Editing Nobledark Imperium Notes (section)

= Dark Eldar =

Urien Rakarth is doubtless still the same twisted fuck. He is probably enjoying the new strange specimens the Chaos Eldar bring from the Eye of Terror.

Duke Sliscus is in disfavor in Comorragh. Whenever he comes into port, there surely will be bloodshed between his pirates and the Chaos Eldar. He considers himself the rival of Prince Yriel, stating his contempt and pity for a once noble Eldar to debase himself before monkeigh. Yriel for his part has too many rivals to keep track of already. Duke Sliscus, when he isn't feuding with the new 'guests' in Comorragh or leading massive pirate invasions has a profitable drug cartel he runs. He likes to sample his own stock.

Kheradruakh the Decapitator has no shortage of heads these days. The shrine grows. The Decapitator is a bogeyman to the Imperium, an unstoppable and grisly assassin without peer. Many a fledgling Imperial hero has been found dead in the night, hacked to pieces, with their head missing. Unusually close to Lady Malays, acting as her bloody left hand.

Drazhar acts as Vest's iron right hand. Rumored to be the greatest swordsman in the galaxy, he has cut a bloody swathe through the Imperium's finest, leaving a trail of corpses and legends behind him. Despite his merciless efficiency in the killing fields, Dark Eldar don't trust him. He acts with too much honor, maintaining an unsightly code. He eschews subterfuge, preferring instead to kill his enemies face to face. And worst of all top the Chaos Eldar, one whisper placed him in the Gardens of Nurgle during Isha's liberation. Perhaps this is why Vect keeps Drazhar close: he so loves to see his bride furious. Rage and hate are a fine substitute to love for the dark Eldar.

Dark Eldar joined in the War of the Beast (and started attacking their Craftworld and Exodite kin in larger number than in canon) because Craftworlders asked Dark Eldar to at least try to leave humans alone after the Craftworlders and Imperium had allied for the raid on Nurgle's Mansion. They didn't even ask the Dark Eldar to change their ways, they basically went "Look, we're working with these mon-keigh. Can you please find some other group of mon-keigh to go perform your business on? Like the Tarellians. Nobody cares about the Tarellians". Dark Eldar were incensed that their white-knighting kin were telling them what to do and attacked both the other Eldar and the Imperium even more to spite them. The Craftworlders ironically found themselves being attacked by kin while fighting alongside strangers. As a result, unlike canon, the majority of Craftworlds and Exodites hate the Dark Eldar.

Up until the union between Vect and Malys the Dark Eldar were seen, by their gods at any rate, as still their children. Misguided children maybe but kin all the same. After the union of the Dark and the Chaos the gods have stopped caring about them. They may, as individuals, still be capable of crawling their way back to the light but they will have to do it on their own because the old gods don't feel it is worth the effort anymore.

===Dark Eldar Philosophy===

The Dark Eldar have a rather weird philosophy. In their mind they are the only truly free people, free of decrees from gods, kings, or emperors. The Eldar Gods were weak, because they weren’t strong enough to save themselves from being murderfucked/shattered/kidnapped (or at best saved themselves by running away like a coward), and therefore don’t deserve their worship. They see the Exodites and Craftworlders as blind sheep who can’t think for themselves. They don’t have a much better opinion of the Crone Eldar, who they see as just as bad for prostrating themselves before some incomprehensible god, exchanging one set of shackles for another.

Commorragh likes to style itself to outsiders (when they do bother to culturally posture) as a libertarian meritocratic utopia where everyone is free to do as they please without having to bow to the will of gods, kings, or any other authority. It’s unclear who they’re trying to convince with this message, as the Imperium sees them as a bunch of thieves and pirates (on a good day), the Crones see them as prudes in denial, and the Necrons and Orks don’t really give a shit. Thing is “people” to the Dark Eldar has a really, really narrow definition. "People" to them means trueborn, Commorragh-born Dark Eldar. Mon-keigh need not apply. Defecting 'edgy' Craftworlders and Exodites (which does happen) end up at the bottom of the social heap and have trouble climbing up, usually ending up a vagrant on the street or a corpse lying face-down in some alley. Vatborn have a better chance than most, but there is still a stigma surrounding their origins at best or considered "half a person" at worst. The highest ranking defectors and vatborn generally get that way by hiding or eliminating any evidence to the contrary. Non-Dark Eldar have risen through the ranks before, but these instances are really, really rare, and you basically have to be a Fabius Bile-level sick fuck before they even begin to take you seriously.

Outside the xenos districts, where races like the Slaugth, Sslyth, or even human pirates come to trade their wares or look for mercenary work, Commorragh is really only “safe” (in the loosest sense of the word) for Dark Eldar and some of the Harlequins and Crones. Dark Eldar because they can walk through the streets without getting knifed for being a mon-keigh (no guarantees are made for any other reason for knifing). Harlequins and Crones because both groups are violent and crazy and those two traits are a good knife deterrent in a bad neighborhood like Commorragh. Even the Crones are barely tolerated, Dark Eldar seeing their constant proselytizing as annoying, and those Crones who try to go one step further and subvert the city find that the Dark Eldar’s patience can rapidly wear thin. Harlequins are given a bit more respect/fear, as the Dark Eldar know their god has a very real presence in the Webway. Even Vect tried to avoid antagonizing the Harlequins until his plans were set in stone.

====Commorragh: A Fair and Upright Society====
[[What|Wait, what?]]

Okay, this is going to take some explaining.

Surprisingly enough, compared to the attitudes of the Old Empire and Shaa-Dome after the Fall, Commorragh is fairly idealistic. Sure sadism and exploitation are commonplace, but there's a degree of social mobility however improbable, all the pain serves some purpose instead of existing for its own sake, and there's even some distorted version of taste that bounds their wildest excesses. Theoretically, anyone can make it just below the top in Commorragh (anyone in this case referring to Trueborn Dark Eldar and to a lesser extent Vatborn), though not the very top because Vect doesn't want someone bungling the whole system and implementing their idea of social order. And if you don't like the system, you're always free to leave (except you can't, because Vect ate up all his competition and now Commorragh is essentially a monopoly). By contrast, the Old Empire was composed of a bunch of aristocratic Sidhe houses constantly fighting each other for power with very little social mobility unless you were a "new money" OP plz nerf psyker. For Vect, who grew up before the Fall and who's cutthroat rise from gutter rat to minor servant in noble house was seen as beyond the pale, Commorragh is the picture of a fair and upright society. And its hard for even Eldrad to argue against Vect that the Craftworlders are a truer reformation of the Old Empire than the Dark Eldar. Stripped of the mystical excesses and more psychotic whims, the Eldar of the pre-Fall empire would undeniably be closer to Vect's Project than to the Craftworlders and Exodites, who live a romanticized cultural myth alike to their ancestors in the War in Heaven

Eldar are known for their obsessive, perfectionist tendencies and extreme devotion to goals. The Crones are devoted to serving Chaos. The Craftworlders are devoted to their paths. The Aspect Warriors are devoted to combat. The Harlequins and Handmaidens are devoted to their gods. Eldrad is devoted to saving the eldar people. Vect is devoted to Commorragh. It's his life's work and vanity project, his statement on what society should be like. When Vect says "I am Commorragh", he's not kidding.

===After the Wedding===

I like the idea of the more sane Withered and maybe some of the less extreme younger generations and maybe quite a few of the Vat-born of the Dark Eldar having their eyes opened by the wedding.

Up until that point they could always point at the Cronedar and say "at least we aren't that". Then their great and independent city becomes so close to that that it makes no practical difference, not that it did to outsiders anyway.

Now they don't have an option. Now they are staring into the abyss with Clockwork Orange eye clamps on and they can't look away and they are slowly being dragged forward and they can see perfectly well where this journey ends. Oh holy ever loving fuck they can see where this journey ends, this is going to be The Fall v2.0 and they are at ground zero.

A large number of their number would maybe have gotten a Harlequin escort out of the Dark City. Vect wouldn't have been recklessly brash enough to antagonize the Clowns until the marriage had stuck and he knew it was safe, their god is often abroad in the webway and can manipulate it to some degree.

That would have been the last time the Harlequin Troupes would have visited the City of Sins. Beyond that point it's just a Chaos stronghold with nothing worth saving. At that moment the City was forsaken by the elder gods. Even Khaine. They had finally managed to make their own mother admit they were irredeemable and wish them dead.

Of the millions of Repentants they would be viewed as highly suspect. They would only be permitted into the visitors section of the Craftworlds if that and that is generous.

They would not be officially permitted on most human or other xeno worlds although that would be very difficult to enforce as eldar can not into paperwork at the best of times and one group of eldar is difficult to tell from another to a basic human. Needless to say Chaos and Dark Eldar infiltration would increase drastically, but only temporary.

However, don’t take this to mean that Commorragh is deserted, or that the majority of Dark Eldar defected. Commorragh is huge, being essentially two Dyson Sphere-sized outgrowth of the Webway stacked on top of each other. The Kabals and their Archons are there, being too deep in the sunk cost fallacy to ever leave. In their mind, they didn’t spend their considerable lives scheming and backstabbing their way to the top just to abandon all that and start all over as a second-class citizen. The same is true for any Dark Eldar who are infamous enough to be recognized as individuals by the Imperium at large. For both groups, they feel like they have no choice but to stay in Commorragh, and would rather oppose Vect to the bitter end. They would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven, a mon-keigh turn of phrase that is rapidly turning out to be disturbingly literal.

The Dark Eldar who left Commorragh are the young, the idealistic, the ones who aren’t entrenched in the power structure and thus have nothing to lose if they leave. Especially the vatborn. Being treated like second-class citizens or pawns at best, many of the vatborn probably jumped ship if they were able to. Of course, this just means the Dark Eldar have just kicked their cloning vats into high gear both to replace the losses caused by the refugees and to meet the demand for troops by the Crones.

==The Bleeding Star==

The Bleeding Star is essentially a Chaos Eldar Flying Dutchman, and the Croneworlder's version of an Ork attack moon. However, while an Attack Moon prioritizes toughness over firepower, the Bleeding Star (as would be expected of something of Dark Eldar origins) prioritizes speed and power over defense. Precise, long-range weaponry to a Moon's wild sprays of fire, fast to its slow, (relatively) fragile to its ludicrously tanky. It’s like a Dark Eldar raiding party on steroids, like a Craftworld that someone rammed into a Space Hulk. Also unlike Attack Moons or World Engines, which tend to be fairly ponderous, the Bleeding Star has a habit of showing up in orbit around a planet with no warning. When a normal Dark Eldar raiding party shows up to a planet, it’s a fair bet that you can eventually fight them off before they do too much damage. When this thing shows up around any world that isn’t a Fortress World or a Space Marine Homeworld, you’d better hope that someone else noticed and is sending backup ASAP. Maybe worth two or three Assault Moons. Not powerful enough to be worth the EVERYONE PANIC levels of a World Engine, but dangerous enough that the Emperor is briefed each time it shows up.