Frozen Ocean wrote:German Shepherd. A friend just moved back to the country after living in Prague for a while, and she got a puppy. Six and a half weeks old, and super adorable.
Spoilered for cute.
I almost died of that cute
Anyway though, if the argument is a lack of soulstones limiting their birthrate then I must have misunderstood your original point. That may be a contributing factor to the issue, but another is undoubtedly long Eldar reproductive cycles that go hand in hand with their long lives. That isn't necessarily faulty genetics, it just happens that they lose more Eldar to war than can easily be replenished due to the natural length of their cycles. Plus, if World Spirits are able to suck up the souls of Exodites that die on their worlds, one would think that Infinity Circuits can work the same way regarding Eldar who are physically present on the Craftworld when they die. It's the same technology as far as we know, so unless there's actual canon examples of the Infinity Circuit being unable to absorb the souls of Eldar who die on Craftworlds it seems like it should function the same way and that Soulstones would be reserved for Eldar who are traveling beyond the Craftworld's protection.
Frozen Ocean wrote:This is actually good thinking, but it completely ignores embryonic implantation (creating an embryo then putting it into a mother - this happens in real life) and other examples of "vat-growth" in the setting. The Primarchs and many Dark Eldar, for example. Furthermore, this suggests that the extremely powerful psykers of a Craftworld (not to mention the Infinity Circuit itself) could not be used for this exact purpose.
Sure, it makes sense from a human standpoint. Think about it from the perspective of the Eldar though.
Your Craftworld has suffered, many of your people have died, but your civilization is holding on despite all the horrors it's been through. Your Craftworld is now your single most precious and valued possession, completely irreplaceable in every sense. Despite your low population, there are still a handful of billions of you scattered among the different Craftworlds, your women are still fertile and your men are still able to get the job done without external or technological aid. Every decade hundreds of thousands die, but every decade hundreds of thousands are born. Perhaps not quickly enough to fill the void left by those that die, but though your population is overall in decline your people are not being killed fast enough to declare a state of emergency that would demand abandoning all your other goals as a civilization.
Now imagine that you could turbo boost your reproduction by growing Eldar in vats, but there is a real fear that by doing so you could expose your Craftworld's Infinity Circuit to wandering warp entities that could latch on to the embryo in the vat, then spread through your Craftworld's systems like a virus, putting your most valued possession in all the galaxy in grave danger. There are two possible solutions to this problem, the first being assigning Seers to psychically guard the vats against the warp, but this would mean that these Seers would not be able to leave the vats at any point, even if the Craftworld should have dire need of their gifts. Furthermore, should anything happen to these Seers, sudden death, corruption, mental decay, becoming lost on their path, or anything else, the vats and Craftworld would suddenly be in grave danger. The second solution is to remove waystones from the Infinity Circuit and allow the dead to guard the unborn, but since this is akin to Necromancy and is only done in the most dire of circumstances (Yeah, I know. We are to believe that any time a Wraith unit is used in tabletop or in the games, it's a 'dire' threat to the Craftworld in which their survival as a people is threatened), it would go against one of the most closely held beliefs of your people.
All of this would be to help bolster your people's struggling population, but at a potentially devastating cost. Bearing in mind that your people currently have no problem reproducing the old fashioned way, they just have a tendency to get slaughtered from time to time. Basically what I'm getting at is that the Eldar must have a reason to not use this technology that their brethren have, otherwise they would be back on top of the galaxy in no time at all. It may not necessarily be a good reason. It may be steeped in tradition, superstition, fear or all three and then some, but the reason must exist somewhere.
As for family bonds, we don't know what sort of intense psychic bonding expecting parents do with their unborn child while it's still in the mother's womb. While a human family may be able to feel as strong a bond to a lab-grown child as they would to one conceived the natural way, I doubt Eldar would feel the same. Plus, if a stigma is attached to being vat-born in
DE society, it's quite possible that a similar stigma would exist in Eldar society, not the polar opposite. Though they are rivals of a sort, the two Eldar cultures remain similar in many ways and they aren't necessarily closed off to each other, despite the shared tension.
Anyway, the original point of the questions about sex was to determine the Eldar stance on non-reproductive intercourse given their intensely emotional and sensitive natures. I was unclear on whether or not it was permitted in their culture or a strict taboo. Since the reason I asked in the first place was for the sake of directing my
RP players through a campaign that's sure to involve some degree of romance, the actual method of reproduction matters much less to my players than whether or not the act would be culturally acceptable. I wish it were more relevant though.
Sorry for the long post, and for not addressing more of your points, but in truth I don't see this debate going anywhere since we could both be right in equal measure and the outcome isn't relevant to the story I'm cooking up. I hope you understand where I'm coming from
