Editing Nobledark Imperium Forces of Chaos (section)

= The Crone World Eldar =

''"The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the [[Old Ones|Great Old Ones]]; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom"''<br>
-- H.P. Lovecraft

''“Although most races in the galaxy have failed to reach the level of spiritual purity of Orks, some of the closest are the Crone World Eldar. And the reason for this is simple: purpose. Much of life is driven by a search for purpose, to find meaning in why we exist. For the Crone Eldar, this question is already answered. They exist to spread the will of their dark gods, whether by word or by sword, and all other needs are secondary. An individual Croneworlder may have their own wants and dreams, their own loves and losses, but ultimately it is this purpose that drive them forward even in their darkest times. Although I find myself abhoring their beliefs and goals, I admire them in their simplicity and purity of purpose.”''<br>
-- Uthan the Perverse, controversial Craftworld Eldar philosopher

The birth of Slaanesh was essentially a galaxy-wide extinction-level event. All across the Milky Way, species were wiped out, societies collapsed, and worst of all many races were twisted into something their forerunners would find unrecognizable by the corrupting influence of Chaos. Perhaps no race was more strongly affected than the Eldar, whose highly populated Crone Worlds were located right in the middle of the massive hole in the fabric of reality torn by the birth of the new Chaos God. In an instant, nearly 90% of the Eldar population was wiped out.
 
But not all Eldar were wiped out in this event. Though some Eldar manage to survive on far-flung Exodite worlds, artificial planetoids of wraithbone or extradimensional redoubts of the Webway, the vast majority of Eldar survivors were located on the Crone Worlds themselves. These were Eldar that, whether by sheer chance or some quirk of fate, were passed over by the hunger pangs of the newborn Prince of Pleasure. These individuals became known as the Crone World Eldar.
 
Being veterans of the debauched society that created Slaanesh in the first place, the Crone Eldar took to worshipping Chaos like a fish takes to water. Whereas the Fallen primarily follow the Ruinous Powers because they think it will bring them power and further their goals, the Crone Eldar follow Chaos for the sense of religious ecstasy it brings them. The majority of Crone Eldar, for one reason or another, see Chaos as the apotheosis of the Old Eldar Empire, one they are obliged to spread to the heathens of the galaxy whether the rest of the galaxy wants it or not. Make no mistake, despite their imposing physique, at the heart of a Crone Eldar is the mind of a Chaos cultist. This extends to the Croneworlders’ view of daemons. Whereas most other groups fear daemonic possession, Crone Eldar will climb over each other for the chance to be daemonically possessed, as possession will bring them one step closer to their gods. This also allows the Crone Eldar to do something that would be impossible for any other Eldar: survive in the Warp unmolested. Daemons know the souls of the Crone World Eldar will flow to them eventually (and to be frank find food that puts up a struggle to be more appetizing), and so they prefer to follow them like pilot fish following a shark, feeding on the carnage in their wake, rather than devouring them outright before their own death. Although the Crone Eldar are not truly protected from the warp (though really, who is), entering the Warp unprotected is not the death sentence for them that it is for virtually everybody else.

Across the Imperium, the Crone World Eldar are variously referred to as "Croneworlders", "Crones", or "Cronedar", as well as many other less polite terms. The term "Croneworlder" didn't always have the connotations it currently does among the Eldar and the greater Imperium. Due to Eldar physiology and culture (namely, the relative lack of aging among Eldar and their worship of the goddess Morai-Heg as a goddess of wisdom), the word [insert Eldar word for crone here] while literally translating to "crone", has additional connotations of being "well-developed" or "experienced", as opposed to "ugly", "withered", and "hag-like" as it does for humans. This is one reason why the Eldar called the Crone Worlds just that: these were the worlds in which civilization was well-developed and well-established. Humans, on the other hand, were just happy to have a shorthand term to refer to their enemy, one that had the added benefit of being insulting in human terms as well. Of course, once the Eldar learned the human connotations of the word "crone", they were only too happy to use the term "Crone Eldar" or "Cronedar" as a derogatory insult against their debased kin. This was just one of the many fun and innovative ways to insult people the two species taught to one another in the early days of the great alliance.

== Crone Eldar Demographics ==
 
The largest chunk of Crone Eldar are Slaaneshi worshippers. The Old Eldar Empire was the society that produced Slaanesh, after all, and many Crones have changed little from the pleasure cults of the old empire. Even today, Crone Eldar worship of other gods is often decidedly Slaaneshi-flavored. Slaaneshi Eldar often hold a stifling amount of influence over the Crone Eldar as a whole, especially given that the centerpiece of the Crone empire, Shaa-Dome, is completely Slaaneshi-controlled.
 
The next largest faction of Crone Eldar, nearly as numerous as the Slaaneshi Eldar (~35%) are the Eldar of Chaos Undivided. Those who worship Chaos as a pantheon. The majority of Undivided Eldar just try to keep their heads down, and aren’t too different from their Slaaneshi kin. Then you have the hardcore Undivided Eldar, the ones who actively try to court the blessing of all four Chaos Gods. The path they walk is a narrow one, for any degree of failure results in nothing more than an abnormally large Chaos Spawn, but the ones who succeed are truly dangerous. Such an Eldar may not be able to outstrip a more specialized worshipper in their field of choice, but they are more flexible, a true master of none. Worse yet, compared to other Crone Eldar, these Eldar possess a frightening amount of vision, and are often sane enough to direct the attention of the Crones on realspace. And they resurrect. Not always, it's not a guarantee, but compared to Eldar of other gods they do come back more often. A result is that they are increasing in number. There were an estimate few dozen at most in the day so the Great Crusade. Now there are a few hundred.
 
There are about equal numbers of Khornate and Tzeentchian Eldar (about 15% for each). Several bands of Khornate Croneworlders have been exhorting the Blood God to take up Khaine’s old weapons and armor. It’s possible they do so because they see Khorne and Khaine as the same being. It’s possible they see Khaine is truly dead and believe that you keep what you kill. It’s possible they see themselves as having merely switched to the “winning” side. It’s possible that after all this time war is the only thing left they get off to, worshipping a Chaos God is merely pure coincidence. It’s possible that they’re all mad and potentially even daemonically possessed, making speculations on motivation pointless. It’s possible, even probable, that all of these views are held by at least one warrior band.
 
Tzeentchian Cronedar are more respected in the halls of Shaa-Dome than Eldar of Nurgle or Khorne, but they usually prefer to stick to their own colleges in the Warp and the Webway, where they can practice their own brand of nonsense made deceit made madness undisturbed.
 
Nurglite Eldar are surprisingly rare (~5%), given the kidnapping of Isha. Indeed, most Croneworlders that join Nurgle do so in the hopes of getting closer to Isha, and the most prominent members of Nurgle’s followers are derived from the corrupted remnants of Isha’s followers pre-Fall. On Isha's part, their company was just slightly preferable to Nurgle's own, and they mistook this preference, and her mixed pity, disgust, and sorrow for genuine love for them, and they believe they will be welcome in her presence, eventually. Their actual loyalty to Nurgle is somewhat questionable, but since the Raid they have become psychotically dedicated to dragging Isha back into Nurgle’s garden. Most Nurglite Eldar hope the version of the Starchild Prophecy with the Emperor and Lady Malys comes true because they think it means they will get to “rescue” Isha and the  Plaguefather will get Isha back.
 
Then there are the actual Nurglite Eldar, which are rarer. They see the Fall of the Eldar as it truly is, with none of the romanticism or self-justification of the other factions; only as evidence of the universal trend towards entropy and decay. The only possible means of enlightment is despair. The clockwork of the universe counting down towards the end of all things. Inexorably. Irredeemably. Inevitably. It doesn't upset them much. They are past despair and into the enlightenment of acceptance they believe that by sharing Nurgle's gifts with all living things the inhabitants of this dying universe will be happier in the long run. Or dead. More probably dead. But if you're dead you aren't unhappy.

In the immediate aftermath of the Fall and throughout much of the Age of Strife, Crone World Eldar outnumbered their Exodite, Craftworld, and Commorragh-dwelling kin (that is, Exodite, Craftworld, and Dark Eldar ''combined'') by a whopping 9 to 1. By M41 this number was more like 4 to 1 (or to be more specific, 80% to 20%, Dark Eldar making up a larger percentage of the latter number). This change is primarily due to population growth of non-Chaos Eldar, whether through natural birth or through mass-cloning (as in the case of the Dark Eldar). Eldar naturally have very low birth rates, but even a slightly positive population growth rate over 10,000 years adds up. Crone Eldar populations have remained relatively stable due to attrition rates essentially cancelling out birth rates, despite the efforts of the Crone Eldar to increase their population through demented methods such as the Daemonculaba.

== Crone Eldar infantry squad organization ==

The smallest grouping of the warriors boils downs to 5 warriors in 1 raiding party. These parties are commonly a squad of ten that were split into two during small scale raids. The most basic warriors that make up the bulk of the Crone Eldar warbands are known as Unlanded Warriors, due to the fact Crone worlds lack the space for private property many simply rent living space. These Unlanded Warriors often join the military to gain land and power. The rank of Subjugator is equivalent to a Sargent who ruthlessly keeps the squad in line. The rank of Second Hand is for who serves to help the Subjugator in all matters and also act as a courier while being second in command. The Witch-doctor is included in a squad to heal permanent damage and provide counter minor psyker support on the battlefield, although these weak psykers could but won’t heal minor wounds as these wounds serve to provide pain and pleasure. The Witch-doctor is always accompanied by an Unlanded Warrior who would protect and help the Witch-doctor but also be always around to put down the psyker if driven too insane or rebelled. The Whippers are the only pair of warriors who have less lethal weapons and are melee specialist. Whippers are also infamous for whipping comrades when ordered to by their Subjugator. The pair works to bring in targets alive and fend off melee warriors. The last 4 others in the squad are the Submissives who can be armed with melee weapons or ranged weapons like the Saw Rifles, and act as flexible general infantry.

== Typical equipment ==

The Subjugator normally fights with a blessed sword and a Saw Pistol. Second Hands can have the same weapons as the Subjugators or have a Splinter Rifle instead. The Witch-doctor is often seen with a phallic staff which can smash skulls and the pointed bottom is made to slice through cloth flake armor. The Unlanded Warriors including the Witch-doctor guard are often armed with melee weapons like swords, hammers, and mauls with Repeating Saw Pistols. Alternatively the Unlanded Warriors are often also armed with a Saw Rifle and Saw Pistol. Whippers normally carry around a melee weapon, whip, and several Nervous Pistols

All Saw weapons fire mon-molecule dices like Eldar shuriken weapons but are shaped like a buzz saws. The difference between the ammo is to prevent the rounds from sticking on a target but instead to simply slice through organs and arteries. Saw Pistols are semi-auto pistols that fire bursts of rounds. Repeating Saw Pistols hold more ammo, have a stock, are heavier, and can also fire automatically. Saw Rifles unlike the Splinter rifle doesn’t fire using pellet or slug rounds, these rifles shoot with steady stream of rounds being sent like an Eldar shuriken weapon. The blessed swords are just regular melee weapons but are given special effects by Warp sorcery or by one of the Dark Gods. The phallic staff is a weapon that becomes larger at the top with its head usually being round while the bottom of the staff is sharpened to pierce cloth, leather, chainmail, scale, and thin plate armor. Witch-doctors are known to disable human Guardsmen by simply shoving their staff through the flake cloth even most feudal worlds with metal armor can’t stop the piercing. Nervous Pistols can only fire once before reloading. Shooting out all 9 chemically laced bolts at once are all connected to the weapon via extremely thin wires. If these bolts touch flesh after firing, they would send a shocking electrical current aided by chemicals on the skin to overwhelm the nervous system and stop any motor functions of the humanoid size target.

Unlike the Dark Eldar, who mostly tend to eschew up the use of armor in combat (with the exception of the Incubi), Crone Eldar generally wear at least some form of armor. Crone Eldar are fighters, not raiders, and so need some degree of protection when they battle. Although many Crones will claim their faith and frenzy are the only shield they need, most when pressed will admit their armor helps. Most of the armor designs used by the Crone World Eldar have their origins in some form in the armor used by the Old Eldar Empire. Like most forms of Eldar armor, Crone armor tends to be relatively form-fitting compared to the armor worn by Astartes, the result of using wraithbone/ghastbone in its construction. That said, most Crone Eldar armor designs tend to be spiky, chitinous, and made of ghastbone, rather than the sleeker designs favored by the Old Eldar Empire.

Crone Eldar armor integrates itself with the nervous system of the wearer, allowing them to mix work and pleasure by allowing them to feel sensation even on the battlefield. However, believe it or not, this feature has its origins in Old Empire designs and once had a very practical purpose. Because the armor was formfitting and was built not to interfere with hygene, it did not they did not hinder the soldier’s agility and allowed them to go about their daily business or even wear their armor at all times with only a minimal amount of discomfort. Additionally, because the armor could be vacuum sealed yet still interfaced with the user’s nervous systems, it was effectively a hardsuit where the user loss none of their dexterity nor their sense of touch. Of course, the original designers of the armor, even back in the hedonistic days before the Fall, never intended for it to fondle and stimulate the user while they wore it (such a feature would be a distraction, if nothing else). That feature was a later addition by the Crone Eldar. Like most armors worn by the servants of the Chaos Gods, over time Crone Eldar armor becomes clingy and difficult to remove if not outright fusing with the wearer, though even by these standards the type of armor worn by things like [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#Phalanxes|Phalanxes]] (which fuse immediately upon their creation) are rather extreme.

== Crone Eldar Notable Groups ==

=== Scions of the Old Helm ===

Khorne's elite military cult of pre-fall Eldar warriors and guardians that turned to him in the violent wake of Slaanesh's birth. They earned their place in his favor when in the fall he watched them turn their ships inward to the great debauchery and slaughter their kin as they writhed together in the filth of Slaanesh, cut down mad sorcerous seers as they exalted the ever changing Tzeentchian glory of the expanding eye, and harried the clinging sycophants all about Isha as Nurgle dragged her down into the garden. They warred gloriously through the Shaa-Dome's upper surfaces, brought continent shattering climax to the mounting hells on the empire's scattered worlds as they washed in immaterial miasma, and shredded the webway within the Eye, spilling pocket universal redoubs into the eye's cloying nebula. He granted them his mark and blessing, and in time since they have proven their worthiness of his esteem as terrors among even the heavies of Chaos. The forces of this ancient military cult have made particular efforts to drag the remains of Khaine into Khorne's domain, and their legacy of horrific, bloody war has been felt in every corner of the Galaxy. The Scions of the Old Helm are led by [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#Arrotyr.2C_Marshall_of_the_Scions_of_the_Old_Helm|Arrotyr]], once a hero of the Old Eldar Empire turned into a madman and fanatic even by Crone standards in the chaos of the Fall and his veneration of the Blood God.

=== The Puppets ===

The 'puppets' or 'dolls', as they are known to Imperial soldiers, are one of the stranger factions of the Croneworld Eldar. Totally abandoning the normal unlanded warrior/noble officer structure of most Croneworld raiding bands, they advance to war 'wearing' a dizzying array of vat-grown and ghastbone bodies, transferring their minds into new bodies by sorcery and surgery, or piloting them from afar via MIU-analogues. Although the politics of Shaa-Dome are opaque to the Imperium, it seems that the puppet clades are distant from the normal courts, almost never fighting in the same theaters as the more 'normal' Croneworld forces, even in the middle of the Black Crusade. There is evidently some ideological animosity between the dolls and the great lords of Shaa-Dome, and they make their homes far from the center of power. Many of them seem to come from [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#Altansar|Craftworld Altansar]]

In combat, the puppets are more variable than even the normal run of Chaos warbands. Their war-bodies vary in mind as much as body, each one possessing its own unique patterns of thought. The mind is a plaything of the body; a fluid takes the shape of its container. Most of the older puppets are no longer recognizable, in both body and mind, as having ever been Eldar. 

These are custom murder-bodies of the nobility, bizarre post-Eldar hive minds and mind hives, priests seeking extremes of experience impossible in an unmodified brain and solitary killers so radically modified they can no longer meaningfully communicate. All radically different, and yet essentially identical from the perspective of the Guardsman on the ground.

=== The Bleeding Star ===

The story of the Bleeding Star begins with Archon Darumache Zharr, and his Kabal of the Venomed Breath. After a plot to destroy a more powerful rival backfired on him, Archon Zharr and his Kabal chose to flee into the Webway rather than stick around for the inevitable overwhelming retaliation. After wandering the Webway for decades, raiding Imperial worlds and rival raiders for supplies, they found something incredible- a proto-craftworld in orbit around a warp rift, crew slaughtered in the Fall but otherwise untouched. Archon Zharr instantly declared this their new base, and named it 'Port Razor'.

The millennium that followed was good for the Venomed Breath. Port Razor gradually attracted other outcast Kabals and lone Dark Eldar, mercenary bands, Ork Freebootas, xenos pirates and Chaos marauders, until it had become a city in its own right. Commorragh in miniature. Constantly on the move and equipped with the finest cloaking fields, it provided all the scum of the galaxy with an inviolate base to strike at civilization from. Until the Imperium finally tracked Port Razor down, and assembled a Crusade to destroy it.

Unwilling to abandon his domain twice, Lord Zharr committed to a vicious defence. However, deprived of their usual advantage of mobility with the need to defend a mostly-static position, his fleets were slowly destroyed or simply deserted. Port Razor itself was forced deeper and deeper into the warp storm, fleeing into the depths where Gellar fields failed, beyond the reach of the Imperium. It was assumed to be destroyed, and centuries passed without further sign of Port Razor and the Venomed Breath.

Then the Bleeding Star emerged. Outer hull encrusted with the hulks of thousands of ships, the outline of what was once Port Razor was still visible, having been transformed into a Space Hulk in the terrible depths of the warp storm. The old inhabitants had been likewise transformed. Archon Zharr and the Venomed Breath had sold their souls to Chaos in exchange for survival- and power. The Bleeding Star ripped its way through an entire sector before it was finally damaged enough to drive it away. Before, Port Razor had been a base, a port; now the Venomed Breath operated it as a warship, a super-dreadnought of horrendous power. They had fallen primarily to Khorne and Nurgle (and Slaanesh not at all- they take particular pleasure in killing Croneworlders who follow She Who Thirsts), and their behavior reflected that; much more willing to assault the enemy head on, much more willing to stand and fight- and much more capable of doing both. Now capable of true warp travel thanks to the thousands of daemons bound into its hull, the Bleeding Star blazes bloody paths through the Imperium, only stopping when grievous injury forces it to withdraw and recover. It licks its wounds for decades, or centuries, loitering beyond the reach of any foe in the Warp- then it comes in again, without mercy, without warning.

Over the millennia of its operation, Port Razor and the Bleeding Star are estimated to have killed trillions of Imperial citizens. Its every appearance is met with furious force- but each time, it manages to slip away, leaving burning ships and worlds in its wake.

== Crone Eldar Elite Infantry Units ==

=== Gorgons ===

Gorgons pursue the Slaaneshi ideal of sensation being a weapon in and of itself. They eschew conventional weaponry in favor of bizarre arrays of demonic hologram emitters, noise-makers, and more exotic sense-effecting devices. They use these to attack the minds and souls of their targets directly. At its simplest, a Gorgon's attack is simply a spray of epilepsy-inducing noise and sound, paralyzing and confusing entire companies with sheer neural overload. A more focused attack can burn out a mind entirely, causing brain-death without a single trace of physical damage. Given time in which to work, increasingly exotic effects are possible, from mass hallucinations to causing basically arbitrary mental illnesses to 'programming' a mind to respond to certain subliminal cues. A Gorgon's approach to combat varies widely by individual, ranging from full-frontal epileptic assaults to slowly programming entire regiments with subliminal cues to explode into fratricidal violence at the right moment. 

Fortunately for the Imperium, the sort of absolute understanding of psychology needed to make a good Gorgon is rare; the sort of skill that allows entire regiments to be attacked at once rarer still. In addition, Gorgons are not often liked by their fellow Croneworlders. They approach sensation with a highly technical mindset, speaking of baud and bit-rate and qualia where most Croneworlders speak of overwhelming religious ecstasy. This limits how well coordinated they are on the battlefield, with the Gorgons mostly being left to go do their own thing, irrespective of where they would be most useful on the battlefield. Still, a skilled Gorgon at the wrong place at the wrong time can- and has- turned successful campaigns into catastrophes.

=== Meatweavers ===

Meatweavers are thankfully a rare sight on the battlefields of the Imperium. They depart dramatically from the normal humanoid form, constantly remaking themselves into new forms. While they are capable of acting as combat medics, they do so rarely; their true calling is the creation of abominations. They stalk the battlefields of the Black Crusades, collecting the dead and dying of friend and foe alike and remaking them. Skeletons re-articulated, muscles resectioned, flesh ripped apart and put back together into monsters. The exact nature of these things varies, from stripped-down snake-like infiltrator forms to tank-killing amalgamations of hundreds of corpses. Even when they deign to heal, they never leave their 'patient' entirely unchanged.

In direct combat, meatweavers are a relatively modest threat; dangerous in melee but lacking ranged weapons, and generally preferring to avoid direct engagement. What makes them lethal on the battlefield is their ability to recycle the dead into various combat organisms, fast enough to be tactically useful; given more time, and more bodies, a meatweaver can create an army. Clearing a hive which has had a meatweaver cabal squatting in it for several months is a bloody exercise in frustration. Fortunately- and a small comfort it is- they often disregard practicality in their creations. On the rare occasion a meatweaver has been interrogated, they indicate their work is a sort of religious sacrament, an act of creation/rape that brings them closer to their god. As such, strict military usefulness is a secondary consideration; for every murderbeast there's a stationary sculpture, incapable of anything but moaning. 

There are indications that meatweavers are themselves creations; that on occasion, a meatweaver will select a particularly 'suitable' individual and remake them into a new meatweaver.

=== Meltheads ===

Meltheads appear to be in a state of constant disintegration, sloughing off tracts of skin and slowly bleeding from every pore. This is because they are, in fact, constantly disintegrating, at a rate matched by their incredible powers of regeneration. They form the cornerstone of the Croneworlder's biological/chemical attack capabilities; their flesh, as it dissolves, gives off toxic/hallucinogenic fumes of wildly varying effect and potency. In light concentrations, this can be warded off with standard NBC gear and void suits; in heavy concentration it ignores any and all conventional precautions, as it is psy-active and warp-based, and these qualities come to the fore as it accumulates. In addition, these clouds can exhibit mobility and sentience, actively pursuing enemies and hindering the movement of people caught in them. In addition, by ripping out their own (regenerating) organs and performing various rites with them, Meltheads can create still more elaborate and dangerous effects. The most common of these is the 'smoke pot', which simply vents long-lasting fumes in vast quantity until destroyed; enough smoke pots are certainly capable of rendering a world forever uninhabitable. Other known effects include 'rust clouds', which destroy machinery with hideous effectiveness, and 'purple fog', which can evidently phase in and out of existence and exert limited mind-control abilities over people caught in its range of influence.

For all their terrible power, Meltheads do have weaknesses. For one, they are often listless and unmotivated, having to be goaded into battle by their handlers; without provocation, they are often content to wander listlessly and stare blankly into the middle distance. Second, the smog generated by a Melthead is evidently in some sense still part of their 'body'; this means they can exert control over its movement and effects, but also that the smog dissipates quickly upon the Meltheads' death. Third, enough fire does indeed burn off the smog, making massed artillery and airstrikes a viable option for dealing with the more exotic or permanent effects. Finally, to the relief of the Imperium, for all their power, Meltheads are quite rare.

While Meltheads are generally seen among Croneworlder forces, Nurglite examples have been known, and are generally even more hideous. There are indications that Meltheads are actually the castoffs and rejects of some experimental regime or procedure; what the finished, complete product would look like is almost too hideous to contemplate. Finding more information on this potential threat is a top priority of the Inquisition.

=== Phalanxes ===

Phalanxes form the heavy-armor assault infantry of the Croneworlders. They are sealed into suit of possesed armor, which quickly (and extremely painfully) integrate themselves into the biology of its host. Once put on, the suit cannot be removed. The armor is not actually that heavy, and Phalanxes retain most of their agility; what makes them durable is the armor's ability to shift in response to incoming threats. Lasers? The armor becomes a near-perfect mirror, reflecting the incoming fire back at the attackers. Bolters? It becomes a bizarre labyrinth of sharp angles that deflects the shells away from vital organs. Plasma? Electrically charged sea-urchin spines that disrupt the magnetic sheath of the bolt and cause it to detonate harmlessly in midair. Melee attacks? The armor can go so far as to sprout bladed limbs of its own to parry with. Almost any kind of attack in existence has some kind of counter, and the Phalanx can use them all. The armor also incorporates strength-boosting mechanisms, allowing the use of heavier-than-usual weapons, the most iconic of which is the Zweihander; a ten-foot-long power blade made for cleaving through entire ranks of men at once. 

Thankfully, forging such suits of armor is time-consuming and difficult, limiting the number of Phalanxes in service. The only reliable way to overcome a Phalanxes' armor either with overwhelming force (heavy artillery, tank cannon) or by targeting them with multiple types of weapon simultaneously and hoping the armor gets 'confused' and is unable to effectively ward off them all. Among other Croneworlders, Phalanxes are both respected and pitied; the nature of the armor means that anyone who dons it effectively gives up all other sensation in favor of the heat of battle; an admirable choice in some ways, but not one most Slaaneshi would make.

=== Slaughtermen === 

The result of a Chaos Eldar being infected with the Obliterator techno-virus. Slaughtermen are capable of forming nearly any man-portable weapon out of their evil-nanomachine-infused flesh, for a wide definition of 'man-portable'. Even more dangerous, Slaughtermen are capable of extreme precision with their weapons; as their ammunition is as much a part of their body as their weapons, they can perform such feats as seeing through and steering their rounds mid-flight. This allows incredible feats of BVR accuracy, as well as makes them excellent scouts. On top of that, they are also capable of creating 'drone' weapons such as autoturrets and spider-mines in order to harass the enemy long after the Slaughterman itself has vacated the area. Fortunately, the formation of such tools is apparently extremely taxing and rarely done. 

Slaughtermen do have their weaknesses. They do not have unlimited ammo; they evidently have an internal 'reservoir' of ammo-mass that slowly refills over time, and can be expended. This contributes to their emphasis on precision over mass of fire; compare Traitor Astartes infected with the Obliterator, who have either genuinely unlimited ammunition or simply a vastly larger 'reservoir' and thus lay about with abandon using heavy weapons. For another thing, they use projectile weapons almost exclusively; their ammo-scrying and ammo-steering abilities do not operate, or operate with reduced effectiveness, with energy bolts. Finally, even though their ability set would be greatly complemented by stealth and camouflage, they are often anything but stealthy. Flamboyant markers of rank and kill-count (synonymous among Slaughtermen fraternities) are the norm, which allows them to be picked out easily on the battlefield. Of course, exceptions exist. They are also found with some frequency among Khornate Eldar, for obvious reasons.

=== Shrikes === 

The Crone Eldar equivalent of Swooping Hawks or Assault Marines, Shrikes use their rapid speed and agility to strike without warning on the battlefield. Shrikes are a fear, the wailing cries of the Raptor Cults resembling a cross between a hunting bird of prey and a jet engine. However, shrikes are also notoriously vain and haughty. Although they serve Chaos, they will not fight for any given warband out of any sense of common loyalty to the Ruinous Powers, and demand large payments of loot and captives in return for their aid. Lady Malys and Be’lakor have been known to keep their own Raptor Cults on retainer (with threats as much as rewards) in order to avoid dealing with the more independent cults’ notoriously fickle nature. Shrikes do not worship any one of the Big Four (and resent attempts of aligned warbands to convert them), instead worshipping the Raptor God, a predatory god of fear and cruelty that does not seem to correspond to any one of the Big Four, but in all likelihood represents a greater daemon of Chaos Undivided. After the War of the Beast, some of the Fallen were enticed into worshipping the Raptor God of their own accord, becoming the first Chaos Raptors and later Warp Talons. Raptor Cults are surprisingly open and accepting of non-Crones for a Crone institution, but that is merely because most Raptor Cult devotees have shifted the focus of their disdain from all non-Eldar to all who do not worship the Raptor God, not much of a change overall.

Shrikes are created when a Raptor Cult devotee is deemed sufficiently to be gifted a Shrike symbiote. The symbiote permanently grafts to the acolytes’ body, permanently reshaping them into a form more pleasing to the Raptor Cult’s sensibilities of war. Hands and feet are changed into metallic talons, while a pair of brass or steel wings grows from the back complete with their own set of jet turbines. Dissections of Shrikes have only revealed twisted cancerous flesh beneath their steel exterior, suggesting that their internal workings are warped just as heavily as their outer appearance. Shrikes prefer to use their own natural weapons in melee combat, but when fighting from a distance will use sawguns or filched bolters. Shrikes also have the ability to fire razor-edged blades from the tips of their wings. In this respect they resemble the Stymphalian Birds of Earth myth. Whatever they do not steal they defile and leave unusable, having some ability to spread filth from their deformed internal organs.

Perhaps the most gruesome habit of the Shrikes is their habit of taking plunder from the battlefield in the form of prisoners of war. Shrikes prefer their meat healthy and alive, but if this is not possible they have been known to sweep the wounded and the dying off the battlefield to deny them a peaceful death. Once back in their home realm, they impale their victims on Gallows Trees, techno-organic plants seemingly composed entirely of thorns in the defiance of all laws of botany. These trees insert tiny microfilaments into the bodies, prolonging their agony and death throes of their impaled victims for as long as possible. These trees serve as more than just nourishment for the Shrikes’ sadistic sense of amusement, for these Gallows Trees seem to feed on the pain and suffering created by the death throes of their victims to create new shrike symbiotes.

Swooping Hawks, Wracks, and descendants of the Blood Angels all consider Shrikes to be particularly insulting abominations, and will take extra satisfaction upon striking them out of the air on the battlefield.

'''See Also:''' [[Nobledark_Imperium_Writing#The_Phinean_Massacre|The Phinean Massacre]]

==Other Units==

===The Marionettes===
Marionettes are slaves- human, other Imperial, and badly disgraced Croneworlder, in descending order of commonality- who have been sealed inside suits of sensory-deprivation armor. As protection, the armor is... better than nothing. The true purpose of the ghastbone suits are to filter the wearer's perceptions of the outside world, rendering the wearer entirely dependent on the commands of their Master to function.

At the highest level, a Marionette's armor induces total sensory deprivation, even suppressing internal senses like proprioception and balance, with the commands of the Master- delivered direct to the nervous system- the only sensory input. This level is rare, as it requires the Master to manage each individual twitch of a muscle on top of whatever else they're doing. This highest grade of Marionette is therefore found mostly in the retinues of the highest and most perfect nobility, who can manage such complexity, moving in perfect concert with their master. 

The average soldier-Marionette, of necessity, operates at a lower level of filtering, the outside world heavily abstracted to a level where they can do simple tasks like walking and aiming independently, but anything more complex is virtually impossible without outside direction for simple lack of information. Thousands of such soldiers can be found marching in the battles of the Black Crusades under the command of a single Master, moving in perfect formation through even the heaviest defensive fire- which they may not even perceive, seeing nothing but the ground under their feet and abstract targets to be shot, everything else reduced to featureless void. 

Aesthetically, Marionettes (naturally) vary; the most common is blank, featureless white plating, reflecting the total suppression of independent will and inner life, but excessive riots of color and ornamentation are also popular. As with everything, infinite variety. 

The primary users of Marionettes are, naturally, Slaaneshi warbands. Tzeentchian forces are the second-most-common users, and have developed their own variations on the technique. Some of the more together Khornate warbands use Marionette armor to control their berserkers, herding them in consistent directions and preventing them from turning on each other by limiting their perception to the desired objective. Nurglite forces, hardly at all.

===Dragon's Teeth===
Dragon's Teeth are one of the many ways the Chaos Eldar have of making the Imperium's life miserable. Created by the forces of Nurgle from carefully-tended knots of filth, they resemble metallic seeds in their inert form- and in a sense, that is what they are. They are scattered about as a raiding force withdraws, dormant- until the conditions for their awakening are met. What those conditions are varies; it could be time elapsed, large numbers of people nearby, a snatch of birdsong, almost anything. Then it awakes, and starts to grow, sending tendrils through the ground. Then, once it has fully grown, it emerges. 

They are wireframe horrors, masses of rusty, filth-encrusted razor-wire in the vague outline of a living thing. They attack by entangling their prey, slicing them apart with a thousand cuts. They are very stealthy; having no skeleton of any kind, they can squeeze themselves through gaps an inch wide and flatten themselves against the ground to avoid detection, and they make excellent use of this ability. They have a natural grasp of terror tactics; sneaking into a tent of sleeping soldiers and killing every third of them without waking the rest, stringing up soldiers inside themselves without killing them and forcing the rest to shoot their comrade, more. They often prefer to maim rather than outright kill; wounds inflicted by them will invariably become infected, becoming new vectors for Nurgle's gifts. They also seem to take particular pleasure in blending their way through hospitals.

Despite their undeniable lethality, their true purpose is to tie up resources and degrade morale. Hunting down an infestation of Dragon's Teeth is long, tedious, stressful, and manpower-intensive. Tracking one down requires exhaustive search efforts involving thousands of people. The injured must be treated- and guarded. Maintaining quarantines becomes near impossible with their ability to worm through the tightest cracks. A world sown with Dragon's Teeth can continue having problems with them for centuries, as long-dormant seeds awaken. They just generally take a disproportionate amount of resources to deal with- and that is their true power. 

Fortunately, they have very little in the way of target discrimination. They (usually) don't attack other Dragon's Teeth, but that's as much as they can manage- on the open battlefield, they pose as much a threat to 'allies' as to enemies, and thus are not usually deployed in combat alongside other forces. It is a small comfort, especially since they make a perfectly adequate minefield.

===Qlippoth===

The Qlippoth began as something of a science project deep within the bowels of Shaa-Dome. An attempt at creating emotion and sensation unprecedented even to gods, creating zones of altered space equally foreign to both the Materium and Empyrean and minds to inhabit them - minds to be consumed. Born to die. 

It worked. Croneworld legend holds that everyone even tangentially involved with the project was immediately elevated to Daemon Princedom for creating sensations previously unknown to even the Prince of Excess, but the actual truth could be anything. 

Qlippoth intended for war use are transported within ghastbone containment/support wombs, which are in turn locked within stasis fields. Once on the battlefield, the stasis fields are deactivated and the contained micro-universe and inhabiting Qlippoth(s) begin eating their way out of the containment womb and leaking into the outside universe. 

It begins with a psychic howl, an utterly alien psyche pressing down on the mind and soul. Devastating and incapacitating. Permanent damage is likely. Closer to the epicenter, total mind erasure. 

Then, physical effects, as the containment womb starts to collapse entirely and the micro-universe within starts to force its way out, resulting in a zone of overlapping physics within both the Materium and Immaterium. The exact effects are never the same twice, each Qlippoth and its substrate being utterly unique, but they are invariably devastating. Not even daemons take well to the laws of physics changing underneath them. 

Finally, the utter collapse of the containment womb and the release of the Qlippoth itself. Without the womb maintaining its form and feeding it energy, it will only live for a handful of minutes, but will cause enormous destruction in those few minutes before the laws of nature finally reassert themselves. Even so, the scars on both Materium and Immaterium will linger indefinitely.

Qlippoth vary in yield based on their size. Most Qlippoth "only" have a blast yields comparable to a [[Deathstrike Missile Launcher]]. The largest and rarest ones are essentially a Crone Eldar form of [[Exterminatus]].

===Nightmares===

Nightmares are some of the most depraved of all Crone Eldar creations, living siege engines that lay waste to anything in their path. Nightmares are in effect perversions of spirit stone technology, the same technology that keeps the souls of Craftworlders from being eaten by She Who Thirsts upon their demise. Crone Eldar normally hate spirit stones, calling them “soul traps” and seeing them as barriers that keep eldar from being closer to their gods, but they are more than creative enough to turn this technology to their own needs. Although spirit stones are normally used to protect the recently dead, they can also be used as holding vessels for souls forcibly ripped out of their host bodies. Dark Eldar have used this to forcibly swap the souls of different races as part of their sick pleasures. Crone Eldar have taken this concept and weaponized it. And being on the Crone Worlds, the developed worlds of the Old Eldar Empire, the Crone Eldar have a lot of spirit stones to work with.

Nightmares are massive goliaths, made of hundreds of stolen souls linked together into wraithbone lattices and clothed in warp-tainted flesh often stolen from the bodies of slaves. The souls that compose a Nightmare are all aware of their situation and feel the sensation of their entire body, but are typically only able to control a small portion of their form. This decentralization makes Nightmares incredibly hard to kill, as they are able to ignore most forms of pain not specifically tailored to harm them by their masters and will keep fighting until they are too damaged to move. In order to impose some degree of control over the Nightmare, all of the souls composing the abomination are linked to a single empty spirit stone, which is able to coordinate the movements of the entire monstrosity despite each individual soul only able to control a small portion of the beast. Typically, the only way is to destroy this linking spirit stone, and sets the component souls of the Nighmare free (to where is unknown, but it is arguable that even oblivion is preferable to life as a component of a Nightmare).

Being living macabre works of “art”, no two Nightmares are the same, whether in the number of eyes, number of arms, number of heads, even the very souls that make up their being are often taken from a multitude of species. The only similarity is that all Nightmares fear the lashes of the Flesh Wardens that drive them into battle. The only pleasure they ever receive is the flood of endorphins released into them by remote control at the end of each successful battle, which coincidentally sedate a Nightmare and make it possible for other Crone Eldar to wrangle it back into containment. On rare occasion, a particularly brave or foolish Crone Eldar will actually be able to break an abomination and ride it into battle, typically those Eldar devoted to courting the favor of all four Chaos Gods simultaneously, seeing as they tend to not have much of a survival reflex in the first place.

===Faehounds===

The Crone World eldar are nothing if not an ingenious people. Consider the humble [[Chaos Spawn]]. It its natural state, it is a pitiable thing. Barely able to move, barely able to breathe, in most cases good for relatively little except as component materia for a [[Mutalith Vortex Beast]]. However, take that Chaos Spawn, prune away the unusable limbs, induce further mutations, and replace the parts that don’t work with prosthetics, and you get a creature that is actually worth something. Crone eldar are masters at this process, their fleshsculptors carefully and artistically trimming chaos spawn like bonsai to create the creatures that they call faehounds.

Like other flesh-sculpted abominations, it does not matter what faehounds were before they were blessed with their mutations. Even Chaos Spawn that used to be Crones receive no special treatment, Crones generally considering being turned into a Chaos Spawn as voiding one’s claim to belonging to the chosen race of the gods. Faehounds come in a vast array of shapes and forms, and it can be quite accurately said that no two look alike. As with anything Chaotic, there are innumerable variants of faehounds, their numbers limited solely by the whims of their creators and the mutating eddies of the Warp. However, most show echoes of a common design, a general hound-like form, typically quadrupedal, though bipedal, six-legged, and even centipede-like forms are known. Manipulatory appendages are rare, but most have some kind of mouthparts with which they can savage their enemy. Faehounds are generally smaller than most Chaos Spawn due to the careful grooming of their flesh, but they trade this for much more coherence in their body plan.

Faehounds have many uses in war. Perhaps their most common use is as cannon fodder. Faehounds, with their unnatural speed, can rapidly outpace Crone Eldar, and can charge enemy lines absorbing enemy fire while more valuable forces advance. Whether or not they survive is irrelevant, faehounds are easily replaceable, and each shot fired at them is one less shot fired at more valuable eldar lives. Although Perhaps one of the most common variants of faehounds are forms modified as suicide attackers, exploding in a burst of corrosive digestive juices once their purpose is finished or they are too damaged to fight any longer. After all, it is not as though they were expected to survive in the first place.

Faehounds are also useful trackers. Many varieties have some form of highly acute senses, whether it be smell, sight, or even the ability to see the raw currents of the Warp. Therefore, many Crones include faehounds in their hunting parties, these mutated beasts tracking their quarry at the side of their masters. Although the actual battle is important, the Crones find hunting down and killing the fleeing survivors to be just as much if nor more enjoyable.

==Dark Eldar and Croneworld War Vehicles==
Dark Eldar vehicles have very little in common with either their contemporaries or the Elder Empire under the hood. Their abandonment of the psychic forced them to also abandon most of the typical Eldar technologies- wraithbone in particular. They had to recreate their vehicle technology from scratch. This is not actually the cause of their notorious fragility; that is a deliberate philosophical choice. Anyone slow and stupid enough to get hit at all deserves to die, or so the thinking goes. Agility, speed, firepower, more or less in that order; everything else can go hang. An excellent setup for a hit-and-run raider.

The forces of the Chaos Eldar, in contrast to the second-line defensive forces of the Craftworld Eldar and the pirate raiders of the Dark Eldar, are descended from the main military clades of the Elder Empire. They are meant to take and hold territory. They are heavy; often slower than Craftworld vehicles but much more durable. A great many walkers and hybrid grav/leg vehicles, faster and less affected by terrain than a pure leg vehicle while carrying more armor than most pure grav vehicles can manage. More insectile that the Craftworlders' preferred anthroform designs. More resources available for construction means more exotic weaponry, more energy shielding, more bizarre subsystems like regeneration, cloaking devices, teleportation. And that's before 10,000 years of Chaos exposure is factored in. Most armor fielded by the Chaos Eldar is a daemon engine of some description; ghastbone is an excellent host medium. The original classes of vehicle fielded by the Elder Empire have become something like taxons of animal life, branching into a hundred different descendant species. Each one uniquely terrible.