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.

In Xenology the Old Ones were more like pure warp entities...or at least became such. Rogue Trader gave us the Old Slann as their degenerate descendants, but it also gave us a lot of stuff that doesn’t fit in the lore post-3rd edition.

It’s possible they were flesh and blood beings when they created the Eldar, but after eons of worship they underwent apotheosis as the Star Child theory says the Emperor will someday.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Hm., I do not understand your argument. Can you give me the source where it is actually written that Slann=Old Ones?

Rogue Trader, p. 194, on the section for Slann. It describes how they explored and nurtured primitive races and cultures, engineering races, and seeding worlds. Basically all the things done now by the Old Ones. Just replace every instance of Old Ones with Slann and you have the same story.

Realms of Chaos Volume 1, p. 215. The Eldar are described as inheriting the warp gate network of the Slann (i.e. what is now called the Webway, and attributed to the Old Ones). Again basically replace every instance of Old Ones with Slann and the story is the same.

As already mentioned the 3rd edition Necron Codex, which among other things set out the basic though now modified framework of the War in Heaven, specifically said to use a Lizardmen army to represent "degenerate descendants". Descendants, not servants.

Old does not mean automatically outdated, not unless contradicted. Xenology's flaw is of being an in-universe narrator (and one that proves to have been deceived on certain points) conducting research on various biological and archaelogical findings, so its conclusions are not necessarily correct. Translating ancient legends of Old Ones being like shining energy beings may be inaccurate (see my earlier post about how for example the WHFB Slann invented depictions of their Old Ones without ever actually having seen them).

GW has pretty much laid out the dotted lines like they usually do when they nudge and wink towards something.

With all due respect, drawing that conclusion as something currently cannon based on circumstantial statements written literally decades ago seems more than a little unjustified to me.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
With all due respect, drawing that conclusion as something currently cannon based on circumstantial statements written literally decades ago seems more than a little unjustified to me.

It's mostly WFB lore that seemed to be starting to suggest that the Old Ones were 0th Generation Slann by the End Times (and Lord Kroak is a being of pure energy). After that it's then connecting the dots back via the 3rd ed Necron book and older material.
There's definitely not been anything would suggest that the older lore has been replaced with something specific in mind, just that's it's waiting for reinterpretation.

I believe the war in heaven took place 60 million years in the past. At that point humanity’s ancestors looked like tree squirrels.

The only way the old one connection makes sense is if some old one survived and fiddled with us relatively recently. Maybe at the near extinction event about a million years ago. Or More likely at the other one about 70,000 years ago, when super volcano toba almost wiped us out.

At that point there were between 40 and 1000 humans left. That would be an easy population size to tinker with, and ensure the changes last. Maybe the interloping old one set off the toba eruption intentionally.

 Hellebore wrote:

 Tastyfish wrote:
It depends on what art you look at, in some they really don't.
Early 2000 GW elf art had a hint of alien grey about them.

Unnaturally thin physiques, large all black almond eyes.

There's also convergent evolution, why do sharks, dolphins and icythosaurs look alike? Or in an even more extreme case the various moles, despite having very different ancestors?

The Old Ones in 40K had little to do with the uplifting of humanity, as they were long dead before the very earliest primates emerged. Necrons might have had some involvement, but only as part of their Pariah Project.
I assume it was to make something more like Star wars' Ysalamari, but if you add genes that connect something to the warp - then strange but often familiar mutations happen.

There's a chance that in order to make a counter to the Eldar armies used by the Old Ones, they created a psychic connection in the warp to the concept of their enemies which then shaped the evolution of humanity when the currents of the warp ran strong, creating the periods of punctuated equilibrium we see in the fossil record.

Yeah I much prefer the slightly too thin to be a human aesthetic - I think they even went with pupils so large their eyes looked black as well for a while.


https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/c/c0/Eldar_Warlock.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20120822071508

https://www.deviantart.com/beckjann/art/Dark-Eldar-and-the-raid-has-begun-288048326

I love that artwork of the Warlock as well as all the other matching pieces from different factions, like the Cadian trooper and Kasrking, the Ork Boy, Necron Warrior and Fire Warrior. (And there's probably more)

That is the proper Eldar look imo. They look alien af but still very much human-like, and darker than your average elf from other fiction