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I started writing the second piece and I want it to involve my Archon doing something dramatic to earn either a huge amount of esteem or wealth. She currently has a hundred thousand warriors in about fifty warships so does anyone have any ideas about what would be a good target to throw them up against? Or a suitably awesome goal to achieve? My first thought was her attacking a craftworld by diverting a hive fleet but that was basically just copying what Malys did so it wouldn't have done.

I finished a draft of the first part of my Dark Eldar story;but I hate editing so it might be a while before I put it up.So I started the second piece where Helstai is gathering her strength outside of Commoragh through a series of raids.

Could send her after the leader of an Emperor's children/splinter faction warband. Taking out a chaos space marine champion is quite a tall order indeed, especially with a full warband surrounding him. There's also a nice added bonus that death will get see her soul in the most hated Slanesh's grasp for eternity, AND you avoid the well-beaten "imperium good versus other faction bad" cliche with a nice dust-up between some of the meanest sadists in the galaxy everyone loves to hate.

cordan123 wrote:Could send her after the leader of an Emperor's children/splinter faction warband. Taking out a chaos space marine champion is quite a tall order indeed, especially with a full warband surrounding him. There's also a nice added bonus that death will get see her soul in the most hated Slanesh's grasp for eternity, AND you avoid the well-beaten "imperium good versus other faction bad" cliche with a nice dust-up between some of the meanest sadists in the galaxy everyone loves to hate.

It would be a good fight but she also has to benefit tangebly through gaining some artifact or resource to compensate for the inevitable loss of her soldiers. She also already has a grudge match against an Iron Warriors Chaos Lord (my friends army) and whilst he has plenty of Slannesh warriors in his force I want to save that for later. ie when we do a full campaign again.

We are gearing up for one but I'am taking the invincible swarm for that.

Sticking with the Chaos Lord theme, why not have to prevent a summoning of an uber bad ass demon that would have some kind of control over all the eldar race? You could even have some kind of alliance with craftworld eldar (or even base it on an exodite planet and have creative free reign over characters) which would lead to a nice secondary tale of bitter enmities.

They could win then turn on eachother.

Well. As I said before Chaos is a bit of a no no and Helstai has...done terrible and unholy things to the Craftworld Eldar.

Attempting to cut supplies from mars, massive assault on adeptus mechanicus

kitch102 wrote:Attempting to cut supplies from mars, massive assault on adeptus mechanicus

Which would be a diversion for her to kidnap the Emperor on Terra...

I got it!

The Tau Etherials are hosting a grand assembly on their homeworld of every allied race along with the diplomats from other races; their aim being to form a grand alliance to defeat the tyranid menace and provide galactic defence. In attendence will be the leaders of 200 different species, the Warmaster of the Tysan Crusade and of course the great peacemaker Aun Va Scythias. Representing one of the Eldar factions will be my Archon Helstai. Her plan will involve capturing the entire delegation in a stasis field and then (whilst battling the whole fire caste on their home turf) airlift the Tau equivalent of the UN all the way back to Commoragh. Think of it as a grand mission impossible. She can then extort all of those species to get their leaders back or make them trophies at her leisure.

I dunno, that seems kinda.... OTT, even for Warhammer 40k. Remember, audiences will accept the impossible (magical space elves that must torture others to avoid being tortured for eternity themselves by a sadistic God fed by emotion) but not the improbable (people being struck by lightning or winning the lottery in the middle of the story)..

LoneLictor wrote:I dunno, that seems kinda.... OTT, even for Warhammer 40k. Remember, audiences will accept the impossible (magical space elves that must torture others to avoid being tortured for eternity themselves by a sadistic God fed by emotion) but not the improbable (people being struck by lightning or winning the lottery in the middle of the story)..

So, things like the glass plague, syrums that make people grow until they explode and the dark eldar having enough numbers to slaughter a huge Tau planet are fine? But a 100,000 dark eldar being unable to lift a single buidling or kidnap a few hundred people is OTT? You do realise the average ship is like two or three km long. Its not as if she'll just waltse in there they will get shot at a lot by Tau. I mean Malys managed to get a whole ork fleet to drop on top of a forge world because theys too dumb to move their ships out of the way.

I like it, let me know if you go with it, I'd like to have a read

Totalwar1402 wrote:

LoneLictor wrote:I dunno, that seems kinda.... OTT, even for Warhammer 40k. Remember, audiences will accept the impossible (magical space elves that must torture others to avoid being tortured for eternity themselves by a sadistic God fed by emotion) but not the improbable (people being struck by lightning or winning the lottery in the middle of the story)..

So, things like the glass plague, syrums that make people grow until they explode and the dark eldar having enough numbers to slaughter a huge Tau planet are fine? But a 100,000 dark eldar being unable to lift a single buidling or kidnap a few hundred people is OTT? You do realise the average ship is like two or three km long. Its not as if she'll just waltse in there they will get shot at a lot by Tau. I mean Malys managed to get a whole ork fleet to drop on top of a forge world because theys too dumb to move their ships out of the way.

Do you think those 200+ leaders would come without guards or defenses or teleport arrays or escape vehicles? But if you have 100,000 Dark Eldar fighting for it and sustaining heavy losses in the process, it might work (your earlier post implied there were way less Dark Eldar). But that raises the question of, how could that many Dark Eldar get to the Tau planet without raising suspicion? Surely the Tau would say, "Hey, that's more than you need. Leave a couple thousand of those guys behind."

Also, whose Malys?

LoneLictor wrote:

Totalwar1402 wrote:

LoneLictor wrote:I dunno, that seems kinda.... OTT, even for Warhammer 40k. Remember, audiences will accept the impossible (magical space elves that must torture others to avoid being tortured for eternity themselves by a sadistic God fed by emotion) but not the improbable (people being struck by lightning or winning the lottery in the middle of the story)..

So, things like the glass plague, syrums that make people grow until they explode and the dark eldar having enough numbers to slaughter a huge Tau planet are fine? But a 100,000 dark eldar being unable to lift a single buidling or kidnap a few hundred people is OTT? You do realise the average ship is like two or three km long. Its not as if she'll just waltse in there they will get shot at a lot by Tau. I mean Malys managed to get a whole ork fleet to drop on top of a forge world because theys too dumb to move their ships out of the way.

Do you think those 200+ leaders would come without guards or defenses or teleport arrays or escape vehicles? But if you have 100,000 Dark Eldar fighting for it and sustaining heavy losses in the process, it might work (your earlier post implied there were way less Dark Eldar). But that raises the question of, how could that many Dark Eldar get to the Tau planet without raising suspicion? Surely the Tau would say, "Hey, that's more than you need. Leave a couple thousand of those guys behind."

Also, whose Malys?

Not all the DE would enter at once. Helstai would have a hundred in a retinue and then activate a warp gate beneath the Tau defence stations (after dropping it off in orbit from her shuttle; its actually a piece of equipment in the DE armoury). Once they're among the Tau cities and with the element of surprise the Tau wouldn't be able to bring their full weight to bear until the dark eldar were long gone. Also, as you say there would be a limit to how many retinues could be brought to the gathering. Most of the resistence would be from the considerable fire caste presence in the city and what could be brought in. The Warmaster might have ten deathwatch with him but theres probably hundreds of crisis suits outside just on ceremonial duty. Even surprise and mobility could only get the DE so far. They would probably lose a good third of their force in the process. The benefits though would vastly outweigh the loss if it suceeded. She could extort millions of slaves from the less scrupulous leaders and the pure havoc she would have wreaked on the younger races would earn her incredible respect in Commoragh. Warriors would flock to her replacing the losses by tenfold.

BTW if eldar armies are capable of fighting apocalyse and epic then it implies that they can fight at this scale quite comfortably. Backstory wise in my verse this is actually only a low average sized kabal and currently recovering from being near annialated. Path of the Renegade really pushed just how huge commoragh is. Much more than a single craftworld and some of the Kabals are described as huge in scale before you consider Vect who has soldiers everywhere.

Lady Malys is a Dark Eldar special character in the codex. Yet to get a model.

Maybe consider changing the location to an uninhabited planet or moon, completely devoid of life, no terrain at all, just a flat sphere of nothingness.

The Tau would suggest this place as it's completely neutral to all races, but unbeknown to anyone your archon has arranged for some of her kabal (maybe mandrakes as they'd fit the shadowy characteristic required) to bury portals under the planets crust somehow (eldar magic!) which allow her to bring her kabal in from underneath them , or even just collapse the world and dump them straight in slave pens. You then have 2 options - 1) it doesn't work, they all turn on each other not knowign who to blame, and your archon has to make do with what she can get or 2) it does work, and then it's a survival story as seen in one of the salamander novels.

Possible 3rd eventuality is that the necrons jump out from ever further below the ground and slaughter everyone

kitch102 wrote:Maybe consider changing the location to an uninhabited planet or moon, completely devoid of life, no terrain at all, just a flat sphere of nothingness.

The Tau would suggest this place as it's completely neutral to all races, but unbeknown to anyone your archon has arranged for some of her kabal (maybe mandrakes as they'd fit the shadowy characteristic required) to bury portals under the planets crust somehow (eldar magic!) which allow her to bring her kabal in from underneath them , or even just collapse the world and dump them straight in slave pens. You then have 2 options - 1) it doesn't work, they all turn on each other not knowign who to blame, and your archon has to make do with what she can get or 2) it does work, and then it's a survival story as seen in one of the salamander novels.

Possible 3rd eventuality is that the necrons jump out from ever further below the ground and slaughter everyone

I prefer the idea of the sudden shock of the Tau having a Dark Eldar army drop from the skies of their homeworld. It seems like the sort of bold, but well-planned and executed move expected of a great Archon. Not to mention the prize of several hundred precious and rare souls.

Fair play to you dude, whatever tickeles your fancy!

You might even consider both, very becoming of a canny archon