Aeldari

Before humanity discovered fire, the Aeldari ruled the galaxy. Their civilization was ancient when the Milky Way was young — psychic beings of extraordinary intelligence and grace, whose empire touched every corner of known space. They built the Webway: a network of tunnels through sub-reality connecting their worlds, invisible and instantaneous. For millions of years, nothing threatened them.

That was their undoing.

Without struggle, the Aeldari turned inward. Their society fractured into decadence — pleasure cults, cruelty, obsession, excess. Their psychic nature meant that every emotion they felt resonated in the Warp. Across ten thousand years, their collective depravity built a presence in the immaterium — a vast, growing thing made of their worst impulses. Then, approximately ten thousand years ago, it was born.

Slaanesh — the Chaos God of excess, sensation, and pleasure — tore itself into existence in a psychic cataclysm that consumed the Aeldari empire in an instant. The Eye of Terror opened where their heart worlds once were. Billions died. Their civilization, built across millions of years, ended in a single screaming moment called the Fall.

The survivors were those already traveling the stars on massive city-ships calledCraftworlds — and those disciplined enough to have kept themselves separate from the corruption. Now there are perhaps millions of Aeldari left in a galaxy of trillions. They know their species is dying. Every death is irreplaceable. And Slaanesh still hungers for their souls — which is why every Aeldari wears a Spirit Stone to capture their consciousness at death, preserving it in the Wraithbone matrix of their Craftworld rather than letting it be consumed.

They fight because they have to. They win because they've had ten thousand years to practice, and they can't afford to lose.