Soul Consumption

It's no debate that Dark Eldar consume souls, however looking at a bunch of different fluff I've found that there doesn't seem to be an actual consensus on how they go about it, some sources seem to act like it's more metaphorical, some things say that torturing does the job, I've heard consumption of their body does the trick before and some sources say you just put some high quality soul in your goblet and chug it

So I wondered what do other people assume they do, and is there any actual distinctive proof on how?

Well............

.....there's the Spirit Syphon?
Perhaps all Dark Eldar, like the Chronos, use a straw?

Squidmaster wrote:

Well............

.....there's the Spirit Syphon?
Perhaps all Dark Eldar, like the Chronos, use a straw?

"SLAVE, fetch me my bendy straw, I have souls to drink

Oh yes this is definitely how they drink their souls

I think that torturing makes the victims leak their soul. And the Dark Eldar lose their soul due to Slaanesh. It gets drawn into the warp to her to consume. So the Dark Eldar soul is like a sponge due to the 'lack of soul parts'. And when the victims leak their soul, it gets sucked into the void inside of Dark Eldar. That's how I think it works.

That makes sense, although I'd expect Pariahs to act in the same way in that case.

The descriptions of the Arena seem to imply that it's something that happens automatically, and is scalable (ie multiple DE can all feed off the same soul at once). If I remember rightly the old fluff had it that the Haemonculi had to process the souls (hence why they were modelled holding little boxes), but seems a natural process now.

Let's not forge that this is the Dark Eldar, a race that's so advanced that they seem magical to humans. Why not both? They could very well consume the souls naturaly, bu I imagine they could also make them into a physical thing (like a drink) to sup from. It probably just depends on how grandiose the consumer is feelingand his resources available

Dark Eldar might be like sponges, but pariah are like black holes. And nothing can fill the void.

Sucking the life energy is a conscious act. In the path of the dark eldar book it becomes clear that the one with the more willpower sucks in most of the leaking energy.

Additionally, pariah don't have souls aka reflections on the warp.

The Path of DE series brings up the age old question of how canon is BL? Personally, other than the Horus Heresy series which is worked on by a whole bunch of authors who are always communicating with each other, I don't see BL as canon. There tends to be a bit of contradictory material between different books and you just end up accepting on author's view of the universe.

Don't get me wrong, they are entitled to their own view and if you chose to follow that then that's fine, but why take the words of Andy Chambers over Braden Campbell? Why listen to either of them as they too, like us, are fans of the hobby with the difference of having a book published. I wouldn't accept them as canon unless they were approved by the people who wrote the codex.

Because of this I'd say it's open to interpretation and personal thoughts of what is cool rather than what's written in the BL books. Although it does make for some awesome discussions.

With resprct to "canon" I take the approach I found in the Elder Scrolls lore community - it's all fiction about a fictional universe. Therefore anything goes, so long as you can justify it to yourself and others.

Fair enough. That's a good view on it. I just think it's best for people to agree in stuff like fluff that there's not one answer.

The 'Path of the' series does refer to stuff such as Kralliach being a very old archon getting visibly younger from being at the arena, which begs the question, how many souls does Vect need daily, he is Millennia older then even the oldest of Archons, he should logically have to be in a nonstop
death-orgy to maintain life, unless the original Vect even exists any more......

It's an almost invisible process in my mind. Maddened souls, half glimpsed out of the corner of one's eye, twisting and writhing in agony, invigorating their tormentors as they fade, shrieking, into the afterlife. It's more of an abstract concept than anything.

I would, however, love to see Vect modelled with a bendy straw.