The 40k Lorecast - Episode 14 - The rise and very brutal fall of the Aeldari Empire.

Episode Date: December 26, 2023

On this episode we cover the incredible rise and and growth of the Aeldari empire. Then what happens when the most inquisitive and advanced race in the galaxy starts to get bored. Then what happens when you feed Chaos with everything they love and more. Anyone else ever broken the sky? Anyone.........PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallOur Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out Pebl: https://hellopebl.com* Check out Pebl: https://hipebl.ai* Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/loreAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K lore cast. Hello and welcome the 40K lore cast with me, John Barsati and Brad Chester. This guy. Hot off the presses of an orc trifecta, we've decided to do a little tease of what's to come with Eldar, by doing kind of a... We're not going to jump headlong into Eldar after doing orcs because we're just going to get tired. And also, don't want to blow our load this early. It's also a lot of everything. It's a lot of everything.

65 million years, to be precise. Yeah. And so for those of you who don't know Brad very well, Brad's favorite faction is. Eldar, right? It has been forever. I have played them since third edition, and I've been psycho about the lore.

It's how I got into the lore. Or got into the game, sorry, is because of the lore. We talked about this before. In Eldar, I love Eldar because Eldar are so anigmatic. They have ridiculous, horrible problems, but they also reach the pinnacle of greatness, and they also meet the depths of despair and failure. They've been both.

Yeah. And I would also point out that for those people who play competitively, they also tend to always be the most broken faction every addition. Oh, that's not that hasn't ever happened. I feel like someone's going to hit me through the internet right now. Before this, Eldar are an amazing faction. I actually also love them. I actually do think, and I will say coming off an orc cast,

I think playing Eldar and Orks is a really great way to enjoy the game because you kind of learn both styles very, very quickly, and they have two very enjoyable styles. Orcs are hit with Hammer, Eldar are dance around the star in the darkness, and hope no one sees you. Yep. And they hit you with a super sharp scapple. Yeah, incredible out of nowhere, you never saw it coming.

They are the ninjas and the orcs are, well, the ours. I mean, and one of the thing is that I do want to go into, what the differences between Eldar and humans are superficial at first glance. Yes. So, yeah, let's start there then. So let's go into kind of the idea of this cast is to take us from a quick back on the Eldar and take us from the rise of the Eldar, under the post-old ones, up through right about the 30th millennia.

And we'll leave it at that. Yeah, so we're in like 64.9 million years. Yeah, I mean, easy, piece. You look like, cover it in a quick, quick hour. Yeah, this is an hour, maybe 45-minute episode. Yeah. So we'll start with what Brown would be just touching on. What is an Eldar?

The thing is, is Eldars are very at first glance. It looks like a thin, athletic human. Yeah. But then you get quick divergence. One, you go with what the Imperium has said in the, in different fluff, in the lore. Eldar are actually disconcerting to be around for humans because their movements are all too precise, too fast. It's like interview with the vampire vampires where they just keep doing things and their movements are just too fast, too precise, too everything for humans. And that's because they were made to be that way.

Let's go into what they are. They were uplifted by the old ones. Go back into that in a second. but the Eldar are made to be OCD, hold my beer. Eldar have OCD. Eldar only focus on one thing at a time, and I make the fun of this all the time because we ended up with Aspect Warriors and things of that.

They get so focused on a certain type of fighting, a certain type of anything, knowledge, casting, knowledge of the warp of everything else, how to do things. But they also have people that are craftsmen that spend their entire time going, I am going to make the best donut. I'm going to make

they get people that are insane though. They pick something. Well, they pick something and they also spend a thousand years doing that something. Their craftsmen make artwork. Where they live is pure art that is functional.

But they also do that in war in learning and knowledge. And their leaders and psychic. Well, you even said it earlier where, you know, it's, it's disconcerting for humans to be around them. The Eldar, in that 64 million years between, you know, the fall of the old ones, and they were around before that. So this is probably a hundred million year species versus human beings, which are a million.

They were already space space. They perfected things like walking, which sounds like a stupid thing. But this is when you read the fluff to talk about this, when an Eldar walks, the way that they walk is so perfect. It actually is creepy because they've had millions of years to perfect walking. Because their steps are all exactly the same distance. Yeah, same distance. The way that the heel the toe ratio, everything about it is it's, it's every, but the thing is this every, they're all psychos about that. So everyone does that. It's not one guy does this. They, this became the only way to walk. Like there is, it is, they do everything they do is the exact best way. You know,

you could possibly do it, which is creepy to see. And also the thing is, is that we also have to look at the Eldar that we see now. And we'll go into this a little bit more. And we'll go a little bit after. But we now see only the extremes of Eldar, which is left. We'll get into that. It'll get how it happened. So let's talk about where they came from.

So as Brad said. Pull back real quick, though. Eldar are psychically infused. They were already a psychic race when the old ones, I guess, uplifted. lifted them. Yeah. They already knew that they existed, but they went, we need help. We need, we're in a, we're in a scrap right now.

There's actually no, it's interesting. We have stories of the necrons and how the necrons or the necrons tier came into being and met with the old ones. We don't have this for Eldon. No. The Eldar just kind of were under the old ones. That's all we know. And they, we just know that they got juiced up.

But we know that they created the orcs. And then they basically took the Eldar and went, oh, cool, a race that is, very magic oriented, psychically, to basically infused, like, genetically already. Well, we don't have time to do anything else. Let's just juice that up. They basically gave the LDRPEDs on psychics and went psychic and went, go. Go get them. Yeah.

And also, we need you to fight this super powerful star gods and also these pseudo-robot. Sudo-robot not robots. Yeah. Also, we're losing, so you need to do something about this now. Also do that. And then later on, there's these things that are eating us out of the webware and enslaving us. Can you also kill them off too? Like right now.

Yeah. Also, you need to kill them. Yeah. Also watch out because they might mine slave your entire. They're also coming for you too. But we're jumping out of it. So let's roll back to the old ones. So we have old ones, create them.

The interesting thing about the Eldar, which kind of the story I like about them is the old ones didn't create them for war initially. They were actually made for poetry. They were making. No, they're poet. They're supposed to be the best. One of the thing is, is that you're saying, make them, you know, uplift them to be the best of your, all your things. Yep. The old ones were creators, but they were creators trying to be in harmony with the universe kind of thing.

And they saw the elder as these are going to be the greatest of the builders, of the poets, of the craftsmen, of the artisans. and then they went, oh, crap, we're getting attacked and went, yeah, remember that the first plan? Do that, but do it with guns and swords and psychic attacks. But we were going to basically do poetry and build the best and the finest and the most uplifting things in the universe. They went, yeah, talk, talk, talk, talk. We're getting shot at. We get less talkie-talkie, talkie, more shooty, shooty. Yeah, let's go.

So we had a huge divergence in you are going to be the artisan. and the craftsmen and the poets of the universe. And also now, enough one with the universe. You have to be one with the gun. We need you to go kill all of these things. Some of them are star gods. Is that weird? Yeah, we're also losing terribly right now.

So at the time they were, they were getting rolled. What ends up, and Brad and I were discussing this before we started, but ends up kind of setting the Eldar down a path of destruction is, though, the old ones, though they were turning the tide against the C-10, the necrans, the arrival of the enslavers created a huge problem because the old ones just suddenly lost. The enslavers, even though the war they were winning, the inslavers did it.

And so the inslavers removed the old ones before they could give a legacy. Kind of in the thing, because they never know exactly what happened with that. The enslavers got beat back. The inslavers did that. The inslavers didn't kind of win away, but the enslavers still exist.

the old ones just kind of went away. But the problem is that the old ones, remember, the old ones were unlimited in tapping into the warp, but they never affected it. They just kept it as serenely. What the problem is, is that they have this race that was already tapping into the warp just by innately. They knew it existed, but they just, they all were connected to the work. we're going to basically do this.

We're going to make them more powerful. We're going to increase their connection to the warp because we want them to have more power because they need to be able to fight. So they did this, but then they didn't teach them, oh, yeah, what you shouldn't do is this and then they were gone, which is, oh, yeah, all of your actions, all of your thoughts have consequences in the warp because now you are forever. every descendant of yours is forever tied to the warp. Everything you do has consequences in the warp because we wanted you to be, again, the artistism

poets, so you were forever going to be putting perfection, harmony, philosophic, thoughts into the warp. They were a race made, to use a bad reference, they were a race made for good that was turned to a race made for destruction. whether they wanted to be or not. That's what happened. And the issue is, I don't think the old ones ever really conceived of what would happen. Well, what if we lost?

But the Eldar and the Cork and the Joker will do an episode on later continued on without us. What happens without direction is we covered in the last episode with orcs. What happened with the orcs were given no direction. And the answer is shit went down. Bad. So this is what ends up. So the old ones are just gone. luckily the necrons decided to turn them to C-Tan around the same time.

And then looking up, seeing it, and the Eldar, the necrons just go into hiding. So it's just the Eldar, the Jokoro, who were never mentioned, by the way, ever, anything I can ever find until much later. And the crook. So the Eldar just kind of look at the crook and go, no, and push them off to the side of the galaxy. Luckily. We're not losing to, you know what you can do? We can also do, but we're not you.

Yeah. The downside is the cork as we've been over, an orc is never beaten. So you can push him back, but the second you give a space, yeah, enjoy punching the tide. The thing is,

is that the Eldar, well, let's go back up just a little bit. The Necron's try to take on the Catan. They think, hey, we've won this fight, but there's a lot of Eldar.

Yeah. There's a bunch of orcs. There's, and they go, we're going to take this time to turn because we think it's the only time we're going to get, because they're still fighting going on.

Yeah. The necrons turn on the C-Tan in the middle of the war. Yeah. They attack Russia in the winner. And the difference is, unlike that, they actually won, though. They actually did defeat C-Tan. Well, but they took such horrific losses that they literally looked over and went, oh, in the time, because it took a long time.

Yeah. In the time that we've been doing this, those guys that were the helpers of the old ones are now a galactic civilization. Oh, we can't deal with this. They're extremely well armed. And it's them and the crew. That's all they've been doing, too. So the necrons just at this point disappear.

The elder are looking around, and there's no necrums. There's no C-Tan. The cork they knock out first. That's it. That's the entire galaxy. And the last thing that the note I had pointed out was that Brad touched us earlier. The old ones did warn the Eldar of saying, hey, you got to follow the original path we gave you. don't fall to your primal instincts.

But much like the emperor with the primarks didn't explain why. Why? Just says don't do it. And nothing happens. Now we're going to talk about 64 million years very, very quickly. But as you can imagine, things get forgotten. So the first thing that the elder are going to do is they begin to conquer the stars. And they laughably do it.

Yeah. I mean, there's nothing to stop them. Well, it's not only bad. It's just most of the races that are. going to be anybody don't exist. And the races that we don't know about, just like the two purged legions, they just rick-roll them and just move on with their lives.

Because they're so numerous and technologically and psychic. Because remember, no one else is using psychic powers besides them. Well, the orcs, I just don't realize it. I'm saying besides the orcs themselves, no one else is even tapping into this warp thing. so they are just psychically attacking anybody they meet and going, yeah, I had a gun, I had a sword, and then Ted's mind blew up. And I didn't know, I didn't know what a brace for a mind explosion. And the Eldar, what I would say is it starts off really great.

Actually, they for a little bit, and I say a little bit, it's... 60 million years? Yeah. They create a society of... More than, like 63 million years. Yeah, but they create a society for a long time. of no one wants anything. And this is a big deal because

Eldar of today do not use any of this forbidden for a reason. Yeah, much like the Dark Asia technology for mankind. They view this era as being losing in the fall. Right. Which is Eldar

legit, like, orcs do it accidentally. Eldar make with, because they are there in harmony. Everything that Eldar does that's mechanical isn't quite mechanical. It is actually there's warp energy. There's warp energy in it.

They make things out of the wraith bone, but it's all, it's sung into existence. Yeah. But they live in harmony. They're trying to do it off elves and fantasy, where they live in nature. They make things from existing.

Well, yeah, and we can also call this out that, you know, 40K is the predecessor to fantasy. And so the Eldar, or one of the first races, and in the game, Eldar, orks,

mankind chaos. Well, they're supposed to be the elves of old Nordic times. These all line up with... They're the Elysium elves. They live in harmony. They make things because they exist. But elves for millions of years have a society where

you can will anything you want into existence. And I mean anything. And they do this. They start off with the webways. What they do is the webways were again built by the old ones. And the Eldar took that. And the way I'd like to describe it is the old ones built the Roman roads, which any of us who've been to Europe or those who live in Europe have probably walked on,

driven on whatever a Roman road. Romans built good roads. But there weren't that many of them. And the Eldar took that and made that like the U.S. highways system. Yeah, they made it a super highway. Yeah, just or she'd join Obama, name it. And they are everywhere.

So now, as the Eldar conquer new worlds, they build new webways to connect those worlds. So they get instantaneous travel. you have instantaneous travel to anywhere you want, period, in the galaxy, and also you will things into existence. So as soon as you conquer a world, you just make whatever you want there. And that world becomes a garden world overnight. But one thing this is going to come up later is they also took the webways and took them up quite a few notches.

They actually began to build cities, Gomorra. We have to put this out. We say city and you think, oh, it's a city. No, it's a limitless expanse of interdimensional area. It's, you're like city. I live in Toledo. That's a small city. It's not a city.

It's totally safe. Toledo is just Toledo. Yeah. But I'm just saying, you look at that and you go, hey, man, what I'm actually saying is I have an Atlantic ocean size property and there's things everywhere. What do you mean by that? I'm going to edit this out later, but I'm trying to imagine what the Toledo of the Webway would look like. It's still the dark sitting. Oh, yeah.

Oh, it's, is it, is it, or even that you're not going to go there. It's the bad part of Garmat. It's a bad part of Gamer. Sorry, I may edit that out, but I probably won't. But it's a big deal on this because they are in, this is a big thing, and this isn't an, like, are the elder of the best, but you have to look at it from the elder mentality of Eldar are the kings of the universe for them. Yeah.

We are untouchable. It doesn't, there's nobody that could possibly do anything ever to us. That is the mindset of a race of people. And it gets, I mean, and what we talk about, we know who can touch us. Let's really dig into it. We're not talking. Like, when mankind expanded into the stars, they would hit, you know, we look at imperial history. They would hit, you know, random dude civilization, and they beat it.

But they still have to work at it. the elder would just show up and there'd be somebody, hey, no, and they go, they're gone. They're gone. They're gone. They're gone. They have next level technology. They just don't even think that these people exist. And that is, kind of sets the way for, I love that we put pleasure cults.

Yeah. But the problem with ego, ultimate power ultimately corrupts. And the problem is, is that Eldar took this to the next level, which is if you were born into life and you say, how long do I live, kind of forever? Effectively forever. And also, anything I think becomes real, and this is how I live from day one. Well, actually, at one point about that, not only do I live forever, but when I die, I reincarnate. Yeah.

So I am effectively immortal. I'm already long lived, but I'm also effectively immortal. Right. And the thing is, is that you were born into this. I am the most powerful thing in my, that I know of. That exists. But to be fair, you are the most powerful. My win.

That doesn't exist yet. Yeah, because also my whims become real. Cool. What am I doing for excitement? What is going to make me, remember, we are also a crazy OCD race, a perfectionist. What is going to stimulate me? What do I want to be the best at? What do I want a perfection of that?

And you started to get Eldar Colts that went, I'm bored. My OCD is I want to be the best at seeking new things. Well, let's dive into that, though, really hard, though. I think this is something that needs to be driven down when we talk about what happens to the Eldar. These are a species that were uplifted to be creative. They were uplifted to be questioning all these. wonderful features. And in 60-something million years, they're also incredibly powerful. They just solve all of their hardships. Well, there's nothing to be creative about because everything that

you could be creative about has already been solved. There's all, like, you have unlimited. And we think about what would make all of us happy in this world. At a basic level, it's like, well, I want food. Yep, that's, we, I can make that with my mind. I need shelter. Make that with my mind. You know, I want to read books. Well, you live forever. Every book you ever want to read is available for you. When you read so fast, you have almost unlimited amount of knowledge. There isn't this, there's just no, you lose want.

So you also lose need, which is what also propels people to be the best at something. Oh, yeah, I have a drive to be perfect. Yep. And right now you told me there's no reason to do anything. Because I'm already, you already are perfect, but I need to be perfect. You are perfect. That's a weird problem. The place to be.

And now I have a theory on this, and it's just a pure theory is I actually think this was the work of the chaos gods. I think this is actually zinch primarily. And the reason I think this is, when you read through the codexes and you read through the stories, the Eldar, there was a lot of war going on. They were, there were, Eldar actually did fight Eldar throughout this period of time. they did conquer galaxies. And I think that the warp gods were being formed at this era.

And there was this, what's going to get to happen. Because again, we have, you have to go on. The Eldar were warned that there's consequences to what they're doing, but they're now the biggest narcissist, crazy, we care not about anything. And that is going for millions of years into the war. Exactly. And there are stories of them. they viewed races as being just barbarians.

And so they would just eliminate them, which that was even that close. It was just like if you, if there was ants in your driveway, you went, yeah, get out of my drive. I get the stuff and spray them and they're gone. So this is, again, it's a theory I have, but I really do believe that this is some of the early chaos God intervention on, on them was making what's going to come next, making them say, well, I've mastered everything. What else could I do with my time?

and be terrible. There you go. Be next level terrible. Yeah. Be the best at being the worst. So we see this era that I referred to as the rise of the pleasure cults. You know, and let's go into this because I want to do the same thing of the pleasure cults. So at the time of the pleasure cults, we end up with the craft worlds.

This stage, the Eldar, I was saying earlier about Buzinj begin to go down, not all Eldar, but similar, a bit of a dark path. I think the first piece is, as we were saying, you have a species. I hate saying that they did this because they were bored because it's insulting. It's not that they were bored. They were created to be inquisitive

and consistently looking for further levels of perfection and knowledge. And they got all of it. That's the only way to explain it. It's it. It's done. And this is one of the strange thing is they could have literally found more things,

but I do agree. that they were corrupted down a path of, you could go try to find new ways or you could just do this right here, which is right in front of you. And so the story of the pleasure cults is a little bit different, depending on which codex you read,

which story you read, but effectively it starts off with, the theories, it starts off with kind of like them just looking for happy, fun things. Yeah, they did a hedonistic version of it, but then they instantly got bored with that. Yeah, that wasn't enough.

And then they went, well, I'm going to inflict harm. I'm going to make people fight, actually. Yeah. They started building coliseums and making people fight and killing. And that seemed to feed a bloodlust, which might sound like a certain chaos god. Well, then they actually even went farther from that, which goes back to because you think, again, the gods of chaos. And then you want siege to get back into this, which is, I don't want to them just fight.

I think you guys just enjoy hurting people. Yep. And then they went, well, how do you hurt people and how do you become perfectionists at hurting people? Yep. And then we get into these what become the pleasure cults go from a hedonistic cult to torture, murder cults. I mean, horrifying things. And then we see this in the Dark El Doran later on with Covens. Yeah, the Covins, the Hemunculi, for those of us who play 40s who play four a game, know the Dark Elder, the homunculi are the label of this era.

Yeah. And so the stories you hear are of like the cities at night, you just hear screaming. And it was it was these hordes of people chasing people that murdering them. Just murder and death everywhere. The end times, basically, of be stronger or just be used for the delights of these ruling. It's not even class. It was just the most powerful. Well, it actually was to realize. And this is where kind of it all, this is why, again, I think it's chaos because this is this is just, pure zinch right here. as these pleasure cults start growing, they begin to really infect the ruling and wealthy class of the Eldar

who find this to be even more awesome. At that point, now your society has hit the inflection point because now the people in charge are the ones doing all the bad. They've got all the power. They've got all the money. What do you do? And these things start to explode.

So what you do is you bail. And that's the thing is that what happens is is over thousands of years. Because sometimes they gloss this over in the stories. But this takes a huge amount of time. A large number of Eldar, which is a small number of Eldar compared to the full society of Eldar. Decide that this is not what Eldar being, this is not what being Eldari is. This is not what being an Eldar is. Take a moment, talk about Sears at this point, because the Sears, I think.

Well, the Sears start literally seeing into the future and see the downfall of the Aldar race, and they know that there's a cataclysm coming. And the ruling class of the Eldar effectively say, you're full of shit. Yeah. And they just go, and they're like, when's it happening? They're like, sometime in the future. They're like, yeah, good a year. I don't care. I live forever.

Yeah. And so the Elder starts constructing the craft worlds, which are planets with rockets effectively. They make, but they take forever to build. And this is why they gloss it over a little bit in the codices and a lot of times in some of the books. These are like lifetime creations. They take forever, thousands of. Hundreds of thousands of years to build these ships that are going to hold billions, trillions of people. And they say that this is, we're going to take people that are holding to the old

ways effectively, but also not the pleasure cults. Yeah. Well, it's the old ways, but it's super scientific. You know what I mean? They're super, but all they want is they're not going to use the things that created, well, this goes into the fall. But once some bad stuff happens, they realize that we fell into this because of the fact that we were using the warp to create light, just anything in life. We can't use it to create thought. The thought cannot become a reality. It corrupts completely. We will use our technology for everything, you know, and they have to become one. Time set off in literally random directions. And I have to be careful about bringing this topic up with Brad because we could lose 40 minutes, but exodites. There is. He knows where I'm going

with this. They are copying off of something called the exodites. We'll be right back after a quick break. Now, as the Eldar have been growing over time, this is not the first time that Eldar have left. the exodites have left for numerous of reasons the exudites represent one of an interesting move on gw's part where they decided to write they teased us all with rules about eldar riding dinosaurs and bright lances on their heads and have never released the model um and the biggest thing about this is that they've been doing this for millions for millions of years and these these are effectively lost eldar to the societies because these eldar went we are never going to achieve anything great if we don't have a need, not a want, a need for things. Well, yeah, the exodus where I think my opinion were always motivated by exploration. They were like, all right, this is where our thirst knowledge is.

Because one thing that we, and we recover this more, we dive more into Eldar, but each craft world that we discuss here of Eldar are independent. They have their own thing that they specialize and care most about. and, you know, depending on, you know, with your L.A. talk. Well, they drew, they drew certain peoples into it. Like, Bealtan, got all the, the specific aspect warriors. So they were basically, when this is the thing that draws people to us. And that became what the craft worlds, the craft worlds weren't as ridiculously focused as they were originally.

Yeah. But you got, as you get more and more. The thing was, this is the beauty of having immediate travel to anywhere in the world. Like the reason most of us don't move and go different places is it's expensive. It's a pain on the ass. How am I going to get there? Where am I going to live? All this stuff.

Now, imagine wherever you go, you have food. You have sheltery of all these things. What the Eldar at this point, what their race had become was, you would go and just live wherever you, wherever they were doing the thing you were most interested in. So that's where all these craft worlds were. That's what the Sam Hain, the Ulthway, the Alatoc, they were all, everyone who was with them, this was the thing they believed in. most. The exudites were the weird ones because they were the ones who were on team. I just don't want to be here. I want to go find something. Oh, they were like, this is, you are the problem. You are not what being elders about. Yeah. They said, we're going to go and be,

we're going to find out what we are, basically. But the good thing for the elders is because everyone was aware of the excites. They didn't leave in secret during the night. Everyone just like, hey, we're leaving. Everyone, all right, bye. Well, they didn't care. That's the thing is, is that it's one of the biggest things is, and let's just go straight to the fallenness. Because effectively, no one cares because the elder society has reached the pinnacle of corruption, but also the pinnacle of disdain. Billions of people are leaving. Who cares? I mean, this doesn't affect me at all. I'm going to continue to fish hooks and buttholes everybody and do the weirdest shit in the universe and no one can tell me not to, I don't give a shit that all these people, because also this is still a very small amount of Eldar.

Compared to a galaxy ruling civilization. Exactly. I mean, this is how ridiculous the Eldar were. The Imperium of Man in the Dark Ages. The Dark Age of Technology. Dark Age technology explored the galaxy and the Eldar were so whatever. interact with human humanity at that time. They just thought there's insects with rockets and different things. Who cares? They had warp technology. Mankind was traveling through the war, had fast-in-light technology, were conquering planets, were me just, you know, harnessing the power in some cases of the stars, not fully, not like necron, but this stuff. And the elder just were like, yeah, we did that like 62 million years ago. Yeah, like this is

nothing. You're like, and people were like, this could be a, problem. They go, why? Yeah, they're not. They haven't, they haven't literally been anywhere near our empire, which is two-thirds of the galaxy at this point in time. They're in that other area that we never bothered. And that's really what happened at that point in time. So then we have the ultimate decadence. Well, if you take ultimate decadence and you do it for a few million years and you are tied to the warp more than any other race and the galaxy's tied to the warp, the warp begins to.

Shit might happen. Yeah. So what ends up going next is... Well, it's tied together with what happened in the Perium. The Imperium is the man is wrecked right now. Yeah. So, oh, that's a good point. Yeah, we should line this up because the door, we talk about dark age technology.

The Eldar caused a lot of the Dark Age of Technology. Yeah. Because as they were doing this, as we discussed before... They ruined the warp. Yeah, the warp starts just getting fed. It's just, it's a tumultuous storm. We talk, it's going to end with the birth of a new dark god, but what the things that the Eldar are doing are feeding corn and zinesh very heavily.

And whenever you feed corn and zinesh, you feed nergle, it's just the way that it goes. So all of this dark gods are getting fed. And. But there's one dark god that none of them had the aspects of. Yeah. So this is a, literally, you went, I'm feeding these three guys. And then there's this excess weird stuff we're doing that's not actually covered. When you look at pantheons of gods, you go, what's covered under my pantheon?

And you know what's not covered? Excess. Excess and just pleasure. Yeah. And you're like, well, you know what could happen? Oh, we might actually break the sky and create another dark god. Oh, they did. This all begins.

The story I like is this all begins with a dream. Every Eldar, when they would sleep at night, would get the same. dream of this like sleeping. It's like terror. Yeah, it's a nightmare. And no one can figure out what it was. At this stage, this is when we talked about the craft worlds. The craft worlds really sped up.

There became a, hey, society's falling apart because people are bringing this up. Imagine it's not just you and your neighbor have the same dream. You and every single person you've ever met, you've ever encountered with. And these guys can talk, they've got communication throughout the entire galaxy. You're all saying, yeah, I had the same thing last night. And then the pleasure cults are over there going like, whatever, worse, they're going to go on team murder. Also, we've had the same dream for a long time.

Hundreds to maybe thousands of years. There's no dates in this. So, unfortunately, we have to kind of infer some of this a little bit. But they're all having the same dream. So the craft worlds begin getting built. Again, we think craft world, it is a, it's craft ship is a better way to describing it. It's a craft planet with gun.

Yeah, yeah, crap. But I think for people who don't follow it, well, it's a ship. It's a big ship. I mean, they literally make giant Noah's Ark, but they're planet size. And they just, and these guys start, they start leaving. And they're leaving and leave everything behind. Because they realize that despite this dream everyone's having, they can't convince the,

the pleasure cults to stop. They're saying there's going to be, the Sears have been saying this for a long. There is going to be an end. There's Ragnarok is coming. It's going to destroy everything. thing. And not like a cool Chris Hemsworth style. Yeah. This is bad. This is actual

Ragnar. It's not good. And well, it happens. Yeah. Out of nowhere, I mean, out of a very predictable the spot, the sky explodes. Well, they break the sky. Yeah. The Eye of Terror is created. The Eye of Terror for people that don't know is where the center

of Eldar civilization used to be. Slanesh is born from quadrilli. There's no No, I don't even have a number. Slanesh is born from all of this happening and the essence of coming out of the cocoon of the warp. Slanesh breaks the sky, destroys all of the core Eldar worlds

and sucks the life force out of all Eldar. But way worse, now because of their warp connection, any Eldar that's ever going to die ever is also going to have their soul eaten by slimness. Yeah, because that's actually, I think we didn't touch on well enough here. When Eldar dies, their soul goes into the warp and then comes back before this moment, and then would come back out of the warp to be reincarnated into a new body. It's how that Eldar had always functioned.

This was also helped really have a lot of their ego, for lack of better phrases, they became immortal via this method. Eldar always did this. For the pleasure cults, even, who are going out there and murdering people, at night. Every person they murdered just got reincarnated. They don't think anything else. So in some ways, it's still evil. Don't get me wrong. But it's not quite the same thing of like, yeah, I killed that guy, but he'll be back, he'll be back tomorrow. So whatever, you know, the type, type scenario. This is how the elder had functioned for 65 million years. Exactly. And now

every elder that dies, not only dies forever, but also gets its soul eaten. The soul goes into the warp where Slanesh is waiting. Well, it comes to Slenish. It's drawn to Slenish, and Slenish not just destroys their soul, but effectively you suffer at eternity of hell as you're getting absorbed. And it powers up Slenish each time. And the thing is, is that, well, we're going to Infinity Circuit later, but Elder have to do something to fix this. But what happens is this actually frees up the Imperium to become. One, Eldar just lost 90% of their people.

maybe slightly more, to be honest. And become a dying race. Now, they lose 90%. I mean, we say they're a dying race, but there's like a lot of them. But one I'm saying is that they're a dying race and that they now have, they're on the path to extinction. They're not dying. Well, they reproduce super slowly from one.

But I'm not, can they even reproduce anymore? So they never really go into that on that. That's the thing. Like, I was trying, I was trying to find this myself. I don't think they even can reproduce. I think they held our already. Because their souls go into the infinity circuit, which is a, basically a closed network.

Yeah, that's how they try to keep themselves alive, but I don't think they can expand. In the 41st of the millennia, I don't think they can add elder. Yeah. So, but basically this clears up the world. As Slash explodes, though, one thing we should note for those of us who are playing 40K

is some of those craft worlds we were talking about didn't quite leave in time. All the cons are. Yeah, yeah. All the ones we discussed had left well before this, because as Brad said, when this breaks the size, sky. It's not just one or two planets. It is

systems upon systems. And the eye of terror is fascinating and terrifying because it is a bridge between the bacterium and the immaterial that you can go through. All the works did this. Species do this. They actually are able to enter. It's a way into the warp you can literally walk through. It's created. Has never existed in the history of the galaxy. It's such a traumatic psychic. event that it scarred both sides forever.

Well, yeah, Eldar, even Exudites felt this happen. This spread the entire galaxy. There's a psychic backlash. Well, the thing is, also a ton of Eldor just died that weren't in the explosion. They died from a massive psychic attack, but also, again, sad. Like, my race just died, or it's going to do. I've just seen the death now of my race. Well, yeah, I think about it.

Star Wars, episode four, when the Death Star blows up Alderman. Yeah, he sees him. And you see Obi-Wan makes that face. Yeah, but you have to do that a million times. One planet, yeah, billions of these all happen. It's planets. It's not people. It's planets.

And all of the Eldar feel this instantly. The only two who is, well, I guess three who escaped us are the Exodites, who were long gone, the craft worlds who left early enough, and interestingly, this group becomes important. Any Eldar who were in the Webway would happen, because the Webway is not in the Materium or the Imitarium. They know, they find out this exists, but also at the time, the Webway is currently full of all those pleasurable people.

Yeah, they got really into this. Yeah, they got super into it. They got so into it that they wanted to be off the grid to do weirder things. So that was where we are. The Eldar at this point now, let's present 90% of the Eldar are dead. It might actually be more,

to be honest with you. It's actually hard to do. Again, there's no numbers here. This is all stuff. We know these things happened and we understand pieces of it, but there's no,

you know, GW never went from, well, yeah, there was in the population of blah, blah, blah. Well, everybody that was in the ITER, which is a huge spot.

Yeah. But also, everybody near the I tear also died. And then random ones ever. And then also you have Eldar who didn't fully know what happened, any time an Eldar died

until they felt the infinity circuits and Gamora had their own, the Dark Al had their own way of doing this. Until they figured those out, every time an Eldar died, they also were just dead forever, which they'd never experienced. Again, we're talking about a species who's already long-lived, now having to learn

an entire new way to live. Yeah, because you weren't ready for the guy that died at age 5,000, dying and you went, oh, I thought he was going come back tomorrow and he's just gone forever oh there's not that many of us left now and where this means to set up the modern the modern the modern quote unquote modern 40k is this also uplifts a lot of the other races the elder were the dominant race by a by miles and miles and my by there's there's no

by light years they just not only did they lose a massive percentage of their population but also they're now on their back foot. Because they also don't care about ruling. Yeah. But the point one thing is they went from, Brad, we talked to us before. If mankind or anyone bumps into an Eldar world and pushes a little bit, Eldar just killed them. It wasn't a big threat. No problem. Because they had the abilities, they had the numbers, they have all this stuff. The problem of the elder now is they, the Eldar are now in an eternal fight with Slanesh. Well, they also are. Who is a real opponent? Well, they also have, I have technology. that could win this instantly,

but if I use it, I could be damning every single person that's on my craft world. You're like, so I could win this fight right now, but if I turn this machine on, everybody might have their soul sucked out

instantaneously, and I'm not sure if that's going to happen. So, so I'm probably not going to do this. And so the Eldar are nerfed, mankind at the same time, all of us, this times out really well

with the emperor conquering, Well, he sees that this is going to happen, though. Yeah, that's actually true. Yes, the Great Crusade. Well, he basically sees that this is going to happen because right now, mankind had conquered some of the stars. They had big technology. The Dark Age of Technology was a big thing.

They created SDCs. They had the Man of Iron. They have full AI. They're still not even close to Elder technology, so Elder didn't care. but during this time, Eldar effectively ruined them. Because not only did you have a revolution inside the, I know we're doing the Imperium,

but this does directly affect. Yeah. The Imperium had, well, this is before the Imperium existed, but humanity had a gigantic civil war between AI. And as soon as that happened, then you had, we can't travel anymore. Yep.

Because the warp became this. Well, not, it's more than we can't travel. can't travel or communicate. Correct. And the second one's almost more important than the first one. Because there's nothing, the warp, at least for humanity, because they don't have a webway, is just, they're gone. There's no travel. There's no communication. And all of a sudden, you went, oh, and then things went to shit. And then the birth of Thanesh quieted the warp back down. All of a sudden, mankind now can go. The emperor begins a great crusade, creates a prime mark project he goes. However, that's not the only race in the galaxy that gets fed by this.

The orcs have been largely being kept kind of under control by the elder. Every time that, every time the orcs, we talked about it's a lesson. The orcs had never done a true wa until pretty, actually until fairly recent in imperial history. A lot of reasons why is because the elder knew what the orcs were. And they also kept them separate. Yeah, kept them separate. And any time they got a little bit too big, they'd go and stamp them out. Yep. Before they can get any sort of force.

That's gone now. And as I've said... Also, in the mankind does not know what orcs are. Yeah, no one knows about this. So the orcs just go from this species that every time in the orcs don't know what the orcs are for being honest here. I mean, they're just kind of existing. Now they can begin to really multiply.

And they can begin to get together. And as we've said before, the more orcs that gather, the more powerful the orcs get. And suddenly you start getting bigger and bigger org groups. The orcs begin expanding. They spread spread throughout the galaxy, and this, again, sets them down the path to where they are in modern 40K. But probably, well, actually not probably the most important thing that happens here is chaos. Well, I'm going to give the Brad theory, and this might be completely not the thing. It's our cast.

But my theory on this is all the gods existed. Well, Sanesh is born, the youngest of the kids. gods. The gods existed in the most primordial of ways. Yeah. But, and then they effectively gained sentiences, we would think it, as far as they were already doing what they wanted, what they did. But they were so like, this, I am, I am this. I am war. I am murder. I am knowledge. I am the thirst for knowledge. I am deception. I am page and pestilence, plague and pestilage. But the thing is, is that this God gets born, they all get wildly more powerful.

Like crazy, they all power level up like 2,000 times. What's the point? Like, I, my reading the books, I think this is where demons were created. We don't have any stories. You get some stories in the early heresy of like where they encountered, like, beings and this kind of stuff. The Eldar are weird because, I mean, correct me where I'm wrong here, but the Eldar seem to have a deep knowledge of chaos when they meet mankind,

But that's a thousand years, a couple thousand years post the birth of Slanesh. This is where, I think, chaos in my mind becomes manifest. It is always existed. Because this is also when I really feel that the chaos gods start courting humanity on, oh, we did this. This happened because of the Eldar. Well, these guys are affecting it also. and there's wildly more of that.

So many more than, because that's actually, we didn't touch on that, we probably should. The Eldar were, much like the old ones, they're not an overly populist race because they don't need to be.

The reason there's so much mankind is because logistics. We just need more people to do more things. We have to make food. We have to make things. We have to make things to exist, whereas the Eldar could think of it

and made it. Yeah, they just didn't need any, they had no workforce at all. There's no farmers. There's no laborers. There's nothing. There's just the upper tier. Mankind had that and chaos gods got a taste. We could do this with X amount of people. What happens if I went a hundred to exponential? Yeah,000 X, 10,000, 100,000 X, exactly. Right. And this is when they started courting and being, effectively, I think they became more active.

Yeah, that's, I mean, this is, this sets up everything. So when we discuss, the reason we wanted to do this cast for all of you was to really set, give you that final stage set as we dive into more of a modern version of 40K. This is where it comes from. The whole reason the chaos gods got, you know, they met with the emperor. They corrupted Lorgar. They corrupted Horace. It all comes from this. This was their dream.

This was their goal. Eldar broke the sky and ruined everything. And ruined everything. And I say everything. Everything. They ruined the galaxy. The galaxy is falling apart and they were warned not to by the old ones. And on a future cast, we may discuss the old ones coming back.

This is pure fan fiction, but it's very enjoyable. So with that, a little bit of a shorter episode than normal, but that's why I want to do it with you all. On our next episode, we're going to dive back into the Imperium. The goal of this cast, for those of you who are listening along with us, is we're looking to not just, we want to still tell a story. We want to give you pieces of the lore. We want to at least have a piece of somewhat of a cohesive story,

you're not falling all over the place. The goal from here is we're going to expand out pretty hard, pretty fast, and the random places. Just so much that's going on, and we've got a long time to go with it. And understand GW, this is because of how GW's written it. We have to give you the backstory before you give you the current story. So with that, we look forward to you joining us next week. Again, please like and subscribe, join our Discord and our Facebook page.

We look forward to engaging with you. You'll start seeing some polls appearing on them very shortly to help us kind of decide where we're going next. Now that we've told really the backstores who want to tell, plus we had to do works. We just couldn't wait any longer, so that one had to happen. So with that, I'm John Barsight, this is Bradchester. This guy. Have a wonderful evening.