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Hello,

I might be missing a key bit of information here but I am confused with the pre-30k timeline.

So, the Eldar have been around for millions of years, after being created by the Old Ones to aid with their fight against the Necrons and C'tan gods. When the Enslaver Plague wiped out the galaxy the Eldar hid within the webway, while the rest of the galaxy was mind-raped.

At some point, after the Enslavers have been sucked back into the warp for whatever reason, the Eldar re-emerge and start building their galactic empire, completely dominating with high-technology and psychic powers, only to eventually fall by getting a touch too heavy on the BDSM.

It is well known that humanity spread across the galaxy some considerable time before the birth of SWT, the event which destroyed the Eldar empire, and which finally wiped out most of the warp storms which had separated humanity for thousands of years.

How can humanity have dominated the galaxy at the same time as the Eldar? The Eldar at the time being galaxy-spanning Commorites would not have put up with the upstarts and would surely have wiped them out, even with "Golden/Dark Age" tech.


A couple of other things which are somewhat related.

If the Eldar ruled the entire galaxy and it was mostly the Eldar who were caught in the EoT who were killed, why was their entire race virtually destroyed when they spanned the galaxy?
How did the Orks and Humans survive the Enslavers?

Have I just missed some lore adjustments or ambiguities?



Also, minor rant regarding the novel The Master of Mankind, probably been covered before.

Being a Galactic power doesn't mean being spread across the Galaxy. The Eldar Empire was large and powerful, but it was still mostly centralised around what is now the Eye of Terror. Humans being spread so thin and across a large area is a relic of their crappy FTL method more than anything else.

also you can have multiple powers. in fact it's a very rare situation for there to only be ONE power, useally someone fills the void of a rival.

I suppose so. A lot of writers seem to go with however they perceive the history should be, instead of existing lore. Many of the Eldar books and some codexes indicated that they pretty much owned the galaxy.

WH40 Wikia is a little sketchy on the Human and Eldar empire interactions in its first paragraph.

Current lore doesn't really do well in explaining the Enslaver problem or the fact that humanity is actually millions of years old if the Old Ones creating humanity is still considered canon.

Considering that Orks are a thing, created by the Old Ones who forgot to put an Off Switch on them, I highly doubt the Spess Ehlves ever "controlled the Galaxy" in a literal sense.

"created by the Old Ones who forgot to put an Off Switch on them"

I knew I recognised that from somewhere.

You're right, let's just go with the TTS Emperor version of things!

My understanding is that the Eldar were never very numerous even at the height of their empire. They might have dominated the galaxy, but they did so by being militarily powerful enough that nobody could seriously threaten even their most isolated colonies, not by literally ruling over everyone else. A lot could happen in other parts of the galaxy that the Eldar weren't particularly bothered about.

People think of 'modern' Eldar as arrogant, but that's nothing compared to pre-Fall Eldar. Eldar at the height of their Empire were just completely unconcerned about what other species were up to. DAoT humans were no threat to the Eldar and (as far as the Eldar knew) could never be a threat, so the Eldar never bothered trying to stop them spreading across the galaxy.

Do you worry about humanity's existence being one day threatened by the growing numbers of rats? No, of course not. Rats might be unpleasant and you might want to control their numbers in places where you want to live, but they're not an existential crisis, or even a potential future existential crisis. You don't sit around worrying that some unforeseeable catastrophe might strike and we'll somehow be reduced to a handful of desperate human refugees hunted by hordes of heavily-armed rodents.

Humans were only a meaningful threat to the Eldar after the Fall. And by that point it was too late for the Eldar to do anything about it.

Humans 'survived' the Enslaver Plague by not existing yet. Earth primates had separated from other mammals at that point, but genus Homo was 60 million years in the future, give or take. The enslavers only targeted intelligent psychic species, which at that time was basically just the Old Ones' weapon races.

Orks probably survived due to the unique character of their psychic nature. Orks have a gestalt, rather than individual, psychic presence. It's therefore difficult for an enslaver (or a daemon for that matter) to 'take over' an individual ork. They also have a strong instinct for social conformity. An individual that is seen as acting 'un-orky' will quickly be violently dealt with. It's even possible that orks can actually sense a possessed or psychically dominated ork in their midst, as it disrupts the otherwise uniform aura of psychic orkiness that naturally manifests around groups of orks.

60 million years is a long time, longer that human mind even really understands, a lot of things can happen in such a huge span of time. Eldar didn't just immediately become galaxys head honchos, there were all kinds of things that were poweful enough to stand up to them. The original Mon-keigh were able to enslave the Eldar for a time.

Also, the galaxy is really, really, really big. Again, bigger than anything human mind can comprehend.

I think the date of The Fall has been ret-conned a few times, IIRC it was initially pre-IOM then shifted to M25-M30ish with Slaanesh's birth clearing the Warpstorms allowing for the Great Crusade to start

With out getting to down into specific dates, I'd assumed the Eldar at their height probably didn't care about humanity or any lesser species much. Hell Orks were probably a more troublesome species and as far as we can tell they couldn't even be bothered to curb them numbers in a significant ways. Chances are the Eldar let humanity have what ever worlds that didn't much interest them and when the pests tried to take something the eldar actually wanted, boom curb stomp battle. I'd also assume as the Eldar became more decadent and corrupt, they cared less and less about practical things like maintain balance in the galaxy or worry about our empire being viable long term. Then with a flick of switch, most of the Eldar died, ran into the webway, ran away period, or otherwise isolated themselves. This void humanity filled with gusto.

Also with the webway as their own the material universe and your location in it is less important, just look at the modern galaxy maps and see where the dark eldar live. So their planets may have been centred around the eye area but their influence and control would’ve been all over.

Political entities in the 40K universe are not continuous territorial entities. Though the Imperium lays claim to vast swathes of space, the reality is that the Imperial occupied star systems are oases separated by wilderness space. That is how pocket empires and xenos empires can exist even within nominally Imperial space. The Eldar empire would have been no different, especially since their Webway technology means Eldar settlement could have been spread throughout the galaxy, without occupying low value systems in between the high value ones.

In the past, the situation would have been likely similar. The Eldar Empire was dominant, but they would have been like the Vorlons of Babylon 5, mostly keeping to their own systems. Any intrusion on them was likely met with devastating retaliation so after awhile humanity learned to stay clear. The Eldar for their part even before the Fall seemed content to let things be so long as they remained on top. The old Necron Codex blurb with the Alaitoc Farseer suggested the ancient Eldar had a reverence for life and took a laissez faire attitude after the devastation of the War in Heaven.

I think sometimes this whole pumping up of the DAoT humans is a bit of OOC player or writer inability to accept or tolerate humanity not being on top or somehow "special". The whole theme of the Eldar Fall is like the story of Atlantis or Star Wars' Old Republic, a power grown so mighty and secure from external threats that they succumb to hubris and rot from within.

 Duskweaver wrote:
Humans were only a meaningful threat to the Eldar after the Fall. And by that point it was too late for the Eldar to do anything about it.

Supposedly, and this really is a canon conflict, the Old Ones created humanity.

WintersDev wrote:

 Duskweaver wrote:
Humans were only a meaningful threat to the Eldar after the Fall. And by that point it was too late for the Eldar to do anything about it.

Supposedly, and this really is a canon conflict, the Old Ones created humanity.

There is no hard evidence that the Old Ones made humans..

I find the assumption that pre-fall elder wouldn’t have been military troubled by the pre-age of strife human confederation to be strange. The Dark Age of Technology humans had some ridiculously powerful reality bending technology, I doubt the eldar could have dismissed them so easily.

I think it’s more likely that there was some form of treaty or non aggression pact between the two, with perhaps some limited dealings between some factions of the two races. Or maybe the eldar was so isolationist and hard to pin down that they weren’t really known to humanity at large and their was little interaction between the two species.

 Duskweaver wrote:
You don't sit around worrying that some unforeseeable catastrophe might strike and we'll somehow be reduced to a handful of desperate human refugees hunted by hordes of heavily-armed rodents. .

I dunno about that, I play a lot of Vermintide 2...

WintersDev wrote:Supposedly, and this really is a canon conflict, the Old Ones created humanity.

I think that might have been hinted at in the RT era, and it was certainly true in the WHFB setting, but 3rd edition 40K explicitly stated that humanity evolved naturally (apart from the Pariah gene) long after the Old Ones disappeared from the galaxy.

robbienw wrote:I find the assumption that pre-fall elder wouldn’t have been military troubled by the pre-age of strife human confederation to be strange. The Dark Age of Technology humans had some ridiculously powerful reality bending technology, I doubt the eldar could have dismissed them so easily.

The point is that, no matter how impressive human DAoT technology was, the eldar were so much more powerful that none of those human weapons were a threat to them. Stars literally lived and died at the eldar's whims.

You have to remember that post-Fall eldar are psychically crippled by the existence of Slaanesh. Even the most powerful farseer is only using a tiny fraction of his or her potential, because opening their soul to the Warp more than the merest crack invites unwanted attention from She Who Thirsts. Before the Fall, every single eldar could tap the power of the Warp pretty much at will. The laws of physics were whatever the nearest eldar wanted them to be. Pre-Fall eldar should be thought of as an entire species of alpha-plus-plus psykers. Humans probably learned early on to just leave them alone.

The fluff isn't entirely clear, but these points are important:

-Eldar fell because of their decadence
-Eldar decadence was because there was no threat to fight, no challenge for them to face

Thus, if pre-IoM Humanity were actually a threat, the Eldar would not have fallen (at least not until Eldar defeated them). From that, the fluff only works if, even at the height of DAoT, they were no threat to the Eldar.

Now, remember that Mon'keigh does *not* mean human. It means sea slime - any races that are just a gross infestation. Humans are the most populous one, but other races would be, too.

Further, there's more interplay between the Fall and the IoM. The leadup to the fall built up large Warp Storms. This prevented Warp travel, isolating the Sol system from other human worlds. Which provided the perfect opportunity for the IoM to finally claim Earth. Then, after Earth was claimed, the Warp Storms disappeared, and the Warp was unnaturally calm. To add to this, the dominant force in the galaxy was just destroyed. Newly founded and triumphant Terra steps out into the galactic scene and into a major power vacuum. So the Eldar Fall was instrumental in creating the IoM.

As for other factions, the Eldar were around and fought the same enemy as the Koruk, and would have been around as they devolved into Orkz. It would make sense (but there isn't a lot of fluff around it) for pre-Fall Eldar to know what drives Orkz, how to clear a world of an infestation, and how to not attract them in the first place.

Finally, technology. The DAoT has some impressive stuff. A common example is a supermassive capitol ship who's primary weapons is a Black Hole gun. And it has systems that can detect a CWE cruiser in stealth. With those systems functioning, it still can't manage a *direct* hit on it's alpha strike, and the *black hole gun* shot in the alpha merely *damages the cruiser's stealth*. That suggests that the DAoT ship isn't even on the same tech level as a late-model long-past-fall what-they-could-scavenge CWE ship. Because even a modern-tech battleship (although we don't build them anymore) would have obliterated a modern cruiser in a similar situation.

There are a couple examples of amazing tech in pre-fall Eldar. There's some suggestion that CWE are well below pre-fall Eldar tech. It's explicit that Exodites *don't* use most tech. Finally, Dark Eldar had to completely rebuild their tech from the ground up - they knew the concepts the pre-fall Eldar did, but they had to completely restart materials sciences, engineering, and interfaces - as what they used pre-fall is now forbidden to them (the one thing *actually* forbidden in the Dark City).

We are talking about a force that fought Necrons at the height of their power in the War in Heaven. In a war where the Celestial Orratory is a thing. Beyond just their tech being well beyond DAoT tech, they also had much more experience with galactic warfare. And we're not even talking about their real strengths in war at the time: literal gods, who, again literally, took part in the war. We're not talking Avatars of Khaine - we're talking about the originals. The real things.

While only the Eye of Terror was fully consumed by the birth of Slanesh, Eldar across the galaxy were consumed. Most, at the moment of Slanesh's birth. But every Eldar in the galaxy that survived that was being consumed constantly from that point forward. The surviving Eldar are those that found protection from that consumption - DE with their sadism, CWE with soulstones, Exodites with their World Circuit, and Harlequins with Cegorath. All others are being devoured and don't live long - even if they live on the far edge of the galaxy.

There is no way Humanity posed any real threat to the Eldar Empire pre-fall. Eldar were far too powerful. And doing so would have prevented the fall. So, clearly, humanity was just the most recent sea slime infestation that wasn't important enough to erradicate.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
One other note - Eldar have a mythos of being gardeners, not executioners. While they revel in the slaughter (not just DE), they pruned back what overgrew, and eliminated things that shouldn't be. Not all life shouldn't be, though.

 Duskweaver wrote:

WintersDev wrote:Supposedly, and this really is a canon conflict, the Old Ones created humanity.

I think that might have been hinted at in the RT era, and it was certainly true in the WHFB setting, but 3rd edition 40K explicitly stated that humanity evolved naturally (apart from the Pariah gene) long after the Old Ones disappeared from the galaxy.

3rd ed Necron dex has an Eldar talking about how humanitys animal ancestors were a creation of the Old Ones. In the power vacuum it, like many others then evolved in unforeseen ways.

Because Eldar have never at any point ever lied. :-P

Morgasm the Powerfull wrote:
3rd ed Necron dex has an Eldar talking about how humanitys animal ancestors were a creation of the Old Ones. In the power vacuum it, like many others then evolved in unforeseen ways.

My 3rd edition Necron codex is in another country right now but, IIRC, it states that the Old Ones might have originally seeded life on Earth, but then left it alone to evolve naturally (and the eldar themselves chose not to interfere later). So that doesn't contradict what I said: humans evolved naturally. The Old Ones certainly did not create humans, and had been absent from the galaxy for 60 million years by the time Homo sapiens appeared on Earth.

EDIT: It occurs to me that, if you don't have a background in evolutionary biology, you might not be aware that abiogenesis and evolution are separate things. Saying a particular species evolved naturally is not the same thing as saying the initial origin of life on Earth was completely without outside interference.

 Duskweaver wrote:

Morgasm the Powerfull wrote:
3rd ed Necron dex has an Eldar talking about how humanitys animal ancestors were a creation of the Old Ones. In the power vacuum it, like many others then evolved in unforeseen ways.

My 3rd edition Necron codex is in another country right now but, IIRC, it states that the Old Ones might have originally seeded life on Earth, but then left it alone to evolve naturally (and the eldar themselves chose not to interfere later). So that doesn't contradict what I said: humans evolved naturally. The Old Ones certainly did not create humans, and had been absent from the galaxy for 60 million years by the time Homo sapiens appeared on Earth.

EDIT: It occurs to me that, if you don't have a background in evolutionary biology, you might not be aware that abiogenesis and evolution are separate things. Saying a particular species evolved naturally is not the same thing as saying the initial origin of life on Earth was completely without outside interference.

Of course Old Ones didn't create Homo sapiens as a species in particular, nowhere does it even suggest that.

What it does say is that animals that eventually evolved into humanity were "...comical tree-beasts, part of the eco-system of their world, but with no greater role defined for them by the Old Ones."

Point is that Old Ones had some influence on the animals that evolved eventually into humans, which means that some portion of that influence must still remain, like how we still have useless stuff like the third eyelid, darwin's point, wisdom teeth or the appendix.

Eldar seem to see humanity as a broken tool run amok, a harmful, invasive animal with a brain too big for its own good that is spreading and causing havoc where it doesn't belong. Kinda fits into the Eldars mental image of themselves as galaxys caretakers.

This is a really interesting discussion! To consider the Orks in this period for a moment;

I consider 'Da Big Party' to be one of the most important events in Ork history (It is the war that broke the dominance of the Blood Axe clan over Ork society)
Everything we know about the Blood Axes points to the fact that an Ork society controlled by them would be quite different from the one of the 41st Millennium.
We don't know when 'Da Big Party' happened exactly, but since it was triggered by excessive peaceful interactions with other aliens (especially humans) we can assume it happens during the later part of the DAoT at the earliest.

We also know that a flourishing trade emerged amongst the early Squat worlds, the Eldar and even the Orks!

This to me paints a picture of a more peaceful galaxy with greater goods exchange and diplomatic activity between races than we see in the 41st Millennium.

Xenology mentions an active Old One 100,000 years ago, and hints that humanity and the Star Child plot may have been his plan.

Bharring wrote:
The fluff isn't entirely clear, but these points are important:

-Eldar fell because of their decadence
-Eldar decadence was because there was no threat to fight, no challenge for them to face

Thus, if pre-IoM Humanity were actually a threat, the Eldar would not have fallen (at least not until Eldar defeated them). From that, the fluff only works if, even at the height of DAoT, they were no threat to the Eldar.

Now, remember that Mon'keigh does *not* mean human. It means sea slime - any races that are just a gross infestation. Humans are the most populous one, but other races would be, too.

Further, there's more interplay between the Fall and the IoM. The leadup to the fall built up large Warp Storms. This prevented Warp travel, isolating the Sol system from other human worlds. Which provided the perfect opportunity for the IoM to finally claim Earth. Then, after Earth was claimed, the Warp Storms disappeared, and the Warp was unnaturally calm. To add to this, the dominant force in the galaxy was just destroyed. Newly founded and triumphant Terra steps out into the galactic scene and into a major power vacuum. So the Eldar Fall was instrumental in creating the IoM.

As for other factions, the Eldar were around and fought the same enemy as the Koruk, and would have been around as they devolved into Orkz. It would make sense (but there isn't a lot of fluff around it) for pre-Fall Eldar to know what drives Orkz, how to clear a world of an infestation, and how to not attract them in the first place.

Finally, technology. The DAoT has some impressive stuff. A common example is a supermassive capitol ship who's primary weapons is a Black Hole gun. And it has systems that can detect a CWE cruiser in stealth. With those systems functioning, it still can't manage a *direct* hit on it's alpha strike, and the *black hole gun* shot in the alpha merely *damages the cruiser's stealth*. That suggests that the DAoT ship isn't even on the same tech level as a late-model long-past-fall what-they-could-scavenge CWE ship. Because even a modern-tech battleship (although we don't build them anymore) would have obliterated a modern cruiser in a similar situation.

There are a couple examples of amazing tech in pre-fall Eldar. There's some suggestion that CWE are well below pre-fall Eldar tech. It's explicit that Exodites *don't* use most tech. Finally, Dark Eldar had to completely rebuild their tech from the ground up - they knew the concepts the pre-fall Eldar did, but they had to completely restart materials sciences, engineering, and interfaces - as what they used pre-fall is now forbidden to them (the one thing *actually* forbidden in the Dark City).

We are talking about a force that fought Necrons at the height of their power in the War in Heaven. In a war where the Celestial Orratory is a thing. Beyond just their tech being well beyond DAoT tech, they also had much more experience with galactic warfare. And we're not even talking about their real strengths in war at the time: literal gods, who, again literally, took part in the war. We're not talking Avatars of Khaine - we're talking about the originals. The real things.

While only the Eye of Terror was fully consumed by the birth of Slanesh, Eldar across the galaxy were consumed. Most, at the moment of Slanesh's birth. But every Eldar in the galaxy that survived that was being consumed constantly from that point forward. The surviving Eldar are those that found protection from that consumption - DE with their sadism, CWE with soulstones, Exodites with their World Circuit, and Harlequins with Cegorath. All others are being devoured and don't live long - even if they live on the far edge of the galaxy.

There is no way Humanity posed any real threat to the Eldar Empire pre-fall. Eldar were far too powerful. And doing so would have prevented the fall. So, clearly, humanity was just the most recent sea slime infestation that wasn't important enough to erradicate.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
One other note - Eldar have a mythos of being gardeners, not executioners. While they revel in the slaughter (not just DE), they pruned back what overgrew, and eliminated things that shouldn't be. Not all life shouldn't be, though.

Challenge and threat are not the same thing. DAoT Humans wer probably to pre-Fall Eldar what Wolves are to modern Humans. A dangerous threat, that needs to be taken into consideration, but no actual challenge for hegemony. Occassionally, they will overgrow, become overly aggressive, and need to be pruned back. The Eldar could probably simply avoid human forces at ease and destroy any Human force they collected sufficient force for, but that doesn't mean that the odd, isolated Eldar outpost wouldn't be vulnerable to Human attacks. I wouldn't be surprised if the fringes of Eldar society were regularly involved in skirmishes with Humans, but that this rarely caused enough actual trouble to warrant any kind of punitive expedition.

The Ark Mechanicus you are referring to is a poor example. For a start, the ship had only just awoken, and was far from being used at it's full potential, yet still immediately locked onto and crippled an Eldar cruiser. It also did more than damage the stealth of the ship, but crippled it, left it dead in the water, and resulted in it's destruction under the gravitic forces of the area. There is also no indication this is the height of pre-Strife Human tech. I think this tells us that DAoT Human voidcraft were capable of threatening Eldar ships, but Humans were not capable of threatening the Eldar race as a whole.

According to the HH ancient humanity absolutely could have been a massive threat to the Eldar, if not technologically surpassed them. Flipping through the HH books relics and some HH lore, Ancient Humanity had-

-Satellite defense systems that released signals that stimulated the bodies of the entire planetary population to release a flood of hormones and become enhanced to the point of being as tough as a space marine, albeit temporarily.

-Nanite swarms that devours the entire population of a planet, or can be loaded into a gun to defeat any infantry target it's fired at, regardless of armor.

-Men of Iron, which included gigantic mechanized kaiju able to destroy continental plates and "sunsnuffing" weapon platforms that could destroy solar systems.

-Perfect cloaking fields which hide you from any means of detection

-Seismic Actuators which are small enough to fit in a melee weapon, and when thrown can destabilize a continental plate

Frankly the idea of the Eldar at their height being able to bulldoze humanity, or even have anything greater than a bloody war of attrition against a peer foe, is dubious at best. DOAT humanity had terrible transporation speeds but made up for it with each world in their possession being draped in enough firepower to make the Imperium drool.

They'd need to be able to deal with super-powerful psychic abilities though. Perhaps that is specifically what kept Humanity down.

I think its more likely no one was kept 'down' and the Eldar largely kept themselves to themselves.

Humanity in the Age of Technology has incredible weapons, there are many references in the HH series as Wyzilla mentions.

Much of what Eldar fans cite as Eldar superiority in that age is supposition and not backed up by any evidence.

 Wyzilla wrote:
According to the HH ancient humanity absolutely could have been a massive threat to the Eldar, if not technologically surpassed them. Flipping through the HH books relics and some HH lore, Ancient Humanity had-

-Satellite defense systems that released signals that stimulated the bodies of the entire planetary population to release a flood of hormones and become enhanced to the point of being as tough as a space marine, albeit temporarily.

-Nanite swarms that devours the entire population of a planet, or can be loaded into a gun to defeat any infantry target it's fired at, regardless of armor.

-Men of Iron, which included gigantic mechanized kaiju able to destroy continental plates and "sunsnuffing" weapon platforms that could destroy solar systems.

-Perfect cloaking fields which hide you from any means of detection

-Seismic Actuators which are small enough to fit in a melee weapon, and when thrown can destabilize a continental plate

Frankly the idea of the Eldar at their height being able to bulldoze humanity, or even have anything greater than a bloody war of attrition against a peer foe, is dubious at best. DOAT humanity had terrible transporation speeds but made up for it with each world in their possession being draped in enough firepower to make the Imperium drool.

They also had weaponised black hole cannons, the dark angels in heresy still have it, added to that list is also

Ability to create stars and destroy them

Virus weaponry

Temporal weaponry

The STC system

Baneblade MBT not super heavy.

 Formosa wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
According to the HH ancient humanity absolutely could have been a massive threat to the Eldar, if not technologically surpassed them. Flipping through the HH books relics and some HH lore, Ancient Humanity had-

-Satellite defense systems that released signals that stimulated the bodies of the entire planetary population to release a flood of hormones and become enhanced to the point of being as tough as a space marine, albeit temporarily.

-Nanite swarms that devours the entire population of a planet, or can be loaded into a gun to defeat any infantry target it's fired at, regardless of armor.

-Men of Iron, which included gigantic mechanized kaiju able to destroy continental plates and "sunsnuffing" weapon platforms that could destroy solar systems.

-Perfect cloaking fields which hide you from any means of detection

-Seismic Actuators which are small enough to fit in a melee weapon, and when thrown can destabilize a continental plate

Frankly the idea of the Eldar at their height being able to bulldoze humanity, or even have anything greater than a bloody war of attrition against a peer foe, is dubious at best. DOAT humanity had terrible transporation speeds but made up for it with each world in their possession being draped in enough firepower to make the Imperium drool.

They also had weaponised black hole cannons, the dark angels in heresy still have it, added to that list is also

Ability to create stars and destroy them

Virus weaponry

Temporal weaponry

The STC system

Baneblade MBT not super heavy.

There's a lot more in all of the HH books too, it's really just a tip of the iceberg thing. The Dark Angels have a special DAOT Strike Cruiser with a perfect cloaking field (which probably means those cloaking fields mentioned prior can be mounted on anything from a battleship to a titan) or warp shields which not only stop all incoming fire but throw it all back at the shooter. The DAOT humanity possessed is both impressive and terrifying in its implications for the scale of warfare they waged 'back in the day'. For all we know the average DAOT soldier was a dude with literal void shields on an infantry platform, carrying pistols firing swarms of nanytes that gobble up hordes of enemies, graviton guns, or even miniature black holes. And having augmentations making them comparable to an Astartes while still being in a human-sized packaged.

Outside of the mention of the dream machine which made the Dark City, I can't think of anything the Eldar are mentioned to have that compares. As mentioned prior they do have psyker powers, but those only get you so far when you're facing things like black ships and automated solar system killers.