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.

So I was reading some fluff on eldar and it says that the reason they are a dieing race is because of a low birth rate.
I tried to research WHY they have a low birth rate but all i can find is eldar gestation take a pretty long time.
I know the DE compensate by breeding infants in tubes(But they still of trueborn eldar)
So can anyone give me info on hy their birth rate is so low, but they where able to get to the galaxy spanning empire they once had?

too much baby makin' might attract sleneesh?

Low birthrate is a standard fantasy staple for long-lived races. Given that Eldar live for a heck of a long time, it's reasonable that they would have a low birthrate as a result... The drive to reproduce isn't as strong when it's not as necessary to do so.


Their Galaxy-spanning empire was at a time when there wasn't a lot of strong competition, so they wouldn't have had the same level of attrition they face in the 41st millenium where, apparently, there is only war.

Well the way Eldar reproduce is over a century (a long, long time) and it requires lots of 'meeting up' with the partner to have the child. And with war so common, civilians will die and so the conception might not be completed?

That's what I read somewhere, can't remember where though...

The Eldar's ascent wasn't due to a lack of adverseries. Recall that they had to face the Necrons - and their lords - in their prime. Considering how deadly small pockets of Necrons that survived the war are, they're no pushover.

I interpreted the century figure as referring not to the conception process, but the time it takes an Eldar to reach adulthood. This is almost as much of a problem for population growth, as the lag between birth and reproduction age means that replacement of dead adults can't happen on a short time scale.

On the other hand they had an empire of countless billions of Eldar with many planets, much like the Imperium in the current age.

Making a galaxy-spanning empire is quite hard if you have a very low birth-rate and still have to fight enemies (i.e. Necrons).

The Eldar had a sixty million year long period of peace once the war in heaven ended.

Bharring wrote:
The Eldar's ascent wasn't due to a lack of adverseries. Recall that they had to face the Necrons - and their lords - in their prime. Considering how deadly small pockets of Necrons that survived the war are, they're no pushover.

Yes, but after the War in Heaven, they had 60 million years of Peace. Not counting stuff like the Orks, but generally they had plenty of room to grow their empire, with no real adversaries, on the level of the IOM, Tyranids, Necrons, etc etc.

The Eldar had a sixty million year long period of peace once the war in heaven ended.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm not sure why the eldar would have a low rate of birth. I would have thought that they would clone more eldar to replenish losses, as the dark eldar do it, and cloning isn't something that is considered particularly evil.

It might have something to do with spirit stones, and how the eldar need them to make Ynnead, a new god, in order to take on the chaos gods.

thetallestgiraffe wrote:
I'm not sure why the eldar would have a low rate of birth. I would have thought that they would clone more eldar to replenish losses, as the dark eldar do it, and cloning isn't something that is considered particularly evil.

It might have something to do with spirit stones, and how the eldar need them to make Ynnead, a new god, in order to take on the chaos gods.

The Craftworld and Exodite Eldar are reluctant to have children if they can't get new soulstones for them, and getting new soulstones involves plunging into the eye of terror. Harlequin Eldar can count on the protection of Cegorach though.

 Von Chogg wrote:
Well the way Eldar reproduce is over a century (a long, long time) and it requires lots of 'meeting up' with the partner to have the child. And with war so common, civilians will die and so the conception might not be completed?

That's what I read somewhere, can't remember where though...

This was in the Xenology book (bad spelling) it said Eldar birth requires "genetic materiel" to be added at several intervals during the gestation period. So it does make sense that in a age of war not much baby making is happening. But it does make you wonder if the genetic material has to be from the same donor and if not would the Eldar actually do this with the fear of slaanesh overhead.

shivman wrote:

 Von Chogg wrote:
Well the way Eldar reproduce is over a century (a long, long time) and it requires lots of 'meeting up' with the partner to have the child. And with war so common, civilians will die and so the conception might not be completed?

That's what I read somewhere, can't remember where though...

This was in the Xenology book (bad spelling) it said Eldar birth requires "genetic materiel" to be added at several intervals during the gestation period. So it does make sense that in a age of war not much baby making is happening. But it does make you wonder if the genetic material has to be from the same donor and if not would the Eldar actually do this with the fear of slaanesh overhead.

I remember a fluff piece that said that due to this peculiar quirk of Eldar biology, any given Eldar can have multiple genetic fathers.

 Kain wrote:

shivman wrote:

 Von Chogg wrote:
Well the way Eldar reproduce is over a century (a long, long time) and it requires lots of 'meeting up' with the partner to have the child. And with war so common, civilians will die and so the conception might not be completed?

That's what I read somewhere, can't remember where though...

This was in the Xenology book (bad spelling) it said Eldar birth requires "genetic materiel" to be added at several intervals during the gestation period. So it does make sense that in a age of war not much baby making is happening. But it does make you wonder if the genetic material has to be from the same donor and if not would the Eldar actually do this with the fear of slaanesh overhead.

I remember a fluff piece that said that due to this peculiar quirk of Eldar biology, any given Eldar can have multiple genetic fathers.

That's quite disturbing in itself.

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

 Kain wrote:

shivman wrote:

 Von Chogg wrote:
Well the way Eldar reproduce is over a century (a long, long time) and it requires lots of 'meeting up' with the partner to have the child. And with war so common, civilians will die and so the conception might not be completed?

That's what I read somewhere, can't remember where though...

This was in the Xenology book (bad spelling) it said Eldar birth requires "genetic materiel" to be added at several intervals during the gestation period. So it does make sense that in a age of war not much baby making is happening. But it does make you wonder if the genetic material has to be from the same donor and if not would the Eldar actually do this with the fear of slaanesh overhead.

I remember a fluff piece that said that due to this peculiar quirk of Eldar biology, any given Eldar can have multiple genetic fathers.

That's quite disturbing in itself.

It'd make for amusing paternity test reality TV shows. "You're ALL HER FATHER!"

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

 Kain wrote:

shivman wrote:

 Von Chogg wrote:
Well the way Eldar reproduce is over a century (a long, long time) and it requires lots of 'meeting up' with the partner to have the child. And with war so common, civilians will die and so the conception might not be completed?

That's what I read somewhere, can't remember where though...

This was in the Xenology book (bad spelling) it said Eldar birth requires "genetic materiel" to be added at several intervals during the gestation period. So it does make sense that in a age of war not much baby making is happening. But it does make you wonder if the genetic material has to be from the same donor and if not would the Eldar actually do this with the fear of slaanesh overhead.

I remember a fluff piece that said that due to this peculiar quirk of Eldar biology, any given Eldar can have multiple genetic fathers.

That's quite disturbing in itself.

Except it's not true. There is no known fluff piece that says this. The only clear reference to Eldar reproduction and the only reference to successive genetic material additions at all is in Xenology and it doesn't actually say this about multiple fathers, and what it does say is in-character human POV and is speculative (i.e. not confirmed true). It's yet another piece of made up or misremembered misinformation, which is so often the case whenever someone starts with "I read somewhere" or "I remembered somewhere". Claims should be sourced.

 Kain wrote:

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

 Kain wrote:

shivman wrote:

 Von Chogg wrote:
Well the way Eldar reproduce is over a century (a long, long time) and it requires lots of 'meeting up' with the partner to have the child. And with war so common, civilians will die and so the conception might not be completed?

That's what I read somewhere, can't remember where though...

This was in the Xenology book (bad spelling) it said Eldar birth requires "genetic materiel" to be added at several intervals during the gestation period. So it does make sense that in a age of war not much baby making is happening. But it does make you wonder if the genetic material has to be from the same donor and if not would the Eldar actually do this with the fear of slaanesh overhead.

I remember a fluff piece that said that due to this peculiar quirk of Eldar biology, any given Eldar can have multiple genetic fathers.

That's quite disturbing in itself.

It'd make for amusing paternity test reality TV shows. "You're ALL HER FATHER!"

Only from the Eldar POV. For a Human, its VERY disturbing.

Generally the issue lies in that it takes longer for an Eldar to reach maturity and add their ability to fight to a Galaxy filled with constant warfare.

Due to taking 3-5 times as long as a human to reach adulthood and be viable for a combat scenario means that Eldar would need to produce 3-5 times as many children for each human child to keep up. Therein lies the problem, this is simply not possible without being accomplished by technology.

 Farseer Faenyin wrote:
Generally the issue lies in that it takes longer for an Eldar to reach maturity and add their ability to fight to a Galaxy filled with constant warfare.

Due to taking 3-5 times as long as a human to reach adulthood and be viable for a combat scenario means that Eldar would need to produce 3-5 times as many children for each human child to keep up. Therein lies the problem, this is simply not possible without being accomplished by technology.

That and they need Soulstones for all of them, and you can only get them in the eye of terror.

 Farseer Faenyin wrote:
Generally the issue lies in that it takes longer for an Eldar to reach maturity and add their ability to fight to a Galaxy filled with constant warfare.

Due to taking 3-5 times as long as a human to reach adulthood and be viable for a combat scenario means that Eldar would need to produce 3-5 times as many children for each human child to keep up. Therein lies the problem, this is simply not possible without being accomplished by technology.

Well, that's making a lot of assumptions - mostly this seems to assume that the ratio of dying Eldar to total Eldar is about the same as the ratio of dying humans to total humans. This is presumably not the case. Eldar don't seem to die very often. They're much more concerned about preserving their soldiers' lives and their soldiers are consistently portrayed as being significantly more capable than the basic infantry of other races. Aspect Warriors make up a large portion of their infantry, and are typically portrayed as comparable to the nearly-invulnerable Space Marines. It's also probably reasonable to assume that the Eldar simply don't engage in large-scale combat with lots and lots of bodies - given their pretty clear manufacturing advantages over everyone else, if they /can/ put super-heavies on the field (they need webway access) they might well fight with almost exclusively super-heavies, which all have extremely small crew complements. Their ships are portrayed as being far beyond everyone else's except the Necrons'. And just in general, their Farseers help them avoid battles that would result in unacceptable losses.

I think the numbers here are a bit implausible, but the new codex says that Iyanden was devastated by the loss of "thousands upon thousands" (this scale is repeated several times - in the timeline section it's explicit that only "thousands" of waithguard were called to help stand against "millions" of Tyranids). Even if we bump that up to millions or even billions, there just aren't that many Eldar out there, and if they're not totally irrelevant to the galaxy or extinct already it must be because even a very small number of Eldar are extremely significant, militarily, and can continue to be so over time (which implies that they don't take many losses). Without implying a one-to-one equivalence, they're basically a race of Space Marines with much more advanced vehicles and spaceships, and it's important to remember that most human or Tau or Ork casualties are going to occur in these much-larger-than-40k-scale fights where Eldar technology allows them to compete without risking nearly as many lives.

In addition to the soul stone in the eye of terror (which I did not know of)..

Here in the modern developed world, well-to-do families having 1-2 kids is common. And it makes a lot of sense given the environment: having kids is cheap, supplying them with material necessities, educating them and protecting them from perils is expensive. And if you want them to be more then just cogs in a machine, that requires even more education and socialization.

If each Eldar needs to be highly trained to not fall into that decadent path that led to the fall of their homeworld and the creation of Slaanesh, how much time and effort would that need? What kind of culture and life style would that also entail?

The average Eldar is inherently psychic, how much so? Are they all under constant threat of daemonic possession and entry? How about just psychic attack? I suspect would-be parents would take all the effort they could to make sure each child is as well protected and provided for as possible. If that takes a couple centuries to amass the means and results in only 1-2 children per family, that might seem an acceptable price compared to seeing their child being possessed or becoming that decadent kind of being that led to Slaanesh.

Given the way that Craftworld Eldar regulate their society - an Eldar might need to on the Path of Procreation (or such like) to be prepared and willing to undertake pregnancy- then they have to find a suitable partner etc.

Plus as noted - the Soul Stones new more specific fluff (that they are remnants of their lost kin) means that there should be a fintate number - but then they should have plenty to reuse.............so not sure about that actually.

Exodites given their more natural lifestyle shouldn't have ths same issues............just tend to be very vulnerable to enemies as they are usually stuck on the same world/star system.

The path of procreation amuses me more than it should.

 Accipiter wrote:
In addition to the soul stone in the eye of terror (which I did not know of)..

Here in the modern developed world, well-to-do families having 1-2 kids is common. And it makes a lot of sense given the environment: having kids is cheap, supplying them with material necessities, educating them and protecting them from perils is expensive. And if you want them to be more then just cogs in a machine, that requires even more education and socialization.

Modern developed world families tend to be smaller because people now have more things to waste their time on and prefer to do that than tend to kids, have reliable birth control and because we don't need to have 5 or 6 kids to have half a chance of a couple surviving to adulthood.

Also According to the Dark Eldar Codex:

"The Eldar Gestation cycle takes many laborious years to complete"

 Sasori wrote:

Bharring wrote:
The Eldar's ascent wasn't due to a lack of adverseries. Recall that they had to face the Necrons - and their lords - in their prime. Considering how deadly small pockets of Necrons that survived the war are, they're no pushover.

Yes, but after the War in Heaven, they had 60 million years of Peace. Not counting stuff like the Orks, but generally they had plenty of room to grow their empire, with no real adversaries, on the level of the IOM, Tyranids, Necrons, etc etc.

The Eldar had a sixty million year long period of peace once the war in heaven ended.

Yeah, exactly.

The IOM has likely fought against Orks more than all of those others combined (even Tyranids, considering they are a recent entrant to the galaxy). Considering that Orks have been around for as long as the Eldar, and haven't really changed their ways, there was probably never complete peace during that time.

Could be they have taken a step further in direction our own society is going. Who is breeding now in the civilized world? Developed nations around the world with high education and good medical practices are being shown to have lower and lower birth rates, while poorer, less educated societies and cultures with an agrarian mindset(regardless of if they are still farming or not) tend to have large numbers of children sometimes just because it somehow proves to their friends how manly they are. You also have issues in poorer groups that having more children equals more government handouts so they have kids that way. Conversely, I know many highly(Masters+) people with a single child, and even some of those were more of an oops in a few cases. In a very similar parallel, the more affluent and wealthy people are, the more they enjoy their lives and do not want the hassal or expense of having children tie them down or restrict their fun. Eldar take this to the extreme, very long lives of doing pretty much whatever they want with few restrictions. They do sleep around with each other in the fluff, somehow they have an economy even though many of them do not seem to even have jobs to make an income(path of the dreamer/hipsters for example) and drift from career path to career path as whimsy takes them. There is no dire need for individuals to care enough to have kids. There are not huge familial ties. Not a lot of love lost between parents and children, in eldar society children would be a huge restriction on their whimsical and random following of Paths. That gets into a whole other hole in the eldar society plot. Eldar society is a guidance couselor's dream, "you can do anything you want, no really, and it doesnt take any real preparation work!" Why would anyone want to go be a janitor when they can show up at the docks and drive a ship or go be a seer of some sort? Or go the hipster route and be a Dreamer for a living? With all these options open, why put up with a squealing kid who holds them back and wakes them up every night with dirty diapers.

Col. Dash wrote:
Could be they have taken a step further in direction our own society is going. Who is breeding now in the civilized world? Developed nations around the world with high education and good medical practices are being shown to have lower and lower birth rates, while poorer, less educated societies and cultures with an agrarian mindset(regardless of if they are still farming or not) tend to have large numbers of children sometimes just because it somehow proves to their friends how manly they are..

All poorer people have kids solely to prove they are manly? That opinions a little off.

Col. Dash wrote:
Could be they have taken a step further in direction our own society is going. Who is breeding now in the civilized world? Developed nations around the world with high education and good medical practices are being shown to have lower and lower birth rates, while poorer, less educated societies and cultures with an agrarian mindset(regardless of if they are still farming or not) tend to have large numbers of children sometimes just because it somehow proves to their friends how manly they are. You also have issues in poorer groups that having more children equals more government handouts so they have kids that way. Conversely, I know many highly(Masters+) people with a single child, and even some of those were more of an oops in a few cases. In a very similar parallel, the more affluent and wealthy people are, the more they enjoy their lives and do not want the hassal or expense of having children tie them down or restrict their fun. Eldar take this to the extreme, very long lives of doing pretty much whatever they want with few restrictions. They do sleep around with each other in the fluff, somehow they have an economy even though many of them do not seem to even have jobs to make an income(path of the dreamer/hipsters for example) and drift from career path to career path as whimsy takes them. There is no dire need for individuals to care enough to have kids. There are not huge familial ties. Not a lot of love lost between parents and children, in eldar society children would be a huge restriction on their whimsical and random following of Paths. That gets into a whole other hole in the eldar society plot. Eldar society is a guidance couselor's dream, "you can do anything you want, no really, and it doesnt take any real preparation work!" Why would anyone want to go be a janitor when they can show up at the docks and drive a ship or go be a seer of some sort? Or go the hipster route and be a Dreamer for a living? With all these options open, why put up with a squealing kid who holds them back and wakes them up every night with dirty diapers.

BY THE EMPEROR THIS POST IS RIFE WITH PARAGRAPHICAL HERESY! PUUUUUURRRRGEEEE!!!

Poor people tend to have more children because sex is the cheapest form of entertainment between two people. There's nothing more to it. Most of the countries that evidence this phenomenon have no social welfare programs.

It should also bear noting that, in much of the Third World, where poverty *and* birth-rates are high, the Catholic Church maintains a dominant presence, and Catholicism bans the use of birth-control.