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So, I run a Ynnari list, composed entirely of serpent guard and hemlocks. It was originally my fluffy Iyanden list back in the day, and has evolved into what it is now.

I wanted to know if in the fluff Yvraine has any position on wraithguard and the use of aeldari souls to pilot combat craft in general. I know it can be a controversial topic within Eldar society, and I'm curious if the way I'm running my army is still 'fluff compliant'

Not only do the Ynnari work with Wraith units, the Wraith units gain a level of clarity when associated with Ynnead, able to function with all their mental faculties intact, and no longer needing the intercession of a Spiritseer to keep them all on track.

 Jimsolo wrote:
Not only do the Ynnari work with Wraith units, the Wraith units gain a level of clarity when associated with Ynnead, able to function with all their mental faculties intact, and no longer needing the intercession of a Spiritseer to keep them all on track.

Yep if i recall properly she *binds* the Eldar souls to the Wraith bodies allowing them to move and react as fast as normal living eldar in the Fracture of Biel-tan fluff.

Yeah, the Ynnari are all about exploiting the Dead for power in the mortal realm. Using them to power extra-killy robot bodies barely even registers along side literally consuming them to gain a temporary speed boost.

This is one of the several reasons that polite Eldar society really doesn’t like them very much at all…

 Mr_Rose wrote:
Yeah, the Ynnari are all about exploiting the Dead for power in the mortal realm. Using them to power extra-killy robot bodies barely even registers along side literally consuming them to gain a temporary speed boost.

This is one of the several reasons that polite Eldar society really doesn’t like them very much at all…

On this note, I've been wondering how that works.... If the dead eldar souls are captured by their spirit stones, how do the ynnari capture energy from it.... And if they do, what happens to the souls?

znelson wrote:

 Mr_Rose wrote:
Yeah, the Ynnari are all about exploiting the Dead for power in the mortal realm. Using them to power extra-killy robot bodies barely even registers along side literally consuming them to gain a temporary speed boost.

This is one of the several reasons that polite Eldar society really doesn’t like them very much at all…

On this note, I've been wondering how that works.... If the dead eldar souls are captured by their spirit stones, how do the ynnari capture energy from it.... And if they do, what happens to the souls?

Ynnari Eldar discard or break their stones. The souls of the dying then get absorbed by Ynnead instead. The SfD empowerment is then either from the dying spirits deliberately helping their allies "on the way out" or the living acting as a psychic conduit to Ynnead and protecting the dying from She Who Thirsts, or Ynnead giving back a little to its worshippers. Or possibly all three, it’s not clear (and, with warp-magic involved, likely never will be).

 Mr_Rose wrote:

znelson wrote:

 Mr_Rose wrote:
Yeah, the Ynnari are all about exploiting the Dead for power in the mortal realm. Using them to power extra-killy robot bodies barely even registers along side literally consuming them to gain a temporary speed boost.

This is one of the several reasons that polite Eldar society really doesn’t like them very much at all…

On this note, I've been wondering how that works.... If the dead eldar souls are captured by their spirit stones, how do the ynnari capture energy from it.... And if they do, what happens to the souls?

Ynnari Eldar discard or break their stones. The souls of the dying then get absorbed by Ynnead instead. The SfD empowerment is then either from the dying spirits deliberately helping their allies "on the way out" or the living acting as a psychic conduit to Ynnead and protecting the dying from She Who Thirsts, or Ynnead giving back a little to its worshippers. Or possibly all three, it’s not clear (and, with warp-magic involved, likely never will be).

Or, as i've interpreted it, they literally consume them. No absorbing by Ynnead. No willing helping your living comrades out. Just outright using your immortal soul as a supernatural adrenaline shot.

There's an old diagram in one of the eldar codices that mentions 'soul drinkers' as a rune-concept that is one of the most revolting in the eldar language, separate from the runes for Dark Eldar and Slaanesh. If that's what the Ynnari are doing and passing it off as 'our god helping us along' then it's no wonder they're viewed with suspicion.

That's my way of injecting a little grimdark into the whole thing anyway.

The Ynnari seem to get their power when other non-Eldar die around them, so it does not appear to be just a function of Eldar souls. However, Yvraine and the Visarch seem to be in some manner a repository for Eldar souls as they are described as hearing the voices of Eldar souls and gaining part of their skills from effectively "mini-possessions" by souls with the needed knowledge or skills. My hypothesis is that they have become mini-Infinity Circuit repositories.

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

 Mr_Rose wrote:

znelson wrote:

 Mr_Rose wrote:
Yeah, the Ynnari are all about exploiting the Dead for power in the mortal realm. Using them to power extra-killy robot bodies barely even registers along side literally consuming them to gain a temporary speed boost.

This is one of the several reasons that polite Eldar society really doesn’t like them very much at all…

On this note, I've been wondering how that works.... If the dead eldar souls are captured by their spirit stones, how do the ynnari capture energy from it.... And if they do, what happens to the souls?

Ynnari Eldar discard or break their stones. The souls of the dying then get absorbed by Ynnead instead. The SfD empowerment is then either from the dying spirits deliberately helping their allies "on the way out" or the living acting as a psychic conduit to Ynnead and protecting the dying from She Who Thirsts, or Ynnead giving back a little to its worshippers. Or possibly all three, it’s not clear (and, with warp-magic involved, likely never will be).

Or, as i've interpreted it, they literally consume them. No absorbing by Ynnead. No willing helping your living comrades out. Just outright using your immortal soul as a supernatural adrenaline shot.

There's an old diagram in one of the eldar codices that mentions 'soul drinkers' as a rune-concept that is one of the most revolting in the eldar language, separate from the runes for Dark Eldar and Slaanesh. If that's what the Ynnari are doing and passing it off as 'our god helping us along' then it's no wonder they're viewed with suspicion.

That's my way of injecting a little grimdark into the whole thing anyway.

Seems likely to be a combination of the two. Ynnari DO act as conduits for souls to be absorbed by Ynnead, an act which empowers them in the process, but the Eldar memories/fears of 'soul drinkers' hold many back from joining their number (and might be deliberately used by the aeldari looking to maintain the status quo to invoke fear and distrust).

Do you believe it is possible for an Eldar 'soul-drinker' to have existed before Slaanesh?

Is it some vague conceptual philosophical fear, or was/is there actually a faction of Eldar who drank souls?

This is interesting to me, due to this weird desire I have of porting pen & paper RPG characters into 40k...

I should say that 'soul drinkers' as a faction or historical group is pretty much solely headcanon, but built up from various sources and coincidences.

It stems from this picture from the 5th ed. Eldar codex (I think).



Loads of info in here to set the mind racing. You've got your CWE and exodites and harlequins and DEldar, but at the bottom right there's a rune which depicts the concept of a 'soul drinker'. It's related to the Dark Eldar by proximity, but it's not the rune for DEldar. It's also distinct from the rune for Slaanesh, which would be the next option.

As part of my delving into the details of the Eldar, i thought 'what if that rune is a holdover from a previous time'. Similar to how real-world mythologies remember real events like migrations or invasions as abstract concepts, so too might the eldar remember details about their history in the same way (considering their entire history is recorded as a mythological record rather than the matter-of-fact modern human method of dates and times and events).

It was also linked to the idea that the Eldar Empire lasted for a phenomenal amount of time, so there must be great swathes of history no-one today remembers, except for obscure references like this. Plus, this is the fethed up 40k universe here. A great deal of it is probably going to be pretty awful.

So, i took a leaf out of real world historical interpretation of myths to the Eldar.

History is written by the victors, and the losers (and traits of the losers) are often villified. Perhaps the term 'soul drinker' became a form of racial slur for a defeated group of proto-eldar. I looked at the Dark Eldar's ability to consume souls to give them sustenance and power and thought 'i'm sure some eldar must have figured that out before'.

So, what if these eldar soul-drinkers discovered they could murder and consume other eldar's souls as sort of an internalised infinity-circuit/exarch suit (based on an idea another person had about the eldar actually being designed by the Old Ones as sort of vessels for psychic energy, hence the crystalline organs amd reincarnation). This would give them a considerable advantage in the eldar's early days, possibly rising to rule some of the early empires of the eldar (in a way reminiscent of the Vampire Counts).

The idea that they were only early on in the eldar's history is a bit of a justification for why there's nothing left of them at this stage beyond a rune-concept and maybe a tale to scare children. It was so long ago that their memory has faded into nothingness after they were overthrown (as they would likely have been given that their concept is villified).

Perhaps some of them survived in hiding, hunted by witch-hunters until they were believed dead, only to emerge again as part of the Eldar's descent into depravity. Perhaps they went on to become the haemonculi, or to be experimented on by the haemonculi to learn the secrets of absorbing another being's soul to maintain your own.

The whole idea of absorbing another eldar's soul and having it sort of swimming around inside you like a living exarch-suit I had before I read the whole Gathering Storm thing (my exodite lord is one of these Soul-Drinkers, explaining how he's still kicking around since he led his people away during the Fall, and he's so old and has consumed so many souls that he has considerable difficulty differentiating between what his own thoughts are and the swirling miasma of chittering souls within him). So, i was pretty pleased when Fracture of Biel Tan came out and almost the exact same mechanism and effect was described with Yvraine

The idea that the Ynnari actual consume (and destroy) spuls during this process is just me wanting to inject some grittiness to them because they seem a little noblebright to me. Perhaps if you do the whole soul-absorbing thing wrong you get a massive hit of power but the soul gets torn apart in the process.

Plus, it seems fitting that a bunch of religious fanatics lie, deceive and deny about their methods being not being benevolent, offering a salvation that is in fact only a reality for a lucky few.

So yeah, basically me filling in blanks with evocative ideas with modelling and fluff potential based on what-ifs and logical extrapolation of existing fluff

Fun idea though

Since the rune concept is referred to specifically as 'soul-drinkers,' it's very reasonable to assume that it's based in a real event or group.

Further, I'd point out that the soul-drinkers rune is incredibly close to the rune for Ynnead.

However, the Ynnead rune adds an additional element: the infinity circuit element (and the horned element common to several god runes). This indicates that Ynnead does aggregate the Eldar souls, which live on in some fashion. (And it is from this that Ynnead's divinity springs.)

It's cool stuff.

Oh man, now I want to make a 'soul-drinker' Eldar army using Ynnead rules but without the actual Godhead.

Damn FAQs lol.

 Jimsolo wrote:
Since the rune concept is referred to specifically as 'soul-drinkers,' it's very reasonable to assume that it's based in a real event or group.

Further, I'd point out that the soul-drinkers rune is incredibly close to the rune for Ynnead.

However, the Ynnead rune adds an additional element: the infinity circuit element (and the horned element common to several god runes). This indicates that Ynnead does aggregate the Eldar souls, which live on in some fashion. (And it is from this that Ynnead's divinity springs.)

It's cool stuff.

Ooh nice spot i wonder if that's deliberate. Much though people like to say some of the new fluff is a bit pants, and some does display a worrying lack of imagination (cough...wolfmcwolfclaw...cough) there is a great deal of thought that goes into writing this stuff

Also, i'm with you kn the idea that Ynnead does genuinely aggregate Eldar souls...just not the ones his followers tear apart and consume to leap across the battlefield at supernatural speeds

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Oh man, now I want to make a 'soul-drinker' Eldar army using Ynnead rules but without the actual Godhead.

Damn FAQs lol.

Hell yeah! Great idea

I always thought Strength from Death is exactly how Power from Pain is supposed to work. Someone next to you dies a horrible death and you get a burst of energy.

Much better than Power from Patience...

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

I always thought Strength from Death is exactly how Power from Pain is supposed to work. Someone next to you dies a horrible death and you get a burst of energy.

Much better than Power from Patience...

The original Power from Pain rules were like Strength from Death in that the boost was triggered only by the elimination of enemy units. The current incarnation of the Power from Pain rules seems to stem from a move towards less bookkeeping (having to keep track of which units had triggered it), and also perhaps from recognition that it did not fully fulfill its purpose of making the fragile Dark Eldar army as a whole better/more resilient as the game went on, since only some units would be able to trigger and thus benefit from it. The current Power from Pain rules appear to be a blanket bland albeit reliable way of distributing benefits to the whole Dark Eldar army.

Speaking of the Ynnari, it seems Gav Thorpe has published a new short story titled Shadows of Heaven featuring Aradryan, the Outcast character from his earlier Eldar trilogy.

Is there any novel or codex for around $25 or less that contains the Ynnari background? It sounds much better than most new fluff additions.


Also, the Oldcron codex implies that the C'Tan ruled many or all of the Eldar for thousands, possibly millions of years. Certainly, the Eldar still have a fear of death and use skull imagery for aspects of Khaine (from Nightbringer) and an extreme distaste for placing their sould in automatons (Necrontyr/Necrons). They even use similar "Egyptian" design elements, although far more diffused through their culture. Is it possible that their experience with the C'Tan imprinted 'soul drinking' on the Eldar culture, perhaps leading to a Warp makes it real effect where later Eldar elites took on the essences of the then-mythologized C'Tan?