Dark Eldar in the Spinward Front: New GM needs Help

By antijoke_13, in Only War

Posted at

So I'm opening up a game this weekend focusing on a guerilla regiment that's very quickly going to have to contend with Dark Eldar, and as a rookie GM, i have a couple Questions.

the Corebook has precious little information on the Dark Eldar Presence in the Spinward Front, with, at best, token mention of Dark Eldar conducting raids on some planets. Do the Dark Eldar have any kind of a semipermanent base of operations in the front (ship, hidden lab, anything), or do they almost exclusively attack out of the webway?

What planets do the Eldar typically attack for slaves? I'd imagine Sisk and Kulth are prime targets. Kulth is in a state of total war, so a few hundred missing Guardsmen, Sepratists, or non combatants are hardly noticed by high command. Sisk, with its relatively unpatrolled countryside, seems like a good place to more covertly nab people. whole village is empty? must have been the mutants.

which Kabals are primarily operating in the Front? and where should I start for statting up Haemonculi, Succubi, or Archons?

Posted at

Do the Dark Eldar have a presence in this area? Whilst I cannot answer this question as far as FFG's books are concerned, I will say this: If you'd like to have a campaign with this focus, make it up. 40k as a franchise does not consists of a singular consistent setting, just "tens of thousands of overlapping realities in the imaginations of games developers, writers, readers and gamer" (to quote Gav Thorpe), so even apart from the standard P&P rule of "it's your game", you are more than free to adjust things that don't fit your ideas and/or preferences.




If you want them to have a semi-permanent base, I suppose you could rig up something like a sort of "holding area" where they dump off slaves from a raid until they get shipped off, or even sold to other species (potential for more enemies as a third party surprise if you like).




As far as likely targets are concerned, personally I would expect them to hit mostly undeveloped/underdeveloped colonies where they'd face little resistance. Feudal and Feral Worlds, Agri Worlds if possible. War Zones I'd say could be tricky, depending on how many forces are operating in the theatre, including warships in orbit. That said, the chaos you mentioned would provide suitable cover (plus we are talking about Eldar), and refugee trains surely make a tempting target. Speaking of raiding transports, pilgrim ships might be useful for this angle as well.


If need be, just pick a little-defined world from the map and fill in the blanks as you need them, or invent an entirely new planet from scratch.




Good luck!

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I recommend tracking down a copy of the Rogue Trader adventure The Soul Reaver . The adventure itself is not very good, but there is a lot of info about Dark Eldar that would probably be helpful to you. There is a Dark Eldar 'base' (a planetoid stuck in the mouth of a Webway portal) in the Koronus Expase that is used as a 'jumping off' point for slave raids into the Expans and the Calixis Sector (and, presumably, the Spinward Front). A brief overview of the Kabals residing at this base is also included, as well as stats for several DE weapons and troop types not included in the Adversaries section of the OW Rulebook (the systems aren't 100% compatable, but close enough that you should be able to adapt stuff from one system into another).