"The Extinct Eldar"

I have been seeing a lot and lot of talk about the "dramatic and tragic tale of the Eldar, the sons of Khaine, who fight for the survival of their very own race"-stuff, and im getting rather tired of it, because the eldar as a race are definitely not extinct. I mean, the number of residents in Commorragh is rather difficult to count, but I would safely say that there are at least a hundred times more of us than Craftworlders (even though it's the opposite when it comes to players). Has GW, when writing fluff, completely ignored other eldar, focusing only on the Craftworlds?

While thinking this, I also thought of the exodites and corsairs. How numerous are they?
Does anyone have any insight or thoughts about this?

From what I have gathered, I have understood that corsairs are rather small in number, and they sort of co-operate with craftworlders and commorrites too?
Of exodites, I dont really know, but if I would have to say something about their amount, I would think that there are more of them than craftworlders, but they are... well, wilder than others, and not very "civilized".

There are likely now some dramatic differences between Eldarith and Eldarith Ynneas. It is certainly possible when referring to 'the decline and slow death of the Eldar' that the writers really mean 'the decline and slow death of the Craftworld Eldar' which makes sense within the fluff and also holds true with their concepts of gods rising up to avenge them when 'all the Eldar are dead and their soul stones collected' which, basically and pretty obviously does not include a large number of Dark Eldar.

Also, the Dark Eldar are doing fine numberwise - if you read the fluff about what exactly Commoragh is as far as size and scope go...there are a lot of them. Like...a LOT.

99.999% of the eldar died during the tragedy.
The survivors are scattered across the galaxy in small independent bands, even Commorragh is little more than a collection of warring gangs.

Necromunda has a population easily in excess of ten trillion
10,000,000,000,000
Earth today has a population of
7,000,000,000

They have toned down the near death bit a lot, but pre great crusade, the Eldar owned the galaxy...

DominicJ wrote:

even Commorragh is little more than a collection of warring gangs.

Gangs that can blow up suns, desolate worlds, and hold constant Roman-esque spectacles daily and in millions of arenas at the same time.

Remember, a hive is to Commoragh as an anthill is to a Hive.

DominicJ wrote:

99.999% of the eldar died during the tragedy.
The survivors are scattered across the galaxy in small independent bands, even Commorragh is little more than a collection of warring gangs.

Necromunda has a population easily in excess of ten trillion
10,000,000,000,000
Earth today has a population of
7,000,000,000

You've got to remember though craft worlds are far bigger than any known planet and can hold far more eldar I think someone told me it was close to a 50/60 trillion per craftworld but can vary greatly

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99.999% of the eldar died during the tragedy.

Complete exageration, completely unaccurate too.

Of the exodites, some worlds died, some of them died, but a lot of exodite worlds were ok, they went as far as possible from the original eldar empire.

Dark eldar were 100% unaffected, they laughed possibly, but they didn't feel a thing.

A couple of craftworlds escaped too, all those factions together were the old eldar, which was a unified race, especially counting the dark eldar, that 0.0000001 is a lot of billions. so, no, completely wrong.

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Necromunda has a population easily in excess of ten trillion
10,000,000,000,000
Earth today has a population of
7,000,000,000

Where the Khaine do you get this from, you can find the number of inhabitants of certain planets and of certain hives, I've never seen a planet with this many inhabitants. Not even sure if it's possible, what's your source for this? I really would like to know the source of this or else I can just assume it's incorrect.
I know for sure, with various sources, a human Hive city has easily a couple of Billions of inhabitants, even Terra doesn't have a trillion inhabitants btw.
There are Hive cities with more inhabitants than our 7 billions...that's completely irrelevant.

Now considering the fact that the codex says Commorragh is like a mountain compared to a termite mound, you've got a lot of billions, in theory, absolutely nothing to disprove we're not talking trillions. The safest to assume is a lot of billions, it's the safest bet.

Something else about size of Commorragh, there is no definite size, best way to describe it is: it's huge!  Now the codex does use the world realm, to describe its vastness.
Besides the huge number of inhabitants, you have to remember this isn't just a city where people live, it's everything else too: training grounds, factories (weapons, food, testube babies, etc...), living quarters, shipdocks and a lot of them (you've got thousands of spaceships, they're far from being small, meaning the spaceports are pretty huge too), you've got the underworld, you've got te arenas, the useless palaces, the fortresses, etc...
You find all race in this city too, not just eldar, they also live somewhere.

Commorragh has several suns, that tells something about its surface, a sun can warm a pretty big surface, now imagine what type of space you have to warm up to need several suns. It's funny when people think Commorragh is the size of a planet, why would 1 single planet need several suns? (good joke)

The webway has no ceiling apparently, you can keep building taller and taller, the codex describes this too. Still plenty of room to expand, the city gets bigger and bigger too, a city only gets bigger when the number of inhabitants gets bigger btw.

The eldar will never go extinct, just because the dark eldar can never be killed. Commorragh is huge, loaded with killers, it's in another dimension, eventually you can isolate a part of it, drop a black hole on it, if you want. (humans think their exterminatus is badass, wait till we see what we use to kill everything, black hole destroys a solar system, not just one tiny planet)

Craftworlds are still fairly big, they got bigger, some are still getting bigger, Biel tan got to the point where they got enough confidence to start rebuilding an eldar empire attacking other races aggresively.

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You've got to remember though craft worlds are far bigger than any known planet and can hold far more eldar I think someone told me it was close to a 50/60 trillion per craftworld but can vary greatly

No eldar codex says, about the size of a moon, not a planet, so smaller than a planet obviously, some craftworlds and bigger than others, some are more intact than others too. A small craftworld has a few hundred of thousands inhabitants, best bet to assume on how many inhabitants the bigger craftworlds have: a couple of hundred thousands to maybe a few millions.
No spaceship can hold trillions of people, not even sure a planet can.
I'm already anticipating what you'll be thinking, no you can't put trillions of people on a big planet, all planets have the size of earth, the bigger the more gravity, just follow the laws of phisics, you can only put a limited number of inhabitants on a livable planet.

Still a couple of hundred thousands is far from extinct, though eldar reproduce slowly, it's a very complicated matter. You do have alternatives options and delays. An eldar lives longer than a human, a lot longer, a dark eldar can go eldar, has happened several times. eventually they can grow eldar in Commorragh to repopulate a craftworld. Eldar can go dark eldar just as easily as eldar can go dark eldar.

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From what I have gathered, I have understood that corsairs are rather small in number, and they sort of co-operate with craftworlders and commorrites too?

You have mainly 2 types of eldar corsairs, the obvious eldar corsairs and dark eldar corsairs.
As it's implied, eldar corsairs use eldar craftworld tech, mostly based on wraithbone, dark eldar corsairs use tech from Commorragh.
Only 2 main types, but tons of other sub types:
Eldar corsairs: 2 sub types:
-Loyal eldar corsairs: Amongst eldar corsairs you have the ones that stay loyal to their craftworld, they separate, but still help their craftworld whenever they need. They're very close to their craftworld and remain in regular contact.
-evil eldar corsairs: these are pretty much eldar who only care about themselves, they still use craftworld tech, with some of their own customisations, but they're as evil as their dark kin brothers. No loyalty to any craftworld, they just kill, steal, enslave whatever they want.

Now all eldar corsairs have no problems asking help from their dark kin brothers, as mercenaries to get a job done. So still a corsair force with a couple of dark eldar elements, fewer in numbers though, still under the direct lead of a corsair prince.

Dark eldar corsairs: also 2 sub types:
First, what's the difference between dark eldar corsairs and normal dark eldar?
The dark eldar corsairs don't live in Commorragh, it's that simple.
-either you were banned, or fled Commorragh, no choice, you continue your business, but elsewhere, still the same structure as a normal dark eldar army, can still contain all the separate factions, though the most common type is the Kabal based armytype. You still do have wyches and even arenas onboard some spaceships, this is described in the arenas of Death of the supplement: Crusade of fire (limited edition, very fun new rules for arena fighting, damn GW had to make this limited edition)
-either you left Commorragh willinly, the best example is the Duke Slicus. Trust me, he can return, even with his enemies awaiting his return. When you're an archon you show no weaknesses and all archon in Commorragh have enemies anyway. He got bored of the dark city and left, with no intention to return.

Now all dark eldar have no problems with taking in eldar corsairs as allies, don't even have to be dark eldar corsairs, any dark eldar can take in eldar corsairs units, even before this new edition with the new allies rules. The Voiddragon flyer for example an eldar flyer was always avalable to all eldar and dark eldar armies. So mixing these corsairs types is absolutely no problem.

Now reading the Path of the Outcast, I found another type of eldar corsair; a mix of both types, even more chaotic, both types of tech, mixed all over the place. The leader is a dark eldar archon, but she pays no attention to her soldiers and they're all somewhat equal. It's just a bunch of eldar who got together to form a corsair band, with no preference to tech or military structure.

Now All eldar corsairs do have bases, it's what the fluff says, their factions are small, but not as small as you think. Dark eldar corsairs are far larger than most eldar corsair fleets, they're dark eldar. The Duke Slicus agian is a good example: his force is big enough to attack a major imperial spaceport, this is a huge achievement.

There is very little fluff on exodites, close to 0 on population, nothing left to guess on.

Still put all the factions together, the eldar race is just so far from extinct.

I studied biology at university, in the biology we consider that if a species goes below 10k, it's becoming extinct. Still doesn't mean is will disappear for sure, humans are a good example: it's was discovered that around 50k BC human population went down to a couple of thousands, humans still repopulated the earth again afterwards. (happened because of the eruption of a supervolcano, this resulted in a mass extinction of species due to the dust covering the atmosphere during a few years. )

A couple of billions, not extinct in my book, far from it. Not even nid can wipe out the dark eldar, they get farmed by the dark eldar for fun. Exodites, craftworld can disappear, but not the dakr eldar, corsairs can escape too as a matter of fact, in the webway you also have eldar cities, still, where eldar and dark eldar corsairs reside, they're ruled by eldar though, not dark eldar, that's why they aren't part of Commorragh.


What I've noticed a lot too, they used to talk a lot about the eldar extinction, but no more in the last eldar codices verisons, fewer in numbers but not extinct. Like GW wanted to give the eldar the squat treatement, but they changed their mind.

Thor665 wrote:

DominicJ wrote:

even Commorragh is little more than a collection of warring gangs.

Gangs that can blow up suns, desolate worlds, and hold constant Roman-esque spectacles daily and in millions of arenas at the same time.

the fluff on the archons says any Kabal can stop an imperial crusade, they have that much power. Pretty hilarious definition of a "small gang" . The bigger Kabals could inflict major damage on other races, but they chose not to. Why kill your crops when you can just collect them when needed.

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99.999% of the eldar died during the tragedy.

Complete exageration, completely unaccurate too.

The 99.999% could actually be something. If the Eldar indeed were 'rules or the galaxy', with lots and lots of planets, I could think that their population could be... a number too big to count. Something seriously epic, even.

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Commorragh has several suns, that tells something about its surface, a sun can warm a pretty big surface, now imagine what type of space you have to warm up to need several suns.

I think that the suns are used as an energy source, nothing more. The codex does tell after all, that no light (except on rare occasions) illuminates the Dark City. So I doubt that Commorragh is a very warm place

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humans think their exterminatus is badass, wait till we see what we use to kill everything, black hole destroys a solar system, not just one tiny planet

Agreed.  

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A small craftworld has a few hundred of thousands inhabitants

What is the source for these numbers?

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Now reading the Path of the Outcast, I found another type of eldar corsair; a mix of both types, even more chaotic, both types of tech, mixed all over the place.

This is the thing I have been looking for. A corsair-group who does not care at all on who they take, what they have, as long as they are strong.
I have not read any of Path-books other than Andy's, but I think I will give Gav a try too.  


Cheers for all the answers.

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You've got to remember though craft worlds are far bigger than any known planet and can hold far more eldar I think someone told me it was close to a 50/60 trillion per craftworld but can vary greatly

Craftworlds were playable in BFG, they didnt have 50 trillion inhabitents, they might have had 50million. Unlikely though.

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99.999% of the eldar died during the tragedy.

Complete exageration, completely unaccurate too.

Of the exodites, some worlds died, some of them died, but a lot of exodite worlds were ok, they went as far as possible from the original eldar empire.

Dark eldar were 100% unaffected, they laughed possibly, but they didn't feel a thing.

A couple of craftworlds escaped too, all those factions together were the old eldar, which was a unified race, especially counting the dark eldar, that 0.0000001 is a lot of billions. so, no, completely wrong.

The exodite worlds were fine, but they were also negligably populated.
The Deldar werent unaffected, They were all but exterminated!
Go find out what Vect was doing during the fall (hint, he was a child).
Hundreds of craft worlds escaped, from (relativly) huge ones like Iyandan, with populations of tens of millions, to tiny ones like Xandros, with populations of tens of thousands.

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Where the Khaine do you get this from, you can find the number of inhabitants of certain planets and of certain hives, I've never seen a planet with this many inhabitants. Not even sure if it's possible, what's your source for this?

Necromunda is made up of 1000 hive clusters, each of about 12 hives. The top level of the capital hive, the most lightly populated area, had over a billion residents when it was last counted.
Ten trillion is a significant understatement.
Source, 40kn lexicanum, Necromunda fluff book.

Theres a Penal Legion book by Gav Thorpe, they visit the Tau, there are were more humans in one of the soldiers home hive than their are Tau.

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the fluff on the archons says any Kabal can stop an imperial crusade, they have that much power. Pretty hilarious definition of a "small gang" . The bigger Kabals could inflict major damage on other races, but they chose not to. Why kill your crops when you can just collect them when needed.

People misunderstand what a crusade is.
A crusade is not, by definition, a huge military undertaking, its merely any military undertaking ordered by the Senatarum Imperialis.

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Craftworlds were playable in BFG, they didnt have 50 trillion inhabitents, they might have had 50million. Unlikely though.

You can't believe any of that to be to scale, though. When an Imperial Guardsman is the same size as a Space Marine anything that GW makes for their games is not on an actual scale.

Many have tried to explain the number of Eldar. The fact is that nothing specific enough has ever been said by GW, it can't be properly answered. Suffice to say that while there are a large number of Eldar, that number is nothing when you consider that it's an entire galaxy, and certainly nothing compared to the original number during the Eldar Empire. Craftworlds are of varying sizes, with Iyanden being the largest, the sizes have never been specified, nor have their populations because every Craftworld is different. The number is indeterminate. All we know is that there are a minute number of Eldar compared to humans, who the Eldar compare to insects swarming across the galaxy. Obviously this wouldn't have been the case before The Fall, but The Fall tore the heart out of the empire and slew most of the Eldar. The survivors were either far away enough from the epicentre or were in the Webway. Even then, the Webway was fractured by The Fall, so no doubt many died even in the Webway.

The Eldar are still very powerful, but their numbers are low. That doesn't usually matter when it comes to a fight because they apply the necessary force for the situation. Just because they're outnumbered across the galaxy, doesn't mean all of those enemy numbers are in one place. Combine that with the fact that the Eldar are masters of dismantling and destroying forces of far greater size, and the difference in overall galactic population doesn't really effect the outcome of their battles. The real issue is that each Eldar lost is felt much harder than each human lost. Eldar make sure to take minimal casualties while crushing the foe, and are very good at it, but they aren't invincible and each loss hurts. Again though, war isn't the problem, they're very good at war.

The real issue for the Craftworlds is that the rate of reproduction is dwindling ever further, and few craftworlds are reproducing at a high enough rate to counteract the loss which is largely due to Eldar tiring of The Path and becoming Outcasts.

The Dark Eldar are just fine though. Of course there are hardly any of them compared to the number of humans, but there are still incredible numbers of them. Commoragh isn't just one place, it's untold numbers of places of varying size linked together by portals so that it seems like one huge place.

http://www.thedarkcity.net/t2926-the-torturer-s-tale
"Luckily for our people, that sacrifice was not to be. It was that very night that the Great Enemy was born into the universe. Even you humans have heard of that event. Our hero was on the altar, his body bared to the blade, anointed in the most exquisite perfumes and oils, his mind enraptured by the elixirs he had taken in preparation for the glorious event. As the blade touched his throat, her birth-scream screeched across the galaxy, extinguished suns, and all but wiped out our race. Her scream was joined by the death cries of countless millions of my people, their spirits ripped from their bodies by the hungering maw that is the Great Enemy. Almost all of us died that single night. The victims of She Who Is Not Named dropped to the ground as lifeless, withered husks. Some survived, but not without loss. They were the ones whose spirits were torn between the real world and the realm of Chaos. They were driven insane – half their mind within the rational world, the other half tormented by impossible visions of the Otherworld. Many ended their own lives. Others were driven into killing frenzies and rampaged through the streets slaying everything they came across, burning buildings, smashing the beautifully sculpted statues, razing the intricately ornate gardens in their madness."

The Torturer's Tale isn't canon any more, or at least he now has to be considered to be lying, because the codex tells us where Vect rose from and it doesn't coincide with what he says in The Torturer's Tale.

Yeah, don't consider it canon at all. It says that they go to the Webway after the Fall to make Commorragh, when we know it was established in M18 and lots of Eldar already dwelt in the webway.

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Commorragh has several suns, that tells something about its surface, a sun can warm a pretty big surface, now imagine what type of space you have to warm up to need several suns. It's funny when people think Commorragh is the size of a planet, why would 1 single planet need several suns?

That's about dimentional structure, not the size. Commoragh is a junction of many sub-realms, you could leard about similar objects in topology. It's quite possible that one sun's radiance couldn't get into several sub-realms, so one would need more suns.

Mngwa wrote:

I have been seeing a lot and lot of talk about the "dramatic and tragic tale of the Eldar, the sons of Khaine, who fight for the survival of their very own race"-stuff, and im getting rather tired of it, because the eldar as a race are definitely not extinct. I mean, the number of residents in Commorragh is rather difficult to count, but I would safely say that there are at least a hundred times more of us than Craftworlders (even though it's the opposite when it comes to players). Has GW, when writing fluff, completely ignored other eldar, focusing only on the Craftworlds?

While thinking this, I also thought of the exodites and corsairs. How numerous are they?
Does anyone have any insight or thoughts about this?

From what I have gathered, I have understood that corsairs are rather small in number, and they sort of co-operate with craftworlders and commorrites too?
Of exodites, I dont really know, but if I would have to say something about their amount, I would think that there are more of them than craftworlders, but they are... well, wilder than others, and not very "civilized".

That was the question asked.
Where does all this "nearly extinct eldar" stuff come from
It comes from page seven of the current codex, and page twenty.

I tend to find that a lot of the lore is written as if it were from the Imperium's point of view...

Since only a small number outside the Eldar race are even aware of the Dark City and it's inhabitants the Eldar would appear to be all but extinct...