What does Veeky Forums think of Dark Eldar?

One of the few good parts of 40k left.

The Dark Eldar just seem to meaningless... A few can extend their lives and avoid getting eaten by Slaneesh for a while but at some point yous gonna die. Most likely from another dick dark eldar and your soul goes kicking and screaming.

As such, theres no Dark Eldar end game other than survive. No secret weapon or distant hope to reverse their fortunes.

Don't you mean Necrons?

>newcrons
>good

Ahh, hello old target audience I'm new target audience, I'm the people who disliked necrons until the recent changes, you probably didn't think I existed for a while and once it was clear that I did you certainly made efforts to ensure you could discard my opinions as invalid

I used to think the DEldar were redundant in the face of Slaanesh, until people starting pointing out the more Fair Folk influences, along with the Ayn Rand-style psycho anarchist philosophy. It makes for a funny combination. Not to mention the aesthetic is way sleeker than 40k Slaaneshi.

Imma side with Newcrons here, mainly because you can always just do what I do and have your particular dynasty still be omnicidal maniacs who may or may not be slaved to a specific C'tan. It's the elemental of choice there that I like, for the sake of variety.

isn't that a part of their appeal ?
at least you don't get factionfag that say ''muh chaos can't into losing, chaos unlimited and fucks other factions'' or ''muh space marines can solo entire army'', or ''muh tech is best tech ever'', etc etc

Bleak copy of Dark Exiles.

Around Dark Eldars...

I like them although they try too hard to make them sadistic sometimes. and the fact that everything DE have literally has edges on them which allows the people that hate anything "bad" go "wow thats edgy".

Favourite faction, love their hilarious edginess, comical villainous selfishness and lack of any form of fuck-giving about the galaxy.

The covens are even funnier, they're the only Dark Eldar with stable enough lives to have associates, they're the closest thing to Dark Eldar with friends and their dickheadedness only increases because of it.

The problem with factionfags - of ANY faction - is that they're all concerned with some "endgame". As if that fucking matters.

Just go along for the ride. Do you want to try and be noble and rage against the dying of the light? Do it, and pimp that paladin aesthetic on your marines, or your haggard vet aesthetic on your guard.

Do you want to just party and fuck with other people and dress like a cenobite? Pimp that DEldar/Slaanesh aesthetic, and do some cocaine.

Have Your Dudes be Your Dudes because you like them that way, not because you're going to "win the plot" of 40k.

Literally who?

Both of those things are what makes them fun, though. They're absurdly over the top, and not intended to be take seriously out of universe.

They're fun nutjobs that will steal a medicine that would save millions of lives, only to just stick it in a trophy room and collect dust because it's hilarious.

Dark Exiles, army from new GW flagship - Age of Sigmar.

>The problem with factionfags - of ANY faction - is that they're all concerned with some "endgame". As if that fucking matters.

This. The pointless arrogant nastiness of the Dark Eldar is what they're about, not some plan to win the setting.

The best thing about the Dark Eldar is that they're just assholes, they're not trying to create the god Blarglesnarf by torturing people, they do it because they're dicks. Sure it helps them survive but primarily they do it because it's fun. They live in Commorragh because they like it there and it's the way it is because they like it that way. They're just nasty dicks who like to pick on people weaker than them for fun and because it makes them feel powerful.

I don't really consider them canon because they were added after the 2nd edition, just like Tau.

Dark Eldar have great looking minis but they're all spindly as fuck and hard to not-break.

Corroragh is a pretty interesting setting for a human merc. D.Eldar prefer human mercenaries over other D.Eldar because human mercenaries will work for the highest bidder while other D.Eldar will betray for the hell of it.

>D.Eldar prefer human mercenaries
They prefer aliens mercenaries, humans pretty useless from then since in Commoragh you should have SM-tier equipment.

>isn't that a part of their appeal ?

No, it's not their draw.

They are pointless with Slaaneshi's being a thing like Alfabusa said. They bring nothing new to the setting.

>They bring nothing new to the setting.
Neither do Chaos Daemons as an army, half the human armies, almost all of the Space Marine lists specifically, the Necrons and so on. 40K is about the broadness of the galaxy and I don't begrudge the Eldar race having 2 lists when for some insane reason Cult Mechanicus and Skitarii are different armies (just why?)

Wrong. They show more of the Eldar character. Craftworlders are weird monks and not really representative of what Eldar are.

>other D.Eldar will betray for the hell of it
They kinda have to, if they lost credibility as backstabbing assholes they'd get eaten alive by the other backstabbing assholes.

They are just the revamp of "Eldar Pirates", which are in RT. Look again.

They're a bunch of fuck off pansies who use edginess as a weapon.

Yeah, stories like Vect's Gift, anything the Duke does, or that one Archon who was such a narcissist he released a plague that caused planet's every living organism to bear his likeness are great.

Or

>703.M41 A MADDENING GIFT Seething after an imperfect regrowth that he judges to be a deliberate slight, the disfigured Acothyst Mydilian gifts his masters in the Coven of Twelve with a flock of Aelindrachi shaderavens. The avian terrors are well received, for though it is rumoured their caw slowly drives those who hear it insane, it would be seen as an act of cowardice to refuse them. Given the inherent strangeness of the Haemonculi, few notice that the Coven of Twelve are becoming ever
more eccentric. A year to the day after Mydilian’s gift, several of the Coven’s senior Haemonculi depart into a shattered spar of the webway without warning. Their clarity of thought long gone, they plunge through a forbidden gate onto a long-lost crone world, rubbing their clammy hands in anticipation of having daemonic ‘specimens’ to experiment upon.
Upon a plain of burning bones the Covenites find more in the way of Daemons than they bargained for. The horizon is scarlet from end to end with the footsoldiers of the dreaded Blood God. A never-ending cycle of battle begins as the souls of the Haemonculi are claimed as playthings by Khorne himself, denying them any chance of regeneration in their Commorrite lairs. They are condemned to an endless grind of unimaginative but extremely gory deaths, whilst Mydilian and three of his peers enjoy a sudden promotion.

>Alfabusa spouting anything more than meme-level understand of 40k

>discard my opinions as invalid
I mean, it's not hard, user.

It is great that the minis finally caught up with the concept. The original line of vehicles were cool, but the troops were pretty bad, with a few exceptions.

Humans are aliens to the dark eldar.

I think that's one of their best features.

Everything in 40K is being pushed to the brink of absolute apocalypse, and it's stiffing. There's no room to imagine what your guys are doing if literally everyone is in one big battle that will never be satisfactorily resolved.

Your Dark Eldar can always do what you want them to do without necessarily compromising their characters.

I wish other factions had that freedom.

That would be corsairs like Yriel.

I don't know much about them, but kabalites look very cool and I imagine its fun zooming around on those boat motorcycle things

But Yriel is a craftworld prince, is he not?

Unmodified humans, yes, but long time IG vets and former AdMech can tank out most D.Eldar.

Yriel is a corsair prince who returned to Iyanden to save it from Tyranids in Doom of the Eldar.

Kabalite Warriors are essentially to their Kabals what Made Men are for Mafias. Most dark eldar are just run of the mill gang members or lone wolf criminals. And yeah they're stylish as fuck. And it's all uphill from there.

Chaos add something to the setting by being a purely supernatural army.

Since the setting is focused on the Imperial and its aspects, you will get a lot of Imperial armies. Each represent an unique aspect of the Imperium.

Necrons were a mistake like the Dark Eldar. Both factions being nothing new to the setting and their removal won't impact the setting.

Dark Eldar are the descendants of the degenerates who were influenced by Slaanesh into abandoning their culture and gods. The Dark Eldar do not represent what the Eldar are. The craftworlds with their honoring of the Eldar gods and the ancient traditions and duties are representative of what the Eldar truly are.

Dark Eldar are just representative of Slaanesh and nothing they do sets them apart from Slaaneshi worshipers.

I like them a lot, but not for the torture, human experiments and shit
It's more the fact that in a setting full of over-the-top factions that plot the end of all life, complete extermination of aliens, absolute order, absolute destruction for their gods, complete dominance and all big stuff like that, they're the ones who just raid shit from their cozy hidden city and have no big end game other than surviving. Eldar are like that too but have too much of fantasy elves to be likeable, DE are just fuck this let's just do our little thing while not really bothering anyone too much

Like I said I like them my friends on the other hand... "Woah why would you like something so edgy?".

...watch you radars?

I like 'em a lot. Cool aesthetics, great background, mechanically interesting on the tabletop.
No one will ever accuse you of cheese when you play them, as their basic transport can be destroyed by a single bolter shot.
I also like that their fluff usually includes instances of them failing or being defeated, as well as times when they stomped on everyone else. They're neatly balanced in terms of the threat they present.

I liked the bit about the Dark Eldar showing up to rescue Iyanden at the last minute, and the Craftworlders are all like "Why did you help us?"
And the Dark Eldar are like "Well, uh... we think the way you keep making desperate moral compromises to survive and lamenting your fate is really funny. We couldn't just let you die."

"Edge" is such a malleable word. I usually think of "edgy" characters (in the bad way) as being not just extreme or gritty or whatever, but also lacking in self awareness, in universe or on the writer's part.
The Dark Eldar having a weird sense of humor, being complete jerks and failing regularly are what keep them from being too anime.

I realised that Killing Floor 2 is the best "Imperial Guardsmen vs Dark Eldar Haemonculus' Fashion Show" simulator.

>Dark Eldar Haemonculus' Fashion Show
Okay, that made me laugh.

I find the idea of the Dark Eldar being the "true Eldar" hilariously wrong. Allow me to disprove it. Lets start.

>You see the origins of the Iconoclast’s mound go way, way back – all the way back to before The Fall. When the people found they had become gods themselves they had no further use for graven images and imaginary friends. They threw them in the rubbish: Asuryan, Lileath, Isha, Kurnous, Khaine and all the rest…

>‘Later, when they stole similar artefacts from other races, they did the same thing. They threw such plunder down among their own broken gods to show that there was no higher power, no saviour, no immortal plan. Everything was damned for all eternity. So they wanted to believe because it made their own damnation easier to bear – and do you want to know the even greater irony? The bits and pieces of the eldar gods are still down there, broken and forgotten at the bottom of the pile, buried under a spoil heap being made ever higher by hatred and hubris. Now how’s that for a metaphor?’

The degenerates of the Pre-Fall Empire have lost their connection to the Eldar Gods for a long while. Enough while for them to think they are imaginary beings and forget about them. How could psychic creatures lose contact with warp beings who are attuned to their psychic awareness and souls? Simple the degenerates ceased to be true Eldar. The Dark Eldar continue the practices of scoffing at the Eldar gods as being figments of imagination and it has been noted that the spiritual power of the Dark Eldar is much much lower than other Eldar.

>The Dark Eldar do not represent what the Eldar are
>The craftworlds with their honoring of the Eldar gods and the ancient traditions and duties are representative of what the Eldar truly are.

The thing is, none of the current Eldar factions truly represent the Eldar at their pinnacle. In some form or another, the various "modern" Eldar deny some aspect of their birthright. In the case of the Commorites for example, they deny their psychic abilities. And all Eldar today live in fear (whether they admit it or not) of the daemon-god they created. Except the Harlequins.

Roll with absurd melodrama of it. Make your haemonculus a Space Elf, Flesh-Crafting Mugatu served by grad students getting their master's degrees in BDSM. Or the fact that Dark Eldar bikers are all essentially CUHRAYZEE prima donnas . And Hellions are the essentially skateboard punks.

And finally, the fact Duke Sliscus was inspired by 70s-80s Bowie.

Incredibly redundant faction. Roll them into Chaos already.

Linked the other post by mistake. Oh well, I gotta continue.

>In their arrogance, the ancient Eldar abandoned their gods, turning their backs upon the morals and codes that guided their civilisation. Divested of their ancient pantheon, many Eldar declared themselves divine. Pleasure cults spread through the Eldar realms, each more twisted and perverse than the last. Against the lurid glare of now, the glories of old were spat upon as pale, unworthy things.

>In the face of this wanton madness, the old gods could do nothing. Bloody-handed Khaine raged. Vaul the smith turned his back, while mother Isha wept oceans of tears. Even Asuryan the creator looked on powerless. Only Cegorach seemed uncaring, for he merely laughed.

-Murder Clown dex

Here is the confirmation that the degenerates, whom the Dark Eldar came from, abandoned all what the Eldar are and were for the sake of pleasure and excess.

So the idea that Dark Eldar are "true" Eldar is hilariously wrong. Of all the Eldar factions, they are the furthest from the ideal Eldar.

>Each represent an unique aspect of the Imperium.
Except they don't, they're over separated and you used to get the same flexibility just from the vanilla codex that you now apparently need mountains of expensive hardback books to get? You don't really need a separate army list for IG and Stormtroopers, or for AdMech 1 and Admech 2. You certainly don't need all those different marine lists when the old Chaos codex allowed you to field practically every traitor legion just with a couple of other unit types and marks knocking cult troopers into the troops slot.

>Chaos add something to the setting by being a purely supernatural army.

Except they don't because every army is now a slurry of building blocks for building insane retarded allied armies. Hell, Chaos Daemons is an insanely unfluffy codex, armies are normally blobs of Nurglings and Horrors led by Bloodthirsters.

But aren't the atrophied psyker potential of the dark eldar borne out of necessity? They do not have spiritstones as the craftworld eldar do, and using warp powers attracts chaos and shiet

I like the fey folk theme they have going. I wish they were slightly less maximum edgy though, the slavery and torture is fine, folklore elves were sadistic bastards who kidnapped children and fucked with people for laughs too, but the whole feeding on pain takes it to extremes imo, and they should have other hobbies that don't involve torture or dissecting things alive.

It'd be cool if the lower levels of Commorragh was more open to other races too. I like the idea of some hidden city that gets visited by the scum of all races, like you'd have mercenary Ork kommandos wandering about next to Kroot, Rogue Traders and renegade muhreens, like the pirate cities during the Golden Age of Piracy.

>The thing is, none of the current Eldar factions truly represent the Eldar at their pinnacle.

Craftworlders are the closet to the Eldar ideal since they preserved much of the true Eldar ancient heritage. And don't say birthright and imply the Dark Eldar care about it. The Dark Eldar and their ancestors dashed all of it down.

>Except they don't because every army is now a slurry of building blocks for building insane retarded allied armies. Hell, Chaos Daemons is an insanely unfluffy codex, armies are normally blobs of Nurglings and Horrors led by Bloodthirsters.

You do know that during real space invasions, lesser daemons will defer to Greater Daemons regardless of their origin. Greater daemons will posture and fight a bit but ultimately a singular Greater Daemon will rise to be the commander of the mixed host.

Please if you don't know the fluff, then go back.

Pretty much. The repress their psychic potential because they do not want any chance of "Perils of the Warp", that said some in the underbelly of Commorragh practice fortune telling, though even that is forbidden. Basically, use mind bullets or mind words, and Vect's enforcers will come into ruin your day.

True Eldar aren't meant to live their lives in rigidly planned, sterile paths and ivory towers, living in fear of a soul-devouring racial daemon their ancestors made.

>It'd be cool if the lower levels of Commorragh was more open to other races too. I like the idea of some hidden city that gets visited by the scum of all races, like you'd have mercenary Ork kommandos wandering about next to Kroot, Rogue Traders and renegade muhreens, like the pirate cities during the Golden Age of Piracy.

They are, they have a non-Eldar quarter specifically for other races to dock at, though they don't venture into Commorragh proper because it'd be insanely dangerous.

>don't know the fluff
Oh you mean that fluff they made up so they could gloss over no god having enough daemons to make a balanced list? The fluff that ignores what the chaos gods are and what they think of each other?

They have other hobbies then torture or dissecting things alive.
They blend wine, poisons, collect rare stuff they like, make deathly pranks, are busy with Eldar resources to secure that big promotion and mostly just do what they enjoy the most.
Which can be something else then plunder and murder, but when collecting rare stuff you need for your hobbies usually end up plundering the place that has it.

>atrophied psyker potential of the dark eldar borne out of necessity

Is it or is it the result of their practices and behavior? The Pre-fall Eldar degenerates lost their connection to the gods which indicates that their psychic potential was in decline long before Vect made his policies.

Making daemons their own army was a mistake.

>The fluff that ignores what the chaos gods are and what they think of each other?

You mean to say that you ignored the fluff where the Chaos Gods often ally with each other to scourge real space and the fluff that says that the Chaos Gods give their Greater Daemons the freedom of action to do as they please?

Go back.

desu most of the armies introduced after 4e are a mistake. Most of them aren't even armies, they're just different wargear options for other armies.

What's the mistake here is you making a flawed fluff arguments. Since Realm of Chaos days, the Chaos Gods allied with each other, forming pacts and alliances. With the HH being the most notable example.

While you guys are arguing post Dark Eldar art if you have it.
Thanks.

How about you go back, Carnac.

There's a difference between forming an alliance and putting one god's greater daemon in charge of the daemons of their rival god. Chaos gods will ally true, but very very rarely with their opposite god and neither would readily agree to being the subordinate god. All bets are off in chaos Daemons though because GW needed another army fast and they already had the models made for this one.

Yes, let us show these pests what the Children of Khaine are truly capable of!

Has anyone read the short story from the Path of the Eldar omnibus that's about the Incubus who becomes a Striking Scorpion? How is it?

Got sidetracked, Back to business.

According to the novels "Farseer, one of the Macharius novels (the one they enter the webway), and Aurelian. Slaanesh guided the Eldar into birthing him. oddly dressed priests preached the coming of a new god and stoked the excess of Eldar. Daemons whispered and guided the Eldar further and further to extremes. Despite losing all their connection to their gods, the degenerate Eldar felt the growing power of Slaanesh and they welcomed it.

This makes the Pre-Fall degenerates and Dark Eldar Slaaneshi in all but name. Slaanesh inspired their culture. He still does.

> Chaos gods will ally true, but very very rarely with their opposite god and neither would readily agree to being the subordinate god.

Please, user, this is headcanon. Baseless one at that.

>The Brazen Host is a vast warband of Chaos Daemons composed primarily of Khorne and Slaanesh Daemons. Despite being from opposing Chaos gods, the Daemons of the Brazen Host number in their thousands and are bound together by infernal pacts and the will of their mighty Bloodthirster master, the Gore Lord. The Brazen Host always seek out and attack strongly defended locations in order to honour Khorne to the utmost.

wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Brazen_Host

The Chaos Gods are self serving and daemons have laws that bind them via oaths and pacts. Being a rulelawyer and knowing true names can get you a long way in the Warp. You can easily justify any alliance. So please put your headcanon away.

And everyone immediately regretted it afterwards. The Dark Eldar just decided to build a wall and keep partying.

Wasn't it that the phoenix lord of striking scorpions becoming an incubus

What about forbidden love between a Deldar Highborn and her loyal snek bodyguard

>Arha burns dark with the flame of Chaos
>Farsight is destined to become of the "Mont'shaar" aka the Terror that burns dark

Holyshit!

Farsight is Arha.

That's post-Chaos Daemons fluff invented for a battle report though.

Yeah, Arhra (the first Phoenix Lord of the Striking Scorpions) betrayed, or left (depends who's telling the story) and his greatest student Karandras became the next Phoenix Lord by tempering the bloodthirst of the Scorpions with a hunter's patience. Arhra went on to found the Incubi temples of the dark eldar.

What I'm referring to though is Path of the Warrior. Bechareth is actually an incubi who was taken prisoner after a dark eldar raid on Alaitoc, and was given mercy, but had to take a vow of silence and not reveal what he used to be. The climax of the story has the protagonist save Bechareth from a dreadnought, so that Bechareth could one day move on past being a warrior. "Prove the Khaine doesn't own our souls"

The short story I'm talking about is in the Path of the Eldar omnibus, and I'm guessing it's about him.

...

Life being that complicated makes me realize why people wanna be an incubi and live life like Caim. Murder does solve everything.

>Dark Eldar are the descendants of the degenerates who were influenced by Slaanesh into abandoning their culture and gods
That is COMPLETLY WRONG. You couldn't be more wrong than that even if you tried. Dark Eldar are the descendants of the degenerates that CREATED Slaanesh. Dark Eldars live lifes of more tortue, pain, betrayal and excess than Ancient Eldar of the Eldar Empire but what is important is that the difference is only in quantity NOT quality. Dark Eldar are the real descendants of the Eldar Empire, evolution of it. They live like their ancestors did, they just upted it to eleven.

What Craftwords Eldar are is the COUNTER culture to the Eldar Empire. From the day they were born, even before the birth of Slanesh, Craftword Eldar were the refugees, "rebels" to the Empire that opposed rampart vices of Eldar Empire instead trying to embrace what they percieve as a virtues. Craftword Eldar reach out to the times of the inception of Eldar race, when they were guided by Old Ones, this is why they reach out to long dead gods, this is why paths exist. Craftword Eldars are counciously limiting themselves and trying have some higher authority. Craftword Eldar are the antithesis of Eldar Empire the times that Eldars were the most powerfull force of galaxy and the fact that almost all Craftwoords wet themselves to the thoughts of this dead empire is hilarious irony.

The fact that you don't understand that, is the best proof that your whole argument and vision of Necrons and DE is bullshit.

PS Man, that is a lot of "Eldar" I used in this post.

>Simple the degenerates ceased to be true Eldar
But, they are right in the end. Eldar Gods turned to be just Psychic construct that are (most of them) dead at the present. What you invoke as "true Eldar" is in fact Eldar created and controlled by Old Gods, who in all likelihood were living weapons. They were dogs on the leash. And I would argue that we only learn what they really are when they are free, this is when we see their real/true nature, not the controlled nature their master wanted them to show.

Shit like this is why I like DE. They're just so over the top in pretty much everything they do.

They're a bunch of egoistical assholes with little to no self-control and access to ridiculously advanced technology they primarily use to fulfill their whims and fuck over anybody else because they thought it'd be funny. They're at the same time hilarious for being absurdly over the top and downright terrifying. They're also by far the most evil people in 40k.
Orks and Nids just act according to their insticts and thus can't really be held accountable for their actions. Imperium does horrible stuff out of necessity. Even the followers of Chaos usually act on some higher goal (overthrow the False Emperor and rule humanity themselves, or bring glory to the Chaos Gods they worship), or are so far gone that they're just puppets to their gods and therefore have little to no control over their actions. DE do horrible things partly because they feed on pain, yes, but largely because of purely base and selfish motivations or on a whim (if they just were after pain, they could just "farm" slaves in Commorragh; in fact there's one kabal that is mentioned doing stuff like that), and unlike the Orks they know full well that what they're doing is terrible, they just don't care.

For me, that adds an extra layer to their despicableness. Having your planet destroyed because it was part of a millenia-long machinations of a Chaos Lord seeking vengeance on the Imperium that he feels betrayed him, or because exterminatus was declared as a last resort to stop a Tyranid invasion and spare the rest of the sector, is one thing. Having it be because some Archon's girlfriend has a fetish for genocide and he decided to surprise her by killing everybody on some random planet and filming the whole thing so she can shlick to you and everything you know dying horribly over and over again is another. They probably broke up next week anyway, or she accidentally taped over it.

That's basically the gist of it. Dark Eldar are a bunch of addicts who want to keep the party going, no matter what. Could they solve a lot of their problems if they just started living monastic, structured lifestyles like their Craftworld kin? Or by living the tough, but fulfilling life as an Exodite? Yes they could, but that would be boring. That would be gauche. That would be denying who they are. They are the true inheritors of the Eldar empire. They could stop at any time, but it is their lordly right to act as they see fit.

The fact that so many of them actually think like that makes me love them even more.

Yesh, they're a bunch of depraved addicts that keep on pretending they're better than everybody because they're too afraid to admit to themselves what they've become, and probably end up buying into their own lies. They drown themselves in stimuli and luxuries to hide and forget the fact that they've got a literal hole in their soul that they have to keep filling or they'll drop dead. I feel like they'd be like those drug barons who've gotten a shit-ton of money from criminal activity and use it on all sorts of really tacky shit purely to show that he has money, and probably to distract people from the fact he's ultimately just a criminal.

When I was GMing that Rogue Trader adventure with DE in in, that was the kind of stuff I wanted to get across. I described the Archon's ship as being pretty much decorated by somebody with far more money than common sense. Floors covered with expensive-looking carpets and rare animal pelts just kind of haphazardly heaped on each other because they didn't fit otherwise, cabinets stacked full of trophies almost blocking the narrow hallways, tacky self-portraits hung from the walls. The Archon's personal quarters had enormous golden doors stolen from a cathedral on some shrineworld, covered in intricate frescoes which had been cut in half in order to fit them into a frame half as tall as they had been built for.
The Archon herself put on a show of appearing as this cool, cultured, and wealthy mastermind, but in actuality was an extremely petty, vapid, and childish person, albeit one with enough wealth to make the average Rogue Trader jealous and considerably military power at her beck and call.

What was it like doing a dark eldar heavy Rogue Trader campaign? I've always wanted to be dark eldar if I ever got the chance to play Rogue Trader, and take the Incubi Initiate advances.

It wasn't really particularly DE-heavy, although being a DE player, I included them as secondary characters multiple times. Had one RT hire DE mercenaries to go after the players, and had them encounter the Archon from Soul Reaver before that adventure to set her up a bit.
They didn't have DE PCs, but ended up with one Kabalite hanging out aboard their ship after doing Soul Reaver (he was the guy the Archon sent with them to act as their guide when on the DE outpost, and they ended up recruiting him in their crew. He accepted because it'd improve his life-expectancy considerably). The DE became kind-of sort-of allied with the PCs afterward, and occasionally had minor role in later sessions.

Soul Reaver was pretty fun to run, but I ran it pretty heavily off the rails to add more interaction with the DE and remove the worst of the annoyingly railroady stuff. Characterizing a bunch DE NPCs was pretty fun, too.

How do you keep a Dark Eldar aboard ship? Do they go out and torture a few ratings now and again, or is the sort of danger a Rogue gets into normally enough to keep them going?

Not him, but if I recall, aside from the morale penalty from having a xenos on the ship, dark eldar have some other stuff that can make having them a hassle.

Dark Eldar, like in the wargame, can get pain tokens in various ways. They must accrue one pain token a session, otherwise they get stat penalties.

Each time such an "incident" to get a pain token, or any reason seen as unjustifiable, occurs against the crew, morale goes down another 1 point.

His offical title the RT gave him was "disciplinary equipment/twistcatcher". Disobedient crew members got to have a "session" with him, and when there weren't any they had him help clear the lower decks of mutants.

As far as he considered, it was still an improvement over his old job, since at least he wasn't being randomly sent on completely inane errants, like getting the Archon her favorite ice cream and risking decapitation because they're all out and the nearest store is three lightyears away.

In my opinion if you have a Dark Eldar on your ship you are just asking for trouble from the crew or the eldar.

Some Rogue Traders like to live dangerously. The best way to deal with Dark Eldar is know that no matter what, they're always looking out for themselves. A dark eldar will stick with you for as long as he or she thinks it' their (and their ego's) best interests to do so.