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So reading up on the lore, they travel around putting on dances and dramas, reciting poetry, etc. They are the bards of 40k. Do they just repeat the same performances over and over again or do harlequins write new plays, poetry, develop new dances and music based on more recent events or do they constantly just put on the “Eldar Greatest Hits” over and over again?

If you think about it, other than the Tau, no race has advanced their technology, society, anything really, in 10,000 years.

So no. Nothing new happens. Ever. People just kill each other with the same tools as always. I mean, if a bolter is the epitome of infantry death dealing such that they haven't improved upon it in 10 millenia, then what would be new in the Eldar's existence worth making something new about? Shurikens still slice off limbs, same as they've done for 100 centuries, or more. Craftworlders still craft-worlding. Wraithbone doesn't grow itself [or does it?] so you need the bone shapers.

The interesting thing about the eldar perception of existence is that as far as they're concerned time is perfectly cyclical. They don't differentiate between their myths and the time they're living through now, so as far as they're concerned events that are happening in the present day are just another mythic cycle repeating the countless cycles that have taken place before.

For me, that's part of the reason why the eldar have had difficulty developing their technology since the Fall. Their whole worldview locks them into a mind-state that makes innovation very difficult in the exact same way as the Imperium's veneration of the technological might of the past does for them.

So, the way this relates to Harlequin dances is that the dances they perform are probably a melange of events both new and old, and eldar will interpret them both as historical tales and echoes of the same events throughout their history reaching forwards to the present day. Each dance is probably performed with subtle nuances of which cycle's tropes are emphasised in order to skew the interpretation of the viewing eldar towards that particular troupe's viewpoint.

What I wonder is whether it's a more true perspective or not. History is certainly cyclical to a large degree, and when your species has lived for 60 million years then I expect a great deal of your history will have repeated itself countless times.

Is our worldview that we each and every thing we try is brand new this time around simply the naive outlook of a child-like race, or are the eldar blinkered and fettered by their outlook such that they can never equal the dynamism of humanity.

Perhaps both are valuable and caustic in their own ways, the eldar doomed to stagnate and humanity doomed to repeat their mistakes time and time again.

I just wonder if something like the return of Guilliman and the Eldar role in it makes its way into works by the Harlequins. Or this rise of the Ynarri. It would seem weird that Harlequins don't create new material for these recent events, since they are now key parts of Eldar present and probably history.

It also depends what you call "recent", as Eldar tend to see time in a different way, as Ynneadwraith explained.
For instance, we know that Harlequins have a performance that depicts the fall. I think it's in the 7th ed. codex that they explain how some craftworlders freaked out the first time they saw that performance. And the solitaire is the person who play Slaneesh in that play. So we know they added that event to their repertoire at some point after the Fall, although it might not qualify as recent.

I wouldn't be surprised if they had a play to represent Ynnead's birth, as it's the biggest thing to happen since the Fall, and many Harlequins embrace the Ynnari thing. Hopefully we'll have some fluff about that in the Harlequin or Ynnari codex.

I'd absolutely expect that they'd have a performance around the birth of Ynnead, but it would probably take the form of a re-interpretation and subtle tweaking of an existing performance around a different historical event that has parallels.

Say, for instance that there's a performance about the rise of a great hero from the ashes of a dead House who lead the eldar to victory against their enemies at the time.

This dance would get reinterpreted with Ynnead implied to be the hero rising from the ashes, and the events would be linked together in the eldar's great mythic cycle. If you have 60 million years of historical cycles to draw on, I'm sure you'll be able to find reinterpretations of old events for damn near anything.

That isn't to say that new performances are impossible mind. Just that an event has to be completely and utterly unprecedented for that to happen. The Fall I expect would qualify (although there are parallels to the War in Heaven). The birth of Ynnead, I'm not so sure. Many heroes will have risen and fallen to save the eldar. They have birthed gods before.

Again, not to say it isn't a new dance. Just that if I was a Harlequin who wanted to persuade people that Ynnead was a good idea I'd want to pick a performance that's familiar and roots Ynnead within the cyclical expectations of the eldar's worldview. People would be much more comforted by thinking 'oh, Ynnead is just this cycle's version of Eldanesh', rather than 'Jesus Christ not even the Harlequins know what they're doing with this one'.

Also, Harlequins do speak and play music during these performances, right? It's not just silent interpretive dance? I imagine it to be like really grimdark broadway musicals with spoken lines, singing, dancing, etc.

Rajah wrote:
Also, Harlequins do speak and play music during these performances, right? It's not just silent interpretive dance? I imagine it to be like really grimdark broadway musicals with spoken lines, singing, dancing, etc.

I'd expect so, but perhaps not. The eldar language has a deeply complex postural element. There's the old phrase 'it's even possible for two eldar to have a conversation between them without talking, simply by body language alone' or words to that effect. However, the implication of that is that it's a rarity and not exactly de-rigour for eldar conversation. Still, if us dull-witted humans can (sometimes, admittedly) understand interpretive dance then I expect eldar to be able to get their point across without speaking if necessary.

I always imagined it more like street-theatre than broadway. Small band, setting up in a random place on a craftworld without much warning and performing, relying on word of mouth to spread around the craftworld and bring their audience in.

As for the subject matter, I expect it's like 'The Woman in Black', except they lace the pre-show drinks with a bad batch of Magic Mushrooms.

Yeah, I can see that. I am looking to start my own Harlequin army and I just had the feeling that it is dancers, musicians, actors, costume designers, writers, and a director all just be awesome at fighting. Basically, every type of "artist" needed to put on a show is there in the models and I was thinking of converting them up to show their role. Like give the playwright a scroll, the director a baton, maybe have the musicians have small instruments on their back, etc. I want to keep it as true to the fluff as possible, though.

So they send the production assistant to fetch the coffee and soulstones?

Sounds stone cold awesome I wholeheartedly approve

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
So they send the production assistant to fetch the coffee and soulstones?

Of course. The put-upon looking player with the frazzled hair that always leads the charge is the production assistant. Maybe have him/her carrying a Starbucks cup in one hand.

The Dance without End it's the Eldar final cyclic history it's brrn evolving since the first Harlequins as new acts of the Eldar race shape their history.

In the novel Valedor, the Harlequins show up and perform the Dance adding a new part depicting Ynnead being born and defeating Slaanesh, something never saw before.

Harlequins are free to create their own interpretations and dances of the myths and legends of the Eldar people, but you are correct in the way that they don't really come up with anything new. Just knew ways of showing something old.

But to the Harlequins, almost every situation can be seen as analogous to a scene of Eldar myth. For example in the Fabius Bile book the Harlequins have coined him the Prince of Crows and act in a way to force Bile into actions that mirror the myth that involves him. Everything seems cyclical to them, and they are all just playing their characters at different times, even until it means they have to die for it.

All the fluff I've read about them suggests it's not just interpretive dance, narration is a big part of it as well, highly suggest Masque the Vyle which puts a large enthesis on 3 performances by a troupe.

IIRC the Harley codex does say that to an extent Harlequins don't play their roles in dances and actually become whoever they play.

pm713 wrote:
IIRC the Harley codex does say that to an extent Harlequins don't play their roles in dances and actually become whoever they play.

Yeah this is something that always intrigued me. Seems like a protection type thing. CWE follow the strictures of the Path to avoid Slaanesh, the Dark Eldar hide in the webway,and the Harlequins go so hard into method acting that they become the person they're playing.

I always thought there's real grimdark potential there with Harlequins that quite literally forget who they were, and basically act out the actions of mythical characters in the present day. Not so bad if you're Eldanesh, not so great if you're Khaine the God of Murder...

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:

But to the Harlequins, almost every situation can be seen as analogous to a scene of Eldar myth. For example in the Fabius Bile book the Harlequins have coined him the Prince of Crows and act in a way to force Bile into actions that mirror the myth that involves him. Everything seems cyclical to them, and they are all just playing their characters at different times, even until it means they have to die for it.

Now that's fascinating. I really like the idea that they force people to enact the roles they see them as, just as they themselves play their parts. I like Harlequins as insidious rather then strictly good. Perhaps their end game is simply that everyone plays their part. Considering that the eldar mythic cycles end with the Rhana Dandra and all the eldar dead, it's a strong possibility that their ultimate goal is the genocide of the eldar.

Eldrad should pay close attention to his supposed Harlequin allies...

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:

But to the Harlequins, almost every situation can be seen as analogous to a scene of Eldar myth. For example in the Fabius Bile book the Harlequins have coined him the Prince of Crows and act in a way to force Bile into actions that mirror the myth that involves him. Everything seems cyclical to them, and they are all just playing their characters at different times, even until it means they have to die for it.

Now that's fascinating. I really like the idea that they force people to enact the roles they see them as, just as they themselves play their parts. I like Harlequins as insidious rather then strictly good. Perhaps their end game is simply that everyone plays their part. Considering that the eldar mythic cycles end with the Rhana Dandra and all the eldar dead, it's a strong possibility that their ultimate goal is the genocide of the eldar.

Eldrad should pay close attention to his supposed Harlequin allies...

In the Phoenix Lords novels it's stated they follow a special *brand * of fate (referred as the dreams of the dead God Asur) this fate can't be tampered by Farseer like normal, and the final goal it's the Rhana Dandra where all eldar will die just to take Chaos down with them.
So unless Ynnead can change that the Phoenix Lord are just delaying the Eldar destruction until the right time.

The thing about creating new dances is that they would (probably) need to resonate with any aeldari the harlies wanted to perform that dance for. As a result, you'd only really want to do a dance about something all aeldari can relate to or wrap their heads around. So making a dance about some cool autarch from Iybraesil... might not really be all that applicable if you're anywhere but Iybraesil. Especially if the message you're trying to convey is already covered by the extensive mythology shared by all aeldari already.

So if you want to say, "The autarch was as brave as Eldanesh as he faced the void weaver!" then you may as well just tell the story of Eldanesh and the Void Weaver instead.

But yeah. Ynnead's birth is probably worth chatting about.

You've hit the nail on the head there. You have to think 'what do the Harlequins want to achieve?'.

With Ynnead, some of them want eldar to accept and welcome the Dead God, so they'll tie his birth into familiar and comforting existing myths.

With the Fall, I'd expect they'd want to shock eldar into action,or terrify them enough that they know the magnitude of what's happened if they weren't near the epicentre, so a completely jarring new dance would do the trick

Lord Perversor wrote:

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:

But to the Harlequins, almost every situation can be seen as analogous to a scene of Eldar myth. For example in the Fabius Bile book the Harlequins have coined him the Prince of Crows and act in a way to force Bile into actions that mirror the myth that involves him. Everything seems cyclical to them, and they are all just playing their characters at different times, even until it means they have to die for it.

Now that's fascinating. I really like the idea that they force people to enact the roles they see them as, just as they themselves play their parts. I like Harlequins as insidious rather then strictly good. Perhaps their end game is simply that everyone plays their part. Considering that the eldar mythic cycles end with the Rhana Dandra and all the eldar dead, it's a strong possibility that their ultimate goal is the genocide of the eldar.

Eldrad should pay close attention to his supposed Harlequin allies...

In the Phoenix Lords novels it's stated they follow a special *brand * of fate (referred as the dreams of the dead God Asur) this fate can't be tampered by Farseer like normal, and the final goal it's the Rhana Dandra where all eldar will die just to take Chaos down with them.
So unless Ynnead can change that the Phoenix Lord are just delaying the Eldar destruction until the right time.[/quote
I always thought that part of destroying Chaos would be freeing the Eldar trapped by Slaanesh and regaining the ability to reincarnate. So the Rhana Dandra isn't about destuction in glory but a massive resurgence in power.

The Harlequins are not entirely locked into just repeating the old. For example, the Dance Without End (the tale of the Fall) was first performed after the Fall, and the first Solitaire was also post-Fall.

In the novel Valedor, a troupe introduces a new finale to the Dance Without End, and so we know this is a recent thing as the novel is set around the battle of Duriel. Traditionally it ends with Slaanesh and the Laughing God stalemated and still in an ongoing dance battle. However that time, the troupe had a figure representing Ynnead (as goddess not god but then Eldar seem to not be fussed too much about gender) in the background, growing bigger, while the ongoing dance battle continued. Eventually Slaanesh trips up the Laughing God (though it is possible that the Laughing God let it happen on purpose), and moves to deal the final blow, not noticing Ynnead growing bigger behind Slaanesh. Just before Ynnead strikes Slaanesh does notice and turns around, and displays a kaleidoscope of emotions, including fear (to the amazement of the watching Eldar audience). Then the play ends.

I think people have it nailed - there are certainly some ritualised dances (altho there can also be interpretations of these) - they are the 'saedath' telling the horrors of She Who Thirsts' predations - tales such as The Rise of the Darkling Prince, the Last Echoes of Yggh, and Verses from the Fall as well as the Dance Without End.

There are a number of 'standard' forms

A straightforward answer to your question, from Faces by Matthew Farrer:

Faces wrote:Perhaps they would tell one of the great stories, perhaps they would tell one of the lesser, perhaps one of the younger stories of the Devourer or the bestial wars about the great Gate.

They do create dances about new and very recent events, though the 'classics' of the Eldar mythology cycle are seemingly held in higher esteem.

Iracundus wrote:
The Harlequins are not entirely locked into just repeating the old. For example, the Dance Without End (the tale of the Fall) was first performed after the Fall, and the first Solitaire was also post-Fall.

In the novel Valedor, a troupe introduces a new finale to the Dance Without End, and so we know this is a recent thing as the novel is set around the battle of Duriel. Traditionally it ends with Slaanesh and the Laughing God stalemated and still in an ongoing dance battle. However that time, the troupe had a figure representing Ynnead (as goddess not god but then Eldar seem to not be fussed too much about gender) in the background, growing bigger, while the ongoing dance battle continued. Eventually Slaanesh trips up the Laughing God (though it is possible that the Laughing God let it happen on purpose), and moves to deal the final blow, not noticing Ynnead growing bigger behind Slaanesh. Just before Ynnead strikes Slaanesh does notice and turns around, and displays a kaleidoscope of emotions, including fear (to the amazement of the watching Eldar audience). Then the play ends.

Interesting.

Does support the notion that there are very few new dances (the Fall is one, but that's pretty unprecedented), only new variations on old, which fits perfectly with the eldar's worldview.

It also fits with the notion that these dances aren't just retellings of history, they're tools which the Harlequins use to manipulate the opinions of the eldar around them. Presumably the above Harlequins are Ynnari-leaning, so altering the ending to show Ynnead triumphing would be a ploy to persuade the eldar around them of Ynnead's importance and power. Whether they're right or not is another matter, but considering the respect and sway Harlequins have it's interesting to remember that they're all scheming buggers in a way Tzeentch would be proud of

Iracundus wrote:
The Harlequins are not entirely locked into just repeating the old. For example, the Dance Without End (the tale of the Fall) was first performed after the Fall, and the first Solitaire was also post-Fall.

In the novel Valedor, a troupe introduces a new finale to the Dance Without End, and so we know this is a recent thing as the novel is set around the battle of Duriel. Traditionally it ends with Slaanesh and the Laughing God stalemated and still in an ongoing dance battle. However that time, the troupe had a figure representing Ynnead (as goddess not god but then Eldar seem to not be fussed too much about gender) in the background, growing bigger, while the ongoing dance battle continued. Eventually Slaanesh trips up the Laughing God (though it is possible that the Laughing God let it happen on purpose), and moves to deal the final blow, not noticing Ynnead growing bigger behind Slaanesh. Just before Ynnead strikes Slaanesh does notice and turns around, and displays a kaleidoscope of emotions, including fear (to the amazement of the watching Eldar audience). Then the play ends.

That's awesome.