Dark Eldar

The Dark Eldar are the forsaken and corrupt kindred of the Eldar, an ancient and highly advanced alien race of fey humanoids. Their armies, like their Eldar counterparts, usually have the advantages of mobility and advanced technology, though they are often lacking in resilience and numbers. The Dark Eldar revel in piracy, enslavement and torture, and are sadistic in the extreme. Dark Eldar armies make use of various anti-gravity skimmers such as Raiders and Ravagers to launch high speed attacks. They strike with little or no warning, using an interdimensional labyrinth known as the Webway to traverse the galaxy safely and far more quickly than most advanced races are able to with their Warp jumps. The Dark Eldar are unique amongst the intelligent races of the Milky Way Galaxy because they do not live on a settled world or worlds, but rather the bulk of their population is concentrated in one foul city-state - the Dark City of Commorragh - that lies within the "ordered" Immaterium of the Eldar Webway. The Dark Eldar are mainly pirates and slavers who prey on targets across the galaxy to feed their unholy appetites for other sentient beings' souls, a terrible desire called the Thirst, though they are sometimes used as mercenaries by other species.

The Dark Eldar are the living embodiments of all that is wanton and cruel in the Eldar character. Highly intelligent and devious to the point of obsession, this piratical people revel in the physical and emotional pain of others, for feeding upon the psychic residue of suffering is the only way they can stave off the slow consumption by the Chaos God Slaanesh of their own souls. The Dark Eldar, particularly their warrior castes, are tall, lithe, white-skinned humanoids. Their alabaster skin is death-like in its pallor, for there is no sun within their dark realm to provide colour. Their athletic bodies are defined by whipcord muscle, shaped and enhanced until they are physically stronger on average than their Craftworld Eldar counterparts, as the Dark Eldar prize physical and martial prowess highly. Yet for all their physical beauty, the Dark Eldar are still repugnant monsters. When viewed with the witch-sight of a psyker, the Dark Eldar's black souls are revealed, for they eternally thirst only for the anguish and torment of other thinking beings in order to fill their own infinite emptiness. Unlike their Craftworld Eldar cousins, the Dark Eldar do not integrate their still powerful latent psychic abilities into their culture, and indeed have a great disdain for psykers of any kind. This is because for the Dark Eldar, the use of psychic abilities would only further draw the attention of She Who Thirsts (Slaanesh) upon them, and their souls are already at risk enough of being devoured by the Prince of Chaos.

Origins
The Dark Eldar have fallen from true grace in the most profound of ways. Their roots as a culture lie at the very height of ancient Eldar society, when theirs was perhaps the most highly advanced species in the Milky Way Galaxy. The Eldar once boasted mastery over a civilisation that was the greatest seen in the galaxy since that of the Old Ones. The various cultures of the Eldar that exist today in the 41st Millennium are only shadows of the glory of that ancient Eldar empire.

The true origins of the Dark Eldar can be found in the Fall of the Eldar, the great cataclysm that nearly destroyed the entire Eldar race. It was an event so terrible that not only did it kill trillions of Eldar, but it breached the gap between real space and the Warp, and gave birth to the Chaos God Slaanesh.

The ancient Eldar had perfected their science and technology to such an extent that they could remake planets and quench the light of the very stars at a whim. The need for labour or hard work in Eldar society became nothing but a dim memory of a difficult past. The Eldar, arrogant in the belief that they were now the true masters of their destiny, spent more and more of their time in esoteric pursuits and entertainments intended to escape the ennui that set in over the course of their centuries-long lives of ease and comfort. The Eldar mind and psyche is a thing of duality: it can experience zeniths of bliss and nadirs of suffering far more keenly than that of the other intelligent races, including Mankind. The Eldar were just as capable of becoming as unredeemably corrupt as they were of transcending their flaws and touching the divine. With so much power at their hands, the core worlds of the Eldar empire--once the height of civilisation in the known universe--became centred solely on the pursuit of individual fulfillment and entertainment.

To understand the reasons for the Fall, it is necessary to know something of the Eldar mind and soul. An Eldar's mind is incredibly complex. Their senses are extremely sharp, able to perceive incredible levels of detail. Their emotions can be so strong that a human’s are merely pale shadows by comparison. They are extremely intelligent; their thought processes are much faster than a human’s. All of this means that an Eldar experiences the universe and all its sensations to a greatly heightened degree compared to a human.

Similarly, an Eldar's soul is much brighter in the Warp than those of "lesser" sentients like humans who do not possess such potent psychic abilities. Eldar are able to affect the nether-realm of the Warp much more than most other intelligent races. Every Eldar is a latent psychic and has the ability to become a very powerful psyker with training. It is the psychic strength of the Eldar's souls that was one of the causes of their downfall.

Before the Fall, during humanity's Dark Age of Technology, the Eldar had an immense galaxy-spanning empire comprising millions of worlds, larger and more powerful than even the Imperium of Man at the height of its power. The Eldar lived in relative peace—barbarian races such as the Orks were kept at easily manageable numbers and never had the strength to threaten the might of the Eldar empire. The humans were not yet virulently xenophobic and did not have a large interstellar domain, and the Tyranid Hive Fleets remained unknown. The C'tan and Necrons, the ancient foes of the Eldar, had been defeated long before and still remained dormant.

Life on the Eldar worlds was idyllic, with fantastically sophisticated machines that took care of all the labour and manufacturing required to keep an advanced society functioning, leaving the Eldar free to indulge in other, more aesthetic pursuits. With all menial work taken care of for them, the Eldar became indolent and decadent. They began to explore more deeply the arts of pleasure, delving ever deeper into hedonism. This descent into decadence spanned millennia. Tradition and order disintegrated as the Eldar pursued the limits of the pursuit of pleasure. Sects called Pleasure Cults were formed, dedicated to achieving the highest levels of hedonistic sensation, and their ceremonies and practices became ever more wild, eventually devolving into violence against one another and even the ritual sacrifice of their own kind. Some Eldar hated what their race had become and left the Eldar homeworlds for the unexplored and virgin Maiden Worlds, or left on the newly-constructed Craftworlds, leaving the Pleasure Cults to their madness.

Among the pleasure-seekers and the interminably curious of the Eldar were those whose pursuit of excess became ever more extreme. These included a great proportion of the aristocracy of ancient Eldar society, who possessed the wealth and time to truly explore the meanings of decadence. One by one, the leaders of the Pleasure Cults that were becoming the centrepiece of Eldar society became obsessed with their own power. They relocated their headquarters to the Labyrinth Dimension known as the Eldar Webway, for so great was their political influence that they could command the construction of entire sub-realms just for themselves. Unseen, these Pleasure Cult lords continued to grow in power and influence, initiating more and more of the ancient Eldar population into their strange and shadowy creeds of decadence.

The Eldar are the most psychically gifted of all sentient beings in the galaxy and as the corruption gradually seduced them, the echoes of their ecstasy and agony began to ripple through time and space. In the parallel dimension of the Immaterium, the Warp, the reflections of these intense experiences began to coalesce, as the shifting tides of the chaotic Empyrean can take form around the raw emotions emitted by the sentient beings of the material universe and attract even more of such similar psychic energies to themselves. The constant stream of individual selfishness and indulgence pouring into the Warp from the Eldar empire nourished and empowered that which lay within - a nascent God of pleasure and pain, content to wait and to grow.

As the Eldar empire sank into corruption and decadence, brother turned against brother in pursuit of ever more extreme and darker pleasures. Some of the wiser Eldar, however, foresaw the disaster that was approaching their society and fled from the Eldar core worlds to safety. The first of these were the Exodites, who chose to establish a network of Eldar planetary colonies known as the Maiden Worlds far from the blighted heart of the empire. Many of these Exodite colonies still exist in the galaxy, their cultures living in a symbiotic relationship with the world-spirits of the planets they call home and protect. Among the last Eldar to escape from the empire's core before the Fall were the ancestors of the present day's Craftworld Eldar. As their society collapsed into civilisation-wide insanity these Eldar recoiled in horror from what they were becoming. Releaising that they stood upon the brink of destruction they bend their considerable resources to the construction of the massive Craftworlds, the graceful spaceborne cities that were the size of small moons. The Eldar of the Craftworlds retreated into asceticism and spiritual introspection, preserving what they could of their ancient ways and culture before the time of the Pleasure Cults. They left the core worlds of the Eldar empire for the dubious safety of deep space, to the laughter and contempt of those who remained behind. Some even managed to flee far enough to escape the terrible destruction of the Fall.

Meanwhile, as mentioned above, something terrible was stirring in the Warp. The long millennia of Eldar hedonism had made a massive impact in the psychic realm of Chaos. Within the Warp the decadent Eldar civilization was giving shape to a new Power of Chaos, which grew and grew over thousands of years, getting stronger and more defined until suddenly it sparked into an intelligence – a shatteringly huge and malign intelligence, with an immense and bottomless thirst for Eldar souls. This was the birth of the Chaos God Slaanesh, the Dark Prince of Pleasure, better known as She Who Thirsts to the Eldar, who see Slaanesh as inherently female.

This process lasted for thousands of years, corresponding to the historical era that was Mankind's Dark Age of Technology, although when Slaanesh finally came into being the results within the material universe were apocalyptic and sudden. As depravity riddled every aspect of Eldar society, the Pleasure Cults sought ever more violent thrills. Before long the streets of Eldar cities ran with their blood. The elegant architecture of their palaces became battlegrounds as the Eldar preyed upon each other, revelling in the cruelest of crimes. Their insanity and tainted passions poured into the Warp until it finally achieved critical mass. With an apocalyptic bellow that tore the heart out of the Eldar empire, a new Chaos God was born, Slaanesh the Dark Prince of Excess. An almighty psychic shockwave scythed across the galaxy, destroying countless billions of Eldar souls as Slaanesh's birth cries echoed through the material realm. The souls of almost every Eldar were stripped from them in an instant and devoured by the new-born Chaos God in a cataclysm of pain and terror. There were few survivors. Most were driven mad, their minds trapped half in the real world and half in the swirling insanity of the Warp. A great Warp rift was created in the material universe at the site of what had once been the epicentre of the Eldar civilisation, encompassing almost the entire Eldar empire and creating the Eye of Terror, thus marking the dawn of the era known to humanity as the Age of Strife. World after Eldar world had fallen into the Warp, to later be known as the Crone Worlds. Slaanesh gorged itself upon the Eldar's horror and despair. Unstoppable in its ascendancy, the new God consumed the ancient deities of the Eldar empire and scattered their psychic remains to the far corners of the Empyrean.

The Eldar civilisation was gone. All that was left of the Eldar race were the Exodites of the farthest-flung Maiden Worlds, the Craftworld Eldar who had travelled far enough to escape the aftershock of destruction caused by Slaanesh's birth and the formation of the Eye of Terror, and those adherents of the Pleasure Cults who were hidden in the sub-realms of the Webway. Much of the Webway was shattered into ruin by the Fall of the Eldar, but unlike the Craftword Eldar who fled the catastrophe in realspace, those Eldar who had built their own jealously-guarded empires in the Webway remained physically unaffected by Slaanesh's birth. The echoes of the new God's apoetheosis still resounded within them, but unlike their kin in realspace they had escaped destruction. In their arrogance, they did not end their quest for excess and decadent pleasure, not even for a momentary respite following the death of their empire. Repentance and atonement were meaningless concepts for a people that no longer acknowledge any limits on their actions, regardless of the consequences.

The change that was wrought upon those Eldar sealed within the Webway was far more subtle. Rather than having their psychic essences, their souls, consumed in one great darught by Slaanesh, their souls were more slowly draining away into the Warp, taken over time by She Who Thirsts. The Eldar hate and fear Slaanesh above all other things, for she was given life by their actions and yet she waits hungrily to claim each and every one of them, now or later. Where the Eldar of the Craftworlds learned to deny Slaanesh's hold upon them by using the mystical Spirit Stones, the Infinity Circuits and the philosophies of the Eldar Paths to safeguard their souls from consumption by She Who Thirsts, the Eldar of the Webway became exceptionally good at ensuring that other beings suffered in their place. As long as they steeped themselves in the most evil and savage decadent acts, the Eldar of the Webway found that the curse of Slaanesh upon their race could be avoided. The agony of others nourished their diminished souls and kept them vital and strong, filling their spare frames with unnaturally robust energies. Assuming that they could feed regularly enough upon the miseries of other intelligent beings, the Eldar of the Webway became psychically immune to the passage of time. So it was that the Dark Eldar were born, a race of sadistic murderers and torturers who feed upon the suffering of others in order to prevent the slow death of their own immortal souls. Ten thousand standard years later, in the 41st Millennium of Mankind, Slaanesh's thirst consumes them still. There truly is no escape, for the Dark Eldar have only exchanged a horrible but quick death for an eternity of infernal hunger and the infinite emptiness wrought by self-absorption.

Deep in the Webway after the Fall, the groups of Pleasure Cult survivors came together and laid the foundations of vast new sub-realm they named Commorragh, the Dark City. More and more Eldar survivors from other sub-realms in the Webway began to arrive and soon added their own regions to the new realm, slowly making it even larger and more heavily populated, until today it is a vast place, an infernal city of suffering and death. To this day, the Dark Eldar raid and pillage the galaxy at large from their hidden sub-realms in the Webway, sowing as much misery and destruction as possible and stealing away millions of cpative slaves to their lairs within the Dark City for their own horrible ends. They are experts in the techniques of torture and mental and physical degradation, as the longer a Dark Eldar can drag out the torture of a slave the more psychic nourishment he can take from him or her. A Dark Eldar who has recently fed upon the suffering of others shines with a cold and startling aura of power, his physical form restored to beautiful, youthful perfection even as his soul rots within its pristine shell. A Dark Eldar who is not allowed to partake of such energies for long enough will become a physical shadow of his former beauty, desperately hunting for a taste of misery to stave off the gnawing thirst in the depths of his withered soul.

The Rise of Asdrubael Vect
Over the millennia, Commorragh grew from its shoruded beginnings into a galactic nightmare, its expansion driven largely by the machinations of one being, Asdrubael Vect of the Kabal of the Black Heart, who rose from slavery to become the true Overlord of the Dark City.

Four thousand standard years after the Fall of the Eldar, in the time that Mankind calls the 35th Millennium, Commorragh underwent its greatest ordeal since its founding. The slave Asdrubael Vect had risen, through pure guile and murderous ambition, to become the Dracon of what he later named the Kabal of the Black Heart, when the elite forces of the Imperium of Man mounted a full-scale invasion of the Dark City. At that time Vect, the hidden architect of this time of strife intended to cement his own rule, was opposed at all turns by the most influential of the Dark City's noble factions, the Houses Xelian, Kraillach and Yllithian. By the time the human invaders had been repelled, the powerbases of these houses were in ruins, their Archons slain. It was not long before Vect and the more meritocratic Kabals had replaced them as the source of ultimate power in the Dark City, just as he had planned.

The seeds of the Imperial invasion were sown in the region of the galaxy called the Desaderian Gulf. This area of wilderness space was well-known among the human starfarers of the Segmentum Tempestus for the number of spacecraft that had disappeared within its confines. General Imperial practice was to avoid it at all costs. Unknown to the Imperium, there existed a vast portal into a main arterial of the Webway within Desaderian space, shielded by holofields that made it appear to be nothing more than a shimmer in the starlight, perhaps a result of gravitational lensing. Behind this portal lurked the pirate fleets of Commorragh, waiting for unwary prey.

The Dark Eldar's noble houses preyed upon Imperial shipping lanes only rarely in order to escape retribution; hence the missing ships were always considered acceptable losses or written off as bureaucratic errors of the Administratum. Vect's first move was to increase the frequency of these piratical raids tenfold. He made it his Kabal's priority to capture every Imperial Navy warship and invade every human world within reach of the Desaderian portal. He tore apart the Imperial Guard Regiments garrisoning the planets of the Desaderian System, devastated their fortifications and disappeared with his living bounty into the depths of the Dark City, leaving nothing but utter ruin in his wake. This campaign saw the Kabal of the Black Heart grow rich in plunder and souls, though Vect's detractors thought him a fool for antagonising the massive Imperial war machine.

With its usual ponderous, bureaucratic slowness the Imperium eventually reacted to the disappearances in the Desaderian Gulf. A strike cruiser belonging to the Salamanders Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes was close enough to investigate. It was patrolling the edges of the Gulf in search of the sacred artefacts and relics of their Primarch Vulkan. Captain Phoecus of the Salamanders ordered his ship deeper into the Desaderian Gulf. After a short but violent exchange with Vect's Kabalite fleet, Phoecus' strike cruiser Forgehammer was crippled by haywire bombs and transported through the Desaderian portal into the heart of the Dark City. The furore that resulted from this audacious capture set the spires of High Commorragh aflame with new intrigue. A Space Marine Captain was a great prize indeed, for such an individual could withstand extreme and prolonged mental and physical torture before divulging his vital secrets about Imperial defence. Before long, Vect found his Kabal's fleet in the Desaderian Gulf dwarfed by the armada of the Archon Lord Xelian. The Forgehammer, still rendered impotent by Vect's haywire field, was confiscated by Xelian, taken to High Commorragh and analysed by a long dissection process.

In his arrogance, Lord Xelian had not reckoned with the resourcefulness of the Space Marines trapped within the stricken strike cruiser. The ship's vox communications network had been shorted out by the haywire field, but unknown to Xelian there remained a more pervasive method of communication available to the Astartes. Captain Phoecus' close friend, the gifted Librarian Hestion, had sent a psychic request for aid as soon as the starship's systems had been disabled. Hestion acted as a living beacon to the rest of the Salamanders Chapter, a beacon now trapped within the spires of Xelian's realm in the Dark City. When Lord Xelian sent the elite of his warrior court to bring the Space Marines to his torture chambers, they were met with far sterner resistance that anticipated. The Dark Eldar found it easy to carve through the hull of the strike cruiser and gain entrance to its dark corridors, but overpowering the Space Marines proved impossible. Lit only by the flashes of boltgun fire, a desperate battle took place within the hull of the Forgehammer until Astartes and Dark Eldar blood had mingled upon its hull plates. Xelian was quick to realise that he had underestimated his victims. He returned the salvage rights for the Astartes starship to the Kabal of the Black Heart, appearing generous but actually intending to seize the Space Marines once the Black Heart had suffered the losses in taking them captive. Vect readily agreed, forming small strike forces of all those warriors in his Kabal whom he suspected of disloyalty and sent them to face the strike cruiser's defenders piecemeal. Vect's Kabalite Warriors, triumphant on dozens of worlds, marched into the Forgehammer without fear, but the battle lasted for days.

Xelian was happy to let Vect drive his so-called Kabal to destruction, believing the Kabal's Dracon to be a fool for not attacking with all the force at his disposal in a single, massive assault. Vect played a waiting game, feeding the diisloyal elements of his Kabal to the guns of the Space Marines to buy time and even employing Commorrite mercenaries with well-known ties to Xelian's court, all of whom were soon swallowed by the violence within the human strike cruiser. On the sixteenth day of the siege, the skies above High Commorragh suddenly broke open. The Salamanders Chapter had received the coordinates that had led them to their beleaguered Battle-Brothers from the Librarian Hestion's psychic broadcasts. The Desaderian portal had mysteriously been left fully operational, its guards slain and its controls locked so that it could not be closed.

The full fury of the Imperium of Man thundered from the crackling jade-cloured Webway portal directly above Archon Xelian's personal spire. Through it came starships bearing the heraldry of not only the Salamanders but also the badges of the Howling Griffons and the Silver Skulls Chapters of Space Marines. Two dozen strike cruisers, each appearing like a chunk of Gothic architecture reshaped for war, hammered though the wide-open portal into the shadowy skies of the Dark City. At their heart was the great battle barge Vulkan's Wrath, an immense spacecraft with broadside batteries that could flatten whole cities. Its prow was a vast jutting ram that ploughed straight into the spire where Xelian stood, crushing it like a hammer driven into a priceless sculpture.

The Dark Eldar overcame their surprise quickly. From nearby Port Shard came hundreds of exotic craft, each a needle-like splinter next to the slab-like Imperial vessels, but no less deadly for that. Voidraven bombers and Razorwing jetfighters careened out of their towering hangars like bats from a cave, descending in swarms to attack each Astartes strike cruiser. Though many were destroyed by the Imperial cruisers' broadsides, others systematically targeted the larger ships' guns with focused void lance fire and sustained hits from their disintegrator cannons. The Vulkan's Wrath was struck by thick blasts of electromagnetic force produced by Port Shard's salvage spars, rendering the majority of its weapons systems useless. One by one, the Imperial ships' guns were silenced. But these were Space Marines, and they were nothing if not resourceful. Ejecting from each strike cruiser came Drop Pods, fired with such force that they were projectile weapons in their own right. The Drop Pods hurtled down, smashing through Dark Eldar fighter craft and Commorrite starscrapers alike, each containing a squad of Space Marines who deployed upon impact with their weapons blazing. They left pure ruin in their wake as priceless Eldar statues shattered and the spires of the Dark City fell.

The Astartes' counter-attack robbed the Dark Eldar of the initiative. Within only moments of the Drop Pod assault, the Space Marines had established a perimeter in the obsidian-paved streets of the Kraillach Quarter. Though they took constant fire from Kabalite warriors and Scourges that flew through the dark skies above, Astartes Power Armour proved to be an effective barrier to the Dark Eldar's splinter weaponry. Yet it was not long before more of the Dark City's denizens joined the fight, drawn to violence and death like sharks to blood. Massed swarms of skyboard-mounted Hellions and Reaver Jetbikers swooped down to rake and tear at the Space Marines, who returned fire, literally, with their promethium-fueled Flamers. The half-daemon Mandrakes and Raider transports loaded with Dark Eldar Warriors assaulted the Space Marines with claws, knives and splinter pistols. Battle was joined from one side of High Commorragh to the other and the streets seethed with violence. Entire sections of High Commorragh burned as the invading Space Marines cut down or incinerated each new breed of horror that assaulted them. Word spread quickly through the Dark City of the human invasion and high up in the arenas, the gladiators of the Wych Cults mobilised for war.

The Space Marines within the city were five hundred strong, almost half the size of a full Chapter, and they maintained a defensive perimeter throughout the Kraillach Quarter. High Archon Kraillach himself led a massed charge against the Astartes, intending to crush the invaders that were destroying his personal fiefdom. Yet Kraillach's rampage was ultimately halted by a "stray" blast from a dark lance that vapourised him where he stood.

As the Forgehammer lay shackled by electromagnetic force high in the spires, the battle in the skies of the Dark City intensified. Xelian's last command had been to destroy the captive human ship no matter the cost, for if mere humans recovered his prize, the Archon's authority and that of his fellow noble-born peers would be shattered forever. Flights of winged Scourges armed with haywire blasters and heat lances began to systematically destroy the captive ship while a fleet of Ravager gunships forced the Space Marines who sought to rescue the vessel's Battle-Brothers back into cover. Then, in a storm of light generated by their teleportation technology, Terminators from the Salamanders' 1st Company teleported directly onto the hull of the Forgehammer and returned fire. The Scourges were driven back and Captain Phoecus seized his chance. His men emerged from cover as a single force, sending a Krak missile soaring into each of the nine towering spars that held his craft captive with their beams of electromagnetic force. Miraculously, each missile triggered a chain reaction of explosions, and the burning spars crashed down into the streets below. The Librarian Hestion summoned a psychic storm of his own, a raging inferno in the shape of a flaming drake that tore the Ravager gunships out of the sky one by one. The Forgehammer had been ravaged by the Dark Eldar assaults, but it was free at last from the Dark City's clutches. With a roar, the strike cruiser began to ascend into the sky and freedom.

Far below, the Space Marines fighting in the Xelian Quarter were completely encircled as the full weight of Commorragh was pressed against them and warriors from dozens of noble houses joined the defence of the city. Yet the Space Marines' objective had been achieved, for the Forgehammer was free. A single curt comm-signal was sent and within mere moments, the main bulk of the Space Marines in the Dark City teleported away in a brief burst of light. Those that had been cut off from the main assualt gave their lives to buy their brethren time or else were parlayzed by Dark Eldar hypertoxins and taken away to later fight and die as warrior-slaves. Confusion reigned as the haywire fields that had shackled the Imperial spacecraft were disengaged one by one. The battle barge Vulkan's Wrath, now joined by the badly damaged Forgehammer, fired its retros and disengaged itself from the ruins of Archon Xelion's pride. The vast starship's engine blast flattened spires and starscrapers alike before the Space Marines made their escape. The entire Astartes fleet then passed through the still-yawning Webway portal above High Commorragh and escaped triumphantly into realspace.

In the aftermath of the Imperial invasion, Commorragh changed forever. The power vacuum left by the vanquished noble houses of High Commorragh was quickly filled by Asdrubael Vect and his jubilant Kabal of the Black Heart, who had proven their superiority to their rivals in the crucible of war. In the years that followed, Vect played politics like a true machiavellian master of intrigue, forever asserting the meritocracy of the Kabals over the ancient aristocracy of the Eldar noble houses. So it was that the Kabal of the Black Heart rose to ascendancy over the Dark City in place of the old nobility and Archon Vect's stranglehold over the fate of Commorragh and the Dark Eldar race as its Supreme Overlord was sealed.



Culture
Dark Eldar soon learn to fight with every weapon at their disposal in order to ensure their own survival, primarily against the machinations of their own kind, but also the other major races of the Milky Way Galaxy whom they raid often for slaves. No distinctin is drawn between the genders, for an individual's skill and cunning is far more important to the race than sheey physical traits such as height and gender. Their senses are keen to the point of paranoia, their eyes and long tapered ears always alert to the slightest movement or disturbance that portends betrayal and death. In the Dark City, the unwary rarely survive for long among their treacherous brethren.

While their countless generations of conflict and internecine strife led the Dark Eldar to develop better reaction speed and greater overall physical strength than the other factions of the Eldar race, the innate psychic abilities of the Dark Eldar have atrophied. To channel the psychic energies of what is essentially Chaos within Commorragh would invite disaster, for the use of Warp energy would draw the attention of Slaanesh, She Who Thirsts, the eternal nemesis of the entire Eldar race. As a result, the use of psychic abilities or sorcery within the Dark City is one of the only activities truely forbidden to the Dark Eldar.

Though it is manufactured rather than psychically grown from the hardened substance of the Warp like the wraithbone implements of the Craftworld Eldar, the Dark Eldar's weaponry is just as technologically advanced as that of their more benevolent counterparts. When it comes to war, the Dark Eldar are veritable artists. their technology refined to the point that some of its effects appear as nothing less than magical to less advanced species like humanity. Their infinite--if infinitely dark--imaginations and sheer skill have led them down a sinister path--their favourite weapons can set everry nerve ending afire with pain, darklight beams, whps that bleed acid and eldritch soul-traps. The Dark Eldar are so confident of their own abilities that their lightweight suits of body armour incorporate bladed plates not only for protection, but also to provide them with yet another weapon to inflict pain. The warriors of Commorragh are well-versed in the physiology and anatomies of all the other starfaring races of the galaxy, knowledge that is used to inflict the maximum amount of pain, suffering and death.

Though they turned their backs upon the mortal universe millennia ago, whenever the Dark Eldar emerge from their pocket dimension they revel in their superiority to their prey. They rarely deign to sully their tongues with the primitive languages of the other races, instead using translator technology on the rare occasions that some form of communication is actually necessary. The warrior Kabals strike swiftly and without warning from portals opened within the Labyrinth Dimension of the Webway, or disappear like wraiths when the enemy resistance becomes too difficult to overcome. The strike forces of the Dark Eldar, despite their own treacherous natures, are well-honed machines in combat. Raids are planned meticulously by the Archons and Succubi that lead them and hidden routes through the Webway are opened in readiness for the attack. Only the most capable Dark Eldar warriors are recruited for each incursion into realspace, for to fail in such an invasion is to bring one's own entire Kabal that much closer to annihilation in the byzantine politics of Commorragh. Working together ensures that not only is the greatest amount of suffering inflicted upon the forces of realspace but also that the greatest number of victims can be taken back to the Dark City. Personal vendettas are engaged once more only after all of the captives have been divided, for over all other things, the Dark Eldar must have fresh souls to keep themselves from the clutches of She Who Thirsts. The Kabals regularly launch fresh piratical raids into realspace and there is much to be gained for an individual Dark Eldar for being part of such an effort--the thrill of hunting the lesser mortals of the universe, the chance to personally capture new slaves which adds to their personal wealth and the joy of unbridled destruction for its own sake. Upon the Kabal's triumphant return to Commorragh, thousands of the captives will be traded as currency, put to work in the infernal depths of the weapon shops, rendered down in flesh-troughs or tormented until their deaths, that happy release drawn out for as long as possible so that the Dark Eldar can draw even more psychic sustenance from their suffering.

To the Dark Eldar, the sweet nectar of horror and suffering is as pleasing as the act of murder itself. They relish breaking the bodies of their slaves, but prize even more the process of crushing the mind and the spirit, for nothing is more gratifying to a Dark Eldar than securing true and willing dominion over an individual who formerly resisted them. They drink in every nuance and every inflection of pain until their captives gibber and plead remorselessly for death--a mercy that the Dark Eldar rarely grant easily or quickly. Dark Eldar, like most Eldar Kindreds, make use of advanced technology, including anti-gravity devices, dark matter weaponry, nanotechnology and psychic artifacts. While Dark Eldar do make use of psychic devices, they do not any longer use psychic powers themselves because of the danger that interacting with the Warp brings for those whose souls are desired by Slaanesh. Psykers are treated as playthings in Commorragh, and given the twisted, sadistic nature of the Dark Eldar, this necessarily involves pain and torment for the psyker.

As far as the Dark Eldar are concerned, the Eldar Gods died in the Fall and they despise them for it. That the Gods had become so weak that they could be consumed by the ascendancy of Slaanesh indicates that they never deserved to exist in the first place. The exceptions are Khaela Mensha Khaine, the Eldar God of War who is still held in high regard in Commorragh and the lesser powers known as the Dark Muses who are the embodiments of selfish vice and whose clandestine worship by the Pleasure Cults contributed to the demise of the Eldar Gods. The Dark Muses are truly powerful Dark Eldar from ages past who have essentially become folkloric figures of reverence, much like the Imperial Cult's saints. Many epitomise a particular form of vice, whose worship and practice weakened the Eldar Gods and so helped to bring about the Fall. Favoured by assassins and murderers is the Dark Muse Shaimesh, the Lord of Poisons, the treacherous brother of Saim-Hann the Cosmic Serpent. The courtesan elite of the Cult of Lhamaea pay homage to Lhilitu, the Consort of the Void, whereas powerful Archons are more likely to follow the tenets of Vileth, a being synonymous with the immense arrogance so often displayed by the Dark Eldar. Before they enter combat, many traditionalist Wych Cults invoke the Red Crone Hekatii, or make sacrifices to Qa'leh, Mistress of Blades. It is believed by many Dark Eldar that their current Supreme Overlord, Asdrubael Vect of the Kabal of the Dark Heart, may one day join the ranks of the Dark Muses, though given his ability to cheat death again and again, this may be an honour long in the coming.

Over time, the Dark Eldar begin to suffer more and more from the Thirst. They develop an all-consuming and ever-increasing need to drink the souls of other beings. It is postulated that the cause of this is the Chaos God Slaanesh, the Great Enemy of the Eldar, who leeches the soul-essence of the Dark Eldar while they still live because of their pursuit of the hedonistic and sadistic activities that strengthen the power of the Dark Prince. Dark Eldar "drink" the souls of other sentient beings to stave off this leeching - perhaps by sating the thirst of Slaanesh, or perhaps by replenishing the essence of their own souls with that of the consumed one. Slaanesh will also consume the souls of Dark Eldar whole should they die. Dark Eldar are long-lived but not immortal; drinking souls has a rejuvinating effect that reverses aging, thus Dark Eldar need not fear falling into the clutches of Slaanesh due to death from old age, if they have a constant supply of souls. The usual source of these souls are those of the many captives taken as slaves during Dark Eldar raids.

Gameplay
In the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop war game, many of the Dark Eldar units are similar to the units used by the Eldar armies of the Craftworlds, but twisted by the malevolent nature of the Dark Eldar. For example, instead of having Aspect Warriors, Dark Eldar have drug-using gladiators called Wyches. Rather than having their heavy weapons systems transported by robotic walkers or miniature anti-gravity floaters, they are carried by specialised warriors wearing jetpacks - these are called Scourges. The Wraithguard and Wraithlords of the Eldar are replaced with the Talos, a bizarre mechanical weapon which is part grav-tank and part torture device, powered by the suffering of the tortured sentient being bound into it. The Dark Eldar are best known for their speed and fluidity on the battlefield. Almost all of their units are focused on what can be accomplished with a combination of speed and power. Even the Dark Eldar's heavy support units, the winged Scourges and the mighty Ravager, are as agile as they are dangerous. The Dark Eldar are capable of completely redeploying their forces faster then any other faction in the game, thanks to their plentiful transportation. With access to the flying Raiders, the Dark Eldar are capable of delivering their elite close combat units like the Wyches to where they will deal the most damage, and placing plentiful anti-tank weapons where the enemy's armored sections have gathered.

Archon
An Archon is the leader of a Kabal, the organisation that serves as a standard Dark Eldar raiding force as well as the Dark Eldar's primary political unit within the Dark City. The Archons of the Dark Eldar Kabals are the true lords of Commorragh. They sit at the apex of the Dark Eldar hierarchy that controls the Dark City and the Labyrinthine Realm of the Dark Eldar's portion of the Webway. Each wields enough political influence to collpase portions of realspace, stall an Imperial Crusade or take the population of entire worlds as slaves. The overlord of a Kabal is always a potent foe on the battlefield, but he has attainted his position not merely through martial prowess in the arts of war of the violent suprression of the weak but through consistently emerging as the victor on the most difficult game of all -- the byzantine intrigues that govern all things at the heart of the Dark City. Thouh every Archon is a conceited, solipsistic megalomaniac convinced of his mental and physical superiority over all other beings, he will retain his position as an overlord of Commorragh for only as long as he can stave off the endless coup and assassination attempts of his rivals, enemies and his own Dracon lieutenants. One false move in the upper echelons of the Dark City is almost inevitably fatal, and so all Archons have an uncanny ability to predict the motives and schemes of others and take great delight in the turning their rivals traps against them in bloody and often spectacular ways. The endless ambitions of their underlings keep an Archon's paranoia as sharp as their own blades, and so it is in the service of treachery that al Archons truly excel, with their strategies stretching across millennia as centuries-old plots come to fruition. It is said by some that the Archons of the Dark Eldar could teach even Tzeentch, the Lord of Change, a thing or two about plotting for the long term. Some of the Archons known asthe Lords of Twilight, who govern from the highest spires of Commorragh, even claim to have seized their thrones in the times before the Fall of the Eldar. These eldest of the Archons view the rest of their species with contempt as little better than squabbling children and they do not suffer fools willingly. A single syllable out of place may rouse an Archon to murderous wrath. In matters of maintaining their Kabal's hierarchy, Archons have been known to even prefer solutions that leave everyone less well-off if only to spite them. Yet revelling in the depths of suffering and madness for an eternity eventually extracts a price. Over the long Terran years that they have held the reigns of power or clawed their way up to hold their loft positions, the Archons of the Dark Eldar have enjoyed the pain of others for so long that only a true atrocity invigorates them. Archons regularly lead full-scale planetary raids for their Kabals, as drinking in the agony of entire planets is the only way they can regenerate themselves. Thousands of slaves must be sacrificed for the eldest Archons every night and this still may not be enough to make the oldest and most corrupt look youthful once more. As a result, eleder Archons usually cover their black-vined faces with masks. Some Archons' masks are stylised and beautiful; others are bloody, alien and terrible, fashioned from the flayed flesh of their rivals' faces. When the time comes to offer battle, an Archon will first stop at his weapons museums, savouring the process of selecting which of the baleful technologies of the Dark City -- soul-traps, Agonisers, and Shadowfields -- he will use to bring terror and pain. The Archon's most favoured retainers and pets, each of whom specialised in its own preferred form of visiting death and pain, accompany him into combat. Few mortal eyes have ever seen a Dark Eldar Archon in combat -- and kept the tongue in their mouths to tell the tale.

Succubus
Commonly also known as Archites, The Succubus is a leader of a Wych Cult. They are often supported by a retinue of their finest Wyches, and in battle they lead a Wych Cult rather than a traditional Kabal.

Haemonculi
Masters of torture, Haemonculi are the last thing you want to see when you are a captured slave of the Dark Eldar. Depraved, the Haemonculi think that their torturing is a form of art that issues a chorus of screams and wails of pain.

Hekatrix Bloodbrides
The Hekatrix often rule over the squads of Wyches, organising them towards viable targets. Sometimes however, several Hekatrix will leave their squads, forming into their own squads. Led by a Siren, they regularly take large amounts of Razorflails, hydra gauntlets and Shardnets and Impalers. While rife with feuds, in battle they will put aside their differences, for their is promise of bloodshed.

Kabalite Trueborn
Naturally-born Dark Eldar are rare, due to the long gestation period of the Eldar body. The ones that are, however, are often very privileged in Dark Eldar society because of the circumstances of their birth. As such, they are arrogant and see themselves as far better than any half-born. Due to this, they often gather in squads of other Trueborn, who are the Kabalite Warriors that escort their Kabal's Archon into battle as his or her elite bodyguard unit. Trueborns often sport many more advanced weapons than their fellow Warriors, such as the Shard Carbine, a Dark Eldar weapon design that hybridises the Splinter Rifle and a Splinter Cannon and possesses a shorter range than either. Trueborn also often make use of Dark Lances and Splinter Cannons as well as Blasters and Shredders. The Trueborn are an elite group that excludes any half-born Dark Eldar birthed in an amniotic tube from their company. Led by an officer called a Dracon, these hardened killers carry a wide assortment of expensive and deadly weapons wherever they go, supposedly to better protect the life of their Archon but in truth only to better inflict more pain and death. Trueborn delight in dramatic displays of firepower, sending powerful fusillades into the enemy's ranks and leaving bodies and the broken carcasses of armoured vehicles in their wake.

Harlequins
The Harlequins are followers of the strange Eldar god called the Great Harlequin (also known as "The Laughing God"), one of the only two Eldar gods to survive the Fall and being devoured by Slaanesh. They often act as a midway point between the Crafworld Eldar and the Dark Eldar. They often tag along with Dark Eldar raids, pursuing their own mysterious agendas.

Mandrakes
Thanks to their Warp-tinged skin the Mandrakes can hide well in the shadows. They will often pop out of the shadows to slay their prey even if the prey itself is another Dark Eldar. They have been known to wear the skins of their enemies as a cloak or robe.

Grotesques
The Grotesques are the twisted figures sent to shamble forth towards the Dark Eldar's Foes. While their innate stupidity requires close supervision, it also allows them to ignore small arms fire.

Wyches
The Wyches are Dark Eldar gladiators who fight for survival. Honing their skills in the Coliseums of the Dark City of Commorragh, Wyches are fearsome warriors who are used to fighting for their lives. To watch over the Wyches lest they rebel are the Hekatrix, a group of elite gladiatorial warriors.

Kabalite Warriors
The Warriors of the Dark Eldar Kabals lie at the heart of every Dark Eldar strike force, pirate fleet and slave raider assault. They are the cruelest members of their caste, hungry for power over their fellows and thirsty to taste the suffering of others. Each Warrior will have forged a fearsome repuation for himself in the war-torn halls of High Commorragh, and has proven himself in multiple battles and formats to be a merciless combatant. The nore vicious and ruthless a Warrior is, the better his chances for advancement within the Kabal. Only a truly born killer can thrive within the back-stabbing halls of the Dar City and only a chosen few of true skill and utter cruelty are chosen to enjoy the thrilland privilege of striking at the worlds of realspace and returning with living souls, the screaming booty that every Kabal requires for its survival. Only the most skilled at arms among the Dark Eldar of each of the Dark City's sectors are selected to serve as Kabalite Warriors. Whether male or female in gender, Dark Eldar Warriors are tall, whipcord thin and athletically built, more powerful in body and violent in temperament than those of their brethren who remain behind in the Webway. When they go to war, each Warrior encases him or herself in a sophisticated bodysuit of segemented, powered Eldar armour, similar to the suits worn by the Craftworld Eldar. These suits are donned during long, and usually painful pre-combat rituals, the better to ensure the Warrior's psyche has been honed to a single point of murderous intent, somewhat like those Eldar Aspect Warriors who "put on their war mask" when they go to battle, though Kabalite Warriors express only the darkest and most violent extremes of Khaine's battle-madness. Much of the armor is held in place using long metal barbs that penetrate deep into the Warrior's nerve bundles, sharpening his senses by subjecting him to constant pain. It is pain that energises the Kabalite Warriors and it is pain they hope to inflict upon their prey--and the more merciless and agonising, the better. To this end, Kabalite Warriors make use of a wide-array of particularly devious and deadly weapons. Foremost amongst these is the dread Splinter Rifle, which is a long-barelled and elegantly-shaped kinetic weapon that fires a stream of jagged crystalline slivers, much like Craftworld Eldar's Shuriken Weapons. However, each needle-like shard is impregnated with a wide spectrum of potential hypertoxins. A Splinter Rifle can slay its target over severa extremely excruciating moments as the toxin does its work, allowing the jubilant wielder of the rifle to savour their victim's agonising death as a gourmand might savor a fine meal. Though the distilled poisons of a Splinter Weapon can kill even the monstrough biologically-engineered living weapons of the Tyranids, it is of little use against heavily armoured enemy vehicles. A squad of Kabalite Warriors will usually carry a far more destructive weapon for this purpose -- the Blaster is a particular favorite, for it can destroy even a Space Marine Land Raider with only a single shot. All Kabalite Warriors are also experts in close combat fighting, though few have the political pull needed to ensure that they can claim regeneration in the lairs of the Haemonculi. As such, Warriors often employ heavy ranged weaponry to avoid the severe injuries melee combat can bring. The sightlinks built into their Splinter Cannons and Dark Lances not only improve accuracy but also allow the wielder to watch his victim's agony as each weapon blast penetrates flesh and bone. The more imaginative Warriors use mnemonic scopes to record such events, replaying the hologhosts created upon their return and basking in the envy of their fellows at their skill and foresight. Each squad of Kabalite Warriors is led by an officer called a Sybarite, typically the most veteran and experienced among their number. Sybarites are not only veteran raiders of realspace, but also the Kabalites who have the honour and duty of initiating each new Warriro into the always-brutal mysteries of their new Kabal. While certainly no Sybraite, or any Dark Eldar for that matter, can claim the loyalty of his or her underlings, the Sybarites are obeyed fr the simple reason that they are the masters of the craft of war and their orders when followed are more likely to lead to success in the raid...and survival.

Raider
The transport of the Dark Eldar, the Raider, is the fastest anti-gravitational vehicle known to any intelligent race of the galaxy. Its speed is used to transport Dark Eldar Warriors, Wyches, or even the Dark Eldar Lord to crucial areas where the most harm can be caused, but most of all Raiders are used to haul back slaves that have been captured.

Venom
A smaller but no less deadly Dark Eldar transport. Based on the design of the sky chariots of the ancient Eldar empire or the the Viper of the Craftworld Eldar. Often used by the Wych Cults, it can transport a smaller size of unit but it sports splinter cannons on the wings and often includes a high end optical forcefield known as the flicker field.

Dark Eldar Hellion
These Dark Eldar ride upon sky boards wielding weapons that enable them to strike then disappear before anyone can retaliate. The hum of their Sky Boards strikes fear upon those few who have survived a Dark Eldar Raid.

Reaver Jetbike
Dark Eldar who ride the ultra light and fast Jetbikes are known as Reavers. Amazingly Reavers are astounding combatants even on their Jetbikes. They are usually seen ahead of the main forces of Dark Eldar sowing destruction and havoc while the bulk catches up.

Scourges
Extensively modified Dark Eldar. The Scourges operate as messengers and assassins outside of battle, With their bat-like wings they fly through the night sky and then drop upon their prey sowing destruction and chaos before they jump back into the sky and strike again. The Scourges commonly wield a shardcarbines, as they can be easily fired on the move, though they also wield heavy weapons. They are renowned for their speed.

Beastmasters
Technically part of the Wych cult, though the mostly male and remote from the Hekatarii. Riding on skyboards, they goad many numerous and strange beasts into battle. From Blade legged Helspiders, hyper violent bhargesi, Tyranid monsterous creatures and even Astartes warriors. However 3 creatures; the Donorian Clawed Fiend, the Khymerae and the Razorwing flocks, remain ever popular.

Talos Pain Engines
A creation of the Haemonculi, the Talos have found service on the front lines, powered by the psychic suffering of a victim subject to a multitude of tortures within its armored shell. its victim's agony propels it towards the enemies of the Dark Eldar, not stopping the brutal assault of its vicious claws and stinging tail until it either has no more targets or has been destroyed.

Ravager
An Adaptation of the raider, the ravager fills the role of "heavy support" sporting 3 high powered heavy weapons. either dark lances or disintegrator cannons. While it is used heavy support, it is still lightning fast, like the raider, and indeed, all Dark Eldar vehicles and still sports very little in the way of armour.

Cronos Parasiet Engines
Like the Talos, the Cronos Parasite Engine is a creation of the Haemonculi. However unlike the Talos, however, the Cronos isn't used as mere brutal killing force, it is instead used to drain the souls of their victims. Stripping their souls, they magnify it through their carapace, and fire it to another Dark Eldar close by, usually their macabre captors.

Razorwing Jetfighter
A Aircarft with speed unmatched by even the fastest of of the Craftworld vehicles, the Razorwing jetfighter is commonly used as heavy support and to rapidly advance ahead of the main force, taking out gun batterys and battle tanks to prevent casualties to the main fleet. The Razorwing is piloted by an ex raver jetbiker who earned enough to escape the carnage of the death races, and now seeks to main and kill without risking his own skin.

Voidraven Bomber
A bigger, more heavily armed and armoured version of the Razorwing Jetfighter, the Voidraven bomber sports a much higher cluster of weaponry. Allowing its 2 crew members to better kill and destroy their prey. Like it smaller cousion, the razorwing, The Voidraven is piloted by an ex raver jetbiker who earned enough to escape the carnage of the death races, and now seeks to main and kill without risking his own skin. However, it is the gunner of this sleek aircraft who defines its worth.

Gallery
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