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**Psienesis**

Frozen Ocean wrote:
Wyzilla wrote:
They're made from the souls of the Eldar ghosts who still wander their lost worlds made corporeal, which at specific times will literally rain down on the planet's surface.

Don't they just coalesce from the raw stuff of the Warp?

Sorta, some sort of psy-reactive crystal that is called waystone or way-stones or something like that. Whether this stone is coalesced out of the warp or is simply veined with warp-matter, I'm not sure we're told. I imagine it could also be something like the natural lightsaber crystals that the Jedi gather in the SW universe. Find a place where the Force is strong, there are natural crystal growths, some of which will be of a purity and clarity to be natural fits for inclusion in the construction of a lightsaber. Sith, on the other hand, manufacture most of their crystals.

**Wyzilla**

Frozen Ocean wrote:
Wyzilla wrote:
They're made from the souls of the Eldar ghosts who still wander their lost worlds made corporeal, which at specific times will literally rain down on the planet's surface.

Don't they just coalesce from the raw stuff of the Warp?

Nope. Path of the Eldar. Soulstones are actually the souls of dead Eldar turned into physical objects.

**PhillyT**

Eldar technology was never as high as the Necron.

The Necron are the absolute pinnacle of real world technology. They had/have the technology to invalidate and manipulate every conceivable law in the real universe. Eldar have the second highest technology, but it is quite a lot less. They do however supplement with psyker energy.

As far as growth, Necron cannot make more warriors, but they are more than capable of producing robots in various forms and can conceivably increase their numbers if necessary in that manner.

**Wyzilla**

PhillyT wrote:
Eldar technology was never as high as the Necron.

The Necron are the absolute pinnacle of real world technology. They had/have the technology to invalidate and manipulate every conceivable law in the real universe. Eldar have the second highest technology, but it is quite a lot less. They do however supplement with psyker energy.

As far as growth, Necron cannot make more warriors, but they are more than capable of producing robots in various forms and can conceivably increase their numbers if necessary in that manner.

Ehhhh. Eldar were more powerful just before the fall. Gotta love hax dream technology.

Some packed their families and belongings and left, taking flight to new planets or setting out for the great world-ships. Some built a great vault, a safe place into which they could retreat within the webways. They began to experiment with devices that would tap the flows of power, let them restructure reality.
...
At last, what I have so long sought is within my grasp. The Tower of Heaven stands before me and within it is the reality engine the ancients devised.
...
It is both better and worse than I had hoped. The machine of the ancients stands before me. It is still functioning, but it looks as though it has been warped by the influence of Chaos. This means it may not function in the way it is supposed to, may be twisted to the purposes of She Who Thirsts.

I am faced with a maddening choice, to attempt to use the device and perhaps be destroyed or to turn my back on it and attempt to leave this place through the horde of waiting enemies.

Over the communications channels, I can hear the chatter that tells me how the battle is going. My warriors are selling their lives dearly but, one by one, they are falling to the superior numbers of our bestial enemies. I have not come all this way just to be slain by mon-keigh.

I lay my hands on the control altar and let them flicker over the complex runes of the initiation sequence. Now I will find out if those ancient books lied.
...
I reach out through the device and I touch infinity. I feel the pulse of creation around me. I sense the flow of cosmic energy. Beyond that I sense something else, the infinite power of Chaos in that universe that runs conterminous with ours. I feel my mind start to buckle under the pressure of the inputs.

This is not how the machine was supposed to work. Or was it? It was intended to make thoughts and dreams real. How does it do that? I begin to concentrate, to fight back against the waves of pleasure and pain that pulse through my brain. I began to imagine the shape of reality changing around me, responding to my will. I begin to understand what I have found.

This whole sub-universe is malleable. All of the matter here can be, and has been, changed. I visualise the streets of Commorragh, and they coalesce around me. I picture Sileria writhing naked, and she dances before me in her skin. There is a ghastly, ghostly quality to this, of the not quite real of illusion, but I know that if only I concentrate hard enough, what I wish will take shape. I see what those long gone eldar were working on before they were devoured. They were trying to tap the forbidden power of Chaos to allow them to reshape reality. And they succeeded. Although their success may have contributed to their downfall.

I know that if I work on this I can summon armies to my aid, armies that will worship me like a god, which will allow me to raise myself to heights undreamed of by the inferior intellects around me. I hear the whisper temptations of absolute power and I do not resist them. Who would?
...
At first, it was as if I had stepped through into formless nothingness. All around me was only swirling, multicoloured mists of the sort that had been visible through the walls to either side of the roadway we had walked. I wondered if we had passed through some sort of final barrier and into what lay beyond the cosmic structure the xenos had built. Ahead of me, floating, were the others. Ahead of them, in the distance, was a glowing platform. I could see a small figure moving towards it. I tried to move myself but nothing happened. It was like trying to swim in a medium that had no resistance. I could move my limbs but there was nothing for them to gain traction against. I writhed and twisted my body but my wriggling could not move me from the spot.

I noticed my surroundings were starting to change, that the clouds of floating colours were taking on shape and density. I ignored them and drifted through the ether towards our distant goal. I could see it now. There was an altar. It glowed with holy light, a transcendental energy. Near it stood one of the xenos, the tallest and most powerful looking I had yet seen. It carried itself with an aura of utter confidence, and the glance it directed at us held only the purest contempt. In such a way a man might contemplate an insect he was going to squash.
Even as I felt the chilling gaze pass over me, I noticed that the clouds of formless matter were taking on a new shape. They were becoming more solid, acquiring the look of the ruined city we had seen outside or something much worse, an almost infinitely large fortress of xenos build stretching as far as the eye could see. From each building peered out a hundred xenos faces. I wondered what had happened. Was this some sort of transportation device? Had we suddenly been shifted through space and time to some new alien realm? Were we about to be overwhelmed by legions of eldar desperate to rend our flesh and feast on our agony?

The air shimmered, and more and more of the xenos came into being. How had they achieved this? I had heard of teleportation devices but never of them being used on so vast a scale.

The whole thing had the aspect of a dream. If this were a portal to some distant realm we were not all the way through it yet; reality had not yet twisted all the way. Drake seemed to be shouting something at Macharius. Grimnar ignored him and moved towards the xenos. A score of the newly materialised eldar threw themselves in the way. Grimnar’s chainsword flickered out and rent through them.

At first they came apart like ghosts, as if their flesh were nothing more than mist. The Space Marine moved forwards, chopping through them, and as he did so they became progressively more solid. Not only that, more and more of them kept appearing, out of nowhere. For every one he cut down, two more materialised. They moved swiftly, with eerie grace, fast enough to match even his superhumanly swift movements. The tide of the combat turned. Grimnar found himself on the defensive, beaten back till he stood beside Macharius and Drake. A hail of fire from the warriors mowed down the eldar, and for a moment things seemed stable.

I paused to look around. Gigantic, dark crystalline structures had somehow swung into place all around me, unfolding out of nothingness until they loomed overhead like the castle of some childhood ogre. Again I was struck by the dream-like quality of all of this. It could not be real. And yet when I reached out my hand, I felt smooth, cool stone beneath it. When I glanced around, I saw hundreds upon hundreds of eldar infantry moving towards me. I knew the moment of my death had arrived. There were far too many of them to be resisted. Still there was something not quite right. The eldar’s armour did not have all the details I expected, the hieroglyphs that marked rank or status or role or function, whatever it was they did. The xenos’s movements while graceful were repetitive and similar. They all appeared to move in perfect synchronisation.

I clutched the shotgun tighter and noticed there was ground beneath my feet. It was dark and shimmering like the structures around me, and although crystalline it was not slippery but seemed to have been designed to allow traction. I began to move towards the conflict. There was not really anything else to do. I could remain on my own in the strange city taking shape around me, but that would have meant soon being surrounded by hordes of murderous xenos.
...
I sense the approach of others. Foolish flies have entered the web woven by my god-like consciousness. I will devour them now. I begin to spin a new reality from dreams and visions, summoning a world into being around me, creating legions of lost souls to serve me.
...
ot. More eldar raced towards us. Our surroundings continued to change as well. They were more solid, more real than they had even a few moments ago.

I shook my head, wondering whether I was going mad, whether too much fatigue and too much stimm were affecting my brain. I wriggled along on my belly towards where Macharius and Drake were. Grimnar stood watch with them. A massive explosion ripped the ground, throwing us apart. I fell to land beside the Space Wolf. Somehow he had managed to keep his feet. Where the others had been was only a tangle of broken crystal and strange flickering lines. Hails of fire from the eldar splintered the wreckage around us. I lay prone and still for a moment.

Looking up into Grimnar’s face, I noticed that his eyes were yellowish, like those of a dog.
‘What is happening?’ I shouted over the roar of the carnage around us.
‘The reality here is mutable. It responds to a sufficiently strong will. The foes we face have been conjured by the eldar.’
I thought about what I was seeing. The way reality continued to swim and shift. An enormous tower collapsed under the impact of an artillery barrage. A plume of dust rose up as if to touch the sky.
‘It looks so real,’ I said.
‘It is real,’ said Grimnar. ‘In this place, it is real.’
A look almost of dismay flickered across his face. I tried to imagine what all of this strangeness must be like to him. His senses were keener than mine. He could see things I could not, hear them and smell them as well. It could not be pleasant to have the very forms of reality dance and transform before him.
...
I raced across a landscape torn by war, chaotic beyond belief, twisted by a kind of madness that was all but incomprehensible. Overhead loomed a city built by maddened eldar. It shimmered and bent and moved as if part of the flickering imagination of a demented god.
...
I glanced back and saw Grimnar wrestling with a group of xenos. They had swarmed over him with their uncanny swiftness and were cutting and slashing at him with no regard to their own lives. They seemed utterly and maniacally fearless.
- Fist of Demetrius

TL;DR, the Eldar Empire had a machine that let them make anything they could dream of, the only limit was their imagination. It was used to make Commorragh.

**PhillyT**

Necron have the stellar orrery and the galactic cannons. I would place the necron tech beyond most anything else the eldar produced.

**Wyzilla**

PhillyT wrote:
Necron have the stellar orrery and the galactic cannons. I would place the necron tech beyond most anything else the eldar produced.

They made a machine that can literally build whatever the hell the user wants. Hell, it made people (well, Eldar). It probably could reproduce any Necron tech, as it works via the warp and the psychic ability of the user. Just that Slaanesh smashed the Eldar Empire before they could truly rise to a point of being unrivaled.

**Pendix**

Eldar from before the Fall, and Necrons were/are at the pinicial of 2 entirely different branches of technology. The Necrons were the masters of the sciences of the materium, Eldar; masters of psychic and imeterium-related sciences. Claiming one was purely superior to the other, is a deeply over simplistic approach.

Technological progress is not a single ladder where you can post civilisations on different rungs.

**Daba**

Wyzilla wrote:
PhillyT wrote:
Necron have the stellar orrery and the galactic cannons. I would place the necron tech beyond most anything else the eldar produced.

They made a machine that can literally build whatever the hell the user wants. Hell, it made people (well, Eldar). It probably could reproduce any Necron tech, as it works via the warp and the psychic ability of the user. Just that Slaanesh smashed the Eldar Empire before they could truly rise to a point of being unrivaled.

They were at the point of being unrivalled, at least in power. It said in the book literally no external force could oppose them so they could not be opposed by anyone and anyone includes Necrons.

**Wyzilla**

Pendix wrote:
Eldar from before the Fall, and Necrons were/are at the pinicial of 2 entirely different branches of technology. The Necrons were the masters of the sciences of the materium, Eldar; masters of psychic and imeterium-related sciences. Claiming one was purely superior to the other, is a deeply over simplistic approach.

Technological progress is not a single ladder where you can post civilisations on different rungs.

...Except until you build a machine that lets you create whatever the hell you want, be it people or Necron tech.

**some bloke**

Frozen Ocean wrote:

This is not logical because this is not at all how evolution works.

it is actually. the principles behind evolution are that DNA causes random mutations to occur when 2 strains are combined (IE 2 animals who aren't clones make a baby). Over a long period of time, external interactions cause some of these mutations to prove useful and others to prove a hindrance. In nature, the hindrances are generally punished by death (You'll never see an asthmatic gazelle in the wild). in societies, these hindrances are often made up for by things such as inhalers. in this instance, the genetic mutation is not being able to give birth naturally. normally the parent and child would die. instead a C-section makes them live, and a child with the DNA code to not be able to give birth naturally comes into the gene-pool.
Over a long period of time, and due to people preferring the (apparently) pleasing look of skinny women, these women will be the ones who mate more than the larger women who still have child-bearing hips, and so their DNA will spread faster. The gene-pool will become more based around skinny people who can't give birth naturally, because they aren't being weaned out by dying trying to give birth. (This can be evidenced if you look at pictures of tribes in any part of the world where they don't cut babies out of people - they have wide, child bearing hips - those that didn't, died.) this will eventually lead to the race becoming skinny and entirely reliant on unnatural birth. if society collapses and suddenly there are no doctors to cut people open to get the babies, the species will start to die out.

If you want more evidence of how evolution works, look at selective breeding. that's all evolution is, only it's usually nature that does the selection (let's call this "Natural Selection"). we humans decided to only let the bifggest bulls breed, and so the babies were bigger. only the biggest of these were allowed to breed, so even bigger. filtering out all the other traits to refine a species to a point in which bulls are huge and fresians are skeletal cows with enormous udders to pump out milk. before selective breeding, people just fattened up animals, which just made them fat.

Might I ask how you think evolution works? (I really hope you're not one of these people that thinks that a dinosaur gives birth to a chicken and that's evolution...)

**Inquisitor Bob**

Oh ok so only humans decided that only bigger bulls breed, and I suppose we're also to blame for the pupua red-faced finches that never get some because the more populous blue and yellow faced ones are prejudice from birth..
Get over the fact that people disagree and stop posting freaking essays about gal that has nothing to do with the OP titled
"Why my argument is more awesome than yours"

**Psienesis**

The gene-pool will become more based around skinny people who can't give birth naturally, because they aren't being weaned out by dying trying to give birth. (This can be evidenced if you look at pictures of tribes in any part of the world where they don't cut babies out of people - they have wide, child bearing hips - those that didn't, died.) this will eventually lead to the race becoming skinny and entirely reliant on unnatural birth. if society collapses and suddenly there are no doctors to cut people open to get the babies, the species will start to die out.

I was with you until this point... and that's when you went off the rails. Just because a woman is skinny does not mean she is incapable of bearing children. I know a mother of three (natural births, one and all) who is 5'1" tall and weighs 110 pounds... at the most.

You also realise that humanity has been doing C-Section births for thousands of years now, right? This is by no means an invention of modern medicine.

**some bloke**

Inquisitor Bob wrote:
Oh ok so only humans decided that only bigger bulls breed, and I suppose we're also to blame for the pupua red-faced finches that never get some because the more populous blue and yellow faced ones are prejudice from birth..
Get over the fact that people disagree and stop posting freaking essays about gal that has nothing to do with the OP titled
"Why my argument is more awesome than yours"

I expressed my thoughts concerning the route that may have been taken by Eldar, which was related to the OP. someone disagreed, and I tried to explain it more to them. then you got angry, and now we're here. Sorry if my "essays" of a couple of paragraphs were too much for you.

Psienesis wrote:
The gene-pool will become more based around skinny people who can't give birth naturally, because they aren't being weaned out by dying trying to give birth. (This can be evidenced if you look at pictures of tribes in any part of the world where they don't cut babies out of people - they have wide, child bearing hips - those that didn't, died.) this will eventually lead to the race becoming skinny and entirely reliant on unnatural birth. if society collapses and suddenly there are no doctors to cut people open to get the babies, the species will start to die out.

I was with you until this point... and that's when you went off the rails. Just because a woman is skinny does not mean she is incapable of bearing children. I know a mother of three (natural births, one and all) who is 5'1" tall and weighs 110 pounds... at the most.

You also realise that humanity has been doing C-Section births for thousands of years now, right? This is by no means an invention of modern medicine.

to the first point, I thought that "Women who's pelvis's are incapable of allowing the unborn baby escape through the birth canal" could be adequately summised by "skinny Women" for ease of reading. I acknowledge that yes, some women can give birth naturally and are skinny, but they are a minority. this was also a prediction of the future, not the present. whatever her measurements, I doubt she's anywhere near as skinny as the Eldar are portrayed.

To the second point, C-Sections were used in history, yes, as a last resort that meant only the mother died and not the mother and child. they were only given to people privelaged enough to have access to a doctor, and were altogether uncommon. Nowadays far, far more C-sections are needed. increase in C-sections, increase in future generations needing C-sections... you see where this is going?

**Psienesis**

In many cases, birth by c-section is a choice the mother makes, not for health reasons but simply for convenience. It's a fairly simple procedure at this point.

**Xyptc**

Wyzilla wrote:
Pendix wrote:
Eldar from before the Fall, and Necrons were/are at the pinicial of 2 entirely different branches of technology. The Necrons were the masters of the sciences of the materium, Eldar; masters of psychic and imeterium-related sciences. Claiming one was purely superior to the other, is a deeply over simplistic approach.

Technological progress is not a single ladder where you can post civilisations on different rungs.

...Except until you build a machine that lets you create whatever the hell you want, be it people or Necron tech.

Except that the Eldar are almost extinct, they didn't defeat the Necrons when they had the chance, they didn't prevent the birth of Slaanesh etc. The history of the Eldar is too littered with missed opportunities for me to take this sort of thing seriously. They had a machine that allowed them to create whatever they wanted, except it obviously didn't, or it would have created some sort of IWin button.

**some bloke**

Xyptc wrote:
If they had a machine that allowed them to create whatever they wanted, except it obviously didn't, or it would have created some sort of IWin button.

"there was great deal of smoke, and when it cleared two things had been made; The first, a vehicle called a "Waveserpent", and the second, a piece of paper simply saying "Give seer councils jetbikes"."

**Wyzilla**

Xyptc wrote:
Wyzilla wrote:
Pendix wrote:
Eldar from before the Fall, and Necrons were/are at the pinicial of 2 entirely different branches of technology. The Necrons were the masters of the sciences of the materium, Eldar; masters of psychic and imeterium-related sciences. Claiming one was purely superior to the other, is a deeply over simplistic approach.

Technological progress is not a single ladder where you can post civilisations on different rungs.

...Except until you build a machine that lets you create whatever the hell you want, be it people or Necron tech.

Except that the Eldar are almost extinct, they didn't defeat the Necrons when they had the chance, they didn't prevent the birth of Slaanesh etc. The history of the Eldar is too littered with missed opportunities for me to take this sort of thing seriously. They had a machine that allowed them to create whatever they wanted, except it obviously didn't, or it would have created some sort of IWin button.

Yes, the Eldar are "dying", just like how dinosaurs "died" after the K/T event. Eldar population is in the billions, the only problem for Craftworld Eldar is their reproduction rate being incredibly slow due to the need of soulstones. Dark Eldar however are thriving.

And it did let them create whatever they wanted. If you actually had read any Eldar fluff you'd know they were completely blindsided by Slaanesh- the Craftworld Eldar are the crazy conservative prophets o' doom that happened to turn out right this time. The Eldar Empire meanwhile was busy engaging in incomprehensible pleasurable acts that would likely be squick for even the worst sociopath.

**adamsouza**

1.) Even if you had a device that built what you wanted from atoms on up, you would only be able to build things with it that you could understand.

2.) Eldar were creations of the Old Ones. The Old ones were driven off/defeated by the Necrons. Eldar screwed the universe by unleashing Chaos into it. Necrons said screw this and went to sleep, waiting for Chaos for finish of the Eldar.

3.) Eldar have the greatest understand and connection to the Warp of the living races. If you want to call that tech, then they are top dog. If you consider crap they build and power themselves, Necrons have stuff that blows the doors off.

Necrons Travel through space with tech the other races can not fathom.
Necrons have self repairing tech.
Necrons have self replicating tech.

Populations

Humans - On the Rise. They die in hordes in wars, to the inquisition, and psykers sacrificed to the Emperor, but they are still expanding, and popluated worlds throughout the warp are still being rediscovered, and reclaimed by the Empire.

Tau - Expanding. They may have the smallest numbers of all the races, but they are growing and expanding in their corner of the galaxy.

Orks It's been said that Orks are the most numerous race in the galaxy, and if they ever united they would overtake all the other races. Anything short of eradicating all life on a planet leaves their spores to reproduce and repopulate.

Eldar Dying Race, because that's what the fluff says. Seriously, they are space elves, and it's cliche that Elves are always a dying race once man enters the picture.

Tyranids They nomadically travel and consume as they go. They reproduce faster than any other race given enough resources. Considering large portions of space are unguarded by sentient races capable of stoping them, I'd hazard a guess they are a growing race, which is ironic considering their performance in 6th and 7th edition

Necrons - According to their fiction they are only a fraction of their former glory, but there are nearly countless numbers of them still slumbering. In Theory their sentient losses, that can't be repaired, are lost. They kind of are a dead race that left behind machines with imprints of their personalities on them.

Demiurg - Declining. There are so few of them left, no one has seen them out of their ships since 2nd edition

**Bloomshadow**

Is it ever explained why the necrons couldn't just force subjugated alien races to become new necrons?

I don't imagine they just "lost" the technology to do it...Maybe the C'tan soul nomming is needed? But then they would still have shards to do it with.

**adamsouza**

The C'Tan basically screwed the Necrons over in the process of converting them. I don't think they really want to share "Eternal Life" with others. I do think racial superiority plays a part of it as well. I'm pretty sure the Necron nobility sees other sentient races as below them, and not worthy of conversion.

Although in previous editions, the Paraiahs were Human Psychic Nulls that were converted with Necron Tech. The new codex pretty much ignores that.

**kungfujew**

Eldar Dying Race, because that's what the fluff says. Seriously, they are space elves, and it's cliche that Elves are always a dying race once man enters the picture.

That's actually backwards in 40k. The fall of the Eldar and birth of She who thirsts calmed the warp to allow for stable, 'reliable' travel between the stars. It also opened up a monstrous power vacuum and humanity was the next one to step into the top dog position. So in this case the eldar became a dying race and then man entered the picture.