Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Ok so I have always assumed that it was the fall of the Eldar that allowed Humanity to spread unchecked throughout the stars before the period of warp storms came and isolated all the human worlds and triggered the near collapse of the human empire only averted by the events following the end of old night ie th unification war and the start of the great crusade. However recent fluff suggests that the time between the fall and the start of the great crusade was much much closer together, My question is how did humanity spread so far previously then if the eldar were all but masters of the galaxy as they are reported to have been? I know the galaxy is a big place but the Eldar Empire/homeworld is centralized on the EoT which isn't that far from Terra, why would the eldar have let humanity spread out unchecked like that if these events are much closer together?

Because they were to lazy to do anything...

Brother Coa wrote:Because they were to lazy to do anything...

This

On the whole yes but weren't the exodites and craftworld eldar fleeing for centuries before the fall? surely this would have resulted in much more butting of heads than is suggested.

Ugly Green Trog wrote:On the whole yes but weren't the exodites and craftworld eldar fleeing for centuries before the fall? surely this would have resulted in much more butting of heads than is suggested.

Decades perhaps. Centuries? I don't think so.

In a race where you can get orgasms from doing your taxes, any survivalist is a freak.

Iranna.

It's not just recent fluff that has tied the Fall and the Crusade together... it was always the Fall that triggered the Crusade.

It was the earlier randomness of Warp Travel that resulted in humanity being so spread out in the first place. Then a long period of huge Warp Storms cut everyone off.

The Fall, and the resultant psychic backlash into the Warp quieted everything down for a while, allowing for the Emperor to launch the Crusade to bring humanity back together.

Eldar and Humanity had non-aggression pacts. You can say that Humanity was easily on par with Eldar on technological and military might in it's golden age. But Mankind didn't attack anyone back then, we were to busy advancing and being nice ( and see when that brought us... ).

Brother Coa wrote:Eldar and Humanity had non-aggression pacts. You can say that Humanity was easily on par with Eldar on technological and military might in it's golden age. But Mankind didn't attack anyone back then, we were to busy advancing and being nice ( and see when that brought us... ).

I probably wouldn't agree that -even in its Golden Age- the Imperium has ever been on par with Eldar technology. It was most likey in the Eldar's best interest to form non-agression pacts with Humanity, having just suffered the results of The Fall and Humanity probably still believeing the Eldar to be the "dominant" race.

On another note, is there any mentioning that Humanity encountered Exodites or Craftworld Eldar during the Great Crusade? If so, was there ever any conflict?

Iranna.

Iranna wrote:

Brother Coa wrote:Eldar and Humanity had non-aggression pacts. You can say that Humanity was easily on par with Eldar on technological and military might in it's golden age. But Mankind didn't attack anyone back then, we were to busy advancing and being nice ( and see when that brought us... ).

I probably wouldn't agree that -even in its Golden Age- the Imperium has ever been on par with Eldar technology. It was most likey in the Eldar's best interest to form non-agression pacts with Humanity, having just suffered the results of The Fall and Humanity probably still believeing the Eldar to be the "dominant" race.

On another note, is there any mentioning that Humanity encountered Exodites or Craftworld Eldar during the Great Crusade? If so, was there ever any conflict?

Iranna.

The Emperor's Children met Ulthwe Eldar on their Maiden World, and Eldrad Ulthran warned him about the future treason of Horus. Fulgrim didn't believe the Xenos and the Emperor's Children fought with the Eldar.
And Imperials form non-agression pacts with Eldar only when they have common enemies ready to kill them all. Sad but true. I always wanted my Eldar and IG fight together.

Iranna wrote:
I probably wouldn't agree that -even in its Golden Age- the Imperium has ever been on par with Eldar technology. It was most likey in the Eldar's best interest to form non-agression pacts with Humanity, having just suffered the results of The Fall and Humanity probably still believeing the Eldar to be the "dominant" race.

On another note, is there any mentioning that Humanity encountered Exodites or Craftworld Eldar during the Great Crusade? If so, was there ever any conflict?

Iranna.

And did I say "Imperium"? I said Humanity and yes - they did have technology in pair with the Eldar. Imperium didn't exist in the golden age of Mankind ( 22.000 to 25.000 ).

I think that even in the Golden Age humanitys Tech wasn't as good as the Eldar, Certainly not in the way of traveling, but i think the non-agreesion pacts went somthing like this:

(warning metaphore)

if you see a hoodie down the street and have no reason to fear it, you might say "hello" or "good morning" or even just smile at them
(i.e. Humans finding aliens like the eldar and being able to coexist without ripping each other apart)

but if the hoodie stabs you, the next hoddie you see (even if it is a different person) you will treat with cation and probably run away or somthing
(i.e. going on the great crusade to find orks butchering Humans)

so now Humanity treats all Aleins with the same distrust

Brother Coa wrote: You can say that Humanity was easily on par with Eldar on technological and military might in it's golden age.

Do you have a source for this?

I ask because there is another forum I lurk where the general consensus is that even at that time Eldar tech was so advanced that it was seen as magic blablabla, though no sources were given.

Huh? The Fall is what triggered the warpstorms that brought about the Age of Strife.

Polvilhovoador wrote:
Do you have a source for this?

Not beside the stories what people talk and Lexicanum. And this:

sirrah wrote:Huh? The Fall is what triggered the warpstorms that brought about the Age of Strife.

No, the Fall is what ended the Age of Strife.

From Codex: Eldar:

"Ten thousand years before the Fall, the Warp was riven with storm and tempest. This made it almost impossible for Human spacecraft to travel between the stars. With the birth of the Great Enemy the Warp was temporarily calmed, its rage all but spent. A new equilibrium was reached as Slaanesh joined the ranks of the Chaos gods. With the Warp storms around ancient Terra dispersed, Human worlds throughout the galaxy were again brought into contact once more. During the Great Crusade that followed, the Emperor brought Humanity together and forged the Imperium of Man. In this way, the death of the Eldar heralded the birth of the Imperium, and Mankind inherited the stars."

Codex: Space Marines has the same info, although written from more of an Imperial point of view. As far back as 2nd edition at least, that's been how it fit together.

Brother Coa wrote: You can say that Humanity was easily on par with Eldar on technological and military might in it's golden age.

The fluff does not support this claim (Especially in regards to technology).

The only faction with undeniably better technology than the Eldar are the Necrons.

Now, you can argue that humanity was more innovative than the Eldar, who largely just used technology the Old Ones created.

Yes the eldar and space marine codex even say this.
The Golden Age of humanity was before this.
And the fall triggered the Great Crusade.

The Emperor was pretty prepared for it as well.

Though does that mean Slaanesh had no hand in the deal with the Emperor or stealing the primarchs?

Void__Dragon wrote:
The fluff does not support this claim (Especially in regards to technology).

The only faction with undeniably better technology than the Eldar are the Necrons.

Now, you can argue that humanity was more innovative than the Eldar, who largely just used technology the Old Ones created.

Eldar only had Webways + they started doing nothing at the time. At Golden Age Mankind was on it's technological "peak", Imperium already have teleporters, massive starships, titans, hive cities, Advanced AI, cybernetics etc... Mankind had even more in it's golden age. We can say that they were more advanced then Tau for sure. Eldar only had Webway to their advantage and nothing else. - and to me that is not much of advance. And Mankind had more worlds then Eldar had at that time.

Brother Coa wrote:Eldar and Humanity had non-aggression pacts. You can say that Humanity was easily on par with Eldar on technological and military might in it's golden age. But Mankind didn't attack anyone back then, we were to busy advancing and being nice ( and see when that brought us... ).

Please learn to distinguish between inference and fact; all that has ever been stated is that golden age-era mankind made non-aggression pacts with unspecified xenos.

Brother Coa wrote:And did I say "Imperium"? I said Humanity and yes - they did have technology in pair with the Eldar. Imperium didn't exist in the golden age of Mankind ( 22.000 to 25.000 ).

Inference again; STC-derived technology - i.e. all standard Imperial technology - was devised during the golden age, and is conspicuously not equivalent to that of the Eldar.

insaniak wrote:No, the Fall is what ended the Age of Strife.

The fall didn't happen overnight; the warp storms which brought about the age of strife were the product of Slaanesh's 'gestation', their abatement in M30 after his 'birth' allowed the crusade to begin.

Brother Coa wrote:Eldar only had Webways + they started doing nothing at the time. At Golden Age Mankind was on it's technological "peak", Imperium already have teleporters, massive starships, titans, hive cities, Advanced AI, cybernetics etc... Mankind had even more in it's golden age. We can say that they were more advanced then Tau for sure. Eldar only had Webway to their advantage and nothing else. - and to me that is not much of advance. And Mankind had more worlds then Eldar had at that time.

You do realise that everything you just named, the Eldar had as well? I mean except Hive Cities, but that's frankly nothing to be proud of. Or cybernetics, but then Eldar don't need them.

I don't think you get how huge an advantage the Webway is, especially back then.

Eldar ships are also faster than Imperium ships.

Oh, and who can forget all of their fun stuff like Blackstone Fortresses.

Eldar tech is surpassed only by Necron tech. STCs, as English Assassin mentioned, are Golden Age tech, and are not as advanced as the organic, psyker-fueled tech of the Eldar.

The Eldar advanced past cybernetics. They likely had most or all of the golden age technology around the time humanity was finally evolving from monkeys.

Also I've never read about a Human-Maiden-world, so the Eldar also got terraforming going for them (and i talk "change the planet to a paradise" terraforming, not "punch the planet in the face till it looks like any other mechanicum planet"-terraforming )

Also, is there any source about who built the dyson sphere where the outsider "resides"?

And the STC technology, as mentioned before, isn't really better than eldar technology, although "better" really depends on the viewpoint in many cases.
But the eldars technology is definitely more sophisticated.

Void__Dragon wrote:
You do realise that everything you just named, the Eldar had as well? I mean except Hive Cities, but that's frankly nothing to be proud of. Or cybernetics, but then Eldar don't need them.

So Eldar have genetically-engineered warriors and advanced AI? I didn't know that, where odes it say?

I don't think you get how huge an advantage the Webway is, especially back then.

It helped the Old Ones against Necrons, that is why they exist today. Wait...

Eldar ships are also faster than Imperium ships.

Imperium maybe. We have no data on Human ships before the Imperium beside the fact that they used Warp Drive and Geller fields to. For all that we know pre-Imperium Mankind ships would be more powerful and faster then the ones Imperium have currently.

Oh, and who can forget all of their fun stuff like Blackstone Fortresses.

That belonged to the Eldar? They are even bigger idiots for letting them to drift in space for 10.000 years only to be stolen in the end by Forces of Chaos. And didn't the Old Ones build those as well?

Eldar tech is surpassed only by Necron tech. STCs, as English Assassin mentioned, are Golden Age tech, and are not as advanced as the organic, psyker-fueled tech of the Eldar.

You know that Main Mankind tech is not STC? STC only provides necessarily scripts for basic equipment ( and there was also military one ). I can say for sure that Humans had at least technology in pair with the Eldar ( aldo Eldar didn't invent anything, they inherited that tech from the Old Ones while we invented everything so we had bigger knowledge of how our tech works ). But we cannot know that because we lost 95% of it in the Age of Strife. I would like GW to make just 1 novel at that time to see how advanced we are.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

iDevour wrote:
And the STC technology, as mentioned before, isn't really better than eldar technology, although "better" really depends on the viewpoint in many cases.
But the eldars technology is definitely more sophisticated.

If you consider peace of paper with blueprints how to build a Ford Esscort technology, then you are right.
STC is just blueprint, not actual tech. And we only know about military STC's, we don't know about great other who existed in the Golden Age of Humanity.

Void__Dragon wrote:
Oh, and who can forget all of their fun stuff like Blackstone Fortresses.

And who built them again? Oh, right, the Old Ones, not the Eldar.


That said, I still think that the Eldar's technology is greater than that of Humanity during the Golden Age of Science. The Castigator is kinda interesting though...

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Void__Dragon wrote:
Oh, and who can forget all of their fun stuff like Blackstone Fortresses.

And who built them again? Oh, right, the Old Ones, not the Eldar.

Thak you good sir

That said, I still think that the Eldar's technology is greater than that of Humanity during the Golden Age of Science. The Castigator is kinda interesting though...

We don't know that, we only know that we were also on our technological peak. For all that we know we could have been like Federation from Star Trek with technology back then. The reason I am saying this is because we understand our tech and Eldar don't understand theirs. It would be like some alien civilization came to Earth and give us all their stuff, and we are now what? Technologicaly advanced race and we don't know how 90% of our stuff works? Sorry, but for me that is not advanced at all, pre-Imperial Humans at least knew how their stuff worked while Eldar just let their run and had all day.

Brother Coa wrote:

iDevour wrote:
And the STC technology, as mentioned before, isn't really better than eldar technology, although "better" really depends on the viewpoint in many cases.
But the eldars technology is definitely more sophisticated.

If you consider peace of paper with blueprints how to build a Ford Esscort technology, then you are right.
STC is just blueprint, not actual tech. And we only know about military STC's, we don't know about great other who existed in the Golden Age of Humanity.

Actually if I recall correctly either the Rhino or Leman Russ was a tractor and adapted for military use. There's also the STC for their generic buildings they use, convenient way to explain the CoD terrain kit.

They're not all military, but how important would it be to the main story over all if they recorded all of them?
There'd be stuff like:
"M38: An exporator fleet discovered the STC to construct windows with 5% increased glare reduction on the boarder of the Ultramar section"

Likely everything we see the IoM using came from STCs, but there would also be a very small amount of original or semi-original constuctions like the Vindicator.

STC is technology in the sense that it is a database that contains existing technology.

WD 126:

During the Dark Age of Technology, scouts from Earth travelled far through the galaxy seeking planets to be used as agricultural worlds to provide food for the huge hiveworlds of Humanity. They copied the farming techniques used by the Eldar Knights already living on some of the worlds discovered. In a period referred to by the Exodites as The Coming of Men, the Eldar and Human colonists clashed in a series of bloody wars as the Eldar Knights sought to protect their homes from the interlopers.

When these planets were cut off in the Age of Strife, they became feral worlds. A warrior aristocracy grew up on the Human worlds, mimicking the lifestyle of the Eldar clans. On many worlds, the Eldar clans resurged to win back the lands they had lost and settled into a pattern of battling and raiding both against the Humans and each other

STC technology is the pinnacle of Human capability, that's why it is so sought after by the AdMech, but I don't think it's a match for Eldar design. Aren't the Eldar supposed to be one of the most advanced races in the universe?

Brother Coa wrote:

Void__Dragon wrote:
You do realise that everything you just named, the Eldar had as well? I mean except Hive Cities, but that's frankly nothing to be proud of. Or cybernetics, but then Eldar don't need them.

So Eldar have genetically-engineered warriors and advanced AI? I didn't know that, where odes it say?

Isn't advanced AI the whole reason Eldar stopped working at all? The damn robots did EVERYTHING for them, even war (IIRC though).

Pilau Rice wrote:

WD 126:

During the Dark Age of Technology, scouts from Earth travelled far through the galaxy seeking planets to be used as agricultural worlds to provide food for the huge hiveworlds of Humanity. They copied the farming techniques used by the Eldar Knights already living on some of the worlds discovered. In a period referred to by the Exodites as The Coming of Men, the Eldar and Human colonists clashed in a series of bloody wars as the Eldar Knights sought to protect their homes from the interlopers.

When these planets were cut off in the Age of Strife, they became feral worlds. A warrior aristocracy grew up on the Human worlds, mimicking the lifestyle of the Eldar clans. On many worlds, the Eldar clans resurged to win back the lands they had lost and settled into a pattern of battling and raiding both against the Humans and each other

STC technology is the pinnacle of Human capability, that's why it is so sought after by the AdMech, but I don't think it's a match for Eldar design. Aren't the Eldar supposed to be one of the most advanced races in the universe?

STC is only blueprint on how making stuff. AM consider it "blueprints from the Machine God" and that is why it is considered "pinnacle of Human capability". It would be like someone say "Book is the pinnacle of Human capability", and we send Men to Moon like several times. Eldar are more advanced than Humanity - but don't know how their stuff works ( because they inherited all of that from the Old Ones ), while Mankind created all of it's tech alone. And + we have no info about real Human tech at that time ( for all we know they could had Portal Gun back then ) and that is why we can't say for sure that Mankind had worse technology then Eldar.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Polvilhovoador wrote:
Isn't advanced AI the whole reason Eldar stopped working at all? The damn robots did EVERYTHING for them, even war (IIRC though).

We don't know that as well, we only know that they stooped working and start experimenting with their emotions. And as I remember Wrathbone don't have AI at all, nor do Eldar...