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Author Topic: Eldar situation in 40 K universe fluffwise  (Read 9861 times)

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Offline Harmen

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Re: Eldar situation in 40 K universe fluffwise
« Reply #20 on: December 28, 2004, 04:32:40 PM »
I had thought about something like that myself ( I had some ideas for a craftworld to match my color scheme, and it would be an outpost of a far larger one somewhere really really far away) because before the Webway half collapsed, some craftworlds would most likely have simply taken the webway tunnel leading the farthest away from what is now the eye of terror and started something there.

Onother point I thought up, why don't Eldar (espescially Iyanden) make an army of robots? They have room on the Craftworld, resources, they have a completely automatic industry, with their current population I'm guesseing most of their industrial capacity is being wasted, so why not make robots to bulk up the army's number (I'm thinking things like those in the Linkin Park video clip Points of authority). But I suppose that would be a lot of extra work for GW(meaning it'll never happen).

Back on topic, so accually there should be like a campaign where one of those more powerfull Craftworlds retuns to check things out, and starts "helping" out (supplying the Exodites with weapons and teachers, technology, attacking some other stuff), might create some interesting situations when the Craftworlds we know don't agree with them, and they get pushy (seems logical to me), but they don't really want to fight.
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Offline Col. Or'es'o (retired)

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Re: Eldar situation in 40 K universe fluffwise
« Reply #21 on: December 28, 2004, 04:47:41 PM »
with regards to the "why not have a robot army" thing my understanding is that:
1) eldar do not like things without souls, so AI is out. Also, AI tends to be dumb, and being dumb doesnt coincide with the way eldar wage war.
2) being a wraithlord or guard is pretty horrible. like, really. so most souls just wanna rest after serving their craftworld, and it takes an especially strong soul to be able to operate in a wraith body for any length of time, and even then they tend to suffer from being lethargic and confused by flashbacks, screams in the warp, etc.
3) robots are resource intensive, and eldar dont actually have that many hard resources compared to any other race (they dont exactly have many mining colonies or owt).
4) eldar used to have robots (cool models for the time), they turned into wraithguard, which are cooler.

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Offline Rasmus

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Re: Eldar situation in 40 K universe fluffwise
« Reply #22 on: December 29, 2004, 07:15:56 AM »
4 is incorrect. They never were robots. They were ghostwarriors, and turned into Wraithlords. They always had a soul-graft though; no AI for the Eldar. Orks, Marines and IG had robots though, and they were neat in a completely different sort of way.

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Offline Eagle of the Stars

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Re: Eldar situation in 40 K universe fluffwise
« Reply #23 on: December 29, 2004, 12:01:34 PM »
Eldar arn't in that bad of a position, really, i'm guessing that the eldar in this galaxy are dieing, but think a bout it, there probably all over the universe by now.

I had thought about something like that myself ( I had some ideas for a craftworld to match my color scheme, and it would be an outpost of a far larger one somewhere really really far away) because before the Webway half collapsed, some craftworlds would most likely have simply taken the webway tunnel leading the farthest away from what is now the eye of terror and started something there.


from Shadow Point, p58:

"Half the galaxy away, another craftworld drifted serenly in the dark, uncharted places between the stars. Its name was unknown to the librarian-scribes of the Inquisition's Ordo Xenos, whose task it was to compile secret lists of such things. Its history was untoched by contact with the Imperium, for it lay far beyond the  Imperium's borders, and its inhabbitents neither knew nor cared about the squabbling affairs of such a vulgar, upstart race. It lay almost at the very limits of the webway, and there were few of those ancient routes which still conected to it.
   And so, by choice or circumstance - none within the craftworld could remember, so long ago was it - they existed in almost complete isolation. Detached and unruffled, there they existed at the hour of the sunset passing of their race in a state more akin to that of the long and blissful days enjoyed by there ancestors in the time before the great, self-inflicted cataclysm.
   Aloof. Idyllic. Untroubled."


Do with this whatever you want, but this passage shows me several things:
1) humans dont know the full extent of the eldar race
2) the webway (while there may be some, if extremely few, exeptions) is confined to this galaxy (Milky Way)
3) there are some eldar who have nothing to do but research and repopulate, thus ensuring that they will last for the next few eons or so
4) since the webway is confined to our galaxy, so to is the eldar race

Also, due to the fact most eldar vessels (craftworlds among them) are propelled by solar radiation, it seems very unlikley that they would be able to simply sail out. Although some may have tried...
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Offline Kage2020

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Re: Eldar situation in 40 K universe fluffwise
« Reply #24 on: December 29, 2004, 10:47:47 PM »
4 is incorrect. They never were robots. They were ghostwarriors, and turned into Wraithlords. They always had a soul-graft though; no AI for the Eldar. Orks, Marines and IG had robots though, and they were neat in a completely different sort of way.
Ah, the joys of the Tuisich Novasmair.  Of course, that 'fluff' is seeminly as dead as the BL copy editor.  Oh, and it translates as "Lord Pheonix" according to the archaic 'fluff' so you can take that with a pinch of salt... if you want to, of course, which is kind of the point.  The question is whether the 'Failleanam' is directly applicable and whether the the earlier - or later - edition imagery is in conflict?

For me, the idea that the eldar use 'soul grafting' doesn't mean that they are incapable of producing "AI".  Indeed, I would imagine that they use "AI" (this is not 'true' intelligence, for me) quite a bit in the Infinity Circuit.  Then again, I view the IC as a computer system that just happens to act as a massive 'Soul Jar'... ;)

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Offline Da Mighty camel

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Re: Eldar situation in 40 K universe fluffwise
« Reply #25 on: January 1, 2005, 08:50:20 AM »

3) robots are resource intensive, and eldar dont actually have that many hard resources compared to any other race (they dont exactly have many mining colonies or owt).


The Eldar dont need mines, everything they got is made of Wraithbone, created from the Eldar mind

Offline Rasmus

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Re: Eldar situation in 40 K universe fluffwise
« Reply #26 on: January 1, 2005, 09:49:33 AM »
There are still lots of resources the Eldar needs that are not wraithbone or ore. Logistic support for an army in the field is so much more than vehicels and weapons, after all.

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Offline Kage2020

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Re: Eldar situation in 40 K universe fluffwise
« Reply #27 on: January 1, 2005, 02:03:36 PM »
Of course, one could also remember that the eldar were seemingly capable of building a huge space station just to put on a dance... ;) (Watson, Draco/Inquisitor).  Make of that what you will...

The main reason that the eldar don't use robots, despite the fact that they apparently made extensive use of them pre-Fall, is that it doesn't tie in with their Theme.  It really is quite that simple.  People can try and justify it by talking about their 'elf' origins, or that they abhor 'unthinking machines', but then again one is going to be making value judgements about whether the eldar determine autonomic biological functions to be any different to those in an advanced, heuristic programme (i.e. 'expert systems' or 'AI/PI' as opposed to MI).  But such is the way of things and of personal interpretation.

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Offline Lt. Pinard

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Re: Eldar situation in 40 K universe fluffwise
« Reply #28 on: January 2, 2005, 06:04:57 PM »
like ppl send above the eldar are scattered and when they go to war, a race like human or orks while mass against that eldar craftworld so tho eldar have advanced tech they can't win every battle when their out numbered.

Offline Rasmus

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Re: Eldar situation in 40 K universe fluffwise
« Reply #29 on: January 3, 2005, 06:16:25 AM »
like ppl send above the eldar are scattered and when they go to war, a race like human or orks while mass against that eldar craftworld so tho eldar have advanced tech they can't win every battle when their out numbered.
   That is really hard to read. Could you rephrase it please?

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Offline Dark Flame

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Re: Eldar situation in 40 K universe fluffwise
« Reply #30 on: January 3, 2005, 12:31:08 PM »
  This is what I got from that sentence:  "Like people said above, the Eldar are scattered, and when the go to war, other races like humans or Orks will mass againsts that Eldar army, so even though the Eldar tech is so advances they won't be able to win every battle because they'll be so outnumbered."  Hopefully that helps.

  Anyway, on the robots thing, I'd say that it would make sence for the Eldar to use them, but so far (to my knowledge) there is no indication of Eldar robots in the fluff.  Possibly they are only used for Craftworld tasks, and not on the battlefield, possibly they aren't used at all.  My guess would be that the Eldar prefer using their own warriors in battle, as they understand what the Fall did to them, and know that they are fighting for a chance at their one time power, while a machine, or any other thing which wasn't either there during the Fall, or didn't have the Eldar cluture press the importance of the Fall and what the Eldar were once capable of upon them every day for a lifetime wouldn't be trusted to understand the true importance of the battle.  Wow, that was a pretty long sentence, and I'm not sure if it will be easily read, but we'll see.  Anyway, I'm basically just coming up with ideas out of no where for the robot thing, so if you can't make sence of it, it might be that it doesn't make sence at all.

Offline Kage2020

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Re: Eldar situation in 40 K universe fluffwise
« Reply #31 on: January 3, 2005, 07:15:22 PM »
Rather than making sweeping statements as to why the eldar don't currently use robots, perhaps it is more reasonable to look at the 'history' of the 40k 'fluff'.  The "Torturer's Tale" indicates that at one time (pre-Fall) they did use artificial constructions.  These were 'robots' in much the same way as we think of them, perhaps even shading towards Von Neumann machines which might reasonably have been in their technological grasp. 

Then came the Fall.  We understand that 'Seers' foresaw the Fall, one of the reasons for - some argue - the construction of new craftworlds as well as the increased exodus out of the core empire... Slaanesh is born but, at this time, do they have an analogue for the  Infinity Circuit up and running?  (Something I still see as being based on the more 'primitive' World Spirit.)  Perhaps not.  Perhaps the Tuisich Novasmair were an intermediate period, one where the 'soul' must have been directly grafted into a machine before life departed... these broken, once dead warriors were truly 'Phoenix Warriors' (rather than the Phoenix Lords! ;)) It is not certain whether the eldar still operate significant quantities of autonomous robots, since if they were that important to society (i.e. leading to the hedonomis) then the 'blue prints' (to use an obvious, if misleading, term) in the pre-Fall period it is possible that they would have been used in the interim period between peri-Fall and post-Fall craftworld society.

Eventually post-Fall society matures and the Infinity Circuit - and hence the Eternal Matrix - is developed.  The basic premise of the Failleanam is extended to the Waystones, etc.  Perhaps even some of the Tuisich Novasmair could be recovered from their eternal prison... Indeed, using this model one could wonder whether it still might be used.

Anyway, the C'tan and the Necrons once again arise.  Kind of like robots, are they not.  Perhaps there is a global spread of distrust of the 'machine' and a shift away because of problems with them... Were they vulnerable to TEMPEST hacking or the equivalent?

Just a thought, since I prefer to integrate all the 'fluff' rather than just take the latest revision! ;)

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Re: Eldar situation in 40 K universe fluffwise
« Reply #32 on: January 9, 2005, 04:39:36 PM »
Necrons are kind of robots, they have captured souls powering them, as siad the race that the NEcrons used to be gambled thier lives for C'tan
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Offline Kage2020

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Re: Eldar situation in 40 K universe fluffwise
« Reply #33 on: January 9, 2005, 10:02:16 PM »
The general argument being, however, that the C'tan do not have 'souls' only the 'mind'.  This makes some people twitch but finds support in the very premise of the Untouchables.  Of course, you should twitch when people refer to them as having a soul, just a "negative one". ::)  Such is the Rule of Cool.

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Offline SkavenGuard

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Re: Eldar situation in 40 K universe fluffwise
« Reply #34 on: January 17, 2005, 09:38:00 AM »
To add some fuel to the debate of robots ...

In the Ghost Guant book (First and Only), the heros of the story find a dark-age site that made robots.  The villians in the story wanted to start making robots to fight chaos.  The Heroes said no as such technology is forbidden.  The villians turned on the machinery and out popped a robot which was tainted by chaos.
It was found the entire sight was corrupted.

The implications is that a computer systems, no matter how advanced could and can be affected by chaos.  The robots with computer brains could be corrupted and turned against their masters.

It is possible that since the fall of the eldar, they have avoided using such technoloy (or some similar tech) to prevent this sort of corruption.  Thus the evolution of the wraith guard tech, something that would be difficult for chaos to gain controll of. 

Just my two cents...

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Offline Rasmus

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Re: Eldar situation in 40 K universe fluffwise
« Reply #35 on: January 17, 2005, 12:45:02 PM »
Imperials built Robots back in RT. They were pretty nifty too, but they are no longer available, list-wise or model-wise.

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Offline Kage2020

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Re: Eldar situation in 40 K universe fluffwise
« Reply #36 on: January 17, 2005, 01:25:05 PM »
It is possible that since the fall of the eldar, they have avoided using such technoloy (or some similar tech) to prevent this sort of corruption.  Thus the evolution of the wraith guard tech, something that would be difficult for chaos to gain controll of.
It's a bit of a stretch, do you not think?  The gradual mutation and corruption over millennia being a reason that the eldar do not use robotic technologies...?

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Offline Flash_hound

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Re: Eldar situation in 40 K universe fluffwise
« Reply #37 on: January 17, 2005, 01:34:18 PM »
Well its pretty simple why they don't have robots, they don't want to recreate the easy life they had before the fall, so they don't fall again, if you catch what i'm saying.

Offline Kage2020

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Re: Eldar situation in 40 K universe fluffwise
« Reply #38 on: January 17, 2005, 01:48:08 PM »
Yet the craftworld eldar are supposed to be close to another Fall, at least if you are to believe the Exodite 'fluff'.

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Offline Rasmus

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Re: Eldar situation in 40 K universe fluffwise
« Reply #39 on: January 17, 2005, 03:01:42 PM »
Well its pretty simple why they don't have robots, they don't want to recreate the easy life they had before the fall, so they don't fall again, if you catch what i'm saying.
  Robots were never, as far as we know, part of Eldar culture. Before the Fall or since. There is something else about the fact that the Eldar never made them; surely they could, they just chose never too. Possibly because spiritstones were just vastly superior in every aspect to an AI, no matter how advanced.

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