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How does it work from a fluff perspective. How do DE feed upon the pain and the soul of their victims ??? Do they have technology that enables them to do that ? Is it a inherent capacity of eldar (in that case, why don't CWE do it) ?


thanks for the answers.

It has to do with their relationship with Slaanesh. All Eldar owe a debt of their soul to her, and the different factions of Eldar go about that debt in drastically different ways.

The Craftworld Eldar lead lives of stoicism and pleasurelessness part in fear and part in atonement for causing the Fall. They use their soulstones and the Infinity Circuit to save their souls from Slaanesh. The soulstones prevent their souls from entering the warp. If an eldar dies without a soulstone, their soul is immediately devoured by Slaanesh and subject to eternal suffering.

The Dark Eldar, on the other hand, have this weird thing going on where they are acting just as awful as they were during the events that caused the Fall, but rather than abstain from the horrible pain and pleasure they inflict, they sort of use it as a trade off with Slaanesh to sort of keep her sated. They fear and detest her as much as the Craftworlders, but their means of saving their own souls is more of a deal with the devil type thing, as far as I understand. EDIT: And because the Eldar are highly empathic, they are literally feeding off of the pain of others as a sort of high. Craftworld Eldar don't do this because its pretty damn psycho.

Not to mention, most Dark Eldar are actually clones and whether or not they even have souls is up for debate.

They're also nowhere near what anyone would call sane to begin with, and often crazed from combat drugs. Is it so odd that they get increasingly frenzied in combat?

I see it as an innate psychic ability, since the warp is a place of emotions.

Dark Eldar suffer from constant draining of their souls to Slaanesh. If nothing is done, they become the "Parched", wasted and shriveled up, and eventually die. The previous Dark Eldar Codex talked of how the Parched lurk in the run down areas of Commorragh hoping to prey on an unlucky soul and thus restore themselves from their Parched status (The canonical Kabal of the Baleful Gaze is in fact made up of these lucky Dark Eldar that have recovered from being Parched). The ability for even starved feral Dark Eldar to feed strongly suggests this is an innate ability and not anything technological. The Dark Eldar compensate by feeding off pain and fear and use that to "top up" their constantly draining souls. In the 40K universe, the soul is a construct of psychic energy. By feeding, the Dark Eldar are able to use this energy to reverse the effects of physical aging, heal wounds, and otherwise empower themselves with greater physical bonuses. However as the latest Dark Eldar Codex has repeated, this physical youth hides the underlying gnawing insatiable hunger of the Dark Eldar. They are never sated because their souls are constantly being drained, and this effect becomes more apparent with age, meaning they have to feed on greater and greater numbers of souls or more extreme displays of atrocity to get the necessary amounts of fear and pain to regenerate themselves. Just like a thirsty person will be driven by instinct to seek out water and drink, the Dark Eldar are driven to feed.

The other varieties of Eldar do not suffer from this constant soul drain due to their different lifestyles, though their souls are still hunted down and consumed by Slaanesh if they are released into the warp. Because their souls are not being drained, they do not have that soul thirst. Their culture also puts such behavior as taboo.

Note: The soul thirst seems to be an effect of the Dark Eldar lifestyle, as a Craftworld Ranger in the BL novel Path of the Renegade that joins the Dark Eldar begins to feel the first stirrings of this. Similarly in Path of the Warrior we see a former Dark Eldar, now part of a Craftworld, with no signs of the soul thirst. One could interpret this to mean the Dark Eldar lifestyle is in keeping with Slaanesh's values and therefore the souls of the Dark Eldar become somehow more accessible and therefore susceptible to being drained while they are still alive. It is not solely the Craftworld Path system that protects, as we see Outcasts and Corsairs with no apparent need to consume souls.

I think his question is how this process occurs. AFAIK this is not explained in the fluff.

They do have machines that can suck the life force out of things. However, it's much more likely that they're just getting into what they are doing. Sorta getting their jollies from murdering things. They are still psychic beings, so whether this is purely a physical thing or a psychic thing as well is up to debate. I'd say it's more likely a combination of both.