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I've never heard of the Drukhari using spirit stones. I get that She Who Thirsts can't reach them in the Webway, but you'd think they would still want spirit stones while on realspace raids, if only to store the soul of the deceased until a haemonculus can create a new body for it.

Plus, Drukhari being sadistic bastards, I can imagine them wanting to trap the souls of their enemies for torture.

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They do.

Good talk

A spirit stone would be like being in solitary confinement. For a being that is used to a life of unbridled sensation and doing whatever it wants whenever it feels like it, this would be like torture.

Also, their society is big on bravado, strength, and against any admission of weakness or fear. It is the reason why poison antidotes, while available, are not really used very often within Commorragh because it would be an admission of weakness and fear, which invites other Dark Eldar to target you. If it seems you are fearful and planning around the possibility of defeat, then you appear weak and may lose followers or gain enemies.

Commorites have their cloning/rebirth technology.

Essentially, provided you can meet their price? The Haemonculi will snip a bit of you off, and keep it safe. This essentially creates a soul tether, so even if you’re killed during a Realspace Raid, your soul doesn’t pass into the warp.

Overtime, and exposed to sufficient agony, that clipped bit will regenerate into a whole new body. Provided you can pay the ongoing costs? That process can be continuously repeated.

Hence, there’s no particular requirement for a Waystone. And as Ircancus said, yes a Waystone prevents you being a Crunchy Soul Nugget, but it’s no life for a species still addicted to experience.

Exactly what else is involved in that process remains something of a mystery to me, but it might be covered in a novel somewhere.

In addition to what others have said, getting stuck in a stone like that means your stone is likely to be recovered who either hate you or at least find it amusing to torment you. So you're not only stuck being tortured by solitary confinement, but you *also* have to endure the shame of being permanently at the mercy of your personal enemy.

It's part of the reason trapping someone in a djinn blade is seen as rubbing salt in the wound instead of being a preferred fate.

Also also?

Waystone =/= Spirit Stones.

The Waystone is worn by a living Craftworlders (and I think Exodite). Kept on your person at all times, if you get squished or otherwise snuff it, your soul is drawn into it for temporary safety keeping. And in the early background? It wasn’t for long term storage, having something of a time limit to get you transferred into the Infinity Circuit/World Spirit.

A Soulstone draws a soul from the Infinity Cricuit/World Spirit, and once placed in a Construct can be a more permanent holding.

I’ll go through me old books when I can, see if I can find exact quotes.

They are the same thing

It is common knowledge that every Eldar wears upon his breast a shining breast or polished stone. This psycho-reactive crystal is called a spirit stone or waystone, and it is attuned solely to the mind of its owner.

Codex: Eldar 2nd edition, page 6

my headcanon is that they're called waystones when they're empty and spirit stones when they're occupied, but at this point I can't remember if I've read that anywhere or if it's just my extrapolation

Drukhari do use Spirit Stones. Cracking open Spirit Stones is part of their initiation to become high-ranking soldiers like the Incubi.

-Guardsman- wrote:
Plus, Drukhari being sadistic bastards, I can imagine them wanting to trap the souls of their enemies for torture.

They do trap them, just using different technologies. What do you think Soul-Trap cube is?

Also, most recent DE models have multiple captured spirit stones on them, there is even a mention Incubi candidates have to take one off Eldar aspect warrior and rebuild it into torture device (torturing both said warrior and whoever it targets) which would really make anyone considering it think twice because getting stuck in one owned by your enemies might be one of the few fates comparable to being sent straight to S as far as DE are concerned...

 Irbis wrote:

-Guardsman- wrote:
Plus, Drukhari being sadistic bastards, I can imagine them wanting to trap the souls of their enemies for torture.

They do trap them, just using different technologies. What do you think Soul-Trap cube is?

Also, most recent DE models have multiple captured spirit stones on them, there is even a mention Incubi candidates have to take one off Eldar aspect warrior and rebuild it into torture device (torturing both said warrior and whoever it targets) which would really make anyone considering it think twice because getting stuck in one owned by your enemies might be one of the few fates comparable to being sent straight to S as far as DE are concerned...

This is one of the reasons I really hate GW trying to smush dark eldar and craftworlders together, rather than them actually being as inimical to one another as chaos and the imperium.

You can't brush off the active capture and torture of eldar as a philosophical difference that can be debated in polite society. The only reason Ynnari work at all is because they each give up their current paradigm to follow a new god. But the DE are killers of their own kind and torturers of the eldar, there is no way that they can be presented as just a different version of eldar.

I don’t see them as inimical to each other. Untrusting and distant? Yes. But they’re still all Eldar at the end of the day.

What I’m now wondering is whether it’s possible to combine Soul Stone tech, with Dark Eldar tech. So instead of being installed in a Wraith Construct, your soul and consciousness is instead transferred into an otherwise empty clone?

I think the different eldar factions being able to sometimes cooperate despite their differences makes the situation much more interesting than pure black and white antagonism.

Yeah. I like the duality of Commorite and Craftworld.

Not to mention the awful hypocrisy of the Craftworlds, who absolutely will have suitable, usually human, miscreants, sent to the tender mercies of their darker cousins.

And, at the end of the day? Both great societies are dedicated to seeing their species’ fortunes reversed.

And chaos are humans so they will ally with the imperium right?

The de have war crimes against the craftworlders as a part of their culture, specifically the torturing of their souls and spirit stones.

Not even chaos has a hard on to specifically screws with humans in a way unique and terrible to them.

What I think is black and white is the idea that being the same species means they must be capable of working together. The chaos legions are more similar to their loyalist brethren than a DE is to a craftworlder.

 Hellebore wrote:
And chaos are humans so they will ally with the imperium right?

The de have war crimes against the craftworlders as a part of their culture, specifically the torturing of their souls and spirit stones.

Not even chaos has a hard on to specifically screws with humans in a way unique and terrible to them.

What I think is black and white is the idea that being the same species means they must be capable of working together. The chaos legions are more similar to their loyalist brethren than a DE is to a craftworlder.

The difference is that both Chaos and Imperium are ideological fanatics whereas the eldar can be more pragmatic. The factions don't like each other and are mostly hostile for the obvious reason you mention. But they still can occasionally cooperate when the situation warrants it. And yea, eldar supremacy is a thing that unites them. They do not really see other species as proper people.

The differences and active antagonism between drukhari and non-drukhari is and should be a major hindrance to cooperation between them. It's just not an insurmountable one.

A craftworld isn't going to buddy up to some dark eldar without a darn good reason, but they're both intelligent factions with common enemies. Some necrons waking up and reactivating too much of their tech has the potential to be a problem for craftworlders and true kin alike. Tyranids eating a sector is bad for the craftworld the next system over, and for the kabal that likes to go raiding in that neighborhood. And anything involving Slaanesh can at least ensure that you both hate the enemy more than eachother.

And the drukhari simply have access to a lot of skills/tech other factions don't have while often being willing to strike some sort of bargain. You can't trust them, but the temptation to try and navigate some form of cooperation is understandable.

And in the case of the ynnari, non-drukhari *could* potentially appreciate that the torture and soul eating and so forth is partly a matter of desperate people going to extreme lengths to avoid an unimaginably bad fate and to survive in a cutthroat city. Not that that excuses anything, but knowing that Yvraine can take away the *need* for torture, you might be more willing to cooperate with the former torturers. Horrific as the drukhari are, I imagine there is *some* sympathy that comes with the shared trauma of Slaanesh, even if the coping mechanism/survival strategy of the drukhari is nightmarish.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I don’t see them as inimical to each other. Untrusting and distant? Yes. But they’re still all Eldar at the end of the day.

What I’m now wondering is whether it’s possible to combine Soul Stone tech, with Dark Eldar tech. So instead of being installed in a Wraith Construct, your soul and consciousness is instead transferred into an otherwise empty clone?

Craftworld Aeldari suppress their emotions, while Drukhari fully embrace and express them. In the 7th edition Haemonculus Coven supplement, it was stated that the Drukhari’s intense will to live is what keeps them tethered to life. Pain serves to strengthen this connection, allowing the soul to pull itself back into the body. A soul that has not enough will to live is beyond their ability to resurrect.

So, a highly emotional and stubborn individual—someone who refuses to accept their own death—can be brought back. In contrast, the more emotionally restrained Craftworld Aeldari likely couldn't be resurrected this way. And since Drukhari don’t rely on soulstones for this process, I don’t really see a plausible person, except the Exarchs, who could use both together. And I don't think there is any Craftworld, that would go the length for people that don't follow the paths anymore.