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Are the imperium aware of what birthed Slaanesh? The whole fall of the Eldar etc. do they know what spirit stones do? Or why the Dark Eldar do what they do to fend off she who thirsts?

Some inquisitors do, that is not the same as The Imperium knowing. there are very few things that The Imperium knows as a whole

The vast majority of the people in the imperium aren’t even aware chaos exists, let alone the origins of any of the gods.

So….what charax said really.

Yeah this is a case of what you, the fan knows vs. what someone in-universe would know. I think even the old lore had Slaanesh birthed by the Eldar, even though Nurgle came from the Black Plague, Khorne from the crusades, and Tzeentch from Dark Ages or some such.
It may be a thing where they moved things around, because they needed humanity to be scattered by the Eye of Terror/ warp storms made in Slannesh's wake.

Those that Need To Know will know.

But for even The High Lords of Terra, there’s not a lot can be done with that information. They don’t exactly need an excuse to persecute Eldar of any stripe.

Andykp wrote:
The vast majority of the people in the imperium aren’t even aware chaos exists, let alone the origins of any of the gods.

So….what charax said really.

I doubt the know what eldar are. If you give people information then they get ideas


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Those that Need To Know will know.

But for even The High Lords of Terra, there’s not a lot can be done with that information. They don’t exactly need an excuse to persecute Eldar of any stripe.

And even those that know… do they accept it as fact? And even if they do what good does knowing do them.

Well, arguably knowing new gods can be created is….worth knowing. It can inform policy and mindfulness etc. And encourage the attempt being made for The Emperor etc.

But overall? Knowing the Eldar caused Slaanesh specifically assist…nothing that I can immediately think of. It’s not like wiping the Eldar out would make one of the Gods go bye-byes.

I think what prompted me asking was wondering if they’d use spirit stones to compromise captive Eldar etc. by threatening to smash them or whatever leaving their souls vulnerable to Slaanesh.

Pretty much any knowledge of the Gods or Eldar beyond the very surface level stuff is going to be the almost exclusive domain of specialised Inquisitors that have spent decades or even centuries compiling knowledge.

The creation of Slaanesh is the greatest shame the Eldar race has ever endured, they birthed their own arch-enemy and destroyed their own galaxy-spanning empire in the process, leaving them a weakened, dying race - this isn't the kind of thing you chat about with the stupid ape-descendants that keep trying to murder you and settle your former worlds.

And even when Inquisitors gain that knowledge, they aren't a particularly collaborative or sharing bunch either, so the intimate details of how one of those filthy xeno races created a God are not the sort of thing you'll just let slip in front of the High Lords. The most secretive faction of humans gains access to the secrets of the most secretive xenos race, they wil probably...keep it secret. Not least of which because other Inquisitors might consider the knowledge blasphemous and try to murder them or steal it

Some people will definitely know that soul stones are valuable to the Eldar - Eldar have gone to great lengths to recover them before, and have severely punished those who have desecrated them, but there's a significant difference between
"Hey the Eldar seem to really like these things called soulstones" and
"Hey the Eldar literally keep their souls in these things to prevent them being consumed by the Chaos God birthed from the arrogance and hubris of their race at its galaxy-spanning height, so destroying or capturing one holds the same emotional significance of kidnapping a loved one with the added weight of being one of a limited number of souls from a dying race that used to be able to reincarnate so the idea of permenant death is especially horrifying due to the fact they will be conscious as Slaanesh tears them apart for eternity

 General Kroll wrote:
I think what prompted me asking was wondering if they’d use spirit stones to compromise captive Eldar etc. by threatening to smash them or whatever leaving their souls vulnerable to Slaanesh.

Inquisitor Vail deals with Eldar in one of the later Cain novels, where a corrupted Imperial Governor is trying to summon that Daemon Cain keeps running to (Sylysse or something?). But I can’t for the life of me recall if she knew what the Soulstones/Waystones were throughout. And she’s someone familiar enough with the Eldar to be able to speaking their language.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 General Kroll wrote:
I think what prompted me asking was wondering if they’d use spirit stones to compromise captive Eldar etc. by threatening to smash them or whatever leaving their souls vulnerable to Slaanesh.

Inquisitor Vail deals with Eldar in one of the later Cain novels, where a corrupted Imperial Governor is trying to summon that Daemon Cain keeps running to (Sylysse or something?). But I can’t for the life of me recall if she knew what the Soulstones/Waystones were throughout. And she’s someone familiar enough with the Eldar to be able to speaking their language.

I still need to get stuck into the Cain novels.

 General Kroll wrote:
I think what prompted me asking was wondering if they’d use spirit stones to compromise captive Eldar etc. by threatening to smash them or whatever leaving their souls vulnerable to Slaanesh.

Anyone who has learned about why the Eldar value soulstones has probably *also* heard about what has happened to certain high-ranking Imperials who merely *used them as jewelry*. The Harlequins have ways of finding these things out. And they *will* give you a one-way ticket to Commoragh *when* they discover that you're talking about destroying them. They'll even tell the Dark Eldar exactly why they grabbed you, free and on the house. Given that smashing soul stones literally feeds She Who Thirsts, you can bet that the Dark Eldar will also take a more dim than usual view of your actions.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Well, arguably knowing new gods can be created is….worth knowing. It can inform policy and mindfulness etc. And encourage the attempt being made for The Emperor etc.

But overall? Knowing the Eldar caused Slaanesh specifically assist…nothing that I can immediately think of. It’s not like wiping the Eldar out would make one of the Gods go bye-byes.

I suppose having the understanding that gods can be created is useful but I doubt the imperium understand how slaneesh was created although they may have some knowledge of eldar history and legends. If they knew that the outpouring of raw emotion in such a concentrated way could cause the birth of a chaos god they would surely put 2 and 2 together and think about the endless war.

Unless they are using that knowledge to create the emperor as a choas god through the imperial cult

I wonder how much a powerful psyker could intuit. They can probably sense when soulstones hold a soul, although whether the hunger of Slaanesh can also be sensed is a different matter.

Again, though, unlikely to be widely disseminated beyond the close circle of the psyker.

If any Inquisitor knows, it would be Inquisitor Czevak.