The origins of the Dark Eldar can be found in the Fall, the great cataclysm that nearly destroyed the entire Eldar race. It was an event so terrible that not only did it kill trillions of Eldar, but it breached the gap between Real Space and the Warp, and gave birth to a Chaos God…

To understand the reasons for the Fall, you must know something of the Eldar mind and soul.

An Eldar’s mind is incredibly complex. Their senses are extremely sharp, able to perceive incredible levels of detail. Their emotions can be so strong that a human’s are merely pale shadows by comparison. They are extremely intelligent, their thought processes are much faster than a human’s. All of this means that an Eldar experiences the universe and all its sensations to a greatly heightened degree.

Similarly, an Eldar’s soul is much brighter in the Warp than those of ‘lesser’ sentients. Eldar are able to affect the nether-realm much more than most other races, all Eldar are latent psychics and have the ability to become very powerful psykers with training. It was the strength of their souls that was one of the causes of their downfall.

Before the Fall, the Eldar had an immense galaxy-spanning empire comprising millions of worlds, larger and more powerful than even the Imperium of Man at its height of power. The Eldar lived in relative peace – barbarian races such as the Orks were kept at easily manageable numbers and never had the strength to threaten the might of the Eldar empire. The humans were not yet virulently xenophobic and did not have a large domain, and the Tyranid Hive Fleets still voyaged through the voids between galaxies. The C’tan and Necrons, ancient foes of the Eldar, were long ago defeated and still remained dormant.

Life on the Eldar worlds was idyllic, with fantastically sophisticated machines to take care of all labour and manufacturing required, leaving the Eldar free to indulge in other, more fun pursuits. With all menial work taken care of for them, the Eldar became indolent and decadent. They began to experiment more and more with the arts of pleasure, delving ever deeper into hedonism. Over the millennia, the Eldar became more obsessed with their decadence, with law and order breaking down, the traditional forms and structures of society disappearing. Eldar grouped together into loose sects called Pleasure Cults. These cults were dedicated to achieving the highest levels of hedonistic sensation, and their ceremonies and practices became ever more wild, eventually involving violence and sacrifice of their own kind. Some Eldar hated what their race had become and left the Homeworlds for the virgin Maiden Worlds, or left on the newly constructed Craftworlds, leaving the Pleasure Cults to their madness.

Meanwhile, something terrible was stirring in the Warp. The millennia of Eldar hedonism had made a massive impact in the shadow-realm of Chaos. First the psi-energy of trillions of decadent Eldar had coalesced into a presence, which grew and grew over thousands of years, getting stronger and more defined until suddenly it sparked into an intelligence – a shatteringly huge and malign intelligence, with an immense and bottomless thirst for Eldar souls. This was the birth of Slaanesh…

When Slaanesh came into being, the results were apocalyptic. There was an almighty psychic shockwave that scythed across the galaxy. The souls of almost every Eldar were stripped from them in an instant and devoured by the new-born God. There were few survivors. Most were driven mad, their minds trapped half in the real world and half in the swirling insanity of the Warp. A great Warp-rift opened in the centre of the near-annihilated Eldar empire, swallowing the innermost worlds in what is now known as the Eye of Terror.

Of the few survivors of the Pleasure Cults, some remained sane and able. They found to their horror that Slaanesh had not yet finished with the Eldar – She was slowly draining their souls while they still lived. To escape this these survivors fled in small groups to the Webway, the system of sealed tunnels that run through the Warp and enabled the Eldar to traverse the galaxy safe from attack by Daemons and other Warp creatures. Deep in the Webway, these small groups came together and laid the foundations of Commorragh. More and more survivors began to arrive, and added their own parts to the new city, making it even larger and more heavily populated.

Some Kabals can trace their history back to the creation of the Dark City, including Asdrubael Vect’s Kabal of the Black Heart.



SOULS:

Although the Webway is protected almost completely from the influences of Chaos, Slaanesh’s leeching of Dark Eldar spirits is only reduced, not stopped. To replace this drained spirit-essence the Dark Eldar consume the souls of others. This is the primary reason for slave-raids. Besides providing labour and various amusements for their masters, slaves are the Dark Eldar’s main source of souls.

Why the Dark Eldar still suffer the soul-leeching by Slaanesh is a matter of debate. Some say that the successive generations of Dark Eldar are somehow ‘cursed’ by the events of the Fall, others say that it is the wild, undisciplined lifestyle that echoes the pre-Fall days that makes their souls so attuned to Slaanesh’s thirst.

There is another reason why Dark Eldar devour souls. All Eldar are extremely long-lived – but not immortal. When any Eldar dies, causes natural or otherwise, Slaanesh waits to drink the released spirit. Other Eldar have Waystones to ‘catch’ their spirits in upon death, denying Slaanesh the chance to take them. Dark Eldar do not have Waystones, so their only other recourse is to not die. To stave off weakness and death from old age, very ancient Dark Eldar consume huge amounts of souls, the influx of life-essence rejuvenates them and keeps them alive, vital and strong.

It is also the need to consume souls that gives a practical reason to the Dark Eldar practise of torturing their slaves, though sadistic amusement is of course just as much motivation. It is known that the torture somehow ‘refines’ and ‘distils’ the victim’s soul, somehow improving its quality when consumed. This is probably due to the connection between soul and emotion – extreme emotions and sensations will ‘brighten’ the soul, enriching it so it provides more essence when devoured.

And so it is that Slaanesh is the arch-nemesis of the Dark Eldar, as indeed She is for all Eldar. The Dark Kin will not even refer to Slaanesh by name, instead referring to their dire foe as ‘She Who Thirsts’, ‘The Great Enemy’, ‘The Nightmare That Hungers’, ‘She Who Must Not Be Named’ and other such sinister terms. Dark Eldar view Slaanesh with a mixture of terror and hate, the deepest loathing. It is Her looming presence in the Warp and ever-present soul-draining that fills the Dark Eldar with desperation and drives them to ever more twisted acts of brutality.
The History, By: Lomendil