Editing Nobledark Imperium Xenos (section)

=== Mon-Keigh ===

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The Mon-Keigh, as in the original Mon-Keigh from which the more general eldar term is used today, were a race of cannibalistic, misshapen [[Ogre_Kingdoms|ogre-like]] monstrosities that terrorized the eldar early in their history. Humanoid only in the loosest shape of the word, the Mon-Keigh were characterized by matted orange fur, chitinous plates overlaying the skin, a clawed left arm much larger than the right, and a snake-like gullet capable of expanding to swallow chunks of food larger than the Mon-Keigh’s own head. The Mon-Keigh were also known for their massive appetite, having a massive gut complete with a complex gizzard which allowed them to digest almost anything, including quite frequently each other. Satiating this massive appetite (and avoiding those who would do the same to them) which was a primary impetus behind the Mon-Keigh’s eventual development of space flight. Unlike most species, who developed space travel to collect resources, flee harmful conditions, or satisfy their curiosity, the Mon-Keigh traveled to the stars in order explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, and [[Ogre_Kingdoms|eat them]]. At the same time, this motivation led the technology of the Mon-Keigh to seem rather inconsistent. Despite being a race that could build starships, on the ground the Mon-Keigh behaved more like a horde of techno-barbarians and big game hunters than an invading army. Eldar ledgends make extensive record that the Mon-Keigh preferred quick, spacious ground and low-air hunting transports over any kind of armored vehicle, easily tracked in their comings and goings from the Mon-Keigh's ground encampments despite camouflage due to the raucous passengers.  Likewise the Mon-keigh rarely used anything more powerful than an autogun or a lasgun, as any more advanced, destructive, and tactically flexible weaponry such as explosive bolts, plasma, or meltas didn’t often leave enough of a body to eat, and thus defeated the purpose of their use.
 
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Perhaps the most notable effect of the Mon-Keigh on history is when a Mon-Keigh warband led by the warlord Hresh-Selain invaded the eldar homeworld of Shaa-Dome back in the days when the eldar in the midst of their Bronze Age. However, during the invasion of Shaa-Dome, the Mon-Keigh’s tendency to fight in disorganized hunting parties and use relatively primitive weapons despite being able to build and use spacecraft ended up exploited as the massive liability it was.  Their expected entrees A) outnumbered them by an order of magnitude, B) readily organized into massive and well supplied armies across their world, C) were able to fall back on guerrilla combat and asymmetrical warfare in the forests of Shaa-Dome once the initial assault failed, and D) were sufficiently perceptive and clever to begin copying the Mon-Keigh's lower technology and grappling with understanding their higher works. The Mon-Keigh were used to fighting as big game hunters, not an actual army. This first encounter left a deep impact on the cultural memory of the eldar, and is in large part why the Eldar are so paranoid and mistrustful of other species in the first place. For the eldar, their first contact with another sentient species was when a technologically-advanced race descended from the stars to butcher them and hunt them down like animals.
 
The eldar during this time were led by Elronhir, who was a stubborn old (proto-eldar equivalent of sixties) warrior who united the various warring nations and tribes of Shaa-Dome to drive Hresh-Selain and the Mon-Keigh off their planet. It is not clear if Hresh-Selain’s warband was completely slaughtered by the proto-eldar or if they just got them to flee, eldar history claims the former but given their naiveté of the greater galaxy at the time and the tendency of later eldar to exaggerate their own history both options are possible. The twin heroes of the War in Heaven, Eldanesh and Uthanesh, helped as well, but at the time they were little more than rank-and-file soldiers (proto-Eldar equivalent of late teens) in the conflict and at best it could be said they were talented warriors. When the Old Ones showed up shortly after the Mon-Keigh had been defeated, Elronhir considered himself too old to fight in another war and wanted to die of old age in peace, upon which Eldanesh and Uthanesh picked up the torch (and were among the first of the Eldar to be genetically enhanced by the Old Ones).
 
The Old Ones knew about the Mon-Keigh. Indeed, given the fact that all the Mon-Keigh cared about was eating, it's highly likely that the Old Ones covertly sponsored their rise to becoming a space-faring species, though the Mon-Keigh never knew they were sponsored and thought they were in control of their own destiny. All the Mon-Keigh knew was that they occasionally received cryptic warnings that a particular star system was off-limits, and warbands that didn't pay attention to those warnings tended to disappear. The Mon-Keigh had a very alien mindset that was predicated around them being the apex predator and everyone else being perceived as talking food, and therefore could not be communicated with or controlled as easily as later species (among which were the Krork, which is illustrative of the Mon-keigh), but a wize Slann could slip a craving for something new into a warband's heads and send them on their way. They were useful if the Old Ones wanted a particular species wiped out without wholly destroying the ecosystem around it, or as an evolutionary catalyst, the metaphorical anthill to the much later tyranids' galactic locusts, to test if a species had enough worth for the Old Ones to step in as patrons. In fact, Hresh-Selain's discovery of Shaa-Dome would not have been an accident, especially given how soon the Old Ones showed up afterwards. The Old Ones, in their inscrutable ways, may have directed the Mon-Keigh towards Shaa-Dome, Hrudworld, and other worlds to find races suitable for uplifting for the War in Heaven (the proto-Eldar, Hrud, and others merely being the ones that survived). Regardless, a Bronze Age race managed to fight off the Old Ones' favored planet pruners, and combined with the proto-Eldar's psychic potential and ability to selectively express their own genome, the Old Ones took notice.
 
Some Mon-Keigh fought in the War in Heaven, even wielding weapons far more suitable caliber for that conflict. The Eldar didn’t pay too much attention to this, as they assumed the War in Heaven was a war of such magnitude that even the worst of enemies would be willing to ally to stop the Necrons and their omnicidal crusade. Regardless of their opinions, shortly after the Old Ones uplifted the Krork they set them on the Mon-Keigh, who had outlived their usefulness and had officially grown too uncontrollable to bother to salvage, as a test of their war making ability. This nearly wiped the Mon-Keigh out in a single blow, and few survived to fight in the remaining War in Heaven. Nobody cared. Indeed, as the Old Ones' sense of humor tended that way, they found it hilariously ironic that the Mon-Keigh were killed and eaten in the same way the Mon-Keigh had been killing and eating others. Be'lakor probably did at the very least. A few bands the ancient Eldar didn't know of survived for a time around the ragged edge of the galaxy, trying to stay away from everyone and everything that had become so much bigger than them. They didn't survive the Enslavers.

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