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.

Hey dakkarites,
So I was listening to the latest Muse album and as always the last song reminds you of a chaotic landscape filled with people going insane. But it got me thinking (strangely enough) on what it would have been like to be an Eldar while the fall was happening. Does anyone have any knowledge of sort of what happened? Was it an instantaneous event where 1/4 of the milky way just turned purple? Did it gradually expand over the course of a few days, ala the Mass Effect 3 ending(s)? A few months? Honestly it would be terrifying if you suddenly found out 1000's of planets where being lost within minutes! Never heard much about it though.

AFAIK the Fall was pretty much instant. Like, matter of moments the Eldar empire was utterly toast. But this is based mostly on memory, and I can't cite a source or anything.

 curran12 wrote:
AFAIK the Fall was pretty much instant. Like, matter of moments the Eldar empire was utterly toast. But this is based mostly on memory, and I can't cite a source or anything.

From the historical Eldar perspective, it can probably be seen to be and almost instantaneous event. But remember that Eldar have VERY long life spans, so and "instantaneous" event for them would be far longer from a human perspective.

I would guess it took place over the course of several years. Maybe even decades.

I doubt it took a couple years. Maybe over a few days perhaps, radiating outward from the center. Enough time for the Eldar to feel what was coming but not enough time to escape. Only those that fled before it actually started managed to escape.

It was a calamitous event that must have been horrific to behold.

Eldar 1st Ed -
The rest of their race sank wholeheartedly into the dark worship of the Chaos gods. A racial madness had taken hold throughout Eldar space, and the insanity had only one end. In a mindless psychic orgy every Eldar planet perished in a single night. The death screams of the Eldar echoed across the warp. On every planet Eldar corpses twitched In the mindless dance of Chaos and crumbled to dust. Worlds were laid waste in moments. The Eldar race were sucked into the warp.

It was instant in the epicenter, from further Eldar realms it took a little longer. Ingethel shows the Word Bearers an Eldar planet near the epicenter being consumed by Slaanesh Daemons over several days during the fall.

Course other things say it was all instant. Can chalk it up to GW inconsistency (this tbh) or Ingethel just lying.

In case the OP is talking about The Fall as in the entire process of the fall of the Eldar, they started their slide into decadence thousands of years before Slaanesh was born. It was the psychic turbulence of the Eldar's excess and Slaanesh's gestation that caused Old Night for the previous human empire, as it made travel through the warp impossible. Only once Slaanesh was born and the Eldar empire destroyed could the Emperor begin reuniting humanity.

Its also entirely possable some planets were consumed slower then others. This is the Warp after all, time gets screwed like a cheap hooker when its involved.

From what I can tell the "event" was instant. The lingering effects could have lasted days, but th "Birth" was an instant event that more or less consumed most of the race.

Couldn't it be both? At least from the perspective of the warp time gets so weird that from some perspecives it would be instant but for others the process would last decades

 CalgarsPimpHand wrote:
In case the OP is talking about The Fall as in the entire process of the fall of the Eldar, they started their slide into decadence thousands of years before Slaanesh was born. It was the psychic turbulence of the Eldar's excess and Slaanesh's gestation that caused Old Night for the previous human empire, as it made travel through the warp impossible. Only once Slaanesh was born and the Eldar empire destroyed could the Emperor begin reuniting humanity.

When did they change this? AFAIK, the eldar's decline and Fall happened thousands of years before humanity even travelled to the stars.

Bran Dawri wrote:

 CalgarsPimpHand wrote:
In case the OP is talking about The Fall as in the entire process of the fall of the Eldar, they started their slide into decadence thousands of years before Slaanesh was born. It was the psychic turbulence of the Eldar's excess and Slaanesh's gestation that caused Old Night for the previous human empire, as it made travel through the warp impossible. Only once Slaanesh was born and the Eldar empire destroyed could the Emperor begin reuniting humanity.

When did they change this? AFAIK, the eldar's decline and Fall happened thousands of years before humanity even travelled to the stars.

Around 30k in the DE codex

It happened about 47% quickly.

The build up to the fall will have taken ages. Like, tens of thousands of years I guess, possibly more. Anyway, a long time, as the Eldar slowly got more and more arrogant etc.

As for the actual event where it all went tits-up for the Eldar, that wouldn't have lasted long at all. By that I mean, a minute at most.

That's my view

Theres a bit in 'the first heretic' which describes the fall quite well.

It was meant to take place immediately prior to the great crusade as the birth of slaanesh dissipated the warp storms which had been isolating terra from the rest of the galaxy (it creates a good sense of Irony, the fall of the eldar leads to the rise of the Imperium).

 vodo40k wrote:
Theres a bit in 'the first heretic' which describes the fall quite well.

(it creates a good sense of Irony, the fall of the eldar leads to the rise of the Imperium).

More so then one would think, IIRC, the storms were the result of the Eldar's increased power leaving feeding into the warp as they descended into decadence. In a real sense, the whole rise of the Imperium would not and maybe could not have happened if earth and most of mankind had not been so cut off.

Does that make sense though?

Cause wasn't the whole idea about the Dark Age of Technology basically being well, the Golden Age of Technology, where humanity had inhabited the vast majority of the stars in a warm and happy almost-Star-Trek type happiness factor.

Then the warp storms happened and stuffed everyone.

I find it hard to reconcile the height of the Eldar empire and all these high tech human planets and star systems hanging around too.

No one fethed with the Eldar, not even during the darkage. You could not out gun them, you sure could not outrun them and they found the whole human "empires" to be kinda not worth the time.

Dark age humans had a hard enough time holding the orks at bay. They Eldar, you need to recall did not claim every world in an area like humans did, they claimed what they wanted and you damned well left it be or found oneself very dead.

Even now humanity does not own all the stars, or even half, they claim them but whole xeno empires exist within the area that man claims.

Although nothing compared with the Eldar, golden age humanity had some pretty hefty tech as well allowing their expansion in the first place. I always imagine humanity was able to expand despite the Eldars dominance simply due to the Eldars extreme arrogance. They still regard humans as underdeveloped monkeys in the 41st millennium, imagine what they were like at the height of their power. They probably regarded humanity building their stellar empires the way we would regard ants building ant hills.

Mostly eldar of the dark age had already withdrawn from the galaxy. They were busy being hedonists and could care less along as the kids stayed off their lawns.