Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

@OP: Why are you trying to prove DE aren't evil?

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
The problem is, the morality trap is that having their souls eaten by Slaanesh is a predicament of their own causing. A person is born needing to eat stuff. Chickens occupy the unenviable lower spot on the food chain. The Eldar weren't born being so uncontrollably bangy that they unleashed the Evil God of Raping Stuff. They did that themselves, lol. Rather than accept their fate, they realized that if they were even more rapey, that Slaanesh would cut them a break.

So, yeah, the Dark Eldar are ultimately "doing what they have to to survive", but that also stems from a conscious decision to survive by consuming others. The rest of it, the torture, the slavery, etc. That's just for fun.

No. It's because of Eldar that lived before current DE.

So a Dark Eldar is not not justified because members of his race did something long before he was born. It is his own choosing. Dark Eldar do evil and so they should perish.
A human is justified because members of his race did something long before he was born. It is not his own choosing. Humans have to be do evil to survive.
Sure sure, it's totally different.

Macok, humans of the past did not decide that the species would forever require protein to survive.

 Manchu wrote:
Macok, humans of the past did not decide that the species would forever require protein to survive.

Neither did the Dark Eldar. They also did not choose to be forced to cause pain or have their own soul plucked and tortured for eternity.

Food has nothing to do with this discussion. Imperium is not bad because it eats. It's a very bad example / metaphor.
It's about Sins of our Fathers. You can't just say that one race is forced to do something and another one chose it's fate.

The Eldar of ages past sank into hideous decadence and brought a reckoning upon themselves. Those who never changed but have yet to experience said reckoning are the Dark Eldar. The DE do not have to rape and torture to survive. They could like their dour brothers of the Craftworlds pursue a life of discipline and integrity. The DE choose to continue on with the decadence that brought Slaanesh into existence in the first place. As their depravity is freely chosen, they are morally culpable for it. There is no need to talk about humanity to make this judgment.

 Manchu wrote:
The Eldar of ages past sank into hideous decadence and brought a reckoning upon themselves. Those who never changed but have yet to experience said reckoning are the Dark Eldar. The DE do not have to rape and torture to survive. They could like their dour brothers of the Craftworlds pursue a life of discipline and integrity. The DE choose to continue on with the decadence that brought Slaanesh into existence in the first place. As their depravity is freely chosen, they are morally culpable for it. There is no need to talk about humanity to make this judgment.

This. The DE are the Eldar who never changed their ways after the fall. They might not be the exact same Eldar who caused the fall, but they are the same in deed and spirit.

 Mandor wrote:

The Dark Eldar maim, kill, torture, rape and backstab because if they didn't, their souls would be consumed by Slaanesh and their race would cease to exist, which is good for no one but Chaos.

See what I did there?

Actually, I see the galaxy would stand to benefit if a race like the Dark Eldar just ceased to exist.

So it would really be good for everyone but the Dark Eldar.

 Manchu wrote:
The Eldar of ages past sank into hideous decadence and brought a reckoning upon themselves. Those who never changed but have yet to experience said reckoning are the Dark Eldar. The DE do not have to rape and torture to survive. They could like their dour brothers of the Craftworlds pursue a life of discipline and integrity. The DE choose to continue on with the decadence that brought Slaanesh into existence in the first place. As their depravity is freely chosen, they are morally culpable for it. There is no need to talk about humanity to make this judgment.

And the humans didn't brought their fate on themselves?
Have they learned from their mistakes and changed or still proceed to do everything like they used to?

DE are borne, raised, trained, conditioned etc. to live like this. They have never experienced any lifestyle different to one they live.
It's not about stopping to be mean to somebody. It's changing your life in an opposite direction. For a race with so powerful emotions they created a soul sucking god.
Deathwatch can choose to start negotiating truces with all the xenos and Sisters of Battle can choose to stop worshipping the Emperor, right?

I'm not excusing Dark Eldar. I cannot, however agree to the: "Humans do A, because they have to", "Xenos do A, because they chose to do bad things".

As I said, there is no need to discuss humans to understand that DE are evil.

I think suffice to say even if Slaanesh were dead, the Dark Eldar would still continue as they are now and probably get even worse, because their fear of Slaanesh keeps them more restrained with what they dabble with.

That alone should prove the DE as evil. They're not doing what they do to survive. That may be part of it, but they're doing it because they enjoy it.

 Overlord Zerrtin wrote:
but both types of eldar kill countless innocents to survive just in different fashions would that make them both evil just because the DE are more gruesome about how doesnt change anything.

but eldar of both types dont really consider humans to be worthy of caring about. It is like how today we kill millions of mosquitos to prevent anyone from getting malaria. We simply dont consider mosquitos to be worth worrying about. Does that make us evil?

Being a murdering, torturing, and otherwise unpleasant psychopath pretty much makes one evil.

daveNYC wrote:
The DE codex has that one bit of fluff about (I believe) Lady Malys raiding a mechanicum world in order to destroy some medical research that would have cured or prevented some disease. This raid was done as part of a challenge to hurt the Imperium. Causing pain and suffering just to cause pain and suffering. That's evil.

I believe that she raids realspace to destroy a fully function STC database that was just being uncovered. With it humanity would have been able to return to a level of technology higher than during the great crusade.

Still this is kind of like preventing a termite colony to grow any further. Evil? Not really.

 Macok wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Macok, humans of the past did not decide that the species would forever require protein to survive.

Neither did the Dark Eldar. They also did not choose to be forced to cause pain or have their own soul plucked and tortured for eternity.

Food has nothing to do with this discussion. Imperium is not bad because it eats. It's a very bad example / metaphor.
It's about Sins of our Fathers. You can't just say that one race is forced to do something and another one chose it's fate.

THe Dark Eldar are not bad because they eat souls, lol.

They are evil because they do all of that other stuff before/after eating souls.


The eating souls thing just gets no excuse since it's a perpetuated problem.


Good lord this has to be the most bizarre, disturbing, and ultimately nonsensical discussion I have ever heard. You people play Dark Eldar, Little plastic toy soldiers. They don't reflect on you, and it's okay if they are evil. Stop trying to justify torture, rape, non-consensual sadism, slavery, and murder for the sake of immortality. Doing that makes you a sociopath, lol.

 Exergy wrote:

daveNYC wrote:
The DE codex has that one bit of fluff about (I believe) Lady Malys raiding a mechanicum world in order to destroy some medical research that would have cured or prevented some disease. This raid was done as part of a challenge to hurt the Imperium. Causing pain and suffering just to cause pain and suffering. That's evil.

I believe that she raids realspace to destroy a fully function STC database that was just being uncovered. With it humanity would have been able to return to a level of technology higher than during the great crusade.

Still this is kind of like preventing a termite colony to grow any further. Evil? Not really.

The way you describe it, it could be Craftworld fluff. Something must make it Dark Eldar fluff.

 Monster Rain wrote:
Being a murdering, torturing, and otherwise unpleasant psychopath pretty much makes one evil.

But ... but ... maybe the haemunculus just wants to play and express his hurt feelings?

Oh, and I have no problem with zenophobe Eldar, Zeno wasn't the most likeable of Greek philosophers :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno_of_Elea

The other main fallacy here is that no one really thinks the Craftworld Eldar are "good". Nowhere in the fluff does is say anything resembling that. Even when they are being "friendly", like in the Space Marine Codex in the story about Pedro Kantor, they make sure the Astartes know that they are not, in fact, bros.

Ask the Dark Eldar - they would tell you that they enjoy doing what they do - and they they would demostrate on you how much they enjoy it.

The Dark Eldar have embraced their needs.......... and few if any of them seem to want anything else

I don't think that's the issue.

DE aren't evil only when compared to something else.

They are evil without regard to comparison, whether or not they would describe themselves using a similar concept.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
THe Dark Eldar are not bad because they eat souls, lol.

They are evil because they do all of that other stuff before/after eating souls.


The eating souls thing just gets no excuse since it's a perpetuated problem.


Good lord this has to be the most bizarre, disturbing, and ultimately nonsensical discussion I have ever heard. You people play Dark Eldar, Little plastic toy soldiers. They don't reflect on you, and it's okay if they are evil. Stop trying to justify torture, rape, non-consensual sadism, slavery, and murder for the sake of immortality. Doing that makes you a sociopath, lol.

Woah woah woah.
First of all I don't play Dark Eldar.
Second of all please don't make this personal and try to "analyse me" over the internet.
Third: as I already stated explicitly:
a) I don't justify DE.
B) I did point out what my posts are about: they are the reaction to your (among others) posts of "xenos do bad because are bad, IoM does bad because they have to".

Can't you see the irony of calling others 'sociopaths' while defending actions of one of the most genocidal race in the galaxy?
How do you not get all the DE / IoM comparisons? They are not about showing one side in a good light but to show how subjective is excusing one side while bashing the other.

 Manchu wrote:

 Exergy wrote:

daveNYC wrote:
The DE codex has that one bit of fluff about (I believe) Lady Malys raiding a mechanicum world in order to destroy some medical research that would have cured or prevented some disease. This raid was done as part of a challenge to hurt the Imperium. Causing pain and suffering just to cause pain and suffering. That's evil.

I believe that she raids realspace to destroy a fully function STC database that was just being uncovered. With it humanity would have been able to return to a level of technology higher than during the great crusade.

Still this is kind of like preventing a termite colony to grow any further. Evil? Not really.

The way you describe it, it could be Craftworld fluff. Something must make it Dark Eldar fluff.

I'll have to check the codex, I could be off on what the target was.

Dark Eldar are physically and psychologically more than capable of protecting their souls from predation via other means. It is a matter of uninformed choice or lack of choice for most of them that they do not choose a different way of protection. It is not part of their racial psychology to want to torture others, although it is part of it to be overly indulgent when it comes to senses and feelings.

Please note that neither Craftworlders, Exodites nor Harlequins need to rape, kill, maim in order to survive and that all of the above are more than capable of accepting migration to and from the Dark Eldar ranks - although the Harlequins are a bit of a special case since their god is still alive.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Exergy wrote:

 Overlord Zerrtin wrote:
but both types of eldar kill countless innocents to survive just in different fashions would that make them both evil just because the DE are more gruesome about how doesnt change anything.

but eldar of both types dont really consider humans to be worthy of caring about. It is like how today we kill millions of mosquitos to prevent anyone from getting malaria. We simply dont consider mosquitos to be worth worrying about. Does that make us evil?

Either you are on a rather serious hyperbole or... well... I'm going to go with that you've got a serious hyperbole going. This isn't how the Eldar view of humans are described. They certainly do not care about their pains and pleasures, but I'd more describe it like how a modern day human with a ecological outlook on life view a race of top predators in the wilds. Sufficiently important to sometimes help, not important enough to loose land to and certainly not important enough that there is a choice between who should live in a threatening situation where one of the two races are in conflict.

Mosquitoes, however, fill a rather dubious ecological niche as (important?) food for birds which crap on our windshields. Mosquitoes are annoying things which nearly all would be happy to torch with a flamethrower. You don't help mosquitoes. The only question is whether a mosquito is important enough to bother killing. Not exactly the human-eldar relationship.

 Macok wrote:
How do you not get all the DE / IoM comparisons?

To the extent that the IoM has a unified culture, I don't think bad things are generally done because the IoM likes doing bad things. You're treating "have to" and "want to" as an exclusive binary. There are somethings that the IoM might not have to do but still doesn't enjoy. I would say the utter oppression of humanity is one of those things. The DE, by contrast, seem to do all the utterly depraved things that they do for no other reason than because they refuse to change even considering the threat of Slaanesh. All that torture and rape don't necessarily guarantee that Slaanesh won't get them -- it's a role of the dice, a scramble for dominance, the thrill of rapine competition, etc, etc, etc. If all the DE wanted to do was avoid Slaanesh, they could just prude it up with some Soul Stones and the Paths like the non-evil (notice I didn't say good) Eldar. But they wouldn't like that very much.

The DE are who they are not just by choice but by preference.

The IoM is much more complicated. You could say, and be totally correct, that the Imperium has made some extremely gakky decisions over the course of its existence. But few if any of them were made because humans prefer to live in the GrimDark.

Manchu, the utter oppression of the human race is the end goal of the imperial structure that is the IoM. It is it's core identity and the reason it exists.

No, I'm afraid you have missed the point of GrimDarkness. The Imperium exists to safeguard humanity and ensure human dominance in the galaxy. Thanks to GrimDarkness (TM), the only thing the Imperium can actually do is oppress humanity so as to wage (and slowly loose) a continuous, galactic-scale war.

Macok wrote:Can't you see the irony of calling others 'sociopaths' while defending actions of one of the most genocidal race in the galaxy?
How do you not get all the DE / IoM comparisons? They are not about showing one side in a good light but to show how subjective is excusing one side while bashing the other.

I've actually not defended the actions of the Imperium. I said they are morally questionable as all hell. But that their actions are at least objectively justifiable. I don't get the DE/IoM comparison because they are ludicrous, lol.

They sacrifice a thousand pyskers to gas up the Golden Throne. They do that because if the Golden Throne fails, the Imperium falls apart and everyone dies. Okay, I get the logical sequence there. It's unpleasant, sure. But, I get it. Chaos exists because it does, and the Imperium just exists in a universe where it has to do unpleasant things.


The Dark Eldar woke the sleeping God of Raping Everything, and Soul Eating. To keep from having their souls eaten, they realized they could eat other souls. Now, here's the thing, let's assume there's a justification for feeding on the souls of other sentient beings, because hey, the Imperium does it. Nevermind that the Imperium does it because the universe sucks, and the Dark Eldar do it because they made the universe suck. But, let's say the "current" Dark Eldar (who are probably the same Dark Eldar, since they live in the Webway outside of time and space) are innocent bystanders, victimized by their own heritage. Okay, so they eat souls to keep from having their souls eaten (I'm seeing some kind of giant ethical Grand Canyon here, but let's cross it on our rocketbikes wearing capes). Exactly where does all the raping, slavery, and other nastiness come in? I mean, they could breed things with souls in a big soul farm, creating a renewable resource and become self sufficient. But that's neither here nor there. Maybe space limitations in Commoraugh make this impossible. Maybe they tried and it didn't work, so being Galactic Bastards and wandering off to drag sentient beings screaming off into the Webway is the only solution. Maybe we'll even jump another ethical logic Grand Canyon, and give them some cultural relativism credits. They don't think of other races as actual people. I mean, certainly that's an excuse, I'm sure. Somewhere.

So now we've established (allowed):
Dark Eldar have to eat souls.
Dark Eldar have to capture things with souls to eat souls.
Dark Eldar, as a society, may not have respect for other sentient life.
The Dark Eldar eat souls to keep from having their own souls eaten.

Oh wait. That's not the next step. It's actually:

Dark Eldar have to eat souls.
Dark Eldar have to capture things with souls to eat souls.
Dark Eldar, as a society, may not have respect for other sentient life.
The Dark Eldar capture people, and rape them, and make them into pleasure slaves, and torture toys, and other heinous things.
The Dark Eldar eat souls to keep from having their own souls eaten.

Ohhhhhh, that's why they are evil. Suddenly it makes so much more sense.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Yeah, uh, no.


There's not a single school on ethics, morals, or values that would agree with the OP, lol. The Dark Eldar are utterly and completely evil. So admittedly so, that both of their codex books preface themselves describing the Dark Eldar as evil. This is a race that takes slaves for pleasure, torture for pleasure, and sadism... for pleasure.

The Eldar's fate was of their own doing. The measures they now find themselves faced with having to engage in to avoid having their souls devoured by Slaanesh does not serve as an excuse for actually engaging in those measures, lol.

Not exactly, ethical egoism would allow for the actions of the DE without ruling them morally wrong. And ethical relativism would say that they are following the version of morality that is created by their society.In that case it seems that the Dark Eldar would define something wrong as something selfless.
It's wrong in the context of their society. Many of the original Eldar that were present at the fall have died by now so the choice of their forebears does not factor into the moral standing of their offspring.

They can be morally evaluated based on ethical theories created by humans, They themselves are a fictional creation of humanity and are given the characteristics of an individual.

It depends on whether or how you define good or evil. Also whether the DE are evil or their actions are evil.

orz192 wrote:
It depends on whether or how you define good or evil.

This gets us nowhere as fast as possible.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
They don't think of other races as actual people.

If that was really true, why would they bother? The point is, they do it because they like to hurt people (or at least, other sentient beings). Hell, they do it to each other every chance they get, too.

(N.B., I realize I'm preaching to the choir, VS. It's just that your quotation was the best launchpad for that point.)

Actually, the case against the Dark Eldar gets even worse. We know that some Dark Eldar have left Commoraugh and the Webway to be Corsairs and other galactic bastards. So they can, and do, survive outside the Webway, just like regular Eldar.

So not only to they rape and torture and enslave and all sorts of other fun, nasty stuff, but they eat souls because they consciously choose to remain in Commoraugh because they love raping and torturing and soul eating so much that the whole Slaanesh thing is a minor headache, at best.


And you are correct, I should have specified, legitimate accepted school of ethics and morals. Nobody accepts ethical relativism anymore. Nor does ethical egoism fly with anyone civilized. Those aren't really schools of thought, though, so much as behavioral definitions. Only Ayn Rand was stupid enough to believe her nonsense. Oh... wait.

Dark eldar are pretty damned evil. It might be evil by need, but evil none the same.