Of Phoenix Lords and Aspects

[Rev. Tiberius Jackhammer]

First off, a heads-up that the Phoenix Lord of the Shining Spears has finally been named - the Iyanden supplement calls him "Drastanta, Tempest of Starlight", and includes his Celestial Lance as a (badass) wargear choice for HQs. The fluff on him mentions that he disappeared after Asurmen's last stand (well, before being revived umpteen times), but his Lance has been passed on from Eldar to Eldar. Yaaaaay! That combined with the "Wraith Spider" who miiiight be the Warp Spiders Phoenix Lord means we've got a more complete view of the PLs.

Wonder how the Shining Spear and Crimson Hunter Phoenix Lords handle needing a vehicle for their style of combat - perhaps their armour's built into their legendary Jetbike/Aircraft? I'd be pretty into Drastanta looking like some kinda Jetbike-centaur.

Also, does a Phoenix Lord NEED to be one of the students of Asurmen? I mean, we know from the Striking Scorpions that the Lord needn't be the primogenitor of the Aspect - could an Exarch who isn't from one of the original Aspects exemplify his/her Path enough that he/she leaves a strong enough psychic imprint in the armour for it to act as a Phoenix Lord?

On a rules note, how about using Battle Brother Dark Eldar allies to act as the Aspects who lack rules? Slicing Orbs of Zandros, Crystal Dragons and Eagle Pilots. Plus, seems like Power from Pain could be swapped for Battle Focus without unbalancing anything, and the changes to Exarch Powers makes them a lot less central to the "feel" of Aspect Warriors.

[Nabterayl]

Regarding the vehicular aspects, isn't the spirit of the phoenix lord technically in the spirit stones of his or her armor, rather than the armor itself? If that's the case, then you could just have a phoenix lord jetbike and a phoenix lord Nightshade.

[Rev. Tiberius Jackhammer]

Ooo, like anyone who mounts the Jetbike/enters the cockpit "becomes" the Phoenix Lord? That'd be pretty awesome, feels very myth-y.

[Tyrendian]

does leave the question of what happens if said vehicle is blown to pieces though... but that's kinda a general problem with the concept - none of the Phoenix Lords seems to ever have been hit by a meltagun, or worse yet, Titan-class weaponry, because those surely wouldn't leave enough of the armour for some exarch strolling by to put it on...

[eldargal]

Assuming their armour is as easily destroyed as regular armour, we really don't know enough to say. Complete speculation but you could even have the suit based around an indestructible core that regrows itself or gets sucked into the webway when the suit suffers a critical amount of damage.

I'm actually a bit cranky that we've had two moe Phoenix Lords added to the background in the past few years and both had to be male, as if a 5/1 ratio wasn't bad enough before.

[chromedog]

There's fluff of karandras' armour being rent asunder, open tears, enough to indicated disembowelment kind of damage.
As long as some of the stones survive (an exarch suit is studded with lots of stones - a PL moreso, I would surmise that the PL/exarch can return. It's plot armour. It survives because it has to.

[Aramel]

At least they added mention of a Matriarchical Craftworld in the Codex. Which is of course impossible to play competitively because of its reliance on Banshees... But even that continues the same trend of gender segregation. One of the things I liked about the Path books was that gender is shown as irrelevant in Eldar culture and thus you saw a 50/50 representation throughout Alaitoc.

I honestly don't understand why that never translated into the game. 1 in 4 Guardian torsos are female, as is one shining spear and a Phoenix lord, but that is pretty much it. No Autarch, Farseer and other Aspects. Hopefully there will be a new Iyanna model.

[Rev. Tiberius Jackhammer]

Yeah, it's a shame the Craftworld Eldar don't have the same 6/4, 4/6 gender ratios in the Dark Eldar Wych and Warrior kits. Variety like that makes a force feel much less cookie-cutter

I suppose the Warp Spiders Lord could turn out to be female - the "spider lady" archetype is fairly common, and 40k does love its common archetypes. There could be a fun bit of fluff with her fighting the "usurper" Wraith Spider, mirroring the Arha/Karandas battle.

Plus, we'll probably get some new Aspects whenever the finecast ones get plastic kits (since it'd be difficult to make, say, Warp Spiders a dual kit with another, existing unit, so better to invent a new unit with a similar body/armour), perhaps those new Aspects might have a female Phoenix Lord.

[Ravingbantha]

Any model could potentially be female, the idea of individual breast cups on armor is a bad idea. When in combat the valley between these cups creates a point where weapons tend to slide towards the middle, as opposed to outwards as they should, and thus up to the throat. Combat effective armor for women should have a single raised section at most more like a sports bra, but alot of chest armor for women is built much inline with it's male counterpart.

Shave down the waist abit and make the hips more pronounced, and throw on a female looking head and it's easy enough.

[Anggul]

Any model could potentially be female, the idea of individual breast cups on armor is a bad idea. When in combat the valley between these cups creates a point where weapons tend to slide towards the middle, as opposed to outwards as they should, and thus up to the throat. Combat effective armor for women should have a single raised section at most more like a sports bra, but alot of chest armor for women is built much inline with it's male counterpart.

Shave down the waist abit and make the hips more pronounced, and throw on a female looking head and it's easy enough.

This. I hate female Eldar armour, what's with the sculpted breast cups? Just have a slightly raised section if needs be. Apparently all female Eldar have huge breasts that need to be separated by their armour? Really silly.

I just assume some of my aspect warriors are female. The armour bulks out, so you couldn't tell the difference anyway. That Striking Scorpion could be male or female, they have pretty big armour for Eldar so the gender would be obscured. I suppose it's different for Howling Banshees, who have much more slender armour, but it still bulks out and wouldn't be as pronounced as it is, and as said by bantha, wouldn't have a valley for weapons to get purchase in.

It's a bit of an odd subject to talk about, but I think it's worth mentioning. I would be tempted to do some conversion work on my Banshees, but they probably won't see the table anyway so there doesn't seem to be much point. I may well do so with my Guardians though, even if it's just a bit of filing and filling to make them look less daft.

On OPs subject, why does the Iyanden book have the Celestial Lance? It even says in the Eldar codex that Saim-Hann have it, (Nuadhu specifically) as well they should. Oh well, hopefully they'll get it wielded by Nuadhu if they get a book. I doubt they'll make models, but it would be nice to see, and the Warp Spider and Crimson Hunter will hopefully be female to set more of a balance. I thought the Shadow Spectres Phoenix Lord was female, but apparently not. Not that I really acknowledge the Shadow Spectres much anyway. They have no role of their own. What aspect of Khaine are they? The aspect of floatyness?

[eldargal]

Women are a different shape. It's not just a matter of breasts, that's just an easy way to differentiate and you can't blame them for taking it. I get really, really ****ing sick of the 'they could be any gender under their argument' because in most cases they are in fact quite obviously male and it's an excuse not to make more effort*. FW even pulled this for ****ing Imperial Guard for gods sake. Look me in the eye and tell me a Cadian could be mistaken as a female. Women have smaller waists, wider hips narrower shoulders, smaller hands and feet, longer upper arms and quite a few other small things.

The fact is none of the Aspects have any female soldiers in them, you can assume all you want but they are quite clearly and distinctly males. You can get away with it to some extent if you add a female head to the body but that's still quite unsatisfactory. If you read the Path series you will read that the armour of each Aspect Warrior shapes itself to their bodyshape, which means the differences in female form should be obvious. They aren't on the models because the models depict males. That's all their is to it I'm afraid.

There were rumours the SS Phoenix Lord was going to be female but sadly not. I've actually written to FW to suggest they retcon it in the pdf update but they won't of course. Apparently for a race that has no distinctions between gender and soldiers are just as likely to be male as female there is still only one female Phoenix Lord out of nine.


*Crankiness aimed at GW and FW, not either of you.

[AirHorse]

It has always struck me as a bit odd that the apparently indiscriminate Eldar have a female dominated aspect at all, but then perhaps they also have a male dominated one we've not heard of yet(not counting model ranges)? I personally would've preferred it to just be the model range that was predominately female with banshees.

But I guess the aspects are all super mythologically rooted so its maybe just me over thinking it there!

Definitely agree would be nice to see more diverse models in the eldar range(well all ranges really, but the eldar background seems to be trying hard to emphasise its diversity compared to some other factions).

As a side note, would a female phoenix lord not be a phoenix lady? :P

[eldargal]

The Aspect of the Banshee is female so it may attract more females to it, the other Aspects of Khaine oddly enough aren't gendered.:) Gav Thorpe has said several times he really wants to write a story about a male Banshee whose Banshee persona/War Mask is female. So all Banshees are female, but not all the time. Imagine the uproar amongst fanboys if BL published that.;)

Having said that I would happily sacrifice a female gendered Aspect for an equal gender ratio in the models range. Plastic Aspects have that potential, enough male and female torsos in each to make whatever you want and a couple of bare heads for each gender.

Jain Zar is referred to as a Phoenix Lord so no. I look at it a being a translation thing, in the original eldar it is a non-gendered word analogous to Lord so Lord gets used.

[AirHorse]

That's an interesting thought actually. I guess it wouldn't be unreasonable to guess that even though the armour of howling banshees depicts a female(i.e. badonkadonks sculpted on the armour) it doesn't determine the actual gender of the warrior inside. That's quite a cool reversal that never occurred to me before.

Also, I was just being daft with the phoenix lady thing :P. Lord isn't a male only title, the queen is a lord!

[eldargal]

You still have the issue that eldar armour shapes itself to the wearer, so breast cups are kind of superfluous on a male. I'd rather a male Banshee look like a male.

[Kyban]

Aren't there some stories where a male autarch has been through banshees? I seem to remember one, just no idea where...

[Nabterayl]

I don't know any stories, but there'd have to be male autarchs who have been through banshees.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

One of the Alaitoc Autarchs in the Eldar Path series is mentioned as having been a Howling Banshee. He's a male. It's just an offhand reference, mind. Credit to Gav Thorpe, he really wants to put more of the Eldar's cultural attitude towards gender and so on into his books - mostly that they really don't believe in gender distinctions - but they played it a little safer with the first Eldar-specific series. (A decision I dislike, honestly; underestimating what your audience is interested in and is willing to read is an awful trend in genre fiction publishing) I'm sure more will creep in as we go on.

If he does the Phoenix Lords series, that's a good angle for it. Over ten thousand years, female Eldar must've taken the mantle of Asurmen, Karandras, Maugan-Ra and so on plenty of times.

[Archon Charybdis]

I think it's be quite interesting to see a story of a transgendered persona for somebody in their Banshee War Mask, and I'm a white heterosexual male (which much of the internet tells me is a very bad thing).

As far as the Wraith Spider thing, wasn't that mentioned in a single CS Goto book, and never actually called a Phoenix Lord? Inadmissible. I do love the idea of a "Spider Lady" kind of theme for the Spider PL.