Eldar info From Gav Thorpe

[eldargal]

Stolen shamelessly from Warseer, originally posted by Horus38:

Hi,

Sorry for the delay in replying, it's been a bit mental lately with writing and a trip to Games Day Australia.

I've been following the debates stirred up by the Path series with interest, feel free to quote me in any forum discussions!

My interpretation is that the largest craftworlds would have a population in the low millions and the smaller vessels in the thousands. A craftworld the size of Alaitoc has a living space larger than a typical Earth continent, with the majority of the population concentrated in habitat domes and a scattering of others across the 'wilderness' zones. This would equate to a small present-day city spread across an environment the size of North America. Perhaps the Path series doesn't quite convey how massive some of the domes are and how much of a craftworld is virtually unihabited - like most conflicts, the majority of the human invasion is focussed on the populated areas. Hopefully the battle scenes in the forest dome, involving huge columns of tanks with flyers and titans in support, demonstrates that each dome could be considered a separate combat zone, each the equivalent of a country to be invaded and conquered.

These numbers are higher than those in the old quotes for the simple reason that craftworlds, at least the major ones, are considered to be on a par with many human worlds in terms of their military potential and the smaller numbers just don't hold up to this. However, tens of millions of eldar seem to go against the whole point of them being a dying, numerically-challenged race, so a few million seems a good compromise.

With every eldar potentially able to serve as a guardian or on the ships, and the infinity circuit and advanced technologies allowing for a very small supply-side, mobilisation of nearly one hundred per cent of the population might be possible. Measured against this is the massivel labour-orientated Imperial war machine that can lay claims to million-strong armies but only when supported by tens of millions, perhaps billions of workers.

In the context of a the galactic power struggle, the Eldar craftworlds' greatest strength lies in the difficulty of an enemy mustering enough forces in one place. The Imperium can lay claim to countless billions of warriors, but getting them to a war zone relies on limited ship capacity, and an even more limited number of Navigators. These are not issues for the Eldar hosts, which can coordinate and travel with a flexibility impossible for orks or humans to match, ensuring that their numerical inferiority is easily offset by their ability to concentrate their force where it is most effective.

I'm glad you enjoyed the books, hopefully I'll be coming back to the eldar in a couple of years. Thanks for getting in touch,

Gav
While I have a great deal of respect for Mr Thorpe and the way he has depicted eldar in general, I think the population numbers thing just goes to illustrate the old 'scifi writers have no idea about numbers' thing. Craftworlds were built to house the populations of entire planets, even if only 1% of a systems population survived taking earth as a current example that would be 60million and we know they have grown tens to hudnreds of times in size since the fall. Which only makes sense if their population has grown to some extent even if overall there is a population decline.

So a nice but of insight into eldar, particulary the fact they can focus their force in vulnerable areas much more easily than the IoM.

I personally put the major craftworlds have a population in the tens of billions, with the bulk being in low billions and a range of smaller from low to hundreds of millions. Anything lower is impossibly small in contrct of the 40k galaxy with over a million inhabitable worlds and trillions upon trillions of humans, Orks etc.

[Rev. Tiberius Jackhammer]

His spin on it seems kinda plausible, considering some of the Eldar quirks - military action often being avoided through prophecy, many being killed off by the birth of Slaanesh, overly complex reproduction matched with attrition in the battles they do fight preventing significant population growth. Having the Eldar function in a way that seems impossible by human standards helps reinforce their inhumanity. Even such a small number of Eldar could have a meaningful impact through their superior galactic mobility and shenanigans.

Admittedly, that's disregarding fluff where a shortsighted Farseer leads a massive army of Eldar directly into an occupied Necron tomb or bring siege upon several companies of Ultramarines for a trinket.

[eldargal]

The problem with it isn't the idea that the eldar are few, that is undeniable, but what few means in the context of 40k. A craftworld having a population in the low millions (an average city size on earth) would put the total Craftworlder population somewhere between that of the USA and India today on earth. That is high by our standards. But in the context of a galaxy with a million worlds and single hive worlds with a population of 150billion a craftworld with a population in the low millions is ridiculously, implausibly low.

It's by no means limited to 40k or eldar either, this is a common thing in many scifi settings.

Another fact to remember is that in canon literature (BFG books) craftworlds are said to be 'moon sized', not continent sized.

[Nabterayl]

I'm not up on my eldar fluff; what do we know of their reproduction cycle?

Eldargal, what do you imagine a craftworld's strategic commitments to look like? We're told that guardians are deployed because of a dearth of available aspect warriors, right? And we know that guardians are deployed on a regular basis, right? (Those are honest questions.) Let's assume that a craftworlder maintains a standing 1% of its population as active military professionals. If a craftworld has a billion eldar, that gives us ten million aspect warriors - even assuming as many as 75% of those are fleet personnel, that is about a fourth the size of the Vraks siege army - in aspect warriors. How many campaigns is a major craftworld involved in at any one time, that ten million aspect warriors or more is inadequate?

[Gotthammer]

Those numbers are terrible.
The Imperium can't muster enough forces in one spot to wipe out a few million dudes at most? If that was the case they'd never invade anything or win any wars ever. Given the size of the fleet described in the path books the navy vessels alone would probably have crews into the millions, before even getting to their cargos.
If Alaitoc only has 5 million or so inhabitants spread across an area the size of North America it'd be pretty easy to wipe them out or kill enought that you could cripple the vessel (ie blow up the infinity circuit's core, destroy the solar sails etc)- and I'm a big fan of the Eldar!

[Nabterayl]

. Given the size of the fleet described in the path books the navy vessels alone would probably have crews into the millions, before even getting to their cargos.
Surely not? Even an Imperial heavy cruiser only has a crew of about 100,000. And I can't believe that eldar vessel crew requirements are even in the same order of magnitude. The Navy loads its macro cannons by hand =P

[Gotthammer]

I was meaning the Imperial Navy, sorry - that the crews of the Imperial vessels alone would be enough to kill everyone on a craftworld.

[Nabterayl]

Well ... to be fair, it's pretty clear that the Imperium has more combat power than everybody except for orks and tyranids. I wouldn't object to a craftworld falling to a serious Imperial invasion. I thought the established explanation for that not happening was (i) the Imperium doesn't actually know where any craftworlds are (not with enough precision to invade, that is) and (ii) at the highest levels of government, the eldar aren't considered a clear systemic threat.

[Anggul]

Another fact to remember is that in canon literature (BFG books) craftworlds are said to be 'moon sized', not continent sized.

Assuming that they were comparing them to our Moon, Earth's Moon (because a Moon can be any size), that's not really that big considering that even Earth is relatively small.


There is no canon regarding actual Craftworld population, size, military size etc., and until the GW overlords specify, anything written by anyone is just their idea of it, Mr. Thorpe included.

He has written a very nice trilogy here. Sure, there are many, many flaws and fluff in-correctness, but they're still better than a lot of BL books. Path of the Outcast probably had the least flaws in my opinion, as it didn't actually talk about the Craftworld and the battle much.


One thing that I will note as being very important is a part in the new 6th ed. rulebook, which states that the Imperium can never manage to catch Craftworlds, and has only brought a Craftworld to direct conflict once. This conflict resulted in the loss of an entire sector fleet. The Path books, on the other hand, depict the battle as a struggle for the Eldar, which just makes no sense given the sheer firepower available to the Eldar. Charging a Space Marine chapter into a Craftworld would result in having a Craftworld's worth of titan-sized Distort weaponry pointed at them and subsequently being annihilated with ease.

The force of them which made it to the crystal dome at the end? One Cobra. One Cobra would be enough to remove them from existence.

[Bigred]

Well that kind of settles the debate, the "real Eldar race" in terms of population is almost certainly the Dark Eldar.

With Craftworlders being a fringe group amongst the overall race. Depending on the population level, the Exodites could easily outnumber the Craftworlders and maybe even the Dark Eldar depending on how many maiden worlds are out there. But like the Imperium, the Exodites are inward looking and scattered far and wide, while the Dark Kin and the Craftworld are much more mobile and concentrated.

Looking at the race from the outside, its no wonder the Imperium sees them as enigmantic, untrustworthy and random.

[Nabterayl]

Wait what settles the debate? Just Thorpe's idea that there are only millions of craftworlders?

[Bigred]

Yes, at least until there is another author assigned to the Eldar from Black Library.

At this point I always consider canon from BL to be "higher grade" than the studio's fluff scribbling *cough*carved his name into Mortarion's heart*cough*

:)

[Nabterayl]

Where do you get an overall figure though? Even if Thorpe thinks craftworlders number X, and dark eldar number Y, where do you get an eldar population figure such that you can derive any relationship between X and Y?

[CouchViking]

Kinda feel bad for Thorpe having to back pedal like this. He is a story teller, telling a character driven story. I don't think he should have to explain the logistics to fill in fluff for a more "complete experience" to please the reader. Although if he volunteering the information then I gotta say he should check his facts behind previous cannon.

[Rev. Tiberius Jackhammer]

The problem with it isn't the idea that the eldar are few, that is undeniable, but what few means in the context of 40k. A craftworld having a population in the low millions (an average city size on earth) would put the total Craftworlder population somewhere between that of the USA and India today on earth. That is high by our standards. But in the context of a galaxy with a million worlds and single hive worlds with a population of 150billion a craftworld with a population in the low millions is ridiculously, implausibly low.Dunno, still think Thorpe's approach of "they're inhumanly well-organized" covers it. That 150billion Hive will produce millions of Navy-slaves (while Eldar have nigh-autonomous starships) and millions of guardsmen, many of which will be wasted (we've seen droves of guardsmen die because their landers fell through thin ice/stone, jungle-fighters mis-assigned to an iceworld, those who the administratum forgot etc). By "continent-sized", I think he meant only the living-space - the entire vessel is still moonsized, but only a continent-sized part of it's maintained to city/forest standards.

I'm not up on my eldar fluff; what do we know of their reproduction cycle?Xenology had some notes from a Xeno-researcher, the Imperial theory based on dissection (possibly inaccurate, of course) is that it's a lengthy process, requiring the ovum-equivalent to be fertilized multiple specific times over a prolonged period. It's mentioned in the Deldar 'dex that having a "natural" child is a luxury few can afford, and most of 'em are the results of cloning.

I was meaning the Imperial Navy, sorry - that the crews of the Imperial vessels alone would be enough to kill everyone on a craftworld.Well, yeah, but they'd need to catch the Eldar with their pants down for that to happen. And Eldar have psychic-prophecy-pants :P

Well that kind of settles the debate, the "real Eldar race" in terms of population is almost certainly the Dark Eldar.Yeah, plus, a fair few Craftworlders bleed off and join Exodite, Harlequin, Corsair and Dark Eldar factions, particularly younger Eldar. That probably slows growth.

[Nabterayl]

Does the dark eldar codex give some indication of how many dark eldar there are? Is that the piece I'm missing here?

[Anggul]

Yes, at least until there is another author assigned to the Eldar from Black Library.

At this point I always consider canon from BL to be "higher grade" than the studio's fluff scribbling *cough*carved his name into Mortarion's heart*cough*

:)

Ward doesn't count. ;)

I only put anything above codex when Ward is involved. At all other times, non-BL takes precedence for me.


Also, given the other fluff discrepancies, I can't really think of Path as being canon. In Outcast, for example, they seemed to be able to slip in and out of the webway whenever they felt like it, rather than having to find gates. The reach of the Eldar is generally confined to certain areas because those areas are where Webway gates are. They can't just slip in and out anywhere that's in line with a webway tunnel. They also didn't seem to care in the slightest that Aradryan spoke regularly with a Solitaire. It's meant to have a horrific effect on one's fate to even be in the company of one, and to speak to one is said to invite such misfortune that one ought as well commit suicide as soon as possible rather than suffer the horrible fate that awaits them. This just seemed to be completely missed out, with no-one so much as batting an eyelid. Little things, but things which could be easily learned by taking a little time to read the codices.

It really isn't hard to learn all of the fluff you need to know before writing something. All you have to do is read the codices, rulebook, things like that, heck you can often just read the Lexicanum articles and get almost everything you need to know about something in 40k. For some reason though, Black Library writers usually seem to be devoid of this easy and simple research.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the books and Gav writes beautifully. I could actually feel my mood and thoughts fluctuating right along with Aradryan's, I could feel and vaguely understand everything he was going through, and it was brilliantly done in pretty much every way. I just think some little changes could complete the experience and fill in any gaps. Overall though, really great.


As I said before though, his take on the Craftworlds is just that, his take. Considering the length of time they've been in the fluff, there is precious little ever written about them. The codices and rulebooks etc. usually just give a description of what they are, rather than actually going into any detail at all about size, population etc.

[Archon Charybdis]

It's obviously an issue of Sci-fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale, but it's kind of irksome because with even a passing consideration it should be apparent how silly of a number that is, especially in light of the attrition rate we see just in the course of the story--it's not as though the Eldar are depicted as so superior as to not still take considerable casualties in combat.

If you average the populations given for the Hive Worlds on Lexicanum's page http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Hive_world, you get an average hive world population of 166 BILLION. That's per planet. And a total of 32,380 Hive Worlds in the Imperium. That puts the human population of the galaxy somewhere over 5.38e15 That's over 5 quintillion.

It would be an absolutely gobsmacking, inhuman, nigh miraculous feat for the Eldar to be a potent galactic military force with a population in the tens of billions per Craftworld--a few million is just absolutely carve-your-name-on-Mortarion's-heart stupid.

[Nabterayl]

It would be an absolutely gobsmacking, inhuman, nigh miraculous feat for the Eldar to be a potent galactic military force with a population in the tens of billions per Craftworld

Obvious question time: ARE they a potent galactic military force? When was the last time the eldar conquered a planet that was held by opposing forces of even a few million?

I've always thought that eldar are kind of like space marines, in that as long as they can identify a fulcrum that can be turned by commando action (and 40K storytelling presupposes that the galaxy is rife with such fulcrums) they can have an outsized impact on events. But the moment you tell them to conduct an actual war, they pack up and go home - unless they already are home, in which case we get to see how commandos on the defensive and against the wall can make their individual superiority felt, albeit at great cost.

Can anybody cite examples of eldar overcoming large numbers of enemy troops in direct conflict?

[Archon Charybdis]

I suppose "effective" military force might be more apt. That is to say they frequently achieve their military aims--which are admittedly more narrow in scope than the Imperium's-- through superior tactics (Divination, *****es) mobility, and firepower. They do function much more like Space Marines than IG in that sense. That said, as Anggul pointed out, the only canon instance we have a Craftworld coming under attack by Imperial forces resulted in the destruction of an entire sector fleet (can't recall if this was in the BFG books or one of the main rulebooks). I would call that military potency.

[Rev. Tiberius Jackhammer]

That said, as Anggul pointed out, the only canon instance we have a Craftworld coming under attack by Imperial forces resulted in the destruction of an entire sector fleet (can't recall if this was in the BFG books or one of the main rulebooks). I would call that military potency.Human starships need thousands upon thousands to operate them, while Eldar need somewhere between a dozen to zero pilots. Due to the wonders of wraithbone, most of their starships are semi-sentient. It seems pretty plausible that their Navy is an effective military force nearly on par with the Imperium's, despite the population difference.

[Nabterayl]

Its impressive, for sure, but let's remember that a sector battle fleet tops out at about 50 capital ships. That in itself is an example of 40K's obsession with fulcrums - the loss of a mere 100 vessels is a big deal in 40K storytelling.

I get that eldar often achieve their goals, but those goals (as far as I know) are generally extremely limited. If all you ever wanted to do was destroy a base here, a task force there, a warboss here, I would think that even a million aspect warriors per Craftworld would be plenty.

On the other hand, if your military goal is "kill the 15,000,000,000 PDF troopers on this planet," and you really mean it - none of this space marine style *****footing around killing a planetary governor and draping "Mission Accomplished" on your battle barge - well, who but the Imperial Guard, orks, and tyranids is ever depicted as capable of that sort of thing?

[Rev. Tiberius Jackhammer]

On the other hand, if your military goal is "kill the 15,000,000,000 PDF troopers on this planet," and you really mean it - none of this space marine style *****footing around killing a planetary governor and draping "Mission Accomplished" on your battle barge - well, who but the Imperial Guard, orks, and tyranids is ever depicted as capable of that sort of thing?Orbital bombardment like a boss. The Imperium sends in ground troops because they want to preserve infrastructure/artifacts, the Orks go in on foot 'cuz they want a good scrap etc, but if it's not a Maiden World, there aren't any fulcrums that need tilting and there aren't any relics to retrieve, then the starships are going to open fire. I guess this risks retaliation, though.

Alternatively, they altered the direction of a Waaaagh! 20 years ago, which collides with the billions of Guardsmen with a satisfying meaty sound. Meanwhile, Eldrad sips a glass of wraith-wine and listens. Because he's a dick like that.

---

Yeah, the whole race being that scarce is pretty stupid, but to me, at least, it feels 40k-stupid instead of vanilla stupid-stupid.

[Nabterayl]

Yeah, that's my point. I'm not aware of eldar doing anything you need millions of elves under arms to do. So I'm not sure we have grounds for saying, "But there have to be billions of them! Otherwise how could they do X?" Not seeing any candidates for X yet.

[eldargal]

There is no canon regarding actual Craftworld population, size, military size etc., and until the GW overlords specify, anything written by anyone is just their idea of it, Mr. Thorpe included.

There is, actually. BFG talks about how big they are and gives some guidelines to use in terms of depicting them in BFG games, rulesbooks are canon. IA11 also talks of craftworlds being large enough to hold entire planetary populations which while not giving a specific number indicates they are quite huge.

My issue with the figures isn't along the lines of 'there aren't enough eldar to do <insert something here>' but rather that they are implausibly low for such a vast setting as 40k.

[Roadkill Zombie]

Well, there is the Invasion of Gnosis Prime in the year 786.M41. It was a hive world that the Eldar invaded. It had a population of billions of people. Apparently the planetary governor unwittingly signed the death warrant of the entire population.

The planet was garrisoned, not only with the Governors personal bodyguard but also Valhallan and even Cadian regiments.

In the description it talks about how the Eldar isolated and destroyed each hives military might with incredible tactical acuity.

It also says that the Eldar fell upon each hives garrison with terrible fury. Millions of humans were slaughtered and the industrial complexes were set aflame.

[Kawauso]

I'm going to have to side with Eldargal on this one.

Even taking into account their crazy technology, the logistics of maintaining a Craftworld would be pretty immense.

Not only that, but the -scale- of a Craftworld would be completely impractical if their populations were as low as Thorpe implied. It would be way easier for them to hide, survive, evade enemies etc. if they weren't floating around in continent/moon-sized spacecraft. What would they even need all that space for, anyway? The biosphere habitat things are nice but they don't need to be so immense.

That aside, however, you have to contextualize the Eldar being a dying, numerically-challenged race in the context of 40k and what their empire was at its height. They were a civilization that dominated a considerable portion of the galaxy. That's mind-boggling for us to try and imagine now, but we can extrapolate from known facts about our species right now.

For instance, the current population of our entire world is ~7 billion. The Earth can sustain a lot more than that, and I'd wager that if our civilizations advanced enough to establish colonies throughout our solar system or even beyond the number of humans alive would be mind-boggling, even if we only counted those on Earth. If we could expand our reach to dominate any considerable portion of our galaxy...the numbers would be insane.

However, we do know that the Eldar are longer-lived than humans, that they take longer to mature and their reproductive rate is considerably lower than ours. We don't know the extent to which this is the case (as far as I know, at least), so it's hard to come up with anything concrete. Nevertheless, let's say for the sake of argument that at the height of their galaxy-dominating empire the average Eldar world only had a population of around 10 billion. That sounds like a lot, but for a civilization so far-reaching those seem like pretty low numbers.

Nevertheless, at ~10 billion per planet (obviously trying to take into account worlds with both very light or dense populations - one would imagine the Eldar homeworld to be very densely-populated), with an empire only 1/3 the scale of the Imperium as of M.41 (I'm trying to be very conservative with my estimates), which we know to contain roughly ~1 million worlds, that would put the (very conservative) estimate of the Eldar planetary population circa the Fall at 3,333,330,000,000,000. That's in the quadrillions. And that in no way accounts for permanent residents of the Webway or craftworlds.

So even assuming catastrophic loss of life during the fall (which we are told is the case), it is catastrophic in the context of numbers certainly greater than the one provided above. And their numerical inferiority needs to be placed in the context of the 40k galaxy, which contains a human empire of around a million worlds, which could quite easily contain (quick calculation completely out of my ***; assuming an average of ~30 billion per planet to accommodate greater reproductive capabilities over Eldar, and strike a happy sort of middle ground between hive worlds with 100+ billion populations and agri-worlds or otherwise population-light worlds that have only tens or hundreds of millions of people) 30,000,000,000,000,000 people but could easily have far more.

So, yeah. In that kind of context, I think that 'only' having billions of Eldar per craftworld demonstrates their numeric inferiority and their dying race perfectly well when compared to the heights they'd achieved beforehand and the sort of odds that are stacked against them now.



Also, sorry if my math is off...I'm terrible at it, but I double-checked those numbers a few times over.

[Rev. Tiberius Jackhammer]

Yeah, that's my point. I'm not aware of eldar doing anything you need millions of elves under arms to do. So I'm not sure we have grounds for saying, "But there have to be billions of them! Otherwise how could they do X?" Not seeing any candidates for X yet.Sorry, read your comment the wrong way round :P Thought it was "They can do x, so there must be billions."

Fortunately, 40k's pretty pick-and-mix with all its contradicting fluff, we can all just acknowledge the bits we prefer. That's why the Star Gods still hold dominion over the Necrons, the World Eaters still have Havocs and Pink Horrors absolutely don't look like squigs :P

[Chris*ta]

I get that eldar often achieve their goals, but those goals (as far as I know) are generally extremely limited. If all you ever wanted to do was destroy a base here, a task force there, a warboss here, I would think that even a million aspect warriors per Craftworld would be plenty.

But a population of "low millions" wouldn't have a million aspect warriors -- Aspect warrior is one of many paths, and surely not say, even one fifth of the population. I suppose it depends how you interpret "low millions" though.

Bringing up a point that someone mentioned earlier -- I know Craftworld Eldar sometimes desert their home for the path of the outcast, but what fluff is there for them going to "the Dark side", so to speak, and becoming Dark Eldar? This feels wrong to me, but I'm not that up on Eldar fl...well thought out background.

I do feel that the numbers that Gav provided are far too low ... I've always pictured a Craftworld as being billions, I guess.

[miteyheroes]

Gav's idea of Craftworlds being up to a few million people does fit in with Aurelian. In Aurelian there's a craftworld (from the time of the Fall) with 200,000 Eldar on.


Another fact to remember is that in canon literature (BFG books) craftworlds are said to be 'moon sized', not continent sized.

Earth's moon's surface area is 37,930,000 km2; Asia's surface area is 44,579,000 km2. Moon sized and continent sized are pretty similar?


Well, there is the Invasion of Gnosis Prime in the year 786.M41. It was a hive world that the Eldar invaded. It had a population of billions of people. Apparently the planetary governor unwittingly signed the death warrant of the entire population.

But Gnosis Prime is an example of how a small Eldar force can have a disproportionately large effect. The Planetary Governor ignored the Eldar order to evacuate the planet because the Eldar fleet was so small - that was how he signed the death warrant. The Eldar won by using their superior mobility, attacking each location with their entire force, then moving on. It wasn't a straight-up fight, as that's not how Eldar fight, they use asymetrical warfare. So Gnosis Prime can't be used to support a hypothesis of a large Eldar population.

[OrksOrksOrks]

Its stated in the fluff as being in the low millions per craft world, there are low millions per craft world, if you think that doesn't make sense, remember you're talking about space elves on a ship made of semi-sentinent bone that can travel across the galaxy in the blink of an eye to fight against biologically alterered 8 foot tall super-men.

[Rev. Tiberius Jackhammer]

I know Craftworld Eldar sometimes desert their home for the path of the outcast, but what fluff is there for them going to "the Dark side", so to speak, and becoming Dark Eldar? This feels wrong to me, but I'm not that up on Eldar fl...well thought out background.It was discussed in the Forgeworld Eldar book; Corsair-Outcasts sometimes thoroughly embrace their lifestyle, and those who become very bloodthirsty/crazy will usually seek out the Dark Eldar city. I don't think a typical Ranger/Pathfinder-Outcast would descend like that, though, not without becoming a Corsair in the interim, at least.

[eldargal]

Would you mind providing a source for that, I'm aware of no canon background material that states there are millions of eldar per Craftworld. There is some very, very old background material which says 'thousands upon thousands' which is clearly even stupider than millions. I'm not sure what the point of your post is, we aren't talking about realism but consistency and scale.

Its stated in the fluff as being in the low millions per craft world, there are low millions per craft world, if you think that doesn't make sense, remember you're talking about space elves on a ship made of semi-sentinent bone that can travel across the galaxy in the blink of an eye to fight against biologically alterered 8 foot tall super-men.

Surface area is only part of the picture, a Craftworld is a three dimensional construct.

In regards to Aurelian, there is the issue is that BL authors are completely inconsistent with their numbers and pre-Fall Craftworlds were tens to hundreds of times smaller than those in 'contemporary' 40k. It is quite conceivable, for example, that several smaller Craftworlds like the example in Aurelian joined together, they may have picked up refugees from outlying worlds etc. etc. It is extremely difficult to compare craftworld populations post-fall with those form the 41st millennium.

[OrksOrksOrks]

Would you mind providing a source for that, I'm aware of no canon background material that states there are millions of eldar per Craftworld. There is some very, very old background material which says 'thousands upon thousands' which is clearly even stupider than millions. I'm not sure what the point of your post is, we aren't talking about realism but consistency and scale.


Surface area is only part of the picture, a Craftworld is a three dimensional construct.

In regards to Aurelian, there is the issue is that BL authors are completely inconsistent with their numbers and pre-Fall Craftworlds were tens to hundreds of times smaller than those in 'contemporary' 40k. It is quite conceivable, for example, that several smaller Craftworlds like the example in Aurelian joined together, they may have picked up refugees from outlying worlds etc. etc. It is extremely difficult to compare craftworld populations post-fall with those form the 41st millennium.

I was quoting what you just said, what the writer of the Eldar BL Novels Gav Thrope said, you know, in the OP?

And as for the Size, the size of the craftworld has been stated to be like a moon and Gave said the liveable areas were the size of a continent, its not difficult to imagine a lot of that size is engines, guns, militray compounds, gravity generators, infinity circuit and so on, meaning that a craftworld may well be the size of a moon, but the space for Eldar to live on is "only" the size of a continent. You seem more obsessed with ensuring the Eldar are a powerful force in the galazy than any sort of consitency or scale, as nothing you've pointed out is particularly inconsistent, it just doesn't fit the Eldar into the image of them you had in your head.

[eldargal]

A piece of private corrospondence from a BL author is not canon. Official publications are canon.

It has nothing to do with power, eldar are powerful. If they are so few in number then they are even more powerful given the kind of damage they can inflict upon the IoM. That isn't the point. The point is that in a setting with the scale of 40k the largest craftworlds having populations in hte low millions is out of scale with the rest of the setting and implausible as a result. It would be like describing a massive IG army as numbering in the thousands when even today on earth we can muster armies in the millions.

What we do have in canon is that the craftworlds were originally intended to house entire planetary populations (IA11) and that they have grown by tens or hundreds of times in size (C:E 4th ed). Given that the population of earth is 6bn right now and the eldar had mastery of the entire galaxy for tens of millions of years it is inconceivable to be that their starting population was so low that even if only a fraction of them embarked on the craftworlds that there are only millions left ten thousand years after the Fall.

[Kawauso]

What we do have in canon is that the craftworlds were originally intended to house entire planetary populations (IA11) and that they have grown by tens or hundreds of times in size (C:E 4th ed). Given that the population of earth is 6bn right now and the eldar had mastery of the entire galaxy for tens of millions of years it is inconceivable to be that their starting population was so low that even if only a fraction of them embarked on the craftworlds that there are only millions left ten thousand years after the Fall.

Yep.
Though our planet passed the 7 billion mark either last year or earlier this year.

But yeah, even going by the (again, quite conservative) estimates I made earlier in the thread, the Eldar population pre-Fall was at least somewhere in the quadrillions, and conceivably quite a bit higher. A cataclysmic event that nearly wipes out a population of that size could easily leave many billions of survivors - that's still very, very few in comparison to how many there were initially.

[Nabterayl]

But a population of "low millions" wouldn't have a million aspect warriors -- Aspect warrior is one of many paths, and surely not say, even one fifth of the population. I suppose it depends how you interpret "low millions" though.

I do feel that the numbers that Gav provided are far too low ... I've always pictured a Craftworld as being billions, I guess.
Populations of low millions doesn't give you millions of aspect warriors, no. But if we make the standard assumption that 1% of a craftworld are professional warriors, then a billion craftworlders gives you 10,000,000 aspect warriors. My question is, with a professional military that large, would a craftworld still need guardians?

The answer depends on two assumptions: how many actions is a craftworld of a billion people involved in at once, and what sort of actions are they?

My personal answers to those are "not very many" and "very small." But I'm not the most learned about eldar, which is why I've been asking. Unless major craftworlds are engaged in many, many campaigns at once, or regularly undertake the sort of campaigns for which millions of elf ninja in flying tanks are insufficient, then I don't see how craftworld populations of a billion or more gets guardians on the field - and we know that even major craftworlds do regularly field guardians in their war hosts.

[eldargal]

A guardian isn't a civilian, they are more like a reservist. There would be huge numbers on the Path of the Farmer, Path of Service (mentioned in Path of the Outcast, basically they make sure everyone gets fed and watered), Path of the Janitor, etc. etc. But only a certain number volunteer to be guardians under normal circumstances. Some craftworlds may have a system of compulsory military service (was Alaitoc mentioned as doing this, I forget?) but they wouldn't have the entire population doing so at the same time.

So if you have a population of one billion with 1% being professional soldiers there may only be a similar number of Guardians or even less. As to why a craftworld would need them, simple, for the same reason our own militaries need reserved and very large quantities of support staff.

[Nabterayl]

That isn't the point. The point is that in a setting with the scale of 40k the largest craftworlds having populations in hte low millions is out of scale with the rest of the setting and implausible as a result.

I don't know that it's really that cut and dried. Even by the most liberal interpretations there are less than ten million battle sisters in the Imperium. There are certainly only a million space marines (going by order of magnitude), and the Tau armies that we've seen are numbered less than 10,000 trigger-pullers. And then there's all the xenos who get crushed this don't get tabletop representation, most of whom apparently have a star system or two at most to call their own. 40K's foreground focus has always been on the very small. If eldar are in-scale with the foreground but not the background (that is to say, the Imperium, orks, and tyranids), I don't know that that's any weirder than their obsession with the Tau, or space marines.

[eldargal]

Actually we don't know how many Sisters there are anymore, Ward said in the WD codex background that there were innumerable smaller orders ranging from a few sisters to hundred, or something along those lines. That is much more sensible than it was before and has brought the sisters more in line with the scale of the setting. As to Tau, they only have a handful of worlds compared to the others, they are a very, very small player. Armies of less than ten thousand are still too small.

I'm actually not sure what your point about foreground and background is? IoM are the protagonists as far as GW are concerned and everyone else are background. The major non-IoM races have always been Orks, Eldar and Chaos with tyranids, Necrons and Tau coming on at various points later on.

The fact is it is cut and dried. Craftworlds with millions of people in the 40k setting is as silly as IG armies being in the thousands or there only being 40,000 odd SoB in the entire galaxy. The writers slowly seem to be addressing these, thankfully. The 5th ed BRB timeline mentioned a troop transport carrying 1.5 million troops for example, that fits the scale.

A craftworld with a population in the low millions is small by earth standards for heavens sake.:rolleyes: In a galaxy with a million worlds and untol trillions of aliens somehow people think its logical for a major player to have a population smaller than Belgium...

[Nabterayl]

No, I know that guardians are just veterans called to serve again. But they're called up only in the case of inadequate aspect warriors, right? But do we ever see eldar actions larger than squad size that don't have guardians on the front lines? That is not consistent with using guardians in support roles, and unless craftworlds 1) have very small populations, 2) are regularly engaged in dozens or hundreds of military actions or 3) are regularly engaged in military actions requiring hundreds of thousands or millions of troops, I just don't see how those guardians end up in combat roles so regularly.

[eldargal]

To quote from the current eldar codex Guardian entry:


They are primarily a defence force, employed when a craftworld itself comes under threat, as the Aspect Warriors are not often numerous enough to overcome the hordes of enemy without support.
Guardians are explicitly stated to be in a support role, and generally only in defence of a craftworld. There is a reason a lot of eldar players consider guardian units to be quite unfitting with the background. Like Adeptus Custodes who don't leave the Emperors Palace, guardians would seldom leave the craftworld.

Now this is entirely consistent with what I'm saying. While 10,000,000 Aspect Warriors might sound like a lot, the IoM can deploy troop transports carrying hundreds of thousands to a million troops in one ship, and they could have many such ships. It's also worth noting that according to BFG it takes an entire sector fleet to engage a craftworld with no guarantee of success. Again with the IoM being as large as it is a craftworld has to have a larger population than indicated to stand a chance against such vast armies.

[Nabterayl]

You keep comparing Imperial Guard and eldar troop numbers, eldargal, but I'm still not sure why that seems like a relevant comparison to you. Do you think that eldar are depicted as doing the sort of things the Imperial Guard does? If eldar war hosts are called upon to conquer and hold multiple planets at once, then of course I agree that ten million aspect warriors are too few. But if their mission profiles are the sort of smash and run commando stuff that I think they are, well, the combat power of ten million space marines (Thorpe aside, I'd equate aspect warriors and space marines 1:1) seems more than adequate.

I'm not sure that we need to compare craftworlds to a hypothetical Imperial invasion. BFG says a craftworld has "several" fleets of ten to twenty vessels each, which puts them on par or superior to with a sector fleet in numbers. That seems like it would be plenty to make the landing dicey to say the least. And while Imperial armies can be "large," individual objectives - even those of sector-wide importance - only seen to get ten million men or so assigned to them. I'm not at all sure that a like number of aspect warriors is "necessary" to repulse that sort of attack, given that they would have guardian support and the landings themselves would be heavily contested by the fleets.

[eldargal]

Who said anything about them doing what the IG did? We are talking about SCALE. The 40k setting is vast, there are trillions of Imperial Guard, Orks etc. But for some reason there are fewer craftworlders than there are Indians today. It is non-credible and silly.

An entire Imperial Sector fleet (hundreds of ships) is the minimum required to attack a Craftworld with no guarantee of success, and a single troop transport in that fleet could carry a million men at arms then the craftworld also has to be in scale with that or it becomes farcical. If it has a population of millions, then it is not and their victory is absurd because it is out of scale. It would be like having someone writing about a military super power today with a population in the tens of thousands, it is out of scale with the setting.

[Nabterayl]

Who said anything about them doing what the IG did? We are talking about SCALE. The 40k setting is vast, there are trillions of Imperial Guard, Orks etc. But for some reason there are fewer craftworlders than there are Indians today. It is non-credible and silly.
Well ... how silly? As silly as a million space marines? Or the major Orders Militant comprising "thousands" of sisters? Is it any sillier than that?

EDIT: Sorry, that may have sounded combative. My point was that the setting already has such tiny numbers of people making such outsized differences (and thus being worthy of foregrounding) that I don't think we can say that a small faction is "out of scale" with the setting quite so easily.


An entire Imperial Sector fleet (hundreds of ships) is the minimum required to attack a Craftworld with no guarantee of success, and a single troop transport in that fleet could carry a million men at arms then the craftworld also has to be in scale with that or it becomes farcical.
Battlefleet Scarus had fifty capital ships and seventy-eight escorts, and was one of the best equipped sector fleets in the Imperium. I think it's fair to say a sector fleet might consist of a hundred ships. Hundreds seems way too big. And while the Imperium may have transport vessels that can land a million men, that isn't what we see them actually using. Look at the transport vessels we see in Imperial Armour 3, or 5-7. The average Imperial transport seems to be about 3,000-6,000 men, oftentimes inadequate to carry a regiment (though even regiments, which can consist of hundreds of thousands of men, most often seem to top out at about 10,000).

[miteyheroes]

The fact is it is cut and dried. Craftworlds with millions of people in the 40k setting is as silly as IG armies being in the thousands or there only being 40,000 odd SoB in the entire galaxy. The writers slowly seem to be addressing these, thankfully. The 5th ed BRB timeline mentioned a troop transport carrying 1.5 million troops for example, that fits the scale.

A craftworld with a population in the low millions is small by earth standards for heavens sake.:rolleyes: In a galaxy with a million worlds and untol trillions of aliens somehow people think its logical for a major player to have a population smaller than Belgium...

That there are only 1 million Space Marines is also ridiculously small. Doesn't stop it being the case. 5 countries on Earth have more active troops than that! If you're counting total military size (including reservists etc) then more than a dozen Earth militaries outnumber all the Space Marines in the whole galaxy. That there are only 1,000 Grey Knights is even more tiny. 1,000! There are many more people than that in my work!

But Space Marines, Grey Knights and Eldar don't fight in equal terms. They use unconventional asymetrical tactics, especially superior mobility and careful target selection. Hence they're so powerful.

And this whole "A piece of private corrospondence from a BL author is not canon. Official publications are canon." argument seems... odd. Gav has written probably more than anyone about Eldar - the 3rd ed codex and several Black Library novels. If anyone know how many Eldar live on a craftworld, he probably does? His quote isn't canon, but it's the next best thing until we get something that is.

Especially when his statements broadly match the three facts that we do have from published material - most sources (including the current 40k rulebook and the current Eldar codex) say that they're "all but extinct"; Aurelian says a Fall-era craftworld had 200,000 on it; older sources say craftworlds have grown by 10 to 100 times.

[eldargal]

One million Marines is silly, but it is compensated for by them being ridiculously overpowered. As previously mentioned the SoB used to have ridiculously low numbers and they have begun rectifying that because they recognised it was out of scale with the setting.

Those BFG transport capacities are also unrealistically low, we have naval ships that can house thousands in relative luxury, many more if you pack them in like sardines. Again a relic of GW not getting the numbers right early on, the talk of immense transports in more recent background is much more sensible.

This is a comon error in many scifi settings and one which is being slowly rectified in 40k. As I've already said IA11 talks about craftworlds holding entire planetary populations and gives the fleet strength of one of the corsairs bands as 3500 ships. These are all much more sensible in teh context of a million-planet galaxy with trillions upon trillions of inhabitants.

Miteyheroes, canon is by definition officially published material. Officially published material has to be cleared by GWs head of IP. A private letter is not canon and the author is only expressing his private opinions, and in this case I disagree with them strongly.

Also 'all but extinct' when you were once a galaxy spanning empire with potentially quadrillions of inhabitants does not necessarily mean 'a few million'. Nor are BL writers exactly consistent with numbers themselves, hence this whole problem. A minor craftworld shortly after the fall is NOT a reliable indicator of population numbers ten thousand years later.

Would people PLEASE stop bringing up fighting styles? It is completely irrelevent, we aren't talking power level of respective races but population scale in proportion to the size of the setting. THAT is what is at issue, not how powerful whatever number of aspect warriors are in comparison to the same number of Ig and how they fight differently.

[Nabterayl]

Taking a step back, I guess the question I'm trying to ask is, out of scale on what basis? On the grounds that a population that small wouldn't be worth writing about? On the grounds that a population that small couldn't pull off the martial exploits we see them doing? On the grounds that a population that small couldn't survive the attacks we see them surviving? What are you calibrating against here?

[eldargal]

On the basis of many issues. Certainly yes, if the craftworlder population is under one billion in teh entire galaxy they aren't worth writing about, there are minor races we know next to nothing about who could easily have a population in excess of that jsut by modern earth standards. It makes as much sense as having a world covered in city only having a population of a few hundred million.

There is also the realism factor. The eldar race had tens of millions of years as the apex species in the galaxy, even if only a fraction of their numbers survived the Fall (which we know is accurate) it is just inconceivable that that amounts to the population of India today. If you can't see how ridiculous this is then frankly I think there is something wrong with you. It just makes no sense at all.

Also there is the comparative scale issue. We know the IoM can muster forces of millions/billions of men and vast fleets. We also know that they have attacked a craftworld at least three times after the Great Crusade, once resulting in a draw (Alaitoc) once resulting in the complete destruction of the invading force (6th ed BRB) and once resulting in the destruction of the Craftworld (Idharae in C:SM) with no idea of the forces involved. Given the size of forces the IoM can muster it is implausible that a Craftworld could defend itself against them when potentially outnumbered by hundreds to one.

Remember this isn't limited to 40k, see TV Tropes Sci-FI Writers Have No Sense of Scale (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale).

Also bear in mind I'm not saying EVERY craftworld has a population in the billions. I'm referring only to the big five. The others would range form the low billions down to the low millions.

[Nabterayl]

So ... in what sense are the eldar a "dying" race, in your view? Is their population actually declining? Or are they only "dying" in the sense that they have no realistic hope of regaining their empire (not that they seem to be trying ...?)?

[eldargal]

Canonnically their population is declining (not necessarily through death, but by becoming outcasts/corsairs etc and leaving the craftworld) and they are fighting off extinction (again which doesn't preclude them from having a population in the tens-hundreds of billions given how vast the IoM.Orks/Tyranids etc are). Personally I think the literal dying off is a boring relic from Tolkien elves and I hope it is retconned but that isn't particularly relevent. I favour the idea that it is a cultural, metaphorical dying. Their empire is gone, they are no longer the apex species, their population is a fraction of what it was etc.

In case I havn't made it clear the issue with numbers is not just limited to eldar, it still plagues the IoM in some cases (sector fleets being only 50-100 ships, congratulations on having a fleet the numerical size of the French navy for patrolling a vast sector of space...).

[miteyheroes]

I think that if we ever get anything "canon" it'll build on the "canon" facts we know (one Fall-era craftworld we know about had 200,000 inhabitants; craftworlds have since grown by 10 to 100 times). So Gav's unofficial statements of millions fits; I can believe we may hear of craftworlds with tens of millions; at a stretch I could imagine somewhere like Biel Tan might one day be described as having hundreds of millions; but I really really doubt we'll see a craftworld with a billion on it.

HOWEVER I wouldn't be surprised if GW pushed the idea of there being quite a few craftworlds, even if each one has only millions or tens of millions on it. As the 6th ed rulebook says, "No-one knows exactly how many craftworlds there are, not even the Eldar themselves ... Undoubtably there are others that have yet to make contacts with other Eldar or the Imperium." And the more craftworlds there are, the more people can make their own designs etc. Which GW loves. It's also how they dealt with the problem of the Sisters of Battle, so it's an idea they've used before!

When it comes to the whole idea of 40k canon, ADB says it best: http://www.boomtron.com/2011/03/grimdark-ii-loose-canon/
40k isn't Star Wars. Of course, it isn't quite Dr Who either. It's 40k.

[eldargal]

One craftworld having a population of 200k doesn't mean anything though. That would be like saying 'the population of Belgium is ten million therefore the population of the United States must have been around the same figure'. Yes it fits with some other poorly thought out numbers, that isn't the point. It is also contradicted by other figures (low millions are mentioned for kabals the size of small craftworlds by Phil Kelly, for example). 40k numbers are inconsistent and a lot of them are downright stupid for the size of the galaxy.

Well the most detailed figure we have to go on for craftworld numbers are 'hundreds' which seems reasonable given attrition and perhaps some joining together. Others may have disgorged onto exodite/maiden worlds.

I do appreciate ADBS point but the issue here isn't so much canonicity of sources as what makes sense for the setting. A 'horde' of a few hundred Orcs ravaging a province in a fantasy setting would make some sense due to the smaller scale. Transplant that same figure to 40k and it would be ridiculous, and you wouldn't accept ADB writing it. This is effectively what has happened to eldar. They were elves, there were thousands and thousands on a craftworld. This made no sense for 40k so it has gradually crept up, Mr Thorpe says to millions. This, in my opinion is still far too low given how vast the setting is.:)

[Nabterayl]

If it's a metaphorical dying, well and good; if they're facing literal extinction, their population could be anything north of a few thousand (whatever the eldar threshold for minimum genetic diversity is). A race on its way to extinction has to pass the few million mark as surely as it has to pass the few billion mark, after all.

I'm inclined to agree with miteyheroes that the answer more likely lies in increasing the canonical number of craftworlds than their individual size. That's the route they seem to have taken with sisters, whose "major" orders still field a ridiculous few thousand sisters.

As for the IoM numbers, I think GW gets it wrong in the sense of too many in that regard as well. Ttheir ships are too big (even with the ridiculous crew numbers given, virtually all of those ships must be uninhabited to produce the kind of cramming we read about), and their armies often are too. You can't just throw hundreds of millions of soldiers into a war zone unless that war zone is extraordinarily large. Think about how few soldiers it took to engulf virtually the entire Earth in war seventy years ago - and as far as I can tell, 40K most often follows the sci-fi trope of having only a handful of strategically valuable locations per planet. For every India-spanning palaces, there seem to be hundreds of Armageddons.

I don't know that your arguments persuade me, unless the eldar are not literally in a long population decline. Surely the actions of the eldar make them worth writing about regardless of their numbers - the Imperium may have extinguished billions or even trillions of other aliens, but they didn't do anything (at least as far as we know). Even the Tau are notable not for their size but for the fact that they were one more pissant alien empire that wasn't immediately extinguished. And I don't think we have any way to tell what it looks like when a craftworld is invaded by the Imperium in the sort of detail this conversation needs. We have no idea how big the craftworld that was destroyed was, or even how it was destroyed - though the Imperium's usual method for destroying objects that large has nothing to do with troops.

[Rev. Tiberius Jackhammer]

Not sure if it CAN be "too small for the setting". Doesn't mean that much to me; they're worth writing about because they're interesting, adds a contrast to the "let's add zeros to the numbers until our fingers fall off" approach of writing the Orks/Imp. Guard/'Nids, they can accomplish meaningful victories due to their unique methods, they were bumped down from the quadrillions to the millions due to the birth of an eldritch god attuned to their souls; I don't see a problem, and it all adds up into something interesting.

[Chris*ta]

And while the Imperium may have transport vessels that can land a million men, that isn't what we see them actually using. Look at the transport vessels we see in Imperial Armour 3, or 5-7. The average Imperial transport seems to be about 3,000-6,000 men, oftentimes inadequate to carry a regiment (though even regiments, which can consist of hundreds of thousands of men, most often seem to top out at about 10,000).

Regarding numbers in a regiment. I've discussed this elsewhere on BoLS (with you, maybe?) and I don't believe the
huge numbers sometimes quoted for IG regiments. Simply put, they don't have any intermediary command structure between company commanders and the regimental command, which limits the practicable size of the regiment. The previous IG Codex quotes the Cadian 8th as around 8,000 men, but says typical regiments are 3,000ish. Even this I would say is too high -- 1,000ish seems more sensible.

I'm not sure what my point is here ... umm, wait, I think I'm largely agreeing with your point. Damn! And I wanted an argument :(


But Space Marines, Grey Knights and Eldar don't fight in equal terms. They use unconventional asymetrical tactics, especially superior mobility and careful target selection. Hence they're so powerful.

We're not talking about the number of soldiers that a craftworld has though, but the total population. The Eldar are not a purely militaristic race, the majority of people on a craftworld would have to be in other occupations, partly to support the aspect warriors, and partly because the Eldar are described as having a lot of people following artistic/creative (i.e. "useless" ;)) paths at any given time.

And although any member of the population is liable to be called up for service as a Guardian, they can't have the entire population doing that all the time, the craftworld would go extinct if that was the case. Not to mention, they're not described as being under arms full-time.

TL;DR There needs to be way more Eldar on a given craftworld, because they're not all soldiers. Also, they need way more soldiers, to be anything other than a footnote in some BL publication.

[Nabterayl]

To be clear, I don't mean to argue that a major craftworld can't have a population in the billions; I'm just questioning the idea that it can't have less because of "the setting." 40K routinely tells stories about the small but interesting, and the eldar's influence in stories has never depended on their numbers. That each craftworld must have a large fleet I think is a given - about the size of a sector fleet, whatever that means. But we have no idea how many eldar a fleet of a given size entails. As for needing to be able to defend themselves against a serious Imperial invasion ... we don't know if that's ever happened, do we? The only time we know for sure the Imperium destroyed a craftworld we have no idea how they did it, or anything about the craftworld in question. So I don't see any canonical events that make a major craftworld having a population less than a billion implausible.

[Roadkill Zombie]

Gav's idea of Craftworlds being up to a few million people does fit in with Aurelian. In Aurelian there's a craftworld (from the time of the Fall) with 200,000 Eldar on.



Earth's moon's surface area is 37,930,000 km2; Asia's surface area is 44,579,000 km2. Moon sized and continent sized are pretty similar?



But Gnosis Prime is an example of how a small Eldar force can have a disproportionately large effect. The Planetary Governor ignored the Eldar order to evacuate the planet because the Eldar fleet was so small - that was how he signed the death warrant. The Eldar won by using their superior mobility, attacking each location with their entire force, then moving on. It wasn't a straight-up fight, as that's not how Eldar fight, they use asymetrical warfare. So Gnosis Prime can't be used to support a hypothesis of a large Eldar population.

If you note what was said, the reason the imperial governor ignored the Eldar is not because the force was small, but because the Imperial Governor believed it was small. In reality it was two entire craftworlds that fought that planet. The Eldar simply let the Imperial Governor see what looked like a small force until battle was joined. Then the Eldar unleashed everything on them. My example perfectly supports a hypothesis of a large eldar population. After all, you don't go through each hive killing millions of people unless you have lots of bodies to do that for you.

[Nabterayl]

What's the Gnosis Prime citation?

[Archon Charybdis]

What's the Gnosis Prime citation?

I believe it's in Planetstrike, I remember it was 2-3 pages and included a nice map detailing troop movements and such.

[Roadkill Zombie]

Page 60 and 61 of Planetstrike details the attack.

[eldargal]

Well combining IA11 and BFG we know some corsair fleets have a ship compliment of up to 3500 and we know that a single Craftworld could have dozens of fleets considered significantly more dangerous than a corsair fleet (but we also strike the scale issue here as these fleets are said to be 10-20 ships in strength which is riculously low, Australia has a bigger navy today). This is where we meet a remaining issue of scale with Imperial fleets, a sector fleet of 70-100 ships even when you consider they are vastly bigger and generally more heavily armed than an eldar ship would simply be overwhelmed by numbers.

To be clear, I don't mean to argue that a major craftworld can't have a population in the billions; I'm just questioning the idea that it can't have less because of "the setting." 40K routinely tells stories about the small but interesting, and the eldar's influence in stories has never depended on their numbers. That each craftworld must have a large fleet I think is a given - about the size of a sector fleet, whatever that means. But we have no idea how many eldar a fleet of a given size entails. As for needing to be able to defend themselves against a serious Imperial invasion ... we don't know if that's ever happened, do we? The only time we know for sure the Imperium destroyed a craftworld we have no idea how they did it, or anything about the craftworld in question. So I don't see any canonical events that make a major craftworld having a population less than a billion implausible.


Though Eldar corsairs are a constant threat to merchant shipping, they very rarely pose a major threat to Imperial battlefleets. The same cannot be said of the dozens of fleets of Eldar ships that protect each Eldar Craftworld. Each of these craftworld warfleets is a deadly and highly potent force that is capable of laying waste to an entire sub-sector

So you see the numbers are all jumbled up, not just for eldar. But given the vast size of the setting craftworlds smaller than mid-sized metropoli today on earth make as much sense as Ork warhosts the size you might encounter in WFB.

[Anggul]

There is, actually. BFG talks about how big they are and gives some guidelines to use in terms of depicting them in BFG games, rulesbooks are canon. IA11 also talks of craftworlds being large enough to hold entire planetary populations which while not giving a specific number indicates they are quite huge.

My issue with the figures isn't along the lines of 'there aren't enough eldar to do <insert something here>' but rather that they are implausibly low for such a vast setting as 40k.

Craftworlds are varying in size, they aren't all the same size.

Also, remember that there are quite a lot of Craftworlds, not just the few that are mentioned, so the overall population is higher than most people are thinking. Oh and lest we forget, almost all of the Eldar died simultaneously in the Fall and due to their slow re-population rate and various calamities, so it makes perfect sense that there are such a low number left.


In response to Kawauso, the reason some Craftworlds are far too big compared to their populations is because some Eldar leave or die, and the Eldar re-population rate is extremely low, so the population declines. There would have been many more Eldar at the time of The Fall than there are now.



We're talking about Craftworlds as all being very similar, when actually they're all different shapes, sizes and dispositions, so their population and military strength will be different.

[eldargal]

I never said they were th same size in fact I have repeatedly said I am referring to the larger craftworlds in general.

I've also said that the canon number of craftworlds is in the 'hundreds' rather vague. But it is not necessarily accurate that the craftworlds would have been more populous after the fall, the craftworlds have grown tens or hundreds of times in size since then and you don't waste resources expanding a giant colony ship if your population is shrinking. We even saw in Path of the Outcast damaged domes no longer of use being jettisoned so as not to drain the craftworlds resources.

No one is disputing the fact that eldar numbers are low, the issue is that low in the context of a vast setting like 40k is not low by earth standards which is what 'millions' on the larger craftworlds is. The eldar were the apex species controlling the entire galaxy for tens of millions of years, we know that galaxy has over a million worlds. We know craftworlds were built to house entire planetary populations. We know a single, small planet can sustain well over 7bn humans without the kind of advanced technology the eldar had, remember they were post subsistence.

A few hundred million craftworlds with a population in the low millions on the five largest puts the population between that of the USA and India on earth, today. That is not credible for one of the most advanced races in the 40k setting who dominated the entire galaxy for millions and millions of years and could have supported a population in the quadrillions.

It would be like putting the population of the IoM in the hundreds of billions, it is out of all scale with the setting and THAT is the issue. Not how many aspect warriors there are, not how they fight, not how powerful the faction is, not how many craftworlds there are and not how variant craftworlds may be.

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

Oh dear, someone's trying to challenge EldarGal on Eldar background, this will end badly.

[Anggul]

A few hundred million craftworlds with a population in the low millions on the five largest puts the population between that of the USA and India on earth, today. That is not credible for one of the most advanced races in the 40k setting who dominated the entire galaxy for millions and millions of years and could have supported a population in the quadrillions.

I would like to point out that I'm not supporting what Thorpe said, I agree that there would be more than that on the Craftworlds. Also as I've said many times since the first Path book came out, the idea of a force such as the one which attacked Alaitoc in the books actually being able to get that far when up against the armed and deadly population of such a Craftworld is ridiculous.

What I will say, however, is that their technology and history is irrelevant, that's the entire point in The Fall. Yes there were many of them, and their capability was great, but almost all of them, bar a minor fraction, were wiped out instantaneously.

I agree that under 'normal' circumstances, it would make absolutely no sense for such an advanced race to number so little, but The Fall is a pretty unusual thing, and due to it the Eldar population can be whatever GW want it to be, determined only by how many Eldar escaped The Fall.

What we know is that the Craftworlds have grown substantially since their creation, so initially they wouldn't have been carrying nearly as many Eldar, which does support the idea that only a minute fraction of them saw sense and left on the Craftworlds. That does mean that at some point their numbers increased since The Fall, otherwise they wouldn't have increased the size. Also the Populations of Ulthwe, Iyanden and Alaitoc are ever diminishing, and no doubt there are others which are the same, and others which are increasing and doing well.

But yes, I agree that given the size and scale of the Craftworlds, Mr. Thorpe's estimate is way off, and there would be more. The Eldar are diminished by calamities such as The Fall and the Tyranid invasion of Iyanden, along with many of them leaving to become Outcasts and Corsairs, rather than by actual battle, which they are hard to bring to and even harder to defeat in.

[eldargal]

Yes but that is the point, a fraction of a tens million year old, galaxy spanning post subsistence empire isn't a few hundred million, not when you had craftworlds built to evacuate entire planetary populations.

To put this in perspective, on this one planet right now there are around 42 million refugees. We are expected to believe that a galaxy wide empire of a species that was at the pinnacle of creation for tens of millions of years could produce refugees amounting to only ten times that? Completely implausible and out of scale.

[Anggul]

It would make a lot more sense if they had kept the previous backstory of the Craftworlds originally being merchant ships which returned to the Empire from afar to find horrific decadence, loading anyone still sane on board and getting the hell out of there.

But yes, it would require there to be a very small number of Craftworlds, when there were in fact hundreds. Granted most of them still died because they didn't manage to get far away enough from the centre of the empire, and some of them just went 'screw this galaxy' and left for the gulf of space, but there are still more Craftworlds than enough to make the total more than that.

It does, however, depend on just how many Craftworlds there are. It would make sense if there were only a planet's-worth on each Craftworld, but there were many Craftworlds. I suppose that raises another difficulty: How many Eldar were on each planet on average? I imagine it would have varied wildly, from personal planets to dense cities. It's really something which can't be definitely answered without further information from GW, which I don't imagine they'll ever give.

To be honest I think Thorpe would have been better off not setting the final battle on the Craftworld at all. As said, it's implausible that the Imperial force could pose much of a threat to the Craftworld, Space Marines aren't much good when staring down the barrels of a Craftworld's-worth of Titans and Super-heavies. (Or indeed most aspect warriors)

[eldargal]

Well there are hundreds surviving in the 41st millennium, we don't know how many there were at the Fall. There could have been tens of thousands and only a few hundred escaped.

[Nabterayl]

So you see the numbers are all jumbled up, not just for eldar. But given the vast size of the setting craftworlds smaller than mid-sized metropoli today on earth make as much sense as Ork warhosts the size you might encounter in WFB.
I still just ... don't see this argument. Perhaps we have fundamentally different views of the setting. 40K is, at bottom, a place for small stories to my mind. Primarchs, inquisitors, commissars, seers, warbosses, ethereals - over and over, the motif is of the incredibly few changing the destinies of the many. Ork warhosts the size you might encounter in WFB do make sense in 40K, as being able to threaten bodies of a certain size; the only context in which they don't make sense is that of planetary or interplanetary conquest - the nature of such an action itself requires many more bodies.

But as you agree, eldar simply don't engage in that kind of action. To me, craftworlds smaller than mid-sized metropoli make no less sense than the notion that a single cogent seer can redirect the actions of millions, perhaps billions of orks - the quintessential eldar method of influencing the galaxy (redirecting the actions of the many, not necessarily redirecting the actions of orks). Am I correct that your scale argument is, essentially, having too few eldar simply feels wrong?

[eldargal]

Well as I've said its scale, it doesn't mean you can't have small stories but the scale of the setting is vast. Even GW have said on occassion to treat your battles like they are one small slice of the frontline because the actual battles are huge. I'm also not saying small craftworlds don't exist, they do. I'm saying that a population in he low millions for one of the major five is ridiculously low given the scale of the setting.

It's not that it feels wrong (though it does) it also lacks plausibility because it is inconsistent with the size of both the physical setting (a whole galaxy of over a million worlds) and the size of the other factions. Eldar population numbers as given by Mr Thorpe are consistent with modern earth nation states, not a galaxy-spanning race even one that is a fraction of what it was.

Let me put it this way, imagine you are reading a book set in a fictional superpower contemporary to us today. You read that the capital is a 'massive metropolis of thousands of people', you would think 'wtf, massive major cities today have millions not thousands, that makes no sense'. That is what I mean about the eldar numbers being inconsistent with scale.

[Nabterayl]

Let me put it this way, imagine you are reading a book set in a fictional superpower contemporary to us today. You read that the capital is a 'massive metropolis of thousands of people', you would think 'wtf, massive major cities today have millions not thousands, that makes no sense'. That is what I mean about the eldar numbers being inconsistent with scale.
Sure, but where is the equivalent statement? We don't see eldar armies numbering in the millions, except possibly for Gnosis Prime, which I'd like to reserve until I can get a proper treatment posted at my lunch break. We know that craftworlds were designed to hold planetary populations ten thousand years ago, and vary in size but are all roughly planet-sized (itself a fairly wide size bracket). But we don't know what populations looked like in the late Empire, either in terms of numbers or distribution. We know that ten thousand years later there are five craftworlds, of the unknown number that escaped the Fall, that are appreciably larger than the others. We know that the eldar are "dying," and consider victories with casualty ratios of 10:1 to be Pyrrhic. And now Thorpe would have us believe that even major craftworlds are reduced to pre-Industrial population densities.

I don't see any inconsistencies there. Nobody, to my knowledge, has come out and said anything equivalent to "massive metropolis of thousands." It's more like "thousands living in a massive metropolis." If the setting is post-Apocalyptic - and from the eldar perspective, it is - then that statement makes perfect sense. It requires us to believe, perhaps, that the eldar population has declined precipitously rather than recovered or even stayed stable following the Fall, but is that not consistent with what has been written

[Forlornhope15]

Yep eldar must number a few billion per craftworld given the sheer scale of the 40k universe

Else they would be over run by a single waagh or imperial guard regiment

I think the size of the craft world is about right though, something close to a small moon

[Kawauso]

We know that the eldar are "dying," and consider victories with casualty ratios of 10:1 to be Pyrrhic.

I don't see any inconsistencies there. Nobody, to my knowledge, has come out and said anything equivalent to "massive metropolis of thousands." It's more like "thousands living in a massive metropolis."

The thing is though, inconsistencies like this do crop up in 40k fluff pretty regularly - in both the background material in codices and in the novels, etc.
For instance there are often references to Hive Worlds with pretty conservative figures for populations, and sometimes I find suspension of disbelief challenged a little by the population figures given for other worlds. For example, even agri-worlds given over primarily to food production should have fairly substantial populations, but the figures given are often under half a billion. I can buy numbers like that for certain worlds - feral worlds in particular, like Fenris, etc. But even in the middle ages our own planet's population was around half a billion...it doesn't take that high a technology base to attain population levels like that, and if there is one thing we as a species excel in it's reproduction.

All in all I think it comes down to, as EG said earlier, sci-fi writers more often than not having a very poor grasp on numbers when it comes to fleshing out their settings. Which is perfectly fine - it's hard to put numbers like these into a context that's easy to understand. I remember seeing an interview with George RR Martin about filming Game of Thrones for TV, where he commented he'd 'made The Wall too big' after reflecting on how huge the cliff used for filming that location was, at only a fraction of the height described for the structure in the book.

Populations in the millions and billions -sound- big to us in the context of what we're used to. But they're pretty pitiful numbers when used in the context of trying to describe the goings-on of the galaxy in 40k.
There is -one- quote from a HH book, I believe, that I really liked for describing how many Eldar there were before the Fall (I think). I'm paraphrasing quite heavily, but I believe it went along the lines of "Billions. Trillions. Decillions. An entire species."

So ultimately while sometimes the writers hit the nail on the head when it comes to wowing us with big numbers in the background, we shouldn't necessarily take them at their word outside of rare, very specific instances like the number of Space Marine chapters, etc. The Eldar, even as a race 'pushed to the brink', must have a truly massive population by our modern-day standards. It only makes sense in the context of the setting, and the empire they once held.

[Nabterayl]

... why? Thorpe was pretty clear that he considers the eldar to be in the midst of a literal extinction process. If a species is dying off, without any data as to where in the extinction process they are, any number is plausible. No species can go extinct without passing a population point of a few hundred million.*. Unless you disagree with Thorpe that the eldar are going extinct, on what basis do you place them on either side of that line?

* Unless of course they never had that many species members to begin with, which obviously is not the case here.

[Kawauso]

... why? Thorpe was pretty clear that he considers the eldar to be in the midst of a literal extinction process. If a species is dying off, without any data as to where in the extinction process they are, any number is plausible. No species can go extinct without passing a population point of a few hundred million. Unless you disagree with Thorpe that the eldar are going extinct, on what basis do you place them on either side of that line?

Any number is plausible if all one is saying is that the Eldar are going extinct (I personally find it hard to believe their species is in jeopardy though, because: Dark Eldar).

But they are still a major player on the galactic scene.
Saying that their numbers are as few as is otherwise being implied would be akin to casting the Imperium as the same entity it is now, but with only the Astartes as their fighting forces. The Space Marines are far, far too few in number to make that even remotely plausible. Do the Space Marines steal a lot of glory? Sure. Do they lift more than their weight and impact the galaxy out-of-proportion to how many they number? Of course. But everyone knows that the Imperial Navy and Guard are the real backbone of the Imperium - because they have the numbers to actually get the job done. The galaxy is too vast for anything less.

And even if the Eldar as a race -are- dying out, that has to be taken in context with the extent of how massive their empire was before the Fall. They were pretty high up, and that gives them a lot farther -to- fall.

If the major craftworlds had population levels as pitifully low as the millions, I imagine the Eldar would occupy a similar spot in the 40k galaxy as Jokaero or Sslyth. Hell, minor races like -those- probably have populations akin to the human population today, or even greater.

[Nabterayl]

Saying that their numbers are as few as is otherwise being implied would be akin to casting the Imperium as the same entity it is now, but with only the Astartes as their fighting forces. The Space Marines are far, far too few in number to make that even remotely plausible. Do the Space Marines steal a lot of glory? Sure. Do they lift more than their weight and impact the galaxy out-of-proportion to how many they number? Of course. But everyone knows that the Imperial Navy and Guard are the real backbone of the Imperium - because they have the numbers to actually get the job done. The galaxy is too vast for anything less.
This argument only holds water if the eldar do the sorts of things, militarily, that the Imperium does. Do you think that is the case? I do not. I don't see anything that eldar armies do that aren't essentially space marines actions writ large. That doesn't mean that there are only a few million eldar. But I don't see what the eldar have done militarily that requires populations in the billions.


even if the Eldar as a race -are- dying out, that has to be taken in context with the extent of how massive their empire was before the Fall. They were pretty high up, and that gives them a lot farther -to- fall.
To be sure. A dying race that starts at an arbitrarily high number is no more, nor less, likely to number in the billions than in the millions. Neither number is precluded.


If the major craftworlds had population levels as pitifully low as the millions, I imagine the Eldar would occupy a similar spot in the 40k galaxy as Jokaero or Sslyth. Hell, minor races like -those- probably have populations akin to the human population today, or even greater.
This argument makes no sense to me. The Adepta Sororitas number in the thousands - maybe in the millions. They occupy pride of place before the jokaero. Ditto with the Inquisition. When determining whether to write about somebody, GW clearly asks not how many there are, but what they have done.

[Anggul]

This argument only holds water if the eldar do the sorts of things, militarily, that the Imperium does. Do you think that is the case? I do not. I don't see anything that eldar armies do that aren't essentially space marines actions writ large. That doesn't mean that there are only a few million eldar. But I don't see what the eldar have done militarily that requires populations in the billions.


To be sure. A dying race that starts at an arbitrarily high number is no more, nor less, likely to number in the billions than in the millions. Neither number is precluded.


This argument makes no sense to me. The Adepta Sororitas number in the thousands - maybe in the millions. They occupy pride of place before the jokaero. Ditto with the Inquisition. When determining whether to write about somebody, GW clearly asks not how many there are, but what they have done.

Pretty much everything this guy said.

You can't compare the Eldar to the Imperium because the Eldar don't do what they Imperium do. They don't run around trying to conquer everything for no particular reason. The Eldar are one of the least populous species in the galaxy, that's the point. While I agree that most Craftworlds would indeed have more than Mr. Thorpe says, the argument that they were the apex species with a galaxy-spanning empire and that's why there should be loads of them holds absolutely no water whatsoever. The whole point is that The Fall almost entirely wiped them out, it was their bane and doom. They were the apex and there were lots of them. Then there weren't. Simple.

There are reasons that there would indeed be more Eldar than suggested by Thorpe, but not most of the reasons that are being given here.

[Rev. Tiberius Jackhammer]

Yep eldar must number a few billion per craftworld given the sheer scale of the 40k universe

Else they would be over run by a single waagh or imperial guard regiment

I think the size of the craft world is about right though, something close to a small moonExcept fighting a Waaagh!/Hivefleet CAN overrun them, that very nearly happened to Iyanden (twice). The Eldar's strength is that the Craftworlds are mobile and hard to find, and the Eldar can usually predict when and where the enemy will be and avoid them.

[Nabterayl]

Thoughts on Gnosis Prime here (http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?24877-Battle-of-Gnosis&p=243066#post243066).

[eldargal]

You are missing the point about comparing the IoM with the eldar population. It isn;t about what they do, it is about SCALE. Saing the largest craftworlds have a population in the low millions is like saying the largest fleet in the IoM has twenty ships, it makes no sense given the scale of the setting.

Also if a 10:1 kill ratio would be considered pyrrhic then that would imply there are vastly more eldar than millions. If there are only millions then in every engagement they would need something like a 30000:1 kill ratio to be considered anything but a catastrophic defeat. Also if you consider 100:1 unrealistic for Marines then for eldar to have done some of the things they have done in the background they would need to have had kill ratios in the 1000:1 range or more.


hile I agree that most Craftworlds would indeed have more than Mr. Thorpe says, the argument that they were the apex species with a galaxy-spanning empire and that's why there should be loads of them holds absolutely no water whatsoever. The whole point is that The Fall almost entirely wiped them out, it was their bane and doom. They were the apex and there were lots of them. Then there weren't. Simple.
You miss the point. There aren't loads of them, there are very, very few. But very, very few in the context of a galaxy wide setting is not the same as very few by modern earth standards, and that is the trap Mr Thorpe has fallen into. Also saying that they are dying does not mean they are literally few. Germany has a negative population growth rate, are they dying? Are there few Germans? No there are tens of millions of them. A viable breeding population for humanity could be in the dozens to stop us literally dying out, does a species have to reach the commensurate level for their reproduction rate to be considered dying? In which case there could only be hudnreds of eldar left. Bringing the 'dying race' thing into it is irrelevent.

A small town today might number in the low thousands, a few thousand years ago that would be considered a teeming population hub. If you wrote about a city that size being a metropolis today you would be laughed at. That is the issue here, not what the eldar can do, or how they fight, but the fact their numbers do not reflect the scale of the setting. The way I see it by saying the major craftworlds have a population in the low millions Mr Thorpe is saying 'New York city in 2012 has a population in the tens of thousands'. Out of scale.

[Nabterayl]

Also if you consider 100:1 unrealistic for Marines then for eldar to have done some of the things they have done in the background they would need to have had kill ratios in the 1000:1 range or more.
Like what? I keep asking for examples of this sort of thing. Surely if anybody is in a position to adduce them, you are.

[eldargal]

Also, given that Aurelian was being quoted earlier, how about this quote about pre-Fall Empire population:

An entire species, trillions, decillions, tredecillions
Admittedly the source is a Slaaneshi daemon so there may be some hyperbole. But it is still the only number we have.


Like what? I keep asking for examples of this sort of thing. Surely if anybody is in a position to adduce them, you are.
Any battle where they fought the IoM for a start. You're the one who brought in the pyrrhic victory thing, I'm just saying it works both ways. It's really irrelevent when the issue is scale not offensive capability.

[Nabterayl]

A small town today might number in the low thousands, a few thousand years ago that would be considered a teeming population hub. If you wrote about a city that size being a metropolis today you would be laughed at. That is the issue here, not what the eldar can do, or how they fight, but the fact their numbers do not reflect the scale of the setting. The way I see it by saying the major craftworlds have a population in the low millions Mr Thorpe is saying 'New York city in 2012 has a population in the tens of thousands'. Out of scale.
Okay, here's why I keep bringing up the military action thing: as you yourself point out, "setting" is not specific enough. It would be ridiculous to call a major population center in 2012 as numbering in the thousands. We agree. But who has ever called craftworlds major population centers in M41? Who has ever called the eldar a populous race? Who has ever even compared the population of a craftworld to a hive world? When have the eldar ever fought an Imperial force whose numbers we can pin in the millions?

I'm not saying that these things haven't occurred. I'm just asking you, as local curator of eldar lore, to adduce some citations. Otherwise we might compare eldar to 2012 sea otters as well as to 2012 human metropolises. Without citations, there's no way to know which parts of the setting we should be comparing to.

[eldargal]

By definition the largest craftworlds are the population centres for their race. See above post for a quote on eldar population. Populous is relative, and therein lie the point, it has to scale to the size of the setting to be credible. A population in the tens of millions is average for a nation on earth now, it no more fits with a million world galaxy than that metropolis with thousands of people fits into a modern earth setting. Perhaps I should be clear on what I mean by setting: the 40k galaxy. Over one million life sustaining worlds. A galaxy the eldar rules with no competition for tens of millions of years. Even assuming a low birth rate and generations measures in hundreds of years that would still amount to an immense population. We also know from the DE comparison that the Craftworld population growth rate is artificially low compared to pre-Fall.

Earth sea otters are not a galaxy-spanning, apex species that rules the galaxy for tens of millions of years. Humans on the other hand are the apex species of this planet and the closest analogy we have. :)

[Kawauso]

Earth sea otters are not a galaxy-spanning, apex species that rules the galaxy for tens of millions of years.

But they totally should be.

[Nabterayl]

Right, hang on a tick here. Craftworlds are the major population centers for craftworld eldar, agreed. But who in the 40K universe has ever said anything like, "Wow, that craftworld sure is a major population center?" If a hive dweller, or even a human being, had ever said that, we could start extrapolating based on what the speaker would consider a "major" population center. Simply knowing that a craftworld is a population center doesn't give us anything to work from.

As for the apex species thing, your sense of scale confuses me. I think "tredecillions" of eldar in the Milky Way is almost certainly hyperbole, but as you say, it's the only number we have. So let's assume that there were 5 x 10^42 eldar pre-fall. You are proposing a current population of what, in the ballpark of 500 billion? Thorpe seems to be suggesting, say, 50 million - probably off from what he has in mind but by less than an order of magnitude.

These numbers have the eldar race declining by 5 x 10^31 in your case, and 5 x 10^35 in Thorpe's. These are staggering numbers, in each case assuming the eldar lost over a million souls for each star in the entire galaxy. Why is it plausible that in 10,000 years the eldar lost about 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 souls, but not that they lost 500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000?

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

Woah dude. What the hell was that?

People take things FAR too seriously....

Now if you'll excuse me, the outside world becons.


@Kawauso - ALL HAIL THE GALACTIC SEA OTTERS!

[Psychosplodge]

Now if you'll excuse me, the outside world becons.




The outside world O_o what is this?


@Kawauso - ALL HAIL THE GALACTIC SEA OTTERS!

I for one hail our new overlords

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

Yeah, I'm going to go and play some games today, it's the late night opening for GW Shrews.

[Psychosplodge]

So it's not proper outside, you scared me there for a moment...

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

Hahahaha! That's later.

[eldargal]

...I'm not even sure what your point was in that last post Nabterayl.

Let's take the lower figure of 'trillions' spread accross a large number of worlds, mostly clustered around the EoT area. Assume a figure of say ten billion eldar per planet just as an arbitrary number. Many of these planets start building craftworlds that can hold an entire planets population (IA11). It only takes ONE of these worlds to evacuate with 10% of the population of that ONE world to blow Mr Thorpes number out of the water. We know that there are hundreds of craftworlds in the 40k universe in the 41st millennium. We know there were more immediately after the Fall.

The reason the low millions figure is not plausible is because a) the initial population was immense b) they had the capacity to evacuate entire planetary populations c) We know these ships were launched 'in their hundreds' d) we know since that time the craftworlds have grown exponentially implying some degree of population growth. We also know that some craftworlds left comparatively early and were not caught in the shock wave to the extent some later ones were. So again it would just take one ship not even at full capacity to exceed Mr Thorpes estimate for a major craftworld by an order of magnitude. Why? Because the figure is out of scale.

In effect you have to argue that a civilization capable of moving entire planetary populations was only able to save the equivalent population of contemporary India from accross potentially hundreds/thousands/tens of thousands of worlds. That is just a ludicrous proposition as far as I'm concerned.

[Anggul]

...I'm not even sure what your point was in that last post Nabterayl.

Let's take the lower figure of 'trillions' spread accross a large number of worlds, mostly clustered around the EoT area. Assume a figure of say ten billion eldar per planet just as an arbitrary number. Many of these planets start building craftworlds that can hold an entire planets population (IA11). It only takes ONE of these worlds to evacuate with 10% of the population of that ONE world to blow Mr Thorpes number out of the water. We know that there are hundreds of craftworlds in the 40k universe in the 41st millennium. We know there were more immediately after the Fall.

The reason the low millions figure is not plausible is because a) the initial population was immense b) they had the capacity to evacuate entire planetary populations c) We know these ships were launched 'in their hundreds' d) we know since that time the craftworlds have grown exponentially implying some degree of population growth. We also know that some craftworlds left comparatively early and were not caught in the shock wave to the extent some later ones were. So again it would just take one ship not even at full capacity to exceed Mr Thorpes estimate for a major craftworld by an order of magnitude. Why? Because the figure is out of scale.

In effect you have to argue that a civilization capable of moving entire planetary populations was only able to save the equivalent population of contemporary India from accross potentially hundreds/thousands/tens of thousands of worlds. That is just a ludicrous proposition as far as I'm concerned.

No. This is exactly where your logic is void. Just because there were lots of Eldar and they were capable of moving lots of people, doesn't mean lots of people did escape. The fact is that almost all of them weren't trying to escape, almost all of them weren't refugees, most of them were taking part in the decadence and were consumed. This is not a case of 'they got out as many as they could', this is a case of 'they got out whoever else was sane enough to do so'. Thus, the number of surviving Eldar is determined purely by the number of those who were still sane, scale makes absolutely no difference, there is no set probability of each Eldar falling into decadence, it's not like rolling 6 dice, saying 'each Eldar falls to decadence on a 3+', and then the probability being that two manage to get away.

There is no sense of scale to this, this was an almost species-wide sudden death, there is absolutely no scale to be applied to it because there is no set number of how many of them did and did not fall into decadence.


Once again, purely due to the size and number of the vessels launched, yes I wholeheartedly agree with you that the number that escaped is far higher than Thorpe suggests, however a lot of the other logic you are trying to apply to it is simply incorrect.

[eldargal]

I never said they were ALL trying to escape, I was illustrating that it would only take a small portion of a relatively small population on a galactic level (ten billion) to get ONE ship to exceed Thorpes estimate by an order of magnitude or more. That is why I find Mr Thorpes figures so low, I mean we know at least hundreds of Craftworlds survive to the 41st millennium, we know some of them left in goodtime to avoid the shockwave of the fall, yet somehow these ships designed to carry entire planetary populations of a race numbering in the trillions+ managed make off with the population of Belgium at best.

[Psychosplodge]

Well considering his answer was off the cuff when put on the spot, he thought out how the Eldar have better logistics in regards the webway, but not the bigger picture in perspective?

[eldargal]

Yep, I get the impression that perhaps he hasn't thought a whole lot about the actual population issue and the various factors involved. Which is no criticism, the man is focused on writing interesting and coherent stories about an alien species, all this stuff is just semantics.:)

Also remember I'm not saying the low figures are impossible, I'm saying they are implausible. Hence the example of one ship with 10% of a ten billion population (small if the total is in the trillions) exceeding the whole population of all craftworld eldar in total if we accept Mr Thorpes numbers. It only takes that to happen once, on one single world in a multitude to exceed the low millions figure, hence I find it far, far more likely that tens to hundred oven low trillions of eldar survived the fall, because those numbers are still a miniscule fraction of the former total and still a drop in the ocean compared to the other species. It is still consistent with all the background we have and it fits in with the size and scope of the 40k galaxy far better, in my opinion.

[miteyheroes]

Let's take the lower figure of 'trillions' spread accross a large number of worlds, mostly clustered around the EoT area. Assume a figure of say ten billion eldar per planet just as an arbitrary number. Many of these planets start building craftworlds that can hold an entire planets population (IA11). It only takes ONE of these worlds to evacuate with 10% of the population of that ONE world to blow Mr Thorpes number out of the water.

Ok, taking your figure of trillions of Eldar in the Empire... Let's say the Eldar Empire controlled as many worlds as the Imperium of Mankind - they're both major galaxy rulers, right? And the Eldar were more clustered but were also better at terraforming. The IoM has 1 million worlds. So that means there was an average of 1 million Eldar per world. If you save 10% of the Eldar on a world, that's 100,000 Eldar on a Craftworld. Since the Fall Craftworlds have grown 10 to 100 times, giving them 1 million to 10 million per Craftworld. Thorpe's number is correct.

Of course, I think the number of Eldar in the Empire was higher than a trillion. A trillion is way too small for a race whilst it rules the galaxy. But I think the Eldar worlds were densely populated in the centre of the Empire and more sparsely populated towards the edges. And I think that most of the centre worlds either either didn't make craftworlds (they were liking the decadence) or didn't survive (they didn't manage to flee pre-Slaanesh). Hence the current Craftworld Eldar population is low (but disproportionately effective - thanks to their Seers and way of war).

I also think that the Craftworld Eldar aren't the only Eldar. Craftworld Eldar are the survivors of the Eldar who were living in the core of the Empire and fled at the last minute. There are also the Dark Eldar, who were living in the webway; the Exodites, who'd fled long before; and the Corsairs, who may well include survivors from planets that just weren't as central to the Empire?

[eldargal]

Well the quote is 'trillions' meaning more than one, and we do know that the Eldar Empire was clustered around where the EoT is now so it wasn't spread as thinly as the IoM. Remember that when your population is in the trillions even tens of billions on an outlying world would be considered sparse, in the same way today a city of thousands is little more than a town but ten thousand years ago they were hundreds of times larger than any previous existing settlements. That's the point of my example, it would only take one outlying world with ten billion to evacuate 5-10% to exceed Mr Thorpes numbers, and there were hundreds/thousands of such worlds and at the least many hundreds of craftworlds. This is why I consider his numbers implausible given the size of galaxy, scale of the eldar empire and the fact that they were trying to evacuate (that whole craftworld thing...).

You are quite right, though. The first to leave the Empire became the exodites, basically the eldar equivalent of survivalists today. The second wave, some leaving it very/too late became the craftworlders, the final wave were the Dark Eldar who either fled into the webway at some point befor the Fall or were already in their doing unspeakable things to each other and themselves away from prying eyes. Of these as far as we know it is only the craftworlders and perhaps exodites who are 'declining', the Dark Eldar are still breeding even if attrition is high (then again they can bring people back from the dead so the actual rate of attrition may not be too high).

[miteyheroes]

Well the quote is 'trillions' meaning more than one, and we do know that the Eldar Empire was clustered around where the EoT is now so it wasn't spread as thinly as the IoM. Remember that when your population is in the trillions even tens of billions on an outlying world would be considered sparse, in the same way today a city of thousands is little more than a town but ten thousand years ago they were hundreds of times larger than any previous existing settlements.

If your population is trillions, then tens of billions on one planet means that planet holds about 1% of your population. That's a big amount, that's a major population centre. Only 3 UK cities contain over 1% of the UK population - London, Birmingham and Leeds. No US cities contain over 1% of the US population. Only 18 countries in the world contain over 1% of the world's population.

If one planet contains over 1% of your species' members, you're either a really galactically unimportant species or it's a really important planet! It's not a sparse outlying world.

[eldargal]

Yes but given the exact quote it is safe to assume it is more than low trillions, it goes on to say decillions and tredecillions.:) I didn't mean to say tens though, I meant ten which even assuming just two trillion would be .5% and I think the original population was much, much higher, perhaps not decillions though.

[Psychosplodge]

Only 3 UK cities contain over 1% of the UK population - London, Birmingham and Leeds. No US cities contain over 1% of the US population..

Well that's wrong

post edit from 2001 census
Liverpool-469,017 or conurbation 816k
Leeds - 443,247 or entire met area 810k west yorks conurbation 1.5m
Sheffield - 439,866 - excluding 3 major sub-urbs approx 523k with them.

If we're talking UK then Glasgow is a similar size to Leeds/Sheffield

[DrLove42]

Uk population is 62 million. 1 percent of that is...620,000
I count 9 on the list; http://www.information-britain.co.uk/about/citypop.html
Admittadly if you count the one city only, not the surrounding borughts that make it up, it is only 3

US population is 311 million. 1% is 3.11 million. According to Wiki, NY has 8 million, LA 3.8. So thats 2

[miteyheroes]

Well that's wrong.

Whoops, so it is. New York and LA manage it. Sorry!

And yeah, maybe some UK cities do if you count surrounding towns as parts of cities. It's hard to define where a city ends.

The countries example is probably better?

[Psychosplodge]

I wasn't even considering the US but yeah that too :D

[eldargal]

Mr thorpe also posted a reply on Warseer which actually illustrates another problem of scale:

...Thanks to Horus38 for reposting my reply, but I feel that in all of these debates people forget that having 10,000,000,000 soldiers makes no odds if you can only transport 10,000... If the Eldar were dumb enough to try to conquer a hive world, the numbers would count against them, which is why they don't. How many ships would be required to assemble a million-strong Imperial Guard force? Most of a segmentum fleet I would expect. On the attack the eldar get to pick and choose their fights, on the defensive they have the advantage of any world - the attacker has to get his troops across the void of space.

As Insectum7 said, "That makes the Eldar craftworlds themselves seem really, really desolate. The picture of near-empty craftworlds really brings back the tragedy of the race." Couldn't have put it better

Cheers,

Gav

The answer is one ship:

920.M41 Eldar pirates attack the troopship Emperor's Faithful as it exits Warp space in the Thanas system. The ship is boarded, then dissapears, taking with it a complement of 5,000,000 Imperial Guardsmen and 200,000 men of the Imperial Navy.

[miteyheroes]

Well that's wrong

post edit from 2001 census
Liverpool-469,017 or conurbation 816k
Leeds - 443,247 or entire met area 810k west yorks conurbation 1.5m
Sheffield - 439,866 - excluding 3 major sub-urbs approx 523k with them.

If we're talking UK then Glasgow is a similar size to Leeds/Sheffield

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_the_United_Kingdom - Leeds has 700k, Glasgow 592k, Sheffield 534k, Manchester 503k, Liverpool 435k.

Anyway. The key point is, 1% is a BIG thing in population terms.

[Psychosplodge]

How many identical lists does wikipedia have for the same thing showing different numbers? O_o

[DrLove42]

Lots apparantly.

And yes countries would be a better comparision - much harder to draw boundaries there.

I prefer to agree with EG on the size, but there are things that make it hard to see.

For instance, in the stories of Kraken attacking the Craftworld, it talks of a place in the craftworld where every Eldar on the world can meet at once and discuss the problem. For the population to even be in the low millions....thats a bogglingly big place.

Doom of Malantai...I don't have the Nid codex, but does his fluff mention anything?

IA11...again I'm AFB but does the fluff in there describe the size of the warhost

Need Phil Kelly to answer the subject....no one but his word can be accepted :P

[Psychosplodge]

That only needs to be a large field considering they're psychic...

[eldargal]

The Kraken dome thing I believe dates back to late RT when craftworlds had a population in the 'thousands upon thousands' which was clearly so insane even GW haven't gone on with it.

[DrLove42]

But still, find a field that could be peasably filled in sensible time that could take 1 millions.

Glastonbury as a Festival is only 130,000 people, and that takes the better part of 2 days to get everyone in and out

[Psychosplodge]

DL only takes an afternoon/morning to fill/empty and has upto apparently 120k(more commonly 80-90k I think)...it's just logistics, which apparently eldar are good at...

[eldargal]

If you think about the size of the craftworld for all we know there is one 'deck' that is one immense open space with a series of roads/transport ducts/webway portals etc that even a few billion could squeeze into.

[miteyheroes]

But still, find a field that could be peasably filled in sensible time that could take 1 millions.

Reminds me of: http://what-if.xkcd.com/8/

[Psychosplodge]

Reminds me of: http://what-if.xkcd.com/8/

Yes, but what about if all the rain fell at once?

[DrLove42]

Reminds me of: http://what-if.xkcd.com/8/

I was thinking of that when i wrote it.

I do enjoy the series, I think the robot uprising was particularly good

[Psychosplodge]

I like the rounders one, and the half full glass lol

[Anggul]

I never said they were ALL trying to escape, I was illustrating that it would only take a small portion of a relatively small population on a galactic level (ten billion) to get ONE ship to exceed Thorpes estimate by an order of magnitude or more. That is why I find Mr Thorpes figures so low, I mean we know at least hundreds of Craftworlds survive to the 41st millennium, we know some of them left in goodtime to avoid the shockwave of the fall, yet somehow these ships designed to carry entire planetary populations of a race numbering in the trillions+ managed make off with the population of Belgium at best.

Yeah, as I said I agree completely that Thorpe's estimate is way off, I was just saying that the argument that 'there were too many of them for there to be so few' holds no water due to the nature of The Fall.

But yes, I agree that the Eldar population would be much more than he seems to think. Not the case for Ulthwe and Iyanden for example, but they have very specific reasons.

[Nabterayl]

Whoa, sorry if I came across as hostile there. I was just trying to illustrate Anggul's point: if we can accept that the Fall killed, say, 99.99% of the Empire's population, why can't we accept that it killed 99.999%? "But there were so many of them to start with!" doesn't help us draw that line.

I like the argument from frontier populations better, but it still has too many variables for me to accept that Thorpe simply cannot be right. And on top of that, I think we're too cavalierly dismissing the notion of the eldar being a dying race. Yes, I know it's a cheap port from Tolkien, but I don't think we can dismiss it as the kind of authorial hyperbole that gives us bolter porn. GW does not consistently portray space marines as invincible supermen; it does consistently portray the eldar as dying.

The only way for that to be true, I think, is through non-natural deaths. Even if only millions of eldar survived the Fall they would [almost certainly] have sufficient genetic diversity to have a positive growth rate. But the eldar don't behave as if their population is increasing. As EG has noted, their craftworlds have actually combined over the past 10,000 years, which seems to me like the behavior of dwindling populations banding together in the face of adversity. IA11 portrays this directly over the lifespan of a single eldar; the Mymeara farseer remembers, within his own lifetime, the armies of his craftworld dwindling by 90% due to combat casualties.

The story I think GW is trying to tell of the eldar is that most craftworlds (the ones we read about, anyway) escaped the Fall but are still terrified that their craftworlds will be discovered. They may be hard to find, after all, but they're strategically all but immobile. We've seen eldar go to great lengths to divert forces from discovering their craftworlds (most famously, I think, Eldrad's creation of Waaagh! Ghazghkull). The eldar seem to have no interest as a race in re-creating the Empire, so why are they constantly popping up here and there? Sometimes to recover artifacts (such as the Shadow Spectre Phoenix Lord's armor), but most often, I think, because their farseers are convinced that the craftworld is in danger - going to war on this planet over here will cause this and that to happen, and the craftworld will not be discovered. But every time they do so a few eldar die, and the galaxy is so dangerous, and the potential threats to craftworlds so numerous, that battle depletes their numbers faster than their birth rate can compensate. That's clearly what happened to Mymeara. If Mymeara's armies could fall by 90% in the lifespan of a single eldar (which is what, about 1,000 years?), I don't think we have any basis for saying that the craftworld population as a whole couldn't have fallen by <insert percentage here> in the 10,000 years following the Fall.

[Tynskel]

It isn't just that the craftworld is in danger.

There are the Necrons.
And there is the ever watching eyes of Slaannesh.

However, we know the most dangerous threat to the Galaxy comes from without.
All it took was one beast to find the infinity circuit, and an entire craftworld came down...

[eldargal]

Except I'm not saying that there were too many of them for there to be so few. I'm saying that there were too many of them on too many worlds with too many craftworlds for it to be plausible that so few survived.;) As I've said, it would only take on ship not even filled to capacity to escape and exceed the figure by an order of magnitude, but it could as easily be a hundred ships filled to 1% to reach the same figure

Yeah, as I said I agree completely that Thorpe's estimate is way off, I was just saying that the argument that 'there were too many of them for there to be so few' holds no water due to the nature of The Fall.

But yes, I agree that the Eldar population would be much more than he seems to think. Not the case for Ulthwe and Iyanden for example, but they have very specific reasons.

Also I'm not saying they aren't a dying race, the issue is what does that actually mean? It can't literally be that there aren't enough to breed, a viable gene pool for humans is in the low dozens and even for eldar it may be hundreds or thousands. Even with a declining birth rate it doesn't really mean much, a lot of western countries today and a negative birth rate. going from tens/hundreds of trillions or decillions (nevermind tredillions) to billions would still be enough to class the species as dying. Point is even if there are billions it doesn't mean the species still isn't dying. It's actually for that reason that I favour a more metaphorical cultural dying rather than literal, in the same way the British Empire is dead but the British aren't.

Also the craftworlds are not immobile, some of the smaller ones cn fit in the largest webway tunnels (they can hold fleets, very big tunnels) and during one of the eldar campaigns against the tyranids several craftworlds were seen moving quite a lot.

[Anggul]

Except I'm not saying that there were too many of them for there to be so few. I'm saying that there were too many of them on too many worlds with too many craftworlds for it to be plausible that so few survived.;) As I've said, it would only take on ship not even filled to capacity to escape and exceed the figure by an order of magnitude, but it could as easily be a hundred ships filled to 1% to reach the same figure

Well then we are agreed.

You definitely were saying that there were too many for there to be so few though. ;)

[eldargal]

Only in the sense that it would take just one craftworld to escape with a fraction of an earth sized planet to account for the total number of ALL craftworld eldar by Mr Thorpes number.

[Nabterayl]

Sure, 10,000 years ago. But eldar lore is pretty consistent that their numbers have declined precipitously since then, isn't it? I just don't see how we can say that their population hasn't declined by <insert percentage here>. We know from the codex that in the past 10,000 years multiple craftworlds' populations have declined by 100%, and the fact that craftworlds have joined together strongly suggests that others have come close to the same.

With no starting numbers and no boundary on population decline, the only way I can think of to establish a lower boundary that is lore-inconsistent, rather than aesthetically distasteful, is to point to specific canon actions that the eldar have taken and argue from there. The consensus of this thread seems to be that there are no such actions that are useful in this way.

[eldargal]

Well the transition from post-Fall to M41 is the problem isn't it? One hand we get talk of a 'gradual decline' (C:E 4th ed) of the eldar race, on the other hand the craftworld have expanded exponentially in the same time. You do not do that if your population is shrinking, we know from PotO that they recycled damaged domes so they weren't a drain on the craftworld. It seems inexplicable that they would keep growing their craftworlds to no purpose.

But no, the decline is explicitly stated to be gradual, not precipitous. Some of the decline is related to craftworlds being outcasts too, not just deaths or a low/negative birth rate.

[Nabterayl]

You do not do that if your population is shrinking, we know from PotO that they recycled damaged domes so they weren't a drain on the craftworld. It seems inexplicable that they would keep growing their craftworlds to no purpose.
I'm not so sure about that. We know at least some craftworlds really did die off. If your craftworld were in the process of doing so, you might well join up with another and amalgamate your craftworlds. That's standard behavior for civilizations that are dying off. Doing so would result in a huge amount of empty space, though.

[eldargal]

We don't even know they did join together though, there is no mention of it at all in any background material. It's just speculation that some may have, as an explanation for why the craftworlds grew exponentially it really doesn't hold water. We do know that craftworlds die off, and that alone could explain the gradual decline in population without a negative birth rate (itself just speculation).

[Nabterayl]

So, clarify something for me - how do we know that craftworlds grew exponentially? I can't recall that cite off the top of my head.

[eldargal]

I can't find it in the 4th ed book so unless I'm missing it it is probably in the 2nd ed codex, the phrase is that they have grown 'tens or hundreds' of times in size. My 2nd ed book is downstairs at the moment and I can't be bothered fetching it.:p

[Gotthammer]

Since the Fall the original Craftworlds have grown considerably in size, so that they are now ten or a hundred times larger than the original trading ships which lie at their cores.

Relevant link (http://futurewarstories.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/fws-topics-by-numbers-size-organization.html).


We could also partially extrapolate the number of Aspect Warriors from the Path books. There are something like 15 Striking Scorpions present when the books take place. Times that by 8 for the number of Aspects and you end up with a mighty army of 120 dudes and dudettes do defent the entire Craftworld.

Seems legit :cool:

[Archon Charybdis]

I thought it was stated in some of the BFG materials, I'll see if I can find it later.

[Kyban]

Relevant link (http://futurewarstories.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/fws-topics-by-numbers-size-organization.html).


We could also partially extrapolate the number of Aspect Warriors from the Path books. There are something like 15 Striking Scorpions present when the books take place. Times that by 8 for the number of Aspects and you end up with a mighty army of 120 dudes and dudettes do defent the entire Craftworld.

Seems legit :cool:

I thought there were a lot more Striking Scorpions than that, weren't there 20 in one of the shrines alone? There is also sounded like there were varying number of Aspects, though I'm not sure if all of them would have Phoenix Lords, I think only the originals had them.

[eldargal]

Bah, so it was the damned compilation, not a codex. Grr. Actually I found an 'in universe' mentio nof it on the very lst page of Codex: Craftworld Eldar from 3rd edition, too. Also this, while it has no numbers it just illulstrate the sheer size of a craftworld:

Craftworlds, though spacecraft, are vast beyond
comprehension. They are not merely huge capital ships
ploughing through space with a surrounding escort of
smaller vessels. They are not even akin to vast cities, as
some of the largest star forts of the Imperium might be
considered, but rather are immense spacefaring worlds
accompanied by vast armadas, the likes of which might
otherwise be set aside to defend an entire system or even
sub-sector. Whole battlefleets cluster around key points
and stations all across the thousands of miles of the
craftworld’s exterior as smaller, nimbler craft rush and
surge across its surface in a constant shimmering patrol.

[Chris*ta]

I thought there were a lot more Striking Scorpions than that, weren't there 20 in one of the shrines alone? There is also sounded like there were varying number of Aspects, though I'm not sure if all of them would have Phoenix Lords, I think only the originals had them.

I've never been clear on how many aspect warriors there'd be to an "average" shrine -- I have the impression that there would typically be enough for several squads (so, say 20+) but I'm not sure what I'm basing that on.

And yes, there are an unknown number of different types of aspect warriors among the craftworlds. Although the "big 6" are nearly universal, (and many craftworlds will have several shrines for some) and Warp Spiders and Shining Spears are present on most craftworlds, there are an unknown number of other aspects that are rarer.

[Chris*ta]

Relevant link (http://futurewarstories.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/fws-topics-by-numbers-size-organization.html).


We could also partially extrapolate the number of Aspect Warriors from the Path books. There are something like 15 Striking Scorpions present when the books take place. Times that by 8 for the number of Aspects and you end up with a mighty army of 120 dudes and dudettes do defent the entire Craftworld.

Seems legit :cool:

Umm, so let's say 1 tenth of 1 percent of craftworlders are following the path of the warrior at any given time -- you're saying the total population of a craftworld is ... 120,000 :sad trombone noise:

[eldargal]

Also during the Baran campaign a relatively small eldar strike force was able to annihilate one hundred Raven Guard (lulz) and go on to be able to charge a single objective with 'hundreds' of aspect warriors. Details in the Swordwind epic pdfs on the GW website. The same eldar force was also large enough to survive a battle with 'hundreds of thousands' of Orks though it was defeated and suffered 'hundreds' of casualties.

[Chris*ta]

Also during the Baran campaign a relatively small eldar strike force was able to annihilate one hundred Raven Guard (lulz) and go on to be able to charge a single objective with 'hundreds' of aspect warriors. Details in the Swordwind epic pdfs on the GW website. The same eldar force was also large enough to survive a battle with 'hundreds of thousands' of Orks though it was defeated and suffered 'hundreds' of casualties.

Come to think of it, there's that bit in the C:SM 5th ed about some Eldar fighting (iirc) the entire Ultramarines chapter over some macguffin or other. Hang on ... I'll have a read and get back to y'all.

[Nabterayl]

On the gradual decline front, I was just kicking around a couple of numbers and I found the results surprising. If the craftworld population declines by 0.1% every year after the Fall (the same population decrease that Germany is currently experiencing), in the 10,000th year it would have only 0.00451733% of its population remaining. If there were 10 trillion eldar that survived the Fall, that would result in a remainder of only 451,733,000.

That's not to say that 10 trillion eldar did survive the Fall, or that they decreased by 0.1% every year, but it did illustrate to me that even if a relatively large number of eldar survived the Fall, 10,000 years of gradual decline can really kill your population numbers.

[Chris*ta]

On the gradual decline front, I was just kicking around a couple of numbers and I found the results surprising. If the craftworld population declines by 0.1% every year after the Fall (the same population decrease that Germany is currently experiencing), in the 10,000th year it would have only 0.00451733% of its population remaining. If there were 10 trillion eldar that survived the Fall, that would result in a remainder of only 451,733,000.

That's not to say that 10 trillion eldar did survive the Fall, or that they decreased by 0.1% every year, but it did illustrate to me that even if a relatively large number of eldar survived the Fall, 10,000 years of gradual decline can really kill your population numbers.

The magic of compound interest ... or disinterest ;)

Just realised I haven't looked up that bit from C:SM ... aaand I'm going to bed now, so either I'll report back tomorrow or you guys'll have to do it by yourselves :D

[eldargal]

Except Germans are human (more or less) they die off every 80 years or so. Eldar commonly live for 1000 years and at least one has lived a lot longer. To put it another way in ten thousand years Germans would go through 125 generations compared to eldar going through ten.

Then there is the fact we don't know that the growth rate has been declining for the ten thousand years, given the exponential increase in Craftworld size I personally think it has not, that the decline is perhaps a more recent thing or due primarily to attrition. The loss of a craftworld with, say, billions of souls is a big hit given a low/static growth rate even with hundreds of other craftworlds with millions-billions and a few with tens of billions.

[miteyheroes]

Only in the sense that it would take just one craftworld to escape with a fraction of an earth sized planet to account for the total number of ALL craftworld eldar by Mr Thorpes number.

If the Eldar had planets as overpopulated as Earth. Considering they currently live with a very low population density - perhaps their pre-Fall population density was also low?

There are too many variables for us to know, really.

[eldargal]

Well, earth isn't overpopulated for a start, and there are planets a lot bigger than earth. Also there is Commoragh, which is a good example of pre-Fall architecture in some ways, they at least do not object to living in extremely crowded conditions and they are the ones carrying on as they did before the Fall. So I don't find that a particularly compelling point, no offense intended.:) Also I'm not sre craftworlds are necessarily low density either going by some of the artwork.

[Chris*ta]

Okay, I read through that bit in C:SM 5th Ed:
The Battle of the Sepulchre pp. 34-5
* At Orar's Sepulchre, on Commrath
* Eldar first negotiated for, and then (I'm guessing) used the webway to launch an attack to steal "the Sceptre of Galaxian" -- I don't think this item is discussed elsewhere at all
* Craftworld never specified
* The Eldar forces include aspect warriors, guardians, tanks and the Avatar but no superheavies.
* The marines had (hastily) prepared positions and good fire lanes.
* Opposed by an unknown number of PDF and the entirety of the Ultramarines
Fun Fact: The Ultramarines, "comprising five full companies ... [and] a dozen mobile strikeforces consisting of between fifty and one hundred Space Marines", total more than 1100 marines :confused:
* "The battle for the sepulchre lasted all day and into the night"
* Fighting was fierce throughout that period -- it sounds like a fair number of marines died, but a lot more Eldar
* The battle finished when Calgar gave the Avatar a Dragon Punch ;)
* The Eldar then (again, guessing) fled back to the webway
* Calgar had the Sceptre moved to Macragge because he knew that the Eldar would try and take it again

So we have to assume the Eldar brought at least a few thousand guys, and at least several hundred and probably more likely a couple thousand died/didn't escape.
Also, these losses weren't crippling to them (at the very least in Calgar's opinion) because they could come back with another attack.

[eldargal]

Ah, the Battle of Orar's Sepulchre, where SM scouts are able to ambush Warp Spiders who move through the bloody warp in between attacks.:rolleyes:

[Chris*ta]

Ah, the Battle of Orar's Sepulchre, where SM scouts are able to ambush Warp Spiders who move through the bloody warp in between attacks.:rolleyes:

Shouldn't the WSs not be using their warp jump if they're moving into difficult terrain (i.e. forests)? Also they are fleeing from being shot up by Predators.

My point is that the Eldar had to have a force that was at least a few thousand, and yet the loss of a significant proportion of that wasn't (seemingly) an unrecoverable blow for the Craftworld.

[eldargal]

But how the hell did the SM scouts a) know they were coming that way given that they teleport and b) get there first? I'm not a Ward basher, but that pieceof writing irritates me no end. I have no issue with eldar losing in a SM codex, but it should at least make sense. They fight and act like Orks. Ward did seemto learn from it though, the edlar defeat in C:Necrons was actually really credible and well written.

I know what your point was though, and I agree, given how tough Marines are there would have had to be a lot of eldar there for it to last as long as it did. There is a similar thing in the Baran campaign I mentioned, they took hundreds of casualties in one engagement and the farseers main concern was that it damaged his chances of completimg his missions rather than being a blow to the population of the craftworld.

[Chris*ta]

But how the hell did the SM scouts a) know they were coming that way given that they teleport and b) get there first? I'm not a Ward basher, but that pieceof writing irritates me no end.


To the west, bellowing guns of Predator battle tanks drove Warp Spiders scuttling into the dead forests and ambush at the hands of Ultramarines Scouts.

So, the WSs failed their morale check in Calgar's shooting phase, fell back (on foot) into difficult terrain, where they were charged by Scouts in the Assault phase ;)

[eldargal]

Yes but they don't scuttle, they teleport.:p Again when you dissapear and re-appear how they hell did the scouts know the Warp Spiders were going to be anywhere in the vicinity, it isn't a game of 40k, you don't get to see them deploy.:p

[Chris*ta]

For some reason, I thought they had to fall back on foot.

Also, Calgar, that's why :D

[the jeske]

a) know they were coming that way given that they teleport
calgar new that eldar could teleport . he knew that if he was eldar he would teleport there , so he had scouts there ready in advance probably weeks before the conflict even started. And am not trolling this is the actual calgar fluff about stuff he does . He can even go in to the mind/way of thinking of something as alien as the tyranid race .

But population wise 40k never made sense . sm chapters are either like the ultramarines [with one chapter which job is more or less to breed marines in case ultras are very low in numbers , bein way way above the 1k marines mark etc] or they would die out after any longer conflict . Same with eldar . If the populatio of a the biggest craftworlds was in 3-4 milion range , then something like a full blown conflict [trying to save exodites from an invesion] would kill them with the low birth rate they have , specialy as we dont know at what age do eldar females stop being fertile .

[Chris*ta]

calgar new that eldar could teleport . he knew that if he was eldar he would teleport there , so he had scouts there ready in advance probably weeks before the conflict even started. And am not trolling this is the actual calgar fluff about stuff he does . He can even go in to the mind/way of thinking of something as alien as the tyranid race .

That's what I said:

Also, Calgar, that's why :D

I just had a random thought:Whenever an Eldar path (other than the main ones we always hear about) is mentioned, it's always something arty: sculptor, poet, etc.

Why don't we ever hear mentioned the Path of the Tax Accountant, or Garbage Man.

Now there's a Gav Thorpe book I'd like to see! :rolleyes:

[Anggul]

I think we should /thread here, we're descending into actually considering any Ward-written Ultramarines fluff canon. That's dangerous territory right there.

[eldargal]

Well it's not quite Path of the Garbageman but a few paths along that line are mentioned in Path of the Outcast. Path of Service for example, seems to basically entail being some kind of super-waitress/waiter and making sure everyone gets food and drink. So everyone can go about their Path duties without having to stop and thnk 'crap, what am I going to eat when I get home?'.:)

[Nabterayl]

Ah, so it's ASPECT of the garbageman ;)

[eldargal]

Nope, Aspects are Warrior Paths only.:p Interestingly though there are people who get trapped on the other paths still, like people trapped on the Path of the Dreamer. So sort of like exarchs.

[Anggul]

I don't really want to imagine what someone stuck on the path of service would become...

[Gotthammer]

Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs.

[Chris*ta]

people trapped on the Path of the Dreamer

Polite Eldar-ese for dopehead? :)

[eldargal]

Yep, exactly so, going by Path of the Outcast. Right down to the stimulants/mellowness facilitators.

[Chris*ta]

Yep, exactly so, going by Path of the Outcast. Right down to the stimulants/mellowness facilitators.

I should actually read the Path trilogy. I bought them a couple of weeks ago--the night before the Aus GD--at Gav's talk.

They're currently on my "to read" pile, which is over a dozen books. Which is awfully large considering I'm not working.