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cadbren wrote:You mean there might be more than a million astartes for the entire galaxy?

Ha! That always irritated me, also the idea that some chapters like BA,DA,SW,Ultramarines were of any real note in the galaxy with 1000 men AT MOST.

Atre wrote:

cadbren wrote:You mean there might be more than a million astartes for the entire galaxy?

Ha! That always irritated me, also the idea that some chapters like BA,DA,SW,Ultramarines were of any real note in the galaxy with 1000 men AT MOST.

There is possibly since there are 1000 battle brothers,but no one counts other officers like Captains,Librarians,Techmarines,Company Champions and Chapter Masters.

IvanTih wrote:

Atre wrote:

cadbren wrote:You mean there might be more than a million astartes for the entire galaxy?

Ha! That always irritated me, also the idea that some chapters like BA,DA,SW,Ultramarines were of any real note in the galaxy with 1000 men AT MOST.

There is possibly since there are 1000 battle brothers,but no one counts other officers like Captains,Librarians,Techmarines,Company Champions and Chapter Masters.

^this. but also the legions were forced to comply with codex astartes number limitations and i suspect few of them fully complied. the ultamarines have a plethora nearly identical "successor chapters, as do the blood angels.

as for the eldar, they may not be totally boned, are we forgetting all the exodite radish farmers tucked away in distant corners of the galaxy? its far more likely that they have populations still capable of growth. if they stay hidden who knows?

Atre wrote:Interesting... 1) because it implies that the DE can keep hold of their souls when they die if they're managing to shove old consciousnesses into new bodies - What's Slannesh doing? Suppose it fits with the manipulation of souls for consumption though.

It's noted in the codex that this trick fails if...

- It takes longer than one day to clone the guy in question (which is why Dark Eldar try not to have raids last more than a single day)
- The Dark Eldar in question doesn't have a strong will

She Who Thirsts is still after their soul, but the gist if it is if they're determined enough they can last for a very short period of time before s/he gets them.

This is really good stuff: http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?aId=13600030a

Awesome to see GW actually working out their universe to this level of detail (I will geek out on this 'cos it's my kinda thing but never mind...)

Relevant to the topic; they say the big kabals are like nations, they have huge numbers of warriors and ports - their own fleets etc.... And warriors are only a small part of society so that's many many dark eldar overall. They also say that this makes them "almost as powerful as a craftworld, well, the small ones" (and they say small in a very dismissive manner).

So we get that there are a hell of a lot of DE and that even the weakest of craftworlds is a major entity; implying that the largest could be on a billion+ scale (IMHO)