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From a pure gameplay perspective the idea of allying in Eldar into my Dark Eldar army makes a ton of sense on the tabletop, but I have issues justifying it from a fluff perspective. Yes, that part of the hobby is important to me.

My question is: Is there a certain Black Library novel or a good fluffy example as to why the two armies would be so closely aligned? I'm the type that if I have a good motivation for doing something I'll do it, but if that motivation is purely "Eldar fill DE's gaps," then it's not enough.

I suppose I'm struggling with the idea of them being "battle brothers." Other than being genetically the same and coming from the same place it feels like the two have spun in such wildly divergent directions that it's hard to see why the Eldar would ever trust a piratical Kabal enough to allow them to ride in their transports, or why the heck the Eldar would ever have enough faith in the DE to jump on a Raider without an expectation of getting a knife in the back.

All of this is before we ever start talking about Sathonyx, who wears Farseet bones like trophies.

Well they are united in battling a number of foes in Codexes - usually Tryanids but also Chaos in the webway.

The Craftworld Eldar usually need their help and so have to swallow thier pride and accept the amused assistance of their dark kin.

Saim-Hann would liekly enjoy competing with them on raids on enemies

Biel-Tan would accept their assistance in purging maiden worlds of other races

Iyanden have done it on a very large scale on several occassions to survive.

Il-Kaithe is noted in the Codex that it will "readily ally wth both mankind and Commorragh against Chaos

Lugganath is "percieved as little better than Corsiars" by other craftowrlds

So I would not worry too much about it.................

Fair enough.

Maybe I'm caught up in semantics too much. My brain is telling me that "allies of convenience" would be when additional help is needed, or "desperate allies" when things are so bleak (like a chaos or tyranid incursion) that allying is absolutely necessary.

To me, "battle brothers" indicate armies that are so interwoven at a philosophical level that there's little reason for them not to team up in any situation. It's here where I have trouble grasping the idea of them teaming up.

Good point on the craftworlds though, especially Il-Kaithe and Lugganath.

You could say your craftworld is close to the Harlequins and they arrange Commoraughan help when its necessary, kind of like in the Valedor Novel.

There is an ancient quote that explains this rather nicely.

'I against my brother, my brother and I against my cousin, my family against the stranger.'

Eldar of the various types may war upon each other, but that is a family affair, a matter for them, when any of them are threatened by lesser species, they may deign to offer aid to one another, through old ties (some of these guys are still related by blood, some were alive during The Fall), whim or just the massive overweening arrogance of their race that only they may take one another's lives.

Anything featuring Eldar or Dark Eldar. The racism of the species is apparent at first glance, and that arrogance is what binds them together as peers against a galaxy of lesser lifeforms.

Although Valedor has a tie-in novel showing DE and CWE allying against some bugs, if you'd like a specific book.

There both still eldar, a ainciant race, both have a shared hatred of chaos, and tyranoids as well as those interloping on old worlds.

Yes they may be very different but against those shared enemies they are in agreement.

There isn't. They'll work together for common survival, but the ideas that they're as close as space marines and imperial guard is ridiculous.

He whole ally system is idiotic from a fluff perspective. Best ignore it.

There are examples in the Eldar codex, the Iyanden supplement, and the Dark Eldar codex.

The Valedor novel gives the most detail. Dark Eldar even rescue some craftworld Eldar (without much risk to themselves of course).

The Dark Eldar have helped out Iyanden a few times, if only cause they enjoy poking fun at them for their heavy use of Wraith constructs. It's basically like "You think we're messed up? You guys use the souls of dead warriors to fight for you!"

There is that piece of fluff about the Imperial world that an eldar craftworld sent a delegation to.

The governor had them all killed, and made jewellery from their waystones.

The Eldar TOOK the world, giving instructions that this governor was to be taken ALIVE.

They gave him to some Rangers, who took him to the Harlequins, and explained the situation to them. The Harlequins took him through the webway to Commoragh where they gave him to their dark kin and told them what he had done as well.

It is implied that a loooong stretch of time had passed between the event and the retelling - because it ends with something along the lines of "and they say he lives, still - after a fashion" or something along those lines.

I think the confusion stems from the fact that the Eldar appear morally good and the Dark Eldar appear evil. This is not the case. I haven't seen anything to suggest that the Eldar oppose the DE in any way other then protecting themselves from becoming DE prey. Eldar care just as little for the lives of other species as the DE do.

A simple idea to justify them teaming up: It benefits the survival of their race. That is both factions overall goal afterall, survival.

 Auswin wrote:
Fair enough.

Maybe I'm caught up in semantics too much. My brain is telling me that "allies of convenience" would be when additional help is needed, or "desperate allies" when things are so bleak (like a chaos or tyranid incursion) that allying is absolutely necessary.

To me, "battle brothers" indicate armies that are so interwoven at a philosophical level that there's little reason for them not to team up in any situation. It's here where I have trouble grasping the idea of them teaming up.

Good point on the craftworlds though, especially Il-Kaithe and Lugganath.

Yeah, I believe you need to rethink what "battle brothers" means. Considering GK is battle brothers with *anyone* other than the Inquisition is ... odd. Sure, they'll work hand in glove with you ... until the battle is over. Then they'll either purge your army (AM) or mind wipe you (marines). Heck, if the going gets tough they'll sacrifice you and wipe your blood all over their armor (SoB) before the battle even starts. And that's just one of the many IoM factions that are BB. A few of the SM factions actively hate other IoM factions. Space Wolves and the Inquisition are constantly looking over their shoulders at each other due to the things that happened at the First War of Armageddon, so desperate allies at *best* for them.

Dark Angels don't exactly want the Inquisition getting too close either AND they tend to leave a battle while it's still going if they hear a rumor of a fallen being half a galaxy away regardless of the consequences to their Allies. Probably the best way to represent them on the battle field in an army with allies is "roll a die at the start of every turn. On a 6, the DA leave the board."

My point is just that the allies chart is very very coarse.

Yes, DE have allied with E on many occasions (Valedor is just one). However, DE have raided craftworlds (hint: Vect's Castigators) and maiden worlds as well (rangers often sit and watch portals on those maiden worlds in case DE pop out). Of course, DE will happily stab their fellow Archons (figuratively and literally) in the back if the chance arises and they can get some benefit out of it . Meanwhile, various craftworlds may help each other .. or not. Eldar (all of them) are arrogant and incredibly self centered. Just read any of the "Path" books and you'll see that the prime focus for all Eldar is their own self aggrandizement. There is a reason why their behavior created a Chaos god after all. The only real difference from one kind of Eldar to another is the ways they attempt to avoid being eaten by Slaanesh.

Okay, I can think of maybe one potential exception to that rule: solitaires. Their entire goal seems to be to keep the race out of Slaanesh's hands. Of course, their souls are destined to be devoured so avoidance of that fate is moot... unless the Laughing God manages to save them.

They are both Eldar, they are both opposed to Slaanesh, they both are struggling for survival against the enemies of their race.

I would consider this in a similar vein as how the Eldar treat Corsairs, Outcasts, or Harlequins. They might think the others are barbaric and sometimes don't belong in their society, but they're still Eldar.

Really, there's no justification for that level of closeness. The ally system is erratic and random. Guard should just pick any one army to be BFF with, and that's about it. IoM should be allied with itself, and chaos should be a single facion, like IoM, but the rest of the alliances are pretty dumb. Also, Tau should probably be allies of convenience with everyone and their dogs.

Yeah, that one cabal helped Iyanden, cause they liked that they were necromancers (though, undoubtedly, they were also intending to do something devious to them at some later point).
They do have their racial pride/arrogance, but that isn't deep, abiding trust.

Reading into the corsairs book of Imperial Armour, it even mentions that sometimes the crafties will turn on and kill corsairs because they've fallen a little to close to the darkies.

If you want a good reason to do it, though, I'm planning on doing a jetseer conversion for a friend of mind to represent some crafties that have abandoned the paths and just gave up and went to the dark side.
He's not allowed into Camorragh, but that's not the only place they hole up, after all, just their favorite place.

 CrosisDePurger wrote:
I think the confusion stems from the fact that the Eldar appear morally good and the Dark Eldar appear evil. This is not the case. I haven't seen anything to suggest that the Eldar oppose the DE in any way other then protecting themselves from becoming DE prey. Eldar care just as little for the lives of other species as the DE do.

Yup.

Personally I'd prefer Allies of Convenience but as it is it does at least act as a reminder than the Eldar aren't noble and 'good' tolkeinesque elves in space - they're arrogant, insular, scheming racists.

I think this sums them up well...

Eldrad is the greatest among us. He is the sun which eclipses the light of our stars. He is Ulthwé and the fate of our kind rests in his hands. His eyes are the keenest, no detail goes unnoticed. Four thousand runes can he cast, guiding our path through torment and war, death and salvation. He is the pathfinder, the seeker, the true guide. Even your race has trembled before his might, though you may not have known it. It was he who guided us to the Ork known as Ghazghkull, and commanded us to steer his path to your world of Armageddon. Ten thousand Eldar lives would have been lost if he had not done so. What sacrifice is a million humans for such a cause?

He knows your affairs better than you do yourself. He warned that weakling seer you call Emperor of the treachery of Horus and the strife which would engulf us, just as it engulfed the rest of the galaxy, but your arrogance deafened you to his words. Your stupidity almost destroyed the galaxy, yet you never knew how close the forces of light were to our ultimate defeat. He saw the Great Devourer and warned our kin on Iyanden, even before they had neared our galaxy.

To him all futures are laid out, just as your crude implements of torture are laid out on the cold metal of that shelf. You say we are random and capricious, we say you are vulgar and idiotic. Some of you call us your enemies. All races are our enemy in time. Some of you call us your allies. You are not allies, any more than a butcher’s knife is his ally. You are tools, nothing more. To be used and expended to protect our race, that is your fate.

Your kind think you are so magnificent, yet even now, at the nadir of our power, we can manipulate you, turn you to our ends, as easily as you might pull a trigger and fire a gun. Our time will come again, Eldrad has promised us. Once more you upstart Mon-keigh [subject spits] shall kneel before our power! This time we will not be so lenient! We will exterminate you, every world, every vessel, every one of you! Eldrad has seen the stars stained red with your blood, and it pleases him!

You think us weak, but we will be your doom, children of Earth.

- Last words of a captured Eldar Ranger, subsequently executed

The only time in the fluff I've ever actually seen the DE trade blows with the Eldar is with the Eldar Corsairs- either when it's advantageous for the Dark Eldar to betray them, or when the Corsairs previously backstabbed that Kabal and the Hierarchic now wants revenge on them. To my knowledge a Craftworld itself has never actually come to blows with the Dark Eldar, as the two seem to have a close relationship with each other. To put it into simple terms, they're brothers, and one of them is violently bipolar.


Also, Eldar don't blindly hate the "lesser" races such as humans- blind hate it largely reserved for Necrons, Orks, and Chaos. The Eldar are largely accepting of humans existing, they just view human life as valuable as the dirt they stride upon and thus don't feel too guilty butchering them to save Eldar lives. Although it should be noted that some Eldar have been traumatized while butchering women and children despite having their War-Mask on. Craftworld Eldar aren't really bloodthirsty as a general rule (ignoring Biel Tan), rather they're more hardcore survivalists that value their lives above everything.

The new book-Valedor-by Guy Haley apparently addresses this question. In the end, its either about necessity or the Dark Eldar doing it for the hell of it.

 Wyzilla wrote:
blind hate it largely reserved for Necrons, Orks, and Chaos.

Orks don't hate, Orks love. They love to fight, and if you bring them a good one they'll just love you to death for it.

 Auswin wrote:
From a pure gameplay perspective the idea of allying in Eldar into my Dark Eldar army makes a ton of sense on the tabletop, but I have issues justifying it from a fluff perspective. Yes, that part of the hobby is important to me.

My question is: Is there a certain Black Library novel or a good fluffy example as to why the two armies would be so closely aligned? I'm the type that if I have a good motivation for doing something I'll do it, but if that motivation is purely "Eldar fill DE's gaps," then it's not enough.

I suppose I'm struggling with the idea of them being "battle brothers." Other than being genetically the same and coming from the same place it feels like the two have spun in such wildly divergent directions that it's hard to see why the Eldar would ever trust a piratical Kabal enough to allow them to ride in their transports, or why the heck the Eldar would ever have enough faith in the DE to jump on a Raider without an expectation of getting a knife in the back.

All of this is before we ever start talking about Sathonyx, who wears Farseet bones like trophies.

Valedor. This is in the tyranids codex, as well as a new GW book. The dark elder and craft world elder joined forces to stop a splinter of hive fleet kraken from rejoining leviathan. If this had happened, the hive fleet would have gotten the genetic info on how to fight both humans and elder.

 morganfreeman wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
blind hate it largely reserved for Necrons, Orks, and Chaos.

Orks don't hate, Orks love. They love to fight, and if you bring them a good one they'll just love you to death for it.

Too bad for the Orks that the Eldar don't return their merry feelings.

Purely on fluff, Eldar and DE protect their souls in drastically different ways, but there's no reason a group can't say, "We're tired of doing it this way; we want to do it the other way." Your DE force has decided to join a Craftworld and stop bringing the pain, but they don't have Spirit Stones, yet, so, for this fight, they still have to do things the old-fashioned way (for them).

Or vice-versa. An Eldar force has decided they don't want to rely on Spirit Stones, and they're pretty okay inflicting pain, but they don't know the methods of feeding off the psychic residue of pain, yet, so they're using traditional Eldar methods while fighting alongside their new DEldar brethren.

The fluff of your story is that they're literally joining each other, they just haven't mastered how to do it, yet. Battle Brothers.

 Wyzilla wrote:


Also, Eldar don't blindly hate the "lesser" races such as humans- blind hate it largely reserved for Necrons, Orks, and Chaos. The Eldar are largely accepting of humans existing, they just view human life as valuable as the dirt they stride upon and thus don't feel too guilty butchering them to save Eldar lives. Although it should be noted that some Eldar have been traumatized while butchering women and children despite having their War-Mask on. Craftworld Eldar aren't really bloodthirsty as a general rule (ignoring Biel Tan), rather they're more hardcore survivalists that value their lives above everything.

DE and CWE KNOW each other. They trust each other to some degree. That is as far as you can trust any DE of course but the times and ways a DE will betray you are known to the CWE. Dealing with humans, orks, tau, they aren't a known quantity. They ways, culture, values are just alien.


I dont think CWE or DE have the same hate for orks as they have for chaos or necrons.

eldar might go onto a human planet specifically to kill a chaos or necron threat. Orks, ehh only if they get in the way.

Eldar and Dark Eldar will work together without too much hesitation.

They are both still Eldar after all. Just with 2 different philosophies to fixing the same problem.

Its not like other species where they just see them as animals.


The Dark Eldar have no qualms about fighting other Eldar, but nor are they particularly focused on attacking them. They will work together if their goals align.

 zbg97 wrote:
Purely on fluff, Eldar and DE protect their souls in drastically different ways, but there's no reason a group can't say, "We're tired of doing it this way; we want to do it the other way." Your DE force has decided to join a Craftworld and stop bringing the pain, but they don't have Spirit Stones, yet, so, for this fight, they still have to do things the old-fashioned way (for them).

Or vice-versa. An Eldar force has decided they don't want to rely on Spirit Stones, and they're pretty okay inflicting pain, but they don't know the methods of feeding off the psychic residue of pain, yet, so they're using traditional Eldar methods while fighting alongside their new DEldar brethren.

The fluff of your story is that they're literally joining each other, they just haven't mastered how to do it, yet. Battle Brothers.

This is probably the best way to describe it. I have read about this kind of thing happening a few times before.

The dark eldar suck (relationship wise). They don't like or respect anyone or anything but themselves. They're not nice, by any stretch, and any time they appear nice (such as when helping Iyanden), you can be sure they have some ulterior motive in mind. On the note of the darkies aiding Iyanden, afterwords, the crafties seemed to be quite surprised that the darks had even come to there aid. They had to ask why... Darkies have no qualms about attacking craftworld forces for torture victims and slaves. They have no respect for their cousins. One even nabbed a farseer and now wears his bones.

None-the-less, crafties get sick of the strict lifestyle sometimes and go corsair. Corsairs go deeper and deeper to the dark side, sometimes even joining with Camorragh based raiding parties. Sometiems craftworlders will kill corsairs because they've gotten too close to becoming dark eldar. However, craftworlders therefore do join the forces of Camorragh sometimes.

 Auswin wrote:
From a pure gameplay perspective the idea of allying in Eldar into my Dark Eldar army makes a ton of sense on the tabletop, but I have issues justifying it from a fluff perspective. Yes, that part of the hobby is important to me.

My question is: Is there a certain Black Library novel or a good fluffy example as to why the two armies would be so closely aligned? I'm the type that if I have a good motivation for doing something I'll do it, but if that motivation is purely "Eldar fill DE's gaps," then it's not enough.

I suppose I'm struggling with the idea of them being "battle brothers." Other than being genetically the same and coming from the same place it feels like the two have spun in such wildly divergent directions that it's hard to see why the Eldar would ever trust a piratical Kabal enough to allow them to ride in their transports, or why the heck the Eldar would ever have enough faith in the DE to jump on a Raider without an expectation of getting a knife in the back.

All of this is before we ever start talking about Sathonyx, who wears Farseet bones like trophies.

Try the Valedor novel.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Eldar and Dark Eldar will work together without too much hesitation.

They are both still Eldar after all. Just with 2 different philosophies to fixing the same problem.

Its not like other species where they just see them as animals.


The Dark Eldar have no qualms about fighting other Eldar, but nor are they particularly focused on attacking them. They will work together if their goals align.

In turth though there are three Eldar factions- Craftworld, Dark Eldar, and the Eldar Corsairs which are comprised of Craftworld Eldar who now walk the path of the outcast or Dark Eldar who've left their old lives or fled from enemies to live life as a Corsair.

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Eldar and Dark Eldar will work together without too much hesitation.

They are both still Eldar after all. Just with 2 different philosophies to fixing the same problem.

Its not like other species where they just see them as animals.


The Dark Eldar have no qualms about fighting other Eldar, but nor are they particularly focused on attacking them. They will work together if their goals align.

In turth though there are three Eldar factions- Craftworld, Dark Eldar, and the Eldar Corsairs which are comprised of Craftworld Eldar who now walk the path of the outcast or Dark Eldar who've left their old lives or fled from enemies to live life as a Corsair.

Five if you count the Exodites and Harlequins.

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