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.