How many Eldar there are in the galaxy left?

From what I gartered from your posts and Lexicanum, the Eldar only outnumber the Tau by population.
What population can 1 Craftworld sustain? And what do Eldar do when it comes to children?
Are they doing something to stabilize the population?

We don't know how many craftworlds or maiden worlds there are so we cna only guess.
I'd say they outnumber the Tau but that could easily change.

Some craftworld are the size of Planetoids. Personally, I believe there's over a trilion Eldar.

Oh yeah.
There are probably loads of Eldar but their population isn't going up.

Depends if you count DE in all that? Their numbers are increasing

Delephont wrote:Depends if you count DE in all that? Their numbers are increasing

I'm not. Trillion just craftworld imo.

I don't think so...
They have probably formed seperate species by now...

Brother Coa wrote:How many Eldar there are in the galaxy left?

No one really knows, but I'd go with somewhere around a trillion like everyone else has said.

Brother Coa wrote:From what I gartered from your posts and Lexicanum, the Eldar only outnumber the Tau by population.

Maybe, maybe not. We don't actually know the population of the Eldar. I'd agree that they out number the Tau but who knows.

Brother Coa wrote:What population can 1 Craftworld sustain? And what do Eldar do when it comes to children?

Craftworlds come in a different sizes. The largest is Ulthwe, and I'd take a guess and say it's population is in the billions. The smallest isn't realy known, but more than likely it's Iyanden (population wise). As far as children go, not a ton is know, however we do know that incubation comes in stages with the father prividing his genes several times to the embryo.

Brother Coa wrote:Are they doing something to stabilize the population?

If I were to take a guess, I'd say that there's not a lot they can do, other wise they would be doing it. If Eldar are anything like elves in other fantasy worlds then they have 1 maybe 2 children their whole lives, which is a long long time.

BRB lists 11 craftworlds.
1 craftworld was lost recently ( Malantai ) but wasn't included in the BRB listing.

11+ craftworlds and exodites should make Eldar common enough to be encountered but also one of the smaller populations of the established species.

Yeah the ones listed in the BRB are the biggest ones...
There seem to be a few dozen smaller ones and then maiden worlds on top of that.

Well for all we know there are a few thousand smaller craft worlds. I mean the eldar in thier day had more worlds than the Imperium so even if only half of those planets had craft worlds and only half of those servived think how many survivers there could be. Not to menchon eldar pirates who have smaller version of hives on different astroids. And who said that Uthwee are the biggest I would think its Beil-tan thier motivation to rebuild thier empire would call for more soldiers and more soldiers would mean a higher population. Also Exodite worlds must have some amount of eldar on it numbering in the hundred thousands. On top of all that Lexicanum states that most of the craft worlds have doubled thier numbers over time so i would say they are easily numbering in the 10's of trillions. Also depending on the population of the craft world there can be space add on or taken off or so i would imagine since its only a bunch of raith bone and eldar know how to mold it.

I always thought they were only a few dozen million, the fluff always makes them out to be a dwindling race massively outnumbered.

Oh well, guess my mental vision is ruined

Eldrad wrote:Well for all we know there are a few thousand smaller craft worlds.

Wow. That sounds a bit exaggerated IMHO.

GW fluff always described the eldars as a dying race, and their craftworlds as being extremely rare.

In addition, it seems that a single craftworld can cause a lot of troubles for the IoM. So, the eldars would have surely taken over the galaxy if they could field thousands of craft worlds.

It was only a small part of the Eldar empire that pegged it.
The rest thought it was a stupid idea which is fair.
I'd say there are between 30-60/70 odd craftworlds of varying size.
Including maiden worlds and pirate bases the Eldar still have a fair sized population but due to their long reproductive cycle they cannot replace losses quickly and they keep incurring losses, so yeah they are a dying race.

There are probably a hundred or so small craft worlds.

then there are the Maiden worlds and the large craftworlds.


I would say a Trillion is a safe number.


and as to Eldar reproduction: Eldar require multiple couplings to concieve. the Gestation time is unknown, but I would assume it isn't much longer then Human Gestation.

its the Multiple Couplings that takes time. that and the Eldar's avoidence of extreme emotions to avoid Slannesh would make sex a delicate operation.


on the other hand, this method of reproduction allows for an individual to have multiple Fathers, increasing genetic diversity.

I was also under the impression that the eldar where extremely limited in size [millions] , but after thinking about it i think they'd have to be in the billions to lower trillions.

Edit: Also if they are space elves, wouldn't their be hardly any offspring?

The major craftworlds are the size of Earth (see BFG), but are populated throughout the volume rather than just the surface. With this in mind, trillions per large Craftworld is not actually unreasonable.

With the expansion in size of Craftworlds since te fall (as stated in wd127 and possibly later), we can only assume they have had some population increase since the time of the fall.

Daba wrote:The major craftworlds are the size of Earth (see BFG), but are populated throughout the volume rather than just the surface. With this in mind, trillions per large Craftworld is not actually unreasonable.

With the expansion in size of Craftworlds since te fall (as stated in wd127 and possibly later), we can only assume they have had some population increase since the time of the fall.

Small ones = Pluto
Medium ones = Eath
Large ones = Jupiter

And the Craftworlds had expanded 10 to 100 times in size since the fall...

( all from Lexicanum )

AS for population...I read that Eldar need a lot of time to have a child. And that their numbers is falling faster than they breed a new kin. So if nothing else their population is falling. You can see that by Craftworld Idharae, witch was destroyed by 1 Space Marine chapter ( who had only 300 marines in the moment of attack ).

Brother Coa wrote:How many Eldar there are in the galaxy left?

From what I gartered from your posts and Lexicanum, the Eldar only outnumber the Tau by population.
What population can 1 Craftworld sustain? And what do Eldar do when it comes to children?
Are they doing something to stabilize the population?

A craftworld is the size of a small planet, and populated throughout. Assuming a comfortably low population density, due to excessive use of open space and whatnot, there's probably a lower limit on their normal population around that of the average hiveworld. I haven't heard anything about the craftworlds' populations doubling since the fall, since the Codex says that each generation is smaller than the last, though the two aren't necessarily exclusive considering the extremely long lifespans of Eldar; the initial generation of refugees produces a generation smaller than their own, which produces a yet smaller subsequent generation, and so on, with each generation surviving for nine or ten generations (or more, since we have no clue what an Eldar generation actually is), meaning a large population boom on board the craftworlds after the fall, that's slowly dwindled since (each generation unable to replace the generation dying off in its time, due to reduced births and attrition from war and young Eldar realizing how arbitrary and self destructive the craftworlder philosophy is, and deciding to become pirates instead), so now it's only twice the original population, and dwindling ever faster. That actually seems like a more entertainingly absurd situation: with every advantage, the craftworlders still couldn't help but kill themselves off through adherence to a philosophy that prevents them from thriving, while driving away their young.

Exodites are stone-age barbarians following a hunter-gatherer lifestyle on a handful of worlds. That puts their population in the low millions on the outside.

Commoragh is a city that compares to the largest of Imperial hives as "a soaring mountain is to a mound of termites", leaving it at roughly the size of a solar system in volume, which meshes well with the whole "contains seven stars" and "is a conglomeration of every old Eldar webway city and estate, technically located across the entire galaxy" things.

To take the mountain/termite analogy way too literally, and waste about half an hour waiting for various wikipedia pages to load, in addition to gratuitously making up the numbers that those pages don't contain, for reasons amounting to "I think it would be funny": if we take the average large termite mound (something like three meters high, and one meter wide, for a very rough volume of 2.4 m^3, considering it to be a cylinder for simplicity's sake), and the volume of mount everest (because this is already ridiculous, so why not go all out?; 8,848 meters high, and we'll assume it's a cone with 45 degree slopes because it's 4am and I don't feel like coming up with something more accurate, giving us 181,252,390,836 m^3), we find that everest is roughly equivalent to 76,964,921,799 termite mounds. The largest Imperial hive is Terra, which has a surface area of 510,072,000 km^2; we have absolutely no information on how deep the hive is, so I'm going to make a guess of five kilometers, which I assume is grossly underestimating it; for simplicities sake, let's ignore the issue that it's a crust on an approximate sphere, and pretend it's a flat box, so we get 2,550,360,000 km^3. Now, to convert that based on the analogy: 196,288,257,959,297,640,000 km^3 (196 quintillion; for reference, the area of a disk with a radius equal to the average distance pluto is from the sun is 106,883,258,684,868,356,273 km^2 (107 quintillion), making the offhand "roughly the size of a solar system" comment not too inaccurate, if conceptualized as a thin disk).

I took some gross liberties in calculating this, and I wouldn't begin to suggest it's accurate, but it does give a nice frame of reference (namely, that mountains are quite a lot bigger than termite mounds), and if we took a more average mountain (I don't know, maybe a third of everest's volume? I confess I don't know the first thing about mountains), and made a wild guess as to the size of a more average hive (maybe the size of the US, about 2% of the Earth's surface?), decided Commoragh was 99.9% empty space for some reason, and gave what remained a population density similar to Alaska (.46 people per square kilometer), only made it per km^3 instead of per km^2, it would still have a massive population (601,950,657,741,846, which is a bit saner, but still patently ridiculous). My math may be off in places, not least of which because I flagrantly ignored significant figures and on account of it being 4 am when I started this, not to mention because I just made up numbers that sounded reasonable when I was doing this.


Of course, this really just goes to demonstrate the complete lack of scale that pops up in 40k fluff, with things like Cadia having a population less than that of the US, or Eldar living in a couple dozen planet sized ships, which notably provide significantly more living space than a thin layer covering a small portion of a planet, and yet being treated as though they had a total population barely larger than Cadia's...

Commoragh is a size of a Solar System?

IT's declining.

No sex please, we're Eldar!

Safe to say that their maybe a couple trillions of them left.
Their craftworlds are big as planets (most are)
Of ourse they are trying t stablelize population but the problem is that they loose more then they make so thats a problem.
There are many eldar "tribes" Some are dieing out pretty fast while others increase.
The Imperium as gvein hard and major popultion hits on the eldar when they fined and destroy their craftworlds (but it doesnt happen that often.)
Many of the eldar "tribes" are dieing out beacuse of Necrons, Imperium, and chaos pushing in on them. But some such as the Ulthwe are improveing very well, unlike the Bein-Tall (I do not know if I wrote it correctly)
But keep your hopes up! Maybe in couple of years they will make a new story that will tell which "tribes" have died out and which are doing very well.

There are more Dark Eldar than Craftworld Eldar, DE numbers are unknown but growing, sort of

Grey Templar wrote:

and as to Eldar reproduction: Eldar require multiple couplings to concieve. the Gestation time is unknown, but I would assume it isn't much longer then Human Gestation.

its the Multiple Couplings that takes time. that and the Eldar's avoidence of extreme emotions to avoid Slannesh would make sex a delicate operation.


on the other hand, this method of reproduction allows for an individual to have multiple Fathers, increasing genetic diversity.

Ermm...where are you getting this from? It reads more like some kind of sick Fan fiction that WH40K "fact".....so far, given how sqeamish GW are of anything remotely sexual, the only hints about the "Eldar" reproduction are given in the DE Codex, and that's a very top level sexual education at best....I've never read anything along the lines stated above.

I belive it comes from Xenology



GW came out with it because they were retconning the fluff so that Eldar and Humands couldn't interbreed.

Indeed, it's from Xenology, designed to retcon the earlier fluff about human-Eldar hybrids. IIRC earlier editions had the Ultramarines having some kind of super Librarian who was a cross between a human and Eldar. Given that back then 40k was fantasy in space, it wasn't surprising....I think GW was trying to move away from that though

Highly unlikely Eldar outnumber Tau.

Tau populate dozens of planets in dozens of systems with world size populations. The species is also short lived, indicating they most likely reproduce very quickly. Given city layouts in 40K for most races, I'd clock Tau in at perhaps 100 billion+ depending on how much new fluff has them expanding.

Eldar have a few Craftworlds with a few million apiece on them. Malantai was described as being one such large Craftworld and was destroyed by a few Nids and the "doom"

Had they billions on the craftworld it is unlikely a few nids would of been able to destroy it.

I would estimate the remaining Eldar at 300 - 500 million at the very most including the Dark Eldar. Remember, a single chapter brought a war to Commoragh, if they had billions the Space Marines would of been wiped out in minutes.

The Eldar also have the Exodites.

No-one knows how many Exodites there are, but they have been quietly getting on with things for 10,000 years so it could be a lot by now.

Brother Coa wrote:Commoragh is a size of a Solar System?

That was an offhand joke. Hilariously, it matched up with the extremely unreliable calculations I did.

To try to make it more realistic, let's assume the "soaring mountain" in the analogy is actually just a big hill (say, 2,000 times the size of a termite mound), and the hive in question only covers a third of the surface of a planet roughly the size of Terra, we still get something around 1,683,237,600,000 km^3. If it were as sparsely populated as Idaho (and we decide that per km^2 should be per km^3, further reducing the density since people live in an effectively flat plain on the surface, less than a hundred meters high under most circumstances; 7.3 people per km^2, the seventh lowest in the US; for comparison, the most densely populated state, New Jersey, has a density of 462 people per km^2), it would still come to 12,287,634,480,000 (twelve trillion), in the same ballpark as estimations of the Guard's numbers.

BeefCakeSoup wrote:Highly unlikely Eldar outnumber Tau.

Tau populate dozens of planets in dozens of systems with world populations The species is also short lived, indicating they most likely reproduce very quickly. Given city layouts in 40K for most races, I'd clock Tau in at perhaps 100 billion+ depedning on how much new fluff has them expanding.

Eldar have a few Craftworlds with a few million apiece on them. Malantai was described as being one such large Craftworld and was destroyed by a few Nids and the "doom"

Had they billions on the craftworld it is unlikely a few nids would of been able to destroy it.

I would estimate the remaining Eldar at 300,000 - 500,000 million at the very most including the Dark Eldar. Remember, a single chapter brought a war to Commoragh, if they had billions the Space Marines would of been wiped out in minutes.

You're underestimating the Eldar and possibly the Tau as well. The Tau have... seven, isn't it? main populated worlds, and a few dozen small colonies. We don't know how populous their main colonies are; they could have smaller populations than Modern Earth, making the entirety of the Tau less than the population of a single craftworld, or they could have populations in line with the average hiveworld, leaving them with a total population roughly equivalent to that of a single craftworld.

For reference, the space marines that were allowed/lured into Commoragh were large contingents from three chapters, with a battle barge and a dozen strike cruisers. They suffered in excess of 75% casualties, and lost every ship apart from the battle barge and the cruiser they came to recover, in the span of a few minutes, facing only a disorganized resistance from those who happened to be close enough to react before they fled, further complicated by the campaign of sabotage and assassination Vect's servants carried out against the nobles leading the defense.These were Space Marines, the Mary Sues lugging around several metric tons of plot armor each, and they were slaughtered.

Kilkrazy wrote:The Eldar also have the Exodites.

No-one knows how many Exodites there are, but they have been quietly getting on with things for 10,000 years so it could be a lot by now.

Good point, I forgot to factor them in.

Hard to really tell how many Eldar there really are.

A friend brought up a good point to me, he thought it would be plausible that they have the current population of Earth spread out among the stars.

roughly 5-7 billion could actually exist throughout the galaxy.

Between craftworlds and maiden worlds I think that could also be a distinct possibility... No way to know for sure though.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

For reference, the space marines that were allowed/lured into Commoragh were large contingents from three chapters, with a battle barge and a dozen strike cruisers. They suffered in excess of 75% casualties, and lost every ship apart from the battle barge and the cruiser they came to recover, in the span of a few minutes, facing only a disorganized resistance from those who happened to be close enough to react before they fled, further complicated by the campaign of sabotage and assassination Vect's servants carried out against the nobles leading the defense.These were Space Marines, the Mary Sues lugging around several metric tons of plot armor each, and they were slaughtered

Fascinating.
Not what codex Dark Eldar states.

BeefCakeSoup wrote:
Hard to really tell how many Eldar there really are.

A friend brought up a good point to me, he thought it would be plausible that they have the current population of Earth spread out among the stars.

roughly 5-7 billion could actually exist throughout the galaxy.

Good point but I think he is wrong...
The medium Eldar Craftworld is a size of Earth, and in each Craftworld there are enough Eldar to fill the entire center of Craftworld ( witch is about 2 billions according to BFG ).
So Eldar have 5 major Craftworlds ( size of Jupiter ) with population more than 2 billion, others are medium and minor ( sizes of Earth and Pluto ). There are around 18 of them, + Exodite worlds ( and we know nothing about their numbers ).

Seems more larger than 7 billion people...

Codex Dark Eldar does state that of the almost 500 marines that landed on the streets of Commorragh, half of them were killed within a short time of landing.

And the guns of every Space Marine ship was silenced very quickly after entering Commorragh. Since it's obvious Asdrubael Vect had planned the whole thing, and had no intention of killing every single space marine, they were able to escape. Had Vect's intention been to just destroy them all none would have escaped alive. That's obvious from reading the fluff in the Dark Eldar book about it.

But in the Podcast from the making of the Dark Eldar, Jes Goodwin and Phil Kelly did talk a bit about the total population of Commorragh, and IIRC they said something about it being pretty huge but not as big as a craftworld population.

There's loads. It's just that there are few in comparison to everyone else. Trillions of Eldar, septillions of humans (look up the number septillion).

The usual assumption is that the IoM has one million worlds (a round number.)

Modern science estimates two billion Earthlike worlds in our galaxy, not to mention worlds for species like the Vespid, and terraformed planets.

If that is the case, the IoM, although spread out over a large area, only occupies a small percentage of the available planets.

The rest of them could harbour any number of Exodites, Orks, Tau, Hrud, Demiurg, and other species. If they were unfriendly, the size of the IG would be utterly irrelevant. The other factions could afford to obliterate all the IoM Star systems entirely, and barely notice the loss of living space.

(But, as always with 40K fluff, GW have no grip on reality so the whole thing will dissolve easily when looked at in any detail. Best to leave it alone and make up some nice sounding numbers.)

1hadhq wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

For reference, the space marines that were allowed/lured into Commoragh were large contingents from three chapters, with a battle barge and a dozen strike cruisers. They suffered in excess of 75% casualties, and lost every ship apart from the battle barge and the cruiser they came to recover, in the span of a few minutes, facing only a disorganized resistance from those who happened to be close enough to react before they fled, further complicated by the campaign of sabotage and assassination Vect's servants carried out against the nobles leading the defense.These were Space Marines, the Mary Sues lugging around several metric tons of plot armor each, and they were slaughtered

Fascinating.
Not what codex Dark Eldar states.

By which you mean, taken directly from the codex? From page 14: three chapters (the Salamanders, Howling Griffons, and Silver Skulls) committed two dozen strike cruisers (okay, so I got the number of strike cruisers wrong, meaning they actually had more forces there) and a battle barge; these were met by a few hundred small craft, the only types mentioned being those usable in game (voidravens, razorwings, and ravagers), which are notably each less than a hundredth the size of the smallest Imperial escort (I know there's a picture of one someone built to scale, that came out somewhere on the order of twelve feet long... there's also a picture of Imperial ships as compared to actual objects and other sci-fi ships, let's see if I can find it... well, it's not anywhere on my hard drive, as far as I can tell), which is itself diminutive compared to a cruiser (which, converted to the same scale as tabletop models, would come out to roughly the size of an eighteen wheeler), and disabled by them, at which point they jettison the space marines on board and are promptly not mentioned again, aside from the battle barge. From page 15: by the time the nearby wych cults have reacted, there are around 500 marines in the city, and they've already suffered 50% casualties (so, three chapters each committed more than three companies to the fight, averaged out; the Salamanders probably sent more, meaning the others sent less); several leaders of the defense are assassinated by other Dark Eldar, one with a dark lance and another by Lelith; the machines holding the captured cruiser in place are sabotaged, freeing it, and about half the surviving marines teleport away, with those unable to teleport away for whatever reason being slaughtered or captured; the remaining ships flee as the forces attacking them are set upon by other Dark Eldar ships.

So, 75% casualties, in just over the amount of time it takes for a wych cult to react. By the time even the nearest houses realized they were even there, and had some troops marching on their position, they'd fled.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
You're underestimating the Eldar and possibly the Tau as well. The Tau have... seven, isn't it? main populated worlds, and a few dozen small colonies. We don't know how populous their main colonies are; they could have smaller populations than Modern Earth, making the entirety of the Tau less than the population of a single craftworld, or they could have populations in line with the average hiveworld, leaving them with a total population roughly equivalent to that of a single craftworld.

IIRC correctly, there is fluff confirming that the population of a hive world like Armageddon or Terra has more inhabitants of the entire Tau Empire. The key Tau septs probably have populations equivalent to the modern Earth, for a total population of a little over 50 billion or so in my estimate.

Significant, but tiny compated to the population of the Imperium of Man.

Kilkrazy wrote:The usual assumption is that the IoM has one million worlds (a round number.)

Modern science estimates two billion Earthlike worlds in our galaxy, not to mention worlds for species like the Vespid, and terraformed planets.

If that is the case, the IoM, although spread out over a large area, only occupies a small percentage of the available planets.

The rest of them could harbour any number of Exodites, Orks, Tau, Hrud, Demiurg, and other species. If they were unfriendly, the size of the IG would be utterly irrelevant. The other factions could afford to obliterate all the IoM Star systems entirely, and barely notice the loss of living space.

(But, as always with 40K fluff, GW have no grip on reality so the whole thing will dissolve easily when looked at in any detail. Best to leave it alone and make up some nice sounding numbers.)

Modern science? 10 years ago they didn't know that there are planets around other suns ( until HABL shot one black dot on a star ). Our galaxy has 500-600 billions stars, 2/3 of them have planets. Avrage of 10 planets per star, 3-5 of them can always be terraformed. And on every 2'nd or 3'rd star there is a planet like Eart ( atmosphere, wather in liquid state, continents... ). Did you get the numbers?

Imperium surly have more than 1 million worlds, I read somewhere that "Imperial lose on a dally basis 10 worlds and settle 100 more". And don't forget Human lost colonies still left to be discovered by Imperium. And some of them surely have Human level of technology from DaoT. And all aliens are already unfriendly toward Humanity, but they are also unfriendly to themselves ( Orks for example ), so Imperium will never be crushed by them - neither he will ever be able to crush them giving the number of enemies they already have.

And as always, GW fluff is rather strange when it comes to reality . But Imperium will never lose when it comes to GW, because the center of 40k IS IoM and it's warriors - The Space Marines and their battle for Humanity's survival.

The rulebook has always said the Imperium has been around 1 million worlds. Page 103 in the current 5th ed rulebook.

Ermm...where are you getting this from? It reads more like some kind of sick Fan fiction that WH40K "fact".....so far, given how sqeamish GW are of anything remotely sexual, the only hints about the "Eldar" reproduction are given in the DE Codex, and that's a very top level sexual education at best....I've never read anything along the lines stated above.

Dude......What was so gross about it? What he said was not even close to sick. He just explained some info he knew, besides we need to understand at least a bit of how the races are made to study them better. Stop being a sissy because somebody was talking about how two space elves come together and have intercourse.

Daba wrote:The rulebook has always said the Imperium has been around 1 million worlds. Page 103 in the current 5th ed rulebook.

"Around" is not same as "exactly". On a daily basis they lose a LOT of worlds, but claims to regain or colonize more than they lose...?

And you have mistaken, it's on page 103. Page 105 is picture of the Golden Throne.

Brother Coa wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:The usual assumption is that the IoM has one million worlds (a round number.)

Modern science estimates two billion Earthlike worlds in our galaxy, not to mention worlds for species like the Vespid, and terraformed planets.

If that is the case, the IoM, although spread out over a large area, only occupies a small percentage of the available planets.

The rest of them could harbour any number of Exodites, Orks, Tau, Hrud, Demiurg, and other species. If they were unfriendly, the size of the IG would be utterly irrelevant. The other factions could afford to obliterate all the IoM Star systems entirely, and barely notice the loss of living space.

(But, as always with 40K fluff, GW have no grip on reality so the whole thing will dissolve easily when looked at in any detail. Best to leave it alone and make up some nice sounding numbers.)

Modern science? 10 years ago they didn't know that there are planets around other suns ( until HABL shot one black dot on a star ). Our galaxy has 500-600 billions stars, 2/3 of them have planets. Avrage of 10 planets per star, 3-5 of them can always be terraformed. And on every 2'nd or 3'rd star there is a planet like Eart ( atmosphere, wather in liquid state, continents... ). Did you get the numbers?

Imperium surly have more than 1 million worlds, I read somewhere that "Imperial lose on a dally basis 10 worlds and settle 100 more". And don't forget Human lost colonies still left to be discovered by Imperium. And some of them surely have Human level of technology from DaoT. And all aliens are already unfriendly toward Humanity, but they are also unfriendly to themselves ( Orks for example ), so Imperium will never be crushed by them - neither he will ever be able to crush them giving the number of enemies they already have.

And as always, GW fluff is rather strange when it comes to reality . But Imperium will never lose when it comes to GW, because the center of 40k IS IoM and it's warriors - The Space Marines and their battle for Humanity's survival.

100-400 billion stars and an estimated 50 billion planets, with 500 million within the habitable zone of their star. The number of habitable worlds, or those that could be/happened to be terraformed is unknown, but it's not unreasonable to assume it's less than one percent of those 500 million, since "habitable zone" means exactly nothing as to the composition or size of the planets, only their distance from a star. The "one million worlds" in the Imperium figure is the only number that ever shows up, and as far as I know "thousands of trillions of humans" is the only figure on human numbers.

A thousand billion Eldar? Just seems too much.

Then again we're talking the galaxy here.

As far as the Tau, well, 100 billion? 10 billion or more per world? Hard to tell.

We don't know how many humans there are on the earth right now, estimates are between 6-10 billion I believe.

Projected human population in May 2011 is: 6,915,542,770

Have to repeat?

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
By which you mean, taken directly from the codex?

You should have.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
From page 14: three chapters (the Salamanders, Howling Griffons, and Silver Skulls) committed two dozen strike cruisers and a battle barge; these were met by hundreds of small craft, the only types mentioned being those usable in game (voidravens, razorwings, and ravagers), and disabled by them, at which point they jettison the space marines on board and are promptly not mentioned again, aside from the battle barge.

Such a surprise GW mentions units they may plan to realease someday...

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
From page 15: by the time the nearby wych cults have reacted, there are around 500 marines in the city, and they've already suffered 50% casualties. the machines holding the captured cruiser in place are sabotaged, freeing it,

Sabotaged? Nice name for Termies destroying what held the battlebarge whilst fending off the DE.
Did these DE succed in destroying the space marine vessel? NO? Got shotdown all of them?

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
and about half the surviving marines teleport away,

You dislike correct numbers it seems. How about improving this and next time we see unaltered GW fluff?

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
So, 75% casualties, in just over the amount of time it takes for a wych cult to react. By the time even the nearest houses realized they were even there, and had some troops marching on their position, they'd fled.

Not sure where you get your ideas from.
Deepstriking 500 and losing 50% never amounts to 75% casualties.
Taking your objective and leave is a tactical retreat.

Now, the fleet fred of the entangling fields left and additionally the 2 named ships are mentioned.
Multiple vessel said to be disabled and said to have left. Doesn't support your claim of destroyed.

To settle things, looking at the codex now....

Two dozen strike cruisers come through Webway....hundreds of VoidRavens and Razorwings swarm out of nearby Port Shard to meet them....Despite many of them being shot out of the sky, one by one, Imperial guns are 'silenced'(this is often used in literary expression to mean 'killed').....Space Marines drop pod in....Space Marines establish perimeter quickly, but take heavy fire from Kabalites and Scourges overhead....Hellions and Reavers attack, and are rebuffed by flamers....then Mandrakes and Raiders join the fray, battle is joined 'from one side of High Commoragh to another'....

....Space Marines hold their own, whole things descends into vicious melee fighting.....word of the invasion gets out, Wuch cults begin to mobilise for war....High Archon Kraillach butchering space marines until obliterated by 'a stray Dark lance' (assassinated by an underling maybe?).....Wyches of the Cult of strife get stuck in, Space Marines have to fall back, having 'lost half of their number already'....Lelith assassinates another Archon for Vect mid-battle....

....Ravagers and Scourges up above are dissembling a SM ship...SM using missile launchers break the magnetic fields holding ship in place under cover of a distraction bought by terminators.....Space Marines down below are surrounded, and 'warriors from a dozen houses were converging on their position'....main body of SM teleport away, some left behind to die...SM ships start to leave, DE attackers were met by firepower from both 'friend and foe' (Vect again?)....Remaining Astartes withdraw.


To be honest, it sounds to me like the Space Marines got absolutely kicked there, in the course of what must have been a mere few hours, they lost half their number, and what must have been a sizeable portion of their fleet. They did alright until word of their invasion got out, and then as soon as they met organised resistance, they were being butchered. It probably would have gone even worse for them, if Vect hadn't been knocking off DE commanders left, right and centre.

Never mind, read the post above.

purplefood wrote:If they do number as much as Sir Psuedonymous says they do 250 marines is pathetic to have killed for so many Dark Eldar...

but, but, the Mahreens are uber...

It is very much hinted at that Vect also left the Webway portal open for them to escape. Had he not, ALL of them would have been kiilled or captured and then eventually killed.

Face it, the marines got kicked. The only reason they didn't all die is because Vect was using them to get control of Commorragh.

Next time he should try to get the Ultramarines in their, only this time, not let them go

That is fairly merciful of him...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Uhlan wrote:

purplefood wrote:If they do number as much as Sir Psuedonymous says they do 250 marines is pathetic to have killed for so many Dark Eldar...

but, but, the Mahreens are uber...

I meant that for so many DE to have killed so few marines...
Of course then i read Ketara's post.

1hadhq wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
From page 14: three chapters (the Salamanders, Howling Griffons, and Silver Skulls) committed two dozen strike cruisers and a battle barge; these were met by hundreds of small craft, the only types mentioned being those usable in game (voidravens, razorwings, and ravagers), and disabled by them, at which point they jettison the space marines on board and are promptly not mentioned again, aside from the battle barge.

Such a surprise GW mentions units they may plan to realease someday...

What? My goal was to point out that the only craft mentioned are those that exist on the tabletop, and are geared towards killing infantry and tanks, not strike cruisers. As there was no "and larger warships" or somesuch added, we can only gather that it was a fleet of a few hundred bus sized ships going against twenty four warships that compare to an aircraft carrier as an aircraft carrier does to a bus (and one that similarly dwarfed the others), and at the very least hacking all of their guns off and crippling the battle barge to the extent that it crashes, only to regain power after the strike cruiser they'd come to rescue was freed (wait, rereading it seems the battle barge effectively crashed into some Space Power Lines and fried itself, because whoever was piloting it was an idiot who crashed into some Space Power Lines...). No ship other than the battle barge or the freed strike cruiser is mentioned after "One by one the Imperial guns were silenced."

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
From page 15: by the time the nearby wych cults have reacted, there are around 500 marines in the city, and they've already suffered 50% casualties. the machines holding the captured cruiser in place are sabotaged, freeing it,

Sabotaged? Nice name for Termies destroying what held the battlebarge whilst fending off the DE.
Did these DE succed in destroying the space marine vessel? NO? Got shotdown all of them?

"Miraculously, each missile seemed to trigger a chain explosion, and the burning shards crashed down into the streets below." -> The spars were rigged to go up at the slightest touch, since the whole point of the whole ordeal was to disgrace the Commorite nobility (a krak missile has a hard time doing anything at all the front armor of the light APCs used by the Guard, what exactly is it supposed to do against "giant building able to hold a strike cruiser in place"?); for all we know the missiles didn't even touch the spars, and they were just remotely detonated (educated guess based on the effective range of a missile launcher being less than the width of the ship, let alone enough to hit nine spars surrounding it on all sides).

The page goes on to have all the other haywire fields that had kept the imperial weapons offline mysteriously shutting off, and the first organized aerial resistance to the intruders to be set upon by other Dark Eldar forces, affording the surviving vessels, of which only two are acknowledged as still existing, time to flee.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
and about half the surviving marines teleport away,

You dislike correct numbers it seems. How about improving this and next time we see unaltered GW fluff?

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
So, 75% casualties, in just over the amount of time it takes for a wych cult to react. By the time even the nearest houses realized they were even there, and had some troops marching on their position, they'd fled.

Not sure where you get your ideas from.
Deepstriking 500 and losing 50% never amounts to 75% casualties.
Taking your objective and leave is a tactical retreat.

By the time the closest wych cults responded there were 500 living marines in the city, and they'd already suffered 50% casualties ("The Space Marines in the city were now almost five hundred strong... The Space Marines fell back; they had lost half their number already, and badly needed to regroup."). This is roughly halfway through the battle. Once the strike cruiser is set free, "the bulk" of the survivors teleport away, leaving those unable to to die. 75% casualties is a lowball estimate, when they'd suffered 50% within minutes of landing, facing only what was already beneath them, and then later still some number greater than 50% but less than ~80% of what was left at alive that point managed to escape. So, losing somewhere in excess of half a chapter, to rescue a single, heavily damaged strike cruiser, at the very least losing every single gun on a battle barge and twenty four strike cruisers, potentially losing any number of those strike cruisers, all to those forces that they actively landed on top, in the time it took for the next closest houses to realize something was going on and rush to get in on the action, while Vect's servants took the opportunity to cripple the defense effort.

The Imperial invasion of Commoragh was really a civil war with marines being used as a proxy army by one side. It's not really a good gauge of a straight up invasion to the death.

Kroothawk wrote:There are more Dark Eldar than Craftworld Eldar, DE numbers are unknown but growing, sort of

Where is this stated?

Brother Coa wrote:

"Around" is not same as "exactly". On a daily basis they lose a LOT of worlds, but claims to regain or colonize more than they lose...?

The rulebook just states it is a million; nothing indicates they claim more than they lose.

I said 'around' because exactly 1 million is hard to keep track of knowing the bureaucracy of the Imperium.

Daba wrote: nothing indicates they claim more than they lose.

Just look at DoW games, they lost Tartarus, but regain control over Lorn V, Kronus and Kaurava system.
BL books are full of those examples. There is one quote from some book, ( forgotten the name ) the man said: "hundreds worlds perish, but thousands more prosper".
I only don't know what he meant by prosper: recaptured, defend, discovered... My guess is that they regain the same amount they lose since it is everywhere stated that Imperium always have 1 million worlds...

The majority of Imperial planets are at 'peace'. Peace in that they are not being invaded, hereticla activities are at a minimum, and things are generally going fine. Sure thousands of worlds may be warzones, but hundreds of thousands more are doing just fine without having to fight wars.

Brother Coa wrote:

Daba wrote: nothing indicates they claim more than they lose.

Just look at DoW games, they lost Tartarus, but regain control over Lorn V, Kronus and Kaurava system.
BL books are full of those examples. There is one quote from some book, ( forgotten the name ) the man said: "hundreds worlds perish, but thousands more prosper".
I only don't know what he meant by prosper: recaptured, defend, discovered... My guess is that they regain the same amount they lose since it is everywhere stated that Imperium always have 1 million worlds...

"A million" is a nice round, poetic number. What it means is that the IoM at any one time has about 1 million worlds, give or take a couple of percent either way depending on recent new conquests or losses. Given the state of Imperial bureaucracy, it is impossible for the IoM to know its precise number of planets.

There may well be lots of undiscovered ancient human colonies in areas of the galaxy where the IoM is weak. It seems unlikely there would be lots of undiscovered human worlds in areas where the IoM is strong.

Smitty0305 wrote:

Kroothawk wrote:There are more Dark Eldar than Craftworld Eldar, DE numbers are unknown but growing, sort of

Where is this stated?

Cronicles of the Fall indicate 95% of the Eldar race was killed.

1% fled aboard what were to become the Craftworlds. these also formed the Exodite populations.

the other 4% actually survived Slannesh's mind rape and fled to the Webway.

Could someone explain to me how Eldar souls work? IIRC isn't there supposed to be a finite number? But they are no longer able to reincarnate and thus reproduction is stunted?

Where do the 'new' souls that the odd lucky baby gets come from? I know that there are supposed to be a lot of stillbirths as a result of said soul shortage.

Smitty0305 wrote:

Kroothawk wrote:There are more Dark Eldar than Craftworld Eldar, DE numbers are unknown but growing, sort of

Where is this stated?

It isn't the DE dex insinuates there are more Craftworld Eldar than DE. It's true though that DE numbers are increasing while craftworld are dwindling.

Grey Templar wrote:

Smitty0305 wrote:

Kroothawk wrote:There are more Dark Eldar than Craftworld Eldar, DE numbers are unknown but growing, sort of

Where is this stated?

Cronicles of the Fall indicate 95% of the Eldar race was killed.

1% fled aboard what were to become the Craftworlds. these also formed the Exodite populations.

the other 4% actually survived Slannesh's mind rape and fled to the Webway.

lexicanum wrote:When the Fall came, the Exodite worlds were untouched

Ok right off the bat we cannot speculate how many eldar there are because WE DONT KNOW HOW MANY CRAFT WORLDS THERE ARE!!! We know the ones GW has told us about but a new one comes out about every year or so so basicly its just a way of packing more fluff into the story line. Along with that there is a very small amount of documented Exodite worlds. In fact all of the codex's are based around what the Imperim of mans knows. So lets go back to the drawing board. There are 23 craft world known to the Imperium. There were about a trillion eldar home worlds. How exactly do those numbers line up? I mean its stupid to think that thats all thats left. The speculation of about 100 craftworlds is fair i can go with that but that would have to only be the ones that got out before the Eye exploded. There must be easily a thousand still in the eye. Plus all of the Eldar Pirates thats 10 trillion eldar easy. The exodites i have no idea i would say probably 100,000 or so per planet and again no way of telling how many there are. I would say that they are probably numbering in the 10-15 trillion range.

Grey Templar wrote:

Smitty0305 wrote:

Kroothawk wrote:There are more Dark Eldar than Craftworld Eldar, DE numbers are unknown but growing, sort of

Where is this stated?

Cronicles of the Fall indicate 95% of the Eldar race was killed.

1% fled aboard what were to become the Craftworlds. these also formed the Exodite populations.

the other 4% actually survived Slannesh's mind rape and fled to the Webway.

So the 4% formed the Deldar?

I thought the Exodites had split from the main Eldar Empire before the Fall, moving to remote parts of the galaxy and, and therefore missed out on the destruction.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

against twenty four warships that compare to an aircraft carrier as an aircraft carrier does to a bus

Air craft carriers are easy prey at close range.
So hundreds of DE craft successfully disabled the guns, a feature to be expected of pirates as pirates like to board without being shot to pieces.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

for all we know the missiles didn't even touch the spars, and they were just remotely detonated (educated guess based on the effective range of a missile launcher being less than the width of the ship, let alone enough to hit nine spars surrounding it on all sides).

In game ranges used in fluff?
Now thes uneducated guesses are not really surprising to me, but silly. If anything touched or not, if anything was remotely destroyed is
irrelevant. We can't know since it wasn't written.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
75% casualties is a lowball estimate, when they'd suffered 50% within minutes of landing, facing only what was already beneath them, and then later still some number greater than 50% but less than ~80% of what was left at alive that point managed to escape.

Made up would be the sad truth.
There is no timeframe in the story. To guesstimate 25 % casualties out of nowhere ?
The paragraph ends when the reduced 50% regroup. Next mention is their leave. The text isn't precise enough to draw any numbers from, but still youre on the path of making your own.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
So, losing somewhere in excess of half a chapter, to rescue a single, heavily damaged strike cruiser, at the very least losing every single gun on a battle barge and twenty four strike cruisers, potentially losing any number of those strike cruisers, all to those forces that they actively landed on top, in the time it took for the next closest houses to realize something was going on and rush to get in on the action, while Vect's servants took the opportunity to cripple the defense effort.

Confirmed losses of ~250 aren't half a chapter. Unconfirmed losses of strike cruisers again? Don't you think the escape of the Fleet means
a fleet escaped, not just the 2 named ships? As if, writing about 2 named ships would not lead to describe their actions as those of a fleet, instead the story would tell what these 2 named ships did.
Maybe consider a story in a DE codex won't show the details of any opposing force and their whereabouts fully.

You gave up a good chance to estimate numbers from the given size of the DE-reaction force just to piss on marines.
Funny.
Now it may be lost..

Eldrad wrote:Ok right off the bat we cannot speculate how many eldar there are because WE DONT KNOW HOW MANY CRAFT WORLDS THERE ARE!!! We know the ones GW has told us about but a new one comes out about every year or so so basicly its just a way of packing more fluff into the story line. Along with that there is a very small amount of documented Exodite worlds. In fact all of the codex's are based around what the Imperim of mans knows. So lets go back to the drawing board. There are 23 craft world known to the Imperium. There were about a trillion eldar home worlds. How exactly do those numbers line up? I mean its stupid to think that thats all thats left. The speculation of about 100 craftworlds is fair i can go with that but that would have to only be the ones that got out before the Eye exploded. There must be easily a thousand still in the eye. Plus all of the Eldar Pirates thats 10 trillion eldar easy. The exodites i have no idea i would say probably 100,000 or so per planet and again no way of telling how many there are. I would say that they are probably numbering in the 10-15 trillion range.

Lets see...
- codex DE tells us hundreds of craftworlds set sails to leave the corruptioned realm the Eldars Worlds had become.
- not all of them survived the fall. Most got caught in the shockwave of Slanesh birth. ( codex DE ).
- 11 are confirmed in multiple publications and a few are added to have something to destroy ( example Malantai ).
- the "crown worlds" are part of the eye of terror now, thus deemed lost.
- exodites and webway dwellers survive the fall. As do craftworlds, of the size of a small moon if they get far away enough.

So where do you find the thousands of craftworlds? trillions of homeworlds? Please tell.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:

Smitty0305 wrote:

Kroothawk wrote:There are more Dark Eldar than Craftworld Eldar, DE numbers are unknown but growing, sort of

Where is this stated?

Cronicles of the Fall indicate 95% of the Eldar race was killed.

1% fled aboard what were to become the Craftworlds. these also formed the Exodite populations.

the other 4% actually survived Slannesh's mind rape and fled to the Webway.

So the 4% formed the Deldar?

I thought the Exodites had split from the main Eldar Empire before the Fall, moving to remote parts of the galaxy and, and therefore missed out on the destruction.

I should have been clearer

The Exodites were already on their worlds. i mearly included them in the 1%

sorry if i was misleading.

A trillion huh? I was under the impression that it was a lot less than that...

Don't forget that a lot of the craftworlds were shot through space and time. And many of them left the galaxy as well and may still be out there.

So did the 4% become the Dark Eldar?

yeah, the 4% became the Dark Eldar.

There's no way they had a trillion worlds. There isn't even that many habitable worlds in 40k.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
What's Chronicles of the Fall?

Eldrad wrote:There were about a trillion eldar home worlds.

Where did you read that? You are saying that the Eldar have more homeworlds than our galaxy have stars?
I always thought that they had around few thousand worlds in the galaxy, or maybe million like the IoM, but trillion?

No one has counted how many stars are in our galaxy. There could very well be trillions of stars in our galaxy. However, last I heard the Eldar only had hundreds of thousands of worlds as theirs before the fall.

Roadkill Zombie wrote:No one has counted how many stars are in our galaxy. There could very well be trillions of stars in our galaxy. However, last I heard the Eldar only had hundreds of thousands of worlds as theirs before the fall.

Indeed. During the height of Eldar power Humans still had more worlds.

there are a lot of craftworlds in the eye of terror, but it isn't sure how many still have eldar on them, but it is possible to live there for eldar, as maugan ra and his craftworld showed.

Roadkill Zombie wrote:No one has counted how many stars are in our galaxy. There could very well be trillions of stars in our galaxy. However, last I heard the Eldar only had hundreds of thousands of worlds as theirs before the fall.

From Wikipedia: "The Milky Way Galaxy, commonly referred to as just the Milky Way, or sometimes simply as the Galaxy,[a] is the home galaxy of the Solar System, and of Earth. It is agreed that the Milky Way is a spiral galaxy, with observations suggesting that it is a barred spiral galaxy. It contains 100-400 billion stars and is estimated to have at least 50 billion planets, 500 million of which could be located in the habitable zone of their parent star.[12] The Milky Way is part of the Local Group of galaxies and is one of around 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe."

Nothing about trillions of planets...

Yeah, thats a funny thing. It's called estimating...meaning they don't really know. They can make an educated guess but for centuries educated guesses said the earth was flat. And from what I've seen on many science shows on television they really don't know at all how many there are.

But we're not here to discuss that in detail, were trying to find out Eldar population, and in effect, I was sort of agreeing with you about how many Eldar worlds there are...nowhere near trillions.

Ok. I just pulled out my old Renegades supplement for the Epic game system. In the Eldar entry it states this:

"Long before mankind's first stumbling steps into space, the Eldar had spread through the galaxy. Their glittering civilization encompassed tens of thousands of worlds, planets so beautiful and full of wonder that their names alone conjure the paradise that was the Eldar Empire: Croesus, Mymeara, Iydris, and Eldorado the Golden. "

So, yeah...tens of thousands...not a lot compared to the imperium in the current timeline.

They take ages to grow up I think...

Roadkill Zombie wrote:

"Long before mankind's first stumbling steps into space, the Eldar had spread through the galaxy. Their glittering civilization encompassed tens of thousands of worlds, planets so beautiful and full of wonder that their names alone conjure the paradise that was the Eldar Empire: Croesus, Mymeara , Iydris, and Eldorado the Golden. "

Mymeara sounds like its the one of the upcoming FW/Imperial armor 11, right?

I think so, but I'm not sure, I haven't been keeping up on FW rumors.

Roadkill Zombie wrote:Yeah, thats a funny thing. It's called estimating...meaning they don't really know. They can make an educated guess but for centuries educated guesses said the earth was flat. And from what I've seen on many science shows on television they really don't know at all how many there are.

But we're not here to discuss that in detail, were trying to find out Eldar population, and in effect, I was sort of agreeing with you about how many Eldar worlds there are...nowhere near trillions.

Ok. I just pulled out my old Renegades supplement for the Epic game system. In the Eldar entry it states this:

"Long before mankind's first stumbling steps into space, the Eldar had spread through the galaxy. Their glittering civilization encompassed tens of thousands of worlds, planets so beautiful and full of wonder that their names alone conjure the paradise that was the Eldar Empire: Croesus, Mymeara, Iydris, and Eldorado the Golden. "

So, yeah...tens of thousands...not a lot compared to the imperium in the current timeline.

Estimating with the help of factual science. Estimating will never be exact until you actually physically count each planet, so you know how many there are. However their methods of estimation are accurate, so the number they produce is a rounding. When people thought the Earth was flat, they didn't stop and think, but conjured up a theory, a belief that the Earth was flat without actually going to any lengths to prove this. Various people throughout the ages speculated the roundness of the Earth, and some then made an estimate based on research and calculations, ie. they tried to prove their estimation, but since they didn't have a telescope to look down on Earth they couldn't actually prove they were right. If you were to actually go and work through their original maths and evidence, you would find that they were infallible.

On the Eldar, the actual size of their realm was slightly bigger than the Eye of Terror. I'd say they had anywhere up about a third of a million worlds,

OK i know a trillion worlds was an over statement but what i was getting at is that they had a ton of worlds and saying that only 23 craftworlds survived (yes i checked there are 23 craftworlds known today) doesnt make sense. i mean even if they were caught in the eye, haven't we seen a craftworld come out of it?

There are many craftworlds only the size of a city that we don't know about. They probably only have a few million people though.

Also isn't it possible since you know planets and stars are thought to be more densly formed closer to the center of the galexy and there is also believed to be more planets with oxygen the closer that you get to the center of the galexy that scientificly there would be more habitable planets closer to the center of the galexy. And you know the eye is closer to the center than we are so main stream science would state that in such a large plot of outer space could hold easily over 75,000 planets so i would think that there could easily be hundreds of thousands of eldar planets.

Well, it's hard to argue with canon fluff. Tens of thousands is the number they gave.

And that was at a time when Humanity was on a million worlds. The Eldar were never a big deal.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:And that was at a time when Humanity was on a million worlds. The Eldar were never a big deal.

The Eldar were a big deal, but it was more due to technology than numbers. They were relatively insignificant in terms of numbers and worlds controlled, but they were significant when they were encountered due to the level of technology they posessed.

At the time Humanity was incredibly advanced too.

Eldrad wrote:Also isn't it possible since you know planets and stars are thought to be more densly formed closer to the center of the galexy and there is also believed to be more planets with oxygen the closer that you get to the center of the galexy that scientificly there would be more habitable planets closer to the center of the galexy. And you know the eye is closer to the center than we are so main stream science would state that in such a large plot of outer space could hold easily over 75,000 planets so i would think that there could easily be hundreds of thousands of eldar planets.

But you also have to know that the closer you get to the center of the galaxy, the greater amount of radiation you will encounter as the stars are closer together.


Oxygen isn't a life prerequisite either. there is life on earth now that doesn't require oxygen, at least directly anyway.

Water is the only material that we currently know as being essential to life, but that wouldn't have to be the case. you could have life that uses other liquid componants in place of water.



the Fluff also says that the current EoT was the heartland of the Eldar empire, holding nearly 100% of the total population.

the current Imperium of Man hold roughly 1 million worlds and is stated to be bigger then the Eldar Empire at it's height.


also keep in mind that the IoM isn't the only Human faction out there. there are many Human empires in addition to the Imperium, mostly on the eastern fringe(mostly unexplored)

Roadkill Zombie wrote:Yeah, thats a funny thing. It's called estimating...meaning they don't really know. They can make an educated guess but for centuries educated guesses said the earth was flat. And from what I've seen on many science shows on television they really don't know at all how many there are.

But we're not here to discuss that in detail, were trying to find out Eldar population, and in effect, I was sort of agreeing with you about how many Eldar worlds there are...nowhere near trillions.

Ok. I just pulled out my old Renegades supplement for the Epic game system. In the Eldar entry it states this:

"Long before mankind's first stumbling steps into space, the Eldar had spread through the galaxy. Their glittering civilization encompassed tens of thousands of worlds, planets so beautiful and full of wonder that their names alone conjure the paradise that was the Eldar Empire: Croesus, Mymeara, Iydris, and Eldorado the Golden. "

So, yeah...tens of thousands...not a lot compared to the imperium in the current timeline.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:At the time Humanity was incredibly advanced too.

And the Eldar were just as advanced, if not more so. However, they were vastly outnumbered.

Brother Coa wrote:

Eldrad wrote:There were about a trillion eldar home worlds.

Where did you read that? You are saying that the Eldar have more homeworlds than our galaxy have stars?
I always thought that they had around few thousand worlds in the galaxy, or maybe million like the IoM, but trillion?

EDIT: Nope I'm wrong looks like it was much smaller

Looked up some fluff some indicates it was actually larger while most indicates it was many times smaller.

BeefCakeSoup wrote:

Brother Coa wrote:

Eldrad wrote:There were about a trillion eldar home worlds.

Where did you read that? You are saying that the Eldar have more homeworlds than our galaxy have stars?
I always thought that they had around few thousand worlds in the galaxy, or maybe million like the IoM, but trillion?

Eldar had a larger Empire than the IoM. Apart from the Old Ones it was perhaps the largest.

No way it was trillions maybe 1.5 million or something but not trillions.

yep, only tens of thousands

Maybe we will have trilion worlds one day, when we collide with Andromeda...

Now back to the OP, does anyone know where Exodite worlds are? Halo zone, galactic far rim, Segmentum Pacificus?

They tent to be on the galactic rim I believe.

So is there a chance that some of them have advanced Eldar technologies from before the fall?

Do they keep contact with Craftworld Eldar?

And what about their relationship with DE?

Ancient Eldar split into 4 different factions: Craftworld, Dark, Exodites and Harlequins based on the way they found to survive The Fall. In general they don't associate or trust each other much but they have interected with each other. The results vary of course.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Exodites have their own technology but try to live rustic lives as much as possible. I think they favor lasblasters.

Well, the Exodites for the most part headed eastwards as far away from the main concentration of Eldar worlds as they could reach.

The map in the Eldar codex 4th edition has their worlds in the Ghoul Stars and right in the path of the Hive Fleet Behemoth and Hive Fleet Kraken near the Tau.

As far as their technology goes, they do have many advanced technologies and are familiar with all the sophisticated materials used on the craftworlds.

There are probably many more Eldar in the galaxy than the Imperium suspects. My guess is that the Eldar are not showing this, as they wish to keep the actual numbers of their population unknown, as thish could present an advantage in large wars.

Not really intending to take this off tangent but, could the eldar use the cloning tech mentioned by the DE to begin increasing their numbers, if they wanted to get past the whole emo we're dying off thing?

I think the problem is less of reproduction (the Dark Eldar are insane even for 40k standards, and use cloning to circumvent raising a child as well), but more that young Eldar more and more choose not to follow the path, and leave the Craftworld for a galaxy of adventure as a pirate or ranger, dying far away.

The path structure is too much for them, so the decline is in culture rather than pure numbers.

Frazzled wrote:Not really intending to take this off tangent but, could the eldar use the cloning tech mentioned by the DE to begin increasing their numbers, if they wanted to get past the whole emo we're dying off thing?

IIRC, being cloned means they're born without a soul or something. I also think that the Dark Eldar cloning tech is a Dark Eldar thing that their light cousins don't necessarily posess. I mean, they hardly use any of the same technology, right?

That, or they may have qualms about using it.

DE don't clone, they're in vitro test tube babies but still conceived naturally. Considering its one of the reasons DE are the way they are I wouldn't go down that road either if I were craftworld either. Also there's only so much room on a craftworld and many are at their maximum capacity already. Eldar are not for living in closets like their human hiveworlder friends.

well, the DE as a whole use the Test Tube process, but they do occasionally do it the natural way.


Natural born DE hold themselves as superior to those born in test tubes.


DE with enough wealth can even cheat death. they hack a piece of their body off(a finger will do) and send it to a Homonculus. He can then use the Finger/whatever they hacked off to grow the DE a new body for his soul to inhabit.

naturally the price is steep so you either have to give him alot of new toys or have him indebted to you.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:DE don't clone, they're in vitro test tube babies but still conceived naturally. Considering its one of the reasons DE are the way they are I wouldn't go down that road either if I were craftworld either.

It doesn't necessarily have to be conceived naturally either; a fertilized egg can be produced in a lab, which would make more sense than trying to extract it from a living host. There's also no side effects of the process mentioned, aside from being permanently stuck in a lower social class than the nobility who reproduce naturally.

Grey Templar wrote:DE with enough wealth can even cheat death. they hack a piece of their body off(a finger will do) and send it to a Homonculus. He can then use the Finger/whatever they hacked off to grow the DE a new body for his soul to inhabit.

naturally the price is steep so you either have to give him alot of new toys or have him indebted to you.

The price is part of their soul, and they're revived from whatever could be recovered from their body after death, not a piece removed preemptively.