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The Path of the Outcast The Path of the Outcast is perhaps the most unusual of the Eldar Paths. Like other Paths, an Eldar can voluntarily embark on it and become a Ranger or Pirate, and no stigma is attached to those who choose this Path during the course of their lives. However, unlike other Paths, an Eldar can be born Outcast - Eldar with no connection to the Craftworld or even to the society of the creatures most commonly thought of when the name ‘Eldar’ is mentioned. On extremely rare occasions, these may be the offspring of Pirates in the few permanent colonies they establish. However, the majority of such Outcasts are the Eldar who call themselves Exodites. These are the descendants of Eldar who renounced their ancestors’ society before the Fall, and never followed the ritual Paths established aboard the Craftworlds. Exodites live on planets their ancestors fled to before the Great Enemy awoke and consumed their former homes, planets seeded with life in the even more distant past by Eldar explorers, and shun contact with outsiders including the inhabitants of the Craftworlds. The Exodites In the millennia before the Fall, some of the more powerful Seers among the Eldar predicted the coming of the Great Enemy who would be born of the decadence of the Eldar. These doomsayers preached abstinence from the hedonism engulfing the Eldar worlds. Over the centuries, they gradually gained followers who referred to themselves as members of the Cult of the Exodus, a body dedicated to persuading the Eldar to change their lifestyle and flee the empire. Seen as deluded puritans by most, their cries for restraint were ignored. Once it became clear that their pleas were going unheard amidst the depravity, the cult’s leaders ordered the Exodus to begin, launching their ships to known worlds as far from the empire as possible. For many, it wasn’t far enough. -- Xenosociology Report 150026-4 Eld: The Exodites of the Maiden Worlds The branch of the Eldar race found on the so-called Maiden Worlds has long been the subject of speculation, much of it drawn from accounts by their Craftworld cousins. Through these sources Imperial anthropologists have become aware of central tenets in the belief system and culture of these people, that they believe their world has a spirit and that their ancestors’ souls fuel its existence. A partial understanding of the Craftworlds’ approach to death and the artefacts known as waystones and the Infinity Circuit (see Xenotechnology refs. 1866-12 Eld. and 4439.6 Eld.) has given rise to a better idea of what this belief entails. However, many anthropologists are enamoured of theories which liken the Exodites to animist and ancestor-worshipping cultures in the Imperium, religions the Ecclesiarchy long ago recognised as attempts by the simple, untutored minds of primitive peoples to understand the Emperor’s divine nature and His hand at work in the world around them. These theories create a vision of Exodite society as a barbaric tribal state in the earliest stages of social development, a stereotype which has coloured many of our encounters and discoveries about this Eldar race. This report, compiled from a number of sources, many of which have had direct contact and communication with the inhabitants of the Maiden Worlds, will attempt to correct what this author believes to be a major and possibly dangerous misconception. In appearance, Exodites are very similar to their more familiar cousins, though lives in the suns of their home planets rather than the weak artificial light of a Craftworld has given many communities a darker complexion. Interpreted by many observers as giving the Exodites a less refined appearance than their cousins, this has no doubt contributed to the prejudice that has labelled them primitives. Almost nothing is known about Exodite history since the Fall. The Eldar of the Craftworlds, when they speak of the event which doomed their race, talk of potent Seers who foresaw the decay of their empire into decadence and its eventual destruction and led their followers far away from that empire. The Exodites are presumed to be the descendants of those Eldar, but this is the extent of the Imperium’s reliable information on the issue. Everything else is extrapolation from current Exodite cultural practices and beliefs. While individual Exodite societies vary, across worlds as well as between them, common to almost all of those known is a social structure based around small, independent communities. The reasons for this are unclear; it is commonly held that tribalism is the natural state of the Eldar, evidenced some believe by the little that is known of the so-called Dark Eldar thought to bear the closest resemblance to the Eldar of the pre-Fall empire. Proponents of this theory suppose that a tribal community structure was the obvious choice of the Eldar who found themselves needing to create new societies on the Maiden Worlds. However, this view is based on the assumption that Exodite society is tribal and so roughly equivalent to the warring gangs of the Dark Eldar, and I find this to be erroneous for reasons I will relate below. My supposition is that the Exodites’ social structure developed in the way it has on more practical grounds; because small, scattered communities are the most efficient way to utilise the sparse natural resources of the Maiden Worlds, or simply because small communities are the easiest to administrate in the way these Eldar believe is necessary. It is not hard for Imperial scholars who are predisposed to believe the Exodite Eldar a tribal race to infer support for this hypothesis from a cursory glance at the lifestyle of these alien communities. Each community is led by a single individual, usually determined through heritage, and who is advised by revered Seers who are said to commune with spirits. Many parts of Exodite life are expressed in ceremonies which appear at first glance to invoke the favour of Eldar deities. However, as I shall discuss, each of these apparent similarities with primitive cultures belies a more complex reality unique to these Eldar societies. The first of these is the structure of Exodite communities themselves. Primitive societies exhibit little division of labour, with each tribesman being largely self-supporting. By contrast the Exodite communities are societies of individuals each specialising in one area, their efforts being co-ordinated to mutual advantage by those with an administrative function, in a similar manner to civilised Imperial societies. These divisions are, in fact, central to a rigid system of beliefs which governs Exodite society. The Exodite ‘leaders’, the Athe-Sier, are simply performing their function within this framework, and are respected not as those better than ordinary people like the lords in many feudal Imperial societies, but as functionaries fulfilling their assigned role. While hierarchical structures among Athe-Sier do exist, it is uncertain what differences in status signify in terms of the power of each lord, and unclear how it is determined - Imperial observers have reported that possession of land and the beasts known as dragons plays a role, as does ritual combat, but these do not tell the whole story and may simply be human interpretations based on the things which bring power and prestige in Imperial societies. For the Eldar of the Craftworlds, the Paths are as much a religion as belief in the gods of their mythological past, a religion which promises an afterlife among others of their kind safe from the Great Enemy. This is followed with varying degrees of devotion depending on the culture of the Craftworld in question and on individual sensibilities. The Exodites, too, have created a religion from their desire to stave off destruction, and this has certain affinities with the way of the Paths, but influenced both by the characteristics of those individuals who fled the Eldar empire and the Exodites’ experiences during the Fall. Though as I have stated Exodite history is open to a great deal of speculation, the Eldar of the Craftworlds characterise those who fled the decadence of their homeworlds as sombre, pious individuals intent on resisting the material pleasures that were destroying their people. No doubt this is as stereotypical as the image they present of modern barbarians, and indeed it is hard to envisage any alien culture reaching such a level of spiritual enlightenment without the Emperor to guide them, but in modern Exodite culture can be found a reflection of these attitudes. In the Fall, when the Eldar empire was destroyed, the Craftworlds which exist today were in distant areas of the galaxy on trading missions, perhaps not returning to discover the devastation of their home for centuries, protected from creatures of the Warp by the wraithbone hulls surrounding them. The Exodites had only physical distance between themselves and the region now known as the Eye of Terror, and when Chaos is powerful enough to break through the Warp into real space over such a large area, the consequences for even distant systems would be unimaginable. The Exodites’ nature, combined with physical exposure to the events of the Fall the Craftworlds never faced, created a universal Exodite culture so terrified of the consequences of decadent behaviour that individual expression was restricted almost to the point of prohibition, and that has adhered to these restrictions more rigidly than the Craftworlds to their Paths. Today, Exodites regard the Paths of the Craftworlds as allowing individuals far too much freedom to indulge themselves, encouraging them to seek pleasures and experiences to a point barely short of excess. Exodites are not encouraged to revel in their experiences but instead are assigned a place in society at birth, a job they will spend their lives pursuing, not to explore its many facets or to satisfy curiosity, but out of a sense of the responsibility their profession has to the community, and of belonging in that social position rather than another. The method of selection is, as has been frequently mentioned by both biased and impartial observers, largely based on inheritance from one’s ancestors. Observers have also correctly noted the important role the Seers play in this process, for exceptions to the usual procedure may apply and it is the Seers who determine whether this is the case. The Seers possess some of the talent for divination that the Farseers of the Craftworlds do, and are therefore able to predict the path an individual’s life should follow to some extent, even prior to birth. Though it is comparatively rare for the Seers to rule that an individual should pursue a profession other than the one he or she was born to, it is regarded as a crucial part of Exodite life, as Exodites believe that a society cannot function if its workers are unhappy or incompetent. The stage of development at which the Seers will choose the path an individual’s life will take depends both on the Seer’s own talents at divination and the norms of each society, but is always in the first few years of life and often before birth. An individual who is selected for a new way of life is removed from his or her parents at the earliest opportunity after the divination, and adopted into a household in the profession he or she will follow. The surrogate family may be named by the Seer or the Athe-Sier, or a system of voluntary adoption may exist depending on the community. This ensures that the youth is brought up to follow a single way of life just as though he or she was born to the new family, and is a time of rejoicing rather than sadness for the parents, as they know that their child’s best interests are served by the separation. A variety of ceremonies may mark the occasion, and others will mark significant points in the individual’s development. These also vary between communities, and may be secular or may take the form of plays or dances commemorating a relevant event in Eldar mythology. These are many and varied, and it is believed that a number of apparently religious ceremonies which have been observed reflect mythological events which are no longer remembered aboard the Craftworlds, or which are perhaps more ancient forms of the same stories. The secular rituals may reflect events in the history of the settlement or world in question. The structure of Maiden World society is not the only manifestation of the religion of these aliens. Another is deeply rooted in concepts of the Eldar afterlife shared with their Craftworld cousins. Though even early observers noted that Exodites wear waystones, and have speculated that the wraithbone artefacts found scattered across their planets’ surfaces may have a function equivalent to that of the Craftworlds’ infinity circuits, Exodite belief in a World Spirit has been taken as yet more evidence of this race’s primitive nature. Studies of Exodite religion based on this concept have suggested that the race is both animist and ancestor-worshipping, that they believe the souls of the dead created and sustain life on their worlds, and treat the wraithbone artefacts as objects of reverence, manifestations of these ancestral spirits. Exodite Seers believe that their power is drawn from a spirit realm, thought by many to be a savage’s vague concept of the Warp, and their abilities tend to manifest themselves in soothsaying, scrying, calling down curses on their enemies, communion with the dead and psychically-driven homeopathy. In many cases it is genuinely unclear how much the Exodites understand their ‘World Spirit’ artefacts and how much of their beliefs are myths based on a half-remembered past and how much contemporary scientific knowledge. No doubt, like so many parts of Exodite society, there is great disparity between settlements and planets. Common to all, however, are funeral rites which involve the placement of the spirits of the dead into the wraithbone artefacts. Typically this involves destroying the waystone to ‘release’ the soul, though the origins of this practice are unknown. The reasons given for these rites range from a sophisticated understanding of the perils of releasing a soul into the warp, to a theological concept of a cycle of life in which the spirits of the dead dwell within and enervate their world, whose living inhabitants then add to their number; whether these are two different concepts believed in by the same culture or an example of some Exodite societies having forgotten the Great Enemy altogether is also unclear. Though we have only begun to scratch the surface of Eldar culture and tradition, and though the Eldar of the Maiden Worlds are perhaps the most mysterious of all, I feel confident in offering this summary: these Eldar are a sophisticated race driven by the beliefs of a scientifically knowledgeable society rather than the raw emotions of primitives. While some Exodite societies may indeed have degenerated into the barbarism of the common stereotype, many exhibit social, technological and theological developments on a par with their cousins aboard the Craftworlds. Dismissing these discoveries would be both unscientific and a possible danger to any Imperial citizens who encounter these Exodites in ignorance and complacency about their true nature. Explorator Varna Kallis. -- The Fall of the Eldar Though none of the Exodite worlds was close enough to the forming Eye of Terror to be engulfed, the Fall and the period immediately preceding it wreaked havoc in the new colonies. Driven mad by increased activity in the Warp, possibly in some cases possessed by daemons, some of the Seers started prophesying that the Exodites were doomed along with the rest of the Eldar race. Panicking citizens rioted, civil wars erupting in the most extreme cases. Paranoid community leaders set up inquisitions to find hidden cults to the Great Enemy which they believed to be lurking in their midst waiting to bring destruction to the Maiden Worlds. Villages were sacked and burned; fires which spread throughout the nearby forests and threatened to devastate entire planets. Adding to the mayhem, many people felt the touch of Chaos and turned to wanton bloodletting and destruction. When the confusion ended, over half of the initially small Exodite populations had been wiped out, and it is more than likely that several planets were lost. The survivors laid down rigid rules to govern the societies they would create, though these differed considerably from those devised aboard the Craftworlds. The Maiden Worlds The worlds the Exodites fled to were not chosen randomly by the refugees, but were planets seeded with DNA from life-forms from the Eldar empire by explorers in the ancient past. These planets were called Maiden Worlds in honour of the Eldar goddess Lelith, mother of the Eldar race. Over 50 Maiden Worlds have been catalogued by the Imperium, though two of these are no longer under Exodite control and one was uninhabited when explorators discovered it. It is unclear whether this had been abandoned or simply never colonised. Rogue Traders and the human Knight Worlds located close to Exodite territory have reported at least as many which are not officially recorded, though there are believed to be at least as many as 200 in total. Today, the Maiden Worlds are heavily, though in most cases not exclusively, forested with a remarkable similarity between animal and plant life forms which hints at their common heritage. However, studies of the worlds’ fossil records and the biology of their creatures (sometimes carried out with the Exodites’ approval but more often extrapolated from orbital scans) throw up an intriguing paradox. Although the DNA of the planet’s life is undeniably ancient, and contains features evolved separately on each world over a million or more years, the fossil records of the Maiden Worlds uniformly lack any life as complex as an insect until shortly before the beginning of recorded Exodite history, suggesting that the original DNA seeds had either lain dormant or begun the process of evolution from the start, though at a somewhat accelerated rate, and that the Exodites’ ancestors somehow accelerated the process even further when they arrived. More bizarrely still some scholars have suggested that the planets were waiting for the Eldar to arrive before bursting into life. Imperial explorators have recently put forward theories regarding the existence of advanced terraforming technology on the Maiden Worlds, but these are by no means universally accepted. -- This summary of the conditions and ecology of the planets known as Maiden Worlds is based largely on the log entries from the Challenger expedition. Further studies of the apparent Maiden World discovered by Rogue Trader Captain Kanen Dayl and his crew have not been possible as the Challenger’s cartographic records are incomplete and Kanen Dayl’s ‘lost world’ has never since been positively identified. Nevertheless, the records provide an unparalleled insight into the ecology and nature of these worlds denied to our explorators and xenobiologists by the planets’ Eldar inhabitants. Much of what is related here is transcribed from these records, and I have only added to them where current information provides greater insight than Kanen Dayl was able to. The general characteristics of the planet are those of a paradise (Note: This is Kanen Dayl’s hyperbole, not this author’s). Its temperatures in the region we set down are tropical although we are a long way north of the world’s equator. The temperature gradient between these points is low, as the equatorial regions are lush and forested rather than the overheated desert one might expect of a world whose ambient temperature at the poles is almost sub-tropical. Our landing site was in a clear area, consisting entirely of the ecotype commonly known as fernland, those systems on primitive worlds where grasslands have yet to evolve and plains of low-lying ferns are their closest analogues. They were inhabited by grazing forms of the amazing dragon-like creatures I shall discuss in more detail later. From our lander we could see a surrounding ring of forest while we were above the surface, but in the fern-field itself these were beyond the horizon in all directions. As an example of the scale of life on this planet, our fernland was barely a medium-sized glade in the apparently endless forest. (Note: This description is consistent with both known Maiden Worlds, where the Exodite Eldar are known to build settlements in the vast glades, and with worlds which are believed to have housed short-lived Eldar colonies following the fall of the Eldar empire – see for instance refs. 10657-111 236 Assyri and the recently filed 65230-451 247 Kalamir (Eld)). The forest itself is a transitional phase between coniferous and broad-leafed vegetation, lush with the rainfall which is frequent in these climes. Primitive but colourful flowering plants were found in a number of locations, including by far the largest I have ever seen. Small specimens towered over the larger grazing monsters which shared its home and the dazzling red, purple and yellow of the flower was perhaps twenty feet in circumference. More astonishing still, a specimen located and genetically tested over seven miles from the first was found to be part of the same plant. (Note: Kanen Dayl appears to be describing a plant otherwise known only from the Maiden World Ymelfrin, the largest flowering plant yet discovered by the Imperium. See further xenobotany file 3427981-3359.7869 Ymelfrin Dragon-Eater). We passed strange structures on several occasions. The shape and even colour was indeterminate beneath the ferns and other plants growing on them, though they appeared to have a monolithic form and removal of some of the plants infesting them revealed a surface coloured like bone and textured like some form of plastic. Plants growing on and around the structure are noticeably larger and more vibrant than relatives elsewhere. Since there is no evidence that this world has ever been inhabited, I would conclude that this is some form of secretion from local plant or animal life, perhaps the nest of a colony of insects. (Note: Close contact with and evaluation of the Eldar and their technologies has only been possible since diplomatic relations were opened with a number of Craftworlds, some time after the Challenger encounter. It is therefore unsurprising that Kanen Dayl would not recognise wraithbone, a substance only the Imperial military, with its innumerable victories over our alien foes, would have had access to. It is currently believed by some that the World Spirits known on the Maiden Worlds were part of the original seeding process and may predate Exodite occupation, though they may equally be relics of Exodite colonies now lost. The results of dating are uncertain but appear to show that the structures were constructed by the earliest Exodites, making Kanen Dayl’s discovery all the more intriguing. See enclosed file Eld 2493.56). I must now tell of the monsters whose world we shared, and which looked like images from a Catachan’s nightmare. It is not too much of an indulgence to do as we did, and come to refer to these beasts as dragons, though none breathe flame. (Note: This is the origin of the common Imperial term. The Exodites call the beasts Eadar-Sier, which translates as Exodite (‘displaced one’ to use a vulgar simplification of the Eldar term) animal, or possibly simply ‘displaced animal’ giving a hint to their origin – the derivation of many Eldar terms is ambiguous to an Eldar speaker without that race’s instinctive ability to understand the context of the words). Instead they are grotesquely adorned with all manner of spikes, tusks, teeth, crests, frills, claws and beaks. Some of the first we saw were flying beasts which took off when we exited our lander, with leathery bat-like wings, serrated bills and spiked crests in the most perverse parody of birds. Others were larger than anything living on other worlds, perhaps as large as an animal can physically grow, and with necks as long as their bodies! These beasts were browsers and grazers, but many were not so benign. 40ft predators posed no great threat to us, but animals closer to our own size were equipped with an improbably vicious array of claw and tooth weaponry, and many were pack hunters. We observed many details about the lifestyles and variation of dragons of all kinds (Note: These log entries have since been filed in a separate report by the Magos Biologis of the expedition. Reference Xenobiology file 1288007.76-5 Dragons of the Maiden Worlds), and came close to death when a number of them took exception to our methods so I can report that these creatures’ appearance is not solely for display. This ends my summary of this ‘lost world’. Your faithful servant, Okram Marich, Ordo Biologis. -- Exodite Society In Exodite society, every Eldar is born to a particular way of life. Most commonly, they hold the same social positions and jobs as their ancestors, but the Seers can grant exceptions if they sense that a particular individual is more suited to a lifestyle other than the one he was born to. Each individual is trained as an apprentice to a member of that profession who is willing to take him on. The Exodites regard the system of the Craftworld Eldar, where each individual is free to pursue his own Path, as dangerously close to the wanton self-indulgence of their ancestors, and do not believe that the Paths can successfully curb these urges for more than the short term - they see those who become Trapped on one Path as those who have given in to their desires and follow the old, dark ways of the Eldar. Rather than attempting to curb or moderate hedonistic drives, therefore, the Exodites practice total abstinence as their ancestors did. Exodite worlds are divided into a number of communities, each consisting of an overlord, known to humans as an Exodite Baron, who owns the land and its resources. People living on the land do so only because he allows it, and so they are indebted to him and work for him in whatever capacity they have been trained to. Some of these individuals will work as servants and retainers in the Baron’s household, often forming honoured lineages of servants loyal to a particular Baron’s family. A few will be trained as the Baron’s personal guard, wardens and soldiers and these form the core of Exodite armies. There are no overall rulers who control all the barons and their territories on most Exodite worlds; there are exceptions, but on many worlds so-called Exodite Kings are simply the most powerful barons, or in some cases mere figureheads with a diplomatic role only who hold their position through hereditary privilege. Other worlds have no kings. Exodite worlds are in a state of largely constant internecine warfare as each Baron tries to gain status, measured in terms of the land they control, highly visible signs of which are the dragon herds. Dragons are typically large reptilian creatures used by the Exodites for a variety of purposes. Dragons have evolved in similar though not identical ways on all Exodite worlds, either because of the same evolutionary conditions or ancestral DNA introduced to each world by the Exodites’ ancestors from a common source. Many of these are carnivorous, and are used as mounts in battle but have little value as status symbols. More prized are the megadons, a generic name for any of the large herbivores the Exodites herd. These animals require prodigious amounts of food to sustain them daily, and it is seen as a sign of the productivity and expansiveness of a Baron’s territory that he is able to maintain herds of them. The larger the herd, therefore, the higher the Baron’s status and the animals are often more prized battle trophies than the land being fought for. In order to prevent unnecessary loss of life, any Baron, however minor his status or ancestry, has an ancient right to challenge any other in single combat, with dragons, territory or tenants as a ‘wager’. These jousts can take the form of infantry or cavalry combat, or specially modified exo-suits, derived from those used to herd megadons, can be worn by the participants. These combats are ritualised, and need not be fatal, though more barons’ lineages have probably ended in the arena than in battle. The right to challenge in single combat also allows Barons from weak families to challenge those from more powerful ones on an equal footing, where they would have no chance in battle. This tends to discourage strategic military alliances which, when extensive enough, can threaten to involve an entire planet and destabilise its power base to the detriment of the population as a whole. -- The following is not intended as authority on the ways of the Eldar who call themselves Exodites, but is rather a chronicle of my own experiences among one settlement of these aliens, on the world known to its natives as Ulurash. The Eldar made contact soon after I landed, though they were not as hostile as I had feared, and greeted me with the term maktageth, a word which appears to combine the concepts of primitive, savage and barbarian and which, interestingly, they apply to both aliens and other Eldar, though to outside observers the Exodites of all Eldar appear to best fit this description. The Exodites do not use the term mon-keigh with which our diplomats aboard the Craftworlds have become wearyingly familiar and I speculate that either this context of the term postdates the emergence of Exodite culture, or that these Eldar simply have so little contact with non-Eldar that it has fallen into disuse. Despite the antiquity of their culture, the Exodites’ language is close enough to that of the Craftworlds to be understood. To the Eldar, language is an almost sacred part of their myths and history and may have remained largely stagnant for millennia. The settlement to which my hosts took me was small, no larger than a village on one of the less populous Imperial planets. The buildings are constructed from mostly local materials, wood being predominant with stone reserved for a few larger dwellings. One such was home to the settlement’s ruler, though I use the term loosely for the puzzling reasons described later. His name was Bel’Kithar, and his rank was Athe-Sier (a term which translates roughly as Exodite Lord. Differences in status between the Athe-Sier are somehow indicated by the inflections used when speaking, and reflect differences in power rather than rank). Indeed, rank is a foreign concept to these Eldar, most bizarrely for such an apparently stratified society. The situation can probably best be summed up by saying that while Bel’Kithar is in every obvious respect the leader of these Eldar – as explained to me, he owns the land and receives tithes from those upon it, and ultimately he makes decisions relating to his settlement – he is so because that is seen as his function, not because he is regarded as being more powerful or of a higher rank than his subjects. In order to explain further, I will need to describe the social structure of these aliens in more detail. Those Eldar with whom we are most familiar, it is well-documented, follow a highly ritualised way of life whereby each individual chooses a Path to follow and remains on that Path until he or she is a master of it, whereupon the Eldar moves on to a new Path. This is mirrored somewhat in Exodite society, but in a more extreme form. The Craftworld system is designed to allow each individual to fully explore a facet of his personality without becoming absorbed by it, but this is not without risk. The Eldar who lacks the necessary discipline can become fascinated to the point of obsession with his chosen Path until he reaches the stage where he can never leave. Such individuals, the Eldar feel, embody the intensity of passion which led to their original Fall. The Exodites regard these Eldar, known on the Craftworlds as Trapped, as the inevitable consequence of the Paths as a way of life. In order to avoid this, they give an individual no choice as to his fate. To this end the Exodites determine the way of life an Eldar will follow before he is born, through a combination of heritage and occasionally consultation with the Seers, this latter carried out shortly before birth as I was privileged to witness on one occasion. They believe that it is the curiosity which leads an Eldar to choose his Path which leads inexorably to the fate of becoming Trapped, and that by refusing to allow an individual to satisfy his or her curiosity in this way they avoid this destiny. I mention this as background to the peculiar form of equality which exists among the Exodites. Bel’Kithar is no more high-ranking than an Eldar who was born to tend his fields, he is simply filling the position of Athe-Sier for the settlement just as the other fulfils the function of farmer or herdsman. As far as I was able to learn, there are no Exodite equivalents to those who have become Trapped on a Craftworld Path. This is the extent of what I learned in my first weeks in the Exodite settlement, other than some observations about the herd animals known as dragons which will become more relevant later in this narrative. Shortly thereafter, however, I was privy to a rare occurrence indeed. For over a week, I had heard talk of something strange occurring to Bel-Kithar’s dragon herd, though I lacked the knowledge of the language to understand precisely what, and the Exodites were always aloof around me, accepting I was there but making it clear that they’d rather I wasn’t. Consequently I gained little information by questioning them directly. I did hear, however, that Bel-Kithar was to be advised by a Seer on the issue. I knew by then that consultation with the Seers is carried out only in matters which are important to the settlement, but nonetheless I accorded it little importance at the time. Imagine my surprise, therefore, to see a group of Exodites return to the settlement accompanied by a Farseer and several Warlocks! His colours were the blue and red of a Craftworld I didn’t recognise, and while I never did learn the nature of the problem on which his advice was being sought, he remained in the settlement for several days. Neither he nor his bodyguards registered my existence during their visit. Whatever the emergency was, it claimed at least one life. Following the Farseer’s visit, I presumed to offer him greater protection from rivalry between Athe-Sier, scout patrols were increased and one returned bearing a waystone. I learned in the ceremony that followed that it contained the spirit of a herdsman. The herd had apparently bolted into the forest and the scouts which followed its trail found the carcass of a thick-headed moloch with a hole right through the thickest part of the skull (I know this detail because the animal had been brought back for the Farseer’s examination). Though herdsmen deaths to wild animals are apparently not uncommon, this one seemed to alarm the villagers especially and I never found out why. In any case, the waystone was taken by the Seers (both Craftworld and Exodite) to a wraithbone altar, part of the World Spirit, or soul-storage network, of the planet. As I understood it, this is the standard practice but the Exodite Seers were especially eager to commune with the dead man’s soul to discover what had happened. The Exodite Seer, alarmingly to someone used to the reverence the Craftworlds’ inhabitants show for their waystones, raised the gem above his head before bringing it down upon the anvil where it broke. One Warlock’s astonished gasp of “maktageth” was clearly not aimed at me. I learned later that a trapped spirit has an instinctual yearning to escape the stone, and the energy it focuses in its attempt to do this weaken the otherwise almost impervious gemstone to the point where almost anything could smash it I found myself wondering vaguely how the Exodites get replacement gems, but I never found out. I had only seen Bel’Kithar twice – once when I was first admitted to his presence, when he had been under the misapprehension that I was there to deliver trade goods, and the second time at the herdsman’s ‘funeral’ ceremony. The third time he was ensconced inside an enormous wraithbone structure resembling a taller, more slender version of the Imperial Knights. I learned as I followed the crowd of villagers to a cleared area at the edge of the settlement that he had been challenged to single combat by a rival lord. No one seemed exactly sure who this was, as I heard the names of several of Bel’Kithar’s rivals mentioned. Whoever he was he was similarly suited and waiting in what I think of as the arena. Ritual combat is common to all Eldar; even some Eldar pirates show martial skills in combat they could only have learned through intensive training. Among the Exodite Athe-Sier, this appears to take the form of jousting tournaments as well as the combat training given to all those trained as warriors. Rivalries among the Athe-Sier arise over status, determined primarily by the size of the dragon herds each lord’s settlement has. In Bel’Kithar’s settlement, at least, the dragons are typically free-roaming but marked as his. Herdsmen are sent out to bring animals marked as Bel’Kithar’s back when they are to be slaughtered for food, and to carry out the census of herd sizes on a regular basis. If Bel’Kithar lost his duel, he would send those same herdsmen to collect the dragons he forfeited on the outcome of the joust. In the event, I saw relatively little and in any case soon lost track of who was in which suit. The combat appeared to consist of the two combatants charging each other with lances fixed to one arm of the suit, grappling, disengaging and repeating the process until one of the walking machines was disabled. In this joust, a charge by Bel’Kithar hit his opponent’s walker in the chest and sent it stumbling. The scatter laser attachment it levelled as it fell was knocked aside by Bel’Kithar as he drew his own arm back. Already down on its left leg, having its left arm knocked sideways was enough to overbalance the walker and it fell. I never learned what Bel’Kithar had won from the fight. - Excerpt from “Here Be Dragons: My Time Among the Eldar of the Maiden Worlds”, by Explorator Kovis Ras. The World Spirit Like the Eldar of the Craftworlds, the Exodites live in perpetual fear that Slaanesh will consume their souls when they die. Like their cousins, the Exodites use waystones to capture and store departing souls, and they too place these in a massive wraithbone complex. In the Exodites’ case, this extends across the planet rather than through the walls of a spacecraft, mostly beneath the forests’ soil, though there are projections rising like standing stones or sometimes altars from the ground. It is these that the Seers use to place new souls in the complex and from which they grow wraithbone artefacts and draw upon the psychic energy contained within the network. This huge, lattice-like complex is called the World Spirit of the Maiden World. The land above it and around the standing stones is more fertile than that elsewhere. However, the World Spirit is also a weak point in the planet’s defences. Though practically impossible for creatures of the warp to break into, World Spirits contain such a vast amount of psychic power - many times more than that of the Infinity Circuits of the younger, less populous and more numerous Craftworlds - that daemons and their ilk will do everything they can to exploit any weak points that appear. These occur whenever a Seer taps into the energy of the World Spirit, and the Spirit is most vulnerable when a Seer uses himself as a conduit between the Spirit and the outside world via the artefacts known as World Synapses. Once a daemon is in the World Spirit, it acts as a beacon for others of its kind still in the warp and the Spirit will suffer a daemonic infestation. Using the power they gorge from the Spirit, these daemons can manifest themselves in material form around it and attack the Eldar inhabitants of the planet. To date, no Exodite world has fallen to such an incursion, though in some cases daemons have been known to retreat into the Spirit and have remained inside for years before being destroyed. Exodite worlds recovering from these attacks are, however, easy pickings for pirates and aliens and a number of planets have been lost this way. Exodite Visionaries Unlike the Farseers of the Craftworld, who draw their power from the warp through the medium of protective runes, the psykers humans know as Exodite Seers get their power from the World Spirit. All psychic energy originates in the form of spirits, whether those which form the Gods of Chaos or the reservoir of souls that is the World Spirit. As a result, these Seers are drawing upon a source of energy reminiscent of, though far weaker than, the warp in its pure form before the coming of the Great Enemy. The Exodite psykers practice none of the restraint of the Craftworld Paths, and these factors together make them the most potent living psykers in the Galaxy, though they are still considerably less skilled and powerful than their ancestors. Exodites know these powerful Seers as Visionaries, an homage to the farsightedness of the original Exodites' leaders before the Fall. Today, these Visionaries retain a position at the centre of Exodite life. Though they themselves have some skills in divination, and have an important role in determining the path a chosen individual’s life should take in many cases, the Visionaries never needed to hone these skills to the extent their Craftworld cousins have. Instead their arts lie in the realms of the spirit; they are in tune with the ‘mood’ of the World Spirit and can forecast possible daemonic attacks, they can commune with the spirits and even remove their own souls from their bodies, joining the World Spirit to travel swiftly across the planet, or using the energy it contains to manifest their spirits in corporeal but indestructible form some distance from the Spirit in a similar manner to daemons (which, like a Seer’s spirit, are just concentrations of psychic energy). In battle a Visionary may manifest himself to attack an enemy some distance from him directly, or he may see the battlefield through the Spirit and so carry out reconnaissance, among other things. In order to help channel particularly large amounts of the Spirit’s energy, a Visionary may use a wraithbone artefact grown from the Spirit itself and known as a World Synapse. This has the ability to link him with the Spirit directly, in essence becoming part of it, but it creates a weak point in the psychic network as daemons can then use the Eldar’s body as a conduit into the Spirit itself. It has been theorised that most if not all daemonic incursions are the result of Visionaries using World Synapses, and so they are used only when the need is immense. In Exodite society itself, the Visionaries play a role as spiritual leaders and also psychically shape artefacts from the wraithbone of the World Spirit; on the Craftworlds, Farseers, Warlocks and Bonesingers follow strictly differentiated routes of the same Path, but Seers make no distinction between the abilities to divine, fight and construct. When an Eldar dies, it is the Visionaries who infuse his soul into the World Spirit, ritually breaking the waystone over an altar to free the spirit (which isn’t necessary, but is part of rigid Exodite custom). The Visionaries also have a secular role to play in Exodite life. The Barons who rule Exodite settlements will often seek the counsel of his settlement's psykers. The matters they are called to advise upon will vary with each Visionary's particular talents but will usually only be those of some importance. On the Craftworlds, this system is still mirrored somewhat in the peculiar hierarchy of Saim-Hann. Any Visionary may take it upon himself to advise his lord regarding the fate of children born to the settlement, setting the path their lives will follow. In many Exodite communities, it is expected that each Visionary will, at some point in his life, train at least one apprentice of his own, and often a psyker is not deemed to have attained the position of Visionary in his settlement until he has taken on his first apprentice. This practice of apprenticing is the only instance where the conventions of hereditary position are routinely ignored. Though Visionaries may have children of their own, who may themselves be psychically gifted, it is more common for an apprentice to be taken from an unrelated family. Like other Exodites selected by the Seers, these Eldar will be separated from their families at or shortly after birth and will be brought up as members of the Visionary's household and taught to commune with the World Spirit. When an apprentice has become accomplished with a number of the spiritual powers at his disposal, which may take as little as a century or two in some cases, he is ceremonially granted the title of Shaman. Among the first skills a Shaman will acquire beyond simple communication with the Spirit are those related to healing. Exodites use a variety of homeopathic remedies based upon the local flora and fauna, and herb lore together with the necessary invocations to channel the power of the World Spirit into the sufferer and keep the daemons of the Great Enemy at bay is taught to apprentices from an early age. These remedies are not always for physical or psychological ills; among the powers Visionaries and Shamans learn is the power to call curses upon their enemies. Healing these spiritual wounds is a process as real and as necessary in the minds of the Visionaries as healing more tangible ailments. Eventually, after centuries of tutoring, Shamans will become Visionaries in their own right, when their master feels they are ready to take on the responsibilities or when they have accomplished certain tests they have been set. Long before this stage, however, many will be potent psykers already used to performing many of the Visionary's duties without assistance (though a Shaman will never preside over a burial ceremony, a fundamental ritual in Exodite life and consequently accorded the highest honour). Exodite Armies The original Exodites took with them only enough weaponry to equip small colonies, in anticipation of a need to defend themselves against the forces to be unleashed in the Fall. Most of these were lost during the fighting on the Maiden Worlds during the Fall itself, and over time most of the remainder have been destroyed or lost, or have malfunctioned beyond repair. The oldest families keep the remaining weapons as proof of their lineage’s antiquity, and none are seen in battle today. The Exodite worlds themselves are poor in resources, and those weapons the Exodites do manufacture tend to utilise laser and plasma technologies rather than solid projectile weapons like the Craftworld Eldar and Dark Eldar. Shuriken weapons in particular, common on the Craftworlds, require too much ammunition to be maintained. The Exodites do infrequently trade with the Craftworlds, typically through Ranger intermediaries, and use many of the same energy weapons in addition to their own. The Exodites manufacture weapons to fulfil the roles of shuriken and missile weapons on the Craftworlds which they are able to maintain, but due to the limited technological knowledge of modern Exodites these are often either less efficient or simply less powerful than those used by the Craftworlds, which is why the Craftworld Eldar rarely if ever use Exodite-manufactured weapons in their armies. Exodite armies are organised around levied troops. Each Baron is responsible for training the tenants on his land in basic combat skills; after all, if the land is lost the tenants will lose their homes, and they are fighting for themselves as much as their liege lord. Most are not given cavalry training, though much of an Exodite army will be mounted, because each animal requires a different type of handling and therefore a degree of specialisation. Other people are trained from birth as fighters; these are fairly few in number and form an elite core of the Baron’s army, often his personal retinue. The way the Barons manage each part of their army depends on their individual personalities, and largely on their attitude towards their tenants - the more responsible among them use their drafted infantry to support the main army, equipping them with long-ranged weapons and trying to keep them away from the worst of the fighting. Thoughtless, callous or prideful Barons may deploy them as cannon fodder to screen the advance of the trained troops, often having little faith in the abilities of infantry and relying on as many cavalry as possible surviving to win battles. Exodites and other Eldar The Exodites prefer to remain in isolation from the other Eldar races. They have no known contact with the Dark Eldar and they shun the Craftworlds unless they need to trade or enlist aid in fighting a common enemy. The Harlequins are able to reach the Maiden Worlds - they are thought to recruit Exodites into their ranks and have been seen fighting alongside Exodite armies on rare occasions, but the precise nature of the relationship between the Exodites and the Harlequin cult is unknown. Most of the Eldar the Exodites encounter are from the corsair bands which populate the rarely visited areas of space where Maiden Worlds are found. These encounters are usually violent, as the Pirates mistakenly regard Eldar they see as backwards as easy pickings, but when a foe which threatens all Eldar or just the local area of space encroaches upon Exodite territory, it is the Pirates to whom they will usually turn for aid. Most of the business conducted between Exodites and Craftworld Eldar is carried out by Rangers. These Craftworld explorers often use Maiden Worlds as waystations where they can resupply, rest and enjoy the company of other Eldar, though the Barons will rarely permit more than a few in their territories at a time for fear of possible corrupting influences. Nevertheless, the Exodites are always willing to accept Rangers’ aid in combat and when a Craftworld is nearby may even fight alongside Craftworld warriors. -- Xenotechnology Report Eld 2493.56: The World Spirit Having now completed my investigations into the claims of my Eldar hosts that their world is powered by the spirits of their ancestors, I have indeed been able to confirm our suspicions that the device known as the World Spirit is derived from the same technology employed in the Craftworlds to house the psychic energy of the dead and which is referred to there as the Infinity Circuit. There are, however, differences between the two technologies which bear closer scrutiny. The first and most obvious of these is also the most important in understanding the World Spirit’s function. Extraordinary though my hosts’ claims seemed to me at first, I have been able to verify that the wraithbone projections, monoliths and altars which are found all over the planet are not, as originally assumed, separate soul-storage devices, but are all connected by a massive wraithbone network which extends over the entirety of the planet’s surface and under its oceans. This is not a subterranean feature, but is rather covered by soil and plant life, including the most ancient not to mention hostile forms on the planet, which grows more densely here than elsewhere (of which more later). The undersea parts of the network which are accessible are similarly concealed by extensive coral reefs. It is known from studies of the Craftworlds carried out by my colleagues that, in all the time since the Fall, the number of Eldar who have died and been placed in the Infinity Circuit has not approached its holding capacity (if indeed it has one – the interior of these structures is still a complete mystery, but it has been hypothesised many times that they must contain stable, uncontaminated areas of warp space in which physical restrictions would not apply). The sheer size of the World Spirit is not explicable solely in terms of its use as a storage facility. The use of a single world-spanning matrix rather than numerous smaller ones near each settlement is not of merely academic interest; a single matrix is very vulnerable to attack by the foul monstrosities of the Chaos Powers, and the Eldar of all races would not expose themselves to this risk unless it is absolutely vital. I surmise, therefore, that the World Spirit is not simply a psychic repository, but performs a far greater function crucial to the operation of planetary Eldar society, at least among this degenerate branch of the race. In order to further my investigation into what this greater purpose may be, I made further discreet enquiries of my hosts about a curious phenomenon which, when I first discovered it, I had attributed to the weakening of the barrier between the physical world and the psychically attuned interior of the World Spirit. These structures are in some instances almost twice as old as the Infinity Circuits and some degradation is to be expected. The observed phenomenon is an apparent ‘leaking’ of psychic energy from the Spirit’s reservoir to the world outside. It is this psychic force which accelerates the growth of plant and animal life on and around the World Spirit. Though observational evidence for this is circumstantial at present, I would also tentatively suggest that the unusual resistance to and absence of pathogens from World Spirit populations of all species may also be attributable to this. The Eldar appeared to have no objection to our psyker Davrius’s probing of this phenomenon, so long as he did not attempt contact with the Spirit itself, though we were always observed by a surly brute who, we were told, was one of the local Seer’s apprentices and whose name we never learned. The sobriety and reticence of this race transcends even that of their cousins. The World Spirit is, then, a network designed to transfer psychic energy throughout the planet, stimulating the emergence of life as it does so. It features numerous projections in the form of standing stones and altars which the living Seers keep meticulously clear of plant growth, and from which they grow artefacts which serve as conduits between themselves and the Spirit. Perhaps once, when the Eldar colonised these Maiden Worlds and the Spirit was empty, the immensely powerful Eldar psykers of the time transferred their own immeasurable psychic powers through the planet in the way the spirits of the Eldar dead do now. Hundreds could combine their powers in this way, easily enough to cause the psychic ‘leak’ to extend to areas far from the Spirit, stimulating plant and animal growth on what might have been a barren planet, psychically determining which types of life form would flourish. This would explain both the similarity of life on all Eldar worlds, perhaps fashioned from memories of creatures in the Eldar empire, and why the most hostile creatures and plants tend to frequent the area directly around the Spirit – the Seers would have wanted to defend it in some way. As time went on and the Seers became aware of their imminent downfall, they would have started looking for alternative sources of energy and found them in the souls of the dead, already being housed in waystones to protect them from the vile Power the Eldar refer to as the Great Enemy. As the Eldar of the Maiden Worlds descended further into barbarism, they continued housing the souls which would maintain their world’s life force and forgot the origin of the matrix – a tool, for turning a dead world into a living one, quicker and far more efficient than our own terraforming techniques. In summary, therefore, I would wish to allay any fears regarding any potential threat these Eldar artefacts might pose to the Imperium. It is but a terraforming machine, perhaps still necessary for maintaining the planet’s biosphere or perhaps a now-useless relic which is held in high esteem by degenerate savages, and using no technology or mechanisms which we can learn from. -- |
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