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Do we have evidence that during the heyday of the Eldar Empire, the chaos gods did something? My personal theory is that the eldar gods at that moment were much stronger than the chaos of the gods and simply did not allow them to do anything

The Asurmen novel mentions something called the Annihilator Shards (?) that the Eldar Empire defeated but didn't hunt down and destroy because the Fall happened.

It seems to have been a pattern of Chaos corrupting races, Eldar auto-armies destroying them and repeat.

There's a story involving Slanesh pre-Fall/post-WarInHeaven. The gods certainly existed and could act - even the one that didn't exist yet.

Because Warp.

Yet it's generally understood that once a Warp God is destroyed, it can no longer act.

Because Warp.

I'm sure they had some influence, how measurable, dunno?
But they would be working on much longer timescales(even tho they don't perceive time linearly) than "currently"(cicatrix maledictum). They may also have a "life cycle", needing to be fertilized, gestate, be born, mature, decay. They may all be doing each of those simultaneously?

I really like the lore when you go into these kind of rabbit holes.

Bharring wrote:
There's a story involving Slanesh pre-Fall/post-WarInHeaven. The gods certainly existed and could act - even the one that didn't exist yet.

Because Warp.

Yet it's generally understood that once a Warp God is destroyed, it can no longer act.

Because Warp.

I mean Cegorach & Isha survived the fall but all the others didnt. Would that Include proto-Ynnead? Even if they're supposed to be from the infinity circuits, that imprint would be in the warp just not gestated?

The warp is weird, but if both of the above are true, it really becomes interesting when you factor in how/what BiggiE's relationship is with it.

If you follow the reincarnated psyker souls theory, did he really need to trick them into giving him more power or was he already that powerful but his presence in the warp wasnt?

Since we dont have a ton of info on the War in Heaven and if GW wants to leave those hanging, we may never know

Well, we know The Eye of Terror didn't exist at the time, given it's essentially Slaanesh's afterbirth.

Without that gaping hole in reality, who knows how much influence the Chaos Gods might've had on the material realm?

Sure, the Maelstrom predates it - but to what degree is hard to say.

Racerguy180 wrote:

I'm sure they had some influence, how measurable, dunno?
But they would be working on much longer timescales(even tho they don't perceive time linearly) than "currently"(cicatrix maledictum). They may also have a "life cycle", needing to be fertilized, gestate, be born, mature, decay. They may all be doing each of those simultaneously?

I really like the lore when you go into these kind of rabbit holes.

Bharring wrote:
There's a story involving Slanesh pre-Fall/post-WarInHeaven. The gods certainly existed and could act - even the one that didn't exist yet.

Because Warp.

Yet it's generally understood that once a Warp God is destroyed, it can no longer act.

Because Warp.

I mean Cegorach & Isha survived the fall but all the others didnt. Would that Include proto-Ynnead?

Ynead was not an Eldar god. It'd be like Wazdakka surviving the Fall - he's simply not involved.

Even if they're supposed to be from the infinity circuits, that imprint would be in the warp just not gestated?

Infinity Circuits are a post-Fall thing.

The warp is weird, but if both of the above are true, it really becomes interesting when you factor in how/what BiggiE's relationship is with it.

If you follow the reincarnated psyker souls theory, did he really need to trick them into giving him more power or was he already that powerful but his presence in the warp wasnt?

Since we dont have a ton of info on the War in Heaven and if GW wants to leave those hanging, we may never know

A lot of this is steeped in "It's unknowably alien". Which works, up until some author explains it. Because then it's knowable. Which isn't compatible with beig unknowable.

Trying to put a 'timescale' on anything related to the warp is a tricky thing. There seems to be contradictary statements saying time has no influence at all in the warp or that time has some influence, just that its much more 'malleable'.

I tend to lean towards the latter argument as there definately seem to be times when the warp is 'calmer' or 'rougher'. For instance during the early days of the galaxy when the old ones were first doing their thing, the warp was a much calmer place as there were essentialy no psychic emanations from sentient races to 'stir it up', which allowed for them to initialy construct the web way.

However the war in heaven really messed up the warp with the old ones using every warp based trick (including creating psychicaly active races like the orks and eldar) to try and get an edge over the C'tan. The chaos gods (excluding slaanesh) probably first originated from the psychic turbulence generated in this era but would only become more 'active' after many millenia of psychic eminations of sentient races made them stronger. Therefore they would have indeed been around during the age of the Eldar but just not powerful enough (yet) to influence things in the material universe as during the age of strife and between M31 to present.

Not sure if this last point is still accepted in the current canon but the war of heaven stired up the warp so much that it created mass daemonic incursions in the years following the war that make the current state of 40k look like a mild inconvenience by comparison. These were not 'aligned' daemons assosiated with any god but were the primordial 'enslavers' who set about feeding on all sentient races and creating a galactic 'locust swarm' of brain jellyfish.
It was this reason in combination with exhastion from many years of fighting that the last few old ones were wiped out and the necrons decided to go into stasis to 'wait out' the storm.

Ever wonder why there is such a big gap in the timeline between the necron great sleep 60 million years ago and the current ages of war in the 40k setting? Its because for most of that time the enslavers were around eating all sentient life before eventulay eating themselves to death from lack of prey and dying out, allowing comapritively young races (like humanity) to evolve to sentience without being eaten. Only a few of the prior creations of the old ones were able to outlast the ensalvers (notably the orks and eldar) and rise to galactic significance in the time since their dying out. While the eldar were in control of the galaxy for a good period of time (many millenia) by no means were they dominatnt for a full 60 million years.