Editing Craftworld Alaitoc (section)

==The Events of ''Path of the Eldar''==
[[File:Alaitoc-image.jpg|200px|right|thumb|Alaitoc Symbol.]]
Due to the selfish actions of the ranger Aradryan and the corrupt and egocentric Imperial commander De’vaque, who had dealings with the Eldar pirate Yrithain in an attempt to enrich himself at the expense of the Imperium, Alaitoc found itself under attack by all of the Imperial forces De’vaque could muster, led by the Chapter Master of the [[Sons of Orar]], Nadeus. These events are the main focus of the books ''Path of the Eldar'', by [[Gav Thorpe]], which follow the story of three Eldar youths, Korlandril, Aradryan, and Thirianna. Thorpe decided to leave out their current Necron hunting job (Alaitoc's anti-Necron stance was introduced in 2011 irl, when Thorpe was more than halfway through the ''Path of the Eldar'' trilogy).

The armada that was sent was massive and each of Alaitoc’s [[Farseer|Farseers]] had been ascribed a region of the skein to watch. Thirianna herself was responsible for watching the unfolding fates of more than a dozen Imperial starships from frigates to battleships on her own, whilst the other seer members kept track of many, many more (the imperial fleet consisted of hundreds if not thousands of imperial ships and smaller void craft). Thirianna was impressed that the human ships were protected by [[Warp]]-based technologies ([[void shields]]), for she had not believed them capable of such technology, though it was still simplistic compared to the Eldar mastery of the Warp. Maybe they had become complacent in their dealings with humans because their typical conflicts with the Imperium would normally be dealt with on their own terms and as far away from the Craftworld as possible. But Thirianna's reaction can probably be chalked up to her youth and naïveté, as she, up to this point, had no experience when it came to dealing with humans, and given Alaitoc’s strict customs and insular tendencies, it’s not very likely that such information would be common knowledge. Because not knowing your enemy's capabilities couldn't possibly be a stupid decision. Her lack of knowledge is further made odd by the fact Thirianna was also a Dire Avenger, and was explicitly written killing Chaos infected human children (just like how Imperial forces kill countless innocent alien children all the time, not to mention the thousands of human children that are fed into Imperial factories, or made into child soldiers, and let's not forget how many have been sacrificed to the Emperor every day to keep that glorified lighthouse going; if you haven't realised yet the setting is not a nice place to live); which you don't need any real information on human Warp drives to do, so the fact she was a Dire Avenger is a pointless one.

After the first wave of Imperial ships were butchered, the main Imperial fleet appeared, arriving in small groups scattered around the edges of the star system. The Alaitoc fleet was just not numerous enough to cover every approach. Although they could not ultimately prevent the Imperials from boarding Alaitoc herself, by the time they had finally managed it the space around the craftworld was a graveyard of Imperial vessels.

Before the [[Space Marines]] arrived to save the day, the [[Imperial Guard]] were getting slaughtered within the craftworld by Alaitoc [[Aspect Warriors]], which isn’t a surprise given that they had THREE [[Phoenix Lords]], including [[Phoenix Lords#Maugan Ra|Maugan Ra]], fighting alongside them. One incident saw a small group of warriors luring thousands of Guardsmen, including entire armed divisions, into the centre of one of the craftworld's massive domes before turning off the gravity and ejecting the whole lot into the void. Taking advantage of the limited movement of the Eldar Titans within the confines of the inner corridors, the Imperial Guardsmen were actually able to take down the Alaitoc titans. Given the correct weapons (such as heavy Vanquisher cannons, which are basically anti-Titan guns), the Imperial Guard could indeed accomplish such an objective (though most of them died doing it). The reason the Sons of Orar chapter took light casualties during the initial fighting was because their chief [[Librarian]] was purposely sacrificing the lives of the Imperial guard to preserve the lives of the Marines. Thirianna put a stop to this when she hunted him down and crushed his mind like a grape.

The Craftworld's Farseers had told their people that they had foreseen Alaitoc would survive. The conclusion? Due to the intervention of the Ranger Aradryan, the Imperium discovered they had been tricked by the [[Dark Eldar]] and De’vaque's treachery was finally revealed. In short, the Alaitoc Eldar could have beaten off the attack, but it would have been bloody; despite each Eldar warrior killing dozens of imperial soldiers, for every Eldar lose they would have likely lost eventually given the sheer Imperial number advantage, especially with the, y'know, Imperial Titans inside blowing shit up with the Eldar Titans dead. Though the Guard was taking a brutal beating, they were still pushing through and gaining ground throughout the battle- although this was actually part of the Eldar strategy (I know, I know, blame Gav) to avoid needless Eldar losses. The plan was for the Eldar forces to hit the Imperial forces hard and then fall back in order to lure large numbers of Imperial soldiers into areas where they could be dealt with and away from the civilian areas which would allow them to evacuate before the Imperial forces arrived. This is not to mention any reserves from both sides that would have arrived eventually. Instead, they just told the Space Marines that they had been manipulated into attacking Alaitoc by the [[Dark Eldar]] and an Imperial governor. During the fighting within the Craftworld, the Eldar fleet had continued to destroy the Imperial fleet, leaving their forces upon Alaitoc stranded and surrounded, as they had been continuously lured further in until they were cut off from any reinforcements. Once the Eldar had finished evacuating the last of its population, they had planned to destroy Alaitoc by imploding her Webway portal and killing all the humans left behind (which would still be very much an Imperial victory). They also told the Space Marines that if they did not stop, a fuckhuge fleet of Eldar with ships from pretty much every craftworld was on its way to kill everything that was not Eldar within 20 lightyears.

And so, although Alaitoc is one of the smaller of the big five craftworlds, weaker Eldar for Eldar than other craftworlds such as [[Biel-tan]] and [[Ulthwé]] (who are constantly at war), and not made up of warrior tribes like [[Saim-Hann]] or a huge amount of wraith constructs like [[Iyanden]], they managed, through the sheer scale of Imperial losses, to ultimately convince a Space Marine Chapter Master to negotiate a truce:

"How many thousands have died already?" whispered Alaitin. "How many of your warriors have fallen to clean the blood from this man’s hands, Chapter Master?"

The boom of the pistol caused Aradryan to jump. De’vaque’s head disappeared in a cloud of blood and bone and his headless corpse collapsed to the pavement.

"Too many," snarled the Chapter Master. "Call off your ships and I will cease the attack".

In the end, nearly a third of Alaitoc lay in ruins from rim to core, but the number of Eldar dead was only counted in the thousands (which unfortunately also counted as heavy losses because the Eldar don't have a surplus of lives like the Imperium), and could have been far higher (though the Imperium only wanted to smash everything; killing was just a bonus as they knew how evasive the Eldar are). The Imperium, upon leaving, decided to go kill the ones responsible. Some [[Fail|victory]], but victory is not measured in corpses, especially when fighting the Imperium. For them, it was a strategic victory. The Eldar rely on the stuff the Imperium destroyed to survive; besides that, the Imperium had shown that a small (by Imperial standards- about the same size as the forces sent against the Tau) force could cause serious problems for a Craftworld and the Imperium did not give a shit about the number of ships it would cost, which told the Eldar what they already knew: that the Imperium has absolutely no respect for the lives of its own warriors and that they were so blinded by their own hatred and so heavily indoctrinated that they would willingly suffer truly horrifying loses as long as the enemy was destroyed. Anything less against the vast majority of the Imperium's enemies would just result in constant losses until every human was dead or worse. Ten millennia of that results in a truly terrifying culture. Directly attacking the Imperium with sheer force was not an option with their low numbers; the Imperium could afford to throw away millions if not billions of their own and they wouldn't even care, which the Eldar are not prepared to or willing to do.

Although there will be those who read the books that go straight into the chest thumping “My guys can beat up your guys”, this is unnecessary as it was written by Gav Thorpe and he's got some weird fetish for elf deaths (not this time since only a few thousand died, but that's relative to how many he thought were in the Craftworld in the first place) even when prior books state that the Imperium avoids fighting Craftworlds because it'd be a war of attrition that would be too costly for even them (though it wouldn't be a war of attrition since the Eldar cannot afford to replace their losses and attrition is entirely about which side can replace its losses the quickest; the Imperium wins wars of attrition against the damn ''Tyranids''). It took the entire legion of Space Wolves at full strength and with the backing of the Imperium at its height years to destroy one Craftworld (or months, depending on what book or what the writers decides sounds best at the moment) though saying "full Legion" is misleading as the Space Wolves had very small numbers and it didn't have the backing of the Imperium, only the fleet that encountered that Craftworld which was too stupid to realize attacking everyone it sees is a bad idea.

It also does not help that Gav Thorpe is of the camp of "there are as many elves as there needs to be and they're just strong enough to make things tragic". But the battles are really set dressing to what the book's actual message was, mainly that someone's actions have consequences even when they mean no harm. Although we know the true meaning- It's Warhammer 40,000; the books' messages are always "explosions are awesome, buy our miniatures".

Basically just don't question anything about the book unless you want your head to hurt and find yourself trying to cross-reference several different [[codex]]es to see if you missed something important.