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| - Within the Warp, thoughts and emotions flow together, fed by fellow feelings until they achieve a consciousness of sorts. They become entities of greater or lesser potency depending on the intensity of their origin. Amidst the swirling psychic energy of the Empyrean, the corruption of the decadent Aeldari became manifest on a horrifying scale as the flood of raw emotions coalesced into a gestalt consciousness. Slowly, the Great Enemy stirred towards wakefulness. Too late, the Eldar realised that they had created a god in their own hideous image, a god grown immense and potent by suckling upon the dark fodder of the Eldar spirit. No creature was ever conceived that was as terrible or perverse as the Chaos God Slaanesh. It is a name the Eldar will not speak, instead whispering Sai'lanthresh,
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| abstract
| - Within the Warp, thoughts and emotions flow together, fed by fellow feelings until they achieve a consciousness of sorts. They become entities of greater or lesser potency depending on the intensity of their origin. Amidst the swirling psychic energy of the Empyrean, the corruption of the decadent Aeldari became manifest on a horrifying scale as the flood of raw emotions coalesced into a gestalt consciousness. Slowly, the Great Enemy stirred towards wakefulness. Too late, the Eldar realised that they had created a god in their own hideous image, a god grown immense and potent by suckling upon the dark fodder of the Eldar spirit. No creature was ever conceived that was as terrible or perverse as the Chaos God Slaanesh. It is a name the Eldar will not speak, instead whispering Sai'lanthresh, translatable from the Eldar Lexicon as "She Who Thirsts." In a heartbeat, the shining Aeldari civilisation that had lasted for aeons had its heart ripped out, leaving a pulsing afterbirth of pure Chaos in its place. Since the Fall of the Eldar in the late 29th and early 30th Millennia of the Imperial Calendar, the Webway has become a realm shattered and dangerous, its splintered reaches infested by strange beings from different realities. Yet the Webway's portals still allow the brave and the bold to strike without warning at millions of locations throughout realspace. The ancient Eldar discovered millions of Terran years ago the means to move within the threads of the veil between realspace and the Warp. It was they who mastered the original Webway network, though it has changed drastically since the height of the Eldar empire, torn open by war and disaster. Moving between the dimensions is a technique fraught with danger, but such is the skill and intellect of the Eldar that they are still able to utilise it without hesitation. The Eldar Craftworlds float in deep space and move at only sub-light speeds. Their exact locations are not known by other intelligent races, and the Eldar themselves do not consider their physical positions to be important -- a minor detail in an eternal journey. Smaller Eldar spacecraft, moored in docks upon the Craftworld's fringes, travel between the different Craftworlds by means of the Webway. The main gateways into the Webway take the form of swirling spheres of light and darkness held in stasis astern of each Craftworld. The pathways of the Webway lead to the Craftworlds, to the surface of the verdant worlds of the Exodites, to the Dark Eldar's corrupt city of Commorragh, and to untold thousands of other worlds throughout the galaxy. Cloistered deep within the hidden city-realms of the Webway, those survivors who concealed themselves in their palaces of depravity still revel in the debauched lifestyle that led to the Fall. In that twilight realm between the material universe and the Warp, the Dark Eldar mock and jeer those ravaged by the downfall of their race. Even though they would never admit it, they know in their hearts that, try as they might to allay their fate, unless something changes beyond their imagination to conceive, Slaanesh will claim them in the end. Though the Webway still connects many Eldar worlds and Craftworlds to one another, the baleful energies of the Fall have ruptured its hyperspatial pathways in countless places. Amongst the Webway's shattered and treacherous tendrils there are many byways, dead ends and mazes that can entrap the unwary. Some lead to places long since abandoned or destroyed, or else now inhabited by the daemons of the Warp. These doors are sealed with runes of psychic power, lest unknown horrors gain access to a Craftworld or some unwary traveller unwittingly opens a doorway and is sucked into the Warp. It is claimed that there are many secret paths that lead through time and reality, though only the elegant and deadly Harlequins are reputed to know of such routes. Within the furthest reaches of the Webway are mighty Dark Eldar port-cities and infestations of nests of the wasp-like Warp entities known as the Psychneuein, but the best hidden of all the secrets of the Webway is the hidden Craftworld called the Black Library. The exact shape and form of the Webway is not fully understood by the Eldar of the present day, let alone the xenographers of the Imperium. Each Craftworld's place in the Webway is known only to its Seers, and they guard their knowledge well. It is rumoured that a transdimensional map was made thousands of Terran years ago, a priceless artefact which is now kept in the Black Library. Holding secrets beyond mortal understanding, it shows many hidden ways that have since been lost or forgotten. If this is so, then the Guardians of that strange domain have chosen to keep their secrets. While some of the Webway's arterial passageways are large enough to carry spacecraft, most tunnels only allow strike forces of Eldar on foot or small vehicles to pass. Though most Eldar spacecraft can travel through the Warp itself, it is a difficult and dangerous process for them -- to risk a Craftworld in such a way would be to throw a candle into a storm and hope for its flame to stay alight. As a result, the Eldar travel infrequently to places that lie more than a few light years from the safety of their Webway portals. Webway journeys are relatively fast, allowing space fleets to move easily between the network's major gateways. This enables the Eldar to transfer swiftly to places directly connected by the Labyrinth Dimension, but makes it extremely difficult for them to reach worlds that have no gate into the network.
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