Dark Eldar motivation

So we're starting a Rogue Trader game in a few days and I've decided (and gm has approved) to play a Dark Eldar Wych on the RT'S otherwise all human crew.

Now, we've thought that my Wych will have some kind of life debt to the RT (something alone the lines of him saving her from being sacrificed/found her after she was exiled/escaped after she pissed of the wrong person).

But why wouldn't a Deldar just renege on that deal? Not like they're honorable and prone to keeping their word.

So far I'm leaning towards maybe she feels there is more to these humans than she thought (more open minded than the vast majority of her kin) or that she has some ulterior motive that coincides with the RT and his crew (I assume they will eventually bond for real if the campaign goes on long enough) but what could she be searching for? Revenge just seems so... overdone.

Any ideas or suggestions?

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A Macguffin. Some kind of artifact with great value or potential power to the DE. Some sort of credible rumor as to its whereabouts, that makes her think the Rogue Trader is her best bet to get close to it. Doesn't have to be real, or where you think it is, but that's a motivation.

DEldar are selfish creatures, but they are also pragmatic. They won't actively seek to kill everyone just for the lulz as a chaos cultist would do.

So she's likely to renege on her deal, but given the right motivation she may stick with the party. That motivation may be simply to take part in adventures with a reasonable chance of success, moreover she may not want to return to her kin if she has pissed the wrong person.

Eldar are notoriously very racist so her bonding with a bunch of human is not very likely, however i'd say it is still possible as DEldar are paradoxically more open, mixing with other races more frequently than their righteous brethrens.

>Eldar are notoriously very racist so her bonding with a bunch of human is not very likely, however i'd say it is still possible as DEldar are paradoxically more open, mixing with other races more frequently than their righteous brethrens.


Just need to bond a bit with the RT himself really I suppose and tolerate the others. Me and the GM both are less concerned with staying rigidly true to the fluff and more about making sure the group isn't constantly dysfunctional and at each others throat. Some kind of mutual respect if not real friendship.

Oh hey, somebody else was asking about something similar the other day.

I'll repeat the advice I gave in that thread. To an Eldar, Dark or otherwise, a life debt to a human isn't a very long time. Joining their crew for 10 years wouldn't be very long at all in their eyes.

The biggest thing to worry about would be keeping your soul fed with pain. I'd suggest looking for a Soulstone for the convenience.

Yes I was thinking about that as well. Something that might make me welcome back to Commoragh (or at least stop the hand of whoever I pissed of from killing me outright)...

Will have to think what it could possibly be in that case.

Yes, I was thinking about the whole pain thing. Do Deldar actually need to kill or pain is enough? Been thinking she will always be close by to fights, torture etc, observing from the shadows if she's not participating, as to not cause too much trouble with the crew (she is after all way beyond outnumbered if they all turn on her). It might not be enough so searching for a soulstone might be something I need to convince the RT is a good idea early on!

>Do Deldar actually need to kill or pain is enough?

Technically I think it can just be any excessive emotion. If it can feed Slaanesh, it can feed Dark Eldar, essentially. It's just that pain is typically the easiest emotion to inflict an excess of, and it also suits their hedonistic lifestyles.

Theoretically, you could probably sustain yourself by offering to conduct interrogations for the RT or being present for crew punishments. Maybe incite a few too many drunken brawls. You could potentially have her try and feed off of other extreme emotions, but that's more questionable

It's a big aspect of Dark Eldar though, so you'll definitly want to talk to the GM about it. Getting a Soulstone is the easiest solution, though those aren't easy to get at all. Unless you plan on sailing into the Eye of Terror, your only real bet is asking a Craftworlder for one, which will probably involve a fairly significant favor or trade.

I think DEldar actually NEED strong emotions like pain to stay alive, so a soulstone may not be sufficient. But on the other hand she does not need to kill and not even to inflict pain if the crew does awesome stuff regularly.

Worst case she keeps something like an ork to torture when times are hard.

That's feasible, I'm pretty sure groups of Eldar/humans corsairs are fluffy.

Not even explicit pain, but suffering in general can suffice, and even fear or general misery. Assuming the wych isn't too far down the corruption path she can probably fill her weekly quota of human misery buy wandering around the lower decks of the ship and amusing herself by watching the ratings injure themselves as part of their duties. Wandering up to a few and intimidating them might also do it through he sheer terror it would I still in them.

Rogue Traders are backstabbing mercanary cunts who would easily plant a nuke in a baby's ass to get more sweet thrones and cred.

Dark Eldar would fit right in.

I laughed a lot more than I expected at that.

True. A stroll through the lower decks might actually be enough to suffice.

Interesting. Very interesting. For a moment I thought why wouldn't she hang around a burn ward or something but then I realized that presumably the patients would be sedated or on painkillers, robbing her of nourishment... damn doctors!!!

Consider, first and foremost, that Dark Eldar are defined by selfishness. Ultimately the only person they care about is themselves, and there is nothing they won't do to promote their own success and survival.

So ditch the idea of life-debts or anything of the sort right from the off. There's no way a Dark Eldar would make that sort of deal. Frankly I doubt she would feel any kind of obligation to a human even if one did save her life. Instead, the Rogue Trader should have done something to impress her - something to convince her that he's worth accompanying (and that does me accompanying; not following, because a DE isn't going to see herself as subservient to a human) rather than going it alone or sticking with her peers.

Pitch her as someone who's been forced out of Commorite society, maybe the survivor of a small Wych Cult that was destroyed and absorbed by a larger one, who fled to Realspace to avoid being hunted down by her enemies. She works as a bounty hunter or assassin to make ends meet and ensure she has access to a steady supply of victims to sate the Thirst. At some point, her path crosses with the RT - maybe she's hired to kill him and fails, and rather than kill her, he offers to hire her onto his crew and sends her back against her former employer. She sticks with him because she's smart enough to recognise that there's safety in numbers, and he brings her into contact with enough strange, new things for her to test her skills against on a regular basis.

I LIKE IT!!!

Right, I'll just get this out of your head because it's fucking stupid and pathetic.

Dark Eldar are not negative emotion vampires in a literal sense that every random case of the feelsbads makes them better.

They nourish themselves on misery.

The purposeful suffering of others is their lifeblood.

If you want to play a "Moderate" Dark Eldar you don't play her as some repressive wallflower trying to leech her fill off of unfortunate souls.

Have her wander the ships bowels, sipping fine wine and eating haughty bread as she cackles and waves her hands at the disfigured suffering dregs below.

If I recall correctly, the book with rules for playing Dark Eldar includes very specific rules keeping themselves sustained; and as far as feeding off of the ship's crew, I believe that that results in Morale loss.

Very well sir (or madam, sorry).

It wasn't an actual suggestion buti more of a "if that works why wouldn't this?" kinda thing.
I get what you mean though, it makes sense. Thank you.

Yep, which is why I want to try and void feeding off the crew directly (or in a way that will lead back to me). Don't need them revolting against me.

The book is fucking stupid then.

Dark Eldar are not emotion vampires.

They "Feed" by reveling in the suffering of others.

Not absorbing it like some kind of emo sponge.

Best advice as I can give you is play a cunt.

Play the most haughty onry cunt imaginable.

She needs to be selfish, vain, underhanded, she needs to lie and cheat and backstab and she needs to enjoy it.

She doesn't respect anything, respect is a word for stupidity in the Dark Eldar Language.

She admires things.

She admires how the Orks savagely slaughter things.

She admires how gaunt tyranid horrors systematically cut apart men and women.

But above all, she admires the Rogue Trader because like her, he's a fine coated predator.

>The book is fucking stupid then.

By RAW, they 'feed' by inflicting, or being close enough when someone else, inflicts a Critical Injury on another character, be it PC or NPC. They have to do this once a session or they start to take WP damage.

Well, think about the scenario you've got planned. If your girl was like a typical Dark Eldar, she'd have thought of "lesser" races as disposable toys or livestock at best, while her own civilization were the very apex of advancement and culture. Then, for some reason her own culture, the very thing that is the source of her pride, very nearly ended her life before a group of "primitive" humans saved it. Depending on the specifics, it's not unlikely that she'd feel a bit... disillusioned. She might start to question if the prideful and decadent Dark Eldar were really so great, or whether there might be something to humanity after all. In that case, she could decide to stay with them for a while to see how they do things, maybe see if there was something worth learning from them.

But the Dark Eldar backstab and quarrel with each other as a matter of course. Why would she feel so affronted by it? Well, a person can think to themselves that they support the status quo, but that's not the same as really accepting it, especially when it turns against them. Perhaps your character was a rather successful and prestigious person early in her life, rising to success on the backs of her rivals and using typical Deldar philosophy to rationalize it... until suddenly, because of an ill-timed mistake or just bad luck, the system turns on her in a way she ostensibly knew could happen but never really expected or accepted.

In addition, remember that people generally don't have just one motive for their actions. Motivation is a complex thing, and even if one of a person's reasons wouldn't be enough on its own, there could be others that tip the proverbial scales towards a given course of action.

To be fair, the book talks about causing pain and suffering to the crew in order to feed I believe, which would logically lower morale. Which I'd prefer to avoid if at all possible (the RT might not enjoy having a crew ready to start a revolt either).


I see what you mean, I like the admires explanation. Suddenly it feels a lot clearer on how to play her. Cheers!

Clearly the solution is slaves. Preferably non-human, non-eldar slaves so everyone can have a good time enjoying their screams of pain.

>But why wouldn't a Deldar just renege on that deal?
Because she's having a great time being with the Rogue Trader.

Back on Commoragh, she was a nobody, but now she gets to travel all over the galaxy murdering people in creative ways while generally living a life of incomparable wealth and luxury.

Rogue Trader has placed a bomb in her skull that will explode if he dies.

>But why wouldn't a Deldar just renege on that deal? Not like they're honorable and prone to keeping their word.

Couple of possible reasons, some of which have already been covered.

>The Wych believes that sticking by the Rogue Trader is the best possible course of action for her. She has nowhere else to go, so she is reasonably loyal to him.

>The Wych is obsessed with the Rogue Trader. She is infatuated with him in an obsessive way, to the point where she desires his affections above all other sensations - this isn't love as humans would understand it, but rather a sick and twisted parody of human love where she views him as a lover, master, property, and conquest all rolled into one.

>The Wych is becoming disenfranchised with the Dark Eldar way of life. In living with the Rogue Trader, she is beginning to feel there is more to life than the Dark Eldar path, and seeks to stick with the Rogue Trader to see how it all plays out. While she'll likely never become a Craftworlder or anything like that, nor would she join the Imperium officially, it's possible she may become a Corsair or simply stick with the Rogue Trader because that's all she knows.

These can be kind of difficult to pull off especially the "love" one, at least to do it correctly, but they're entirely possible with the Dark Eldar mindset.

>the Wych was a nobody in Commoragh
>she managed to piss off a few nobles by doing stupid shit
>has to flee Commoragh
>tags along some corsairs
>they are shit tier pirates and also hate her guts
>the Rogue Trader comes and ruthlessly slaughters them all
>she somehow survives
>realizes that tagging alongside RT would give her the best options to survive and gain power
>maybe throw in that whatever the RT is pursuing as his goal would also help her
>have them operate somewhere on the fringes of the Imperium, where there are enough minor xenos races for her to feed off so that the human crew won't have to witness her torturing other humans
>maybe have them raid some wealthier Dark Eldar corsairs, where she finds a few of those parasitic worms that DE have, that collect and store any excess emotions, and have them implanted into some xeno
The worm things are described in the short story Shadow Play by Rob Sanders.

Seconding this. You should portray your DEldar like a complete sociopath lacking any kind of empathy, IMO.

btw, DEldar feeding is related to psychic ability.
So Eldar is a good meal, regular human is a small snack, tau is like an individual peanut, nd a blank is 0cal without any taste. Powerful human psyker would be on par with an eldar, but I guess it depends on the DE particular tastes.

citationneeded.jpg on part two

Something nobody commented on yet, but she is going to be TERRIFIED to levels augmented by the fact she feels emotions more strongly than humans with every warp travel.
DEldar literally feel Slaanesh pull at their heartstring all the time. When on top of that they're in the realm of souls, separated by a tiny Gellar Field, it's like travelling through hell.

This can lead to an interesting relationship with the navigator where she both despises him, fears him or reveres him for what he is able to do. I'm not sure how well informed DEldar are about what a navigator is.

Alternatevely, if the navigator is played and has the power where they can create some sort of bubble of calm around them, I can easily see the navigator become the McGuffin.
Just imagine, you have a portable living slavething that can live for a nice chunk of time (navigators get to be 300 naturally, so even more with rejuvenating treatments) and your precious thing can basically calm the warp around you and hide you from the hungry eye of Slaanesh.

That's one slave that could easily smooth things over in Commoragh. Though how to even GET a navigator all the way there, that's the whole problem.

The Rogue Trader's a means to visit exotic locales, meet new people, and inflict horrific suffering on them.

Psykers are strictly banned in Commorogh though

By the Emperor, a single hive world could feed all of Commorragh

navigators are mutants not psykers

>maybe she feels there is more to these humans than she thought (more open minded than the vast majority of her kin) or that she has some ulterior motive that coincides with the RT and his crew (I assume they will eventually bond for real

No, no, no.
Humans are PREY to Dark Eldar.
They eat the pain and suffering they extract from humans. Thinking that a deldar wytch, who has probably killed hundreds, if not thousands of humans, in unimaginably torturous ways, for her own fucking entertainment and to get her high, would suddenly start feeling "more" for humans is absolutely retarded.

Not to mention that the Dark Eldar are supremely arrogant, far above even that of the Craftworlders. A Dark Eldar would never see a human as anything more than an useful pawn at best.

A Dark Eldar would never willingly utilize a soulstone. They see a fate of being trapped in a soulstone as being basically just as bad as falling into the hands of Slaanesh, and atop of that, it leaves your immortal soul in a very vulnerable gem that you no longer can protect in any way after your death.

Yes, because humans doesnt kill and torture animals and yet some of them stupidly love them.

Can Orks be tortured?

>Then, for some reason her own culture, the very thing that is the source of her pride, very nearly ended her life before a group of "primitive" humans saved it. Depending on the specifics, it's not unlikely that she'd feel a bit... disillusioned. She might start to question if the prideful and decadent Dark Eldar were really so great, or whether there might be something to humanity after all. In that case, she could decide to stay with them for a while to see how they do things, maybe see if there was something worth learning from them.

No. You don't know shit about the Deldar.
Their arrogance in their species is supreme, and they expect other deldar to try to kill them. Survival of the fittest is a core tenet of Commoragh society.
A bunch of bumbling retarded monkeys (which humans are to Deldar), saving a Dark Eldar from being murdered by other Dark Eldar, won't mean jack shit to the saved individual. Well, the individual might murder the humans for their effort, because atop of being arrogant, they are also prideful, and being "saved" by a bunch of monkeys might hurt the Deldar's pride.

Thank you user, yes indeed.

Rogue Trader Soul Reaver p.128, eldar, tau and human gladiators in the DE arenas.
Makes sense, empathy/sympathy is linked with connexion to the warp in 40k.

Wait, so it's impossible for eldars to go in a system that doesn't possess a webway gate?

>implying every psyker isn't a dirty mutant.
are you a heretic, user?

To be fair, everything is prey to a dark eldar. Even other DE.

Wouldn't that just make them stronger?
According to the various Painboyz bits of fluff, they can feel pain, anyways.

For the Deldar, the ones who don't have a puppy torturer mentality don't survive in their society.
Their society is fucking built upon torturing lesser races, humans included for sustenance.

I am not saying that a Deldar would never join a Rogue Trader crew. What I am saying is that a Deldar won't start viewing humans in any different light despite spending time with them.

A Wytch on a Rogue Trader crew would not even hide the fact that she sees all the humans aboard the ship as little more than mere cattle, and she would only offer the thinnest veneer of respect, laded with icy sarcasm, for the people in command of the ship. Anyone else, would receive nothing but arrogant contempt, and predatory gazes, as she imagines how to gut humans aboard of the ship in the most spectacular and painful way possible.

>Wait, so it's impossible for eldars to go in a system that doesn't possess a webway gate?

No. The Eldar know how to make warp jumps. They just avoid doing them unless they really have to, because they are a heck of a lot more dangerous for Eldar than humans. An Eldar soul will shine like a lighthouse in the warp, and Slaanesh will be all over that shit asap. But if they really need to get to somewhere, that isn't connected to a webway gate, they can get to there via warp travel.

Having and Eldar aboard the ship should make warp travel more turbulent for the Rogue Trader's ship.

>so it's impossible for eldars to go in a system that doesn't possess a webway gate
Eldar and DEldar just don't use the warp, so you are correct. They use webway gates.
They could technically but they don't have Gellar Field and they don't have navigators plus the whole Slaanesh bit.
Most Eldars have never been in the warp and in one novel where two of them have to do so aboard a RT ship, they start quizzing the navigator about what it is like and he picks up on them being scared af about it. They think humans are crazy idiots for putting their lives into the hand of a deformed offshoot of their species and pray for the best as they travel through hell.

>implying every psyker isn't a dirty mutant
They aren't mutants though. Psykers aren't the same as mutants. Just because you grew claws and a third arm doesn't mean you suddenly can use mindpowers. And because you use mindpowers doesn't mean your holy human form will end up deformed.

>To be fair, everything is prey to a dark eldar. Even other DE.
Deldar would much rather use other Deldar that they have enslaved for far more important business, than to exhaust their thirst. Being fodder for thirst is a position that only the most lowliest slaves get. There are a shitton of other stuff slaves do in Deldar society as well.

Wraithbone protects Eldar ships in the warp just like a gellar field would. It can still fail of course though.

You can torture an ork by enslaving one, breaking his spirit and forcing him to never do any orky things again.

Actually it states that Deldar characters are young, and can actually subsist happily on the ambient misery and pain of the ship's crew, but you'll never get them sweet pain tokens that way

>soulstone
I believe we have found a possible macguffin

Keep in mind that the Wych might go on a small murder rampage trough the serf decks of your ship unless explicitly forbidden to do so.
Human lives are only worth to her the amount of torment and pain she can extract out of them.

Also, for inspiration on her personality and antics, picture related.

Nigga no.
If you get your hands on the path of the eldar book, don't read them all but go to the last short story, about a DEldar who gets taken in on a craftworld. He needs to go through a complete ritual and sortof regress to back when he was a baby and then try to bond with a soulstone. Just getting a soulstone isn't the end of the story. Your McGuffin, if you go for soulstone, also implies she needs to find a craftworld that will take her in and farseers to help do the ceremonial mind regression bit.

The only reason why a Deldar would be interested in a soulstone is if there is already a soul in it, that he or she might have uses for, or if nothing else, torment. They would never want to be trapped within one themselves.

There have been Dark Eldar who abandon their ways to take up the craftworlder path lifestyle. Most of them because they were sick of having to literally survive on the suffering of others.

Not sure which book but think it was Path of the Warrior that had such a character.

It's in a short story at the end of it, character's name is Becharet.

Almost impossibru. The Dark Eldar think that being imprisoned in a easily breakable gem, of which you have no control of, is a fate worse than being devoured by Slaanesh. And they can be only found on Crone Worlds in the Eye of Terror. That's a huge risk for Dark Eldar to take, so she'd have to have really good reasons to get and accompany the RT there.

>They aren't mutants though. Psykers aren't the same as mutants. Just because you grew claws and a third arm doesn't mean you suddenly can use mindpowers. And because you use mindpowers doesn't mean your holy human form will end up deformed.
By definition, psykers (unless caused by xenosurgery, archeotech implants, or that kind of thing) are mutants; as are pariahs. They are one particular kind of mutation.
Also, not all mutations are Warp-related (psykers are, obviously). You can have mutants caused by pollution or other environmental effects. Like abhumans.
It's just that some people get really trigger-happy when being near a mutant, so they don't always have the time to explain that they are not Chaos-tainted and were just born near radioactive waster before being gunned down.

Mutants ought to be killed.

The only exception is navigators and psykers who have proved stable enough. End of story.

>he doesn't believe the Imperial authority that abhumans are stable

archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/46234423/#46249490
Some writefaggotry about a wych in a RT crew and combat-drugs withdrawal.
I think it fits the thread.

Path of the Outcast, I think. There was a corsair's crew led by a Commourghite who, while not craft world "nice," was disillusioned with the ways of her kin.

>smutfaggotry
Fuck off.