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| - The Fall of the Eldar is the terrible event in the history of Warhammer 40k that befell the Eldar race in the 30th Millenium. It also led to the birth of the Chaos god Slaanesh, the death of millions of Eldar and Humans across the galaxy and the creation of the three main Eldar factions, the Craftworld Eldar, the Dark Eldar and the Exodites.
- Ancient and mysterious, the Eldar are enigmatic humanoid aliens who never speak openly of their terrible past. Before Mankind had even begun to walk upright, the Eldar Empire spanned the galaxy. Their whims decided the fate of worlds and quenched the fiercest suns. Now, they are all but extinct -- the last fragments of a shattered civilisation plunged into constant warfare. They have been reduced to a scattered and nomadic race, as those who had retained enough sanity to flee before the Fall did so on mighty vessels called Craftworlds. It is on these worldships that the last remnants of the ancient Eldar civilisation now drift amongst the stars.
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| abstract
| - The Fall of the Eldar is the terrible event in the history of Warhammer 40k that befell the Eldar race in the 30th Millenium. It also led to the birth of the Chaos god Slaanesh, the death of millions of Eldar and Humans across the galaxy and the creation of the three main Eldar factions, the Craftworld Eldar, the Dark Eldar and the Exodites.
- Ancient and mysterious, the Eldar are enigmatic humanoid aliens who never speak openly of their terrible past. Before Mankind had even begun to walk upright, the Eldar Empire spanned the galaxy. Their whims decided the fate of worlds and quenched the fiercest suns. Now, they are all but extinct -- the last fragments of a shattered civilisation plunged into constant warfare. They have been reduced to a scattered and nomadic race, as those who had retained enough sanity to flee before the Fall did so on mighty vessels called Craftworlds. It is on these worldships that the last remnants of the ancient Eldar civilisation now drift amongst the stars. The Eldar will not describe their downfall to any member of a "lesser race," but much of the story can be gleaned from fragmented sources. The Eldar succumbed to extremes of experience, their senses so finely attuned they perceived the heights and depths of agony and ecstasy. Throughout a long period of decline, the intensity of emotion generated by the Eldar’s excess began to coalesce within the Immaterium. A new Chaos power was being formed, growing stronger with every indulgence. This entity dozed fitfully, its dreams fed by the Eldar’s deeds. These dreams leaked back to the Eldar psyche and the race plunged into further extremes. In time, the Eldar people sank to the lowest depths of depravity and the sleeping power awoke. The Chaos God Slaanesh was born and its birth cries decimated the race, drawing the spirits of billions of Eldar into the Warp to be consumed by the newborn god. The worst destruction occurred at the heart of their galaxy-spanning empire, where the Warp erupted into realspace. An area almost twenty thousand light years across was engulfed in the very stuff of Chaos, known today as the Eye of Terror. The Eye is an area of Warp/realspace interface -- a vast, open wound upon the very fabric of reality constantly weeping filth and corruption. The Eye of Terror is now home to the darkest evils of the galaxy. At the height of the Horus Heresy in the early 31st Millennium the Chaos Space Marine Traitor Legions were driven from Terra and naturally sought shelter within the Realm of Chaos. Some of these corrupted Space Marine Legions claimed new homeworlds, moulding each to their own perverse designs. The followers of the different Ruinous Powers now fight one another in an eternal struggle for supremacy known as the Great Game for the resources to be found within the Eye of Terror, but they are at their most deadly on the very rare occasions when they cease fighting one another and turn their attentions to the material universe outside the Eye. Few have managed to unite the disparate factions in this manner, but Abaddon the Despoiler, once the chosen lieutenant of Horus, is such a being, moulding the Traitor Legions, mutant armies, and daemon hordes into Black Crusades that pillage and destroy the Imperial sectors around the Eye. The Eye of Terror, created by the shame of the Eldar and the price of their Fall, now provides the means by which the Traitor Legions have terrorised the Imperium for ten thousand standard years, as time within that impossible realm is as distorted as it is within the Warp itself. Ten millennia after the events of the Horus Heresy, the very same Traitors who fled from the armies of the Imperium still embark upon their Black Crusades, while the Eldar mourn for what was lost, and fear that Mankind, the foolish Mon-keigh, will replicate their arrogance --and its terrible consequences for the galaxy -- a thousand-fold.
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