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This is why I've been waiting for Eldar fluff pros...because it sounds like they would be Desperate Allies under normal circumstances...except the Harlequins that are Battle Brothers with both independently...it sounds mostly like the Dark Eldar would protect the Craftworld Eldar only in the interests of being the Dark Eldar to personally do the Craftworld Eldar in without interruption...

I could be wrong of course, but that's the way the fluff is leaning...that aside the splinter between these 3 groups is in direct response to Slanesh, the Fall of the Eldar Empire, and the birth of the Eye of Terror...the Craftworld Eldar focused on creating balance and honing their minds in both peace and war...the Harlequins, followers of the Eldar laughing god, have devoted their lives to a nomadic and monastic life of the ritual retelling of the Fall of the Eldar to all of their kin across the stars...the Dark Eldar have shed their connection to the warp to protect them from the eyes of Slanesh, they hone their bodies instead of their minds and drink the souls of their quarry that further extends their decadence beyond what caused the Fall of the Eldar...

You have been to Afghanistan, you have been there as an American soldier serving in a country with entirely different social outlook, with a strong dislike of you and what you represent. You have killed Taliban and had Taliban kill your people.

Then the aliens land and start butchering and enslaving and devouring everyone, except they have landed in Afghanistan and not the United States. American civilians are treated to witnessing the brutality relayed to them via the tv and internet, they watch the men, women and children dying horrible deaths in droves to the unspeakable 'other' as it unleashes terrible fate onto them.

The American military would be over there, not just in self interest but because the people of Afghanistan are people too. There would be no single force in the universe for uniting humanity like the sudden appearance of a hostile nonhuman sentient species.

You can be your sweet petunias that if some filthy, devolved and barbaric species started killing off craftworld eldar or dark eldar, the other eldar won't see 'some other eldar who are my enemy getting picked off by some aliens', they will see 'some filthy aliens attacking my people.' Also factor in that half the eldar and dark eldar are so old they went to school together.

There is alot of people I went to school with that I'd PERSONALLY shove down the gullet of a Carnifex. So...yeah, you have a point about race, but race only binds so far. If Nids landed in Afghanistan, US and Taliban would work together, but I bet you dollars to dimes, they don't go out of thier way to help in the way say the US and Britian would (and even that is a stretch.)

While for the most part Dark Eldar and Eldar stay away, a number of both will join forces and become Pirates. It's not uncommon to have Eldar, Dark Eldar and Harlies hanging out together stealing stuff from those silly mon-keighs because it is fun.

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
There is alot of people I went to school with that I'd PERSONALLY shove down the gullet of a Carnifex. So...yeah, you have a point about race, but race only binds so far. If Nids landed in Afghanistan, US and Taliban would work together, but I bet you dollars to dimes, they don't go out of thier way to help in the way say the US and Britian would (and even that is a stretch.)

No you wouldn't.

When you look at that person you hate, when you look at that group of people you hate, you see other people.

When we encounter another sentient species it will be the singularly most uniting effect ever in the course of humanity, because we will not be a planet of many teams, we will be one of two different teams.

If the tyranids landed in Afghanistan and started unleashing their particular version of hell there, we would not be seeing 'desert terrorists' being consumed for biomass, we'd see our fellow humans being targeted by something utterly repulsive and alien and we'd either swamp the area with troops wanting to help their fellow man or we'd be so aghast we'd nuke the area to stop them.

Nuke yes. Because it solves two problems at once. Flood the area with American lives into an impossible situation? I think we'd nuke the area, and wipe our hands of both problems. Just as if the Nids were attacking and a humvee hit an IED, there wouldn't be one Afghanistan person that would stop and turn around to go help. Not one.

wargey wrote:
The dark eldar and eldar are like chaos and imperium

they really aren't. The craftworkd eldar and dark eldar never fought a war against each other, they never went in and killed each other's patriarchs. They are not trying to convert each other to their supposedly right cause.

It's like grey knights and blood angels. One is all pure and wonderful and the other has a taste for blood. They respect each other to some degree and trust each other far more than anyone else who isn't of the same race.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
No way in hell are the Dark Eldar and Eldar Battle Brothers.

Not unless Chaos Marines and Space Marines can be.

Maybe same 'race' but two totally different idealogies and goals. These two would kill on sight of each other unless Chaos or Nids show up, and still try and scheme against one another to ensure thier demise at a later date.

they would not kill each other on sight. They trade with each other.

DE scheme a bit at everything. CWE are out their trying to live their path and dont much care about how eldar who arent on the path live their lives.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
No way in hell are the Dark Eldar and Eldar Battle Brothers.

Not unless Chaos Marines and Space Marines can be.

Maybe same 'race' but two totally different idealogies and goals. These two would kill on sight of each other unless Chaos or Nids show up, and still try and scheme against one another to ensure thier demise at a later date.

Except the fluff clearly has the Dark Eldar going to the aid of the Eldar.



I against my brother, my brothers and I against my cousin, my family and I against stranger.

It also clearly has CWE fighting for the future of all eldar/eldar as a race.

Exergy has some good points about the eldar there. Also keep in mind that all the archons are trying to power grab as much as possible in the dark city. If scheming with cusins who are only trying to live like Buddhists can accomplish that, then so be it. Also the different craftworld's have different philosefies. Also, they both keep peacefull relations with the harlequens and the corsairs. There are mentioned many dark eldars who are corsairs (the duke slikus and the sevred cabal for instance.) I do not know mutch about the exodites, but many of the craftworlds seem to have a good relationship with them, Bibeltan in particular. Also during the Doom of Mymeria campain Mymeria teamed up with alatioc and 3 different corsairs.

The eldars do seem to be a sosial bunch. Even if they shun each other. Also, they are all fighting the necrons for control of the webway. (Well, perhaps not the corsairs and the exodites but who knows?)

Ork Freebooterz (pirates) - anyone exept tau, tyranids and daemons. Keep da teef flowin'!

This was the point that I was making before...that the rift that separates all the Eldar factions is simply conflicts of interest and protocol, and that's even separates some of the craftworlds from each other...

An Example....the Eldar in general are waning as a population, that they aren't exactly supported by a population growth even close to the orks, being faced with this problem the Craftworld Eldar with mandatory military service for all citizens...however the Dark Eldar turn around and use slavery and mercenaries...

These differences would no doubt cause the Craftworld Eldar to feel a little disgusted at their backwards cousins...but I'd imagine they have some sort of a functional relationship with them...It's better to deal with the enemy that you know as opposed to the enemy that you don't...

If we can't find fluff in rulebooks, codices, or black library texts...then we'll simply have to put it to a popular vote between AoC and DA...

I would say despetate allies

Dark Eldar and Eldar almost never actually fight each other. What do Dark Eldar do? They raid, kill and enslave. Would it be easier to raid a human or other basic colony on a planet, or a Craftworld? There is a clear answer here. Eldar on Craftworlds want to continue the survival of their race. Dark Eldar are Eldar, the 2 factions share common enemies, and don't want to fight each other. They both interact with Harlequins, and all in all, they are similar except for what their lives focus on, and what they do. These are an example of Battle Brothers as much as Space Marines and Imperial Guard are.

Does anyone else think that Allies should not be a two way street. In other words do you think that the primary detachment being different should effect the level of the alliance.

For example I could see Dark Eldar Primary being allies of Convienience (or Desperation)with Nids representing captured "slaves" for the fighting pits being forced to fight. But DE not allying with a nid primary force.

OR Nids allowing IG to be an ally (genestealer cult), but not the other way around.

OR Grey Knight Primary being convienience with Dark Angels, but The other way around they would be desparate or come the Apoc(The inquisition can requisition DA allies, but DA does not want to ask for their help.)

 Lord Magnus wrote:
Dark Eldar and Eldar almost never actually fight each other. What do Dark Eldar do? They raid, kill and enslave. Would it be easier to raid a human or other basic colony on a planet, or a Craftworld? There is a clear answer here. Eldar on Craftworlds want to continue the survival of their race. Dark Eldar are Eldar, the 2 factions share common enemies, and don't want to fight each other. They both interact with Harlequins, and all in all, they are similar except for what their lives focus on, and what they do. These are an example of Battle Brothers as much as Space Marines and Imperial Guard are.

they also trade with each other and both use the same webway for transport that other races do not have access. They are def battle brothers.

at Breng77

I was contemplating taking that route...but it seemed to be overly complicated...to make up for this I made a point to point out each individual race's most hated enemy...like the Thousand Sons famous hatred of the Space Wolves (which is represented as Thousand Suns having MH instead of CtA for Space Marines)...but I gave it considerable thought and finally decided that special notes would be the answer for this issue...i'll post a few to show you what I mean...(also I'm still considering the Exodites and possibly Corsairs to have such special notes)

* - The Black Templars have zero tolerance for psykers, to represent this any of their allies may not use them...except the Grey Knights.

** - The Dark Angels are notorious Xenophobes, to represent this any ally that uses abhumans (ie Ogryns or Demonhosts) in their detachment has it's status changed to “Desperate Allies”.

* - The Chaos Renegades are essentially the Imperial Guard detachments of the traitor space marine legions, usually the only way to officially represent this is to give your Renegades a decidedly Chaos-ey look with spikes, chaos stars, and other iconography to represent this difference.

** - The Gue'vesa are Human Auxiliaries to the Tau, This is the Tau army with it's Troop section replaced with the Imperial Guard's Troop w/out uniques, also the (Fast Attack) Pathfinders would be removed for (Elite) Stormtroopers. Also, they would have Tau bits interspersed.

* - All of the Ork clans usually would rather kill each other than work together...there are only a few Orks that can make them rally under one banner, primary armies containing Grazkull as their warlord can treat all other Ork armies as battle brothers.

** - The Genestealer Cult is essentially a virulent bioweapon used by the Tyranid to soften up a world for harvest, usually a spore carries in a few Genestealers to propagate this plague, after the first infection takes hold they will pass it to the next generation through breeding with the host species, after about 4 generations there is no visible difference between the tainted host and the untainted host, to represent this you may choose between Imperial Guard, Eldar, Orks, or Tau to infect...but the forces need to have Genestealer bits mixed in as a usual Genestealer cult will not be fully composed of full genetic converts, this force may only be chosen as a secondary army.

Hades.Arcadius wrote:
at Breng77

I was contemplating taking that route...but it seemed to be overly complicated...to make up for this I made a point to point out each individual race's most hated enemy...like the Thousand Sons famous hatred of the Space Wolves (which is represented as Thousand Suns having MH instead of CtA for Space Marines)...but I gave it considerable thought and finally decided that special notes would be the answer for this issue...i'll post a few to show you what I mean...(also I'm still considering the Exodites and possibly Corsairs to have such special notes)

* - The Black Templars have zero tolerance for psykers, to represent this any of their allies may not use them...except the Grey Knights.

** - The Dark Angels are notorious Xenophobes, to represent this any ally that uses abhumans (ie Ogryns or Demonhosts) in their detachment has it's status changed to “Desperate Allies”.

* - The Chaos Renegades are essentially the Imperial Guard detachments of the traitor space marine legions, usually the only way to officially represent this is to give your Renegades a decidedly Chaos-ey look with spikes, chaos stars, and other iconography to represent this difference.

** - The Gue'vesa are Human Auxiliaries to the Tau, This is the Tau army with it's Troop section replaced with the Imperial Guard's Troop w/out uniques, also the (Fast Attack) Pathfinders would be removed for (Elite) Stormtroopers. Also, they would have Tau bits interspersed.

* - All of the Ork clans usually would rather kill each other than work together...there are only a few Orks that can make them rally under one banner, primary armies containing Grazkull as their warlord can treat all other Ork armies as battle brothers.

** - The Genestealer Cult is essentially a virulent bioweapon used by the Tyranid to soften up a world for harvest, usually a spore carries in a few Genestealers to propagate this plague, after the first infection takes hold they will pass it to the next generation through breeding with the host species, after about 4 generations there is no visible difference between the tainted host and the untainted host, to represent this you may choose between Imperial Guard, Eldar, Orks, or Tau to infect...but the forces need to have Genestealer bits mixed in as a usual Genestealer cult will not be fully composed of full genetic converts, this force may only be chosen as a secondary army.

Working off of the "not two way street" ally rules, I could see each codex getting a "Army Ally List" in which the codex says what their allies level are with everyone else like the normal chart. The other codex may be different though, so it depends on your primary detachment.

Hades.Arcadius wrote:
at Breng77

I was contemplating taking that route...but it seemed to be overly complicated...to make up for this I made a point to point out each individual race's most hated enemy...like the Thousand Sons famous hatred of the Space Wolves (which is represented as Thousand Suns having MH instead of CtA for Space Marines)...but I gave it considerable thought and finally decided that special notes would be the answer for this issue...i'll post a few to show you what I mean...(also I'm still considering the Exodites and possibly Corsairs to have such special notes)

* - The Black Templars have zero tolerance for psykers, to represent this any of their allies may not use them...except the Grey Knights.

** - The Dark Angels are notorious Xenophobes, to represent this any ally that uses abhumans (ie Ogryns or Demonhosts) in their detachment has it's status changed to “Desperate Allies”.

* - The Chaos Renegades are essentially the Imperial Guard detachments of the traitor space marine legions, usually the only way to officially represent this is to give your Renegades a decidedly Chaos-ey look with spikes, chaos stars, and other iconography to represent this difference.

** - The Gue'vesa are Human Auxiliaries to the Tau, This is the Tau army with it's Troop section replaced with the Imperial Guard's Troop w/out uniques, also the (Fast Attack) Pathfinders would be removed for (Elite) Stormtroopers. Also, they would have Tau bits interspersed.

* - All of the Ork clans usually would rather kill each other than work together...there are only a few Orks that can make them rally under one banner, primary armies containing Grazkull as their warlord can treat all other Ork armies as battle brothers.

** - The Genestealer Cult is essentially a virulent bioweapon used by the Tyranid to soften up a world for harvest, usually a spore carries in a few Genestealers to propagate this plague, after the first infection takes hold they will pass it to the next generation through breeding with the host species, after about 4 generations there is no visible difference between the tainted host and the untainted host, to represent this you may choose between Imperial Guard, Eldar, Orks, or Tau to infect...but the forces need to have Genestealer bits mixed in as a usual Genestealer cult will not be fully composed of full genetic converts, this force may only be chosen as a secondary army.

The issue I see with doing something by Clan, Chapter, Craft world, is that the current codices are not set up to work that way, so it would take a lot of work (unless it is just done via special characters) to define each faction. Things like the Templars no psykers as allies works fine, many of the rest of those are incredibly complicated compared to for instance having the current matrix, but instead of if army A(primary) is battle brothers with Army B, then Army B(primary) is Battle Brothers with Army A. Army A could be battle brothers with Army B, but Army B might only be Convienience with A. Essentially what washout77 is suggesting.

Of course Eldar and dark eldar should be battle brothers. Think of it from an eldars point of view, who would you rather work with, a monkey who will probabilly rip your face off or your weird rapist couisen, who you can convinve not to rape you by saying you can rape the monkeys insted (as i said, very,very weird cousin).

Plus the dark eldar ad the eldar dont activily hate each other. They view each other as different life styles, and an eldar CAN swap between them (read path of the warrior/outcast). The eldar are a declining race and they dont have the manpower to spend on each other, so the have a begrudging acceptence of each other. Read path of the outcast to see a webway metropalis (not the dark city) where both factions live side by side, if not harmouniously.

Be that as it may, apart form eldar, no one else likes dark eldar

Hmm...I still motion that it shouldn't go below allies of convenience...they don't actively trust/revere each other...the freebooterz don't particularly care where da teef come from...a mercenary allegiance is AoC specifically...there's an exchange going on...BB will assist on good will alone...and DA means that they hate each other but they can forget their differences for a common foe...and lol...i suppose that CtA means that if we play an apocalypse game, then we can use anyone as allies

But that's pretty much the breakdown...and I do agree that their allegiance is sketchy at best...some fluff claims extreme hate and animosity...some fluff claims a functional relationship...some fluff talks about friendly relations...it's all pretty scattered...I guess we should start paying attention to which craftworlds are associated with each piece of fluff and that may give us a picture of each groups allegiance...

Help out of the good of their hearts you say? Well the dark eldar helped Lyanden survive an ork waaagh! which would of destroyed them, they gained nothing from it. When asked why the dark eldar simply said they enjoy watch Lyandens forays into necromancy. If thats not goodness of heart ( in 40k at least) what is?

I've written it down...any other such linked fluff?

OK, ill pool my resorces.

Incubi turned striking scorpion in path of the warrior.
Eldar, Deldar and quins work together to beat a chaos sorcerer in the webway. (Deldar codex)
Dark eldar, eldar and corsair ships work together. (path of the outcast)
Exodite turns Deldar and is accepted. (path of the renegade)
Webway port where all aspects of eldar live/trade together. (path of the outcast)
Deldar work with corsairs and quins to gather soulstones to trade with CW eldar. (path of the outcast)
Corsair joins Deldar fleet and eventually gets very high on the command structure. (P O T outcast.)
Afore mentioned Deldar helping Lyanden.
Haemonculi within webport treat all eldar.
They all share the same bar in the webport, small but telling detail.
Deldar dont have any problem...procreating with corsair's. Then again they dont have much of a problem doing that with anything.

Thats all i got, but i have lost my path of the outcast which has a lot of detail about there relationship, i havn't read path of the seer or the doom of Mynerea. Is that enough

The more we talk about the Eldar...the more it sounds like I should take the Dark Eldar out of Maleveolent Xenos and that I should add in the corsairs into Benevolent Xenos with them...which feels odd to say the least...So I'm thinking of renaming the group as "Eldar Empire and Tau Alliance"...and the other simply as Xenos...though I might just have to move the Tau in with the other Xenos anyway...

well...after careful consideration, I'm going to enter in the Corsairs and to also shift over the Dark Eldar entries so that the Eldar have their own section...any objections?

They deserve it, as they are essentually the same race. It would be like excluding grey knights from the imperial one because...they are OP? lol

The Dark Eldar used to employ soul-seeker ammo made from killed wraitguard and looted from wraith bone. The Crucible of Malediction seems custom made for killing Eldar. The argument for them being close because of racial ties isn't any stronger than the argument they hate each other as traitors of their own kind.

 amanita wrote:
The Dark Eldar used to employ soul-seeker ammo made from killed wraitguard and looted from wraith bone. The Crucible of Malediction seems custom made for killing Eldar. The argument for them being close because of racial ties isn't any stronger than the argument they hate each other as traitors of their own kind.

Out of date much? Soul seeker ammo isn't in the new codex and ive only seen it in soulstorm, you know, back when mandrakes where canabalistic gimps? The Crucible is made from captured psykers and effects psykers, the fact it effects all eldar is a bonus Also you cannot compare some dark eldar to the entire race, Yes in path of the renagade they go an raid a exodite world and show contempt for the tree huggers (exodites) but in path of the outcast they seem to activily work, trade and even live together. Also there have been very few real battles between them, i carnt find any references to any battles on the time line of either race, which could be interpretted that there have been no big battles of note between them.

*EDIT* Also a quote from Eldrad (or one of the famous farseers, the name elludes me) says that in locking there true potensial away, they become less then they are (CWE). And perhaps those we left behind (DE) where the lucky ones. This leads me to belive they show no contempt for the dark eldar way of live and dont see them as traitors, if anything they think pity of the dark eldar.

Pshaw...old info isn't necessarily out of date info nor does it make it irrelevant. Just because the newer codex omits any direct references of kin-strife doesn't mean it's non-existent. The previous codex has a 3/4 page story about how the sides hate each other, and nothing presented since contradicts that.

They may not be the worst of enemies but they are hardly allies either.

Yeah... contradicting fluff...just because one is newer doesnt make it absolutely correct...old fluff is still important...and compramises are made when fluff conrtadicts...like the dark angels that would never take xenos allies...but have friendly relations with the tau...thus desperate allies...or the black templars which would kill an allied psyker on site, but can fight shoulder to shoulder with grey knights without the slightest whimper...or maybe how the orks didnt have such strong devisions in early fluff, but now the blood axes are outcasts in their own race for being more human-like than orky...

Hades.Arcadius wrote:
Yeah... contradicting fluff...just because one is newer doesnt make it absolutely correct...old fluff is still important...and compramises are made when fluff conrtadicts...like the dark angels that would never take xenos allies...but have friendly relations with the tau...thus desperate allies...or the black templars which would kill an allied psyker on site, but can fight shoulder to shoulder with grey knights without the slightest whimper...or maybe how the orks didnt have such strong devisions in early fluff, but now the blood axes are outcasts in their own race for being more human-like than orky...

When I read the ork codex I didn't get the feelings that the blood axes were outcasts. . . just not trusted.