Slaanesh as an Eldar god/ess

Looking at other threads and discussion about the Eldar Gods, I got thinking, what makes a god, godly?

Because if all the gods are made of pure warp stuff, what difference is there between the chaos gods and the eldar ones? Daemons are made of thoughts and emotions, the more similar feelings you get packed together, the greater the daemon, until you get a god, The old eldar gods represent their past values and beliefs collectively, Slaanesh started forming as those values started dying as the empire grew, until eventually, the craftworlders knew their old values were no more and everyone else just kept getting more perverted and excessive, down to their very souls, Slaanesh was born in the moment of purest collective knowledge that this was the Eldar race's new existence, and the old gods were quite literally killed by it. Slaanesh is the purest representation of eldar during the fall, the knowledge that all you strive for eventually descends into a maddening pursuit of perfection, we still see it within commoragh, but even more so within the exarchs of the craftworlders, lost upon their path. Slaanesh is eldar, until the eldar can learn to stop being Slaanesh

They aren't gods. It's just a powerful warp entity that can influence reality. But not a god in the biblical way

Many daemon princes and greater daemons style themselves as gods to their followers. Don't think of it as 2 different things, but rather as a gradient scale. Both Khaine and Khorne are both essentially warp-storms of manifested rage, one Eldar, one human, orbiting around each other. Before the Fall, Khaine was dominant, so Khorne orbited him, with Isha as her own storm, etc, but then the Fall happened, and Slaanesh pulled all the Eldar storms to herself, losing all cohesion amongst such overwhelming force, while Khaine is still stuck halfway between Khorne and Slaanesh.
Our brains then rationalise this as gods being consume, and Khaine being torn apart between Slaanesh/Khorne. Essentially, any recognisable feature within these 4 competing storms can be called a god, with Khorne/Slaanesh/Nurgle/Tzeentch just being the 4 dominant super-cells that comprise the greater whole. A greater God might split off some of its own power, but still keep it within the whole, creating a daemon, or the thoughts of mortals might influence the storm enough to create their own eddies and gusts, some of which coalesce into a small storm of their own that take their place within the greater whole, integrating into the 4 storms or being consumed by them.
So basically, a god is a god if it can call itself that. Anything lesser will be consumed and absorbed by something more worthy of the position.

My usual mental separation between a 40k daemon and god, is that a god is the complete personification of a concept, whereas a daemon is more of a minor representations of their god.

My question though is, what separates Slaanesh from the eldar gods? They are both the embodiment of the collective conscious of all eldar, Slaanesh is just a bit more violent than the rest of them, Do gods not die and spawn into existence all the time? A cultures dress, language, ethics, etc. change over time, why wouldn't it make sense for new gods to die and be born?

Slaanesh may have the ultimate goal of consuming all eldar souls, but do the chaos gods not have absurd ways for showing their love?

That's the thing though, it's all just a sliding scale, rather than two different things. The emotion of Greed could form it's own entity within the Warp, and become a minor God in its own right, while still being within the greater realm of influence of Slaanesh, so could be absorbed entirely by Slaanesh and become a daemon of Slaanesh.

What happened with the Eldar gods was that they were both gods of their own concepts, and exclusively Eldar. When Slaanesh was born, She was strong enough to steal them from their previous locations as independant, and given the sheer scale of the deaths caused by the birth, there wasn't enough Eldar influence in the Warp to keep them having independance within the Warp so they lost cohesion entirely.

The word god doesn't only mean the judeo christian god, mythologies all over the world have many gods, all with different powers & different limits.

The 40k gods are no different, in fact GW proves on muliple occassion how familair they are with cultures from all over the world.

The 40k beings that qualify as gods are just extremely powerful beings, not all from the same origin.

There are the C tans, back at their height, they were extremely powerful destructive beings.

There are the warp entities and there are the Eldar gods. There's no official fluff that says the Eldar gods were warp entities. Warp beings can't survive in this reality, they disappear eventually from it. There are exceptions to the rule, but eventually if killed a deamon returns to the warp. This is not the case with an eldar god, he can roam in this reality no problem and if he gets killed he doesn't come back in the warp.

The Eldar gods were kind of opposites of the warp entities, this is only confirmed in the newer fluff.
Ynnead is slowly being born from the eldar deaths, to be more accurate, it's a last plea of the eldar for help, while their souls get sucked in by Slaanesh.

The eldar created Slaanesh, but Slaanesh in it's turn started to give birth to Ynnead.

The Eldar god fluff is very vague, the gods may have existed or not, it's unclear. They talk about it in the latest novel, how vague the normal eldar saw the Eldar gods. Khaine had the fight vs Slaanesh, Isha & Vaul were captured, other gods were killed, it's all in the fluff, but it's not 100% proven.

Aroshamash wrote:

Many daemon princes and greater daemons style themselves as gods to their followers. Don't think of it as 2 different things, but rather as a gradient scale. Both Khaine and Khorne are both essentially warp-storms of manifested rage, one Eldar, one human, orbiting around each other. Before the Fall, Khaine was dominant, so Khorne orbited him, with Isha as her own storm, etc, but then the Fall happened, and Slaanesh pulled all the Eldar storms to herself, losing all cohesion amongst such overwhelming force, while Khaine is still stuck halfway between Khorne and Slaanesh.
Our brains then rationalise this as gods being consume, and Khaine being torn apart between Slaanesh/Khorne. Essentially, any recognisable feature within these 4 competing storms can be called a god, with Khorne/Slaanesh/Nurgle/Tzeentch just being the 4 dominant super-cells that comprise the greater whole. A greater God might split off some of its own power, but still keep it within the whole, creating a daemon, or the thoughts of mortals might influence the storm enough to create their own eddies and gusts, some of which coalesce into a small storm of their own that take their place within the greater whole, integrating into the 4 storms or being consumed by them.
So basically, a god is a god if it can call itself that. Anything lesser will be consumed and absorbed by something more worthy of the position.

This is the single best explanation of the 40k gods I've ever heard. Perfect.

YoungArchon wrote:

Slaanesh is the purest representation of eldar during the fall, the knowledge that all you strive for eventually descends into a maddening pursuit of perfection, we still see it within commoragh, but even more so within the exarchs of the craftworlders, lost upon their path. Slaanesh is eldar, until the eldar can learn to stop being Slaanesh

This is a brilliant insight as well, and fits perfectly with the fluff of Ynnead.

The only thing that will defeat Slaanesh is Ynnead, the god that is born when all Eldar are dead.

It could be that Ynnead is not a god at all, but is simply a concept meaning 'the death of all Eldar'. Nothing will be 'born' at that point. Slaanesh would just cease to be (or cease to be as a power in the warp, after her most dedicated acolytes are dead).

Ynneadwraith wrote:

The only thing that will defeat Slaanesh is Ynnead, the god that is born when all Eldar are dead.

It could be that Ynnead is not a god at all, but is simply a concept meaning 'the death of all Eldar'. Nothing will be 'born' at that point. Slaanesh would just cease to be (or cease to be as a power in the warp, after her most dedicated acolytes are dead).

Prophecies are only interpretation of what could come to be, they are not 100% accurate and while the most accepted interpretation is that all Eldar must die for Ynnead to be born not all agree. Eldrad recently he attempted to change that until the Bolter Porn stopped him. Do to what he just did we don't know if that has altered the prophecy in any way. [Refer to Death Masque]

The contribution of the Eldar to the current existence of Slannesh is just a drop in the bucket in relation to the contributions of the other races. There are most likely far more Humans worshiping She Who Thirsts than there are Eldar still in existence. Day to day people going about their normal lives also feed Slannesh whether they worship her or not just by lusting after something/someone or indulging in mundane activities.

Khain mor wrote:

There are the warp entities and there are the Eldar gods. There's no official fluff that says the Eldar gods were warp entities.

Actually yes, there is. I don't have it any more, but way back in 2nd edition there was a passage that said that the eldar gods were warp entities deliberately created by the eldar themselves to embody the spirit of their people. The only difference between them and Slaanesh was that they created Slaanesh by accident... or did they?

I do agree with slaanesh being fed by others more than eldar in the 41st millenium, but as a race whose pretty much every moment is dedicated to achieving perfection at what they do (the eldar paths is an example), slaanesh would be dealt a heavy blow by that.

And yeah, i can't remember where i read it but i've read two things about the eldar gods:

1. They were manifested by the eldar from aspects of their former culture
2. During the war in heaven the eldar were created in order to fight the necrons by manifesting warp constructs for battle. Later, these warp constructs amalgamated into the eldar gods we know.

I quite like the latter. Brings to mind a whole different pre-fall eldar society where warp-construct (basically eldar daemon summoning) technology was what gave the eldar their power.

Fits with the description of wraithbone as a substance drawn from the warp itself; a sort of solidified warp energy.

Makes me want to try and make an eldar malefic daemonology summoning army as an example of a pre-fall eldar warhost