Topic: Tell me about Eldar Technology...?

[Kage2020]

Another "Update Kage on the Background" threat, but reading through the Eldar novels from BL, I'm wondering about Eldar tech and how it is now envisioned?

There seems to be a little bit of confusion about pre- and post-Fall, so I come to you on bended knee. Help me, 40kOnline, you're my only hope.

[magenb]

it was still meant to be the most advanced, but now every man and his dog has antigrav tech. Our weapons used to require a psychic link to fire them, so they enemy and our dark kin couldn't use them against us, now monkeys can fire shuriken weapons and make them work better than Asurman...

The imperium is really the only ones to advance their tech, which should have been a big no-no, but its OK because it was crawl....


We did figure out how to fit heavy weapons to our bike, we can thank the IA corsair book for giving GW that idea

[Kage2020]

I was thinking about their technology in general, especially as it relates to what they had before The Fall, and what they developed after The Fall. Reading through the "latest" (?) Thorpe novels had me thinking about this.

it was still meant to be the most advanced, but now every man and his dog has antigrav tech.

I think that it's reasonable (?) to acknowledge the primacy of the wargame in some of this. Everything has to be balanced and similar enough for games to be equitable given the relative strengths and weaknesses of the armies.

As it stands, "antigrav" as it is talked about in the game seems to be very much similar to the notion of the 'ole suspensors (do they still have this?). Put them on something heavy and they float. Want to make them move and you push them with something (i.e. motive power/thrust).

The Eldar in the novels seem to have "gravimetric" drives, or whatever you want to call them. Rather than just making things float (they can do that) they can actually use the drives for motive power, too. Hence their starships, spaceships/flyers etc.?

With that said, I do agree with the notion that Eldar technology should be better than it is often represented in the game because of--for want of a better term--wargame balance (?).

Now, I realise that just because the Eldar could "make stars die," or whatever, but I would imagine that we can level this type of technology in the realm of the military insofar not every Eldar could pull a starkiller out of their sideboard. This would mean that the Craftworlds would have commonly available technology and not some of the more advanced tech (though such would be available on the Croneworlds).

So what is that tech?

For example, some of the most advanced armour that the Eldar have is "Mesh", right? Sure, it might not be as clunky as human versions, with Eldar being able to put on, say, a bracelet and it being able to morph into a full suit of armour, but it's still mesh.

What about power systems? There's clearly something going on before The Fall, but the subsequent adoption of the Infinity Circuit and soul power is somewhat rapid (if not necessarily universal).

So what gives?

I'm just trying to figure things out once again.

...now monkeys can fire shuriken weapons and make them work better than Asurman...

I cannot comment on the last bit of that, but I do recall that in the earlier days the Imperium, and the Forge World of Mars specifically, could produce shuriken weaponry. Sure, it was less advanced than the Eldar version (it used magnets rather than grav-based technology), but of course that's not something that is generally going to show up in the wargame?

[Sir_Godspeed]

There's always been a weird timeline thing going on, where the height of the Eldar Empire apparently being fixed to the same period as the human Dark Age of Technology, and so this means that both of these mythically powerful civilizations where gallavanting and consolidating the Galaxy AT THE SAME TIME.

The general explanation we get is that the Eldar civilization was a lot more centralized than the human one, being almost exclusively located where the Eye of Terror is currently. This does make sense, since that explains why almost all of them died when Slaanesh went kaboom, but it does kinda make the difference between ancient humans and ancient Eldar less... stark. Humans underwent their own "fall" after all.

[magenb]

So Eldar used to re-incarnate and have access to memories of their past lives, the degree to what they used to be able to recall has never been defined but you get a taste of it in the Ynarri books.

The considerable loss of lives(and souls) and sheer scale of their fall means a lot of pre-fall tech is lost to the ages and extremely dangerous to recover. They also had to adapt to their new scenario, so as the book hinted at, some of their energy comes from their dead. I think it was in the Jain Zar novel when the Dark Eldar pilot made the comparison between their tech. So they still research and invent new stuff, but they don't have access to all their previous knowledge. Their progress is limited due to lack of population and limited resources. Where as the imperium like to keep people stupid and basically made it illegal to invent new stuff, as they can just go and find it in an SDC. This is where the primaris and crawl had to undergo some serious retcon to make it work and it wasn't very clean. 

The Craftworlds existed pre-fall, so too did a bunch of their fleet, tech on maiden worlds, etc. So their would be a fair bit of it still floating around. So it could be like a walking dead scenario, where there are heaps of cars around, not much gas, few mechanics and you have to salvage spare parts. The ability to nuke a star might not have been tech, probably was but the fall also messed with Eldar's psykic powers. This was also hinted at in one of the Pheonix Lord books, I think it was Asurmen. Any way, so a bunch of their old tech could have required the general Eldar to have more potent powers to use. The farseer book touches a little on this, with some building controls being psychically controlled, they also had a generator that pulled energy from the warp, but it did not sound like that was common tech. Farseer is a decent book to read, not as Eldar centric as I thought it would have been, but worth the read.


I think it was 5th ed or maybe 3rd, but mesh armour isn't a thing for Eldar any more. It's not like Ironmans nano tech where it appears out of no where. It's more like Back to the future where the Jacket shrinks to fit the wearer. It's also never really explained why scorpions can be super sneaky and agile and have great protection, but their militia have armour about the same as a human guardsman. You would think if they can just sing it into existence, they would just keep rolling that armour out. So I think this part of the lore was done to match up with game play.

[Kage2020]

There's always been a weird timeline thing going on, where the height of the Eldar Empire apparently being fixed to the same period as the human Dark Age of Technology...

I remember the same explanation that the core of the Eldar empire was basically the extent of what the Eye of Terror would become. The exception being, of course, the numerous Maiden Worlds that were seeded around the galaxy.

I kind of imagined it the same as what Londo Milari said of the Minbari: "If you do no bother them, they will not bother you" (or some such).

FWIW, I always got the impression that the Eldar were still more technologically advanced than the G/DAoT civilisation. Or has that been retconned to make humans more powerful again?

The considerable loss of lives(and souls) and sheer scale of their fall means a lot of pre-fall tech is lost to the ages and extremely dangerous to recover.

I'm seeing this as above, i.e. very much about how the most advanced technologies were lost. The technology that they seem to play with even post-Fall seems to be very advanced?

They also had to adapt to their new scenario, so as the book hinted at, some of their energy comes from their dead.

Yeah, this drives me a little bit crazy. The rational part of my brain is automatically wanting to know how many kW (or MW or whatever) a soul produces.

There's also some inconsistencies, such as with the power generation from solar sails. On the bright side, at least they're not arguing that the primary motive power is sunlight...

Farseer is a decent book to read, not as Eldar centric as I thought it would have been, but worth the read.

It has been a looooong since I read that book.

You would think if they can just sing it into existence, they would just keep rolling that armour out. So I think this part of the lore was done to match up with game play.

There are certainly a great deal of inconsistencies when it comes to the tech but, as you say, much of it can be placed at the feet of wargame balance/game play.

[magenb]

Yeah, this drives me a little bit crazy. The rational part of my brain is automatically wanting to know how many kW (or MW or whatever) a soul produces.

There's also some inconsistencies, such as with the power generation from solar sails. On the bright side, at least they're not arguing that the primary motive power is sunlight...

We don't get our power from a single source, so it stands to reason that Eldar may have multiple power sources.

My question is, does the soul regen.. or is it a limit energy amount, and once consumed, it just doesn't exist any more.. in the old GW I would imagine its the later.

[Sir_Godspeed]

Any attempt to try and quantify logistics, much less specifically energy, is going to drive you down a path of madness.

There's always been a weird timeline thing going on, where the height of the Eldar Empire apparently being fixed to the same period as the human Dark Age of Technology...

I remember the same explanation that the core of the Eldar empire was basically the extent of what the Eye of Terror would become. The exception being, of course, the numerous Maiden Worlds that were seeded around the galaxy.

I kind of imagined it the same as what Londo Milari said of the Minbari: "If you do no bother them, they will not bother you" (or some such).

FWIW, I always got the impression that the Eldar were still more technologically advanced than the G/DAoT civilisation. Or has that been retconned to make humans more powerful again?

No, nothing's been retconned that I know, it's just that we know all the STC's the Imperium keeps finding are from the DAoT of course, and there's some really crazy stuff in there. We also know that humanity colonized virtually every corner of the Galaxy (apparently fending off a lot of foes without needing a unified empire, although maybe the Eldar laid the groundwork for that by severely decimating lots of hostile species like the orks and so on, and this was obviously pre-Tyranids and Necrons). They also had a massive civil war with their AIs and robots, a war which I believe has been described as bigger than the Horus Heresy, for example (although I'm sure this kind of flavor text is not exactly worth much in a grand context).

[Kage2020]

We don't get our power from a single source, so it stands to reason that Eldar may have multiple power sources.

Fully agree with you. The books that I have been reading recently (yeesh ) have made that clear, too: solar energy (but with magic), and of course psychic energy.

...in the old GW I would imagine its the later.

I would imagine that, if you were going to do any form of quantification, you would have it that they provide standard amounts of energy for normal circumstances. On the other hand, if you pushed them too far with extra energy requirements? That would tire them.

I doubt that the Eldar, given everything, would use soul energy if it actually diminished the soul permanently.

Any attempt to try and quantify logistics, much less specifically energy, is going to drive you down a path of madness.

Completely true. This is one of the reasons that I just use a different power source and leave it at that by just saying that it produces that much.