Editing Eldar (section)

===Origins and the Eldar Empire===
[[Image:Eldarpsykers.jpg|350px|right|thumb|Did you know Tyranid tastes best when cooked inside out with warp fire at 1,000 degrees Celsius?]]
:{{topquote|I watched as the First Ones encouraged the younger race to reach further into the other realm, and with their vibrant minds and passionate souls create beings of power to fight the star gods. ...Without the wisdom and might of the First Ones I saw The Elder's warp-beings evolve from sentient weapons into living gods - the first true gods of the Immaterium.|'Echoes of the Birth' - Liber Chaotica volume 2}}

Much of Eldar history has been lost and is consequently closer to mythology than fact. Even the Eldar themselves are unsure of the details. What they do know is that they were one of many races either created or uplifted by the [[Old_Ones_(Warhammer)#Warhammer_40.2C000|Old Ones]] to fight against the [[C'tan]] and their minions at the time, the [[Necron]]tyr. The only knowledge of their homeworld that the Eldar have is that they had one and that it had three moons; this homeworld has been "lost" since the earliest memories of their most ancient past. The species known as the Old Ones are said to have left in their great ships, leaving the Eldar to develop on their own, only returning at an unspecific time later, only this time their ships were marked by the scars of war. The Eldar were designed to be powerful [[psyker]]s to take advantage of the C'tan's weakness to the powers of the [[Warp]]. In their infancy as a race, the Eldar learned how to create Warp entities (essentially, artificial daemons) to help them get shit done (be it war, healing, or building), but when the Old Ones took the Eldar to war and subsequently got wiped out by the combined efforts of the C'Tan, the Necrons, and [[Enslavers]], the Eldar constructs went out of control and started merging into much more powerful beings, even capable of facing full-powered C'Tan without being annihilated in 0.1 seconds. The Eldar mistook those beings for gods and started worshipping them.

There is also the possibility that in order to escape death, certain [[Old Ones]] who had strong links to the ancient Eldar may have hijacked their Warp constructs, by merging together with them, leaving their mortal bodies behind and ascending to godhood.
These new "gods" started to play [[War in Heaven|divine soap opera]] (which often resulted in piles of space elf corpses) until their boss, [[Asuryan]], got tired of this shit, and banned all divine manifestations in real space, effectively locking all of the gods in the Warp. At this time in cosmic history, the Warp was far less dangerous, especially for the Eldar since it was mainly the swinging bachelor pad of their gods, and not a [[Tzeentch|scheming]], [[Slaanesh|raping]], [[Khorne|murdering]], [[Nurgle|rotting]] hellscape. Some accounts suggest that when Eldar passed away, their souls were preserved in the Warp to be reincarnated.

[[Image:Eldar map.jpg|thumb|left|250px|"40k Map showing the reach of the Eldar Empire and a few of the key locations left after the Fall"]]
For [[Plot armor|reasons]] left conveniently unexplained, the Eldar managed to survive both the war between the Old Ones and the [[C'tan]] and the [[War in Heaven|high school drama]] of their gods, and over thousands of years built a galaxy-spanning empire that was undoubtedly more bitchin' and stylish than anything the [[Imperium]] has achieved. The Eldar terraformed planets into paradises, inhabited thousands of them, and traveled between them effortlessly using the technology of the [[Webway]] left behind by the Old Ones. At the height of their civilization, approximately the same time that humans were starting to evolve, they were using their advanced technology to perform pretty much all the work required in their societies and had rendered manual labour completely obsolete; things called Spirit-drones and psychomatons explored and conquered in their name and they simply reaped the benefits of their galaxy-spanning empire. As time passed many Eldar began to slowly devote themselves to pursuing lives of increasingly hedonistic and decadent behaviour; something as simple as a [[Blood Bowl|game like football would start off as a game, but by the end of the Fall had turned into full-blown gladiatorial death matches]] (like actual American football) (like a goddamn Dr. Seuss fantasy... IN SPAAAACE).

With the end of the War in Heaven, they effectively became the inheritors of the Old Ones' kingdom, although that didn’t mean they immediately became the galaxy's head honchos. There were still many threats that they had to overcome. The word "Mon Keigh", for instance, originated from a race that enslaved the Eldar for a time before they were defeated. Though the word is now mostly associated with humans, at least one Imperial scholar studying the Eldar concluded it is broadly used against races that have been deemed worthy of extermination though this may be because an Imperial probably wouldn’t be willing to drawn lines between the obvious fact the mon-keigh species were cannibalistic savages and humanity’s habit of warring amongst itself and generally acting like intelligent Orks. An interesting little tidbit from "Asurmen: Hand of Asuryan" suggests that after the War in Heaven was over, for some reason, the Eldar did not have access to the Webway, and spent an unspecified amount of time having to travel to the far corners of the galaxy using conventional means in order to reactivate it.

[[The Cabal]] introduced in the [[Horus Heresy|Heresy]] does hint that the Eldar at least maintained links with many of the older species in the galaxy. The assembly consists of many of the oldest species in the galaxy, including a being they refer to as the last of the Old Kind, but also younger species; members of the cabal even considered offering the Emperor a seat (this was before the crusade started of course). The Cabal comes across a bit like the [[illuminati]], but may have acted as a sort of UN for the galaxy, this of course is only theoretical, but may shed some light on how galactic politics may have happened in the Pre-Fall era.

The Eldar dominion before the rot started to set in is described as a shining example of civilization, although exactly what that means is a bit up in the air. It was so "perfect" that it ended up being boring, very very boring; when mentally linking with a "tree" in order to enter an Eldar version of the Matrix is considered boring that's really saying something. Without any form of hardship or strife the effectively immortal Eldar (one of the POV characters in the 'Asurmen: Hand of Asuryan' book takes note that large numbers of Eldar were extending their natural lifespans by insane amounts, intending to outlive the stars themselves; he did not find the idea appealing, as he was already finding his own long life becoming unbearably boring, and preferred to die and be born into a new life) are proof that 'the [[slaanesh|devil]] finds work for idle hands'. The governance of the dominion seems to have been split into something like the ancient Greek city states, each governed by great councils.

Thanks to 'Path of the Archon' we know that one of the few instances of schism to have taken place during their galactic rule focused around the concept of Form. Whilst some believed that their form, both physically and spiritually, was already something inviolable, a pinnacle of evolution, others believed that the form a soul took was not predetermined and saw no problem in changing their forms as they desired; the more extreme amongst them transmigrated themselves into animals, ships, structures or even entire sub-realms (so you're telling me that they can literally claim to identify as an apache helicopter, and actually make it a reality, well hell, where do I sign up).

Later on, there are a few recorded instances of the newly-spacefaring humanity clashing with elements of the Eldar race over resources; whether these Eldar the expanding humans encountered were the forces of the Eldar Empire or the fleeing Exodites is unknown. Said dynamic is arguably evident in current interactions between the Imperium and the Tau - a comparison which doesn't bode well for the former party if you accept that history tends to repeat itself.

The Eldar codex states that the vast trading vessels known as [[Craftworld]]s, which carried the tiny proportion of the race who sought to escape the corruption at the heart of the Empire, sought out other Eldar amongst the far-flung Exodites colonies and even began to settle new worlds of their own. It was then that the fates of the Eldar and Mankind intertwined for the first time, sometime between M18 and M22. It seems that there was nowhere near the amount of bad blood between the two species then as there is now in M41; non-aggression pacts were signed between humanity and dozens of alien races and the introduction of the [[Interex]] in the Horus Hersey claims that the Eldar encountered by humans at the time provided both help and guidance.

* A small bit of obscure lore from way back, deals with why Eldar void craft are designed with wings/fins on them. When traveling through the material universe they act as solar sails, but they were originally also used when traveling the warp. Once upon a time before the warp was so thirsty for Eldar souls, the Eldar were actually able to sail the currents of the Warp in almost complete safety; instead of using engines to force their way through, they would glide smoothly through the sea of souls using its natural currents, barely causing a ripple. It was stated that the Eldar were disturbed by how humanity traveled the Warp: brute-forcing their way in and then using their engines to propel themselves forward, violently churning up the Warp in their wake.