Clones...?

Can anyone tell me where I can find out more about the cloning of Dark Eldar? So far I only have the new codex. It really interests me - I imagine the Haemonculi run the gig, but then what? Do they grow to adults in the tubes, or get let out early with growth hormones for lunch? If so you can see where the social divide would be, and how wide it would be.

Yes, look on the GW website for some videos with Phil Kelly and Jes Goodwin. They discuss this topic in detail.

As Archon has mentioned, the subject that you require is specifically in the second video, but it's certainly worth watching them all, for a complete insight into the Dark city.

Here is the link > Dark Eldar: Designers Round Table Videos

The videos go into great detail not only about cloning, but resurrection from death. To sum it all up briefly this involves being put into a sarcophagus above the Haemonculi chambers where all the pain and anguish which occurs their is channeled into that vessel, which causes regeneration.

Cloning/Accellerated growth is similar to how "testtube" babies are born, albeit in a honeycomb structure and its mentioned that they are fully grown a few years later, but bear in mind that a lot of these processes is intended to be left to the imagination.

All of these services are available for only the richest and most powerful in Commorragh mind you.

I have always wondered about this and never seen those videos, thanks guys!

Sadly, there isn't anything to add that isn't in the codex or video, because the resurrection is an invention from the new background, to finally explain one of the reasons why the Dark Eldar aren't all dead yet.

What I don't get about the whole cloning thing is...
Wouldn't there souls get eaten by Slaanesh the instant they die?

I mean, I know the mention of a tiny bit of their soul clinging to their mortal remains in the codex.. but that isn't enough for me. Craftworld Eldar have soul stones for protection, but regular eldar don't so what gives?

Is like most of the soul eaten, then the lingering bits in the Mortal remains are "cloned" as well when the Haemonculi torture people to rejuvinate the clones?

My theory is that when Dark Eldar drink in the souls of their victims, they are essentially replacing lost energy. Parts of their original souls are draining away and being replaced by new ones they steal to stay alive. This would probably lead to an even more evil and depraved individual if he/she weren't already so, since the replacement soul energy is coming from tortured sources.

So while being cloned would essentially replace this lost soul energy with those of more tortured victims, that's not much different than the usual state of any Dark Eldar. It's easy to understand why DE can be so unpredictable, if this is indeed how it works. They are essentially vessels for multiple consciousnesses.

That's a good point you raise LuckyNo.5 and as far as I know it is officially unanswered.

We know that the Dark Eldars souls are being slowly drained and that to remain alive and healthy, they have to torture and agonise other races whose souls nourish their own. "the Eldar of the webway found that the curse of Slaanesh could be abated. The agony of others nourished their withered souls and kept them vital and strong" DE Codex pg 7 (Jes Goodwin likens this process to constantly topping up a leaky bucket.)

We know how it works, but not why... is it just the act of topping up a dying soul which keeps them healthy or is "She Who Thirsts" directly intervening to keep them alive as a reward for their actions? If the latter is the case, then Slannesh might also restore the Dark Eldar soul if enough souls are taken as payment? My reasoning for this is that in the second video of the Dark Eldar: Designers Round Table Video, where Phil Kelly mention's the regeneration process (See quote from my first post below)

Ariensis wrote:

this involves being put into a sarcophagus above the Haemonculi chambers where all the pain and anguish which occurs there is channeled into that vessel, which causes regeneration.

This process undoubtedly requires the deaths, of many slaves who's souls might in the eyes of Slannesh be worth trading for the soul of one Dark Eldar...


Another theory is that the Hamonculi do more than just take a bodypart to regrow if needed, but a portion of the soul as well. "for they are alchemists of not just the body, but also of the soul" DE Codex pg 37. The bodypart, which is left with the Hamonculi might act as a Dark Eldars form of soul stone? Perhaps the soul is restored into a newly grown body, despite a large part of the soul being lost to the warp or devoured, as long as part of it is kept by the Haemonculi then it can be brought back in its entirely. This theory of mine goes as far to say that the Dark Eldar might have the technology to bring Elrad back...
"As Eldrad realised his folly, his soul was devoured, and the greatest Farseer of the Eldar was lost. However, a handful of way stones he had created still remained active causing some Eldar to believe that he's still alive, but trapped in the Warp" Source: Lexicanum (From the Novel Fulgrim?)


A reference in WD372 December 2010 UK pg 51 under the information listed for the Kabal of the Last Hatred states that this process has advanced to the point of immortality by binding the soul to the body even upon death! (Dark Eldar Vampires!?) "The Kabal have mastered the technique of permanently binding a soul to the cadaver from which it would normally depart at the moment of death"

Sorry for being unable to provide a definitive answer, but hopefully this information will assist your understanding somewhat.

When the body-part is detached, a small "imprint" is left attached to it of the soul it belonged to. Given that the Dark Eldar are already regrowing their souls constantly from the smallest of fragments, this imprint is enough to regrow the entire soul from. Sure, the rest of the "parent" soul is consumed, but, in my mind, the consciousness then reawakes in the newly "created" soul in the haemonculi laboratories.

Of course, what this means if the Haemonculus grows the imprint while the "parent" is still alive is unknown. Does it simply fail to grow, or do we indeed get a clone?

Good points all around. I see the whole "soul growing" thing like this....

I do kind of see it as Krovin-Rezh does with it being more like "energy" that needs to be replaced, but energy with a specific pattern unique to the parent host. So as the DE feed off the souls of their victims...that stolen energy gets reformatted to match their biorhythms and such. I mean an Ork soul couldn't possibly sync up with an DE soul... but maybe after the DE feeds on an Ork soul he's a bit brutish and talking kinda Cockney for a few days while the Ork soul gets reformatted and assimilated. I mean you are what you eat right?

I can buy into the binding of the soul to the flesh. That being said when a DE dies in combat, I would feel that part of the parent soul does get eaten by Slaanesh and that parts remain in the mortal remains. So a Haemonculi would be able to "grow" a new soul from the energies of other tortured souls by mixing the stolen souls energy with the bits of the original DE soul and letting the DE soul reformat and take over.

Now here's a question, it seems that when they grow souls, the clones remember their previous lives, etc. Like How Urien Rakarth remembers all the times he died. So if this happens:

Aroshamash wrote:

Of course, what this means if the Haemonculus grows the imprint while the "parent" is still alive is unknown. Does it simply fail to grow, or do we indeed get a clone?

I think the clone might happen and I think the clone would be able remember his others life. This would be a very valuable commodity for a Wealthy Archon that would want duplicates of himself in case he got killed abruptly. He could have clones with full souls in stasis. Let's say he gets assassinated, his minions just immediately revive a clone, kill a few people to wake him up like a strong cup of coffee, then give him a crash course on whats been going on since that clone went in stasis or transfer "Soul memories" to the clone form the remains of the killed Archon. This would take way less time the weeks it would take to grow a full mature clone and the Archon would be able to get back to business running his Kabal with only a few days lapse in time.

LuckyNo.5 wrote:

I think the clone might happen and I think the clone would be able remember his others life. This would be a very valuable commodity for a Wealthy Archon that would want duplicates of himself in case he got killed abruptly. He could have clones with full souls in stasis. Let's say he gets assassinated, his minions just immediately revive a clone, kill a few people to wake him up like a strong cup of coffee, then give him a crash course on whats been going on since that clone went in stasis or transfer "Soul memories" to the clone form the remains of the killed Archon. This would take way less time the weeks it would take to grow a full mature clone and the Archon would be able to get back to business running his Kabal with only a few days lapse in time.

Keep in mind that the older denziens of the Commorragh are finding it difficult to consume enough sould to keep a youthful appearance. The amount of souls needed to keep one or several clones ready, even if you keep them in stasis, would be far beyond most Archons. Also, you would have to be willing to trust your clone, who knows every thing you know about all your evil plans not to try to depose you!

Archon wrote:

Keep in mind that the older denziens of the Commorragh are finding it difficult to consume enough sould to keep a youthful appearance. The amount of souls needed to keep one or several clones ready, even if you keep them in stasis, would be far beyond most Archons.

That's why I was saying only wealthy Archons, like Vect and his inner circle.

Archon wrote:

Also, you would have to be willing to trust your clone, who knows every thing you know about all your evil plans not to try to depose you!

He can't depose you if you never wake him up and keep him in stasis....

Archon wrote:

Also, you would have to be willing to trust your clone, who knows every thing you know about all your evil plans not to try to depose you!

LuckyNo.5 wrote:

He can't depose you if you never wake him up and keep him in stasis....

That's exactly what he wants you to think.

About the Soulstones, I get the impression that they require a certain amount of psychic control to use, which Dark Eldar don't have (what with their powers having withered away) so they can't use soulstones. And its more Grimdark to have souls be reattached to clones grown through the suffuring of hundreds as apposed to having your soul uploaded on the Eldar internet.

[quote="LuckyNo.5\]He can't depose you if you never wake him up and keep him in stasis.... [/quote]


Unless some of your underlings wake him up to use him against you.

Torpedo Vegas wrote:

About the Soulstones, I get the impression that they require a certain amount of psychic control to use, which Dark Eldar don't have (what with their powers having withered away) so they can't use soulstones. And its more Grimdark to have souls be reattached to clones grown through the suffering of hundreds as apposed to having your soul uploaded on the Eldar internet.

Actually, I get the impression that they could use soulstones if they wanted, but they have a moral(STOP LAUGHING) objection. Everything Commoragh stands for is hedonism and sensation, pain and pleasure. If you preserve your soul in a soulstone(as the Dark Eldar have no access to an Infinity Circuit), you will never feel anything ever again. Alone, with no touch or taste or torment to feel. Forever.

A Dark Eldar would be horrified at such a fate, and contemptuous of anyone who would sink so low as to trade everything that makes life worth living to wring out a few more years of existence that a slave would pity.

I never got the feeling that they objected because of that, but rather because of how arrogant they are. After all, why would they let something else dictate how they live their lives? They are the masters of the galaxy, reshaping it as they see fit. They're not going to limit themselves because some warp-predator wants to kill them. Wearing the soul-stones is allowing something else to dominate them, which they cannot ever allow.

So d'you think you could chop someones fingers off and make a clone from each one? What happens then?
I assume that the agony from say one person bing tortured can nourish more than one clone/Dark Eldar at a time, thats why they have the arenas. I can imagine rows of clones being nourished against a torture chamber. Could you clone people then torture them to make more clones, or is it a diminishing returns thing?

You still need a scrap of said person's soul to create an actual replica of the person, and soulless eldar aren't a good thing.

But the "scrap" is provided by the warp "imprint" of the person. Technically, you could also get the scrap (albeit a much smaller one) from an item important to them, enough to have left an echo of that person on it. It's how auto-seances (sp?) work in 40k, and apparently how the soul regrowth/cloning does too.

LuckyNo.5 wrote:

What I don't get about the whole cloning thing is...
Wouldn't there souls get eaten by Slaanesh the instant they die?

I mean, I know the mention of a tiny bit of their soul clinging to their mortal remains in the codex.. but that isn't enough for me. Craftworld Eldar have soul stones for protection, but regular eldar don't so what gives?

Is like most of the soul eaten, then the lingering bits in the Mortal remains are "cloned" as well when the Haemonculi torture people to rejuvinate the clones?

I imagine the Dark Eldar have highly developed soul technology that blows the Infinity Circuit and the soulstones out of the water. I mean, most of it is probably weaponized, but I bet they have quite a bit of little soultrap technologies, similar to soulstones. I mean after all, look at those little gems on the kabalite armor.

Ariensis wrote:

A reference in WD372 December 2010 UK pg 51 under the information listed for the Kabal of the Last Hatred states that this process has advanced to the point of immortality by binding the soul to the body even upon death! (Dark Eldar Vampires!?) "The Kabal have mastered the technique of permanently binding a soul to the cadaver from which it would normally depart at the moment of death"

This reinforces my theory.

Ariensis wrote:

Another theory is that the Hamonculi do more than just take a bodypart to regrow if needed, but a portion of the soul as well. "for they are alchemists of not just the body, but also of the soul" DE Codex pg 37. The bodypart, which is left with the Hamonculi might act as a Dark Eldars form of soul stone?

I don't if I read this somewhere or if it was in the designer videos, but somewhere it was said that haemonculi use part of the soul and oftentimes demand it to be able to perform the cloning.

I've no doubt that DEldar soultech outclasses the Craftworlers by a mile. They have psychic powers, we have SCIENCE!

That said, there is a limit. In the codex it says that some of the older Archons have to have thousands of slaves sacrificed to get their fix, I'd imagine that at a certain point no matter how good the Haemunculi are at the soul arts you'll run out of "soul'. Maybe using only scraps reduces the number of times you can be regrown. This is purely speculation on my part.

Torpedo Vegas wrote:

I've no doubt that DEldar soultech outclasses the Craftworlers by a mile. They have psychic powers, we have SCIENCE!

That said, there is a limit. In the codex it says that some of the older Archons have to have thousands of slaves sacrificed to get their fix, I'd imagine that at a certain point no matter how good the Haemunculi are at the soul arts you'll run out of "soul'. Maybe using only scraps reduces the number of times you can be regrown. This is purely speculation on my part.

Maybe that's why Vect has slowed down...

I was actually going to use cloning as a part of the fluff for my Kabal. I was thinking that they could use a body part or part of DNA from a already living thing and make a clone out of it without killing the original, there making a living clone.