The Dark Eldar Project

[Strider]

Greetings everyone. As some of you might have noticed, I'm just starting up Dark Eldar, and hope to make a somewhat massive army out of 'em, based on a whole Kabal. However, the resources on the DE are next to nil, whether they been in the codex, forums, even EldarOnline doesn't include much on them besides tactics.

What I'd like to do is assemble a group of fluff nuts who would be interested in fleshing out some solid background for this race, on such things as The Fall, Dark Eldar motives, history, intrigue and the like.

I've set up a yahoo group for this, would anyone else be interested in joining, or giving some criticism on my current crazy idea?

[Renegade]

The Dark Eldar are a 3rd Ed. invention as far as a coherent army is concerned. The 2nd Ed. refers to them, but never fleshed them out as far as I remember. In fact, "Eldar Pirates" and Dark Eldar are sometimes used synonymously, however, I distinguish EP from DE in that EP are more like non-craftworld, non-exodite bands of regular Eldar, whereas the DE have given themselves over to depravity and are akin to Chaos worshippers in their outlook, although they themselves do not worship Chaos per se.

[Lavfluris]

From what there is on the Dark Eldar, I can work out that the Dark Eldar represent Eldar society before the Fall, they are all that is left of that time. During the Fall, the Dark Eldar souls were pulled between the matterrium and the immatterium by Slaanesh and She Who Thirsts is still pulling at their souls to this day, still drawing their souls to her slowly.

There are two reasons why Slaanesh can not pull away their souls quicker. The first is that the Dark Eldar live in Commograph, deep in the webway, shielded from Slaanesh. The second is that the Dark Eldar offer souls to Slaanesh in place of their own. They will capture slaves in abundance and torture them which in turns, ensures that Slaanesh will take the offered soul and lose momentarial interst in the Dark Eldar soul.

In trying to avert Slaanesh, the Dark Eldar are becoming very Slaaneshi by sacrificing and torutring their victims, as well as indulging in hedonistic practices. They are hated by the other Eldar more for being the remnants of the old Eldar society and becoming all most Slaaneshi in their acts.

[Chaoswithchains]

There's very little fluff about for them I'm afraid...
Though there is the occasional fan-fic on them

I would suggest you get in contact with Shadowheart on the Portent forum, he's written a rather impressive piece of Fan-fic, called Blood Night which you may like to have a look at. I would have thought he would be interested in this sort of thing.

If you want the REALLY badass Eldar though I suggest you go for the Crone-World Eldar, those were the ones, exactly whats happened to them is not know... but it has been suggested that some are still alive... in some form...

[Hrothgar]

Have you seen the fluff bit they had in WD when they released the Asdrubael Vect model? From what I've seen, the DE have next to no background (perhaps forgivable when there is older information available...nah.), which really leaves them lacking when compared to the other new races, such as Tau and Necrons. The AV article had some info on how AV had come to power in the aftermath of the fall, taking control as Slaanesh was born.

[Strider]

I went looking for the AV White Dwarf yesterday, but none of the Shops around here carried it, cept for Wizards of the Coast, and they don't like my family.

Thanks for the heads up on Shadowheart, I'll gove give him a ring.

[Wanderingblade]

Definitley worth checking SH, maybe a post explain the DE project in the background section there, I can think of others who might be interested.

[Lavfluris]

It's a shame that the Dark ELdar have very little fluff, they are one of the more interesting aspects of the Eldar, next to Harlequins and Exodites.

And if anyone has read Farseer, you'll see it reinforces the theories put forward on the genesis of the Dark Eldar.

[Nevmenel]

Just bought Farseer today... looks good. Ok, I can't decide... Eldar or Dark Eldar?

[Lavfluris]

That's a tough decision seeing that there are four types of Eldar, which are the Craftworld Eldar (they branche out into five sepreate amries, each very distinctive), the Harlequins (small amries but very elite troops), the Exodites (think of them as wood elves in space, but with dinosuars) and the Dark Eldar.

You might wanna read the codexes of the Craftworld Eldar and the Dark Eldar, and see which army you perfer the backrground of. At the end of the day, the background usually is the determing factor of playing an army.