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So, according to the lore, the only way to become an Incubus is to A) be one of their recruits but then to B) kill another Incubus for his warsuit.  Likewise, to advance you must defeat the person you wish to supplant.  (Source)  At least some of these promotion battles would end in death too, we presume.

So here's my question: how does the Incubi system not collapse?  With zero growth, any casualty is an irreducible loss.  Is there an alternate system for replenishing their ranks I'm not seeing?

I may be wrong here, but i thought that the wanna-be Incubi had to *defeat* a fully fledged Incubus and kill an Aspect Warrior. I imagine that Incubi aspirants have classes akin to white belt to black belt, when at black belt you challenge the Teacher and if you win you become a fully fledged Incubus. If that isn't how it works, then by god this will be my head Cannon.

Any casualty would be irreplaceable, yes. But Dark Eldar are virtually immortal. If they get killed in combat, they can just regrow their soul into a new body. True losses are probably extremely rare for the Incubi.

Only the exceptionally wealthy can afford the regeneration of the haemonculi.

But with the Incubi working as bodyguards for the wealthy, what better way to insure some type of loyality of your personal bodyguards that the promise on regeneration if they fall in service to an archon.

Regeneration is not always going to be available, so you are correct that the Incubi would soon die out.

This is the same problem as the Space Marines face on the tabletop - if Space Marines were as weak as the tabletop says, they would be extinct in the early Great Crusade.

GW just doesn't take into account that many things in its universe would quickly die out.

 Ashiraya wrote:
This is the same problem as the Space Marines face on the tabletop.

It's not just a tabletop problem, IMO it's also a fluff text problem. So much is written to sound "cool" instead of even remotely sensible. 12-year old boys might just see it as cool, but us old keyboard warriors sometimes think about things.

Like the Blood Angels recruiting only once every 50 years from those that survive a hugely dangerous walk across the desert. Space Wolves taking only youngsters that have fallen bravely in combat - how many of these prospects die before the SW can recover them? Or others having massive tournaments where prospects are pitted against each other in mortal combat until only a few are left standing. Like huh? After your geneseed the most precious thing a Chapter can have is plenty of prospects that are genetically compatible with said geneseed. While I too think some of the Ultramarine propaganda is over the top they at least have sensible recruitment practices! Children tested for compatibility are monitored for performance in military schools, the best are selected to become recruits and the rest get to serve Ultramar in other capacities where they can still marry and have children, making sure the compatible population grows.

The Imperium has no shortage of people. Human bodies aren't a precious resource to them, they're something that can afford to be wasted in order to find "the best." (However the chapter in question defines that.)

 Jimsolo wrote:
The Imperium has no shortage of people. Human bodies aren't a precious resource to them, they're something that can afford to be wasted in order to find "the best." (However the chapter in question defines that.)

On a hive world, sure. On other major worlds, sure. But many Chapters have a savage world to recruit from, or a medieval-style society, or even a death world. Populations will be small with high death rates to begin with. While it sounds cool to have a thousand boys fight to the death and then recruit the last ten survivors it's surely wasteful in the extreme somewhere only a fourth of children see their tenth birthday?

Though it does fit the Sardaukar theme mentioned when thinking about how marines were described in earlier fluff. Take some people, put them through hell and then tell them it was all a test and now they can join the Real True Elite...

Every male on Fenris is geneseed-compatible, supposedly, and I expect that the 'toss them in a pit and pick up the survivors' chapters have lost the ability to perform genetic tests.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Every male on Fenris is geneseed-compatible, supposedly, and I expect that the 'toss them in a pit and pick up the survivors' chapters have lost the ability to perform genetic tests.

Hmm... True on Fenris I guess, but still seems a bit wasteful (and inefficient).

Being unable to do the genetic tests sounds like a quick way to go extinct though. Even compatible recruits might die at some stage in the implantation process, those that aren't compatible are a 100% loss.

I always put the losses during implantation down to picking candidates who aren't genetically compatible, to be honest.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Every male on Fenris is geneseed-compatible, supposedly, and I expect that the 'toss them in a pit and pick up the survivors' chapters have lost the ability to perform genetic tests.

But the "toss them into the pits" wouldn't qualify as checking for compatibility for gene seed. It's like making a bunch of people needing liver transplants engage in a deathmatch. The survivor may be the fittest of the lot, but it doesn't mean he'll be able to take the offered liver.

Yes, but we're talking about a bunch of superstitious medieval knights with selectively advanced medical technology. If you don't know about genetic compatibility and all you have on creating Space Marines is how to sew the bits in, then it becomes logical that the toughest survivors are the ones most likely to survive implantation.

Remembering that the Marines doing the recruiting were also recruited from a semi-feral world by surviving being tossed into a pit and told to kill...

Technically, you only need to kill a Incubus if there is no warsuit available for you and you want to become one really bad. If a Incubus has been killed by, let's say, a Striking Scorpion, his armor can be reclamed by any apprentice that seems worthy. If the Incubi Shrine was rich enough, they can have new warsuit and klaive build for them by the best dark eldar artisan and thus grow. If they grow to fast or resplenish their casualty with lesser warriors, you can always cull them from your ranks later with the murderous system exposed earlier. The only real test to become an Incubus is to kill another Aspect Warrior. So there isn't much problem with casualties. Of course, the Incubi Shrines aren't growing a lot and don't do it fast either.

As for Space Marines, they are another subject and lets just say they frequently suffer from a shrodinger effect in their recruitments.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Remembering that the Marines doing the recruiting were also recruited from a semi-feral world by surviving being tossed into a pit and told to kill...

And then got hypno-indoctrinated into superhuman intellect and great knowledge, yes.

That only works if the people hypno-indoctrinating you have that knowledge, Ashi.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
That only works if the people hypno-indoctrinating you have that knowledge, Ashi.

Ofc, that would explain why they carry on like before. They were taught to do it like that and then, by The Emperor, they will!

And it also explains why Ultramarines and most of their successors don't seem to have any great problems replacing even wholesale slaughters where they lose the entire First Company. They still know how to test compatibility, and they recruit in an efficient manner. Sure, the UM have no shortage of recruits in their own little realm but seeing as so many Chapters are of their stock many must have less-populated worlds to recruit from. They just do it in a sensible manner instead of hosting a huge death match. Or if it's a death match it's all compatible boys who have large families carrying on the compatibility.

Spetulhu wrote:


On a hive world, sure. On other major worlds, sure. But many Chapters have a savage world to recruit from, or a medieval-style society, or even a death world. Populations will be small with high death rates to begin with. While it sounds cool to have a thousand boys fight to the death and then recruit the last ten survivors it's surely wasteful in the extreme somewhere only a fourth of children see their tenth birthday?

Even in a world that has high mortality rates and a relatively low population, 1000 people aren't going to be missed.

High infant mortality rates will be accompanied by high birth rates.

Even Medieval or Iron age societies can have large populations. The Roman Empire in 26 BC had an estimated 56 million people. And this wasn't even when the Empire was at its largest. Heck, they had Gladiatorial games, a good analog for the situation of Marine recruitment competitions. This was a time when there was not large scale agriculture and only rudimentary sanitation and medicine(and only for the wealthy) and infant mortality was high.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Spetulhu wrote:


On a hive world, sure. On other major worlds, sure. But many Chapters have a savage world to recruit from, or a medieval-style society, or even a death world. Populations will be small with high death rates to begin with. While it sounds cool to have a thousand boys fight to the death and then recruit the last ten survivors it's surely wasteful in the extreme somewhere only a fourth of children see their tenth birthday?

Even in a world that has high mortality rates and a relatively low population, 1000 people aren't going to be missed.

High infant mortality rates will be accompanied by high birth rates.

Even Medieval or Iron age societies can have large populations. The Roman Empire in 26 BC had an estimated 56 million people. And this wasn't even when the Empire was at its largest. Heck, they had Gladiatorial games, a good analog for the situation of Marine recruitment competitions. This was a time when there was not large scale agriculture and only rudimentary sanitation and medicine(and only for the wealthy) and infant mortality was high.

There's also the Native Americans, who are believed to have had a population as high as even one hundred million.

Can we please quit discussing Space Marines? There are now more off topic posts in this thread than on-topic ones.

 Jimsolo wrote:
Only the exceptionally wealthy can afford the regeneration of the haemonculi.

Like the incubi yes. Between being the most skilled warriors of Commorragh (and possibly the galaxy) and serving as bodyguards for the most powerful individuals, it is safe to assume that the Incubi are extremely wealthy and influential.
Regeneration is almost always available (considering that it can be performed as long as even the tiniest particle of the body can be recovered) as the Incubi would logically take great care to make sure their bodies can be recovered somehow. Also, it is possible that their ranks grow if they regenerate the incubi killed in their internal battles.

Maybe. It seems like the warriors who are so hardcore you can only become one by killing one of their number would view regeneration as a cop out.

But absent any better ideas, it seems like the only logical argument.

 Jimsolo wrote:
Maybe. It seems like the warriors who are so hardcore you can only become one by killing one of their number would view regeneration as a cop out.

But absent any better ideas, it seems like the only logical argument.

Yeah, they might have to regain their honour somehow, but this is the only way I can see it working.

Going by the source, it doesn't actually say that an aspirant has to kill the Incubus to take his warsuit and be accepted, only "defeat" the Incubus. With the amount of focus Incubi put on single combat with the Klaive, that would be no easy feat. The loser would probably be dishonored, and have to regain their status by challenging another Incubus to take their suit, and so on.

This is probably why Drazhar/Arha caused such a stir when he first appeared, because he was wearing the oldest Incubus warsuit, implying that he was the first and greatest.

 Jimsolo wrote:
So, according to the lore, the only way to become an Incubus is to A) be one of their recruits but then to B) kill another Incubus for his warsuit.  Likewise, to advance you must defeat the person you wish to supplant.  (Source)  At least some of these promotion battles would end in death too, we presume.

So here's my question: how does the Incubi system not collapse?  With zero growth, any casualty is an irreducible loss.  Is there an alternate system for replenishing their ranks I'm not seeing?

So I was thinking about this a while and it does appear to be bad fluff. It might be that the most common way to become an incubi is to kill another incubi, but that might not be the only way.

Then I thought about it with terms of regeneration. What if you kill an incubi, and become and incubi. What happens to the guy you killed. He is still an incubi, but is dead. DE have a solution for that, he gets regrown and now you have 2 incubi. The loser having to go get a new warsuit.

Ok, ok, ok. Incubi attrition. First I do own the 7th DE codex, and being a copy-pasted codex I'd assume most of the stuffs said about the incubi in the codex is the same as 5e.

so what is said about their promotion is this:

The act of becoming an Incubus is dangerous in the extreme; through long and gruelling practice, the strong prosper and learn, whereas the weak are cut down and their bodies burnt as an offering to the iron statue of Khaine at the heart of each shrine. (Codex: Dark Eldars. "Incubi". 7th Edition. digital)

That's it. So if 5e had it so that the Incubi-to-be had to kill another Incubi to be promoted, we can head-canon it out of our collective consciousnesses, due to how dumb the idea really is.

However, as another post above wrote: it merely requires that an aspirant to best a proven Incubi and take his armor. It could be a ritual thing -- where you are judged by their shrines' Hierarchs and a circle of proven Incubi to de-armor an incubi chosen for the ritual. The Incubi in the ritual may die, sure, but it won't be a sure thing. In fact, given how better equipped an Incubi would be against an aspirant, I'd say it's extremely rare for an Incubi to die in the sparring exercise.

Regarding Haemonculus and their monopoly at raising dead DEs back to life, the Haemonculus coven basically use their superb art of torturing their victims in the longest and cruelest way possible, and take advantage of the fact that DE rejuvenates themselves given enough torture is "witnessed", when combined revives an DE. This means the to-be-revived must be rich because the Haemonculus will need a boat-load of slaves to torture, in addition to a portion of the warrior's soul. An Incubi may or may not be in a pact with the Haemonculus, since he may or may not be rich enough to afford the cost.

Finally, I'd say there's probably enough of Warsuits in every shrine to go around (first given how much they charge their patrons, and second given those who would have inevitably died permanently in past conflicts), they simply believe in the Spartan ways, but with the additional advantage of resurrection. The loser may be given a new set of warsuit and the chance to proven himself again in battle.

But yeah, that old fluff was terrible, the abridged one is somehow actually better.

Making them bigger pansies somehow makes the fluff better?

There is literally nothing about the 7th ed fluff which is cooler than the 5th ed background, lol.

If the 7th ed had given us an alternate explanation for how eldar are indoctrinated (and later promoted) in the Incubi ranks, then we might-could consider it a retcon. But that didn't happen. They just copy-pasted like they always do, and omitted a bunch of stuff (like they started doing fairly recently) in order to have more room for miniature photographs.

I did have a thought though: maybe they ARE regenerated. Clearly, Archons still get killed, yeah? Even when they're protected by Incubi? Maybe the Shrine still pays to have Incubi who've lost internal duels (to subordinates or to prospective Incubi) resurrected, but once they're back alive, those 'failed' Incubi are given the most dangerous (suicidal) assignments, or are the warriors assigned to clients that the Shrine isn't going to be broken up about losing to assassination or combat death.

That would make sense, fluff-wise, and still fit with the theme and tone of the Dark Eldar.

 Jimsolo wrote:
Making them bigger pansies somehow makes the fluff better?

There is literally nothing about the 7th ed fluff which is cooler than the 5th ed background, lol.

If the 7th ed had given us an alternate explanation for how eldar are indoctrinated (and later promoted) in the Incubi ranks, then we might-could consider it a retcon. But that didn't happen. They just copy-pasted like they always do, and omitted a bunch of stuff (like they started doing fairly recently) in order to have more room for miniature photographs.

I did have a thought though: maybe they ARE regenerated. Clearly, Archons still get killed, yeah? Even when they're protected by Incubi? Maybe the Shrine still pays to have Incubi who've lost internal duels (to subordinates or to prospective Incubi) resurrected, but once they're back alive, those 'failed' Incubi are given the most dangerous (suicidal) assignments, or are the warriors assigned to clients that the Shrine isn't going to be broken up about losing to assassination or combat death.

That would make sense, fluff-wise, and still fit with the theme and tone of the Dark Eldar.

Yeah, except that a shrine would not want to lose any client. Not only would they miss the income from that job, it would also be bad advertisement for possible future contracts.

 Jimsolo wrote:
Making them bigger pansies somehow makes the fluff better?

There is literally nothing about the 7th ed fluff which is cooler than the 5th ed background, lol.

If the 7th ed had given us an alternate explanation for how eldar are indoctrinated (and later promoted) in the Incubi ranks, then we might-could consider it a retcon. But that didn't happen. They just copy-pasted like they always do, and omitted a bunch of stuff (like they started doing fairly recently) in order to have more room for miniature photographs.

I did have a thought though: maybe they ARE regenerated. Clearly, Archons still get killed, yeah? Even when they're protected by Incubi? Maybe the Shrine still pays to have Incubi who've lost internal duels (to subordinates or to prospective Incubi) resurrected, but once they're back alive, those 'failed' Incubi are given the most dangerous (suicidal) assignments, or are the warriors assigned to clients that the Shrine isn't going to be broken up about losing to assassination or combat death.

That would make sense, fluff-wise, and still fit with the theme and tone of the Dark Eldar.

They omitted that because that part is ridiculous and makes zero sense. I never said the new fluff is cooler, it's just better. It's far more consistent. Besides, why are Incubi pansies if they do not require an aspirant to kill one of the shrine's own prove? They maybe Spartans on crack but they aren't stupid. All the jobs they do requires number. How is it cool for a supposedly elite warrior cult to deliberately enforce itself to death? Sometimes the less said the better, Like the old BA take exactly 50 aspirants per decade thing. Something in your brain just tick and go "but what if we need a large influx of recruits, like that one time we stormed a Space Hulk with the entire first company?"