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So, I know nothing about the Culture (by Ian M. Banks) and am looking for some comparisons between the two Eldar time periods (including the DE, Harlequins, etc.)

-STS

The Culture is a post scarcity utopian civilization within which its citizens can pretty much do whatever they want. In the earlier novels its just reaching its true power while in the later ones its one of the galaxy's pre-eminent powers. Most of the heavy lifting is done by hypersentient machines called Minds, many of which are the central inteelligence of a starship, most of which have awesome names. There are also many machine intelligences in a massive range of drones that are equal citizens to biologicals.

I think the key difference with ghe Eldar is that the Culture meddle. Like a lot. While a lot of citizens will never do anything outside the bounds of the Culture, the Contact section, and the entertainingly named "Special Circumstances" very much get their hands dirty with other civilizations. Also they have a high status in Culture society. Its not like its the dregs doing a job none else wants. Contact positions are highly sought after.

The Culture has access to 2 flavours of hyperspace and can weaponize the fabric of space itself with "Gridfire". Antimatter is also commonly weaponised. They have all kinds of firld technology and jneural interfaces between organic and machine technology.

Its explained in the books why citizens cant just go and murder each other and it mostly boils down to a) the Minds will stop you and b) people will stop inviting you to parties.

I love the culture... dann cancer for taking that man too soon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ansd I want a fully cannoned up Abomination class rapid offensive unit. Described in one book as looking like a certain type of toy, apt as fully armed they can ... ahem... whole star systems.

I'm not that knowledgeable about the culture, but there are a couple of key things about the eldar pre fall.

Psychic engines
Psycho active technologies

These two combined factors made virtually anything possible for them.

The entire empire was powered by what were effectively perpetual energy machines. the psychic engines channeled warp energy and converted it to realspace energy, allowing for everything they could think of to be powered with no issues.

They were also able to capture stars as a fuel source as well (as commoragh is currently powered by several), but they would have done that using their psychic engines.

As they are all psychic, the psycho active nature of their technology meant that if they could think of it, the engines could create it.


So yeah they were pretty post scarcity.

I think the term post-scarcity needs to be defined more clearly.

Because clearly even pre-Fall there were things like Eldar nobles and those that were not nobles. One of the Dark Eldar Codices said the rot of decadence first set in with the nobles, who were also more able to hide their decadence through having their pocket dimensions (which later ended up being connected to and being absorbed by Commorragh). This means that there was still a class of Eldar within the pre-Fall Eldar empire that had more power and resources than the rest. So what does post-scarcity mean? Similarly what does it mean for Craftworlds?

Certainly pre-Fall and Craftworld society is constantly described as freeing the Eldar of the need to work, and the needs of daily life being provided essentially for free. However Craftworld Eldar society seems limited ultimately by the Bonesinger population and how quickly they can work. How does society arbitrate or decide between Eldar A that wants a luxury jetbike vs Eldar B that wants a private spaceship vs Eldar C that wants 10,000 sets of clothes with matching jewels? If the Bonesinger production capacity is finite, which we know it is, then at some point demands can outstrip production capacity, in which case that is scarcity since some will have to do without at least for a time, until their turn comes up.

If post-scarcity means simply basic needs are met without effort...well then modern 21st century 1st world society could seem post-scarcity to anyone from a pre-industrial era. Food, clean water, light, heat/cooling, and entertainment on demand would have been fabulously luxurious to people from earlier times. Even people on welfare payments enjoy a standard of living far above that of many people from pre-industrial times.

Post scarcity does not equal total equality. If everyone have access to massive wealth, bliss and plenty, then who will care if some people have access to even more resources and power? It would take a special case of pettiness and envy to even think such differentiation would matter when you already have it really good and everyone live a life of abundance. Classes and entrenched ruling elites are fully plausible in a post scarcity society. If nothing else, those who are prepared to put in all the meritocratic, contact-building, career-climbing legwork to acquire power will automatically have an advantage in that game versus those who aren't interested in such seemingly wanton pursuits.

There is nothing strange with Pre-Fall Eldar being both post scarcity, and having a nobility. Especially with them being aliens, since their minds and societies might work very different to human ones, i.e. the sky is virtually the limit and we should be more prepared to see possibilities than problems in the worldbuilding.

The nobility being the first to turn decadent and rotten is by the way a reference to ancient Rome, as is all of the Fall.

To the peasant of a Bronze Age society thousands of years ago, the average person today already lives post-scarcity. However needs change and increase with society's advancement and wealth. What would have contented that Bronze Age peasant would be considered grinding poverty today. What is considered abundance is relative. To a pre-Fall Eldar, not having your own personal continent may be considered poor, especially when the neighboring noble can play with entire planets as their playground. Similarly, the nobles slipped into decadence as the available services and entertainments grew boring to them. The Fall can at its core be seen as a desire for More of everything, without end irrespective of any moral boundaries.

We also know that pre-Fall Eldar society was not meritocratic, or at least not entirely, as we know there were nobles that inherited based on lineage. We know this because Dark Eldar society pre-Vect was a snapshot of the final stages of pre-Fall decadence, with decadent noble houses lording it over the rest, based purely on birth.

What I am saying is that we (as 21st century humans) may view pre-Fall Eldar society as "post-scarcity" in the same way that Bronze Age peasant (or even noble) might view the 21st century as post scarcity, but people create new forms of scarcity to keep up with changing times. We might see the concerns of the pre-Fall Eldar like how a poor person in the 3rd world might view the complaints of a 1st world person ("1st world probllems"), as ludicrously petty and trivial compared to more important needs or motives. However when those more important needs and drives are met, and are not at risk of being lost, then people have time to fixate on the trivial (and consider them non-trivial), such as for example talking about painted miniatures games or limited release figures.

I think the other big difference between eldar and Culture is that the Cilture doesnt have to.deal.with the grimdarkness of deliberately malevolent superpowers. In the culture verse, when civilisations reach a certain stage they "sublime" to another level of existence and pretty much ignore anything left in the normal universe.

So the Culture can be massively decadent with no fundamental risk.

Also the culture has a galaxy spanning network of hyper intelligent and fundamentally benign intelligences looking out for their interests.

 Flinty wrote:
I think the other big difference between eldar and Culture is that the Cilture doesnt have to.deal.with the grimdarkness of deliberately malevolent superpowers. In the culture verse, when civilisations reach a certain stage they "sublime" to another level of existence and pretty much ignore anything left in the normal universe.

So the Culture can be massively decadent with no fundamental risk.

Also the culture has a galaxy spanning network of hyper intelligent and fundamentally benign intelligences looking out for their interests.

So the setting is almost an inverse of 40K.

Going to guess those benevolent AI's wouldn't transfer so well to the 40K-verse as a bunch of fundamentally malevolent intelligences and cultures are the rule, as opposed to non-existant.

-STS

The Culture is what happens when a civilization reaches absurd levels of technological development.

The Eldar is what what happens when a civilization reaches absurd levels of technological development in a setting in which gods will eat your soul and the universe hates you.

slade the sniper wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
I think the other big difference between eldar and Culture is that the Cilture doesnt have to.deal.with the grimdarkness of deliberately malevolent superpowers. In the culture verse, when civilisations reach a certain stage they "sublime" to another level of existence and pretty much ignore anything left in the normal universe.

So the Culture can be massively decadent with no fundamental risk.

Also the culture has a galaxy spanning network of hyper intelligent and fundamentally benign intelligences looking out for their interests.

So the setting is almost an inverse of 40K.

Going to guess those benevolent AI's wouldn't transfer so well to the 40K-verse as a bunch of fundamentally malevolent intelligences and cultures are the rule, as opposed to non-existant.

-STS

It really depends what the eldar automata were like. There's nothing to suggest they went rogue or fought against the eldar, implying they were not self aware, or they were benevolent, or they were in some way deliberately controlled and forced to work.

The only information we know is that the entire eldar empire was effectively protected by huge automata armies, basically acting as a galactic palisade around the empire.

We don't have any info on how eldar robots might work, so the following is supposition based on known eldar technology.


Eldar automata
My theory is that as the eldar used psychic engineering and psycho reactive materials to do EVERYTHING, this would include robots. As they can store a soul in a psycho reactive shell, it stands to reason they can store soul-like things as well.

so rather than traditional programming, the eldar would psychically embed mental engrams into automaton shells. So for a robot sent out to fight, they would implant the engrams of anger, protection, tactical coordination etc into the shell as part of its construction. So basically they'd imprint a copy of their own thoughts into the shell. This would give them precise control of the level of free will a robot had, whilst also allowing for sentient-like reactions from something that wasn't sentient.

As they could effectively pick and choose what components of a real mind were placed into the shell.

This same technology was then coopted by the craftworlds after the fall to house the full soul of a dead eldar so they could fight again.

It's a very different, analogue method of programming, where you basically treat the robot as a blank slate infant and then imprint conceptual values and actions into them in seconds as opposed to a lifetime.

It gives them an almost alive, but completely controllable design, which is one reason why the eldar were dominant for so long and didn't have the issues humanity had with the men of iron.

@Hellebore:
I like that theory. If "programming" those engrams into an entity (or building the "hardware" that accepts and utilizes those engrams) required sufficiently high amounts of psychic power and/or precision, then it would also explain why automata have largely fallen out of use by craftworlders; they simply can't safely utilize the warp deftly enough to pull off that trick, and the knowledge for how to do so hasn't been handed down as part of a path as a result.

It also feels very on-brand for the aeldari to "program" their automata by basically giving them limited consciousnesses rather than typing javascript into a computer. It's consistent with some of the ancient tech (infinity circuits, the Spear of Twilight, etc.) that seem to have minds of their own and respond semi-intelligently to the thoughts of eldar.

Minor tangent: I really like the idea of "puppet" constructs that craftworlders and harlies can project a sliver of their minds into to use as battle drones. Sort of like using telepathy as wifi to give your psycho-reactive drones commands. It really seems like something you'd want to have if you're a member of a dying race that desperately needs more manpower but hates losing a single life. Maybe "projecting" their souls like that would be too dangerous, even for a psyker, due to the dangers of having your soul caught out outside of your body and the protection of the infinity circuit?

In the Gav Thorpe novel Path of the Outcast there is an Eldar that basically operates multiple wraithbone bodies, although they are less drones than actual copies of the personality.