Warhammer 40,000

The Tau story is basically one of them being a young empire, young enough that they haven't damned themselves yet so it's still up in the air if they'll merrily march down the same path as the Eldar and Imperium in the face of a hostile galaxy or try for something better.

While we're on this topic, I want to discuss the Fatal Flaw entry that was added to the Craftworld Eldar page as I'm not sure that it counts either.

I'd argue that if the Craftworlders do have a Fatal Flaw, it's their arrogance and refusal to let go of their worldview of the other races as beneath them. Then again, you could extend that to the entire species.

Edited by Willbyr on Apr 21st 2021 at 6:29:10 AM

The fact that the first time the T'au got a taste of the full horrors of the Warp the survivors immediately became genocidal is not a good sign.

It's pretty clear that they are heading down the road to ruin like the other empires.

Which is fine because fuck empires.

Edited by M84 on Apr 21st 2021 at 10:44:44 PM

Yeah, that Fatal Flaw example is bobbins.

If the Craftworlders have any Fatal Flaw, it's their fatalism. They by and large think that they are ultimately doomed no matter what. So much so that their endgame involves all of them dying so that they can empower a god of death that can defeat Chaos.

It's so bad that they consider those of their race who think "hey maybe we don't all have to die after all" (the Ynnari) to be heretics.

Of course, this isn't universal among Craftworlders, some of whom do cling to the belief that they can come back from the brink.

Edited by M84 on Apr 23rd 2021 at 3:48:14 AM

The Eldar in general also have an issue with arrogance. The Craftworlders have a Messiah complex a mile wide and the Drukhari constantly attempt to lord over everyone else about how powerful (which they're not) and clever (not really) they are.

The Drukhari's tragic flaw is the Ignored Epiphany. They know that their way of life ultimately dooms them to be eaten by Slaanesh and is merely delaying the inevitable...but they just won't stop.

Again though, this isn't universal among them. Some have left Commorragh to join Craftworlds, and quite a few ended up joining the Ynnari.

Understood.

Look, I put up the Asuryani as having Single Mindedness as their Fatal Flaw because that is listed as their Fatal Flaw on the main Fatal Flaw page. Can we bin that example to avoid future problems?

We should probably take a look at that example as a whole and discuss it...I just glanced at it and saw several that were questionable, and several others that are pure ZC Es.

I'm not sure any of the armies really have a single defining Fatal Flaw. If you tried to find the fatal flaw of the Imperium, for instance, you'd end up playing out a Spanish Inquisition sketch as you keep coming up with more and more.

"Among our flaws are a completely dysfunctional social system with little to no social mobility, a genocidal hatred for all other life in the universe that leads us to squander resources on pointless wars for planets we don't want, a functionally unaccountable State Sec so riven by factional disputes that one of the leading causes of death for inquisitors is other inquisitors, a bureaucracy so vast and entrenched that entire crusades can be lost before the first set of requisitions are processed, constant religious infighting and nobody but the Space Marines ever getting any reinforcements...I'll come in again."

Everyone expects the Imperial Inquisition.

The Aeldar do have a Fatal Flaw of being seemingly incapable of avoiding extremes in behavior due to the way the Old Ones engineered them to be more attuned to the Warp.

That's the root of pretty much everything wrong for them. The Pre-Fall Aeldar's excessive hedonism, the Craftworlders' tunnel vision and ultra-repressed lives, the Drukhari's even more excessive hedonism...

The Aeldar in general seem unable to find a healthy spiritual balance.

The only reason the Aeldar aren't the Old Ones' biggest fuckup is because Orks are a thing.

Edited by M84 on Apr 24th 2021 at 11:33:01 PM

Bah, the Orks are the pinnacle of creation. For them, the great struggle is won. They have evolved a society which knows no stress or angst...yadda, yadda.

"I have made the Eldar."
"You fucked up a perfectly good elf is what you did. Look at it. It's got anxiety."

"Aaaaand now it's started snorting coke off of skinned infants, great job there".

"Great, now it's snorting the skinned infants themselves."

Edited by M84 on Apr 25th 2021 at 7:41:13 PM

"Well the infant arent going to fucking snort and skinn themselves" *Beat* "Hey Uriah, I have the best idea ever: self snorting skinned babies, isnt that cool or what?"

"Where are they getting all of these infants anyway? They take a long-ass time to breed after all."

"Apparently some of them figured out how to artificially grow new ones in jars. So they're growing babies for the purpose of skinning and snorting them."

"...Okay, so how is project Krork going?"

And now for something completely different.

Warhammer Fest Online starts next Monday. Here is the schedule◊.

Battle Sister Bulletin: Sororitas Standard Bearer

Another awesome Sister.

So I'm thinking of adding a Fatal Flaw entry on the Warhammer 40,000: Eldar page concerning the difficulty they have avoiding extremes in behavior. As I've said in this thread, that more than anything else is the root of all of their problems and why they are a Dying Race.

Edited by M84 on Apr 27th 2021 at 7:00:50 PM

That would make sense - most of their ills do stem from the fact that they are prone to extremes, which caused the Fall of their civilisaiton, and the divergent nature of their current societies and cultures are characterised chiefly by the differing ways in which they accress this core Fatal Flaw - namely going full primitivist, adopting incredibly strict disciplined life paths, and denying that the flaw itself is the problem - only its consequences - and slapping a band-aid on it. And then the Ynnari do whatever they do.

Edited by GoldenKaos on Apr 27th 2021 at 12:56:18 PM

I'm not sure whether the Ynnari are a subversion of this or if they too suffer from this flaw.

On one hand, they are trying something new and being proactive about the Aeldar's plight.

On the other hand, they're basically a death cult that spreads death and destruction wherever they go in the name of Ynnead.

It can be argued either way - their faction is a far more goal-driven faction than any of the others. The Craftworlders, Exodites and Commorrites are all trying to live their best lives in their own ways while managing the Fatal Flaw, while the Ynnari, like the Harlequins, have a purpose - it could be argued that it is their version of a "path" - but either way their faction is not based around living with the flaw, but with solving the great, overarching problem facing the Eldar race as a whole, so they're still essentially reacting to the consequences of their Fatal Flaw, trying to fix the wound it originally cleaved into their collective psyche.

I mean, in the end, they still have that same flaw. Arguably it manifests in how far they're willing to go to achieve their goals.

Edited by GoldenKaos on Apr 27th 2021 at 6:19:59 PM

So far it has yet to bite the Ynnari in the ass, though their tendency to cause trouble for others has earned them a lot of enemies in a short time.