Editing Ynnead (section)

== Overview ==

When Slaanesh was born, she devoured most of the Eldar race, and their souls, and most of their gods, and basically caused a lot of things to get badly screwed up, making a terrible mess in the toilet afterwards that the Eldar were forced to mop up. The crap on the wall that won't scrub off was that the surviving Eldar found Slaanesh was constantly hungering for their souls, laying in wait for the moment when any member of their race died to completely consume them. In the past the Eldar believed that when they died, their soul would be reincarnated - with Slaanesh's coming, the Eldar's ability to reincarnate disappeared. To save themselves from this fate, the Craftworld Eldar use [[spiritstone]]s to trap their souls upon death. The spiritstone is then used to intern the soul within the Infinity Circuit of a Craftworld, next to a carefully placed egg timer, where the soul is free to roam around and chill with the other Eldar souls of the Craftworld.

As more souls over time have been added to the infinity circuits, the Eldar [[Farseer]]s perceived something stirring from this collection of souls; this was Ynnead, a god formed from untainted Eldar souls and the power of [[Asuryan]], the king of the Eldar gods, who passed on his power to the Farseers of the Eldar before he was devoured by Slaanesh. The Farseers believed that when the last Craftworld Eldar dies, Ynnead will be fully born and will rise up to cast down Slaanesh, destroying him/her/it forever. It's unknown whether this would have been feasible or not considering Slaanesh's immense power, but Ynnead represented the Eldar race's last, best hope for a better future, and so all their efforts went toward making him as strong as possible.

Worship of Ynnead was, and likely remains, pretty controversial among the Aeldari, as would be expected of xenos modeled on the "dying elder race" shtick. Death is literally his entire purpose and portfolio, and the species that alternately worships and reviles him is coming increasingly closer to extinction - about as permanent of a death as you can get in this universe. [[Grimdark|Their last and best hope is essentially a gamble involving the soul of every single Eldar, alive or dead, on the off chance that they ''might'' be rid of Slaanesh forever, and if that fails...]]

Those who accept Ynnead have the following point of view: Ynnead is the [[Eldar]] god of the dead. Or at least he will be, as he is currently being created. He is in godly limbo at the moment while the Eldar try to amass enough pure souls, or at least souls that have overcome petty desires, in the various [[Craftworld]]s' [[Infinity Circuit]]s which are bonded together by the Eternal Matrix that links all the Infinity circuits and World Spirits together through the Webway, to give him enough mojo to become a proper god.

With the release of the Gathering Storm, it turns out that the Ynnead is [[Emprah|anathema]] to the Chaos Gods and they are actually afraid of it; that's no small aside either, since that's a distinction previously exclusive to Big-E himself, and [[Skub|arguably]] a few [[C'tan]]. Slaanesh has already been put on a bus in Age of Sigmar (Never mind he's getting some new stuff already) and Ynnead is a pretty good way to put Slaanesh on a bus in 40k too.

Other Aeldari see the worshipers of Ynnead as a misguided [[Heresy|heretical]] death cult who are risking the souls of the Aeldari race on a gamble. It also doesn’t help that the Yncarne bears more than a passing resemblance to Slaanesh.[https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/09/30/24th-sept-grim-dark-corners-the-aeldari-pantheongw-homepage-post-2-gw-homepage-post-3/ 1]

Basically, Ynnead is the Eldar's last hope against [[Slaanesh]]. '''Ynnead''' is the [[Eldar]] god of the dead and may or may not be the reincarnation of David Bowie. He's alive (for a given value) and active now, but this is new fluff and as always in WH40k the Eldars' plan did [[Not As Planned|not survive]] contact with reality. As always, they didn’t take into account that the future is constantly changing and other factions and species have their own agendas.

Slaanesh was born out of unbridled hedonism, giving them the theme of extreme pleasure. Ynnead is born out of the dead post-fall Eldar who are vengeful but still optimistic stuck-ups, so Ynnead would theoretically be born out of the Eldar's [[Khorne|vengeance]] and [[Tzeentch|hopes]] for a better tomorrow. Assuming it follows the same process as Slaanesh; Ynnead probably won't go rogue and will follow the main purpose of its creation. Probably.

Could the Eldar have simply had a bunch of Farseers, Warlocks, and Exarchs of each Path commit ritual suicide to reincarnate as an Eldar-Emperor being like the ancient human shaman did in outdated fluff? Probably, but these are Eldar. Their whole schtick is being cowardly pussy-tards. They would probably be too afraid of failing and being eaten to take such a chance. Or worse, it succeeds inside Slaanesh, further strengthening the abomination. That sounds about right for 40K.

Something to consider: Ynnead is a very different god than any other active entity in the setting. All of the other gods are immortal beings of perpetual nature. They are always focused on the concept of being endless, be it stagnation, warfare, evolution or excess. Only The Emperor shares a base concept with Ynnead, which is the concept of finality. Ynnead is the god of Death, and death is by its very concept a mortal thing, making it impossible for the Chaos gods to comprehend. So few daemons are truly destroyed that the ruinous powers don’t actually view the concept beyond something mortals do in their spare time, and facing mortality would be such an alien concept that it would make them fear its existence. Ynnead was able to negate the passion of Slaanesh, the disease of Nurgle, the sorceries of Tzeench and stop the senseless conflict of Khorne. Its very existence is the possibility of ending them, and so they fear what they cannot understand. Ynnead may be small now, but if it ever gains enough power the Chaos gods will have major problems. Even worse problems if Ynnead comes to terms with the Necrons; a god of death backed by an army of soulless metal doom skeletons with gauss flayers who's only motivation is to destroy chaos and then anything else that lives... fun times.

=== Yncarne ===

[[File:The_Yncarne.jpg|300px|right|thumb|The Yncarne, Avatar of Ynnead. Watch as it sings "Dance magic dance!"]]

The Yncarne (Ha! Get it? Yncarne as in...''Incarn AKA Incarnation?'') is the Avatar of Ynnead. Yncarne was the first step to the Seventh Path, a method of awakening Ynnead without sacrificing the entire Eldar race. A lot like the [[Khaine#Avatar of Khaine|Avatar of Khaine]], except rather than a bajillion of them, there is only <u>ONE</u> Yncarne. This is due to the fact that Ynnead's birth was cut prematurely during Gathering Storm, so as of now, Ynnead is now in fetus-form in the persona of the Yncarne.

While not on the same humiliating scale as poor Khaine over there, the Yncarne did got his ass handed to him by [[Ahzek_Ahriman|Ahriman]]. But to be fair, the Yncarne wasn't fully formed so we don't really know his true power.
 
In battle, The Yncarne wields the Crone Sword Vilith-zhar.

Tabletop wise, this little Death God is 250 points, and what a character you get for that. With its Vilith-shar, the Sword of Souls, the Yncarne will be hitting targets with an [[Awesome]] weapon using one of two profiles: a piercing hit for walloping characters and vehicles (S+4 AP-4 D3+3 that ''ignores invuls''), or a sweeping hit for wiping out big squads (SUser AP-4 D1 Ax2). It also has a magic flamer that auto-hits ''every unit'' within 6" (S7 AP-2 D1). The Yncarne is also pretty resilient, T7 with 12 Wounds, a 3+ armor and 4+ invuln and halved damage from Deathly Form.

But it's not just a beatstick. It confers ignore-Combat Attrition to all friendly Ynnari infantry within 12", it starts the game knowing ''all'' of the powers from the Revenant psychic discipline and can cast two of them each phase (with two deny's), it has Battle Focus and Strands of Fate, and it can fly over terrain and appear within 1" of a just-wiped unit whether you have it in-reserve or on the board (the caveat is it cannot appear within engagement range of an enemy nor can it charge or heroically intervene).

All of this means that the Yncarne is a ridiculously strong deathstar model and character assassin with a monstrously wide threat range. Pretty much any enemy squad dies within a round of this beast getting within arms' reach, and very few characters can come out on top in a fight with it.