Eldar Character Guide
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Eldar Character Guide The Path of the Outcast Table of Contents Chapter 1: An Ancient and Powerful Race 3 Chapter 6: Eldar Presence in the Expanse 63 An Ancient History 4 Craftworld Kelor 63 Eldar Physiology 5 Survivors of Strike 64 Eldar Clans and Craftworlds 6 Methods of War 64 Dead Gods 7 The Children of the Thorns 65 Paths of the Eldar 7 The Twlight Swords 65 Spirit Stones 8 The Crow Spirits 67 The Webway 8 Chapter 7: Eldar Starships 69 Eldar Technology 9 Eldar Vessel Special Rules 71 Chapter 2: Eldar Warriors 11 Eldar Weapon Special Rules 72 Guardians 12 Traversing the Webway 72 Corsairs 12 Creating Eldar Starships 73 Dark Reaper 13 Eldar Starship Hulls 74 Fire Dragon 14 Corsair Ship Hulls 75 Howling Banshee 15 Craftworld Ship Hulls 77 Shadow Spectre 16 Eldar Starship Components 79 Striking Scorpion 17 Chapter 8: Alternate Career Ranks 80 Swooping Hawk 17 Bonesinger 82 Warp Spider 19 Corsair Prince 84 Autarch 20 Harlequin 86 Wraithguard 22 Wraithlord 23 A Note from the Author 88 Chapter 3: Eldar Explorers 24 Paths of Ages Past 25 The Path of the Outcast 27 The Path of the Seer 34 New Skills 41 New Talents 42 New Traits 45 Chapter 4: Eldar Armory 46 Weapons 46 Armor 51 Gear 52 Armory Tables 54 Chapter 5: Eldar Psychic Powers 55 Farseer 56 Void Dreamer 59 Warlock 61 2 Chapter 1: An Ancient and Powerful Race The Eldar are an ancient and enigmatic species Clans such as the Crow Spirits and the Twilight which dominated the galaxy millions of years Swords are a plague upon Imperial shipping, their before the rise of the Imperium. Hugely vessels practically impossible to track and difficult technologically advanced and knowledgeable in to detect before they strike. Occasionally, the secrets of the universe, the Eldar once Explorers may even be able to make deals with the controlled or traversed much of the domain Eldar, in those rare instances where humans have humans now claim. These times are past, however, something the Eldar require, or where the and even by the time humanity’s star was rising combined might of humans and Eldar are the only the Eldar had already begun to fade into the hope of facing a greater threat. Quite apart from darkness of history, their civilisation crippled and rousing the interest (and subsequent bloody decaying from a doom now millennia old. Today retribution) of the Inquisition, such pacts are the Eldar are few in number, hidden away in almost always short lived, ending either in violence distant, secret parts of the galaxy, sailing the void and betrayal, or the abrupt and mysterious in their great world-ships or reduced to raiders and disappearance of the Eldar, gone as swiftly as they pirates. Their civilisation has fragmented and has arrived. largely become nomadic, its once-great clans and peoples travelling in vast armadas of ships and aboard mighty Craftworlds, gargantuan vessels the size of cities or larger in space. The Eldar race has also fragmented over the centuries, with some choosing to wander far from their kin or turn their backs on their past while others cling to the teachings of their ancestors and try vainly to keep their civilisation alive. Whatever teachings they follow, all Eldar retain the technologically sophisticated weapons and ships of their forebearers and, even though their numbers are but a tiny fraction of mankind’s, they remain a significant force within the galaxy and a constant threat to the Imperium and its worlds. Within the Koronus Expanse, like many of the fringes of Imperial space, the presence of the Eldar is a very real threat to the Imperium, and though they do not often openly make war upon mankind, woe to the Rogue Trader who chooses to oppose them or meddle in their alien designs. Legends and rumours have it that many of the worlds in the Expanse were once controlled by the Eldar, and still hide ruins and secrets which the ancient race guards jealously from outside interference. Thus an Explorer may not know he has angered the Eldar by simply setting foot on a remote world until an Eldar vessel emerges from the darkness to destroy him. More likely, though, Explorers face the Eldar in the void, where they make for deadly raiders and pirates. 3 An Ancient History Once the worlds and peoples of the Eldar As it grew in power so did the Eldar’s madness; were numerous, their fleets vast and swift, and their each a vile reflection of the other, each feeding off warriors feared by all those who opposed them. For the other’s twisted heart. For long years the Eldar countless centuries the galaxy belonged to the Eldar, turned upon themselves, sinking to sickening depths; all other races pale shadows next to their might and torturing and killing their own kind, eating their own power. Graceful cities of slender towers and dead, and mutilating their once-great civilisation, glittering white colonnades could be found from one until finally the warp god they had created emerged end of the galaxy to the other, and Eldar worlds into full consciousness and power. The Chaos God epitomised culture, knowledge, and the peak of Slaanesh was born. civilisation. The Eldar themselves were an In its moment of birth, Slaanesh, the enlightened people, who pursued art, language, and embodiment of all the Eldar’s darkest whims and learning as much as they mastered the ways of war wanton cruelty, let out a howl across the void, a and conquest. For millions of years their people psychic scream heard by every living Eldar, tearing a prospered, and they were the greatest of the galaxy’s hole in the fabric of reality itself. In the blink of an races; unopposed and unchallenged in their eye the heart of the Eldar civilisation was ripped out, supremacy. its worlds plunged into the warp and all but a Like so many great societies their fall was slow handful of its people killed instantly as the new-born in its coming, but all the worse for the heights they god tore their souls from their flesh. Only those far had achieved. The Eldar mind is a complex and from the epicentre survived, those who had fled to tangled labyrinth of emotion and thought, and Eldar the edges of the galaxy and cut themselves off from are far more susceptible to the highs and lows of their decadent kin. The Eldar were not alone in the extreme emotions. Such was the case with the great damage dealt by Slaanesh, and countless humans, Eldar civilisation, and as their power grew so too Orks, and other races also suffered, though it was the did their hunger for new experiences and new end of the Eldar as a galactic power and the sensations. Over long centuries, this began a slow beginning of their decline; never again would their rot in the heart of the Eldar empire, as more and civilisation command the stars, nor would they be more Eldar turned to a path of decadence and more than scattered nomads, the remains of a broken emotional excess, indulging in their every whim and peoples, brought down by their own pride and giving themselves over their basest desires. Cults hubris. sprang up devoted to hedonistic pleasures and debased rituals, the side effect of a culture that no Eldar Language longer needed to concern itself with common labour The language of the Eldar is an ancient and or the need for personal wealth. Even as the alien complex dialect built upon and refined over millions empire prospered, its success fuelled this dark heart of years. Compared to the crude blunt sounds of of indulgence and depravity, the pastimes of the idle High or Low Gothic, its words flow from one to the populace becoming increasingly at odds with the next, each sentence a complete idea as much as a ancient ideals of their ancestors upon which their collection of letters or numbers. Humans can imitate civilisation was built; and so the cults gained greater Eldar speech to a certain degree, with sufficient power and began to overtake Eldar society training, but compared to a native speaker they are altogether. slow and halting at best. This is largely because the It was at some point during this long unrecorded Eldar language is not words alone, but also slide into decadence that a dark power deep within accompanied by a detailed set of poses and gestures. the warp took notice of the Eldar, a psychic echo of The way an Eldar stands, the cast of his features or their own excessive culture and the depths to how he moves his hands can all change the meaning which it had sunk in the pursuit of increasingly of words, sometimes dramatically. powerful emotions and sensations. Though it had no name at first, it was given life by the Eldar themselves and their increasingly depraved actions. 4 Further complicating matters is that each Eldar Their dark liquid eyes are also markedly different word or symbol is as much a concept as it is a name from human eyes, deep and full of ancient secrets, for something. Thus while the Eldar word for rock assuring any man who looks too long into them just might mean rock, it might also be used to convey how alien the Eldar really are, and that, despite some permanence or stability, or in a different context passing physical resemblance, they are nothing like lack of life or thought. To a human, words gain humanity.