This is an odd, mostly pointless question, mostly looking for fluff, I guess. So, you're an Eldar, somewhere in your third quarter of a very long lifespan. While you and your buds were battling something, let's say Nids, you got injured, and lost your arm a bit below the shoulder. What is the Eldar likely to do? Unlike many other races, I don't see any Eldar with much for cybernetics, so I don't know if he'd just have a prosthetic arm. Is their med tech advanced enough, you think, to just grow a new arm, and graft it on? Would they form a slender, wraithbone replacement, allowing his latent psy energy to "animate" it? I don't imagine they'd just end him, and place him in the Infinity Circuit; Eldar are few in number, and often need every able warrior they can get, yet this one would be significantly reduced in efficiency, so maybe not as much use in battle.

What's the most likely solution to his problem? Just curious. Thanks.

I imagine that the watch word for any solution the Eldar came up with would be Elegance. My gut instinct tells me though that highly advanced cybernetics would be the likely answer, robotic arms and legs much more advanced than anything in the Imperium and the sort that would be very discrete, near indistinguishable from the real thing at a glance. But that said I'm no expert on the Eldar, the wraithbone idea sounds plausible to me.

DW

Wraithbone replacement in the vein of Corum Jhaelen Irsei's silver hand, I would imagine. Intent would likely be to devise a replacement that is not so crass as to add additional functionality, yet supersedes the original in being right for its function, if that makes any sense. Like those prosthetic legs that have greater elasticity than regular legs, but that look like their original counterparts as well.

I could see Biomancy being uses to regenerate it.

I think it depends on the Eldar. A craftworld eldar might well use some sort of biomancy or wraithbone pros. Dark Eldar regularly use cloning to grow troops and minions so I could definitely see them doing the same with a lost limb.

Okay, I suppose psyker-powers could be used to accomplish this; the thought didn't even occur to me, when I was wondering, I'm a bit ashamed to admit. I do rather like the idea of a wraithbone prosthetic, if that failed, looking, for the most part, like a regular arm; I don't see Eldar doing much to elaborate, embelish, or draw attention to it, like many Humans do. Granted, some Humans just have them, and their tech+money point can't do better at hiding them, but the Eldar can.

For D. Eldar, I don't know if they could clone limbs. I sort of feel there COULD (and I have no idea, or proof) be the usual "this race's genetic structure is too complicated for cloning" bs that often creeps in. Anyone who has played Force Unleashed 2 will remember that they seemed to believe, though I don't know why, that Jedi can't be cloned, or at least not without some hefty extra drawbacks. Granted, numerous other canonical sources don't seem to have that problem, but who am I to tell that old, blind drunk he doesn't know what he's talking about? Anyway, with the Old Ones having crafted the Eldar, it might stand to reason that no "lesser" being could clone them, otherwise, the CW Eldar could clone themselves, and begin to shore up their losses from eons ago. At this stage, they could've made a full comeback, and we'd never know they had been in trouble, in the first place.

Personally, I like to treat Eldar like Gnomes (the fantasy genre ones, not that guy who finds good travel deals, but they look the same. Does anyone else here happen to be old enough to have watched David the Gnome?). This is the fluff I would explain with, if it came up in my games. Eldar live for roughly 1000 years, with their psykers pushing it up to 10,000 years, at first maybe being supported by their crystallizing form, until it finally cannot maintain living energy. When they hit about 500 years old, they enter their short window of reproductive ability, and have one or two children (twins). After that, their reproductive life is done. Due to the complexity of their genetic structure, and their warp-nature, they cannot safely be cloned. This makes sense to me, explaining how, even after 10,000 years, living mostly alone, and not getting into too many big fights, they are still a dying race, with dwindling populations. They could've ended up like the Asgard, genetically stagnant, and unable to reproduce, thus dying anyway, but they haven't seemingly done it. Otherwise, one would think they could stabilize their pop, growing clones in the relative safety of their Craftworlds (at least Biel-Tann, which is VERY unlikely to be assaulted, and Iyanden could definitely benefit from this idea). Yet, they don't seem to be growing in pop, and are slowly circling the drain, as if living is a waste, and only everyone dying, to give birth to Ynnead, who will then enter the Warp and finally mercifully slay Slaanesh, seems worth the time.

All of this falls on DE, too, since, like it or not, they are still, for the most part Eldar, and nothing they or the Ruinous Powers have done to them has simplified their genetics. Due to this, I sort of wonder if the Dark Eldar COULD clone themselves, even to grow limbs. My knowledge of this fluff is, sadly, incomplete. so if there is a standing precedent to make all this that I said nothing more than a silly read, oh well.

As an aside, it kind of makes me wonder what your average Eldar does do with his or her spare time. AW's, I suppose, spend most waking minutes training, trying to learn their art, or get lost on the road, and most Farseers likely conduct marathon scrying sessions, trying to divine what's coming ahead, but if they are doing their jobs, and your average Craftworld is warned of impending doom, to change course, and armed with all that makes Eldar cool, what do the regular civilians do, to eat up their empty time? It obviously isn't orgies, or this last bit of mine could've been mostly moot, and it seems that mostly only Bonesingers craft their stuff, so what activities do they perform? If I were going to love 1,000 years, I'd have to hope something in there will be fun enough to want to do fir that long.

In the newer novel, Path of the Warrior, we see how Craftworld medicine works.

The injured is kept in a special room, along with another Eldar on the Path of the Healer. The healer uses some psychic power to create a manifestation of the event that led to the injury, which must then be coped with mentally by the injured. once this has happened, the two focus their willpower and do a lot of visualization (along with maybe some prayers to Isha) and the limb is regrown.

I do believe wraithbone prosthesis also exist.

venkelos said:

The Dark Eldar employ all sorts of seemingly impossible science when it comes to matters of medicine. Haemonculi are master flesh-crafters, nigh-immortal due to self-experimentation, able to rebuild a dead warrior from a scrap of soul and a lump of dead flesh (though such resurrection is only for the wealthy and powerful), and willing to perform feats of augmentation such as grafting functional wings onto a Dark Eldar in order to turn him into one of the Scourges who flit amongst the razor-spires of the Dark City. Further, the majority of the Dark Eldar populace are vat-grown rather than naturally born (only the powerful can afford to risk the vulnerability of procreating naturally). It's not strictly cloning, but it produces a considerable number of Dark Eldar. Only a minority of Dark Eldar ever leave the Dark City - only the mightiest, swiftest and cruellest beings are ever afforded the honour of participating in a realspace raid - so the bulk of this population spends their entire lives under the sickly light of poisoned, imprisoned suns, deep within the Webway.

The arts of flesh-crafting in this sense are not something the Craftworlders practice - amongst other things, they have their origins within horrific and depraved medical and genetic experiments of self-proclaimed 'artists' that took place during the Fall, which the Craftworlders wouldn't have been involved in (because the Craftworlds were isolated from the worst of the depravity that led to the Fall, and spent most of that era fleeing the homeworlds laden with refugees).