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That's easy, I could just say the Eldar didn't care about the human expansion (thus no war), and that the Mechanicus ship got lucky in destroying the Eldar vessel. A destroyed ship doesn't mean that the technologies involved were on par. Those quotes don't really grant you much, to be honest.

Again that is your bias showing, "they got lucky" sure, or they out teched the eldar to such a scale the eldar could not compete, see how that works?

And shunting an eldar ship several seconds into the past and firing contained black holes... hmmm what eldar weapons do we know of that are on par with that? oh thats right, D cannons, they shunt stuff into the warp, now what DAOT do we know of that is comparable to shunting things into the warp? oh... void shields, one race weaponised it, the other did not as far as we know, but why bother, imperial defences are much better than eldar ones who do not have shields on a large scale at all, they use holo fields and essentially ECM, kinda like divergent tech trees, almost as if they are.... different races!!!!!

The quote also states that the Eldar and humans fought, but he humans considered it trivial, almost as if Eldar were a minor threat, but the Eldar call themselves undisputed masters of the galaxy, well damn, that must be true then as they clearly wiped out the upstart humans... oh, they didnt, why not? oh, maybe like you say the didnt want to? or more likely, they could not, since the humans say they are above the trivial eldar race, so my bias says I must go with that explanation over all else and just agree that given almost not information I can make that assertion and anyone who disagrees with me is using head canon.... see how that works?

OR

We can try to work out how to marry the two conflicting statements given what little info we have and STOP making assertions based on our bias towards a certain faction, we could even have a little fun with it and talk about what it could have been like in that age for both races...

@Formosa

The ships the humans faced in the Great Crusade were not the war ships of the Eldar Empire. If you remember what has been said earlier, the Eldar Empire military was actally only automatons. Their ships were certainly very different since Craftworlds themselves were trading and colony ships transformed into words. What the Eldar used against humans in the Great Crusade are basically civilian ships rebuilt for war with the tech they managed to salvaged. They are the ship equivalent of a technical vehicle. At the same time. No living Eldar had the slightest clue on how to fight a war by themselves. That's the sort of thing their automatons did for them. So basically, a crew of inexperimented warriors (the Path of the Warrior wasn't all that established during the Great Crusade as evidence by the fact Banshee lacked their famous mask for example) on armed civilian ships are fighting against the most powerful item in mankind arsenal.

BTW your quote said humans and aliens fought. It does mention they met Eldars and Orks, but they never metionned if combat erupted between any of those races. They also mention that treaties were sign, again we don't by which parties. Do you think they signed a treaty with the Orks?

The quote does not explicity say that Eldar and humans fought a war, and certainly not an existential one.

The quote that humans considered the alien threat to be trivial is explicitly from a human bias. The quotes from the Eldar books and BRBs are not stated as the "view" of the Eldar. It's simply stated.

So if we're going to talk biases, let's consider the amount of information, the viewpoint that is given (if any) and the consistency of said information.

We could have fun with it, but we'd also have to stop making assertions like "this has just as much evidence supporting it as your "eldar are No1 wooooooooooo!" when I've posted real evidence.

My opinion of the matter is that the Eldar were on the top of the food chain (because it's stated outright in several places), and that they just didn't care much about the other races on a societal level. I bet there were numerous times Eldar fought with humans, traded with humans, waged war with humans as allies, etc. but that overall the majority of the Eldar were busy "doing Eldar things" and just couldn't be bothered. From humanity's perspective I'd think they knew the Eldar were out there, but just didn't have a complete picture of the Eldar strength for whatever reasons. I'm sure there were humans who felt "unrivaled" even if it wasn't the case, simply because the Eldar didn't care to "rival" them.

@Insectum7

At that point, the Eldar Empire was already decaying and falling into isolationism. For the Eldars, humans were primitives. For the humans, Eldars were self-centered hedonists. Neither civilisation perceived the other as a threat. Ironically, humans were correct. Eldars destroyed themselves due to their ubris and Eldars were also correct as humans were just another one of those child race whose dominion would be measured in millennias not millions of years like their own history and dominance.

"Humanity encountered several intelligent alien races during their expansion out into the galaxy, such as the Eldar and the warlike Orks. With these discoveries began, in time, the first human-xenos wars. With Mankind at the height of its power, the threat of aliens was VIEWED as trivial and eventually non-aggression pacts were signed between Terra, its colonies and many of the alien races. "
That says that they only viewed aliens as trivial threats which is a different thing to them genuinely being trivial. Some people in universe in 40k viewed the Eldar as being made up. So it's 100% true that they had the view Eldar aren't real but it's also wrong. The same applies to the DAoT humans. Believing doesn't make it so.

As for an Ark Mechanicus destroying an Eldar ship do we have any source for Eldar using the same ships now as before the Fall? Asuryan himself has a fighter that's really just an upgraded pleasure yacht so it stands to reason that could apply to their battleships as well.

epronovost wrote:
@Insectum7

At that point, the Eldar Empire was already decaying and falling into isolationism. For the Eldars, humans were primitives. For the humans, Eldars were self-centered hedonists. Neither civilisation perceived the other as a threat. Ironically, humans were correct. Eldars destroyed themselves due to their ubris and Eldars were also correct as humans were just another one of those child race whose dominion would be measured in millennias not millions of years like their own history and dominance.

I'd agree with most of that, although it's not clear to me that the Eldar were already decaying by that time or if that was more during the Age of Strife. Isolationist tendencies I'd definitely believe. However, I think if the Eldar actually perceived humanity as a threat, any real war would have not gone well for humans.

Ok so again we are taking the extremely unreliable opinion of the eldar who consider themselves the apex of any species that has ever existed and treating it as absolute truth, while at the same time dismissing the same kind of information from the DAOT humans as "opinion"

You guys get that both races considered themselves the apex right?

As for Eldar tech, as stated before, if your going to assert that the eldar had better tech than DAOT humans, your moving into conjecture territory as there is zero evidence of this at all, and plenty on the contrary to show that human tech was on par but different, divergent due to being different races.

And the poor excuse that Eldar lost it all within a couple of decades of the fall is just that, a poor excuse, yes they likely lost some tech but its very convenient to claim that "nuh uh, they lost all the super tech we have never seen or heard of ever"

Its nonsense, current eldar tech is likely the same as Eldar empire tech but with divergences due to time (40k) and culture, and given that Dark Eldar still have some of that old tech.

So I say again, you will be hard pressed to convince me that current eldar tech is much different to old eldar empire tech in terms of vessels and weaponry with little to no evidence existing, if you guys want to engage in conjecture, sure lets do that.

 Formosa wrote:
Ok so again we are taking the extremely unreliable opinion of the eldar who consider themselves the apex of any species that has ever existed and treating it as absolute truth, while at the same time dismissing the same kind of information from the DAOT humans as "opinion"

Right, because one is expressed as the opinion of humans, and the other is expressed as a fact.

 Formosa wrote:
Ok so again we are taking the extremely unreliable opinion of the eldar who consider themselves the apex of any species that has ever existed and treating it as absolute truth, while at the same time dismissing the same kind of information from the DAOT humans as "opinion"

You guys get that both races considered themselves the apex right?

As for Eldar tech, as stated before, if your going to assert that the eldar had better tech than DAOT humans, your moving into conjecture territory as there is zero evidence of this at all, and plenty on the contrary to show that human tech was on par but different, divergent due to being different races.

And the poor excuse that Eldar lost it all within a couple of decades of the fall is just that, a poor excuse, yes they likely lost some tech but its very convenient to claim that "nuh uh, they lost all the super tech we have never seen or heard of ever"

Its nonsense, current eldar tech is likely the same as Eldar empire tech but with divergences due to time (40k) and culture, and given that Dark Eldar still have some of that old tech.

So I say again, you will be hard pressed to convince me that current eldar tech is much different to old eldar empire tech in terms of vessels and weaponry with little to no evidence existing, if you guys want to engage in conjecture, sure lets do that.

One thing is expressed as a fact and the other is an in-universe opinion.

It's not really a poor excuse to claim they lost most of their technology. Exodites intentionally abandoned almost all technology, Commorites lost their psychic abilities so their pre Fall technology is basically a bunch of pretty sculptures, Harlequins are a bunch of priests who didn't exactly hoard technology and Craftworlders live on kitted out cargo ships. None of them are exactly going to have a supply of high tech military equipment. It's equally hard to believe that people who rebuilt their technology almost completely, refugees and clown priests are carrying the same technology as a galactic empire that could turn a planet into a palace for lols or build entire cities in another dimension.

pm713 wrote:

One thing is expressed as a fact and the other is an in-universe opinion.

It's not really a poor excuse to claim they lost most of their technology. Exodites intentionally abandoned almost all technology, Commorites lost their psychic abilities so their pre Fall technology is basically a bunch of pretty sculptures, Harlequins are a bunch of priests who didn't exactly hoard technology and Craftworlders live on kitted out cargo ships. None of them are exactly going to have a supply of high tech military equipment. It's equally hard to believe that people who rebuilt their technology almost completely, refugees and clown priests are carrying the same technology as a galactic empire that could turn a planet into a palace for lols or build entire cities in another dimension.

It's also shown in First Heretic that the Fall destroyed the basis of the Eldar tech. Their city were turned instantenously into ruins as the psychic powerfield and materials they were made off were destroyed by the psychic scream of Slaanesh. It's also been mentionned that Jain Zar weapons were rescued from the Fall and one of the few weapons from the ancient Eldar Empire. These weapons are superior to those of modern Banshees.

 Formosa wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I see no quotes Formosa. You've said DAoT are "undisputed masters", but not actually backed that up with any quotation.

Thats because I am being very lazy and cant be bothered to grab the rulebook and find the exact page, but its in the 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th main rulebooks IIRC, not sure its in the 7th one, will have to check.

Anywho, here are some quotes none the less.

"Perfection of the Standard Template Construct (STC) system permitted an explosion of colonisation that reached the furthest limits of the galaxy. This was the zenith of technological development and knowledge-sharing, for even the most far-flung colony had access to the entire inventory of human invention.

Humanity encountered several intelligent alien races during their expansion out into the galaxy, such as the Eldar and the warlike Orks. With these discoveries began, in time, the first human-xenos wars. With Mankind at the height of its power, the threat of aliens was viewed as trivial and eventually non-aggression pacts were signed between Terra, its colonies and many of the alien races.

For the rest of the age, Mankind spread across the stars, becoming widely dispersed and divergent. Evidence exists of many wars, but none that threatened the stability of human space. Amongst the surviving records are lists of xenos enemies that have long since gone extinct, along with more familiar names such as Aeldari and Orks."

So the books say the Eldar were the unrivaled masters of the universe, that nothing could challenge them.
And books say Mankind met Eldar and other xenos, signed treaties, and was involved in wars. But none of the wars threatened stability of human space.

Those don't conflict at all - combined, it's clear that the DAoT Mankind didn't challenge the Eldar. And there was probably no large war between DAoT and Eldar (but we don't know that for sure, as such a war wouldn't necessarily threaten human space or challenge the Eldar).

"But even that wasn’t fast enough to catch a ship as nimble as one built by the bonesingers of Biel-Tan and guided by the prescient sight of a farseer. The pulse of dark energy coalesced a hundred kilometres off the vessel’s stern and a miniature black hole exploded into life, dragging in everything within its reach with howling force. Stellar matter, light and gravity were crushed as they were drawn in and destroyed, and even the Starblade’s speed and manoeuvrability weren’t enough to save it completely as the secondary effect of the weapon’s deadly energies brushed over its solar sail. Chrono-weaponry shifted its target a nanosecond into the past, by which time the subatomic reactions within every molecule had shifted microscopically and forced identical neutrons into the same quantum space."

So given that Eldar still use the exact same ships, weapons and tech in the heresy mere decades after the fall (Ref: fulgrim) your all gonna be hard pressed to convince me that Eldar out teched DAOT humans by such a large scale that war would be totally one sided, especially considering the above quote having a 40k Ark mechanicus vessel using DAOT weapons to easily smash eldar ships, now if we are gonna talk about possible Eldar weapons surpassing what we have seen them use, well then we are again moving into conjecture territory.

The passage literally states that it was built by the bonesingeres of Biel-Tan, not the Eldar Empire. Right in the quote.

And this event has been argued to death - that Ark Mechanicus heavily outclassed the Eldar vessel, and the capabilities took them by surprise. Even then, it's primary weapons only compromised some systems. It would be like being surprised if a 1400s ship of the line could dent a modern PT boat yacht or tugboat, provided it got the alpha.

Remember, this is an empire that cut it's teeth against a foe with weaponry like the Stellar Observatory (point-and-click remote system destruction from across the galaxy).

 Insectum7 wrote:
The quote does not explicity say that Eldar and humans fought a war, and certainly not an existential one.

The quote that humans considered the alien threat to be trivial is explicitly from a human bias. The quotes from the Eldar books and BRBs are not stated as the "view" of the Eldar. It's simply stated.

So if we're going to talk biases, let's consider the amount of information, the viewpoint that is given (if any) and the consistency of said information.

We could have fun with it, but we'd also have to stop making assertions like "this has just as much evidence supporting it as your "eldar are No1 wooooooooooo!" when I've posted real evidence.

My opinion of the matter is that the Eldar were on the top of the food chain (because it's stated outright in several places), and that they just didn't care much about the other races on a societal level. I bet there were numerous times Eldar fought with humans, traded with humans, waged war with humans as allies, etc. but that overall the majority of the Eldar were busy "doing Eldar things" and just couldn't be bothered. From humanity's perspective I'd think they knew the Eldar were out there, but just didn't have a complete picture of the Eldar strength for whatever reasons. I'm sure there were humans who felt "unrivaled" even if it wasn't the case, simply because the Eldar didn't care to "rival" them.

Exactly this. They're like the Vorlons in Babylon 5. Sure they could go smash up some of the other races, but it would be expensive, time consuming, and embarrassing if they lost anything at all, so why bother? Unless the Humans got in the Eldar faces (Which they were likely smart enough to not do, given they were the apex of humanity), there'd be little reason for Eldar or Humans to fight over anything. And after a while humanity really started to kick it into high tech gear (likely due to their AI tech and men of iron), and then suddenly everything fell apart for them, right before the warp started to become un-navigable.

The eldar were unchallenged for a very long time. The war in heaven was 60 million years ago and the eldar emerged as the only power in the universe after the necrons went int hybernation.

The setting of 40k is not built around the manifest destiny of humanity being the bestest ever race, it's a cycle of renewal and decay. It happened 60 million years ago, it happened 10,000 years ago. It's happening now in the dark imperium.

The DAoT humanity was to the eldar empire as the Tau are to the Imperium. An energetically expanding species creating new technology very quickly.

The DAoT were very advanced, that is not in doubt. But they were very advanced in the context of human technology. The 41st millennium is a baroque mirror on DAoT tech - the tech of 40k comes from the DAoT - the STC is a DAoT artefact. It's all just in a state of decay.


The eldar empire on the other hand had millions of years to come to supremecy. The webway gave them access to the entire galaxy, their long lives gave them plenty of time to master everything they set their mind to. The eldar empire trapped stars in the webway to power their cities.


Their automata armies were capable of holding the galaxy's orks at bay for thousands or millions of years. In many ways, humanity was only able to expand at all because of the protective shadow created by the eldar empire. In EXACTLY the same way the the Imperium's shadow has given the Tau the chance to expand.

No matter how you describe an empire in space, it's still a giant swiss cheese. Nothing is locked down. You can easily have a dozen empires overlapping each other because space is so incredibly large. Empires are also concentrated on star systems, which volumetrically make up very little of the space in the galaxy. It's like a bunch of connect the dots pictures overlaying each other in 3d space, where each dot is connected only by who owns it and nothing else.

I've attached screen shots of descriptions of where the proto maiden worlds settled by the exodites were in relation to the eldar empire, the dominancy of the eldar empire and a map showing where some of these current exodite worlds are.

TLDR

The maiden worlds are along the outer most reaches of the eldar empire, the exodites populated many of these in their exodus and most of these are along the absolute southern and eastern edges of the galaxy.

Therefore the eldar empire spread out across the entire galaxy.

If the Eldar didn't fall the galaxy would have been at peace

Depends on if the Fall was their hedonism or Slanesh. If they never descended into hedonism, they'd still be an extremely violent culture, just not one based on colonialism/expansion. If they descended into hedonism and simply didn't explode, they'd be an extremely violent culture always looking for ways to be even more sadistic.

The Eldar people are more naturally like the Dark City than any Craftworld. Not as bad as the Dark City, but still not what you'd call "good" or peaceful.

Yeah plus the would be f-ed up demigods who can't be challenged by anyone..

In the End a really though cookie for Nyds

I now have a mental image of Khaine himself (not an Avatar) walking upon a world Nids are feeding on, crushing the crust and even mantle under his feet, swatting massive bugs like flies. Cutting entire hive fleet tendrils with his sword.

Thank you, Elian. A number of amazing visuals are painted in my mind due to your words.

Glad to be of service my guy!

I should thank you though that imaginative scene is glorious

Khaine strolling through the corpses of untold billions of billions of Nyds...

And the world is charred and warped into tectonic instability.

The Nids are repulsed. But all the crop fields have burned. All the forests are ash. Half the cities are buried in lava from newborn volcanos. The other half are continually ravaged by earthquakes ripping them apart.

What little life survives the battle starves in a hellish wasteland that provides no shelter, no food, no respite.

Khaine finally rests, sitting in his throne made of all the living creature he had slain.

His anger satisfied, his madness ended.

The end?!?

Bharring wrote:
Depends on if the Fall was their hedonism or Slanesh. If they never descended into hedonism, they'd still be an extremely violent culture, just not one based on colonialism/expansion. If they descended into hedonism and simply didn't explode, they'd be an extremely violent culture always looking for ways to be even more sadistic.

The Eldar people are more naturally like the Dark City than any Craftworld. Not as bad as the Dark City, but still not what you'd call "good" or peaceful.

You'd have to define at what point in their history the new timeline extends from, because it changes their attitudes dramatically.

Before the slide into hedonism, the dark city didn't exist as it later did. They had webway ports, but not as dens of iniquity.

If you stopped say at 5,000 AD, ~15,000 years before they began sliding into excess, you'd have a vibrant culture at the pinnacle of its power. A post-scarcity society that has learned everything there is to learn, can do anything they want and has the technological might to push anyone away from them so they can live in peace.

In my head, I see the Eldar empire spread thinly across the galaxy, each planet encircled by psychic automata armies acting as impenetrable city walls against external aggression. Imagine armies of nothing but wraithlord/knights and revenant/phantom titans piloted by psychic AI constructs that just walk across planets and raze them to the bedrock. No ork spore would survive. Especially if they were using the planet stripping technologies like those found in the modern void spinner: https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Void_Spinner

Metaphorically similar to the gigantic walls surrounding humanity in Attack on Titan (those walls even had a religion built around them because they protected humanity so well... up until the story starts...).

With unlimited time and warp energy, the eldar psychic engines that ran their civilisation were effectively perpetual motion machines. Psychic engines continually growing new wraithbone armies from warp energy replacing any losses, so that no enemy could ever hope to overcome them. The orks in 40k are a galactic wide menace that threatens any planet. During the eldar empire they were vermin that were exterminated and kept contained in areas so the eldar could live their lives of decadent luxury with no care at all.

If I were writing an alternate reality 40k where the eldar empire never fell, I would need to find something that kept their minds from slipping to decadence. The problem was that the eldar mind was kind of designed to make this inevitable without some very specific and deliberate cultural changes put in place.

The only reason the current Path system works is because the alternative is Slannesh eats your soul. The Path system is sustained by a massive existential threat to existence.

It would be very hard to convince 5,000AD eldar to follow a path system without a Slannesh stick hanging over them - they would have far too many other choices to keep themselves entertained.

Any good story has some kind of conflict in it, so a hypothetical 31st millennium with eldar ascendant should have some too.

My thought is that the eldar empire would begin to have internal discord rather than collective decay. Just as splinter communities appear in our societies, they would appear within eldar societies. And with the ability to remake planets however the wished, they could easily go off and build their own little weird society without anyone else noticing.

So I can see exodites creating a chunk of the galaxy as their realm, kind of Amishtown where other eldar would visit for a holiday.

I can see thrill seekers joining the Eternal Wall for fun - so you get a combo dark eldar/aspect warrior type personalities who have decided killing is great so they decide to create floating war fleets that travel to different battle arenas to sample the types of violence they can experience. The mastery of psychic engineering would mean actual casualties would be pretty small. This isn't dissimilar to the Spyrer gangers in necromunda - nobles coming to slum it and murder poor people for fun.

I think with this as a background you have space for the human worlds to try and unite and push into ork territory - the only territory they would have any chance of claiming.

So this alternate reality would have the following:

Calmer warp, easier travel
Less powerful chaos gods
More powerful eldar gods
A splintered society but ascendant technological eldar empire
Quarrantined ork zones that the eldar use automata to keep at bay
Human settled planets dispersed throughout the galaxy, usually on planets the eldar have no interest in
Humans moving around the eldar, avoiding them as much as possible and only fighting with orks to gain territory (the size of the galaxy is so vast that deliberate conflict would be difficult anyway)
The emperor would either not exist as the eldar gods kill him, or he would not be as xenophobic. His plans only worked originally because he was sweeping into the power vacuum left by the eldar. He never attempted to directly try and overthrow the eldar, because that would be very difficult

Only when the necrons start waking up and the tyranids begin arriving would the eldar empire begin to fracture

Correct me if I'm wrong (not as knowledgeable about eldar as I could be) but I always got the impression that even at the height of their power they were not nearly as numerous as they otherwise could have been for various biological and cultural reasons.


That really came back to bite them when most of them died instantly over night but assuming that didn't happen I would guess humanity would be like the Tau, something that could put up a fight but would loss if the eldar really put effort into the fight.

HoundsofDemos wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong (not as knowledgeable about eldar as I could be) but I always got the impression that even at the height of their power they were not nearly as numerous as they otherwise could have been for various biological and cultural reasons.


That really came back to bite them when most of them died instantly over night but assuming that didn't happen I would guess humanity would be like the Tau, something that could put up a fight but would loss if the eldar really put effort into the fight.

One of the screen captures I put up above says that trillions died.

Before the fall, the Eldar had no constraints on their reproduction

Hellebore wrote:

Bharring wrote:
Depends on if the Fall was their hedonism or Slanesh. If they never descended into hedonism, they'd still be an extremely violent culture, just not one based on colonialism/expansion. If they descended into hedonism and simply didn't explode, they'd be an extremely violent culture always looking for ways to be even more sadistic.

The Eldar people are more naturally like the Dark City than any Craftworld. Not as bad as the Dark City, but still not what you'd call "good" or peaceful.

You'd have to define at what point in their history the new timeline extends from, because it changes their attitudes dramatically.

Before the slide into hedonism, the dark city didn't exist as it later did. They had webway ports, but not as dens of iniquity.

If you stopped say at 5,000 AD, ~15,000 years before they began sliding into excess, you'd have a vibrant culture at the pinnacle of its power. A post-scarcity society that has learned everything there is to learn, can do anything they want and has the technological might to push anyone away from them so they can live in peace.

In my head, I see the Eldar empire spread thinly across the galaxy, each planet encircled by psychic automata armies acting as impenetrable city walls against external aggression. Imagine armies of nothing but wraithlord/knights and revenant/phantom titans piloted by psychic AI constructs that just walk across planets and raze them to the bedrock. No ork spore would survive. Especially if they were using the planet stripping technologies like those found in the modern void spinner: https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Void_Spinner

Metaphorically similar to the gigantic walls surrounding humanity in Attack on Titan (those walls even had a religion built around them because they protected humanity so well... up until the story starts...).

With unlimited time and warp energy, the eldar psychic engines that ran their civilisation were effectively perpetual motion machines. Psychic engines continually growing new wraithbone armies from warp energy replacing any losses, so that no enemy could ever hope to overcome them. The orks in 40k are a galactic wide menace that threatens any planet. During the eldar empire they were vermin that were exterminated and kept contained in areas so the eldar could live their lives of decadent luxury with no care at all.

If I were writing an alternate reality 40k where the eldar empire never fell, I would need to find something that kept their minds from slipping to decadence. The problem was that the eldar mind was kind of designed to make this inevitable without some very specific and deliberate cultural changes put in place.

The only reason the current Path system works is because the alternative is Slannesh eats your soul. The Path system is sustained by a massive existential threat to existence.

It would be very hard to convince 5,000AD eldar to follow a path system without a Slannesh stick hanging over them - they would have far too many other choices to keep themselves entertained.

Any good story has some kind of conflict in it, so a hypothetical 31st millennium with eldar ascendant should have some too.

My thought is that the eldar empire would begin to have internal discord rather than collective decay. Just as splinter communities appear in our societies, they would appear within eldar societies. And with the ability to remake planets however the wished, they could easily go off and build their own little weird society without anyone else noticing.

So I can see exodites creating a chunk of the galaxy as their realm, kind of Amishtown where other eldar would visit for a holiday.

I can see thrill seekers joining the Eternal Wall for fun - so you get a combo dark eldar/aspect warrior type personalities who have decided killing is great so they decide to create floating war fleets that travel to different battle arenas to sample the types of violence they can experience. The mastery of psychic engineering would mean actual casualties would be pretty small. This isn't dissimilar to the Spyrer gangers in necromunda - nobles coming to slum it and murder poor people for fun.

I think with this as a background you have space for the human worlds to try and unite and push into ork territory - the only territory they would have any chance of claiming.

So this alternate reality would have the following:

Calmer warp, easier travel
Less powerful chaos gods
More powerful eldar gods
A splintered society but ascendant technological eldar empire
Quarrantined ork zones that the eldar use automata to keep at bay
Human settled planets dispersed throughout the galaxy, usually on planets the eldar have no interest in
Humans moving around the eldar, avoiding them as much as possible and only fighting with orks to gain territory (the size of the galaxy is so vast that deliberate conflict would be difficult anyway)
The emperor would either not exist as the eldar gods kill him, or he would not be as xenophobic. His plans only worked originally because he was sweeping into the power vacuum left by the eldar. He never attempted to directly try and overthrow the eldar, because that would be very difficult

Only when the necrons start waking up and the tyranids begin arriving would the eldar empire begin to fracture

I agree with a preatty good chunk there chief.

But i don't think that Nyds pose a threat to a full powerful Eldar empire.

Necrons on the other hand.. that battle would be awesome!

HoundsofDemos wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong (not as knowledgeable about eldar as I could be) but I always got the impression that even at the height of their power they were not nearly as numerous as they otherwise could have been for various biological and cultural reasons.


That really came back to bite them when most of them died instantly over night but assuming that didn't happen I would guess humanity would be like the Tau, something that could put up a fight but would loss if the eldar really put effort into the fight.

Also, T'au put up a fight because (1) they have better tech than the Imperium, on average, and (2) the Imperium is too busy with other existential threats to bring enough force to challenge the T'au.

In this scenario, Mankind's tech - even DAoT tech - would be primitive relative to the Eldar, the Eldar have no existential threats, and it would take only a couple machines tasked with destroying humanity (those machines would then build armies, etc).

The other big difference is the nature. Eldar pre-fall aren't known for eradicated species. They're known for "putting them in their place", pruning them back. So the Eldar would likely not eradicate Mankind - maybe not even if Mankind launched full-scale war against them. The Imperium, on the other hand, would eradicate the T'au if it could. And the Eldar. And any other non-human, sub-human, or even nonalegiant-human they could.

In my opinion, if 40K fluff had ignored the Eldar Fall, and brought the Eldar Empire into contact with humanity, the Eldar still would have lost that conflict. And I say this with love, as an Eldar player.

40K draws a lot of inspiration from history, and I think that if you had an intact Eldar Empire at the time of the great crusades, the fluff writters would have presented the situation similar to Carthage and the Punic wars. With the Eldar playing the role of Carthage, and the Imperium playing the role of Rome. Carthage was, afterall, one of the great states of antiquity, arguably surpassing Athens as a Mediterranean power. The first two Punic wars were bloody close affairs until Carthage eventually fell to Rome in the third.

Carthage also has great potential to draw inspirational stories for the 40K universe. Like an Eldar Autarch inspired by Hannibal, who leads an Eldar army into the Sol System, and defeats several imperial armies there, but is forced to withdraw before he can take Terra due to a lack of support from the Eldar aristocracy... sound familiar? I think a brilliant, yet tragic figure like Hannibal is a natural fit for the Eldar.

The current setting of the 40K universe requires an absence of Eldar power to create the grim dark feel. I do think it would be more interesting fluffwise if it had come by the hand of the Imperium and the Emperor however, as well as adding to the irony that the one ally with potentially enough power to help the Imperium stand up to the horrors facing them was shattered by the Imperium's own hand.

Except that the Eldar Empire *did* contact Mankind. Even during the height of Mankind's power. And Eldar were unchallenged.

Current 40k doesn't work with the Eldar Empire not falling, though.

The quote that says "trillions of sentient beings died", I don't think it means just eldar. I believe many races died in The Fall.