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We know of the Eldar's relationship to the Great Enemy, and we know that some of them follow the path of Khaine, who may or may not be an aspect of Khorne. And they're probably miffed at Nurgle for taking Isha from them.

But what of Tzeentch? I'm surprised a psychic race doesn't have that much lore involving him.

Well, to the best of my knowledge the Eldar have never had a documented reputation of messing around with Chaos.

Clearly, the know there’s power of a sort to be had, but that one way or another the price is always, always eternal damnation. Either your soul is consumed by daemons and gods, or you become an immortal slave in the shape of a Daemon Prince.

If we take the original Necron lore as gospel? By the time the warp was knackered enough by the Old Ones desperation, the Eldar were already a massively long lived and technologically advanced species. So on the face of it, it could be they’ve just never had the same drivers as humans do for taking the risk.

Tzeentch? I’d imagine Craftworlders, specifically their Farseers need to be incredibly wary that their predictions and foresight aren’t tainted by that god. How they do that? I don’t think I’ve read anything which goes into it.

It could be why they rely on Rune casting and various failsafes, such as the Ghosthelm and that. Sure, lots of that protects them from daemonic assault when using their powers. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only purpose.

I suppose we could argue that given the Farseer’s stock in trade, which seems to be an inherent discipline to their species? Again Tzeentch just doesn’t have the same things to hook onto?

Eldar know that chaos, in general, is scary and bad. Additionally, falling to a chaos god tends to involve going to an extreme in some way shape or form (you don't fall to Khorne for occassionally getting miffed and getting into one bar fight in college.) So generally speaking, I think it's hard for a chaos god other than Slaanesh to be a *pressing* concern for the eldar because it's just so much more likely that Slaanesh will call dibs and gobble up an eldar whose mind/soul end up so excessive in one direction or another that they'd stray from the protection of the path.

Or put another, eldar are so closely attuned to Slaanesh by default that it's hard for other chaos gods to yank them away from her. But a tzeentch daemon probably won't hesitate to eat/claim an eldar soul when they get the chance.

I also don't think that warlocks/farseers are *that* much more prone to Tzeentch-related problems than most because the whole point of being on the *path* of the seer is that you're being a seer in a very disciplined, conservative, safe way using tons of runes as a "fusebox" to make sure you're not suffering perils. In Valedor when they discuss the chaos threats that stress out eldar seers, they specifically reference Slaanesh and don't even mention Tzeentch.

Now all that said, there's a warlock in the Path of the Dark Eldar series who does get possessed by a Lord of Change, and there's a mandrake in that same series who gets corrupted by Tzeentch. So there is *some* threat of Tzeentchly corruption.

And they're probably miffed at Nurgle for taking Isha from them.

Not sure if they retconned it, and I know other stories since then have wink wink nudge nudged that it's true at this point, but Isha being Nurgle's prisoner was stated to be the belief of a single craftworld when the idea was first introduced in the 4e chaos daemons book. (IIRC.) It's just one of those things that's way cooler if it's true than if it's not. But the eldar species as a whole may not even be aware of the *theory* that Isha is a Nurgle captive.

There must surely be something in the Farseeing discipline which helps account for not only seeing what you want to see, but what another wants you to see.

They know Tzeentch exists. So there has to be some kind of caution/allowance.

Still sucks Eldar never got a Waaaargh! the Orks equivalent.

As a Large Language Model I am not able to determine the specifics of transtemporal dynamics, however:

Slaanesh is the youngest of the Chaos God's, and the Path system was developed in response to the Fall, so the entire discipline of Farseeing has only come about during a period of time where Tzeentch has existed. Likewise it's proven to be at least reasonably reliable, otherwise craftworlds wouldn't model military interventions and throw away hundreds of valuable Eldar lives based on the predictions of Farseers.

So either the existence of Tzeentch doesn't affect Farseeing or Farseeing has ways to counter Tzeentchs influence.

Personally I'm of the view that the fact Tzeentch exists has no bearing on Farseeing,and most failures are due to either the inherent unpredictability of the Warp, or some outside interference, or misinterpretation of the visions. Tzeentch only affects Farseeing when he directly chooses to intervene, which must be a rare occurrence otherwise the entire discipline would collapse

It could simply be that Farseeing is a holistic approach. You’re not just looking to the future to see “what happens immediately differently if I kick Dave inna Fork, rather than Wedgie him”.

Rather it may be that they follow the strands of fate for as long as the outcomes remain fairly clear. And it perhaps the true mark of skill is being able to follow those threads ever further.

That way, you can hopefully be reasonably sure not only to secure victory today? But that the price of that victory is managed well into the future.

Example. Let’s say it’s foreseen and agreed upon that the son of an Imperial Admiral, who has already been born, will in time be the doom of an entire Craftworld. Therefore, he has to die.

To a rash mind? Surely sooner is better than later? Nip him right in the bud. But what are the consequences? If an early strike leads to a damaging but survivable attack by a vengeful father with a lot of clout upon your Craftworld, is that the lowest possible price you can pay?

Perhaps the right path here is to ensure the father’s death first. Then the son. Ideally before the son has begun their education.

Maybe there are other ways. It seems likely that “he’s the problem, so we kill him” is never going to be the only solution. What if there’s other ways? Perhaps a particular tutor is the one that sets the worst future in motion? Could removing them from the board be the lowest price? Is it possible to just not be wherever he ends up? What are the consequences of that approach?

And so on and so forth.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Eldar know that chaos, in general, is scary and bad. Additionally, falling to a chaos god tends to involve going to an extreme in some way shape or form (you don't fall to Khorne for occassionally getting miffed and getting into one bar fight in college.) So generally speaking, I think it's hard for a chaos god other than Slaanesh to be a *pressing* concern for the eldar because it's just so much more likely that Slaanesh will call dibs and gobble up an eldar whose mind/soul end up so excessive in one direction or another that they'd stray from the protection of the path.

Or put another, eldar are so closely attuned to Slaanesh by default that it's hard for other chaos gods to yank them away from her. But a tzeentch daemon probably won't hesitate to eat/claim an eldar soul when they get the chance.

I also don't think that warlocks/farseers are *that* much more prone to Tzeentch-related problems than most because the whole point of being on the *path* of the seer is that you're being a seer in a very disciplined, conservative, safe way using tons of runes as a "fusebox" to make sure you're not suffering perils. In Valedor when they discuss the chaos threats that stress out eldar seers, they specifically reference Slaanesh and don't even mention Tzeentch.

Now all that said, there's a warlock in the Path of the Dark Eldar series who does get possessed by a Lord of Change, and there's a mandrake in that same series who gets corrupted by Tzeentch. So there is *some* threat of Tzeentchly corruption.

And they're probably miffed at Nurgle for taking Isha from them.

Not sure if they retconned it, and I know other stories since then have wink wink nudge nudged that it's true at this point, but Isha being Nurgle's prisoner was stated to be the belief of a single craftworld when the idea was first introduced in the 4e chaos daemons book. (IIRC.) It's just one of those things that's way cooler if it's true than if it's not. But the eldar species as a whole may not even be aware of the *theory* that Isha is a Nurgle captive.

In Path of the Dark Eldar, there are 2 Mandrake leaders. One is Nurgle aligned and the other Tzeentch aligned, presumably they both sought power to defeat their rival. I could see Farseers being tempted by Tzeentch if offered more accurate powers to better thwart Slaanesh's plans or get one over their rival Farseers (since Tzeentch loves intrigue).

The survival of Isha is canon as one of the timeline snippets said the Masque of Frozen Stars performed dances of such beauty that the audience wept, and their tears caused the corrupting rain of Rotigus to instead become a purifying monsoon that washed away Nurgle's taint. The power of this rain then gets attributed to Isha, sabotaging Nurgle from within.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It could simply be that Farseeing is a holistic approach. You’re not just looking to the future to see “what happens immediately differently if I kick Dave inna Fork, rather than Wedgie him”.

Rather it may be that they follow the strands of fate for as long as the outcomes remain fairly clear. And it perhaps the true mark of skill is being able to follow those threads ever further.

I would think that they don't only scry for one thing and then say the job's a good 'un, but map out a great variety of different visions and then also match them to more standard intel. Intel officers and military advisors might not be "paths" as such so they don't show up on the battlefield and therefore aren't really written about in army books. Or it might just be understood to be a skillset related to the whole "seer" branch of paths. Reasonably the craftworlders would have access to some pretty subtle probes that they can dot across their typical paths through the galaxy.

I'd take the view that what "Tzeentch" wants and does is very difficult to say for sure because it's such a self-defeating being that plots for the sake of plotting as often as for the sake of achieving anything for anyone. It's more sensible to track individual actors like Ahriman or other sorcerers and daemons than formally tussle with the entity itself. Assuming that Farseers view Tzeentch as a discrete personality rather than a behavioural pattern in the sea of souls, anyway.

An example from other sci-fi that springs to mind is Mega City One’s Psi Division.

Among other Psi Judges, they have Precogs. The division monitors accuracy, and pays attention when even normally a bit wonky Precogs are making the same predictions.

I can see it being the same for Eldar society. We know the Seers form a Council, and its battlefield version. But for the general day to day, collaboration and corroboration seems a sensible idea.

I would assume that farseeing is a lot like Psychohistory from Foundation - here are the probable futures in broad strokes, and here are the events we need to alter to make those outcomes happen - the closer the event is, the less clear the outcome - it's called FARseeing after all.

So a farseer sees a range of possible futures, identifies one that has a beneficial outcome and then backtraces it through time to find anchor events required to nudge fate in that direction:
- Here's future A where we do nothing
- Here's future B we want to happen.
- Look back along Future B's timeline to find where it diverges from A, we need to do that
- OK, we tried to kill that enemy commander and it wasn't successful, so now we're a little further along History A than is ideal, but not insurmountable, it just means we have to make more tweaks to get to History B
- Woohoo! Blowing up that planet helped! We're now on a path to history A(1), which is still not ideal, but is closer to History B than History A was. Now we need to make further changes in the future
{several interventions later}
- Right, not every intervention was successful but we're now heading towards History A(4)(iii) which is very very close to History B, but we're too close to the event to make further changes so we'll have to make do.

History B (the initially foreseen possible favourable outcome) didn't occur, but History A (the unaltered timeline) didn't occur either, and the future was altered enough that something very very close to History B happened in the Eldar's favour

Now, another Farseer might see History B, but also see History C, which is a GREAT outcome, better than B. So now they're trying to make C happen which might conflict with the first Farseer's attempts to make B happen. Maybe they talk it out, maybe they're part of a council and find some other way forward, or maybe they're on different craftworlds and both are incredibly stubborn so the craftworlds end up going to war over it

It might not even be different outcomes. Maybe another Farseer in the first seer council has determined alternate/better inflection points that the first Farseer missed: they're still aiming for the same outcome but finding alternate ways to achieve it.

Could be agreed and imposed limits on their shenanigans. After all, I’d imagine when it comes to the web of fate? The bigger the intervention, the greater and less predictable the potential consequences.

The trick could be in trying to avoid, rather than achieve, certain outcomes? Maybe that’s how you avoid Tzeentch’s machinations.

That's part of what I see as the difference between Farseers and Tzeentch (and why Farseeing doesn't inherently empower/attract Tzeentch)

Eldar gently, incrementally nudge things towards a preferred outcome (or away from another one, same difference). History has an inertia that has to be respected, and while futures can be altered, you have to be careful to set the dominos up correctly

Tzeentch? Tzeentch doesn't care, Tzeentch CAN set up a delicate domino effect of events to achieve a particular outcome if it wants, on a whim, but Tzeentch can also just warp reality to get the desired outcome.

Think of it like Chess. a farseer can see the board, and can see a number of possible outcomes throughout the game. Every move makes some outcomes more likely, some outcomes impossible. A Farseer can control their own/their craftworld's moves to try and shape the game in the way they want. they aren't always successful, but they're at an advantage over someone just playing reactively to individual moves, not taking into account an overall wider scope of the game

Tzeentch ignores the rules. He plays the game, he sees the moves, but also sometimes one of his pawns will just turn into a Queen, or one of his pieces will randomly move like another piece.
He won't always do it, and he won't always win, and sometimes he doesn't even want to win, and maybe his win conditions are completely different to achieving checkmate, but Tzeentch is playing a fundamentally different version of the game to everyone else.

Pretty much my take.

Nudging fate to a more desirable outcome, or to specifically avoid a disastrous outcome isn’t the same thing as trying to Control Fate. And by keeping things relatively precise in terms of what you’re interfering with, perhaps you help minimise the risks of things initially considered low risk snapping back at you.

Tzeentch is plotting for plotting’s sake. Change for the sake of it with little regard to consequences short and long term.

The level of control and consideration I for one associate with the Eldar seems anathema to Tzeentch’s preferences. Something useful to it? Sure. But that the Eldar seem wise enough to plan far ahead and not necessarily believe their own hype? That seems wiser than “I am great prophet, see the three things I definitely got right, therefore I are right about the next forty five things definitely happening exactly as I foresaw with absolutely no horrible things lurking. Hey, I’m sure I left my 20 Primarchs around here somewhere” type self delusion.

That the Farseers are all fundamentally about the safeguarding of their people and know that they're living beings who give up a normal life probably also helps ground them. There's something they very much care about getting done on a practical level and there's something personal they wistfully let go of to achieve it.

You don't become a Farseer because you desire personal power or revenge and you're not a space marine with little ability to understand never mind relate to the idea of a personally fulfilling peaceful life. It's also a whole job process with training and standards meant to discourage mania, quite unlike rogue psykers or those reading a little too much sorcerous tomes. They must have access to some weapons-grade therapy.

Depending on the writer Tzeentch can also be a legitimately intelligent and patient schemer, rather than just a bipolar maniac. Why would he want the eldar to "fall to chaos" when that's functionally handing them all to Slaanesh?

He might just feed the farseers good useful information that keeps them alive and out of Slaanesh's clutches. After all, no one would use psychic divination if it always backfired, right? Think about how much the eldar have rehabilitated its reputation!

Rosebuddy wrote:
That the Farseers are all fundamentally about the safeguarding of their people and know that they're living beings who give up a normal life probably also helps ground them. There's something they very much care about getting done on a practical level and there's something personal they wistfully let go of to achieve it.

You don't become a Farseer because you desire personal power or revenge and you're not a space marine with little ability to understand never mind relate to the idea of a personally fulfilling peaceful life. It's also a whole job process with training and standards meant to discourage mania, quite unlike rogue psykers or those reading a little too much sorcerous tomes. They must have access to some weapons-grade therapy.

The difficulty here is that the Chaos Gods can use entirely altruistic intent as their road in. The Healer might be given the knowledge of how to cure an ailment, only for Nurgle to reel them in bit by bit, sending ever more plagues, agues and sickness until said Healer makes a pact. The Statesman enacting political reform for the better can slowly be twisted to their point of view being “what’s good for everyone is good for me, therefore what’s good for me must be good for everyone”. The Warrior just wanting to defend the innocent of his settlement can, by degrees, be twisted into a killer maniac no longer able to tell friend from foe. The Chef known for providing exquisite foods pushed to using ever more exotic, then degenerate then frankly obscene ingredients and methods.

So that one has non-selfish, altruistic ideals is not proof against Chaos. After all, nobody goes from Mild Mannered White Collar Worker to Frenzied Devotee Of A Dark God in one simple step. It’s corruption, of the body, the spirit, your ideals, your hopes and dreams.

Again, given Tzeentch doesn’t seem to impact Farseers as commonly as we might expect? We can reasonably infer that is a deliberate part of the discipline. But caution and failsafes are never perfect or foolproof. And include being especially wary of too good to be true type stuff.

One could even argue the Eldar are uninteresting to Tzeentch, because the caution makes them far harder work than Smelly Hoomans. Or even that in their current state of a low population, that the effort taken to corrupt and twist them just isn’t rewarded?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Thinking further, we know that rooms and buildings can be daemon proofed through ritual and technology and that.

The Imperium can do it (albeit with….varying efficacy), so surely the Eldar can. And I don’t think it’s an unsafe assumption given their technology is far advanced beyond humanity, that they can do it better and more reliably.

So perhaps the most important divinations are done in such an environment. Another layer of protection and failsafes to prevent those filthy daemonic whispers colouring things.

I entirely doubt any such precautions will ever be 100%. But, like the safety features in a modern car? They won’t yet outright prevent an accident, and none on its own will do the job. But all taken together and working as intended? You can survive, if not exactly walk away, ever nastier accidents, and thanks to some features (ABS, collision detection and that) even help avoid some potential accidents entirely.

And so for the Eldar? They’re about as cautious, informed and protected as you can get. They can, most likely never be 100% certain there’s no nefarious influence on their visions and scryings. But if they universally agree what an acceptable level of risk is? It again helps mitigate the inherent risks.

Ahriman's storyline would imply that Tzeentche has some interest in the harlequins and the black library. such a trove of information would delight the god of schemes. Or Tzeentche just likes to watch Ahriman fail.

I could see Tzeentche and Cegorach playing a big game of fate with each other. And we're all just pieces of the game.

I think the source material has varied quite a bit in how Farseers work.

For some reason in 2nd edition I imagined it more as this extremely complicated ability to make predictions and understand causality. If X starts a war with Y then Z happens and that saves Eldar lives versus the war not starting. But in some recent stuff its been more fairground magic. I.E. "the runes say that if you go to this appointed place at this appointed time you will meet a tall dark stranger, because the Six of Cups is reversed, oh its very hard to see..."

Maybe I'm too far down the Fabius Bile rabbithole - but I think assigning agency to Tzeentch is questionable. His trick is usually the self fulfilling prophecy.

Tzeentch is the god of ambition - and Eldar can certainly be ambitious. But I don't think just the act of being a Farseer makes you intrinsically more likely to have anything to do with Tzeentch.

I would in fact argue the opposite. Worshipping tzeentch is a shortcut to power so a farseer that's already put in centuries of work and earned that power is less likely to be swayed.

But a younger upstart who is in that teenage 'do i really have to follow this strict path for 200 years to learn to move a pebble with my mind ' phase may see tzeentch as a shortcut to power and that becomes extremely persuasive

Possibly? I mean I really don’t like to rule anything out in terms of 40K background.

But again the Eldar experience life very differently. The whole point of the Path system is to allow them to indulge themselves in a pretty safe manner. So whilst say, a 10 year Apprenticeship to a Smelly Hooman may seem like a lot of dogsboy time? The Eldar do seem to appreciate the focus and discipline.

They’re also a properly mature psychic species. And even prior to the Fall, those who would become Craftworlders cautious in their behaviour, avoiding the worst of the excesses that doomed their species.

I’d also imagine those teaching new Seers are looking for signs of Naughty Shortcuts among their charges.

So, never say never like? But it must surely be vanishingly rare. And could lead to the offender being quietly offed.

The corsairs and Rangers are literally Eldar that couldn't hack the path system. It is so stifling there's an entire galaxy wide piratical industry built around it.

Alaitoc has specialist rangers because their zealotry in following the path drives more people into being outcasts than any other craftworld.

They aren't a monolith.

Yet we don’t hear of those more adventurous Eldar fiddling the dark gods.

Whilst as I understand an Eldar can become an Outcast at pretty much any age? They still don’t go completely mental.

So we have to assume that the various Eldar societies and cultures do a pretty decent job of keeping their youth away from dabbling with Chaos, one way or another.

There's a whole paragraph in the Outcasts section of the 2nd edition Eldar codex specifically talking about how the lack of the Path system makes it "all too easy to embrace the obscene virtues of Chaos"

Just because we don't have specific examples of Outcasts falling to chaos doesn't mean it doesn't happen, it explicitly does happen, easily, and is a very dangerous part of being an Outcast

Rosebuddy wrote:
That the Farseers are all fundamentally about the safeguarding of their people and know that they're living beings who give up a normal life probably also helps ground them. There's something they very much care about getting done on a practical level and there's something personal they wistfully let go of to achieve it.

You don't become a Farseer because you desire personal power or revenge and you're not a space marine with little ability to understand never mind relate to the idea of a personally fulfilling peaceful life. It's also a whole job process with training and standards meant to discourage mania, quite unlike rogue psykers or those reading a little too much sorcerous tomes. They must have access to some weapons-grade therapy.

Wanting to safeguard their people is how I see Farseers becoming Farseers in the first place and how they could fall into Tzeentch's clutches. Psychologically they are incapable of leaving the Path of the Seer, but what does that actually mean? I see it as someone becoming locked into a particular mode of thinking or having endless rationales why they cannot leave yet...except that hypothetical future never arrives. A Farseer might tell himself, I'll stop when I can guarantee a safe future for my Craftworld, only no matter how many bad futures he averts, there are always more so his task is never done.

A Farseer could slowly over time fall to Tzeentch because his desire to help his people may mean he wants to have more accurate visions of the future, more efficacious manipulations, and achieve those better futures he desires. Maybe over time he will start adding little flourishes to his manipulations that seem harmless but which seem to increase the effectiveness, listening to that quiet inner voice that tells him to do these things. He doesn't have to go all Tzeentchian immediately.

What protects Eldar seers in general from Chaos influence is their set of runes. As described in the 2nd edition Eldar Codex, they act like fuses, heating up and burning out if necessary to protect the wielder against dangerous or excessive psychic energies.

What protects them is also knowledge.

The Imperium keeps its subjects in deliberate ignorance, whereas the ones of highest rank are allowed to know of Chaos, but ultimately do not remotely understand it, hence Inquisitors getting into danger constantly by playing with fire.

Eldar, like the Interex civilisation, are not only aware of Chaos existing, but are also aware of its nature sufficiently to wholly reject it. Chaos may be beyond fully understanding, but a Farseer has been fully taught about what Chaos is, to not use it, and -why- to not use it.

Combined with the protection of their Ghosthelm against attempts by Chaos to sneak into their minds uninvited, it explains well why we're not seeing them turn to Chaos.