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Asked a friend of mine who has been playing dark eldar since the dawn of man this question. His response, more or less, "say there's a family, mom, pop and a three year old kid. The kid has a lolipop. You snatch the lolipop, take the stick and drop the candy back in the kid's hands. The kid gives you a confused look before sucking on the candy again as mom and pop run up to intervene. Then you steal the candy, but you don't eat it, nah you drop it in the ground and crush it under foot. As the kid starts crying, you snatch the child. Mom and pop come after you not knowing what they're dealing with. You waltz with them for a bit them you steal the mom's clothes, feeding off the ensuing confusion, disgust and best of all fear. Then you take her eyeballs, now you enjoy her pain. You mutilate her face and then show the kid its mom. Kid starts screaming in fear at the naked monstrosity that was its mom, the mom in turn, blindly gropes around trying to find her kid, trying to console it. Not knowing she's the very thing that is making it scream. The screams brings pops to the scene. As he tries to get to them you take his legs from him. Some of your friends start torturing his wife, poking her with sharp objects. Maybe she blindly lashes out in self defense, maybe she tries to use her body to shield the kid, doesn't matter. Pops tries to crawl to them, screaming at you and your friends to leave his wife and kid alone. You let him get close. Then you take his arms. Then your friends start torturing the kid, slowly. Kick the mom away leaving to blindly gropes around for her child, occasionally being pricked by sharp blades and teased with laughter. Your friends muffle the child and begin removing each digit one by one, then each limb. Maybe pops cries and begs for mercy, begs to torture him instead. Maybe he wriggles around on the ground and tries to bite your ankles in an act of impotent rage. Doesn't matter, you kick in his teeth. And leave him in agony to watch on in horror. Your friends toss the kid to mom. She initially holds it tight until she realizes that her baby isn't clinging onto her, that her baby isn't flailing about. Until she realizes that the kid has no fingers, no toes, no arms, no legs. She begins screaming and wailing. Then you take the mom and kid away letting the dad watch them being dragged away hear their screams. They'll be the last things he sees or hears. You pluck out his eyes one by one, then pop his eardrums out one by one. Then you take him as well. It would be cruel to separate a family like that. Besides, they'll make a nice new addition to your hall of screaming flesh. At least until you grow bored of them, or it. Now say that's done but on a planetary scale. That's what the dark eldar steal all for their own sadistic pleasure. For the survival of their culture they're unwilling to relinquish."

 King Pariah wrote:
Asked a friend of mine who has been playing dark eldar since the dawn of man this question. His response, more or less, "say there's a family, mom, pop and a three year old kid. The kid has a lolipop. You snatch the lolipop, take the stick and drop the candy back in the kid's hands. The kid gives you a confused look before sucking on the candy again as mom and pop run up to intervene. Then you steal the candy, but you don't eat it, nah you drop it in the ground and crush it under foot. As the kid starts crying, you snatch the child. Mom and pop come after you not knowing what they're dealing with. You waltz with them for a bit them you steal the mom's clothes, feeding off the ensuing confusion, disgust and best of all fear. Then you take her eyeballs, now you enjoy her pain. You mutilate her face and then show the kid its mom. Kid starts screaming in fear at the naked monstrosity that was its mom, the mom in turn, blindly gropes around trying to find her kid, trying to console it. Not knowing she's the very thing that is making it scream. The screams brings pops to the scene. As he tries to get to them you take his legs from him. Some of your friends start torturing his wife, poking her with sharp objects. Maybe she blindly lashes out in self defense, maybe she tries to use her body to shield the kid, doesn't matter. Pops tries to crawl to them, screaming at you and your friends to leave his wife and kid alone. You let him get close. Then you take his arms. Then your friends start torturing the kid, slowly. Kick the mom away leaving to blindly gropes around for her child, occasionally being pricked by sharp blades and teased with laughter. Your friends muffle the child and begin removing each digit one by one, then each limb. Maybe pops cries and begs for mercy, begs to torture him instead. Maybe he wriggles around on the ground and tries to bite your ankles in an act of impotent rage. Doesn't matter, you kick in his teeth. And leave him in agony to watch on in horror. Your friends toss the kid to mom. She initially holds it tight until she realizes that her baby isn't clinging onto her, that her baby isn't flailing about. Until she realizes that the kid has no fingers, no toes, no arms, no legs. She begins screaming and wailing. Then you take the mom and kid away letting the dad watch them being dragged away hear their screams. They'll be the last things he sees or hears. You pluck out his eyes one by one, then pop his eardrums out one by one. Then you take him as well. It would be cruel to separate a family like that. Besides, they'll make a nice new addition to your hall of screaming flesh. At least until you grow bored of them, or it. Now say that's done but on a planetary scale. That's what the dark eldar steal all for their own sadistic pleasure. For the survival of their culture they're unwilling to relinquish."

God damn, Shawshank... have an exalt

Whatever they bloody want to steal. In Path of the Dark Eldar


[ACHTUNG, SPOILERS]


One Archon went to a raid just because he was promised h could get exotic birds from a maiden world to his collection.

I've always wondered why DE don't simply buy slaves from the Imperium.

I know I know, they like the rush of battle but for a group who are terrified of dying it seems like an overly risky way to acquire something you could just purchase. You'd think there'd be planets who are more than willing to just hand over portions of their criminal populations - far more than the DE could easily abduct- in exchange for the general populace living in peace. I can't imagine a lot of Imperial Governors would lose sleep over criminals being shipped off if it kept DE raids away.

 Kojiro wrote:
I've always wondered why DE don't simply buy slaves from the Imperium.

I know I know, they like the rush of battle but for a group who are terrified of dying it seems like an overly risky way to acquire something you could just purchase. You'd think there'd be planets who are more than willing to just hand over portions of their criminal populations - far more than the DE could easily abduct- in exchange for the general populace living in peace. I can't imagine a lot of Imperial Governors would lose sleep over criminals being shipped off if it kept DE raids away.

I would imagine that kind of thing does happen, Path of Outcast shows Corsairs happily capturing slaves to sell on to Commoragh, but they need those raids to survive anyway to stave off Slaanesh's soul sucking.

Dark Eldar do act as mercenaries and are occasionally hired by humans - probably for precisely that; "the excess population". Of course, they then subsequently usually stab you in the back because...well.....it's their nature.

locarno24 wrote:
Dark Eldar do act as mercenaries and are occasionally hired by humans - probably for precisely that; "the excess population". Of course, they then subsequently usually stab you in the back because...well.....it's their nature.

Or you mispronounce their name (looking at you Duke)

Or because why not?

On the dying note, remember that if a Dark Eldar caches some toenail clippings at the local Haemonculi's lair, he can be re-born after being killed. They're surprisingly safe from Slaanesh, or at least the rich ones are. And boy howdy you gotta be rich or you're going to come back as a fashionable piece of body modification to be passed around like a fine Eldar slave.

Nomeny wrote:
Or because why not?

On the dying note, remember that if a Dark Eldar caches some toenail clippings at the local Haemonculi's lair, he can be re-born after being killed. They're surprisingly safe from Slaanesh, or at least the rich ones are. And boy howdy you gotta be rich or you're going to come back as a fashionable piece of body modification to be passed around like a fine Eldar slave.

This - to me this is the fluff justification for why Dark Eldar society can possibly work. All the murder and treachery is ok, because the really important people are coming back anyway, and they're growing unimportant people by the vat-load. Incidentally, this is the fluff justification for my tabletop Eldar/Dark Eldar force. A Haemonculus and a Spiritseer were each really curious about the other's brand of necromancy.

I would bet things the IoM values would be stolen. 1 to trade with renegades for slaves or what have you, 2 because Feth those guys. Ork stuff probably not but slaves. Even if the tech is of a lower standard it can still be traded or melted down to useable metals and what have you.

Dark Eldar take pretty much whatever they can get their mitts on, and feed off any suffering caused by them doing so. Anything to revitalise themselves and keep She Who Thirsts at bay.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

 King Pariah wrote:
Asked a friend of mine who has been playing dark eldar since the dawn of man this question. His response, more or less, "say there's a family, mom, pop and a three year old kid. The kid has a lolipop. You snatch the lolipop, take the stick and drop the candy back in the kid's hands. The kid gives you a confused look before sucking on the candy again as mom and pop run up to intervene. Then you steal the candy, but you don't eat it, nah you drop it in the ground and crush it under foot. As the kid starts crying, you snatch the child. Mom and pop come after you not knowing what they're dealing with. You waltz with them for a bit them you steal the mom's clothes, feeding off the ensuing confusion, disgust and best of all fear. Then you take her eyeballs, now you enjoy her pain. You mutilate her face and then show the kid its mom. Kid starts screaming in fear at the naked monstrosity that was its mom, the mom in turn, blindly gropes around trying to find her kid, trying to console it. Not knowing she's the very thing that is making it scream. The screams brings pops to the scene. As he tries to get to them you take his legs from him. Some of your friends start torturing his wife, poking her with sharp objects. Maybe she blindly lashes out in self defense, maybe she tries to use her body to shield the kid, doesn't matter. Pops tries to crawl to them, screaming at you and your friends to leave his wife and kid alone. You let him get close. Then you take his arms. Then your friends start torturing the kid, slowly. Kick the mom away leaving to blindly gropes around for her child, occasionally being pricked by sharp blades and teased with laughter. Your friends muffle the child and begin removing each digit one by one, then each limb. Maybe pops cries and begs for mercy, begs to torture him instead. Maybe he wriggles around on the ground and tries to bite your ankles in an act of impotent rage. Doesn't matter, you kick in his teeth. And leave him in agony to watch on in horror. Your friends toss the kid to mom. She initially holds it tight until she realizes that her baby isn't clinging onto her, that her baby isn't flailing about. Until she realizes that the kid has no fingers, no toes, no arms, no legs. She begins screaming and wailing. Then you take the mom and kid away letting the dad watch them being dragged away hear their screams. They'll be the last things he sees or hears. You pluck out his eyes one by one, then pop his eardrums out one by one. Then you take him as well. It would be cruel to separate a family like that. Besides, they'll make a nice new addition to your hall of screaming flesh. At least until you grow bored of them, or it. Now say that's done but on a planetary scale. That's what the dark eldar steal all for their own sadistic pleasure. For the survival of their culture they're unwilling to relinquish."

God damn, Shawshank... have an exalt

No idea how I missed this, but thank you!

 King Pariah wrote:
Asked a friend of mine who has been playing dark eldar since the dawn of man this question. His response, more or less, "say there's a family, mom, pop and a three year old kid. The kid has a lolipop. You snatch the lolipop, take the stick and drop the candy back in the kid's hands. The kid gives you a confused look before sucking on the candy again as mom and pop run up to intervene. Then you steal the candy, but you don't eat it, nah you drop it in the ground and crush it under foot. As the kid starts crying, you snatch the child. Mom and pop come after you not knowing what they're dealing with. You waltz with them for a bit them you steal the mom's clothes, feeding off the ensuing confusion, disgust and best of all fear. Then you take her eyeballs, now you enjoy her pain. You mutilate her face and then show the kid its mom. Kid starts screaming in fear at the naked monstrosity that was its mom, the mom in turn, blindly gropes around trying to find her kid, trying to console it. Not knowing she's the very thing that is making it scream. The screams brings pops to the scene. As he tries to get to them you take his legs from him. Some of your friends start torturing his wife, poking her with sharp objects. Maybe she blindly lashes out in self defense, maybe she tries to use her body to shield the kid, doesn't matter. Pops tries to crawl to them, screaming at you and your friends to leave his wife and kid alone. You let him get close. Then you take his arms. Then your friends start torturing the kid, slowly. Kick the mom away leaving to blindly gropes around for her child, occasionally being pricked by sharp blades and teased with laughter. Your friends muffle the child and begin removing each digit one by one, then each limb. Maybe pops cries and begs for mercy, begs to torture him instead. Maybe he wriggles around on the ground and tries to bite your ankles in an act of impotent rage. Doesn't matter, you kick in his teeth. And leave him in agony to watch on in horror. Your friends toss the kid to mom. She initially holds it tight until she realizes that her baby isn't clinging onto her, that her baby isn't flailing about. Until she realizes that the kid has no fingers, no toes, no arms, no legs. She begins screaming and wailing. Then you take the mom and kid away letting the dad watch them being dragged away hear their screams. They'll be the last things he sees or hears. You pluck out his eyes one by one, then pop his eardrums out one by one. Then you take him as well. It would be cruel to separate a family like that. Besides, they'll make a nice new addition to your hall of screaming flesh. At least until you grow bored of them, or it. Now say that's done but on a planetary scale. That's what the dark eldar steal all for their own sadistic pleasure. For the survival of their culture they're unwilling to relinquish."

And this, folks, is why we purge the Xenos.

Broly wrote:
What do Dark Eldar steal and loot except slaves?

It's not weapons and tech, because their stuff is better. I can't imagine they take raw materials, since, whatever they are using in construction has to be up to their high standards, and would be easier to just extract ore from a mine using slave labour.

There's really nothing practical they can take in a raid (except trophies) that they can't make on their own, even though I specifically read that they indeed loot and plunder.

What do you think?

My understanding is that they steal people mostly, but it probably comes down to whatever they feel like that the time. They're Dark Eldar. It wouldn't shock me if they have raided vessels to steal deck plates just for fun.

 Kojiro wrote:
I've always wondered why DE don't simply buy slaves from the Imperium.

Because the Imperium is a bunch of backward, fanatical, xenophobic to the extreme sons of grox, and the Dark Eldar are not very good at PR with people they consider inferior, i.e. everyone save possibly other Eldars.

 Kojiro wrote:
I've always wondered why DE don't simply buy slaves from the Imperium.

I know I know, they like the rush of battle but for a group who are terrified of dying it seems like an overly risky way to acquire something you could just purchase. You'd think there'd be planets who are more than willing to just hand over portions of their criminal populations - far more than the DE could easily abduct- in exchange for the general populace living in peace. I can't imagine a lot of Imperial Governors would lose sleep over criminals being shipped off if it kept DE raids away.

I would imagine this does happen and probably more frequently than the Imperium cares to admit to. But it doesn't make for as a compelling story as a Kabal murder-fething a planet's population into slavery.

Socks. But only the left ones.

And the 11mm and 3/8 sockets from tool boxes. No one knows why.

 Kojiro wrote:
I've always wondered why DE don't simply buy slaves from the Imperium.

I know I know, they like the rush of battle but for a group who are terrified of dying it seems like an overly risky way to acquire something you could just purchase. You'd think there'd be planets who are more than willing to just hand over portions of their criminal populations - far more than the DE could easily abduct- in exchange for the general populace living in peace. I can't imagine a lot of Imperial Governors would lose sleep over criminals being shipped off if it kept DE raids away.

This happens in a society discovered during the great crusade. It happened until they started running out of criminals. The rulers invented new crimes and enforced the pettiest laws which helped but it wasn't enough. Ultimately, they were forced to make a lottery to meet 'the tithe'.
Needless to say, the Space Wolves who found the world weren't having any of it.

 =Angel= wrote:

 Kojiro wrote:
I've always wondered why DE don't simply buy slaves from the Imperium.

I know I know, they like the rush of battle but for a group who are terrified of dying it seems like an overly risky way to acquire something you could just purchase. You'd think there'd be planets who are more than willing to just hand over portions of their criminal populations - far more than the DE could easily abduct- in exchange for the general populace living in peace. I can't imagine a lot of Imperial Governors would lose sleep over criminals being shipped off if it kept DE raids away.

This happens in a society discovered during the great crusade. It happened until they started running out of criminals. The rulers invented new crimes and enforced the pettiest laws which helped but it wasn't enough. Ultimately, they were forced to make a lottery to meet 'the tithe'.
Needless to say, the Space Wolves who found the world weren't having any of it.

Where's that from?

 =Angel= wrote:

 Kojiro wrote:
I've always wondered why DE don't simply buy slaves from the Imperium.

I know I know, they like the rush of battle but for a group who are terrified of dying it seems like an overly risky way to acquire something you could just purchase. You'd think there'd be planets who are more than willing to just hand over portions of their criminal populations - far more than the DE could easily abduct- in exchange for the general populace living in peace. I can't imagine a lot of Imperial Governors would lose sleep over criminals being shipped off if it kept DE raids away.

This happens in a society discovered during the great crusade. It happened until they started running out of criminals. The rulers invented new crimes and enforced the pettiest laws which helped but it wasn't enough. Ultimately, they were forced to make a lottery to meet 'the tithe'.

While I don't doubt what you say is true, that's an absurd level of prisoner acquisition. The US alone has a current prison population of 2.4 million people. How many prisoners are the DE taking per raid and how frequently are they raiding? I imagine any decent sized Imperial planet would vastly exceed that number.

]This happens in a society discovered during the great crusade. It happened until they started running out of criminals. The rulers invented new crimes and enforced the pettiest laws which helped but it wasn't enough. Ultimately, they were forced to make a lottery to meet 'the tithe'.
Needless to say, the Space Wolves who found the world weren't having any of it.

It's also the key part of an episode of Stargate:Atlantis. One planet, who ship their "criminals" off to an island where the Wraith (space life-force sucking vampire-things) are free to cull for their feedings - in return, they leave the rest of the planet alone. Naturally, the heroes show up and ruin the deal, so they go a-harvesting through the cities, instead.

 Kojiro wrote:

 =Angel= wrote:

This happens in a society discovered during the great crusade. It happened until they started running out of criminals. The rulers invented new crimes and enforced the pettiest laws which helped but it wasn't enough. Ultimately, they were forced to make a lottery to meet 'the tithe'.

While I don't doubt what you say is true, that's an absurd level of prisoner acquisition. The US alone has a current prison population of 2.4 million people. How many prisoners are the DE taking per raid and how frequently are they raiding? I imagine any decent sized Imperial planet would vastly exceed that number.

40k worlds tend to have much more manageable populations than you'd think. Hives are common but so are worlds with populations the size of Ireland or the UK.
Single-biome worlds can have small habitable zones, for instance, or colonists may never spread far from the initial landing zone.
I don't know if it's a function of authors keeping faction feats semi-believable or just not wanting to deal with the continuity and descriptive nightmare that would be war in a multilevel hive but you'll find lots of worlds seem to be WW1/2 England or humble villagers.

pm713 wrote:Where's that from?

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Tales_of_Heresy_(Anthology)#Wolf_at_the_Door

Left socks, they tend to get ripped open by all the spikes in the city. Resulting in a shortage of socks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And scatter dice they always steal my scatter die

 Kojiro wrote:

 =Angel= wrote:

 Kojiro wrote:
I've always wondered why DE don't simply buy slaves from the Imperium.

I know I know, they like the rush of battle but for a group who are terrified of dying it seems like an overly risky way to acquire something you could just purchase. You'd think there'd be planets who are more than willing to just hand over portions of their criminal populations - far more than the DE could easily abduct- in exchange for the general populace living in peace. I can't imagine a lot of Imperial Governors would lose sleep over criminals being shipped off if it kept DE raids away.

This happens in a society discovered during the great crusade. It happened until they started running out of criminals. The rulers invented new crimes and enforced the pettiest laws which helped but it wasn't enough. Ultimately, they were forced to make a lottery to meet 'the tithe'.

While I don't doubt what you say is true, that's an absurd level of prisoner acquisition. The US alone has a current prison population of 2.4 million people. How many prisoners are the DE taking per raid and how frequently are they raiding? I imagine any decent sized Imperial planet would vastly exceed that number.

But how many Dark Eldar are there, billions wouldn't be a surprise to me. Of those prisoners taken, some would be used as slave labour, others would be tortured for soul sucking straight away and others saved for later. It's not hard to imagine that the slave requirements of Commoragh to be pretty high.

What do DE steal?

Doritos, Mountain Dew, a copy of White Dwarf and some porn mags.

Anything else was a gift.

 =Angel= wrote:

40k worlds tend to have much more manageable populations than you'd think. Hives are common but so are worlds with populations the size of Ireland or the UK.
Single-biome worlds can have small habitable zones, for instance, or colonists may never spread far from the initial landing zone.

Oh there's no doubt settlements that are entirely enslaved or killed, who lack the size to be able to make such deals. But you'd only need a contemporary Earth sized planet to produce millions of criminals.

 Imateria wrote:
But how many Dark Eldar are there, billions wouldn't be a surprise to me. Of those prisoners taken, some would be used as slave labour, others would be tortured for soul sucking straight away and others saved for later. It's not hard to imagine that the slave requirements of Commoragh to be pretty high.

That begs the question- how often do they raid a given location and what chunk of the population do they take?

I guess my point is that whatever the scale of DE raiding, surely the Imperium produces enough people to keep them happy. Even if your criminal population isn't sufficient, the Imperium still uses slavery. In short. human life is extremely cheap in the Imperium and if sacrificing humans stops the Xenos from attacking your forge or raiding your mining base I can easily see it happening.

Except for the IOM having an irrational hatred of anything non-human. Many would rather shoot themselves and their family that let them be tortured by xenos, and pretty much all of them would rather just kill the xenos.

No need to let them propagate. The IOM controls a valuable resource for the DE. Strategically, the best thing is to deny the resource.

 Selym wrote:
Except for the IOM having an irrational hatred of anything non-human. Many would rather shoot themselves and their family that let them be tortured by xenos, and pretty much all of them would rather just kill the xenos.

No need to let them propagate. The IOM controls a valuable resource for the DE. Strategically, the best thing is to deny the resource.

Not always the case, there are plenty of cases of Imperial worlds dealing with Xeno's, and =Angels= example was from the Great Crusade.

So it is. Interesting.

It seems the Imperials can come up with fresh ideas. Or at least reiterate old good ones.