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How do!

Here’s a bit of a poser, as I’m not sure the background offers a particularly solid number. We’re told the Eldar are a dying race, and their numbers are few. But due to the Law Of Large Numbers, that doesn’t stop them being more numerous than we might think.

The biggest kink in this calculation will be Exodites, as we simply don’t know how many Maiden Worlds there are.

Commoragh however is far bigger than we might think. This is because it’s described primarily as a City. Yet the background goes further into it, and it soon becomes clear it’s truly vast. And oddly not a single location as we understand it, instead being comprised of a great many places, brought together by Webway trickery.

Craftworlds, like Commoragh are also faster than I think many give them credit. Certainly I’ve always had the erroneous concept they’re just vast ships. Yet a clearer look into the background says the major ones are the size of small planetoids. And unlike planetoids, it’s not merely the surface that’s inhabited. But adding to the mess I’m seeking to address here, they’re hardly of uniform size. We know of the major ones that continue into the modern era. Iyanden was once the most populace amongst them - and it took near the entirety of Hive Fleet Kraken to lay it low. Not a tendril. The Hive Fleet proper.

Hive Fleet Kraken also gives us some idea of how numerous Eldar “Pirates” might be. After all, Yriel came to Iyanden’s defence with his fleet. Give the sheer size of a Hive Fleet, despite the Eldar being leaps and bounds ahead in terms of ship for ship effectiveness, I suspect Yriel’s fleet must’ve numbered into the hundreds, as otherwise I just can’t see them making that much of a difference, barring (and we cannot rule this out with Eldar) particularly well guided and planned precision attacks on The Most Critical Tyranid Ship Beasts.

Now, that Law of Large Numbers? I put it to you that even if the Eldar, in their totality, number 100,000,000,000 (one hundred billion if I wrote that right) despite being, to us, a mind bogglingly vast population? On the galactic scale, particularly compared to Orks, Humans and Tyranids? It’s really not that many.

In the utter hell scape of Necromunda, which is but one among thousands of Hive Worlds, the population is guesstimated (as a census is utterly impossible) to number around that, depending on your source (it’s noted Hive Primus’s spire region alone holds around 1,000,000,000 humans).

Could they number into the trillions? What do you reckon, Dakka? And at least try to show some working for the sake of conversation.



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Oh, and adding to the fun?

Craftworlds are autonomous, and really only nominally aligned by shared pre-fall philosophy of “this is bad. Let’s bail”.

As such, we can’t say for certain how many there are. Depending on just how isolationist their thinking is, it’s possible some may just be….hanging out in the interstellar void, where nobody goes, because they’ve no reason to, let alone desire to be where traditional resources aren’t.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
How do!

Here’s a bit of a poser, as I’m not sure the background offers a particularly solid number. We’re told the Eldar are a dying race, and their numbers are few. But due to the Law Of Large Numbers, that doesn’t stop them being more numerous than we might think.

The biggest kink in this calculation will be Exodites, as we simply don’t know how many Maiden Worlds there are.

Commoragh however is far bigger than we might think. This is because it’s described primarily as a City. Yet the background goes further into it, and it soon becomes clear it’s truly vast. And oddly not a single location as we understand it, instead being comprised of a great many places, brought together by Webway trickery.

Craftworlds, like Commoragh are also faster than I think many give them credit. Certainly I’ve always had the erroneous concept they’re just vast ships. Yet a clearer look into the background says the major ones are the size of small planetoids. And unlike planetoids, it’s not merely the surface that’s inhabited. But adding to the mess I’m seeking to address here, they’re hardly of uniform size. We know of the major ones that continue into the modern era. Iyanden was once the most populace amongst them - and it took near the entirety of Hive Fleet Kraken to lay it low. Not a tendril. The Hive Fleet proper.

Hive Fleet Kraken also gives us some idea of how numerous Eldar “Pirates” might be. After all, Yriel came to Iyanden’s defence with his fleet. Give the sheer size of a Hive Fleet, despite the Eldar being leaps and bounds ahead in terms of ship for ship effectiveness, I suspect Yriel’s fleet must’ve numbered into the hundreds, as otherwise I just can’t see them making that much of a difference, barring (and we cannot rule this out with Eldar) particularly well guided and planned precision attacks on The Most Critical Tyranid Ship Beasts.

Now, that Law of Large Numbers? I put it to you that even if the Eldar, in their totality, number 100,000,000,000 (one hundred billion if I wrote that right) despite being, to us, a mind bogglingly vast population? On the galactic scale, particularly compared to Orks, Humans and Tyranids? It’s really not that many.

In the utter hell scape of Necromunda, which is but one among thousands of Hive Worlds, the population is guesstimated (as a census is utterly impossible) to number around that, depending on your source (it’s noted Hive Primus’s spire region alone holds around 1,000,000,000 humans).

Could they number into the trillions? What do you reckon, Dakka? And at least try to show some working for the sake of conversation.



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Oh, and adding to the fun?

Craftworlds are autonomous, and really only nominally aligned by shared pre-fall philosophy of “this is bad. Let’s bail”.

As such, we can’t say for certain how many there are. Depending on just how isolationist their thinking is, it’s possible some may just be….hanging out in the interstellar void, where nobody goes, because they’ve no reason to, let alone desire to be where traditional resources aren’t.

Going by a convenient Wiki, we have around a dozen 'major', known Craftworlds, about 20 named minor Craftworlds with varying amounts of background, and about a dozen lost or destroyed Craftworlds. On top of that, there are dozens of Exodite Worlds, about which not much information is given. Working from that base, i think that 100 Billion is a rather low estimate even just for the Craftworlders alone, as even the known major Craftworlds, if they held a population roughly equal to current-day earth, would almost reach that number. I'd say that double to triple that number for Craftworlders is probably closer to 'the truth', as it would allow for major Craftworlds to have populations in the multiple billions, and smaller craftworlds around a billion each. Of course, for the total Aeldari population, you'd have to add Exodites and Corsairs, where we have almost no chance to even guess, and Dark Eldar, which i'd put at roughly the same numbers as Craftworlders purely by gut feeling. All in all, that puts us at a nice round trillion Eldar currently alive-ish, which is of course a lot, but still a dying race at the scale of Warhammer 40k, as the entirety of the race would just about as numerous as a handful of particularly populous Hive Worlds or perhaps an average imperial sub-sector of no particular importance.

There was a thread waaaay back on Warseer that posited that Craftworlds were very non-densely populated. Like a big Craftworld, even being the size of a small planetoid and with much more area within it because it's a large structure, only typically having a population in the low millions, iirc. It was also confirmed by a poster believed to be Gav Thorpe.

If it's in writing in the lore anywhere I'm not sure. But the idea was that you had these really vast "worlds", but they felt pretty empty. It's a neat take. The lack of density itself lends to the feeling of tragic loss.

Something I should’ve included in my original post, relating to Craftworlds.

One Craftworld, albeit already partially depopulated by war, was wiped out by a single chapter of Marines, with help from the Legion of the Damned. Though it’s noted at least some of its population fled to Alaitoc.

Sauce

Now this may be misleading at first glance.

The losses it would’ve suffered prior to The Invaders, erm, invading, would’ve be predominantly its military forces, so it may have had relatively few Aspect Warriors left. Faced with a full Chapter invasion, I posit it’s entirely possible the civilian population buggered off quite early, with any remaining military forces engaging in a holding action, as the writing may have been on the wall. Better lives are saved than squandered, even if it would mean the loss of the Infinity Circuit and the countless souls it harboured. Not an easy decision, but quite possibly the only sensible one, distasteful as it must have been.


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 Insectum7 wrote:
There was a thread waaaay back on Warseer that posited that Craftworlds were very non-densely populated. Like a big Craftworld, even being the size of a small planetoid and with much more area within it because it's a large structure, only typically having a population in the low millions, iirc. It was also confirmed by a poster believed to be Gav Thorpe.

If it's in writing in the lore anywhere I'm not sure. But the idea was that you had these really vast "worlds", but they felt pretty empty. It's a neat take. The lack of density itself lends to the feeling of tragic loss.

True on adding to the tragedy, but it could still be a couple of billion or more and still feel pretty empty.

I’m trying to think of a typically bad analogy*, and I the closest I can come is think of the USA.

As a population? It’s big. Around 333,000,000, give or take. Yet because it’s such a vast country, the population density is comparatively low - especially compared to Britain. Yet even in the U.K. there’s still plenty of space that isn’t urbanised.

If we took the population of China (around 1,400,000,000) and had that as the sole human population? Spread out across the world, even just sticking to the more habitable areas, it’s still be a very low population density.

Given Craftworlds must require some form of maintenance, however esoteric to our eyes, I just can’t see the population being in the low millions as a result.

*they’re never deliberately bad, I’m just confirming to not take them too seriously, as they’re typically thought up on the fly.

There is a throwaway quote from around the Eye of Terror campaign about how the Eldar (i.e. Craftworlders) are outnumbered like 100 to 1. It's probably just meant to convey a feel rather than literally meaning being outnumbered at a ratio of 100:1, but let's go with that.

The Hive Worlds of the Imperium are classed as having upper limit population of 500 billion (3rd edition 40K rulebook, p. 114). The 5th edition rulebook on p. 115 estimates there to be 3.238 * 10^4 or 32,380 hive worlds in the Imperium. If all 1,000,000 worlds of the Imperium were hive worlds with 500 billion people that is 5 * 10^17. That is an UPPER limit for the Imperium's population because we know that not all worlds are maximum population hive worlds.

Minea from that page in the 5th edition rulebook is described as a typical example of a hive world, and it has 154 billion population, well under the 500 billion maximum. Assume we are still generous and give all hive worlds a population of 250 billion to account for less populated worlds elsewhere in the Imperium. 32,380 hive worlds of 250 billion population each is 8.095 * 10^15.

That is more than "500 trillion" for the hive worlds alone.

5 * 10^17 as an upper limit is 5 million billion people, or 500 quadrillion people.

If the Craftworlders are outnumbered 100 to 1, then that would be 5 * 10^15 as an absolute upper limit for the Craftworld population. If we go by 8.095 * 10^15 for the Imperium's hive worlds, then the Craftworlds could still be 8.095 * 10^13.

We are still talking many billions.

I have never agreed with Gav Thorpe about Eldar population as he seems to be of the small numbers school or SciFi Writers have no sense of scale . He envisioned Alaitoc Craftworld to be the size of North America but only having the population of a "small present day city". That is only hundreds of thousands if he means a North American city. Even if he means a small city in China, that is still only several million.

The Iyanden supplement however seems to talk about Iyanden losing billions in the fight against Kraken. It seems at least on this matter, Ward has a better sense of scale than Thorpe.

Oooh! Nice one! Not gonna pretend I really follow the maths, but that’s just me not being versed in it for some decades.


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Also, can you check the EoT quote, and let us know if it’s referring to Total Population, or Active Military, as again that’s going to impact.

Yes every Craftworlder is a highly trained soldier, but I can’t see them deploying everything unless trouble is literally knocking on their door?

I like the idea of a craft world hanging about doing an Axiom out in the void, with all the residents whooping about in hover chairs and getting fat

 Flinty wrote:
I like the idea of a craft world hanging about doing an Axiom out in the void, with all the residents whooping about in hover chairs and getting fat

Guess it depends on how they function overall. We know Eldar make use of solar winds as a means of propulsion, but given it’s been a while since I had the pleasure of reading the BFG books (must add those to my buy list!) I’m not sure that’s their sole means of non-warp/Webway propulsion.

Nor can immediately say if a Craftworld needs occasional solar radiation for whatever purpose? The 40K Wiki suggests they’re purely powered by psychic energy, but that doesn’t rule out needing external stimuli/fuel/whatevs as part of it.


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I think we might also need to keep an eye on the origin of Craftworlds.

Seems they were originally trading ships, which would go off on decades long trading missions before returning to the core of the Eldar Empire with their goodies.

It was this infrequent core contact which allowed their crews (described as hundreds of Eldar families) to discern the descent as it unfolded. And prior to the Fall occurring, they were able to onboard Seers and other still relatively sane Eldar) before making off into the wider Galaxy.

And ever since, they’ve grown along with their populations.

Now that raises the interesting suggestion there may have been thousands to begin with? Or at least many hundred. Even if say, half didn’t make the Minimum Safe Distance? That’s still far, far more than the Known Craftworlds of 40k.

Of course, it’s entirely possible for them to have merged such early vessels, indeed I suspect that may have been essential at some point (perhaps an outbound flight meeting an inbound post fall, and finding it a suitable way to share resources) - but as with a lot of this thread, that’s mostly just speculation, albeit mostly couched in actually being possible.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
I like the idea of a craft world hanging about doing an Axiom out in the void, with all the residents whooping about in hover chairs and getting fat

Guess it depends on how they function overall. We know Eldar make use of solar winds as a means of propulsion, but given it’s been a while since I had the pleasure of reading the BFG books (must add those to my buy list!) I’m not sure that’s their sole means of non-warp/Webway propulsion.

Nor can immediately say if a Craftworld needs occasional solar radiation for whatever purpose? The 40K Wiki suggests they’re purely powered by psychic energy, but that doesn’t rule out needing external stimuli/fuel/whatevs as part of it.

The Eldar ships had "solar sails" but from a physics point of view the light pressure from solar sails would give minimal mobility, and the amount of energy would fall rapidly with distance since light intensity has an inverse squared relationship to distance. The purpose was to convey a sailing ship feel to the Eldar. The Eldar ship models had engine pods, so it could be hypothesized that the sails actually catch exotic particles emitted by a star and use that to power the engine pods.

As originally written, Craftworlds supposedly derived their energy from the Infinity Circuits which drew power from the warp and this power could then be converted to more mundane forms of energy such as light and heat. However the Craftworlds were also depicted in art with sails. In Gav Thorpe's Path of the Eldar series, Alaitoc was in a star system recharging using its sails, so Gav seems to go with a system where the Craftworld still needs to replenish its energy stores every so often. This was why plotwise the Imperium was able to catch Alaitoc, because it was temporarily immobile in the star system and still not fully recharged.

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I think we might also need to keep an eye on the origin of Craftworlds.

Seems they were originally trading ships, which would go off on decades long trading missions before returning to the core of the Eldar Empire with their goodies.

It was this infrequent core contact which allowed their crews (described as hundreds of Eldar families) to discern the descent as it unfolded. And prior to the Fall occurring, they were able to onboard Seers and other still relatively sane Eldar) before making off into the wider Galaxy.

And ever since, they’ve grown along with their populations.

Now that raises the interesting suggestion there may have been thousands to begin with? Or at least many hundred. Even if say, half didn’t make the Minimum Safe Distance? That’s still far, far more than the Known Craftworlds of 40k.

Of course, it’s entirely possible for them to have merged such early vessels, indeed I suspect that may have been essential at some point (perhaps an outbound flight meeting an inbound post fall, and finding it a suitable way to share resources) - but as with a lot of this thread, that’s mostly just speculation, albeit mostly couched in actually being possible.

The background is a mashed together mix of the older and newer. Some Craftworlds were trading ships, such as Biel-Tan. Others like Mymeara seem to have been custom built for the designed purpose of being an ark, as the Craftworld faction poured resources into preparing for their exodus.

Even on the bit i mentioned? What constitutes a family?

Is it purely the nuclear family (mum, dad, sprogs), or the “whole” family (nuclear, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins etc), because the latter is going to be a much large population base than the former, especially given the longevity of Eldar, even if we assume “2.4 children” families the norm, and I don’t think that’s something we can assume, again due to the longevity of Eldar, especially pre-Fall.

In fact I’m thinking it must mean the wider family, simply because of how long they’re said to have been away trading before returning.

Saim-Hann is organized around clans so it is likely the conception of family is wider than just nuclear family. However in one of Gav Thorpe's later books, Wild Rider I think, he reveals that originally Saim-Hann's clans were somewhat arbitrary. In other words, the initial population aboard Saim-Hann grouped themselves into clans when in actuality they might not originally have been related at all. Of course after thousands of years, they very well might be related due to intermarriage etc...

Should probably share the sauce I’m working from I suppose.

https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Craftworld

And there it is. Note it suggests since The Fall, (no not that The Fall. That’s Mark E Smith you’re thinking of) Craftworlds have expanded in size by 10-100 times their original size. So if we can get a reasonable feel for their Original Likely Complement, consider you’d probably want such a ship to be comfortable for that Complement, then consider how many could reasonably be carried/sustained in the early days post-Fall, we may have a decent foundation to speculate further.

I would not rely on that wiki. It is rife with errors or inserted fan fiction/speculation that readers might mistakenly take as "the truth".

Iracundus wrote:
I would not rely on that wiki. It is rife with errors or inserted fan fiction/speculation that readers might mistakenly take as "the truth".

This. Lexicanum is a far better source.

Compare the Idharae pages on Lexicanum and the 40k Wiki just as an example to see how much of that is probably an arse pull.

Never forget the infamous chapter master of the Sons of Malice, Ba'Kel Draak on there who never existed and it was someone being a smart arse and simply made an anagram of "Kaleb Daark".

I would say that "Eldar are a dying race" means less about the numbers and more about a once spectacular empire falling and their disparate ancestors living in the ruins of their hubris.

They still function, but their losses are not easily replaced.

It's better to never give exact numbers in scifi because otherwise people will keep track.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Even on the bit i mentioned? What constitutes a family?

Is it purely the nuclear family (mum, dad, sprogs), or the “whole” family (nuclear, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins etc), because the latter is going to be a much large population base than the former, especially given the longevity of Eldar, even if we assume “2.4 children” families the norm, and I don’t think that’s something we can assume, again due to the longevity of Eldar, especially pre-Fall.

In fact I’m thinking it must mean the wider family, simply because of how long they’re said to have been away trading before returning.

If we go by the somewhat outdated and deliberately presented as the speculation of an unreliable narrator Xenology, natural Eldar reproduction is a convoluted process that necessitates multiple fertilizations, not necessary with the same part-father, and it takes years to gestate a single embryo. That probably leads to a tighter focus on the core family, however large that may be, because conceiving a child is a much more significant and ressource-intensive project for them.

There is also the issue of Spirit Stones: they need to have one ready to protect the children from Slaanesh, and apparently new stones have to be sourced from the crone worlds under serious danger, so there's another bottleneck right there.

The Dark Eldar just grow the majority of their necessary demographic replenishment in vats for a reason

 Grimtuff wrote:

Iracundus wrote:
I would not rely on that wiki. It is rife with errors or inserted fan fiction/speculation that readers might mistakenly take as "the truth".

This. Lexicanum is a far better source.

Compare the Idharae pages on Lexicanum and the 40k Wiki just as an example to see how much of that is probably an arse pull.

Never forget the infamous chapter master of the Sons of Malice, Ba'Kel Draak on there who never existed and it was someone being a smart arse and simply made an anagram of "Kaleb Daark".

Actually the Idharae article from the 40K Wiki isn't too bad but it's just one article. Much of the material is taken from the Iyanden supplement almost verbatim, though they should ideally then quote it. The problem is their citation or rather lack of specific citation for each specific bit of information. They just dump all their supposed sources at the bottom of the page with no indication of what information came from which source. A reader would have to go through all those sources to check which bits are actually GW material, which bits are outright false, and which are speculative but inconclusive (but which might be stated as conclusive on the wiki). That's what I had to do to cross check the veracity of that information. Rather than outright 100% falsehood, it is the more subtly mixed in misinformation that is the problem as all too often people seem to treat a rumor or speculative theory as true. The problem is readers don't realistically have the time to check all the sources just to check or disprove one specific bit of information, on a regular basis.

Doc, you know the answer to this question already. It's the same answer that should always be given for settings with Elves in it.

To whit, if there is one still alive, there are too many.

A bit like lawyers in that regard, arguably

Well, if we can find better citations which clash with the info in the link I provided, so much the better.


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Tsagualsa wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Even on the bit i mentioned? What constitutes a family?

Is it purely the nuclear family (mum, dad, sprogs), or the “whole” family (nuclear, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins etc), because the latter is going to be a much large population base than the former, especially given the longevity of Eldar, even if we assume “2.4 children” families the norm, and I don’t think that’s something we can assume, again due to the longevity of Eldar, especially pre-Fall.

In fact I’m thinking it must mean the wider family, simply because of how long they’re said to have been away trading before returning.

If we go by the somewhat outdated and deliberately presented as the speculation of an unreliable narrator Xenology, natural Eldar reproduction is a convoluted process that necessitates multiple fertilizations, not necessary with the same part-father, and it takes years to gestate a single embryo. That probably leads to a tighter focus on the core family, however large that may be, because conceiving a child is a much more significant and ressource-intensive project for them.

There is also the issue of Spirit Stones: they need to have one ready to protect the children from Slaanesh, and apparently new stones have to be sourced from the crone worlds under serious danger, so there's another bottleneck right there.

The Dark Eldar just grow the majority of their necessary demographic replenishment in vats for a reason

There’s also the consideration of when the Dark Eldar tech dates from. I suspect it’s pre-fall, but not necessarily something those that would become Craftworlds might’ve use, or even had access to.

I say that as we know the “grow you back from just a finger” is the preserve of the Haemonculi Covens, and we’re told that at least some of their number have lived since before The Fall. And as a technology, what better way to enable a being truly unfettered experience and excess than a form of immortality. Do whatever you want, as there are no longer consequences to your actions (as we can presume their society had become entirely permissive during that time).

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Given Craftworlds must require some form of maintenance, however esoteric to our eyes, I just can’t see the population being in the low millions as a result.

Two things to this:

WHY must they require maintenence? Maybe they don't, using comfortably sustaining alien technology.

If maintenence is required, why are Eldar themselves required for it? I understand that prior to the fall, much of their wars were fought by autonomous machines. They could have robots still doing all the house chores.

Well, the Wraithbone is alive, and whilst I’ll need to go looking for a proper reference, needs to be shaped and for want of a better term, tamed.

Plus from the other sources, Craftworlds are described as being expanded to suit the population.

So whilst Iyanden and others that have suffered dramatic depopulating events which would lead to the Echoing Halls suggested, I’m not sure that would be universally the case.

Now that doesn’t mean they’re not spacious and sparsely populated, especially by Imperial points of reference, but to me it’s not suggestive of large portions being entirely unpopulated.

"Expanded to fit the population" is a useful clause, although it's possible that it could be referring to much smaller Craftworlds that are growing.

Iirc, at the time of The Fall, even Craftworlds that were far from the Eye suffered huge losses. If the major Craftworlds were appropriately populated before The Fall, and then suffered 90% losses from psychic shock, then just never managed to be repopulated, we'd also get the Empty Halls scenario.

Frustratingly that seems to depend on the source.

Articles regarding Wraithbone describes its psychic nature helping the Craftworlds avoid the full impact of The Fall as it acted as a psychic shield.

Sadly I can’t find anything to confirm Wraithbone needs tending/pruning, so I’ll withdraw that concept from the discussion, until such time as a decent reference can be found.

Fabius Bile had a wraithbone garden on his ship. IIRC it was tended to by a group of Noise Marines who helped it grow throughout the ships superstructure.

Which is what the Eldar are confirmed to do (Bonesingers only really being needed for complex things)

But I concede shaping doesn’t automatically mean it needs maintaining, outside of specific damage.

 Insectum7 wrote:
There was a thread waaaay back on Warseer that posited that Craftworlds were very non-densely populated. Like a big Craftworld, even being the size of a small planetoid and with much more area within it because it's a large structure, only typically having a population in the low millions, iirc. It was also confirmed by a poster believed to be Gav Thorpe.

If it's in writing in the lore anywhere I'm not sure. But the idea was that you had these really vast "worlds", but they felt pretty empty. It's a neat take. The lack of density itself lends to the feeling of tragic loss.

It actually took the size of a craftworld (from BFG), made it extremely sparsely populated (like fewer than one individual per cubic kilometer) and the population was in billions. The conclusion was more like a single large Craftworld, even really lightly populated, has more population than the entire Tau Empire.

Then there’s Commoragh, which is like an Imperial Hive On Acid.

So vast it’s possible not even Asdrubael Vect is entirely sure of how large his domain is, especially if sections Just Behave Themselves when it comes to following orders.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Then there’s Commoragh, which is like an Imperial Hive On Acid.

So vast it’s possible not even Asdrubael Vect is entirely sure of how large his domain is, especially if sections Just Behave Themselves when it comes to following orders.

Commoragh houses multiple 'stolen suns' and has entire sub-realms that have fallen to demons, general warp weirdness or even stranger things like the Nanomachine Plague, it literally defies comprehension or description. 'City' does not begin to cover it, it's more like a built-out star system or Dyson sphere.

 Insectum7 wrote:
"Expanded to fit the population" is a useful clause, although it's possible that it could be referring to much smaller Craftworlds that are growing.

I'm too lazy to go grab my 2nd ed. codex, but the impression I got is that the Eldar have a hard cap on their population because they reincarnate and with creation of Slaanesh, no new souls can be made.

That's why they all have a spirit stone which can capture their soul when they die and then it gets plugged into the infinity circuit where it waits for a new body. This means they are slowly but inevitably dying out, each generation having less young.

How the Exodites factor into this I don't recall.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
"Expanded to fit the population" is a useful clause, although it's possible that it could be referring to much smaller Craftworlds that are growing.

I'm too lazy to go grab my 2nd ed. codex, but the impression I got is that the Eldar have a hard cap on their population because they reincarnate and with creation of Slaanesh, no new souls can be made.

That's why they all have a spirit stone which can capture their soul when they die and then it gets plugged into the infinity circuit where it waits for a new body. This means they are slowly but inevitably dying out, each generation having less young.

How the Exodites factor into this I don't recall.

Iirc it's the other way around, before Slaanesh their souls went to the Warp, but stayed coherent and reincarnated if they wanted to, unlike e.g. human souls. Since the birth of Slaanesh, they can't do that anymore, as their souls will immediately be devoured if they go into the Warp. Waystones and the Infinity Circuit are basically hiding places where they have to stay for all eternity in order not to be devoured. That's why breaking Soulstones or whole infinity circuits is so horrible to them, and why mobilizing Wraith-Constructs is so risky and despised. They can make new souls, but every new soul is automatically damned to either live forever, either in a biological body or in the Circuit, or be eaten by Slaanesh. The appeal of Ynnead is that their birth would lead to a way out of the Slaanesh-trap and a better Eldar afterlife.