Editing Dark Eldar (section)

==The Dark Eldar Themselves==
[[Image:1287692229240.jpg|thumb|right|A lot like this, really.]]
{{topquote|I came to bring the pain, hardcore from the brain/Let's go inside my astral plane.|Method Man, Archon of the Wu Tang Kabal}}


The story of the Dark Eldar's fall and their need to inflict pain and horror in order to live - as well as elaboration on their kabalistic practices - have gone a long way towards deepening their fluff considerably (as one noble fa/tg/uy surmised, less retarded Saturday morning cartoon villainy). While some have balked at the more vampiric flavor of the New DE Codex, several denizens of /tg/ have managed to extract comic gold from this. A common musing is that they are ambitious, sex-crazed, easily shot down, boat-and-plane-loving pseudo-aristocrats (although many of the Dark Eldar really are aristocratic) haunted by a dark curse - ergo, they're not vampires, but, in fact, the Kennedys.

Putting it simply, the soul of a Dark Eldar is [[Grimdark|an open wound that can only be salved with suffering, a void that can only be filled with tortured bodies, a thirst that can only be quenched by spilled blood.]] Just like my ex girlfriend!! The origin of this void within the Dark Eldar, and the source of the nigh-religious terror that drives them to commit these daily atrocities, is the knowledge that [[Matt Ward|<s>THEY WILL NEVER BE ULTRAMARINES</s>]] upon death, their soul is forfeit to the Chaos God Slaanesh - an eventuality they intend to stave off at all costs.

Fortunately for the Dark Eldar, provided that someone recovers enough of their remains, their dead body parts can be brought to the Dark Eldar Haemonculi (an ancient order of Dr. Mengeles, the people that educated [[Fabius Bile]] in the art of being a gigantic [[Eldrad|dick]]) and regenerate themselves in case of death, complete with personality and mental faculties intact. This also keeps their soul from being devoured by Slaanesh - but at a price - this regenerative process is fueled by pain just as surely as the Dark Eldar themselves. This is the reason Dark Eldar raids are so eager to get in and get out as fast as possible; [[grimdark|if the subject is dead for more than a day or so, they're beyond recovery]]. (Actually that's a lie the Haemonculi tell their clients so the clients won't risk the truth: any subject can be revived, but the longer it's been dead the more likely the reviving chamber will attract daemons and cause a disjunction/warp storm.)

Their diet of anguish has blessed the Dark Eldar with some of the longest lifespans in the setting, only surpassed by godlike figures like the C'tan, Necrons, the [[Emperor|Emprah]], [[Phoenix Lords]] and the Chaos Gods. If they die, they can just respawn back at base once the Haemonculi have managed to torture and/or bosh enough pain out of their subjects to allow the occupants of their rejuvenation pods to regenerate. This system is dependant on the Haemonculi though, and as a result they are the single most crucial group within all of Commorragh. The process gradually has diminishing returns though and truly ancient Dark Eldar will eventually require an ever increasing amount of pain infliction to rejuvenate themselves.

The Dark Eldar have also overcome the traditional [[Gay|Elven birthrate problem]] by finding a fun workaround to the long gestation period of conventional Eldar - they can remove a fertilized ovum and place it in an amniotic tube to age them quickly enough to be useful. This is looked down on by Dark Eldar society however - they even have an elite unit, the Trueborn, that are basically a bunch of spoiled brats who feel entitled to all the good weapons just because they got pushed out of a proper twat (that and the fact that ones born from a tube also get older faster and need to feed on pain more often). The fact that hedonism is the rule in Commorragh probably helps too.

The Dark Eldar have some of the most advanced tech in the 41st millennium, in some cases even surpassing the most powerful weapons of their cousins. Access to weapons that basically fling incandescent dark matter and miniature stars around goes a long way towards giving them serious "I'm going to fuck your shit up" power, and their access to arcane wargear and super-fast vehicles even more so. In fact the only race that comes even close to the technological level and destructive power of the Dark Eldar is the [[Necrons]], whose basic weapon rips the molecules off its target, flaying one layer off at a time (though it's still near-instant). Despite this the majority of the most powerful technology cannot be used by the Dark Eldar anymore as it was psychic in nature, and their psychic abilities have long since atrophied away (truly making them the degenerate Eldar). The little psychic ability that they have left tends to be unimpressive.

All that being said, their continued survival is not as implausible as it might seem at first glance. The Dark Eldar are smart, technologically advanced, quite numerous, and even though they'll fight each other to death over a biscuit in Commorragh, during a raid into Real Space they set aside their differences to [[/tg/ gets shit done|GET SHIT DONE]]. The new codex also points out the Dark Eldar do follow a fairly strict set of rules while fighting each other and running shit; one of the reasons they enjoy raiding realspace is that it allows them to cut loose and just butcher innocents for a while.

It is also worth noting that the closest word Dark Eldar have to the concept of love is something along the lines of willingly submitting one's will to another.