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As is commonly known, the Imperium is extremely censorious when it comes to knowledge of Chaos entering the public consciousness. Sure, everyone knows that the Warp is very dangerous but not much more than that. Beyond the individuals and government institutions allowed to have access to knowledge of Chaos, daemons, and the gods, anyone else who finds out too much about Chaos is either mindwiped or even killed. In The Emperor's Legion, Tieron mentions that in less dire situations, him even seeing the Khornate daemons that were attacking the Lion's Gate could have been cause for execution.

Personally, I'm a bit torn. On one hand, I don't think just spilling all knowledge on Chaos to the public is the best idea, as, at least in the short run, could lead to mass hysteria and terror mixed with a huge increase in cultist activity by people who want an alternative to the Imperium. On the other hand, how many people get slaughtered or worse daily by the followers of the gods? The people I think should have a right to know what exactly is preying on them all the time and not be given bs excuses about why their family and friends are being murdered by things that are clearly not just xenos or mere outlaw Space Marines. Maybe there's something in the canon about it, but what about the survivors of Cadia? Some of the greatest heroes of the Imperium deserve to truly know who their enemy is. On a wider scale, education on the nature of Chaos (plus much needed socio-economic changes) could go a long way in people being able to resist Chaos and not give into the voices in their heads that constantly feed them tales of unlimited power and freedom. Many cultists turn to Chaos not out of base malevolence, but because they are so desperate to escape the horrendous conditions of their lives, and with no real knowledge of Chaos, they are prime targets for its lies. In the 8th edition Thousand Sons Codex, Grekk Redeye is a perfect example of why someone could find Chaos alluring; his bosses forced him to keep working despite his severed hand while Tzeentch gave him a whole new hand with crazy new abilities. Who would you want to go with if you were in the same situation? Of course, we all know that the vast majority of cultists end up as slaves, meat fodder for CSM and daemons, test subjects for Nurglite scientists, transformed into Chaos Spawn, and any number of other ghastly fates. But if they knew that Chaos was a lie that only led to suffering far greater than anything that the Imperium doles out, there would be probably far fewer of them, a reality that would cripple Chaos' ability to take planets, especially some of the better-defended ones.

What do you think? Is the Imperial doctrine on the nature of Chaos sound or needs to be reformed?

Yes. And also no.

The "most accurate" answer (in my opinion) is this: "The fluff of 40k is not focused behind a single vision and often varies wildly in the telling dependent on what kind of story an individual author wants to tell, so making broad statements about intent or method is often impossible."

However, that answer is boring, so let's explore this idea a little more deeply.

The problem with the Imperium's relationship is that it's a "Damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.
"Damned if you do", because by keeping Chaos a secret from most citizens, it leaves everyone completely incapable of defending themselves, resisting the pull of chaos, or even recognizing the danger when it comes up.
"Damned if you don't", because if the general population knew there was an alternative to living in the fascist hellhole that most of the Imperium is, there'd be a great many of them who'd take that up in a heartbeat.

Consider that, while most servants of chaos are doomed to suffering far worse than they do under the Imperium, (The difference between being tortured by callous greed and being tortured by explicit malice,) every servant of Chaos has at least a chance of proving themselves and being granted godlike power, beyond that of even the greatest superhuman constructs that the Imperium is still capable of creating. (Physically, a Daemon Prince's only rival is the primarchs themselves.) If everyone in the Imperium knew that Chaos was an existing option, the vast majority would probably say "No, I don't want to be tortured", but there'd still be a hefty quantity of people willing to take up the banner and pledge their loyalty to Chaos, on the slight hopes that they might win the Chaos Lottery.

The solution, of course, is to make the Imperium be less of a hellhole, which is where the problem of lore comes in. If the average imperial citizen was happy and content, they'd have no reason to be tempted by chaos.

Is the imperium cruel and corrupt because it must be in order to survive, or is it cruel and corrupt because the people calling the shots aren't able to run things rationally because they're idolizing a dead man and dogmatically phobic of change?

The thinking behind it is that just knowing about the existence of Chaos plants the potential seeds of corruption. That knowledge is an open door for corrupting influence to sneak in.

So it's a balancing act. Knowledge of Chaos might make it easier for those strong enough to resist it to combat it, sure... but it also makes it easier for Chaos to get a foothold with everyone else.

So the powers that be in the Imperium need to be sure that those who have that knowledge are strong enough to be trusted with it... and given that they know full well that half of the original Space Marine Legions and their Primarchs were turned by Chaos, that's a biiiig concern.

From a narrative point of view, the Imperium is a facist regime. Facist regimes aren't known for being logical, and aggressive censorship is part-and-parcel within that.

From an in-universe point of view, there's several angles to take.
- Firstly, indoctrination is actually a phenomenally powerful method. Convince someone that something is bad and a massive number of them will continue to believe that even in the face of alternative evidence - take a look at whatever conspiracy theory, cult or hokey religion you like. Compared to education? We educate people that smoking is bad for you; they still do it. But when some ancient religious text says that something is bad, those people will harass others to the other end of the earth to force their beliefs onto them, even if those beliefs aren't supported by facts.
- Secondly, belief is a tangible force in the 41st millennium. Even if it's not necessarily worship, the more the average citizen knows about Chaos, it does actually reinforce those gods.

So yes, it does actually make a lot of sense, particularly given that the alternative method would require a massive shift from the facist and feudal state of the Imperium, and would assume an education - something that many within the Imperium will never get.

On a moral level? Yeah, the people *should* have a right to know the truth. In a proper government, the people should be able to know all, and know the truth.

In 40k? I think it's absolutely the right choice to censor Chaos and suppress it's existence - why? Because simple knowledge of it is dangerous not only to yourself and the people exposed to it, but also their loved ones, their planet, the entire unified front of humanity itself. Knowledge of Chaos is enough to damn entire worlds, and suppression of that, while it is a violation of a person's right to knowledge, is done in the ultimate interest of preserving not only the Imperium as a state, but also the people within it.

In my opinion, 40k works best when the Imperium is a fascist, authoritarian, xenophobic state (which doesn't necessarily mean a bad quality of life, only limits on what you're permitted to know and think, which are, admittedly, awful), but that's the ONLY way humanity survives. 40k works if the Imperium, as bad as it is, is the only option for long-term *free* human survival. This asks the question of "is it better for humanity to live by committing horrible actions, or to die out peacefully?"

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

In my opinion, 40k works best when the Imperium is a fascist, authoritarian, xenophobic state (which doesn't necessarily mean a bad quality of life, only limits on what you're permitted to know and think, which are, admittedly, awful), but that's the ONLY way humanity survives. 40k works if the Imperium, as bad as it is, is the only option for long-term *free* human survival. This asks the question of "is it better for humanity to live by committing horrible actions, or to die out peacefully?"

Except that premise is shown false with the existence of long term human pocket empires or single worlds that have survived from pre-Imperium times. The Imperium is not a contiguous swathe of space and even within its borders there are huge areas of unknown wilderness space with all sorts of pocket empires, both alien and human, being found.

Also if the ideology is any action justifies survival, then those humans that join the Tau Empire cannot be faulted either, since it is survival, and arguably a more materially prosperous life than what they would have had in the Imperium. It has been several centuries already since the first human defectors so now there is a sub-group of humanity under the Tau that has known generations of growing up outside the Imperium.

The Imperium's ideology does not really hold up without taking as axiomatic certain assumptions about human supremacy, xenophobia, and the necessity of the Emperor as god or center of religion. There are other ways of survival for humanity in the galaxy, just not ones that a "traditional" xenophobic hyper-religious human supremacist would accept.

Chaos seems like a Virus, or at least chaos corruption, it starts to warp (ha!) your world view, make you paranoid and eventually you break down mentally, imagine this on a global scale.

At least this is how its described in the liber chaotica books, which make chaos corruption very very insidious.

In the Imperium knowledge of Chaos tends to corrupt, like with Inquisitors, or is held in hands like those of the Adeptus Custodes or Grey Knights. Master Of Mankind suggests Custodes are corruptible, but it would take inconveniently long, and Grey Knights have something weirdly similar to the Thousand Sons going on where they know how to use it safely and gosh what's everyone concerned about?

Iracundus wrote:
Except that premise is shown false with the existence of long term human pocket empires or single worlds that have survived from pre-Imperium times. The Imperium is not a contiguous swathe of space and even within its borders there are huge areas of unknown wilderness space with all sorts of pocket empires, both alien and human, being found.

Also if the ideology is any action justifies survival, then those humans that join the Tau Empire cannot be faulted either, since it is survival, and arguably a more materially prosperous life than what they would have had in the Imperium. It has been several centuries already since the first human defectors so now there is a sub-group of humanity under the Tau that has known generations of growing up outside the Imperium.

The Imperium's ideology does not really hold up without taking as axiomatic certain assumptions about human supremacy, xenophobia, and the necessity of the Emperor as god or center of religion. There are other ways of survival for humanity in the galaxy, just not ones that a "traditional" xenophobic hyper-religious human supremacist would accept.

For every pocket empire that "survived" thousands fell. I fail to see how that proves anything, especially seeing the 'survival' often included embracing chaos anyway. See Word Bearer or Thousand Sons home planets, for one, both de facto surrendered to chaos and only "survived" because no one bothered to collect yet. How is that in any way sustainable future, again?

As for Tau, GW finally turned down Tau Sue dial a bit and the Empire got to see first hand what exactly Imperium had been fighting for so long. Spoiler alert - Tau of all people were so horrified (and that with benign phenomena, never mind hostile ones) major group is now loudly demanding extermination of every psyker-capable race within the Empire. Gee, that doesn't stike me as prosperous, sustainable future either...

It is highly logical. Simply knowing that Chaos exists is enough for its influence to spread. Now if someone is strong enough or needs to know, knowing about Chaos is beneficial to a certain degree.

Thats why knowledge of Chaos is on a strict need-to-know basis. Most people in the Imperium are 100% unaware of its existence. Most of those who are aware just know that there are some traitors out there, including space marines, who have forsaken the Emperor. Fewer still will know about the 4 gods of Chaos, the events of the Horus Heresy, and how to recognize Chaos and its taint.

I think it's logical in the sense that the Imperium has survived for 10,000 years because it was built to be controlled. Every inefficiency and lack of understanding helps the high lords maintain their hold.

If there was open knowledge of gods who can and do give "blessings", there would be mass revolts.

It makes sense to suppress it as much as possible because the average human is not likely be able to handle the complexities of chaos and how to resist it.

The IOM doesn't have the resources to put every citizen through chaos 101 what not to do when your book tells you to kill your neighbors and use their blood to draw odd shapes that summon demons.

The few examples we have of planets or empires that could resist and had the resources to keep it that way were so much smaller than the IOM.

Thanks for the answers, I see where everyone is coming from. How much knowledge of Chaos do non-SM elements of the military have, like the Guard and the Fleet? It's not good to have your servicemen going up against an enemy that they have no knowledge of whatsoever. Also, part of me still believes that the Cadians do deserve at least some straight answers.

Cadians are probably an exception to the rule. Being in such direct contact with it, you can’t hide it. But they’re still not going to be told everything. They’ll be told chaos is a corrupting force that they need to keep at bay, maybe they even are told about the 4 gods and some basics about their followers. Enough to know what they are facing, not too much that they might become corrupted by it.

Also keep in mind that the vast bulk of the Imperiums forces will never ever face Chaos or enemies associated with it. Most guardsmen will only face rebellious humans or Xenos. Chaos is a rare opponent when it comes down to it.

Imperial repression isn't really logical, no. It's driven mainly by fear and the belief that total control over others is the only way to conquer fear.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

In my opinion, 40k works best when the Imperium is a fascist, authoritarian, xenophobic state (which doesn't necessarily mean a bad quality of life, only limits on what you're permitted to know and think, which are, admittedly, awful), but that's the ONLY way humanity survives. 40k works if the Imperium, as bad as it is, is the only option for long-term *free* human survival. This asks the question of "is it better for humanity to live by committing horrible actions, or to die out peacefully?"

I would modify this to that 40K only works if the Imperium is evil and it's acknowledged that this is a tragedy. The question of whether it's better to be fascist or be extinct is pretty fundamentally biased towards fascists because that's exactly their world view. If the Imperium is making the best of a gakky situation by embracing fascism then you've just got fascist propaganda. You don't have the horror of humanity dooming itself because at every step of the way to the stars the choice was made to meet them with hostility. You don't get the irony of the Imperium denying humanity in their supposed attempt to save it. That doesn't mean that you can't find actually good people within the Imperium, even within high positions of power, but they should be struggling with tragic fates because they weren't supposed to keep hold of their kindness, reason and humility and the rest of the system is overwhelming them.

Chaos also works best when it's understood as the heart and soul of mortals. It isn't an external, ultracorrupting Metzen goo. Chaos is the infinite potential of our futures. Without clarity it's a big self-destructive shitshow but with maturity it would awaken mortals to a golden age unseen since the Old Ones. That this isn't likely to happen is also a tragedy. 40K should be a kind of mirror of Star Trek, or at least what Star Trek likes to think of itself as, where humanity chose to face the galaxy with dreams of subjugation and exploitation instead of understanding and cooperation. All the factions could have chosen kindness but they did not and so now they're all stuck in a hell entirely of their own making and it will likely be the death of everything.

So, what does the imperial cult say about it? Shouldn't the ecclesiarchy teach about chaos being the dark, awful stuff that the Emperor is protecting mankind from?

I don't imagine they'd go into detail about the gods, daemons and everything, but they should at least teach people about evil stuff in the warp that will doom your soul if you're not faithful enough.

Tiennos wrote:
So, what does the imperial cult say about it? Shouldn't the ecclesiarchy teach about chaos being the dark, awful stuff that the Emperor is protecting mankind from?

I don't imagine they'd go into detail about the gods, daemons and everything, but they should at least teach people about evil stuff in the warp that will doom your soul if you're not faithful enough.

I think the Imperial Cult emphasises the horror and evil of the Alien and how it threatens your soul and safety. So they draw upon imagery of demons and damnation without going into the actual mechanics of real daemons and their plans for your warp presence. They probably do tell people they have a soul in the Christian sense, an immortal true self, instead of the 40K sense. The idea is that people put up the necessary defences but on false pretenses.

Rosebuddy wrote:
The idea is that people put up the necessary defences but on false pretenses.

Some limited knowledge of what is proper is necessary if you want your citizens to report "suspicious activity" to their local priest, law enforcer etc so that it eventually reaches the Inquisition. This surely includes teaching people a list of "proper" Imperial Saints (according to your world, sector etc) that may be asked to help your prayer reach the Emperor, any deviation leading to investigation (or a lynching). So while the average citizen won't have knowledge of specific nasty gods etc he will know that anything beyond his list of approved names is very very suspicious.

Tiennos wrote:
So, what does the imperial cult say about it? Shouldn't the ecclesiarchy teach about chaos being the dark, awful stuff that the Emperor is protecting mankind from?

I don't imagine they'd go into detail about the gods, daemons and everything, but they should at least teach people about evil stuff in the warp that will doom your soul if you're not faithful enough.

They do teach about evils, but they omit any specific details. Saying that "evil stuff in the Warp will doom your soul" would be enough detail that someone would go looking. So they don't say anything about it.

The new Astorath short story has a brief conversation relevant to this discussion. An old type marine falls to the Black Rage while leading a squad of young Primaris. So Astorath turns up and talks to the locals and gets a vague description of the enemy before going looking for the Primaris for more details.

He has a chat with a Sanguinary priest that arrived with him while looking, the enemy sounds like they could be Deamonic so the Sanguinary priest starts talking about purging the civilians. Astorath says no, he says since the creation of the great rift the old purge solution has become untenable, people can see the rift and know it isn’t natural plus the rate of Deamonic incursion and chaos invasions has skyrocketed to such an extent they’d need to almost wipe out humanity to keep the knowledge from spreading.

This is one marines opinion not an official change of policy, plus it’s a Blood Angel so is on the dark side of the imperium where things are considerably worse than Guillimans side. But it’s an interesting if brief discussion, with possibly large implications for the lore going forward.

So does the Ecclesiarchy even know about the ruinous powers? I know they work with the Inquisition, but it's usually to purge heretics, not hunt daemons. And they basically teach that psykers need to be burnt at the stake, but do they know that psykers can cause all sort of warp-related troubles if they're not eliminated, or are they just following dogma 100% blindly?

I'm pretty sure that most planetary governments know psykers are dangerous because there are predators in the warp that can use them to breach into the material universe. This is nice, safe explanation for why psykers are dangerous and doesn't tempt people to go looking for gods to worship. Witches are dangerous because they could doom us all to alien slavery and brain eating monsters.

If they want a god to worship, well the Ecclesiarcy has that covered in a thousand thousand varieties, so long as it doesn't show up on the list of prohibited things that probably aren't worshiping the Emperor, which is pointless because only the Emperor is actually a god.

Both of these things seem pretty logical.

Trusting psykers is suicide, and worshiping anything but the Emperor is pointless. This is extremely good propaganda. It's so effective that a lot of the Chaos cults masquerade as Imperial Cults rather than presenting an actual alternative.

Tiennos wrote:
So does the Ecclesiarchy even know about the ruinous powers? I know they work with the Inquisition, but it's usually to purge heretics, not hunt daemons. And they basically teach that psykers need to be burnt at the stake, but do they know that psykers can cause all sort of warp-related troubles if they're not eliminated, or are they just following dogma 100% blindly?

Again, it depends on how high up you are. The lower clergy will know little more than the typical citizen, other than maybe being told about what signs point to someone being a heretic.

Everybody knows that psykers are dangerous, many worlds simply execute them on sight, because they can destroy entire worlds. But the connection between the warp and psykers is again downplayed if its even told at all. The less people know the better.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 John Prins wrote:
It's so effective that a lot of the Chaos cults masquerade as Imperial Cults rather than presenting an actual alternative.

Indeed. The Imperial Cult is extremely fluid in how it operates, as they have very few core tenants. Which means that you can have hundreds of thousands of variations on it. The Dark Heresy books cover this in a little more detail, showing various variations of Imperial Cults. Everything from your stereotypical Christian Church type cults, murderous Death Cults, and even Pleasure Cults.

One Dark Heresy module had a cult where the inner circles had fallen to heresy and were worshipping Chaos, but the outer circles of the cult were perfectly pure. At the end of the adventure, it shows how members of the cult who were loyal manage to salvage it and keep it sanctioned.

Before the Rift yes

After the Rift no.

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
As is commonly known, the Imperium is extremely censorious when it comes to knowledge of Chaos entering the public consciousness. Sure, everyone knows that the Warp is very dangerous but not much more than that. Beyond the individuals and government institutions allowed to have access to knowledge of Chaos, daemons, and the gods, anyone else who finds out too much about Chaos is either mindwiped or even killed. In The Emperor's Legion, Tieron mentions that in less dire situations, him even seeing the Khornate daemons that were attacking the Lion's Gate could have been cause for execution.

Personally, I'm a bit torn. On one hand, I don't think just spilling all knowledge on Chaos to the public is the best idea, as, at least in the short run, could lead to mass hysteria and terror mixed with a huge increase in cultist activity by people who want an alternative to the Imperium. On the other hand, how many people get slaughtered or worse daily by the followers of the gods? The people I think should have a right to know what exactly is preying on them all the time and not be given bs excuses about why their family and friends are being murdered by things that are clearly not just xenos or mere outlaw Space Marines. Maybe there's something in the canon about it, but what about the survivors of Cadia? Some of the greatest heroes of the Imperium deserve to truly know who their enemy is. On a wider scale, education on the nature of Chaos (plus much needed socio-economic changes) could go a long way in people being able to resist Chaos and not give into the voices in their heads that constantly feed them tales of unlimited power and freedom. Many cultists turn to Chaos not out of base malevolence, but because they are so desperate to escape the horrendous conditions of their lives, and with no real knowledge of Chaos, they are prime targets for its lies. In the 8th edition Thousand Sons Codex, Grekk Redeye is a perfect example of why someone could find Chaos alluring; his bosses forced him to keep working despite his severed hand while Tzeentch gave him a whole new hand with crazy new abilities. Who would you want to go with if you were in the same situation? Of course, we all know that the vast majority of cultists end up as slaves, meat fodder for CSM and daemons, test subjects for Nurglite scientists, transformed into Chaos Spawn, and any number of other ghastly fates. But if they knew that Chaos was a lie that only led to suffering far greater than anything that the Imperium doles out, there would be probably far fewer of them, a reality that would cripple Chaos' ability to take planets, especially some of the better-defended ones.

What do you think? Is the Imperial doctrine on the nature of Chaos sound or needs to be reformed?

Its not logical from any stand point. From a realistic standpoint a single planet couldn't keep that info from spreading like hot cakes, never mind a galaxy where some planets only pay lip service to the Imperium and some have only been contacted by the Imperium a single time. Secondly its far easier for Imperial citizens to be turned by chaos when they've never heard of them, or the dangers that they entail. Plus the untold planets, soldiers etc. wasted just for seeing daemons. And the fact that if a guardsmen sees a daemon for the first time, he'd run, I'd run like hell, its not like they can pass them off as some xenos, they are straight out of horror films, also you should know your enemy.

Dark Eldar are the horror films for horror films so if you can expect the Guard to fight them you can expect them to treat Demons as xenos.
Why would the information on chaos spread? It's incredibly restricted so if you blab to your friends you run the risk of the authorities finding out and making you into a servitor (at best) and there's no big way for people to spread information like that.

Yes. In 40k knowledge is a corrupting force. The more you know about chaos and the more you dwell on it the more your mind is opened. An open mind is easily influenced, corrupted and ultimately damned. Chaos isn't like a science that is being suppressed its... more of a philosophy where practice might mean the end of a civilization. There's a saying that an inquisitor either dies a puritan or lives long enough to become a radical. Once a radical they may very well do more harm then good.

The reason the Emperor has been trying to suppress chaos is because he saw what it did to the previous human empire. The one spanning the galaxy. After the men of iron rebellion mankind went dabbling in chaos unchecked. The result was the age of strife where the entire human empire broke down due to deamons arising all over. Many worlds survived only by burning their psykers in which hunts or going technologically backwards to the point where their scientific level no longer could invite chaos.

The age of strife wasn't really because of chaos, it was more psykers had no control. The solution to that is actual training and learning not ignorance. Eldar are all psykers and how many of them destroy their craftworlds? None because they have basic education.

pm713 wrote:
The age of strife wasn't really because of chaos, it was more psykers had no control. The solution to that is actual training and learning not ignorance. Eldar are all psykers and how many of them destroy their craftworlds? None because they have basic education.

I don't mean to be rude but that's flat out wrong. I'm sure you are aware how psychic powers work in 40k. You open up your mind to the warp, channel the power and change reality in some way. What can go wrong with this is that something from the warp can notice it being done. When a psyker suffers a "perils of the warp" on the tabletop that's literally a deamon taking notice of the psykers activity. Maybe it'd be easier to not think of it as deamons but more as "warp entity". During the age of strife when psykers started emerging those psykers started being noticed by deamons. Chaos ensued and the age of strife began. Education is not the answer to this. Many sources point to the Imperium of the time being far technologically superior to its current form. If there was a way to figure out what was going on and teach people not to do it then the ancient humans would undoubtedly have done so already. Education does not stop a deamon from chewing on your brain and atempting possesion. Training can help with not being noticed but even grey knights and inquisitors, by far the most psychically trained and educated in the Imperium, are not immune to the attempts by deamons to assault their minds when they use their abilities.

There's also ways to acquire psychic abilities without actually being a psyker. By studying the warp and getting knowledge of it a person can learn to harness it through certain incantations and/or bargains with demonic entities. Effectively a person can be turned into a psyker. Generally speaking that's a very bad thing because that psyker would already be at the whim of whatever entities or knowledge which allowed him to harness the powers of the warp. Also in order to gain that kind of power you generally need to make sacrifices, appease some entity or come to an understanding of the warp. The last one is very dangerous because you can not understand the warp without partially becoming it. That includes mutation, insanity and corruption.

Concerning the Eldar I'm not actually sure why they don't attract more demonic attention. They usually use tools (like the runes) as some form of warp middle man, in the same way as the Imperium use the Emperors tarot. They're also very good at hiding from the warp entities despite the fact that their souls are much greater then that of a human. I guess they just have technology that allow them to operate in a very warp minimal fashion. Maybe they tap into the webway instead of the warp? It's long been theorised that the webway actually act like a constructed form of the warp, where the eldars themselves (living and dead) provide the power, creating a warp like atmosphere. It would explain why Ynnead, a warp god, has been able to be incubated and grown in the webway and not the warp.

That doesn't really work. All the technology in the world doesn't stop someone not understanding their own power. For example if everything I touch turns into gold then all the technology in the world doesn't help if nobody teaches me to keep gloves on or something. That's the education.
So with psychic powers someone teaches the psykers not to give in and that's supported by things like null collars for the really young. You can do things like start killing all the psykers but teaching is a better solution.

The Eldar do attract attention, much more of it. They just train and use soul stones, Runes and good old supervision to not have demons devour them. The webway isn't some giant power source for Eldar powers it's where they travel/live.
Edit: Ynnead grows in the Infinity Circuits because Ynneads power is drawn out of all the Eldar dead which live in Infinity Circuits. Every soul is like a LEGO brick in the giant build that is Ynnead.