol" beset still by two of the Ordo Sinister's Warlords, although both were damaged.

Its lance shattered by a blast of ravening emptiness, it sang its defiance across the Empyrean but was answered by prisoning hurricanes of psychic force against which its superior manoeuvrability became nothing more than the struggle of a battered scarecrow caught in a storm.

One of the Warlord-Sinisters then seized the Witch-Idol's broken shoulder, holding it captive while its dark companion tore off the Warlock Titan's head.

With the Witch-Idol's destruction, it was as if the soul of Magc'Sithraal had died as well. Lights flickered and died across the ruined craftworld, systems failed and the end began.

The last remnants of the Aeldari who had not already fled their dying home came on in a suicidal frenzy, but found only the fury of the Blood Angels Legion and the cool savagery of the Sisters of Silence waiting for them.

The Psi-Titans of the Ordo Sinister did not wait, instead they bore up the remains of their fallen comrade, and without further communication departed the battlefield.

The last of the slaughter was not long in coming, and the final act of the Defence of Helioret was for the wreckage of the broken craftworld to be hurled into a nearby sun to die its final death.

 

[General Zodd]

While it’s true they’ve monkeyed about with the established timelines for the genesis of the aspect shrines, it’s not accurate to say all the Craftworlds are just refugee vessels. I mean, by definition that’s what they all are, but some craftworlds had been built and launched decades, if not centuries, before the fall as farsighted Eldar decided their future no longer aligned with the way Eldar society was going. In fact the more successful ones were those that had made it furthest from what became the Eye of Terror at the time of the fall. So the cultures and outlook of some Craftworlds may have been fairly well established by the Heresy despite the trauma of the Fall, and may have already started developing the concepts of the Path by then without contradicting previous Eldar lore.

[Lord_Caerolion]

I just kinda headcanon it as Autarch being a somewhat generic leadership title that was reused by the teachings of Asurmen to refer to those Aeldari stuck on the Path of Command. The Cabal Autarchs are whatever pre-Fall Aeldari had managed to stay sane. 
Avatars… kinda make sense, they were created at the moment of the Fall, but the concept of the Young King would almost certainly not exist yet. 
 

As for Farseers and multiple Howling Banshees appearing in Fulgrim… it just doesn’t make sense. Several years after the Fall, the event that starts the Crusade, and Asurmen has only just found the Aeldari who would become Jain Zar, let alone the other Phoenix Lords, or the turning of their newly-created personas into full quasi-religions, and the instruction of other Aeldari into said religions. 
 

Aeldari society is portrayed as fairly slowly adapting, and taking time mastering things. I just can’t see the Phoenix Lords formation and the initial promotion of the Aeldar Path as taking anything less than centuries.

[Khern]

In tome 20 Primarchs, Iron Hands fight versus eldars. On the battlefield, eldars uses psychic powers to turn Iron Hands's bionics against them. A Farseer tries to impress on Ferrus that his brother Fulgrim will be his downfall.

[Valkyrion]

Was the Dark Eldar/Eldar difference (or Drukhari/Asuryani in modern speeg) a defined distinction back then? 

I know there is mention of what we all know to be Dark Eldar without being explicitly named, but did humanity know the distinction between the two, and were the Eldar as a race suchly divided by then?

This might be veering beyond HH lore into Eldar lore - but I'm mainly asking from an Imperial perspective of Eldar in 30k generally and there will no doubt be many non HH sources that touch on Eldar at that time.

[jaxom]

On 12/30/2022 at 2:49 PM, Valkyrion said:

or Eldrad sticking his nose in in a book I've overlooked?

Old Earth 

Spoiler

He goes on a massive killing spree to get rid of people who's presence and activities make divining the future more difficult.

 

[Noserenda]

The Eldar kindreds had already split but the Craftworlders and Dark Eldar were both still evolving into their final societies as we know them.