Eldar - No Path of innovation/invention?

[Mr Mystery]

Another one from the squalid depths of my mind...

Now granted, decay is kind of a central theme to 40k. The Galaxy itself is damned near entropy made manifest.

But how come that applies to Craftworld Eldar? Is there some obscure fluff I've missed over the years that prevents them from coming up with new toys?

[Cap'nSmurfs]

Craftworld Eldar society is super-conservative. That's not to say that they disallow or distrust invention, like the Imperium does: rather, they believe that letting people dive down into a pigeonhole of "genius inventor" is a fast track to someone becoming an egomaniac and a bunch of other deleterious behaviours they had, uh, problems with in the past. As for actual invention, I suspect it's split over other paths. I don't think there's any rule against "invention", it's just that any invention takes place along very discretely defined, regimented lines: as a poet, or as a sculptor, or as a bonesinger, etc. A generalized "inventor" might have too much power and influence and might get too wrapped up in it.

To the Eldar, an "inventor" probably looks a lot like a Haemonculus. The Craftworlders don't want that.

You obviously can come up with new ideas: what else is the cult of Ynnead, or Iyanden's use of the Infinity Circuit?

They just don't allow people to go off on flights of fancy. Everything happens within the strictures of the Paths.

[Mr Mystery]

Oh cool :)

Wouldn't mind a source book going into Eldar soceity in more depth. Haemonculus Covens could be used as a loose template like - a proper look into different factions and facets.

[Charon]

Craftworld Eldar society is super-conservative. That's not to say that they disallow or distrust invention, like the Imperium does: rather, they believe that letting people dive down into a pigeonhole of "genius inventor" is a fast track to someone becoming an egomaniac and a bunch of other deleterious behaviours they had, uh, problems with in the past.

I guess it has less to do with that... it is just... well they are back in their "stone age".
Most weapons they wield nowadays are in fact "new inventions" as old tech is no longer available or just not working anymore.
Spirit stones and all machines run by spirit stones are "new".

An example of pre-fall tech would be Yriels Spear of Twilight. The weapon is killing him over time because he does not have the same powers as the Eldar of old. Also their psychic powers (while still impressive) degenerated over the millenia as it became dangerous to use them.
Another example would be the "Fire Hearth" from the Valedor Novels. Old tech that needs to be activated via psychic power. And while it was an easy task to mentally reach out and activate it safely in earlier times, the modern CWE had to stand right next to it and hold hands to activate it.

Despite all their superior tech the CWE are basically primitive and psychically inactive compared to the eldar of old. Nearly every weapon, vehicle and armor technology is "new" or just "a primitive version of older tech".

[Cap'nSmurfs]

That's a fair point, yes. I wouldn't go so far as Stone Age: that's the Exodites. The more apt comparison is probably "pre-modern" (the equivalent of cavalry, cannons, bayonets) to the "modern" technology they abandoned (the equivalent of tanks, drones, ballistic missiles).

The Dark Eldar preserved more of the fairytale super-tech, but of course they let their psychic sides atrophy even further so they can't use a lot of it properly. (Without theft!)

[Charon]

Exodites also do have a lot of tech. They just chose to not use it unless in cases of emergency.
That power weapons and prisma lances do not grow on trees.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

Sure. But their social organization is deliberately primitivist.

(Eldar do actually grow their weapons, from wraithbone and crystals - unless you're a Dark Eldar, and the price of your atrophied psychic ability is the need to (have slaves) manufacture weapons (for you))

[Charon]

Not to sure if exodites do actually use wraithbone (as this would not be manual labour which is their chosen lifestyle) or just craft their weapons more like DE. Sources are a quite contradicting when it comes to the mud dwellers.

[David Crossley]

Another example would be the "Fire Hearth" from the Valedor Novels. Old tech that needs to be activated via psychic power. And while it was an easy task to mentally reach out and activate it safely in earlier times, the modern CWE had to stand right next to it and hold hands to activate it.

That had more to do with having two Tyranid Hive fleets with their combined shadow preventing remote activation.

[Morgrim]

Diminishing psykic powers amongst Craftworlders is possibly the same survival mechanism as Kabalites, only less pronounced. It used to be fairly safe for large amounts of psykic power to be thrown around. Nowdays it is akin to rolling in BBQ sauce and jumping into a pit of angry dogs. Or the pit of one very large, very cunning dog who will eat you slowly starting at the feet. If very few people can safely use significant amounts of psykic power and those that do are at greater risk and less likely to reproduce, it makes sense that it dims.

And then you have the Dark Eldar, who are only safe in the Webway as long as they keep the Warp out of the Webway and have unanimously agreed that the use of psykic powers even by accident is an automatic death sentence. It's kind of funny that the least rule-abiding and most backstabby culture budges the least on the one law they actually agree on.

[Denzark]

Don't the bone singers do this?

[Charon]

They are building... don't know if they are "inventing" too.

[StingrayP226]

Well to be honest they could be inventing things... just nothing that really "impacts" the table top game. As a dying race I would think many of their inventors are working on things that helps prevent said dying. Yes better weapons to protect yourself does help, but they could be focusing more on medical technologies, better ways to use Spirit stones (give them range, make ones that are back ups to the main one so the Eldar can remotely get souls in the case they lose a battle), or "inventing" ways to keep their Craftwords operational despite heavy damage and no spare parts.

Yes they have a lot of technology and giant spaceship worlds, but they lack real worlds to harvest raw material from so their resources are likely very limited compared to most of the other races out there. Thus their inventions could be less inventing a whole new weapon, but how to make the same weapon with less materials/inferior materials with the same effectiveness/more durable/etc.

[-Tom-]

I don't think it's an issue of lack of raw materials. They have plenty of wraithbone and you could assume that it is the ultimately recyclable material. Finished with using it for food packaging? Just sing it into a new use.

As has been said earlier in the thread, the appearance of Slaanesh pretty much 'bombed them back to the stone age'. Not literally the 'stone age' as clearly they're not using weapons made from flint and sticks, but in the same sense as we would use the phrase as humans metaphorically (which we do). Imagine if there was a nuclear holocaust right now, or a zombie apocalypse. A lot of the things we take for granted have become pretty refined beyond what we know as a 'gist' of how they work. Most of us have a general idea of how an internal combustion engine works, and some of us could probably even build a fairly uneconomical / inefficient one from scratch if said apocalypse happened. It would be a far cry from a modern car which nowadays need more than mechanical knowledge to fix, because often a computer chip controls a lot of things in the vehicle, and you have to be able to talk to that too.

In that apocalypse scenario, you're also going to be having to spend quite a while just sorting out getting food and shelter, before you can start to get onto thinking how to rebuild energy supplies and manufacturing facilities. If we assume that the craftworlds were originally sent out configured as lifeboats, it may take hundreds of years to create any sort of significant progress in getting the bone singers out to sing workshops into creation, once they are past the point of just 'weathering the storm'. That's just to be able to rebuild things they already know about, and create equipment for laboratories to be able to start undertaking research.

We maybe could then assume that they HAVE managed some sort of research. They have developed better ammo for the shuriken weaponry - it is better against SM armour for example, than it was in the previous codex now that they have Bladestorm.

I think the real issue though is totally outside of anything that you can explain with fluff. The issue is the stagnation in the game universe as a whole, combined with the demand (or perceived demand) from the players - i.e. the Imperium is supposed to be really stagnant, with huge distrust for any sort of development that doesn't come from finding a new STC. And yet, we SEE lots of new stuff for them, partly in all the variants for things that Forgeworld put out (correct me if I'm wrong in this, and they're all 30k things, but I think they have 40k allowability too?). If we had as many variants for Eldar stuff from FW as the Imperials do, they would seem a lot more innovative I think.

(I say perceived demand, as I think that some element of it comes from a bit of a cyclic process. If you decide that such and such a faction is more popular, and so make a bigger range for them, then chances are that range will carry on being more popular and selling more, because people like new shinies. I'm similarly sceptical about the Freeview advert currently on TV claiming that it has something like 90% of the most watched TV. I think that is not the claim to fame they think it is... it's not saying that is the best TV, but as it is freely available, it seems obvious that it can be watched by more people).