Gaire said:

In that case it doesn't make sense either since traitor guard would be battle brothers with CSM and CD while Gue'vesa would be battle brothers with the Tau.

Face Eater said:

Doesn't really fit when around 69% of the Space Marines that make up the Deathwatch are BB (battle brothers/best buddies) with the Tau. Okay, that's a bit unfair since it doesn't make sense that they are battle brothers at all either. Personally I would also move the Eldar to the Allies of Convenience. The Deathwatch always struck me as an organization of pragmatists and they and the Eldar share a lot of common enemies. Or maybe they shared, now the Eldar are best buddies with their torturing and soul-devouring brothers. Emperor, I hate daemons of Retcon.

Well they approach the whole getting away from Slannesh [the Eldar as a whole] differently, but at the core they are the same culture. The Eldar are not cuddly bunny loving elves, they are ancient, unknowable, scheming things and we humans are little better than angry cattle to them so budding with their darker cousins doesn't seem so far fetched when, it only become odd when you look at them through human eyes.

Mjoellnir said:

Possibly, but traitor Space Marines don't a good record of respecting human life so I can certainly imagine that they wouldn't have a massive amount of mutual respect and Gue'vesa would have been steralised by the Tau and otherwise be treated as second class citizens.

Mjoellnir said:

Well, I used a simple system.for the Xeno's, seeing as the Deathwatch motto is suffer not the Xeno to live i thought their general stance would be never to ally with them, but the Eldar and Tau could conceivably team up with against a worse foe. Should there be more Eldar Tau love? What do you guys think?

UncleArkie said:

As far as I remember the Eldar collect souls to form a new god who can kick Slaanesh's ass while the Dark Eldar constantly allow Slaanesh to siphon off their soul energy while they replenish it from other sources. That seems like a tiny conflict of interest to me.

Face Eater said:

Still, traitor guard would often be under the command of a CSM chaos lord. And I'm pretty sure that the Tau don't sterilize everybody, only those who don't want to serve the greater good. Since they are able to include Kroot and Vespids without problem I think Gue'vesa would be as much part of their army, regardless how brainwashed they are.

Face Eater said:

Well, "Suffer not the alien to live" is mainly an Imperial motto, the Deathwatch were just the ones who were supposed to hunt primarily aliens. Personally I think they would have no problems to ally with Xenos to kill other Xenos without any desperation needed. It's convenient. For example allying with Eldar to defeat Necrons means that you split the losses with them and when you have to fight them later there are less Eldar to worry about.

Mjoellnir said:

The Eldar hide their souls in soul stones when they die for them not to be eaten by Slannesh, Dark Eldar hope to appease the Dark Prince by offering up suffering, pleasure and souls to him. Two different approaches to the same conundrum, don't eat my soul please.

UncleArkie said:

From Lexicanum ( http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Ynnead#.UAL6rfWnJ-w ): "Ynnead represents the last hope of the dwindling Eldar race. They believe that when the Infinity Circuits hold all the spirits of their race, all of the Craftworlds will unite into one Infinity Circuit, and the collective spirits of the Eldar will join to form a new Power in the Warp that will battle and subdue Slaanesh, so that Eldar spirits may once more be able to merge with it and form a single, balanced entity. By doing so, if such a thing is possible, they hope that this will allow the Eldar race to be reborn into a better form. Meanwhile the Craftworlds and the spirit stones must be guarded from harm and continue to survive, so that all Eldar can see and form in their own minds a concept of the Eldar virtues that will enter along with their spirits into the Infinity Circuits."

Craftworld Eldar try to merge into a god that can defeat Slaanesh. Dark Eldar constantly feed Slaanesh therefore making her stronger and increasing her chances to do with Ynnead what she did with the other Eldar gods which means that the essence of all the Eldar who "hid their souls in soul stones" would be devoured by her. If I were an Eldar I would try to kill as many Dark Eldar as possible, capture their souls and bury them in the Black Library. Because in the long term they were trying to feed my soul to Slaanesh. Not mentioning the whole deal of them devouring Eldar souls too whose essence is then again drained from them by Slaanesh.

UncleArkie said:

Don't believe the DEldar offer anything to Slaanesh. They hate it too. They keep their spirits bolstered by inflicting pain - they don't give that pain to Slaanesh.

Kshatriya said:

The Dark Eldar don't offer anything, but by continuing to live like before the Fall they allow her to take it. From "The Torturer's Tale" (a story Asdrubael Vect tells to a human prisoner in an old White Dwarf. Google it if you want to read the whole thing):

"As time passed through an eternal nightmare of half-reality – for the emergence of the Great Enemy created the vortex known to you as the Eye of Terror, engulfing our oldest worlds – it became clear to our hero that She Who Thirsts was not finished with our people, her hunger would never be sated. She had a grip on our spirits and though temporally assuaged by the massive slaking of Her thirst during Her birth, She still needs to drink. Our lord-to-be felt Her thirst lapping at him and saw it in the faces of others, their essence being slowly leeched away by the Nightmare That Hungers."

"It seemed there was but one way of escaping Her and that was to flee their homes and leave the physical world behind forever. We came here, into the realm between worlds that we created to traverse the galaxy safe from harm. Here, the Great Enemy's grip is weakened, yet to our Lord's horror it was not wholly broken. He had bought his people time, a little instant of time but nothing more."

"Our founder looked upon the outside world, horrified by the beasts rampantly breeding across our domains. But then a thought occurred to him. Perhaps She Who Thirsts would drink others, as well as us. He sent some of his many warriors to capture a few of the man-things that had been spawned by an insignificant blue world in the western spiral arm. His best counselors and experts examined them and indeed these beasts, for all their crudity, still contained that vital essence of life, that spark of spirit that turns a fleshy vessel into a living thing."

Mjoellnir said:

Except that much of the Dark Eldar background changed when the new codex came out. Asdrubael Vect's story in The Torturer's Tale is no longer accurate (because Vect's backstory differs from his account of it there, and because the settlements in the Webway were already heavily inhabited by the cults of excess long before the final days of the Fall), and the matter of what they actually do with their captives has been clarified.

Dark Eldar consume the agony and terror of others, essentially devouring souls to replenish their own withered essence. They don't sacrifice others to She Who Thirsts as an alternative to their souls.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Strange, I thought they actually republished the story when the new Dark Eldar were released, however, you still don't get what I'm saying. The Dark Eldar don't sacrifice others. Slaanesh slowly leeches off their souls and they replenish it from others. Essentially Slaanesh drinks from a bunch of bottles that is constantly being refilled. The bottles don't become empty at which point they would be thrown into the trash (dead) but Slaanesh still drinks more and more and more.

Which just leads back to "please don't eat my soul", the replenishment is just another way of preserving the self which is what is important to the Eldar as a race, they are more like two factions than two races.

UncleArkie said:

Mjoellnir said:

It's not "please don't eat my soul" for the Dark Eldar, it's "please take all you want from my soul, I'll just replenish it later with the soul of some tortured slave." The Dark Eldar allow Slaanesh to constantly feed on them while the Craftworlders lock her out. And with the constant feeding the Dark Eldar improve Slaanesh's chances of beating Ynnead to a pulp and devouring him. Which since he consists of the collected souls of the Craftworlders…. gnah, I'm already repeating myself.

Mjoellnir said:

You make it sound like there's willingness involved.

The souls of the Dark Eldar are being forcibly dragged away, though far slower than they would be if they dwelled in realspace. They don't have a choice in the matter - it would happen regardless of what other actions they took (the only ways out, demonstrably, are to bind yourself to a Soulstone… and that isn't guaranteed as soulstones can be broken, or to become one of the Harlequins whose souls are bound to Cegorach). They devour the essence of others to replenish their souls and prolong their existences, denying She Who Thirsts their souls in death.

In essence, between the revifification that many powerful Dark Eldar undergo should they actually die, and the devouring of the souls of those too weak to endure, the Dark Eldar themselves serve as a collective repository for the energies of their kin.

The Dark Eldar do differ from their craftworlder kin on a metaphysical level - their souls are atrophied, feeble echoes of what they once were, requiring the regular invigoration of imbibed torment to truly sustain them, lest they become little more than wretched husks devoid of sensation… but to regard their nature as some form of offering to the Great Enemy is (IMO) a serious misinterpretation of the text.

As you said, they do have the choice to bind themselves to soulstones. To make a real-world example (hopefully without sparking a political debate), Craftworld Eldar try to fight global warming by reducing emissions. Dark Eldar try to survive the consequences with air conditioning which makes the greenhouse effect worse. Sure, the Dark Eldar could happily live without having their souls drained off, just like no one likes to live at 50° C, but they are unwilling to go the hard way and limit themselves. The effects of the actions of both peoples should set them at odds.

I'd suggest those differences do put them at odds. They don't live together, or hang out for family dinners, for example, and Dark Eldar aren't welcome to just show up at Maidenworlds and set up shop or Craftworlds to hang out.

On the other hand, its like hanging out with the members of your extended family that you don't like. You may not want them over for supper, and you might not even like them, and you might make fun of them behind their back, but if the Russians invade Crazy Uncle Ross's farm, and I have an army, you can be sure I'm gonna show up if I can to help him.

Thats how I see it, anyway.