When my players created their ship today they rolled 10 on the table for the ships past with the result Xenophilos. Because of the xeno parts integrated in the ships engineering all Repair Tests on the ship have -30 modification. We choosed to interpret this that some of the ships part are partly alien (not just the xeno component).

The players choose the eldar Runecaster as their xeno component and therefore the ship has been partly modified with eldar technology in the past. Because of this some of the ship has an alien eldar design on its architecture.

So how does eldar ships internal architecture look like?

Some ideas that came up was mosaic walls of colored crystals with mirror like effects. Do you have some more ideas of what the eldars design can look like?

Happy for answers...

Personally i would start with re-watching Babylon 5 and use the Mimbari ships for starters. Then add some other twists. strange crystals, no straight lines or sharp corners, everything glowing in weird pulsating colors. Machineries responding to thoughts not words. Soothing foggy corridors, That sort of thing.

Sister C is right - Eldar ships are more art than architecture. Think of them being 'grown' and 'shaped' rather than designed and built.

Try looking at the inside of Moya from Farscape, but in pastels and mother-of-pearl rather than the warm brassy tones she's actually in.

you must think of a garden, a beautiful one, like the one worked by the best of gardeners, then think of it made not of flowers, but stone and crystal. a kind of stone full of life and diamonds shaping itself responding to your thoughs. that's the like of an Eldar ship. growing new bone structure to respond the needs, changing everytime, never as it was.

a nightmare for the Broderhood of Mars!

Thanks for the answers. They gave me some good ideas!

One question that came up was why a tech priest would serve on xenophilous ships with its heretech machines? After som thought we decided that the explorator saw it as a responsibility to ward the ships human made machines against the eldar technology. The character have a goal to cleanse the ship of the eldar components.

7th_seal said:

Because not all Mechanicus believe that xeno-tech is heretical. Some believe that it can be salvaged and saved from the filthy xenos and brought into the light of the Omnissiah. Lots and lots of different opinions on pretty much everything in 40k, never think a single, multi-billion person religion/organisation doesn't have several factions

There are many reasons why Tech-Priests would serve on a "Heretical" ship.

In my campaign the Explorator is played as constantly skirting the borders of outright Tech-Heresy, which makes it appropriate for him to be on the player's ship. It rolled "Blasphemous Tendencies" and "Reliquary of Mars" during design, so it was ruled that it was built by a fringe-sect of the Adeptus Mechanicus using Warp-Tech of very dubious orthodoxy. The whole In-Character reason for the Explorator being in the group is to explore the mysteries of this arcane Machine-Spirit.

I'd talk things through with the players and decide what relationship the Priesthood of Mars has to the ship, and why they serve on it, in the case of any such ships.

MILLANDSON said:

We have used The Sixteen Universal Laws of Adeptus Mechanicus as a ground for the tech-priests beliefs. The ninth law: "The alien mechanism is a perversion of the True Path." have som saying about xeno technology. Aren't alien techonoly without machine spirit or in the worst case scenario hosts for deamons?

There are naturally some exceptions amongst the explorators and Machine cult in the galaxy. Our groups explorator are on his first mission and hasn't been infected by heretic ideas yet. As my adventures twist the characters sense of right and wrong, making them doubt their beliefs, they will naturally see things in new perspectives.

There could be a number of reasons Mechanicus may stay with a Xeno polluted ship:

1. Perhaps the Mechanicus wish to study the xeno tech - thinking that it's benefits could be replicated for the good of them Imperium (Heretical)

2. Perhaps the ship was wrested from a hulk and the xeno tech had grown inside it... to remove it would kill the machine spirit, therefore the intolerable must be tolerated (Heretical?)

7th_seal said:

If you read the copy of "Exterminatus" magazine that originally had the explainations and interpretations of the 16 Universal Laws, you would see that my example interpretation came straight from it. It is an accepted, though frowned upon, interpretation of the Law.

media.photobucket.com/image/eldar%20architecture/oink-pics/art/book/Lugganath.jpg

The above is a picture from the 5th ed 40k rulebook of an eldar craftworld.

The eldar have few sharp edges or corners. Everything flows. Imagine an eldar hallway as rounded with curving ribs growing up on either side, each one also rounded and smooth.

Hellebore

7th_seal said:

The point is not the fact that alien technology is seen as a perversion of what is right and proper, but whether or not those mechanisms can be redeemed for use by the Omnissiah's servants?