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Still a little off topic but a storm guardian squad with power fists and flame pistols jumping out of a venom or a wave serpent could wreck a squad's day. but I keep saying my mentality is stuck in 4th/5th edition. I know how to fix those editions, I don't know how to fix the broken mess that 10th edition is.

 PenitentJake wrote:
A lot of rules proposals for the units that were moved to Legends (Court, Beastmaster, Grotesques).

It's worth noting that they do have rules as Legends, and some of them are pretty decent. Worth taking a look before getting too attached to your own personal work-around for those who haven't done so already.

Never mind. I was thinking of the original Faction Packs when 10th released which did have everything in them.

BanjoJohn wrote:
Still a little off topic but a storm guardian squad with power fists and flame pistols jumping out of a venom or a wave serpent could wreck a squad's day. but I keep saying my mentality is stuck in 4th/5th edition. I know how to fix those editions, I don't know how to fix the broken mess that 10th edition is.

You're sort of kind of in spirit describing the current corsair units. A squad full of guardian-ish statlines with power weapons, and some special weapon shooting.

Theoretically, such a unit could be balanced and given a niche. It's just that you're asking for storm guardians to fill a very different role than they do now. Right now, they're semi-expendable objective grabbers with some cheeky shooting and the option to actually become somewhat scary if you're willing to invest in a quartet of warlocks and Eldrad to help them out. If you want them to be packing more heat than most aspect warrior squads, you're going to have to price them accordingly (which makes them too expensive/non-disposable to be particularly good objective grabbers or action monkeys), and it's going to raise questions of why this random guardian unit is so much more deadly than dedicated soldiers like aspect warriors. (Though arguably the same could be said of modern day windriders...)

I think GW are trying to turn the Corsairs into Dark Eldar Lite.
"All the Elfie Goodness, 50% Less Evil."

 SgtEeveell wrote:
I think GW are trying to turn the Corsairs into Dark Eldar Lite.
"All the Elfie Goodness, 50% Less Evil."

At nearly £40 for five t3 5+ bodies the suffering is right there.

 SgtEeveell wrote:
I think GW are trying to turn the Corsairs into Dark Eldar Lite.
"All the Elfie Goodness, 50% Less Evil."

One thing i actually was thinking about with dark eldar is that we don’t really get to see much of there society other than just evil. Even if it’s family stuff over something like inheritance. It’s so rare to see anything like that.
And I wonder if that ends up with a lot of players not even knowing what to do with the army from an inspiration side.
Like what is a dark eldar army supposed to look like. How do they even function together from the narrative side?

A week or so ago, I wrote a giant post for this thread and something messed up and it got lost. I spent a lot of it talking about a suggestion made on page one or two of the thread that the Drukhari should have gods. Now we have questions about "not evil" in Drukhari society.

I don't have a monopoly on GW's "truth," but I will say these questions do fundamentally conflict with my understanding of Drukhari.

Who inherits family wealth? I think GW has been VERY clear: whoever blackmails, delegitimizes or outright kills the other contenders. PERIOD.

The "not evil" in Drukhari society isn't discussed because it doesn't exist. Drukhari parents (such as they exist- most Drukhari are clones: Trueborn are RARE) actually WANT their childrent to kill each other. It ensures that whoever does manage to survive is strong, and as a bonus, if a child dies painfully, well the family can feed on that. Maybe record the suffering on the brainfruit of a Medusae slave so you can experience it more than once.

As for gods, Drukhari neither need nor want them, and in fact see the desire for diety in other species as a colossal weakness. The decadence of Drukhari society CREATED a god. In their minds, they ARE gods. Hermes doesn't worship Ares: they coexist.

If you want to know what Drukhari society looks like and how to build armies, read the Crusade rules in the dex. It's all there. Want the Scourges to help you in a realspace raid? Go seize control of an Aeyrie or two. You'll have to fight other Ascendant Lords (be they Archon, Succubus or Haemonculus) to do it. If you can't, the Scourges will work for whoever can.

Again, IMHO the BEST way to play Drukhari is to build Commorragh terrain and make them fight each other to determine who gets to go on Realspace Raids. There, you get to fight other forces with a loose aliance of Drukhari, who will IMMEDIATELY return to fighting and scheming against each other as soon as they get back to Commorragh.

Drukharimunda is the game hidden inside 40k, and it's freaking awesome.

Death is also partially optional within Dark Eldar society. If you can afford it, you can leave a digit or two with the Haemonculi as insurance against The Worst, and be regrown. Not reborn, not reincarnated. Regrown.

Which adds to the intrigue. If you’ve planned and pulled off a genuine coup? You have to assume your fallen foe took out that insurance. From there, you’ve choices. Prepare for their inevitable comeback, or try to bribe the Haemonculi Covens to switch off that specific casket. And of course others.

It’s closer to Vampire society than anything, because giving someone a true death is like….really hard once they’ve wealth and social standing. And once you’ve gained wealth and social standing? You’ve a balancing act to be ruthless enough to maintain it, without making an insurmountable number of enemies.

Given Vect’s final sanction can include “ok, well I’ve just set off a daemonic invasion in your branch of Commoragh, and shut you off from the rest of it. Do try to enjoy your demise, I know I will”? There are all sorts of penalties one might face if you don’t play the game well.

Eh.

Vatborn are weird and raise various philosophical questions about Eldar lore which GW has never really gone into. Arguably exploring that could give you more insight into Dark Eldar culture - and in turn create units for 40k.

In terms of Trueborn Children through, if we assume they are very difficult and expensive to make/protect, it seems unlikely Dark Eldar parents would just throw them away. I mean what's the point? If you cared so little for them they'd never survive.

Its much like discussions of evil. You can say for example that the Dark Eldar have no concept of loyalty or honour. Agreements are reached by force - or contract backed by the threat of force. They will obey the strong and gladly prey on the weak. And - importantly - they have to prey on someone. Because she who thirsts is always there, draining them away bit by bit.

But equally, Commorragh is organised chaos. It isn't a 1v1 battle royale for individual murder hobos. So while Dark Eldar would backstab their leaders or subordinates if they could, most of the time they don't/aren't. Which I think is a contradiction/tension that's hard to get across narratively. The big Kabals etc obviously haven't collapsed in 30 seconds.

I don't think the Drukhari need to venerate the Eldar pantheon (which is clearly "a thing" but they feel they've surpassed). I think more could be done with the Dark Muses. Not as something so silly as worship - more like Eldar cosplay. There's clearly something to wider Eldar psychology to take on the mindset of a certain archetypes. We see this with CWE, we see it with the Harlequins. Arguably this might be even more common in a clone-based society.

Vatborn aren’t clones. They’re closer to test tube babies. The parents provide the kickstart (not sure if in the old fashioned way, or just gamete harvesting?), and the resulting lifeform is then brought to term via artificial means.

This is done to circumvent the laborious procreation of the Eldar race, which if memory serves involves multiple stages.

Not sure if I’ve the original proper Dark Eldar codex or not. Will check my collection. If not, I’ll rely on other Dakkanauts to fill in the blanks in my knowledge.

Yeah- that's true; I used "clone" as a shorthand... but I acknowledge that it was inaccurate.

The larger point, however, remains: revivification technology (whichever form it takes) diminishes incentives for both the worship of dieties and moral conduct, leaving the Drukhari uninterested in either.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Vatborn aren’t clones. They’re closer to test tube babies. The parents provide the kickstart (not sure if in the old fashioned way, or just gamete harvesting?), and the resulting lifeform is then brought to term via artificial means.

This is done to circumvent the laborious procreation of the Eldar race, which if memory serves involves multiple stages.

Not sure if I’ve the original proper Dark Eldar codex or not. Will check my collection. If not, I’ll rely on other Dakkanauts to fill in the blanks in my knowledge.

The precise details seem a bit vague. The codexes perhaps not surprisingly trying to emphasise the monstrous/alien nature rather than specifics.

5th edition mentions a fertilized egg into amniotic tubes. 10th doesn't mention it. Just saying that "a newly formed Drukhari is forced rapidly to maturity".

Not sure where my idea they were clones comes from. Just perhaps seemed unlikely the Haemis are running around taking donations. I'll admit I know nothing about biology or cloning, but if you were going to mass-produce via test tubes, aren't clones just... more reliable?

Glancing at "are ants or bees clones" is producing "usually not, but weirdly sometimes..."

Yeah, could be they do have cloning capability amongst other options.

40K is oddly shy of outright cloning. Even among Chaos forces it seems somewhat frowned upon.

But then, where The Imperium has vat growing tech, where the zygote is raised to maturity, perhaps they just don’t need it in the same way. Why risk generational degradation, when the same tech that brings your creation to full term can do it with harvested gametes?

I’m going to get grim here, but in-universe suitable. Imagine if your society largely relies on vat grown offspring. In theory, any female created that way could have their eggs harvested at the point of puberty (when the eggs first become viable). Then, depending on how advanced the underlying tech is? Have each and everyone fertilised externally and away you go with another generation, and in potentially vast numbers.

Inhumane? Absolutely. But sickeningly efficient.

Heck, if you’ve something approaching an efficient transit system? Gametes harvested can be moved between territories to help maintain a healthy gene pool.

And that’s what I reckon is going on with the Death Korp. Not clones, just a highly efficient if morally repugnant breeding programme. Spesh if you can bring the offspring to maturity in the tubes. Then, you can get harvesting straight away.

Cloning has a lot of metaphysical considerations in 40k which is why I think they avoid it.

As each sentient organism has a warp mirror or soul, it requires they decide exactly how multiple copies of the same person interact with that. do they grow multiple identical souls, split one soul 10 ways, grow new ones, grow mutant ones, lose souls entirely?

GW play with the twin souls concept in eldar a lot with titan pilots, so there's some connection between naturally born clones (as identical twins are).

the pieces we have suggest that there is likely some kind of connection between clones, so taking one person and making 100 copies may create half alive freaks.

Was it the afriel strain guardsmen that were made as clones and had an unfortunate demise? I recall something like that.


I think it's easy to go 'eeevill 100% all the time' for the DE without really thinking what that would be like. IMO that's far too 1 dimensional. it's like saying that emperor's children are literally incapable of doing anything practical because they're in a perpetual murder orgy. It being a dominate trait doesn't mean it's 100% on all the time.

This is a problem of flanderisation where individual traits used to distinguish a faction start to be used to define it.


And as I've said previously in this thread, GW needs to provide a relatable aspect to the DE if they expect them to be more popular. If Dexter just flat out murdered children the show would never have been made. He has a sympathetic relatable aspect to allow a story about a guy who gets off on murder to actually happen.

Trying to sell a faction about baby eaters means you have to actually talk about them eating babies when telling their stories. So you better have a really good hook, or you're not going anywhere.

It’s the vampire aspect for me.

I don’t know if it was an intentional thing, but Dark Eldar are vampiric in their own way.

Long lived, capable of returning from the grave in certain circumstances, preying on lesser species for their own survival. Considered alluring and sexy by humans.

Crucially? For their alleged moral failings? They’re still the most successful of all Eldar cultures. The true heirs to the old Eldar empire.

The way they prey upon other species really isn’t terribly different to humans hunting, farming and eating animals. Sure, we might say “but that’s different, us humans are sentient”. But to any Eldar? We’re dull minded oiks with sluggish, unlovely bodies. A lesser species. A useful bulwark to be manipulated and expended to their advantage, whatever form that takes.

One could even make the argument that despite their methods? The Dark Eldar are oddly humane. Yes, their playthings are doomed to suffer horribly. But those condemned to the arena will see the abject suffering of a relative handful of sentient beings refresh and extend the lives of tens of thousands of Dark Eldar at every performance.

None of them are tortured by their hunger or the inhumanity of their actions though. They're all unrepentant mustache twirlers.

Vampires as a genre are almost only ever told through the lens of the 'moral' vampires who feel bad about what they do, even while they continue to do it. They're tortured badboys.

The DE are just badboys, they torture everyone else.

They’re a species that’s accepted the price of their survival is all. Their souls suffer a constant ebbing away into Slaanesh. And the infliction of pain restores what is lost.

And the agony appears to twist them further, like all addictions affect the person.

And not one of them really has a choice. In Commoragh, they are strong and all but inviolate. Sure, individuals can flee to Craftworlds or Exodite Worlds. Whether that lessens or arrests Slaanesh’s leeching is uncertain.

But to do so? They’re turning their back on everything they’ve known since they were born, not just the addiction side of things. Whilst to a far, far greater extent? It’s akin to me, a middle aged guy with lots of technological toys I’m reliant on for my day to day life and work running away to an Amish Community.

Could I adapt? I dare say I could, eventually. But I’d be giving up so many creature comforts and part of my overall world view (not believing gods exist) in order to do so.

And so ultimately? The Dark Eldar aren’t anymore evil than an Ork is evil. They’re just completely different, successful societies. Ones modern humans and those in the setting find utterly alien, if not entirely abhorrent.

I don't really accept that reading of them.

They haven't accepted anything, they've chosen it.

We have plenty of situations where DE have joined craftworlds, harlequins, corsairs or even exodites. Their lives aren't actually tied to the lifestyle. They lose the hunger of slannesh when they take on those other paths (Lelith noticed this explicitly simply by being away from Commoragh, without even giving up the DE path). They really only have to put on a spirit stone and they're as safe as a corsair.

Their society is one of pure choice. they can give it up at any time but are taught to love it. But clearly not all of them do and thy don't stay that way.


Feeling sorry for addicts only goes so far when they start killing and torturing as part of their addiction and it's not a particularly interesting protagonist position to enjoy.

I think you’re missing just how much protection Commoragh offers.

Not only is it vast, but damned near impossible to get to. Yeah, invasions still happen, but they’re exceptionally rare, and typically offer free entertainment

If you’re happy with the price of that situation? You can avoid the risks of existing in realspace all the time. And also the other drawbacks, like having to rein in your excesses.

And again, they born into that. Not all Dark Eldar are Kaballites, Wyches, Mercs etc. Many are just civvies. Civvies born and raised into its merciless society of deliberate, purposeful torment of others.

For a species that experiences things in the way all Eldar do? Introspection on the comparative morality just isn’t going to come into it. You’re too busy trying to survive and ideally enjoying yourself, whatever the price of said enjoyment.

Also, Eldar are presented in pretty human terms.
Orks are sometimes presented as pretty alien, but Eldar are basically just humans with longer lives and pointier ears.

And sure, it can be hard to have sympathy or empathy for an addict. But for the vast majority of Commorites? They’re essentially Crack Babies, born into a society where everyone is on Crack, and sees being on Crack as a necessary part of survival. They’ve never known any other life.

Sure if you're an avid Eldar reader wanting to read stories about other Eldar.

They have to have a hook for human readers though or they just don't sell. And as much as we like to discuss the alieness of aliens, they're all built using human tropes, often heightened or exaggerated to set them apart.

But in the end, Orks, Eldar and tau are just psychologically different expressions of the human psyche. Tyranids aren't but they're more animals than people.

So crack babies aren't a fun read for the average human readers

Hellebore wrote:None of them are tortured by their hunger or the inhumanity of their actions though.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:They’re a species that’s accepted the price of their survival is all.

...

And so ultimately? The Dark Eldar aren’t anymore evil than an Ork is evil.

Hellebore wrote:I don't really accept that reading of them.

They haven't accepted anything, they've chosen it.

We have plenty of situations where DE have joined craftworlds, harlequins, corsairs or even exodites. Their lives aren't actually tied to the lifestyle. They lose the hunger of slannesh when they take on those other paths (Lelith noticed this explicitly simply by being away from Commoragh, without even giving up the DE path). They really only have to put on a spirit stone and they're as safe as a corsair.

Their society is one of pure choice. they can give it up at any time but are taught to love it. But clearly not all of them do and thy don't stay that way.


Feeling sorry for addicts only goes so far when they start killing and torturing as part of their addiction and it's not a particularly interesting protagonist position to enjoy.

I'm going to be that annoying guy who argues for something in the middle. I think Mad Doc is, perhaps, being a little overly forgiving of the species of torturers. The circumstances of their upbringing, the soul thirst, etc. all explain why they are the way that they are, but any dark eldar capable of ethical considerations and self-criticism could come to the conclusion that their existence is ultimately unethical. Even if they don't have the means to actually escape the soul thirst (it's not like craftworlders have recruiting booths with open offers to hand out waystones to converts), they could opt to at least be a little less horrible about their situation.

That said, I do think that Hellebore might be underestimating the difficulty of leaving Commorragh and the requirements for a drukhari coming to the conclusion that they *want* to leave Commorragh in the first place.The modern beef industry could stand to be quite a bit better in terms of ethical treatment of the animals involved. But plenty of people never give that any serious thought because they just aren't exposed to the relevant information. And if they are exposed, maybe they just aren't financially in a position to switch to cruelty-free beef. Maybe they have a medical condition that makes it difficult to go vegetarian. Being a drukhari who opts to stop indulging the soul thirst is like being a vegetarian who had to betray the Yakuza and flee the country in order to become a vegetarian.

Also, it doesn't *seem* like you just stop feeling the soul thirst after a brief separation from Commorragh. Lelith was benefitting from the way Yvraine seems to be able to dampen the soul thirst (presumably by tugging people close enough to another god to loosen Slaanesh's grip somewhat.) While gaining/losing the soul thirst does seem to be doable through lifestyle change, it seems to be more comparable to overcoming a life-long addiction; not just sweating the Slaanesh out in a brief stint of rehab.

EDIT: I also wanted to mention that Da Big Dakka frames a trueborn's first feeding as traumatic. Like making a kid torture someone to death, but shooting them up with hard drugs as a reward for doing it. So while your average drukhari has long since stopped grappling with the morality of their existence, there's at least a sort of tragedy for the beings they initially/briefly were.

We're talking about making them sympathetic to sell to people though.

All this is doing is pushing them further away from being a faction people are interested in.

Until we got the nightlords novels, the nightlords were pure mustache twirlers as well. But they got some relatability in those stories that made them popular despite the depraved nature of the nightlords as a faction. But that's partly because the protagonists didn't spend all their prose skinning children and wearing their faces while strapping their screaming bodies to the armour....



As to how easy or not it is for the DE to leave, the corsairs visit them. They leave and join their crews semi regularly. It's about as open a doorway as possible. All corsairs wear spiritstones, ergo all DE that become corsairs wear spirit stones.

But that's not really the point, because its the customer you're trying to sell these guys to that matter - is pushing the crack baby addict character completely uninterested in redemption, has no remorse, enjoys what they do and eat babies alive by skinning them, while graping their families as an evening aperitif actually something people will buy, or even something GW wants to sell?

If you aren't writing your characters to fit this set of behaviours, then it's because your faction isn't actually as depraved as you've been saying, or your characters conveniently never get a chance to act on their otherwise every day cravings due to plot contrivance, or they're actually exceptions to the rule and don't like it/resist it or whathaveyou.

GW chickens out every time they have an 'evil' faction protagonist, by usually avoiding the gross and repugnant behaviours they tell is in factionwide imagery that they are supposed to do. They paint all DE that way, or all nightlords that way etc. But virtually every time we get protagonists, they're conveniently not that inhuman, because they won't sell books like that. So as I said right at the beginning of the thread, GW aren't going to waste money on them if they aren't going to try to humanise them enough that people will actually buy them in the quantities they need to justify their existence.

It’s all relative.

I’m an omnivore. Sure, I prefer to buy slow reared meat, avoiding factory farming where I can. But to a vegan? My dietary preference is still something monstrous.

Are Dark Eldar depraved if they genuinely see nothing wrong with the Commorite lifestyle? And it’s not They’re Just Socio/Psychopaths. This is their culture. This is how they first survived the fall and continue to do so. They’re the product of the excesses of the now ancient Eldar. They’ve found a way to have their cake and eat it, the worst having already pretty much happened.

I think it’s a difficult thing to write in prose, because us smelly hoomans only really have out life experience to key things to. And so, a human looking species that Just Does Not Recognise Our Sentience is damned hard to pull off.

And in a sense, they’re less monstrous than the Craftworlds. See, a Craftworld will think pretty much nothing of arranging the death of a planetary population if their Seers are convinced it will spare said Craftworld any form of inconvenience. They can never be sure of course, because the whole point of avoiding an undesirable future is said undesirable future doesn’t occur. Yet….they’ll do it anyway.

Sometimes it’s neatly surgical (take out a current mook to stop them becoming the next Hitler type thing). Other times it plunging worlds and sectors into all out war with Orks.

The death toll doesn’t matter, because it’s not Eldar lives. And if it’s not Eldar lives? It doesn’t really count, does it?

What I think Eldar of all stripes really, really need? Is the Waaargh! The Orks treatment.

Single sourcebook, telling us about their society and world view. Well, I say single. Could do one for each major Eldar society. But despite gorgeous artwork and evocative background in their various Codexes? It’s something they’ve never benefitted from.

And hey, they’re all Jes’ babies. And he’s surely approaching retirement age. So the sooner the better if you ask me.

Maybe I'm just an edgelord from the late 90s/early 00s - but this idea that you collect a faction because you sympathise with them is just a bit bizarre to me.

I don't need Dark Eldar to be more like humans. I think Eldar are best when you emphasize the fact they are Xenos. The problem is trying to write characters with a fundamentally alien world view is hard.

If I was being really impolite, one of the major problems Eldar of all flavours has had in the wider writing has been that they are meant to be complex and intelligent. But for whatever reason the author has struggled to write complex and intelligent characters. So instead we get 2-dimensional characters doing stupid things. And then people wonder why no one is especially interested.

I think Farseers should be the most interesting aspect of Eldar. Trying to carefully see the future, every probability and possibility piled on top of each other. How would you really go about explaining that to a reader?

Well... its hard. So lets just have them reach into a bag, pull out some runestones and say "yolo". Because that's easy.

Farseers could be written better for certain.

Try to show us how they settle on a course of action. They don’t strike me as particularly big risk takers. So perhaps it’s all a careful balance. Learning how to spot What Will Only Make Things Worse, what could go either way but will present further opportunities for a beneficial outcome etc.

So, when say, Eldrad has tried to intervene in person, with words rather than actions? Show why he chose that path. Demonstrate the web and weave of fate, and how they prepare for all foreseeable outcomes.

Tyel wrote:
Maybe I'm just an edgelord from the late 90s/early 00s - but this idea that you collect a faction because you sympathise with them is just a bit bizarre to me.

I don't need Dark Eldar to be more like humans. I think Eldar are best when you emphasize the fact they are Xenos. The problem is trying to write characters with a fundamentally alien world view is hard.

If I was being really impolite, one of the major problems Eldar of all flavours has had in the wider writing has been that they are meant to be complex and intelligent. But for whatever reason the author has struggled to write complex and intelligent characters. So instead we get 2-dimensional characters doing stupid things. And then people wonder why no one is especially interes

I agree, whilst its good to have characters you can understand and follow the story of, you don't have to hold the same values, ideals, and so forth. Heck sometimes the best character in a book is one of the morally grey or evil characters! How many people love Darth Vader not at the very end of Return of the Jedi when he returns to the good side, but all through his most evil phase. He's a super popular character when he's cutting jedi in half; commanding legions to wipe out Rebel Scum and in video games tearing whole star destroyers out of the sky.



Honestly I think the biggest issue is that for the longest time GW didn't allow Black Library to write stories outside of the Imperial Perspective. So the Xenos factions have VERY few books to reference outside of their codex. This is a limit for fans and also authors. There's less for writers to latch onto; no big Horus Heresy series; and also a lot of one-off or shorter term series that go nowhere big. So there's no real depth to filter the weaker and stronger stories. This is somewhere that Old World did far better with because there was no poster-child faction to focus on. So every faction got stories of themselves (good and bad); plus you had things like Gotrek and Felix that touched on all the factions.

40K has always suffered model and lore wise with the sheer dominance of the Imperium and Space Marines. In part due to their popularity, but also through the years as various managers and marketing pushes have fixated on the best selling elements of the company.

 Overread wrote:
Honestly I think the biggest issue is that for the longest time GW didn't allow Black Library to write stories outside of the Imperial Perspective. So the Xenos factions have VERY few books to reference outside of their codex. This is a limit for fans and also authors. There's less for writers to latch onto; no big Horus Heresy series; and also a lot of one-off or shorter term series that go nowhere big. So there's no real depth to filter the weaker and stronger stories. This is somewhere that Old World did far better with because there was no poster-child faction to focus on. So every faction got stories of themselves (good and bad); plus you had things like Gotrek and Felix that touched on all the factions.

40K has always suffered model and lore wise with the sheer dominance of the Imperium and Space Marines. In part due to their popularity, but also through the years as various managers and marketing pushes have fixated on the best selling elements of the company.

Well GW can't push what isn't selling. I don't know how the Path of the Eldar/Dark Eldar series did.
The Ynnari stuff was dreadful and I assume didn't sell at all. GW have since I think completely lost any idea where they were going with the Ynnari and may just abandon the whole thing if/when Yvraine and co go out of print.
Valedor was fine I guess. But it felt very paint by numbers. If you've read the codexes you can basically predict everything that happens. Its not bad, but lacks direction.

By contrast the Horus Heresy churned out what, nearly 70 books or something. Of which an awful lot of "these marines in this coloured armour go pew pew". But in turn maybe a third is quite good, and encouraged people to bother with the rubbish. But we all knew they'd get to Terra eventually.

Which I think is the rub. I don't think GW do care about Dark Eldar lore. I don't think there's a "Mr Drukhari" at the company scoping out where DE lore is going over the next 10 years. Maybe it doesn't have to go anywhere (as per the "40k is a setting" people.) But the result is a sort of stasis/stagnation. Vect is in charge and still in charge. Other people are conspiring - and still conspiring. Commorragh is doomed but not actually doomed. If you read the 5th edition codex back in 2011, essentially nothing has changed.

Its fair to ask I guess whether it really does. GW I think wanted to change the setting in 8th with Guilliman and co, and has then spent the better part of 10 years walking everything back. The most recent end of edition supplements read very much as "stuff is happening but hasn't happened". Thats good if you want to use it to inspire your own games as of right now - but not great for evolving the factions.

But maybe a big release in 11th will encourage something new in the fluff/codex. Versus a rehash of 5th with different words.

I think something that would give Drukhari fans a big boost is a Commorragh game. The Running Man with Drukhari Stalkers, or maybe a beefed up "Gangs of Commorragh". Perhaps a campaign supplement for Necromunda, with rules for Drukhari, Harlequins and Corsairs.