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So I was sitting around some friends who have been playing 40K since the beginning (Yes we Predate the Emperor ), when we got into a rather interesting conversation after a short comparison between the direction of Warhammer Fantasy/Age of Sigmar and the way 40K has evolved.

And it started off with the question in the subject matter: "What if we Fixed the Eldar Pantheon.....?"

The Eldar player at the table proceeded to pull out his massive collection of Eldar-related Black Library novels and assorted guidebooks and went of in a line of logic:

Assuming the Eldar Gods are akin to semi-anthropomorphic entities (because apparently there are people who like to interpret all this in terms of pure concepts - almost devoid of personality. )

1.) As of now 3 (2.5?) Eldar Gods are currently around. Ceogorach, Parts of Khaine, and Isha (assuming she hasn't been eliminated by lack of mentioning in later iterations of the game).

2.) He cited also a novel and I -think- Dark Heresy RPG, which stated that Asuryan, the Phoenix King, is actually in "comatose imprisonment" inside Slaanesh. I wouldn't be surprised if that is the case, since Asuryan being the "Phoenix King" must have some connection to the concept of Rebirth.

So his idea: Jailbreak Isha and Asuryan, and put Humpty-Dumpt- I mean Khaine back together.

Our group found the idea to be rather hilarious. Most of the scenarios we concocted in our heads was some sort of Ceogorach-ian style maneuver where a 3rd party (and here Ward's Mary-Sue Kaldor Dragio figures prominently, along with other interesting options such as Tzzentch wanting to knock his fellow Ruinous Powers down a peg) actually ends up performing the deed.

Its the outcome that we had a much harder time generating in our heads.

Of direct consequence, putting Khaine back together would be putting a gigantic bulls-eye on him for Khorne and Slaanesh to fight over. Unless he was content hiding in the Webway, he wouldn't be able to accomplish much.

Freeing Isha and regenerating Asuryan......... we all had no fricking clue as to what that might do.

Part of the issue is that while the Eldar Gods are Entities, they also represent Concepts. Its no wonder, for instance, that all of the Eldar Gods got eaten during a time when the Eldar Empire was sliding into debauchery. What happens in Reality mirrors what Happens in the Warp...

....but what Happens in the Warp can also Effect Attitudes in Reality.

What does an Isha free from Nurgle's influence mean? Do the Eldar grow more resistant to Papa Nurgle's portfolio of disease and static order?

The return of Asuryan, being the Phoenix King, might stir a rebirth of Eldar Civilization (which has been hanging on by a thread). What would that look like? Do we just get better coordination between the Eldar?

And what of Slaanesh? If he...she...it lost out on sucking on Asuyran for Eternity, Slaanesh is obviously weakened... Does that portend a shift in the balance of things in favor of Khorne?

Just some random thoughts - would love to hear ideas running along these lines.

Huh, what an interesting concept

I absolutely agree that the Eldar Gods represent portions of the Eldar psyche, and what happens in the warp is both a mirror and a catalyst for what happens in the materium (when Slaanesh consumed the pantheon it both happened in the warp and as a metaphorical change in the nature of the eldar).

At the moment, if the eldar gods escaped they'd probably be on the run. There aren't enough eldar around to give them the power they'd need to stand their ground. Isha and Asuryan would be captured/eaten, Khaine would be shattered again and Cegorach would run away. Back to square one.

However, if they somehow amassed enough power to defend themselves against the other warp predators, or were clever enough to shield themselves somehow, it might be more interesting.

Judging by the eldar's attitude in general, I expect life would get a fair bit better for the eldar but absolutely nothing would change for any of the other, lesser beings in the galaxy.

I'm not entirely certain Khaine would be a good thing though. He's got a track record of going on murderous eldar-killing rampages, and they did sort of birth a god that tore him to pieces and ate all his fellow gods.

Actually, I've got a bit of a theory that I'm working into my fluff for a potential Croneworld Eldar army. Basically, my thinking is that during the eldar empire, the memory of Khaine's rampage was still relatively fresh in the minds of certain individuals (principally the high priests of the temple of Morai-Heg). Their belief was that the actions of the eldar pleasure cults would birth a glorious new Eldar God of Peace and Pleasure, who would forever banish Khaine and warfare from the eldar's existence (fulfilling Lileath's prophecy). So, they actively worked to blind Morai-Heg to her fate by feeding her false prophesies so she couldn't warn the rest of the pantheon of Khaine's impending doom.

Of course, we know that the god they birthed wasn't quite as civilised as they'd hoped and the rest is history.

The other idea I've just had is 'do warp entities ever actually die?'.

So, if Slaanesh has consumed (nearly) all of the eldar pantheon, do they technically still exist, powerless inside her metaphysical stomach?

Or, is it more abstract than that? By 'consuming' them, has Slaanesh actually come to embody all the aspects of the eldar psyche that she's consumed? The hunter, the smith, the prophet, the wise-woman, the king. All of which are part of Slaanesh now.

Does that mean that if she had actually managed to consume Isha, she'd know mercy? She might even care for the eldar. They are her creators after all. Is it nurgle, by stealing Isha away, who has doomed the eldar?

Anyway, bit of a tangent cool ideas!

Why bother resurrecting the old pantheon who failed, when you can build a new one who may not? You've already got one theoretical new god in Ynnead.

For the others - well, there's an extremely powerful nascent godling on every single Exodite world. What might happen if all of those World Spirits were to, say, merge together into one being?

After that, Ahriman believes that the Black Library contains the knowledge of how a mortal can transcend to become a god. Let's say he's right? Maybe adding a previously mortal touch to the new pantheon might help them succeed where the last one failed - for example, there's this one guy in Commorragh who would do pretty great as a god embodying the Eldar's sensation-seeking, primal nature.

 Robin5t wrote:
You've already got one theoretical new god in Ynnead.

I'm pretty sure that Ynnead was already part of the Eldar pantheon as the god of the dead.

Edit:
I checked and I'm slightly miss-remembering. He currently partially exists and will only fully exist/manifest/awaken/etc... when all of the Eldar are dead, maybe.

 snykyninja wrote:

 Robin5t wrote:
You've already got one theoretical new god in Ynnead.

I'm pretty sure that Ynnead was already part of the Eldar pantheon as the god of the dead.

Edit:
I checked and I'm slightly miss-remembering. He currently partially exists and will only fully exist/manifest/awaken/etc... when all of the Eldar are dead, maybe.

Assuming Eldrad and that Space Marine guy didn't ruin the whole thing, at least...

But no, Ynnead is very much a new, post-fall superstition for the Eldar, the idea only really started gaining strength after Hive Fleet Kraken invaded Iyanden.

 Ynneadwraith wrote:
However, if they somehow amassed enough power to defend themselves against the other warp predators, or were clever enough to shield themselves somehow, it might be more interesting.

I think his scenario implies that "Cegorach's Jailbreak" if you will, has the reformed Phoenix King and Isha fleeing into the Webway, the one place where the Chaos Gods can't "find" them.

So a Jester, a Matron, and a King walk into a certain Library.....

Judging by the eldar's attitude in general, I expect life would get a fair bit better for the eldar but absolutely nothing would change for any of the other, lesser beings in the galaxy.

You see that's the Part none of us really could pin down - How would the Eldar Psyche change?

If we're going on the bits and pieces we have of the old Pantheon, and their correlates in Warhammer Fantasy....

1.) Isha's the Goddess of Fertility, Healing and Harvest.....

So.... do we see a bump in the Eldar population, an increase in the number of Healers in Eldar society,....and do the Crone World Exodites get better crops?

EDIT - also forgot, an Increase in Soulstones because those stones are apparently her Tears.....

2.) Asuryan - Kingship and Rebirth

So.... do the Eldar stop laboring under a "woe is us, we dying race" mentality (notice I said, mentality, their material conditions still point to being squashed like a bug)? Do we see more positive, less cynical Eldar? Do they actually get a sense of.....hope?

And now that the Concept/Social Role of Kingship has been restored to them, would we see the slow reformation of ties between the Exodites, the Dark Eldar, and the Craftworld Eldar?

I mean, I have this image in my head of a Harlequin Parade through Commorragh, with a Jester, a Matron, and a King....

Now that "Dad" is back, how do the Dark Eldar react? Rejection? Shame? Fear? Reformation?

I'm not entirely certain Khaine would be a good thing though. He's got a track record of going on murderous eldar-killing rampages, and they did sort of birth a god that tore him to pieces and ate all his fellow gods.

That's the conclusion my group came to - he's just way too much trouble. That and since the scenario implies saving Isha and restoring some aspect of Asuryan.....neither God in Fantasy or 40K particularly like Khaine....

The other idea I've just had is 'do warp entities ever actually die?'.

So, if Slaanesh has consumed (nearly) all of the eldar pantheon, do they technically still exist, powerless inside her metaphysical stomach?

Or, is it more abstract than that? By 'consuming' them, has Slaanesh actually come to embody all the aspects of the eldar psyche that she's consumed? The hunter, the smith, the prophet, the wise-woman, the king. All of which are part of Slaanesh now.

Does that mean that if she had actually managed to consume Isha, she'd know mercy? She might even care for the eldar. They are her creators after all. Is it nurgle, by stealing Isha away, who has doomed the eldar?

GW has never been 100% consistent with its portrayal of the warp, but to your question I've seen a couple answers.

The comparison that gets often made is what is the difference between the Ruinous Powers and say the Eldar Pantheon or the various other god-lings that belief of lesser sentient species might have brought into existence.

The answer seems to revolve around that the Ruinous Powers are so embedded in actions/concepts that all emotional sentient beings partake in (ie: Khorne = Violence), that they are effectively Indestructible unless something like the Necrons and Tyranids kill off all sentient life.

Other Warp Entities are echoes of emotional responses - they can decay in power... they can even die. But so long as enough people back in the Materium "believe" - the Warp Entity may be back in a new form. In that sense, they cannot die until you cut off that stream of belief from the Materium.

Your idea regarding Slaanesh is quite compelling - Pleasure becoming the Ruling Principle over all the other Social Roles embodied by the Eldar Pantheon. If Isha became "food" for Slaanesh, perhaps we would see Mercy and benevolence from Slaanesh......in a very shall we say.....idiosyncratic interpretation of Mercy.

.....like the Equivalent of Your Mother teaching you the Proper way to be a BDSM Dom with the rest of the Universe being potential Subs..... Sure the Eldar get Nurtured, everyone else is going to suffer for it.

Of course, if we run with this idea. One has to wonder if she got a chance to eat both Isha AND Khaine.....


It starts to make stronger sense why Khorne would challenge Slaanesh for Khaine. Slaanesh would have come to embody Violence in the Eldar..... whereas Khrone would like to claim All Violence as his. (Although by that line of logic, he must have Terrible Relations with Gork and Mork).....






Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Robin5t wrote:
Why bother resurrecting the old pantheon who failed, when you can build a new one who may not? You've already got one theoretical new god in Ynnead.

For the others - well, there's an extremely powerful nascent godling on every single Exodite world. What might happen if all of those World Spirits were to, say, merge together into one being?

After that, Ahriman believes that the Black Library contains the knowledge of how a mortal can transcend to become a god. Let's say he's right? Maybe adding a previously mortal touch to the new pantheon might help them succeed where the last one failed - for example, there's this one guy in Commorragh who would do pretty great as a god embodying the Eldar's sensation-seeking, primal nature.

That's another interesting bit - elevate Mortals to replace the fallen Gods like what happened in the transition of Warhammer Fatnasy to Age of Sigmar.

Although the guy in Commorragh would probably have to stay hidden in the Webway unless he wants Slaanesh knocking on his door....

GrapeApe wrote:

 Ynneadwraith wrote:
Judging by the eldar's attitude in general, I expect life would get a fair bit better for the eldar but absolutely nothing would change for any of the other, lesser beings in the galaxy.

You see that's the Part none of us really could pin down - How would the Eldar Psyche change?

I think you're right with the Phoenix King rebirth aspect of Asuryan in the eldar consciousness. I'd expect to see a general optimism replacing the desperate malaise that has gripped the eldar, and a genuine drive to rekindle the flames of eldar civilisation. Their situation wouldn't change, but their general fatalism would.

I kind of believe that without that, any attempt for the eldar to rebirth their empire will end in failure as they simply will not allow themselves to succeed (or perhaps, by the only way for them to succeed is to defeat slaanesh and rebirth Asuryan. The order of cause and effect is a little iffy in the warp).

As for Isha, it's interesting. Technically, I don't think we'd actually see a change. Neither Khaine nor Cegorach are dead, and all of them still feature heavily in the eldar consciousness. The two main aspects left in eldar culture are their fight for survival, and their manipulation of the other races. The physical embodiments of Khaine and Cegorach.

In some ways, that analogy worked better before they decided that Isha was still alive. I suppose you could explain that while Isha is still alive, she is very far away from her children so her influence is small. Things like Biel-Tan relocating a human colony that landed on an exodite world rather than exterminate them would be the work of Isha.

Perhaps if Isha returned you'd see the Eldar take on the mantle of care-takers and protectors of the younger races of the galaxy, attempting to unify them against the ruinous powers, the tyranids and the necrons. However well that would go down...

GrapeApe wrote:

 Ynneadwraith wrote:
The other idea I've just had is 'do warp entities ever actually die?'.

So, if Slaanesh has consumed (nearly) all of the eldar pantheon, do they technically still exist, powerless inside her metaphysical stomach?

Or, is it more abstract than that? By 'consuming' them, has Slaanesh actually come to embody all the aspects of the eldar psyche that she's consumed? The hunter, the smith, the prophet, the wise-woman, the king. All of which are part of Slaanesh now.

Does that mean that if she had actually managed to consume Isha, she'd know mercy? She might even care for the eldar. They are her creators after all. Is it nurgle, by stealing Isha away, who has doomed the eldar?

GW has never been 100% consistent with its portrayal of the warp, but to your question I've seen a couple answers.

The comparison that gets often made is what is the difference between the Ruinous Powers and say the Eldar Pantheon or the various other god-lings that belief of lesser sentient species might have brought into existence.

The answer seems to revolve around that the Ruinous Powers are so embedded in actions/concepts that all emotional sentient beings partake in (ie: Khorne = Violence), that they are effectively Indestructible unless something like the Necrons and Tyranids kill off all sentient life.

Other Warp Entities are echoes of emotional responses - they can decay in power... they can even die. But so long as enough people back in the Materium "believe" - the Warp Entity may be back in a new form. In that sense, they cannot die until you cut off that stream of belief from the Materium.

Your idea regarding Slaanesh is quite compelling - Pleasure becoming the Ruling Principle over all the other Social Roles embodied by the Eldar Pantheon. If Isha became "food" for Slaanesh, perhaps we would see Mercy and benevolence from Slaanesh......in a very shall we say.....idiosyncratic interpretation of Mercy.

.....like the Equivalent of Your Mother teaching you the Proper way to be a BDSM Dom with the rest of the Universe being potential Subs..... Sure the Eldar get Nurtured, everyone else is going to suffer for it.

Of course, if we run with this idea. One has to wonder if she got a chance to eat both Isha AND Khaine.....

It starts to make stronger sense why Khorne would challenge Slaanesh for Khaine. Slaanesh would have come to embody Violence in the Eldar..... whereas Khrone would like to claim All Violence as his. (Although by that line of logic, he must have Terrible Relations with Gork and Mork).....

Yeah, the more I think about it the more I come to the conclusion that it was fear that drove Khorne to confront Slaanesh. If Slaanesh had succeeded in devouring the entire eldar pantheon, then she would have been unstoppable. The other chaos powers would have buckled and evaporated before her might.

You'd have a twisted eldar god, embodying all the greatest aspect of the eldar consciousness, with the combined power of the souls of a 60 million year old galactic-scale empire.

Huh. I wonder if Slaanesh was an eldar plan to defeat the chaos gods, all those aeons ago. Surely, given their intellectual might they would have known of the ability to create warp entities from the consciousness of sentient beings. Expanding on my croneworld idea, perhaps the eldar of old wanted to create an eldar god so powerful that it would be unstoppable. Again, we all know how well that turned out...

Also, I'd just like to point out that I absolutely despise the re-written fight between Khaine and Slaanesh.

Beforehand, it was a titanic battle between the last remaining powerhouse of a waning empire and a fearsome new twisted goddess, resulting in the inexorable shattering of a warp-diety. The eldar looked kickass, Chaos looked kickass. Everyone looked kickass.

Then, as far as I can tell, some Khornate fanboi read it. The epic battle between the prissy space elves and that thing over there made him feel a bit uncomfortable about his sexuality so he thought he scribble all over it with his red crayon.

Suddenly, in the midst of this epic battle, Khorne is shoe-horned in, and said fanboi start yammering about how his dadgod can beat that prissy space elf god and that icky girl god and doesn't afraid of anything.

Ugh.

It's like if you take a core aspect of another faction that makes them kickass, and shoe-horn the cool guy from another faction into their fluff to sh*t all over their cool guy. Imagine what the outcry would be if halfway through Codexower Armour B, there's a story about how Vulkan was fighting a desperate hand-to-hand battle with Angron, matching power-fist-to-power-fist.

Then, out of nowhere, Roboute Guilliman comes charging in, punches Angron in the d*ck and then gives Vulkan a lecture on how to be the best primarch...

Calm.

Calm.

Back in the room.

Where were we now?

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

Also, I'd just like to point out that I absolutely despise the re-written fight between Khaine and Slaanesh.

Beforehand, it was a titanic battle between the last remaining powerhouse of a waning empire and a fearsome new twisted goddess, resulting in the inexorable shattering of a warp-diety. The eldar looked kickass, Chaos looked kickass. Everyone looked kickass.

Then, as far as I can tell, some Khornate fanboi read it. The epic battle between the prissy space elves and that thing over there made him feel a bit uncomfortable about his sexuality so he thought he scribble all over it with his red crayon.

Suddenly, in the midst of this epic battle, Khorne is shoe-horned in, and said fanboi start yammering about how his dadgod can beat that prissy space elf god and that icky girl god and doesn't afraid of anything.

Ugh.

It's like if you take a core aspect of another faction that makes them kickass, and shoe-horn the cool guy from another faction into their fluff to sh*t all over their cool guy. Imagine what the outcry would be if halfway through Codexower Armour B, there's a story about how Vulkan was fighting a desperate hand-to-hand battle with Angron, matching power-fist-to-power-fist.

Then, out of nowhere, Roboute Guilliman comes charging in, punches Angron in the d*ck and then gives Vulkan a lecture on how to be the best primarch...

Calm.

Calm.

Back in the room.

Where were we now?

'fraid that's how things go these days.

It really speaks to the.....mutability.. of 40K Cannon - whomever has Editorial control can greenlight whatever they feel like.

So one day we are talking about Spiritual Lieges and unstoppable Marines in the Warp, the next day that all goes poof.

One edition the Emperor is this competent leader with a personality akin to Sigmar Heldenhammer.......... Next edition he's this egomaniacal angry totalitarian personality....

GrapeApe wrote:

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

Spoiler:

Also, I'd just like to point out that I absolutely despise the re-written fight between Khaine and Slaanesh.

Beforehand, it was a titanic battle between the last remaining powerhouse of a waning empire and a fearsome new twisted goddess, resulting in the inexorable shattering of a warp-diety. The eldar looked kickass, Chaos looked kickass. Everyone looked kickass.

Then, as far as I can tell, some Khornate fanboi read it. The epic battle between the prissy space elves and that thing over there made him feel a bit uncomfortable about his sexuality so he thought he scribble all over it with his red crayon.

Suddenly, in the midst of this epic battle, Khorne is shoe-horned in, and said fanboi start yammering about how his dadgod can beat that prissy space elf god and that icky girl god and doesn't afraid of anything.

Ugh.

It's like if you take a core aspect of another faction that makes them kickass, and shoe-horn the cool guy from another faction into their fluff to sh*t all over their cool guy. Imagine what the outcry would be if halfway through Codexower Armour B, there's a story about how Vulkan was fighting a desperate hand-to-hand battle with Angron, matching power-fist-to-power-fist.

Then, out of nowhere, Roboute Guilliman comes charging in, punches Angron in the d*ck and then gives Vulkan a lecture on how to be the best primarch...

Calm.

Calm.

Back in the room.

Where were we now?

'fraid that's how things go these days.

It really speaks to the.....mutability.. of 40K Cannon - whomever has Editorial control can greenlight whatever they feel like.

So one day we are talking about Spiritual Lieges and unstoppable Marines in the Warp, the next day that all goes poof.

One edition the Emperor is this competent leader with a personality akin to Sigmar Heldenhammer.......... Next edition he's this egomaniacal angry totalitarian personality....

Agreed. It cuts both ways.

I'd be happy for that piece of fluff to stay the same, if it's traded with the abortion that was the Death Watch book...

If that sticks around you can pretty much kiss Ynnead goodbye...

What happened in the Deathwatch book?

Think he means Death Masque, where Eldrad suddenly decided he had a way to awaken Ynnead early, only to be interrupted by some forgettable Space Marine bloke who disrupted the ritual with... think it was some kind of fancy grenade? Which had the effect of scattering Ynnead into pieces, meaning that instead of one shattered god that can't stand up to Slaanesh, the Eldar now have... two shattered gods that can't stand up to Slaanesh.

Needless to say, any fan of the Craftworld Eldar expecting them to have any kind of positive resolution to their situation during the eventual End Times was just a bit peeved.

Yeah that's the one. Eldrad, the greatest living hero of the Eldar. Most powerful Farseer of Ulthwe with unparalleled vision of the twisting skeins of the future, outwitted by the latest forgettable power-armoured Mary Sue and his merry £20 box-set of mooks.

Can you tell I'm a little bitter?

I don't think the Eldar Pantheon could be resurrected. Slaanesh would never part with the one's she's eaten and no one wants to put Khaine back together again. Khaine wasn't a nice god, and he'd blame the Eldar for forging Slaanesh in the first place, it would not be in the Eldars best interest to bring him back.

On the otherhand I can perfectly see Cegorarchs master plan involving his long dead pantheon. All we know of Cegorarch's plan is that he will use Slaanesh's power against her, probably in some Ironic way. And as you've already mentioned, Asuryan the Phoenix still has a title to live up to. I foresee Cegorarch somehow using Slaanesh to empower the Eldar Gods she's already eaten, probably in some silly way such as letting himself get eaten. Then she'd get a bad case of the tummy rumbles as her insides rip her apart, and all the Eldar pantheon bar Ynnead are destroyed together.

Slaanesh dies, the entirety of the old pantheon dies, Cegorarch gets his last laugh and Ynnead is left to form either a new Eldar pantheon or reshape the glut of now free Eldar Souls to implement herself as a Chaos God in the firmament. Giving leave for GW to make an AoS style army where Eldar are Daemons of the Chaos God of Vengence, Ynnead.

Calling it now. Slaanesh replaced by Ynnead as Chaos God.

Huh. You know what I can see that happening.

It's a pity, but it definitely seems like they're steering Warhammer in a more PG direction recently, and cutting Slaanesh fits with that.

Still. If they do actually do this I personally will find it fantastically alienating.

I definitely think that Cegorach's grand plan will involve betraying the eldar and getting them all killed. Who would trust a trickster god?

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
I don't think the Eldar Pantheon could be resurrected. Slaanesh would never part with the one's she's eaten and no one wants to put Khaine back together again. Khaine wasn't a nice god, and he'd blame the Eldar for forging Slaanesh in the first place, it would not be in the Eldars best interest to bring him back.

On the otherhand I can perfectly see Cegorarchs master plan involving his long dead pantheon. All we know of Cegorarch's plan is that he will use Slaanesh's power against her, probably in some Ironic way. And as you've already mentioned, Asuryan the Phoenix still has a title to live up to. I foresee Cegorarch somehow using Slaanesh to empower the Eldar Gods she's already eaten, probably in some silly way such as letting himself get eaten. Then she'd get a bad case of the tummy rumbles as her insides rip her apart, and all the Eldar pantheon bar Ynnead are destroyed together.

Slaanesh dies, the entirety of the old pantheon dies, Cegorarch gets his last laugh and Ynnead is left to form either a new Eldar pantheon or reshape the glut of now free Eldar Souls to implement herself as a Chaos God in the firmament. Giving leave for GW to make an AoS style army where Eldar are Daemons of the Chaos God of Vengence, Ynnead.

Calling it now. Slaanesh replaced by Ynnead as Chaos God.

The trouble is that Lore never fully explain if the Eldar gods are physical/inmaterium beings or just manifestations of eldar psyche.

Quick example Khaine it's right now the warlike mentality of a Craftworld devoted to war out of necessity. Now figure what will happen when Rhana Dandra comes, all Craftworlds, Harlequins, Dark eldar and Exodites figthing in a last desperate battle with all the existing Avatars concentrated in a single *spot* well seems quite possible they may fuse as a single entity and represent Khaine Reborn (albeit weakened due the now weakened Eldar race) , now let''s throw in some theory that the Phoenix Lords do not die there in a proper way but self Sacrifice to further boost Khaine (after all their are Aspects of Khaine mentality) since the belief and power of their Aspects will reinforce Khaine to a level capable to stand again vs Slaanesh.

That's my biggest irk when it boils down to eldar gods GW lore NEVER fully explained them as real beings able to take personal or individual actions outside the lore of their mythos (Only Cegorach it's close to doing that and even then it's told as a kind of telltale) You can read lore about Chaos Gods blessing their champions, taking this or that action in order to punish or reinforce their followers, but for the Eldar gods there is absolutely 0 histories where any of them it's empowered or lead that way (Lady malys face a creature of the warp in the webway supposed to be Cegorach, all of Iyanden fate play with Yriel it's done by a Shadowseer , The Avatars are always depicted as a simple angry weapon of destruction uncapable of anything different that just smack their enemy just to name a few)

P.S: or just resuming all the post in a question, Do anyone know any history about an Eldar God talking to someoen and calling him his *chosen* or his *Champion* aside the mythic cycles ones?

I think one of the issues is that pretty much since whenever the mythic cycles took place, the eldar gods have been in decline. Even still, during the mythic cycles we still don't have any examples of an eldar god imbuing a mortal eldar with power in the same way the chaos gods do.

We don't know much about pre-fall eldar, so it might have occurred then, but we just don't know.

I think the closest example is in the book Asurmen: Hand of Asuryan. In that book, the main character Ilaithin takes shelter in a shrine of Asuryan. The story cuts to some other time period for a while, and then when it returns he's achieved some sort of apotheosis and emerges as a peerless warrior and leader. It's not covered at all in text, but it's entirely plausible that he was imbued with some lingering power of Asuryan still present during the Fall.

As for whether the eldar gods are physical beings or manifestations of the eldar psyche, I'm fairly convinced that they're both. Like the Chaos Gods, they're entities borne of the psyches of sentient beings (only the eldar have enough psychic potential to manifest beings entirely of their own). Existing as both aspects of the eldar racial consciousness, and entities in their own right.

My personal headcanon is that the eldar gods are manifestations of the eldar's racial memories of the Old Ones. In the eldar's pre-history, they physically fought alongside them (such as the story about eldar fighting alongside Khaine against the Yngir). However, when the Old Ones were wiped out, the eldar's memories of them birthed new warp entities in their image. At this point, any of their actions in myths and legends were likely metaphorical (although, given the nature of the 40k universe that may well have been coupled with physically fighting alongside the daemons of Khaine or somesuch).

Entirely conjecture of course, but that's part of the fun of the 40k background. They give you just enough to start questioning things, but not enough to provide a definitive answer

Lord Perversor wrote:

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:


That's my biggest irk when it boils down to eldar gods GW lore NEVER fully explained them as real beings able to take personal or individual actions outside the lore of their mythos (Only Cegorach it's close to doing that and even then it's told as a kind of telltale) You can read lore about Chaos Gods blessing their champions, taking this or that action in order to punish or reinforce their followers, but for the Eldar gods there is absolutely 0 histories where any of them it's empowered or lead that way (Lady malys face a creature of the warp in the webway supposed to be Cegorach, all of Iyanden fate play with Yriel it's done by a Shadowseer , The Avatars are always depicted as a simple angry weapon of destruction uncapable of anything different that just smack their enemy just to name a few)

Its not in their interest to really. i'm serious. :( .

GW has always portrayed itself as a war gaming company - selling the models is the primary side of the business. All the fiction and lore is simply flavor for you to get you interested in buying the models.

That explains a lot for the dramatic shifts in how the Lore is handled. The best example that comes to mind is the Tau.

If you ask the creator of the Tau, the Tau were really meant to be the "shining happy do-gooder" faction of 40K. The Orwellian element was slapped on to its story appease....well..... us since many non-Tau players felt it wasn't Grimdark enough.

But you'll notice, GW never comes out and states that the Tau live in an Orwellian style police state. They always leave enough room for interpretation for you to think of the Tau as the "shiny happy do-gooder" or in their more Sinister guise.

.... Its because ultimately they don't want to alienate anyone from buying the Models....

Their whole novel series tends to be constructed in such a manner too - depending on what novel you are reading, a certain faction can look amazing........or just plain stupid.

But when asked if a Black Library novel is a "canonical interpretation of the faction," you'll notice the BL and GW reps back off from a hard statement on the matter.