Asuryani Path

The Eldar Paths is the closest traduction in Imperial Gothic of the Eldar term that designates their adaptation of their day-to-day lives to prevent the terrible evenments that led to their cataclysmic Fall. To the Craftworld Eldars, it is both a way of life and a form of physical and psychical protection againts their baser nature.

History
To understand how the Eldar have been forced to rely on such a rigid and restrictive system as the Paths, one must attempt to understand their psyche. For all the physiological differences between a Human and an Eldar, they are nothing to the psychic differences between the two races.

The Eldar are highly psychic, and therefore their emotions and perceptions are much, much keener than any other race. The extreme gratification the Eldar recieved from any accomplishment inexorably led their Pre-Fall civilization down a spiral where they ever searched for even more intense sensations. This long period of hedonistical debauchery eventually culminated in their cataclysmic Fall and the birth of the Chaos God Slaanesh.

The few surviving Eldar realized with horror that this new God would not rest until it had devoured every last Eldar soul, and they had to somehow protect themselves. The Dark Eldar managed to find a way to sacrifice other souls to Slaanesh to protect their own. The Craftworld Eldar found their solace in the Paths.

Preventing an Eldar to intensly experience his surroundings proved impossible, so the survivors defined a way to still experience their emotions without falling prey to them. Each Eldar chooses a discipline, a role he will fulfill in his day-to-day life, and focusses on perfecting his chosen craft as much as he can. The key point of this development is to induce a mental state of what Humans would call schizophrenia in the Eldar, compartimenting his mind to allow him to call on his emotions while he is busy with his chosen craft, and safely store them away in his mind when he is not. This compartimentation allows an Eldar individual to call on his emotions and experience their heights whenever they are needed, but not fall prey to the exesses that lead to the Fall and that would attract the unwanted attention of Slaanesh.

Once an Eldar has achieved mastery of his chosen Path, an event that can take up to many decades, he will simply choose another Path to tread, and begin anew the path to mastery. There is no predifned choice, some choose Paths that are closely linked, while other find their way with completely unrelated roles. Each Eldar builds his own personal bagage of experience, with each Path trod making him a more accomplished being.

There is still one grave danger with the Path however: the Path only allow an Eldar to control his emotions, it does not rid him of his passions. Despite all their care, some Eldar ultimately fail at storing their emotions away, and still become consumed by them. But thanks to the strictly regulated strictures of the Paths, instead of being wholly consumed and opening himself wide to Slaanesh, the Eldar who fails will only gradually transform in a living embodiment of his path, losing his personality in his all-consuming desire for perfection. Such Eldars are said to be Lost on their chosen Path.

Despite the dire warnings of the past, some Craftworld Eldar find the rigid ways of the Paths all too restrictive. Those who cannot bear it will then leave the Craftworld, and become Errants. These Eldar are at enormous risk of being consumed by Slaanesh, so they are viewed by suspicion by their peers. Their out-of-the-world experience is however invaluable in some situations, and they often assist their fellow Eldar as Ranger when war calls and their knowledge of the Galaxy is required. Many Errants slake their wanderlust for a couple of decades, and then return to the safety of the Paths, but fore some, the call is too strong and they become pirates, little different from they Dark Eldar kin.

As astonishing as it may sound, the reverse is also true: there have been instances of the odd Dark Eldar who, sickened by their existence, have sought out the solace of the Paths amongst their Craftworld kin. Rare are those Eldar who do so, and even rarer are those who succeed.