Eldar info From Gav Thorpe

[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.

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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.