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Yea the Black Library authors went a bit overboard in dreaming up impressive dark age tech to serve as plot points in the Horus Heresy books, but it is a fundamental part of the Eldar story that they where the supreme power in the galaxy during their empire.

Therefore it doesn't really matter what feats are attributed to humans during this time, the Eldar 'must' be more powerful!

 Kroem wrote:
Yea the Black Library authors went a bit overboard in dreaming up impressive dark age tech to serve as plot points in the Horus Heresy books, but it is a fundamental part of the Eldar story that they where the supreme power in the galaxy during their empire.

Therefore it doesn't really matter what feats are attributed to humans during this time, the Eldar 'must' be more powerful!

Indeed, it is a fundamental part of the whole Eldar story: that their empire fell due to complacency and pride.
It is the story of Atlantis, Numenor from Lord of the Rings, or the Old Republic of Star Wars, just as the Horus Heresy is really the tale of Lucifer's rebellion. All of these fell to internal rot. In order to fall to decadence and pride, they had to be utterly secure from all outside threats. Having credible threats exist defeats the whole narrative point and purpose.

All the past codices have repeatedly hammered home the point that the Eldar empire was secure and had defeated any upstart enemies, including any waking Necrons with their super-tech, with ease, to the point where not even the most pessimistic Eldar among them doubted that that state of affairs could continue indefinitely...if not for the hidden unknown factor of Slaanesh's birth. That is why the Fall is so galling for the Eldar, because they really did have it all and they lost it through their own fault, not through any outside external threat. The ancient Eldar empire's supremacy is stated repeatedly in 3rd party omniscient narrator format, not fallible in-universe POV.

Black Library authors however have consistently gone overboard with DAoT stuff whether it be from some "Humanity F**** Yeah" trope, inability to stomach humanity not being top dog of the galaxy, or simply because they need some godlike McGuffin to serve as deus ex machina to quickly wrap up the plot.

There seems to be this strange conflation of the idea that if you are dominant you have to go around exterminating everyone else. Just because the Eldar didn't do that doesn't suddenly cast doubt on their dominance. The Eldar, before they became decadent, had their traditional gods, among them Kurnous (embodying the wilderness) and Isha (embodying a more tamed version of nature). In the original old Necron Codex, the Alaitoc Farseer ruminated on why the ancient Eldar had permitted primitive pre-starfaring humanity to live, and it was partly due to reverence for life, particularly in the aftermath of the War in Heaven. It is therefore quite believable to think the Eldar would have been content to let species survive so long as the Eldar remained on top of the food chain, which by all accounts they were.

I've never really seen any sort of cannon conflict with this. The main reason that some people believe there to be is that they are under the impression that humans dominated the galaxy, which is something that the lore has never claimed. Humanity was powerful enough that their realms were secure and prosperous but they were never the dominant species during this time, heck they weren't even the second in line. Humanity during the DAOT held less territory than the Imperium of 40k, even at the peak of their expansion.

It didn't matter to the pre-fall Eldar that the lesser species fought over planets that held no interest to them because they had the Webway, which allowed them to pick and choose what planets they wanted; there was no need to own everything within the material universe. Why worry about a worthless mudball when you can have a paradise world, especially when they have entire realms within the Webway.

Due to being the "protagonist" of the setting humanity gets all the good lore and the black library writers are having a great time adding their own additions. The problem is that there is definite power creep coming into it, every time they add some new super duper DAOT tech, that is mind-blowingly powerful they are just shifting the goal posts. the Pre-fall Eldar were untouchable, and humanity even during the DAOT was no threat to them, so every time they up the power level of humanity during this time they also up the Eldar empires power level. Unfortunately given everything that has been revealed about the level of humanity during the DAOT it means that the Eldar empire must have been unimaginably powerful, they might have well-been gods.

It is a well known fact that BL authors have restraint of Michael Bay on speed. In their version of the setting Space Marine Librarians can literally jump on the orbit and cut space ships in twain wirh their force swords.They write mostly about humanity so of course there is more examples of human hyper tech.

Iracundus wrote:Indeed, it is a fundamental part of the whole Eldar story: that their empire fell due to complacency and pride.
It is the story of Atlantis, Numenor from Lord of the Rings, or the Old Republic of Star Wars, just as the Horus Heresy is really the tale of Lucifer's rebellion. All of these fell to internal rot. In order to fall to decadence and pride, they had to be utterly secure from all outside threats. Having credible threats exist defeats the whole narrative point and purpose.

All the past codices have repeatedly hammered home the point that the Eldar empire was secure and had defeated any upstart enemies, including any waking Necrons with their super-tech, with ease, to the point where not even the most pessimistic Eldar among them doubted that that state of affairs could continue indefinitely...if not for the hidden unknown factor of Slaanesh's birth.

Brother-Redemptor wrote:I've never really seen any sort of cannon conflict with this. The main reason that some people believe there to be is that they are under the impression that humans dominated the galaxy, which is something that the lore has never claimed. Humanity was powerful enough that their realms were secure and prosperous but they were never the dominant species during this time, heck they weren't even the second in line. Humanity during the DAOT held less territory than the Imperium of 40k, even at the peak of their expansion.

It didn't matter to the pre-fall Eldar that the lesser species fought over planets that held no interest to them because they had the Webway, which allowed them to pick and choose what planets they wanted; there was no need to own everything within the material universe. Why worry about a worthless mudball when you can have a paradise world, especially when they have entire realms within the Webway.

I don't see why "secure from all outside threats" and "cannot conquer all other developed civilisations in the galaxy" are mutually exclusive. The Eldar could be entirely secure in their core domains, but be unable to project sufficient force abroad to wipe out all the Human, Ork, and other powerful xenos empires in the galaxy. But similarly, they could never credibly threaten the Eldar empire. It is quite possible that for the most part, Humans could not even enter the webway- it seems great psychic mastery is required to create a webway portal, something that required further psychic evolution for Humans to be capable of (basically only the Emperor and a handful of others by the 31st Millennium). Therefore, for all the massively defended systems Humanity could bring to bear, they may not be able to deploy any of that tech in a way that could threaten important Eldar worlds.

As an example- the US is effectively totally secure from military threats at present. It actually has a similar firepower to the rest of the world combined (which is bonkers), and on home turf, is essentially unbeatable by military means (which is why it is being attacked non-militarily). However, the US doesn't have the capability to conquer the rest of the planet. I think the pre-Fall Eldar are probably something akin to this- nobody can actually threaten them, but they don't have the manpower to conquer everyone else, or the desire.

So as mentioned- the Human demesne was likely secure from external threats, but was in no way capable of challenging or removing the Eldar from ultimate hegemony. Something like the UK or France today- militarily, nobody can feasibly attack them without severely weakening themselves to the point of becoming easy prey, even the US, but equally they have no chance of succesfully attacking another major power alone. Defending is much easier than projecting power abroad.

I think this also applies to Numenor- I don't think they had the capability to conquer the entiriety of Middle Earth, although nobody had a hope of conquering Numenor.

There's a difference between "could not conquer all other developed civilizations" and "did not conquer all other developed civilizations".

If Eldar "could not", that would induce a rather large plot hole. If there were civilizations that the Eldar people (as a whole, not necessarily any party of backwoods hicks with spaceelf supershotguns), then they were not necessarily supreme and unchallenged. The unchallenged bit is important, because it was the lack of challenge that lead to the decadence. If DAoT could challenge the Eldar, then the Eldar would have had "something to do". And so no fall. That's not a *minor* plot hole.

I do think the lore strongly suggests Eldar had a clear hegemony, not a political soverengty, over the entire galaxy. They wouldn't have a need or care to control every corner of the galaxy. But it would have been a disinterest - if there were a corner of the galaxy that would be a challenge, even if not a direct threat to their superiority or future, then they weren't unchallenged.

Whether they were strong enough to wipe out humans, Koruk (and later Orkz), and so forth - the fluff describes them more as caretakers of the garden then wardens of domain. Why would they wipe out a race that isn't a threat? Isn't it proper for younger races to exist, in their on places?

For all these terrifying devices you bring up from the DAoT - aren't War in Heaven Necrons just saying "That's cute". Remember that the Eldar empire cut their teeth fighting *that*. Not giant mecha and world- or sun- destroying conventional weapons. Weapons like "Point to a world, anywhere in the galaxy, to destroy it instantly". DAoT keeps getting +1'ed, but it's still nowhere near that level.

If you imagine the pre-fall Eldar empire to be the US, then mankind aren't UK or France. Mankind are the prarie dogs in the Badlands. Cute little local wildlife. In it's proper place. Why would you kill it?

Finally, it's not just "some psychic shenanigans". While some may think Eldar might approach the "might as well been gods" level of tech, they also had *actual* gods. Gods with *actual* wartime combat experience. Against a force that dwarfs DAoT in every conceivable way (Necrons). They're kind of a big deal.

It's probably worth noting that this is a huge ammount of time we are talking about here, between the war in heaven and the fall of the Eldar, it is highly likely that Eldar power relative to other races changed over time.
They could have been completely unchallenged at the zenith of thier power, but as the Empire took its long slide into decadence and cruelity the relative power gap between the Eldar and rival xenos empires narrowed.

The War in Heaven was supposedly 60 million years before the 41st millenium, therefore the Eldar Empire could have been around for 35 million years before the Dark Age of Technology even began!
It could have been long past its prime before the first human warp capable ship ever slipped it's moorings in Belfast...

By 40k, it's been about 25 *thousand* years since the start of the DAoT - not 25 *million.

Which makes your theory more plausable, not less.

The lore has claimed that the Empire did turn inward. Further supporting it.

However, even all these +1'ed DAoT things mention still pale in comparison to what the Eldar faced in the War in Heaven. And they had 60 million years of fighting (because they enjoy fighting, just differently from how Orks do) to get better since then. Why would "And we can destroy planets, given the right setup!" be scary to a race that faced "And we can destroy planets with the push of a button, from any distance"?

I still don't see any reason to think DAoT could have compared to pre-fall Eldar.

 Kroem wrote:
It's probably worth noting that this is a huge ammount of time we are talking about here, between the war in heaven and the fall of the Eldar, it is highly likely that Eldar power relative to other races changed over time.
They could have been completely unchallenged at the zenith of thier power, but as the Empire took its long slide into decadence and cruelity the relative power gap between the Eldar and rival xenos empires narrowed.

The War in Heaven was supposedly 60 million years before the 41st millenium, therefore the Eldar Empire could have been around for 35 million years before the Dark Age of Technology even began!
It could have been long past its prime before the first human warp capable ship ever slipped it's moorings in Belfast...

The timeline in the Dark Eldar Codex shows the real decadent prelude period to the Fall happened during M25-M30. That is the Age of Strife, when humanity was already fallen from the Dark Age of Technology, and was spent and divided by internal fighting. During the time of the Dark Age of Technology, the Eldar empire had not yet turned away from traditional Eldar values and reverence for their old pantheon.

Bharring wrote:
By 40k, it's been about 25 *thousand* years since the start of the DAoT - not 25 *million.

Oh yea good point... whats a few million years to an Eldar anyway


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Quote from Lexicanium's page on Eldar Dark Muses;

Worship of these beings started in the year c. M19-M24 where the traditional worship of the Eldar Gods began to wane as new sects and societies began to rise in power.

So clearly not all was right in Eldar society even in the Dark Age of Technology.

I agree, humanity started to spread across the galaxy at a time when the Eldar were beginning to turn inwards. Also humanity was not a united race at that time. Humanity spread out in a hodgepodge spill of little empires, federations and republics. Some, like Ultramar would have covered several systems, others probably just single worlds.

As long as the Humans didn't directly impinge on Eldar territory, the Eldar probably didn't care very much. I imagine the Eldar response would have been similarly fragmentary. Some might have traded with amusing space-apes just to ward off boredom. Some might have used them for sport and a few might have attacked them but by and large, I suspect the overlap between them was not that extensive.

Just reading about the ridiculous sounding DAoT stuff in the heresey books, and maybe, and this is a theory of mine only, maybe the humans were a threat so the eldar gave them all this crazy tech and but there empire was more webway based and they went in there and let the humans murder each other with the devastating tech that they had given them. Win the war with out lifting a finger. Therefore, humans no threat. Can’t access webway just roll around in space zapping each other and getting eaten by ORKS and stuff. Eldar keep on partying.

I've always taken any of the rather outlandish claims about how powerful humanity was during the DAOT with a grain of salt and another example of how GW writers don't do scale or numbers well.

Was reading up on titans and found this little tidbit I’d never heard of

Discovered upon the lost Forge World of Chaeroneia, the completely autonomous and artificially intelligent Castigator-class Titan was an autonomous bipedal weapons platform, the first and only of its kind ever built. Called the Father of Titans, the Castigator claimed to be the "original" Titan, as it was first designed during the Dark Age of Technology, and that all subsequent Titan designs were but crude copies. Its design was stored in the Standard Template Construct database, but became forgotten as time passed. The Castigator made use of highly advanced, long-lost technologies such as rapid self-repair routines, and a synthetic muscle-like locomotive system. Standing larger than even the Imperator-class Emperor Titans, the Castigator notably had its head on top of its body, matched by an elegant yet super heavy and very well-armoured chassis and impossibly-graceful movement, and it was far superior to any class of Titan utilized by the Adeptus Mechanicus or any other intelligent race in the galaxy. Its weapons included an arm-mounted melee weapon and a super-heavy, multi-barrelled cannon that fired daemons. The ability to fire daemons was later found to be due to a pact the Castigator’s Machine Spirit ("Abominable Intelligence" or A.I.) had formed with the Chaos Gods. The only known Castigator-class Titan was brought down by Justicar Alaric and his fellow Grey Knights who destroyed its reactor. The portion of the STC database containing the data for the manufacture of the Castigator was destroyed by the Mechanicus because the design had proven so susceptible to Chaotic corruption.

The idea of dark age humans have fully automated super titans is pretty scary

 Formosa wrote:
Was reading up on titans and found this little tidbit I’d never heard of

Discovered upon the lost Forge World of Chaeroneia, the completely autonomous and artificially intelligent Castigator-class Titan was an autonomous bipedal weapons platform, the first and only of its kind ever built. Called the Father of Titans, the Castigator claimed to be the "original" Titan, as it was first designed during the Dark Age of Technology, and that all subsequent Titan designs were but crude copies. Its design was stored in the Standard Template Construct database, but became forgotten as time passed. The Castigator made use of highly advanced, long-lost technologies such as rapid self-repair routines, and a synthetic muscle-like locomotive system. Standing larger than even the Imperator-class Emperor Titans, the Castigator notably had its head on top of its body, matched by an elegant yet super heavy and very well-armoured chassis and impossibly-graceful movement, and it was far superior to any class of Titan utilized by the Adeptus Mechanicus or any other intelligent race in the galaxy. Its weapons included an arm-mounted melee weapon and a super-heavy, multi-barrelled cannon that fired daemons. The ability to fire daemons was later found to be due to a pact the Castigator’s Machine Spirit ("Abominable Intelligence" or A.I.) had formed with the Chaos Gods. The only known Castigator-class Titan was brought down by Justicar Alaric and his fellow Grey Knights who destroyed its reactor. The portion of the STC database containing the data for the manufacture of the Castigator was destroyed by the Mechanicus because the design had proven so susceptible to Chaotic corruption.

The idea of dark age humans have fully automated super titans is pretty scary

I wonder if they had fully automated tanks? Bolo anyone?

given tanks are a far more practical than bi-ped walkers its unlikely as both Daot and IoM tech leans towards 'looking cool if was made into a toy'