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How do!

Just a hopefully quick poser for you.

As is well established, the major Eldar factions all have some way to cheat a final death and the soul being devoured by Slaanesh.

Dark Eldar can leave a tiny part of them behind before action, with a soul tether. And overtime a new body can be grown from that part.

Craftworld and Exodites have the Infinity Circuit/World Spirit which, via Waystones can preserve the soul as a sort of ghost.

What isn’t apparent is whether those two technologies could be combined - so a fresh body cloned from “scratch”, and the soul of a fallen Eldar transplanted into it.

At least….until the Ynnari happened. See, to my understanding, Yvraine, and possibly other Ynnari, might be able to do that specific trick. And if so? We’re looking at, outside of staggering disaster, near Necron level immortality, your soul being given many replacement bodies over the millennia, preserving your knowledge and experience, in theory, forever.

More importantly? It could mean every Eldar soul currently in an Infinity Circuit/World Spirit could be reincarnated, giving a staggering boost to the numbers of a currently dwindling race.

What do you think?

I'll admit to being a bit rusty on Ynnari lore - but isn't Yvraine's ability to resurrect people kind of a magical ability that kicks in at lore-important moments, rather than something she can turn off and on like a machine?

Even if she can resurrect a few people every so often its not going to add up to very much.

There's wider issues that GW seems to want to have the pre-fall Eldar life and death cycle one of continuous reincarnation, but its not really clear how you square that with the Dark Eldar vat born. This gives rise to lots of debate amongst fans that Half Born don't have souls, or the souls are weirdly mutilated (even more so than Drukhari in general, and in turn this explains why wider Eldar society hasn't adopted this technology, preferring to stay a dying race for the past 10k+ years). But I don't think GW has ever been explicit on the subject.

I guess it depends on how you look at Yvraine.

She’s still fairly new to her powers, and hasn’t had much more than a century to really fiddle around with them and see what she can do. Not is it clear if, perhaps, it’s a psychic discipline she might be able to share with others.

If so? I think being able to create empty bodies, and then transfer stored souls into them would be possible.

As for the regeneration from pain thing? I do wonder if that’s absolutely necessary, or just a cheap and cost effective way to do it, leaving the Haemonculi to do more important things, like turning Dave into a table. If so, that leaves room for more rapid fixer upper jobs, using exotic unguents and chemicals and that to speed it along - provided you’ve nothing more important to do. Like turning Dave into a table.

Sorry, Dave.

How does any soul form in 40k?

A baby seemingly grows a soul as it grows itself, there's no soul without a body and it's pretty clearly a mirror of the physical, as all warp stuff is.

And identical twins don't share souls, even eldar identical twins. Their souls are very entwined, but they are still distinct entities.

As a clone is no different to an identical twin (or rather, an identical twin is a naturally occurring clone), then there should be no reason that any clones have any soul 'issues'.

The eldar just had the advantage that their souls didn't diffuse in the warp after death, so they could latch onto a nascent soul forming as a baby is forming and be reborn. You could argue that the soul reincarnation thing is a bit creepy, like a bit of soul cannibalism....

I feel like resurrecting a body so that the soul which originally inhabited is a completely different metaphysical act than creating a body without a soul to be inhabited by another random soul without a body of its own.

I think that a soul and a body a created as a unit, and only become distinct from one another when the body dies.

So even if you're growing a clone, it has its own soul, which cannot reliably be destroyed or displaced by an incoming soul which once had a different body of its own.

Wraith constructs can be inhabited by souls that once had bodies of their own specifically because they don't already have souls.

And since DE clones are "grown" from the original body, the soul is already predisposed to inhabit the new body- or rather, the reconstructed body into which it was originally "born." *

But putting a disembodied spirit into another spirit's body? Yeah.... I don't think so. The soul you want to put into the body may not want to go for a number of reasons. The soul that's already in that body may not want to leave (or share).

And then there's the physical compatibility issues on top of that. I just don't see it.

* I put the word "born" in quotes due to some human notions of soul- many sects of Buddhism believe that souls seeking kharmic perfection linger in an immaterial form, choosing a body to inhabit at the moment of it's conception based on its potential to resolve their kharmic imbalance. A Kendo Sensei once asked me if I thought it was possible that my soul chose this body, this lifetime, because it offered me an opportunity to resolve a kharmic imbalance created by poverty consciousness experienced in my previous body.

I'm really not a fan of the addition of cloning to the Dark Eldar for this very reason!
It takes all the threat out of them dying or their population dwindling, as they can just be cloned anyway.

Considering the level of soul manipulation we see from the Ynnari in the books, I see no reason they couldn't do as you have described. Clone a load of blanks and then rip the souls out of an infinite circuit and into their new fleshy homes XD

My impression is that cloning isn't without its downsides otherwise the Eldar would be doing it all the time. Even souls preserved in the Infinity Circuit are not in perfect harmony.

Also lets not forget Necrons are technically alive but without souls.

It seems that within the setting the concept of a living creature is a duality of body and soul. The line between the two being incredibly hazy, but its clearly there.

A soul can live without a body and a body can live without a soul but either one is an incomplete life in some way. Furthermore in the normal run of things the separation results in death with the body rotting in the material world and the soul heading into the Warp.

Methods to circumvent that tend to come with a cost. A lot of Necrons are basically mindless drones; and those who have intelligence can be driven insane.



So I think there is still a risk with cloning; its not the perfect solution.

We’ve also seen the Craftworld Eldar able to well, blend souls, after a fashion.

The armour of a Phoenix Lord or Exarch is the best known, perhaps only example. There, whomever takes up the mantle becomes the original Eldar, but with their own knowledge and experience added to it.

So, there is at least some potential for multiple souls to co-habit.

Whether there’s a hard limit on doing that with flesh? Much less clear. Could simply be it’s seen as icky and sinful. Could be that, for whatever reason, it’s just not possible.

Again, Yvraine may be the bridge for that. Clone a baby. Yes, it comes with its own soul, but hasn’t yet developed a personality or knowledge base of its own. And so you introduce a soul from the infinity circuit, blending the two together.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
We’ve also seen the Craftworld Eldar able to well, blend souls, after a fashion.

The armour of a Phoenix Lord or Exarch is the best known, perhaps only example. There, whomever takes up the mantle becomes the original Eldar, but with their own knowledge and experience added to it.

So, there is at least some potential for multiple souls to co-habit.

Yes, but from the Eldar perspective that's a horrible fate. Those blended souls are all also already lost to Khaine. The Eldar are queasy enough about sticking souls in wraith constructs as it is. I can't see them pursuing a technology that would give them the ability to double stack souls in one body when the only examples of it in practice are the Exarchs. No one wants to end up that way.

Whether there’s a hard limit on doing that with flesh? Much less clear. Could simply be it’s seen as icky and sinful. Could be that, for whatever reason, it’s just not possible.

Again, Yvraine may be the bridge for that. Clone a baby. Yes, it comes with its own soul, but hasn’t yet developed a personality or knowledge base of its own. And so you introduce a soul from the infinity circuit, blending the two together.

And then you get Alia Atreides.

 Kroem wrote:
I'm really not a fan of the addition of cloning to the Dark Eldar for this very reason!
It takes all the threat out of them dying or their population dwindling, as they can just be cloned anyway.

Considering the level of soul manipulation we see from the Ynnari in the books, I see no reason they couldn't do as you have described. Clone a load of blanks and then rip the souls out of an infinite circuit and into their new fleshy homes XD

Dark Elves in every setting almost always need some form of technology to square the "not-breeding dying race" bit with "murdering each other every other paragraph".

Tend to agree multiple souls in one body gives rise to abominations. I don't think the Eldar are keen on what happens to Exarchs.

Honestly its one of the things I find hard with the old Drizzit books and the Drow - they are SO bonkers at backstabbing each other at all tiers of society you can easily lose immersion just pausing and going "Wait how the heck do they even form a functional society; or have kids or just about do anything that requires more than one drow at any one moment"

So yeah Dark Eldar having clones is at least one way to help cope with a species that's hyper distrusting and hyper violent and has a high rate of murder

Arshbombe wrote:Yes, but from the Eldar perspective that's a horrible fate. Those blended souls are all also already lost to Khaine. The Eldar are queasy enough about sticking souls in wraith constructs as it is. I can't see them pursuing a technology that would give them the ability to double stack souls in one body when the only examples of it in practice are the Exarchs. No one wants to end up that way.

True, but that’s because they’re disturbing the dead to fight

What I’m proposing here? Is disturbing the dead to once again be among the living. Properly among the living.

On the Alita Atredies thing? Depends on whether your cloning produces teeny wee babbies, or relatively blank matured bodies. Either way? Despite them having their own soul, whatever it is behind Phoenix Lords and Exarchs? You’re adding an experienced soul to one which is pretty much a blank slate.

It’s not the same as Phoenix/Exarch, where it’s already long lived experienced souls melding. This would be one experienced soul and all its memories, and something that is yet to truly live. So on the face of it, there’s no loss of a personality.

Of course, that then raises the question of “but wouldn’t that just dilute the Big Soul”. And the answer to that is, I’m afraid “buggered if I know”

Tyel wrote:
Tend to agree multiple souls in one body gives rise to abominations.

Hey better not say that around the Inquisition buddy!

 Overread wrote:
My impression is that cloning isn't without its downsides otherwise the Eldar would be doing it all the time. Even souls preserved in the Infinity Circuit are not in perfect harmony.

Also lets not forget Necrons are technically alive but without souls.

It seems that within the setting the concept of a living creature is a duality of body and soul. The line between the two being incredibly hazy, but its clearly there.

A soul can live without a body and a body can live without a soul but either one is an incomplete life in some way. Furthermore in the normal run of things the separation results in death with the body rotting in the material world and the soul heading into the Warp.

Methods to circumvent that tend to come with a cost. A lot of Necrons are basically mindless drones; and those who have intelligence can be driven insane.



So I think there is still a risk with cloning; its not the perfect solution.

We know though that a blank or pariah doesn't suffer or seem incomplete without a soul. We also know that animals have a warp presence - in fact all of realspace is reflected in the warp, it's just that souls are particularly uniquely concentrated.

The thing that makes this discussion difficult is what exactly a soul is. The retconning of the primarchs to be warp entities possessing flesh vessels makes it seem like a soul is a separate entity that connects to a physical body. But I'm sure they'd put that down to super special primarch shenanigans....

As realspace reflects into the warp, I would argue a soul is a reflection of a particular form of consciousness. I say particular because some species have less of a reflection than others without being any less sapient. This would mean a soul strengthens and develops as the creature matures, reflecting its mind becoming more complex, compounding the warp reflection. There is no indication that a soul exists before the entity is conceived/born, so there has to be some realspace catalyst for its creation. The nascent conscious mind seems to be the best explanation to me.

So from there you can see that a clone should have no issues with a soul, whether grafted or grown naturally. But it does mean that the infant soul forming is either removed or subsumed by the larger more powerful soul that is being added, which makes it grim.

And like I said, identical twins still have their own souls, they don't share a soul. The only examples of this are Alpharius and the close bond of eldar twins, but there's no indication that apart from alpharius twins have one soul between them.

Thus, clones being identical twins of the original should actually be generating their own souls. If their growth is accelerated then you'd have an adult body with a foetal soul, making it easy to cut out and replace, or consume.



Also the entire Votann species are clones...

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


On the Alita Atredies thing? Depends on whether your cloning produces teeny wee babbies, or relatively blank matured bodies. Either way? Despite them having their own soul, whatever it is behind Phoenix Lords and Exarchs? You’re adding an experienced soul to one which is pretty much a blank slate.

It’s not the same as Phoenix/Exarch, where it’s already long lived experienced souls melding. This would be one experienced soul and all its memories, and something that is yet to truly live. So on the face of it, there’s no loss of a personality.

In adding an old soul to a new body, whether infant or adult, that old soul eclipses the development of the new soul. That's where I think the Eldar would have the problem. You're erasing a new individual in favor of an old one, effectively committing infanticide of a kind. Again, the only experience they have with this is with the Exarchs, who I imagine are not really forthcoming about how things work. The autarchs will know, however, that every time the Exarch gets reincarnated that it took essentially the sacrifice of an aspect warrior losing their own identity in the gestalt consciousness.

Yet, when it’s that and a real shot at returning to your former glory (suddenly billions, potentially trillions more Eldar), or continuing your slow march to extinction? The morals get horribly skewed.

It would also add some further flavour to the Ynnari. Not a nice or palatable one, but one very much in-keeping with the setting and its tone.

The thing is preserving old souls is actually detrimental to the Eldar. If they sacrifice the potential for new souls by preserving the old they will end up just like the Imperium - trapped in dogged old ways, old thinking and stuck forever as they are.

Which to be fair with their long lifespans; is already what they are. They've been in a millennia depression and fear since they birthed Slaanesh.


Ynnead is actually the first sense of them bringing some kind of larger scale attempt at unity and striking back; at actually taking territory and pushing back at the other lesser races outside of manipulation in the background; and part of that is newer Eldar chomping at the bit to actually "DO" something as opposed to following the old ways of hiding on craftworlds; in the warp tunnels; on fringe feral worlds

Considering that we saw Necrons and Tyranids make big strikes being in the duel launch box I'd love to see Ynnead or Craftworld in the launch box one edition doing a huge "here we are we are fighting back"

(or Exodites - oh gods yes please Exodites)

Still nothing preventing them having babies, and entirely new members.

This is simply a path to a form of immortality.

Granted, an immortal race is hardly going to be dynamic. But the Eldar are already bogged down in tradition and mythic cycles.

I think you are sort of running into the issues of Ynnari Lore.

Which unfortunately has a been a bit dead on arrival. It was probably meant to herald a bit reset/AoSification - and instead its kind of just being pushed under the carpet. Destined to chase a car they can never catch.

I've always liked Eldar lore when its pan-faction. It does seem weird that someone isn't trying to combine Ynnari necromancy, Haemonculi technology and say the Exodites to create "something". It wouldn't be a Necrons, Orks or Tyranids - but it could be Tau maybe.

But if you've got a successfully selling CWE range and maybe even a DE range (bring on the 11th edition release pls GW), and Harlequins also exist, do you want another one?

Given how long lived Eldar are? Yvraine and her followers struggling to really convince the majority makes sense.

A couple of centuries is a few generations to humans. To Eldar? Not so much. And so you’ve a naturally conservative, by comparison, race.

Craftworlders are doing….mostly fine. I mean, the Path system works, and their Craftworlds have, taking the long view, suffered pretty few losses since it all went horribly wrong.

Commorite all still have the belief/delusion that “but if I stick at it, one day I’ll be the one ordering Dave to be turned into a table”.

Harlequins are playing their role. Literally.

And Yvraine, as a new option hasn’t really been long enough to have had a dramatic an impact as say, Guilliman returning,

But I still think what I’ve proposed is sufficiently attractive, morally ambiguous and potentially horrifying enough to work in 40K, and with the Ynnari. A semi-parasitic immortality, but still arguably victimless. Depending on how liberal you want to be.

Craftworld are surviving but poorly. Their reproduction rates are low so the Eldar have problems with being out-sized by many other factions. Plus there's the issue that many are super scared of death and the risk of Slaanesh.

Plus lets not forget they have to carry Soul Stones on them which have to be carefully harvested from Chaos Corrupted Worlds that were once Eldar Worlds.

In theory this even puts a limit on their maximum population - once they exhaust the accessible supply they can't use that trick any more to preserve their souls.

Eldar are holding on by a thread - of all the factions they are perhaps the second most vulnerable to being utterly destroyed. The other being Tau who have mostly survived by having plot armour that makes Space Marine plot armour look like paper.

However whilst each cycle the Tau grow stronger; the Eldar at best maintain themselves. As a result in the long term you could easily see Tau reaching a point where they become an actual major threat and player whilst Eldar would be constantly chipped away at.

So from there you can see that a clone should have no issues with a soul, whether grafted or grown naturally. But it does mean that the infant soul forming is either removed or subsumed by the larger more powerful soul that is being added, which makes it grim.

I think it's kind of implied that this is just how the eldar species works by default. Like, eldar are being born in M41. They have souls. Presumably those souls aren't being reincarnated because Slaanesh. But we also know that eldar could reincarnate pre-Slaanesh. So it seems to me that in a pre-Slaanesh world, babies would be born, had the capacity to grow their own fresh souls, but were typically inhabited by a reincarnating soul. So yeah. "Soul cannibalism." Albeit, eating a weak, not fully developed soul.

The nature of eldar twins kind of supports this, I think. We know twins share a soul, but that their soul eventually splits like a cell doing mitosis as the two halves become sufficiently distinct. Which makes me think souls do, in fact, grow and power up over time. Which is also inkeeping with the discussion about reincarnation as a mechanism for "leveling up" eldar souls that we had a while back.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:
Craftworld are surviving but poorly. Their reproduction rates are low so the Eldar have problems with being out-sized by many other factions. Plus there's the issue that many are super scared of death and the risk of Slaanesh.

Plus lets not forget they have to carry Soul Stones on them which have to be carefully harvested from Chaos Corrupted Worlds that were once Eldar Worlds.

In theory this even puts a limit on their maximum population - once they exhaust the accessible supply they can't use that trick any more to preserve their souls.

Eldar are holding on by a thread - of all the factions they are perhaps the second most vulnerable to being utterly destroyed. The other being Tau who have mostly survived by having plot armour that makes Space Marine plot armour look like paper.

However whilst each cycle the Tau grow stronger; the Eldar at best maintain themselves. As a result in the long term you could easily see Tau reaching a point where they become an actual major threat and player whilst Eldar would be constantly chipped away at.

Yes and no to all of that. The eldar birth rate issue is often overstated. Left to their own devices, we know that craftworld populations are prone to increasing. The protag of Path of the Outcast comes home to find he has new cousins. Iyanden was forming colonies at one point prior to the triple woe. Etc.

And while the need for spirit stones does theoretically put a ap on population growth, I don't think I've ever seen a single bit of lore where that actually stopped someone from having a kid. It seems to be more of a, "Oh hey. We're low on milk. Send someone to pick up milk soon," situation.

So it seems like craftworld populations do trend upwards... until the grimdark happens and they suddenly have to sacrifice a huge chunk of their population to one conflict or another. So they're at risk of extinction because the galaxy's hostility might overtake their birth rates; not because their birth rates are that low to begin with.

 Hellebore wrote:
How does any soul form in 40k?



As a clone is no different to an identical twin (or rather, an identical twin is a naturally occurring clone), then there should be no reason that any clones have any soul 'issues'.

The clones with "soul issues" we do see in the lore are usually not "straight" clones but involve some sort of horrible dabbling:

The failed Primarch clones pretty surely failed because Primarch are not exactly natural beings and have some sort of warp-meddling involved with their creation that the cloners are just not able to understand.

The famously unlucky Afriel-strain clones are not "natural" clones but concoted up from a weird mix of donor material (that of largely famous imperial heroes, which probably does add weird warp echoes from empathic resonance).

Fabius Bile's clones all carry the same blight as the original, even when the source material is "pure", but that's probably because it's a warp-borne soul corruption and Fabius' soul is... unhealthy.

On the other hand, Kriegsmen are all clones and do not seem to suffer any specifically cloning-related issues (other than their extremely corroded culture, but that's just the Imperium doing Imperium things) and the hordes of cloned mechanicus thralls and base bodies seem to be as "fine" as their general circumstances would allow.

Vat grown isn't the same thing as cloning though.

Vat grown is just taking gamete banks and making babies to grow in artificial uteri.

The Kriegers are vat grown and built from the tissue donations from previous kriegers.

 Hellebore wrote:
Vat grown isn't the same thing as cloning though.

Vat grown is just taking gamete banks and making babies to grow in artificial uteri.

The Kriegers are vat grown and built from the tissue donations from previous kriegers.

AFAIK, the relatively recent novel "Krieg" heavily implies that they're actually all clones of o.g. Kriegsman Colonel Jurten, but that may be down to me taking internet "wisdom" for actual fact, as i have not read that novel myself.

I always thought it was implied Vitae Wombs were basically giant IVF-surrogate machines i.e. the genetic requirement is extracted then put into a massive petrie dish equivalent, then successful ones are put in the tube and speed grown.

Tsagualsa wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Vat grown isn't the same thing as cloning though.

Vat grown is just taking gamete banks and making babies to grow in artificial uteri.

The Kriegers are vat grown and built from the tissue donations from previous kriegers.

AFAIK, the relatively recent novel "Krieg" heavily implies that they're actually all clones of o.g. Kriegsman Colonel Jurten, but that may be down to me taking internet "wisdom" for actual fact, as i have not read that novel myself.

Ah really? Where do the Krieg women come from then? I'm sure there is a short story about a genestealer on Krieg that has women in it.

It would make sense that Dark Eldar are grown in artificial wombs, as carrying a baby around for 22 months is a health hazard for a kabalite warrior or wych!

N.b. I realise human gestation periods are shorter, but I assume Eldar are more like elephants.

 Kroem wrote:

Tsagualsa wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Vat grown isn't the same thing as cloning though.

Vat grown is just taking gamete banks and making babies to grow in artificial uteri.

The Kriegers are vat grown and built from the tissue donations from previous kriegers.

AFAIK, the relatively recent novel "Krieg" heavily implies that they're actually all clones of o.g. Kriegsman Colonel Jurten, but that may be down to me taking internet "wisdom" for actual fact, as i have not read that novel myself.

Ah really? Where do the Krieg women come from then? I'm sure there is a short story about a genestealer on Krieg that has women in it.

It would make sense that Dark Eldar are grown in artificial wombs, as carrying a baby around for 22 months is a health hazard for a kabalite warrior or wych!

N.b. I realise human gestation periods are shorter, but I assume Eldar are more like elephants.

I have no idea really, it would not be the first time different authors have just thrown in whatever they found cool without doing their research, but as i said, i have not personally read the novel in question so it's all hearsay anyway.

Regarding Eldar: if you have a chance to get Xenology, there's some (in-universe, speculative) stuff in it about Eldar reproduction, and it's even weirder than you think...

Multiple stages, if memory serves, requiring the Dirty Deed to be done more than once.

It's been a long time since I read about Gathering Storm in WD, but we know that Ynead is trying to gather all Eldar souls into one place right?

So to MDG point about blending souls, or double stacking them in a single body.
That doesn't sound like something that would offend the Ynarri? That is just a step towards the end goal anyway.