Editing Nobledark Imperium Notes (section)

== Crone World Eldar ==

Daemonculaba in this timeline was created by the Crone Eldar to supplement low birth rate. However, don't think humans get out of this so easily just because they aren't eldar. The Crone Eldar have been trying to make a Daemonculaba out of humans for decades. Just because it hasn't worked the last 500 times doesn't mean it's not worth seeing if the 501st time will be different. And even if that doesn't work they get to laugh and jerk off at the spectacle. Win-win as far as they are concerned. Humans are much more numerous than eldar and if the Crones could get a human Daemonculaba working it would be a much more efficient way to breed an army. One thing that might prove to be a problem if the birth of the Impossible Child ends up breaking down the barriers between humans and eldar is the Crones breeding an army of half-eldar cannon fodder out of human Daemonculaba.

Ghastbone is the construction material of choice for the Crone Eldar, and it more or less a variant form of wraithbone. Normal wraithbone is built in such a way that it is “insulated” from external psionic influences. The reasons for this are both functional (insulation improves the conduction of the psychic signal and reduces the external “noise” sent to a wraithguard body from a spirit stone, for example) as well as for safety (it prevents daemons from manifesting and playing havoc with your systems willy nilly). The Crones on the other hand, tend to strip out all the insulating components that keep out external psionic influences or even add amplifying ones, because they want demons to molest them from behind as they work. This tends to give Ghastbone a tattered, frayed appearance compared to the smooth sleek curves of most wraithbone constructed implements, and often makes Crone devices appear much more ratty than they actually are.

All of the Crone Eldar are on the Path to Glory in some form or another. They see the eldar as the chosen race of the gods, demigods in the making that bridge the gap between mortal and divine, whose job it is to spread the worship of Chaos to all of the “lesser” people of the galaxy. The old eldar pantheon was unable to prevent themselves from being slaughtered by the Chaos Gods, thereby proving the validity of the Chaos Gods as objects of worship in their extreme social Darwinist mindset. [[Edgy|They see the worship of the old gods as immature and juvenile, something that they have grown beyond]]. They see their [[Dark Eldar|Dark kin hiding in the depths of Commorragh]] and the exiles who fled the Old Empire to live on [[Craftworld|floating hunks of wraithbone]] or [[Exodite|squatting in savagery]] as having rejected this divine mission placed on them by the gods, and therefore in their eyes they are [[heresy|heretics]].

That said, the Crones are not completely one-dimensional. They do have a consistent internal philosophy, being social darwinists who believe that as demigods in the making they are above good and evil and what is “right” is whatever makes them feel good, the problem is that they’re mostly sadists and hedonists who see everyone else as either [[eldar|here]][[Dark Eldar|tics]] or lesser lifeforms to be used as entertainment, and "whatever feels good" usually involves fulfilling those desires. Their philosophy is just absolutely toxic and completely at odds with…pretty much every other system of living. Tzeentch sums up their philosophy pretty well in “[[Nobledark_Imperium_Writing#Just_As_Planned|Just As Planned]]”: I do what I want, when I want, and I am strong enough that no one can tell me otherwise, therefore putting any kind of restraint on myself is akin to psychosis.

And there is an aspect of tragedy to their existence. Not tragic in the manner of some Miltonian or Byronic figure, they will kill you with an honest-to-the-dark-gods smile on their face and enjoy every minute of it. The tragedy comes more from their situation, kind of [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Proto-Orks and the Krork|like]] [[Nobledark_Imperium_Writing#The Last Casualties of the War in Heaven|the Orks]] or the [[Dark Eldar]]. The Crone Eldar are born into a society that literally does not allow them to be anything else. Between their upbringing and their intense sense of superiority the Crones have no reason to believe there is any other way to live. Any Crone child who shows signs of mercy, morality, or forgiveness is likely to be weeded of the population by the unforgiving nature of Crone society unless they are really tough in spite of it. From day one they are told “[[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#The_Rant|once the gods loved us. Then some mortals defied the natural order and caused a rift between mortals and the gods and now the gods are only willing to give us tough love.]] But maybe, if we fix the mistake and return Isha to Nurgle’s garden, maybe the gods will love us again”. Which is itself a lie, the Chaos gods were just as terrible to them before the Raid and any claims otherwise are a “just so” story to try and explain why the gods are so terrible like an abuse victim trying to justify their abuse. Crones are essentially born to be damned, if not being damned by proxy by being born in such a Chaos-corrupted society then because the actions necessary to survive in such a society would damn them anyway.

=== Important Individual Croneworlders ===

Note: All these ideas are preliminary, and may be subject to changes (e.g., names)

'''Marshal of The Scions of The Old Helm'''

* Highest ranking figure among Khorne's remnants of the Eldar empire's military, claims authority is descended from the old empire's chain of command
* Access to some of their best surviving large-scale weapons and naval assets from before the fall
* the Marshal holds crone worlds in the eye and is granted warp real estate from Khorne, and has official palaces in the Shah-Dome, but most of its holdings in the shellworld are limited to the outer layers
* the Marshal controlled the backbone of Crone forces and needed to be appeased by Malys at the expense of the other factions until Luther and the fallen became an analogous option

'''High Conservator of The Attendants of Isha'''

* The original High Conservator was a decadent leader of Isha's priesthood that embraced her captivity as a wedding of the generative mother and the eternally preserving father 
* welcomed in the garden of Nurgle, the upper priesthood that clung to Isha became immortal, pseudo-deamonic beings that fawned over their 'mother'
* The upper leadership of the Attendants witnessed Isha's rescue and are absolutely dedicated to her recapture
* Other than being patient, implacable, and insanely hard to kill, the Conservator and attendants have a large following in the slums and horrible places of the galaxy
* Their eternal readiness to campaign and their ability to motivate wars makes them useful to Malys, and they have a few powerful leaders, but they have few holdings that aren't warp real estate from Nurgle and weak armies

'''The Indigo Crow''' (or some other esoteric title)

[[Image:Indigo_Crow.jpg|150px|right|thumb|]]

* The preeminent Crone sorcerer and seer, an independent Tzentchian scholar of vast power, not bound to the service of a liege or court
* Able to call on some level of cooperation between the dark academies of warp-lore in the corrupted webway around the eye
* Its unclear if this is a single individual, an assumed title passed between great tzeentchian eldar, or some more unusual entity, but in any case it is the Crones' answer to both Eldrad and Ahriman 
* Has incredible supernatural power and knowledge, and is the conduit for much of the Tzeentchian Crones' access to Tzeentch's realm and boons, but little military power
* The way you describe it the changeling and the Indigo Crow seem pretty similar. It's interesting that the Indigo Crow has an somewhat clear identity and MO but doesn't know it's overarching plan, the Changeling has what looks like a long term plan and MO, but no clear original identity, only hints. 
* It seems that they can know what they are doing or why they do it but have trouble keeping both in mind at the same time.

It's already been said that the Crow is so mad it needs to read it's own mind to know what it's up to. It might be that when the changeling knows the changeling's plan to usurp the Big Bird it is by necessity not the Indigo Crow, Tzeentch's greatest asset. The Indigo Crow's nature is to not truly know what he's meddling with, but to serve Tzeentch's will regardless, so he only knows his plan when he doesn't know he's the Indigo Crow. 

'''Chosen Taskmaster of Slaanesh'''

* The Taskmaster is selected to direct Slaanesh's material domain in the Eye of Terror while the inner circle enjoy the revels
* Holds power over significant portions of the Shah-Dome, including massive habitation, industrial, and technological assets, made even more imposing by direct connection to Slaanesh's palace
* While the Taskmaster has the strongest realspace assets and most readily granted and utilized warp boons, Slaanesh can provide less in terms of raw power and reality distortion.
* The Taskmaster's strategic purpose is to wield the ruins of the eldar empire Slaanesh has claimed to make the prince of pleasure arch-enemy of the Imperium as a means of expanding his influence on the warp, which works well for Malys

'''Malaria, the Living Hive'''

When Isha was freed from Nurgle's mansion, Nurgle no longer had a guinea pig for his experiments, and Malaria offered herself as a substitute. At first Nurgle took her up on that offer, but eventually the Lord of Stagnation eventually realized it just wasn't the same, and gave up on her. To everyone's shock and horror, Malaria actually survived Nurgle's experimentation, but not before she was merged with the [[Typhus|Destroyer Hive]] creating Malaria, the Living Hive.

Malaria is a disgusting creature. Half of her body is covered in hive-like outgrowths, home to growing maggots, rot wasps, daemon flies, and plague gnats. The parts of her body that are not covered in outgrowths, including most of her face save the area around her left eye, look as pristine and flawless as they did the day of the Fall (similar to Norse goddess Hel). However, this is only a veneer of normalcy. Malaria has almost no original tissue left, and if one were to break Malaria in half (as has happened several times), one would see that her insides are nothing more than honeycombs for the insects inside her with a thin veneer of skin on top (and then get stung by a bunch of angry Nurgle bees). She shouldn't even be able to move, having no brain, muscle, or bone, but since when is Chaos ever logical.

Malaria herself does not care. She is in a constant state of pleasure, happiness, and religious ecstasy as insects pupate inside her body, giggling like an innocent child in spite of the horror she leaves in her wake.

=== The Indigo Crow and Tzeentch's Involvement in the Raid on Nurgle's Mansion ===

The scene is roughly mid-to-lateway through the Great Crusade. At this time Eldrad was the nominal leader of the eldar people, mostly because he was the one yelling the loudest during the Fall and helped get a lot of people to safety. However, now that the immediate crisis has passed the eldar are starting to go their separate ways and they won’t listen to Eldrad anymore. Eldrad looks into the future. Sees the eldar fragmenting into feuding Craftworlds that barely talk to each other and get picked off one by one, then picking fights with the rising power of humanity which just left both races crawling in the mud. This was unacceptable. Eldrad refused to see his people degenerate and die. Only people eldar would listen to would be their gods, of whom only one was alive and relatively sane. The seers said rescuing Isha would be impossible. Eldrad never liked that word. Eldrad, being Eldrad, decides to kill two birds with one stone. So he comes up with a plan and goes looking for the leader of humanity.

Meanwhile, in the Warp, Tzeentch was equally unhappy with the current state of affairs. Out of all the Chaos Gods, Tzeentch had profited much less from the Age of Strife than the other three. Nurgle had his new unwilling waifu and was settling in for the long haul in which the galaxy has a long horrible decline into utter hopelessness. Slaanesh had their binge-eating fest where they ate most of the eldar pantheon, as well as their numerous still-living cultists on Shaa-dome. And Khorne, BLOOD KING OF THE GALAXY, was pleased at the constant war breaking out all across his domain. True, the galaxy was divided into innumerable petty empires whose borders changed constantly through low-level war, but the fact remained that Tzeentch benefited much less from the Fall and the Age of Strife than any of the other Chaos Gods. Additionally, this is most likely the point in time in which the other three Chaos Gods ganged up on Tzeentch and destroyed his wand of wonders, since this was after the birth of Slaanesh yet before the Big Four agreed to temporarily stop fighting each other (at least openly) until the Imperium was dealt with. This was no position for the Eldest of the Gods to be in. So he sends his greatest mortal champion to shake things up.

Back in realspace, Eldrad is starting to get desperate. He knows the eldar’s only long-term hope is to free Isha from Nurgle, but scouring all the old tomes he can’t seem to find any reliable way into the realms of Chaos. Then an old friend shows up out of nowhere (really the Indigo Crow who's stolen his friend's face, and when we say stolen his face, we mean [[Chaos|has literally stolen his face]]) and tells him about an all-but-forgotten path through the Webway he "discovered" via forgotten lore that leads right to the foot of Nurgle’s Mansion. Eldrad isn’t stupid, he knows this is suspicious and seemingly too good to be true, but he’s getting desperate. He uses the information.

The Raid happens. The Raid on Nurgle’s Mansion was still a hail Mary, but it turned what should have been a suicide mission into “merely” a million-to-one chance. Tzeentch’s involvement was just the reason why the raiding party wasn’t jumped by 887 Bloodthirsters as soon as they entered the warp and insta-gibbed. Tzeentch managed to convince the other two Chaos Gods to chip in. Khorne, BLOOD KING OF THE GALAXY, is apathetic to the power struggle, until Tzeentch explains possibilities for conflict should he succeed. Slaanesh already wants Isha, especially taking her from a fellow Chaos God, and is positively giddy there's a Man of Gold up for grabs. Tzeentch's agent would execute the ploy, Khorne's might would to stay Nurgle's reaction, and Slaanesh's seekers were to go catch Isha and bring her back before them. Tzeentch’s real plan was to let the mortals free Isha from Nurgle’s grasp before capturing both Isha and the members of the raiding party (including the last Man of Gold) in one fell swoop, using them as bargaining chips to constantly stir the pot of conflict between the Chaos gods causing constant change and preventing any of the other three from becoming too powerful. [[Not As Planned|None of this happened correctly]].

First off, while Tzeentch had been planning to stall the other gods as much as he could, he almost didn’t need to. Khorne didn’t need an excuse to wreck someone else’s shit, and led his forces on a merry rampage through Nurgle’s garden. Arrotyr is still a flaming anti-Isha fanatic and fucks his part of the operation sideways by opening fire on the other gods' assets before dismissing the task as unfit for his involvement and leaving to take potshots at Nurgle while the Blood King gave him the ax. Slaanesh almost immediately tries to screw the other three over and take Isha for itself, but the force of Keepers of Secrets that were supposed to take out the Steward is intercepted by Tzeentch's own kidnapping force stepping in so Slaanesh can’t just abscond with the prize (because they would eat it, thus running the entire endeavor). The Taskmaster is supposed to be organizing the real-space attack on wherever the portal was, which he half assed, but gladly used as an excuse to expand the Slaaneshi naval presence over Shaa-Dome and around the Eye. Meanwhile, the mortals had slipped into the realm of Chaos relatively unannounced, oblivious to the god war going on in their midst, and had grabbed Isha. Eldrad had realized almost immediately it was a trap and figured that the best way to get out of a trap is [[Alpha Legion|to play along and make your enemy think you had taken the bait until the last second]]. Eldrad, Oscar, and co. weren't supposed to survive their little trip into the Realm of Chaos. They did, against all odds. When you lay a trap, the mouse isn't supposed to make off with the cheese.

What was once a relatively organized plan now broke down into a free-for-all as the squabbling gods realized exactly what was at stake and that the mortals had a very real chance of making off with the prize. The mortals, meanwhile, are running for the portal like the legions of hell are on their heels, which to be frank they kind of are. Against all odds, they managed to make it out.

No matter, for the Indigo Crow although Plan A was a bust, it was time for Plan B. Plan A was the raid fails. Chaos now has the last surviving Man of Gold, the Phoenix Lords and a bunch of literally who humans to [[Rape|play with for ever and ever and ever]]. Also the Craftworlds start to get desperate and more of them fall to Chaos. No large scale civilized galactic society forms and Chaos gets to treat the galaxy as their playground. Good for Chaos overall, including him and his master. Plan B was that even in the unlikely event that the mortals would actual succeed Nurgle still loses Isha and Tzeentch fucking hates Nurgle. Also the upset in the Great Game means change and influence peddling time on a greater scale. Good for him and his master. Also if this alliance between human and eldar sticks and forms The Imperium then he, and by extension Tzeentch, have influence on highest members of its society who will personally owe him a big favour. From his point of view the game was rigged so he couldn't lose.

It looked like "[[Just As Planned]]" time too. [[Not As Planned|Then Eldrad tried to shank him because Eldrad wasn't a fucking fool and knew what games the Indigo Crow as playing]]. Crow escaped because Crow always expects to be stabbed in the back as part of his job and has got very adept at knowing when to cut losses and bolt for the horizon. Tzeentch wasn't happy about his favorite pawn's failure.

Overall, Tzeentch’s involvement in the raid was a combination of the time-old tale of “[[Just As Planned|trickster god tries to pull off something audacious]] (like steal fire from the gods, or all the knowledge in the world), [[Not As Planned|only for it to blow up in their face due to their own hubris]]”, combined with an unlikely event of unexpected success that nevertheless had massive repercussions for the rest of history (e.g., assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand). The Chaos Gods were so fixated on playing the Great Game that they didn’t realize the mortals could become a problem until it was too late.


''‘A Ring of Power looks after itself, Frodo. It may slip off treacherously, but its keeper never abandons it. At most he plays with the idea of handing it on to someone else’s care - and that only at an early stage, when it first begins to grip. But as far as I know Bilbo alone in history has ever gone beyond playing, and really done it. He needed all my help, too. And even so he would never have just forsaken it, or cast it aside. It was not Gollum, Frodo, but the Ring itself that decided things. The Ring left him.’ ‘What, just in time to meet Bilbo?’ said Frodo. ‘Wouldn’t an Orc have suited it better?’''

''‘It is no laughing matter,’ said Gandalf. ‘Not for you. It was the strangest event in the whole history of the Ring so far: Bilbo’s arrival just at that time, and putting his hand on it, blindly, in the dark. ‘There was more than one power at work, Frodo. The Ring was trying to get back to its master. It had slipped from Isildur’s hand and betrayed him; then when a chance came it caught poor Déagol, and he was murdered; and after that Gollum, and it had devoured him. It could make no further use of him: he was too small and mean; and as long as it stayed with him he would never leave his deep pool again. So now, when its master was awake once more and sending out his dark thought from Mirkwood, it abandoned Gollum. Only to be picked up by the most unlikely person imaginable: Bilbo from the Shire!''

''‘Behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that maybe an encouraging thought.’  -J.R.R. Tolkien''


''Oft does evil hurt itself - J.R.R. Tolkien''

=== Tzeentchian Webway Academies ===

Part of the high concept of the Tzeentchian Croneworlders is a parody of ivory-tower intellectualism and incomprehensible philosophy, especially postmodernism/deconstructionism. Trying to communicate in academia is often an exercise in frustration, as professors and officials all have private languages and even once those are deciphered their conversation is still generally incomprehensible, consisting of obscure referents to that University's unique conception of metaphysics. That is, of course, assuming they haven't decided their old language was hopelessly obsolete, and are currently in the middle of trying to make a new one. Except in the case of Tzeentchian Crones using charades and/or assassinations, because they don't have a language at the moment. Or that they haven't proven that whatever language they use is the only language that can exist, and everything else is meaningless babble by animals that just happen to look like people. Or that they acknowledge the existence of existence at all.

Overall they are quite Schopenhauer-esque, this school of thought being famous its incomprehensible drivel and fits better with the setting. It also provides a contrast with [[Sortarius|canon Prospero and it's organization]] since the Crones are marginally more organized than Chaos Space Marines and therefore tend towards competing Platonic or Pythagorean academies with long, illustrious traditions instead of sorceror covens.

===Changelings===
I'd been thinking we needed to do something with the Tzeentchian changeling, Crones giving their own children mutagenic modifications and slipping them into Imperial world and Exodite Eldar populations. Most probably go full technicolor teleporting Eversor before they reach adulthood, and the few changelings that hold it together become some of the most unpredictable malignant actors in Imperial space. 

One thing is that Crones, in the Shaa-Dome at least, seem to do decently to well maintaining a population the old fashion way. Just with high rates of childhood attrition from [Information purged for the benefit of readers], but even that is made up for by their enthusiasm at reproduction. 

At very least they probably wouldn't be too picky about genetic stock for such a project, and the project itself would be more to the benefit of the Scions, Witch halls, and the Attendants. That is to say, the Slaaneshi Crones have enough of a breeding program as is that the Daemonculaba would probably be a project put together by some mix Arrotyr, Nimina, or the Crow's forces, and the Slaaneshies get to just watch, fap, and giggle at the competition.

Doesn't even have to be little girls. It could be any Eldar female the Crones are able to get their hands on. Infiltrators work just as well when your loving wife turns out to have been replaced by an extradimensional horror and rips your face off.

The only issue would be detection. Eldar in canon have the technology to detect genestealers, so it's possible they would psychically notice their children/wives/sisters have been replaced by impostors. But then again this is the Cronedar. If anyone knows how to fool Eldar psychic senses, it's them.

===='The' Changeling====
Changeling may or may not be a double agent.

Ceggers brags that he once made it all the way through the Crystal Labyrinth and the Tzneetian deamon will attest that a small girl and a scruffy looking black dog did indeed once manage to get all the way to the Well of Eternity at the center despite all the cunning traps and riddles along the way.

It is always assumed that Ceggers was dressed up as a little girl because he is the sort of person who will do that sort of thing for a laugh.

But people always forget that there were two of them. Who was the dog? Was it Changeling? Was Changeling the little girls and Ceggers the dog just going along for the ride in heavy disguise?

Changeling doesn't know what it's true form is anymore and one of the things Tzneetch promises is that he will tell him what it is one day but why would a god need to do so? It could be that Changeling was not always of Tzneetch but was one of Cegger's creations back in the old days adopted by Big Bird after The Fall in exchange for protection from Slaanesh.

If that is the case then Tzneetch might also not know and is possibly going to use the Changeling as a bargaining chip at some point with Slaanesh should there be an advantage to do so in which case it won't matter.

But if it is a deamon of Big Bird rather than Cegger it would explain why it knew the way through the maze, but not why it was helping the Cosmic Jester. Unless it's playing the long game, throwing it's lot in with the King of Clowns because it hates it's master and finding a new patron in the same way that other deamons serve the Soul Forge.

Are the Mandraks connected to Changeling? Who can say.

One thing and one thing only for certain, Tzneetch was not happy that something saw what was at the heart of his maze. Not happy at all.

=====What the fuck=====
this one is really only a problem for people so deep in sorcery that there's really no helping them, but if you can shapeshift DO NOT take on the form of the Indigo Crow. His form is his function is his thoughts, so you just straight up become the Indigo Crow, and he might by some strange law of transposition briefly become you, with all your thoughts and soul, etc. 

The act of the Indigo Crow shapeshifting makes it the Changeling, and since the Indigo Crow is you at this point, and you are the Indigo Crow, shapeshifted, and so also the Changeling, the changeling briefly exists at two places at once. Because one of the Changelings is the Indigo Crow it cannot be the Changeling, and the whole superimposition of contradictory states collapses into one thing that is the Indigo Crow and something else that has forgotten itself from the universe, form soon transforming into nothing to fit their forgotten identity. 

More than a few cheeky Daemon Breakers and ambitious Crones have winked out of existence in this manner, and its not clear if the Crow even knows about this phenomenon.

=== The Old Eldar Empire ===

Surprisingly, the inhabitants of the Old Eldar Empire weren't always depraved and horrible people. The eldar didn’t emerge from the Webway after the War in Heaven and immediately go, “well, the [[Old Ones|old bosses]] are gone, time to snort hookers, do blow, and murderfuck us a new god. At first they were actually good and reasonable people, trying to do right and hew to what they thought the Old Ones wanted. This can be seen in the fact that the eldar actually left Earth and many of the Old Ones’ other laboratory worlds alone, when they could easily colonized it when the ancestors of humans were little more than squirrels. [[High_Elves|For many years the old eldar Empire actually protected the galaxy from destabilizing threats]] like the Cythor Fiends.

[[Dark Elves (Warhammer)|Then started the slow slide into decadence]], a death of a thousand cuts made from decisions that seemed quite reasonable at the time. The democratic council of equals became a kratocracy with an nominal autocrat split into feuding noble houses. They picked a fight with their old allies the Hrud. [[Nobledark_Imperium_Xenos#Ilmaea|They stopped the imperialistic aspirations of one would be conquering species much as they had before only this time they stole their suns and condemned them to a slow, agonizing death out of spite]]. They started doing drugs and seeing other species less as people and more as toys.

By the time humanity first started expanding into the stars, the eldar had virtually turned their back on the outside world and cared only about looking inward. For most the Dark Age of Technology humanity only knew of the eldar as “that inscrutable, isolationistic, highly advanced race that rarely if ever cares about anything outside its borders” except on the rare occasions in which they wanted to expand and bloody wars were fought. Then as the rise in influence of the pleasure cults grew, the eldar went from uncaring to outright malevolent, actively snatching victims from beyond their borders to satisfy their twisted whims. Thankfully by this point humanity and the other members of the Interstellar League were strong enough to repel such raiding incursions, though if the Old Eldar Empire had actually cared enough to put their mind to it they could’ve wiped us all out. That said, diplomatic channels didn’t dry up all at once. The eldar almost never allowed mon-keigh into their territory, but during times of peace you very rarely saw eldar (especially young eldar) in the GaB Human Dominion. Eldrad toured around the Dominion for the eldar equivalent of spring break in Cancun, but he barely remembers any of it.

And, of course, the depravity of the late empire [[Slaanesh|and what it led to]] is well-known.

Humanity and eldar both claim to have dominated the galaxy during the Dark Age of Technology, and to some degree the claims of both groups have merit. In terms of sheer space humans and their alien allies certainly occupied more planets, whereas from the human persepective the Eldar Empire appeared to consist of a few scattered, heavily-defended enclaves linked through the Webway. However from the Eldar perspective the Eldar had already chosen the best planets to live on, whereas the rest of the galaxy lived on the other 95% of planets that they didn't feel worth colonizing. Eldar planets were essentially all linked via the Webway, meaning the Old Eldar Empire was in effect one giant city and reinforcements could literally walk from planet to planet. For any invasion to succeed you either had to have the strength to take on the entire Eldar Empire at the same time or somehow cut the planet off from the Webway. Invading human worlds, on the other hand, was like kicking a hornet's nest, as the system's local Man of Gold and Iron Minds remotely activated and linked all pieces of human-built technology for the sole purpose of expelling the intruders.

The Senate of the Old Empire were protected by a praetorian Phoenix Guard, who were empowered by a fragment of Asuryan much in the same way that the Harlequins are empowered by a fragment of Cegorach and the Handmaidens are powered by a fragment of Isha. Asuryan created the Phoenix Guard through a loophole in his own decree when it became clear the eldar needed more direct intervention to maintain stability, Asuryan said no direct interaction with mortals, he said nothing about supercharging mortals with chunks of your power from across the veil. Asuryan wasn’t too happy about it, he expected his laws to be obeyed to the letter without question or criticism and then gets salty when they are obeyed exactly as far as the letter or actively hamper what needs to be done, and he was too proud to change things because that would require admitting he didn’t write a perfect law in the first place. Unfortunately, because he was still only indirectly interacting with them it meant they were in no position to stop the birth of Slaanesh.

One of the main purposes of the Phoenix Guard aside from protecting the Eldar Senate from outside threats was to maintain order in the Senate by keeping its members from openly trying to murder each other, as well as stop the super-psykers among them from simply trying to take what they wanted by brainwashing everyone else. Given that they were a semi-monastic order sworn to serve the eldar pantheon’s top god and therefore relatively independent of the power struggles and were gifted with the ability to shrug off mind control, this made them marginally more reliable than the actual Roman Praetorian Guard. At least in the late empire. At first they were probably just as noble they claimed.

==== The Many Atrocities of the Last Days of the Eldar Empire ====

*There was a certain drug that, when consumed by an Eldar, briefly boosted the user's telepathic abilities while also forcing the user's body to slowly crystallize into an array of other drugs. The exact effects and potency depended heavily on the physical qualities and mental state of the user over the course of the transformation; therefore, the lords of the Empire kept 'Eldar farms' where slaves were force-fed the catalyst-drug while carefully kept in certain states of mind. The most potent mixes (although subject to personal taste) were often considered to come from newborn infants, kept in a state of terror and confusion through the entirety of their short lives. The children's mothers were often forced to witness the slow deaths and subsequent consumption of their babies; this did nothing for the quality of the drug, and was done exclusively for the sake of assholery. 
*Billions if not trillions of members of various alien species were kept as slaves. Many Eldar took to breeding specific varieties of slave-species, much as humans breed specific varieties of horse and dog. Although initially this was for practical purposes, aesthetic values quickly took precedence, and most of the slaves of the late-stage empire suffered from multiple types of deformity, features deemed 'aesthetic' becoming grotesquely exaggerated over generations. Of course even this was not enough, and for many Eldar slave-breeders deformity and defect became an end-goal rather than side-effect, engaging in perverse competitions with each other to see how many genetic defects one individual could have and still produce offspring.
*It was the fashion for Eldar nobles to show off the skill and obedience of their slaves by having one prepare him, her, or itself for dinner. The exact procedure varied according to physiology, but the general outline remained the same. First, surgical sorceries were layered upon the slave to allow him to continue functioning despite massive blood loss and organ trauma. Then, preparation would begin; the slave would skin himself, flense his muscles, and remove his own organs to provide the meat for the meal. Then, the slave would cook his own tissues, a process that often took days given late Empire cuisine, every moment sending jolts of agony through exposed nerves. Then, the slave would serve his master and guests; finally, the slave would crack open his skull or closest equivalent, offering his brain-meats to the master as the final course. If the slave had performed sufficiently flawless, the master would honor him by consuming the brain, finally killing the slave; otherwise, hideous tortures awaited, often with the participation of the guests as apology for subpar service. 
*There were artisans, bone carvers, who would make their works from the bones of the living, often surgically and sorcerously fusing four to thirty slaves together to ensure there was a large enough lump of bone to carve.
*In many noble families of the Eldar Empire, it was a tradition to initiate a child into adulthood with incestuous torture, often with prayers to Isha for a child to result from the various couplings. In some families, those children of incest, twisted by the sorcery used in the torture that conceived them, started an honored line of breeding. In others, they became the centerpiece of a feast to celebrate their parents.

==== Eldar "Robots" ====

Despite having a sixty six million year head start over humanity, the eldar never really made widespread use of advanced self-aware artificial intelligence like the Men of Iron and the Iron Minds, mostly because they really didn’t need them. Eldar “robots” such as they were, were more like automata the eldar puppeted with their mind to do work while the actual body lazed around and engaged in hedonism. The bulk of Old Empire armies tended to be composed of these constructs supplemented by flesh and blood forces. The Men of Iron and Iron Minds actually sneered at the eldar over this, saying unlike the eldar’s creations they were partners with humanity and at least their creators had the balls to give them free will. A lot of this was bravado, for despite being a lot more intelligent than their eldar counterparts the Men of Iron and the eldar’s robots were at best evenly matched one-on-one due to the Old Eldar Empire having about sixty six million years of research and development on the Men of Iron.

After the Fall, robotics generally just fell out of use among the eldar, Exodites and Craftworlders didn’t use them because the amount of leisure time their use created is the kind of thing that led to the Fall in the first place, and most Dark Eldar don’t have the psychic juice to power them anymore. The Dark Eldar do use more advanced constructs like Pain Engines, however. However, the shells used to make the puppets were used to make the first wraithguards, modifying them for use as a whole-body prosthetic for a single soul instead of a projected handpuppet for a corporeal body. Indeed, just like how Imperial Knights were originally designed as megafauna busters and Terminator armor are weaponized hazard suits, most modern Eldar technology is civilian-grade stuff repurposed for a lower tech level. The actual military equipment of the Old Eldar Empire are mostly located in the Crone Worlds, much of which was either damaged by the Fall or fell into disrepair during the five thousand years the Crone Eldar spent fighting and fornicating one another in the Eye. The biggest collection of what remains of actually working Old Empire military equipment is monopolized by Arrotyr.

This is also the reason why the Craftworld/Exodite eldar despite being a part of the Imperium for more than ten thousand years never tried to use their influence to reverse the stigma on artificial intelligence (though it should be noted that building A.I. is technically not one of the Rules and exists in kind of a gray area). It didn’t hinder the eldar or their way of life, so they didn’t feel much of a need to complain about it. Additionally, they saw the status of self-aware A.I. and the Men of Iron as an internal concern of humanity, and so mostly deferred to humanity on how to deal with A.I. because humanity would know more about how to deal with their creations than the eldar would.