Dark Eldar - Game Background

Game Background

The Dark Eldar are depicted by Games Workshop as a race that is sadistic in the extreme, revelling in piracy, enslavement and torture. Like all factions of the Eldar race, the Dark Eldar have access to technology that is extremely advanced by human standards. Players of Dark Eldar armies may select various anti-gravity vehicles such as Raiders and Ravagers (Troop transports and mobile weapons platforms, respectively) to launch high-speed attacks. They strike with little or no warning, using an inter-dimensional labyrinth known as the Webway to traverse the galaxy safely and far more quickly than most races are able to with their Warp jumps.

The Dark Eldar are unique amongst the Warhammer 40,000 factions in the sense that they do not occupy one or more planets, but rather one city, Commorragh. Commorragh has always been portrayed as a colossal city within the Webway, and in November 2010 it was described to be in actuality an amalgamation of several cities and realms located within the Webway, having started as a single port but since Vect's overthrow of the old houses had grown to amalgamate these new territories such as Shaa-dom and Iron Thorn.

Dark Eldar are mainly depicted as a piratical race with no loyalty to anyone except themselves, though they are reportedly sometimes employed by various races as mercenaries. When describing the raids of the Dark Eldar, Games Workshop literature has always focused on the capturing of slaves, which appear to be the main currency of Commorragh.

The Dark Eldar have technology far advanced of those of other species. They make use of technology, including anti-gravity devices, splinter weapons, dark matter (in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, something more akin to antimatter) weaponry, nanotechnology and psychic artifacts. While Dark Eldar do make use of psychic devices, they do not use psychic powers themselves: psykers could be tracked down by Slaanesh (one of the Chaos gods) and Commorragh destroyed. Because of this, using psychic powers is strictly forbidden in Commorragh. In the back story released in the most recent Dark Eldar Codex, it is revealed that the Dark Eldar gradually lost their natural psychic ability during the millennia following the Fall of the Eldar race, and that they are sustained only through the absorption of the psychic power released by pain, torture and anguish of other sentient beings.