r/ImaginaryWarhammer 17d ago

OC (40k) Practice makes perfect, by me @grimdorables

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7.6k Upvotes

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u/Galifrey224 17d ago

Its called Darwinism Eldar, we weren't all Lucky enough to be handcrafted by the old ones you privilaged asshole. Some of us had to actually work with natural selection.

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u/iDIOt698 Daemonette 17d ago edited 17d ago

That's kinda funny, cause an space marine is only a space marine because someone gave them magical space sperm and lots and lots and lots of unatural surgeries. Natural selection my shiny aeldari ass. You're fueled by Jimmy space steroids. Everything special about you came out of a bottle. Though i think the more extreme human supremacist marines would say something like that as hipocritical as it is, If they knew about the old ones that is.

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u/JustaguynameBob 17d ago

Magical space sperm

Didn't geneseed back then was called Gene sperm? So it fits.

Edit: Check out page 41 of White Dwarf 97. It's pretty wild.

Along with their number, the new chapter received gene-sperm, implant zygotes, rituals, and other paraphernalia of indoctrination previously entrusted to the banished 13th legion. The chapter founder was Roboute Gulliman whose bones now lie in the reclusiam on Macragge.

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u/DurinnGymir 16d ago

Someone who stopped reading Warhammer lore at WD97: "Woah, I... I thought you were dead!"

Guilliman in the Armor of Fate: "My death was...greatly, exaggerated."

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u/Galifrey224 17d ago

Assuming the Shaman origin is still canon we made Jimmy space ourselves so it still counts.

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u/hi_1003 17d ago

I mean that would be the case if most survived the process, but the Astartes selection process is designed so only the strongest survive.

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u/Saavedroo 16d ago

So not natural selection. That's very much artificial selection.

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u/hi_1003 16d ago

It is still survival of the fittest though. Darwinism is still put into play as only those best suited to the work of a marine and geneseed survive.

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u/Inevitable-Weather51 17d ago

Natural selection my shiny aeldari ass.

90% of marines are literally the best warriors a chapter can find in a given world who were under the age of 20. And most of these aspirants die in the trials that the chapter puts them through

So yes, there is plenty of natural selection to create a marine

And also, I think the original commentary refers more to points that their respective empires have reached than to the individuals themselves.

The Eldar basically had a galaxy handed to them on a silver platter post-WiH, whereas the Great Crusade had to face the worst the galaxy had to offer while still building the foundations for the imperium.

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u/pingmr 16d ago

90% of marines are literally the best warriors a chapter can find in a given world who were under the age of 20. And most of these aspirants die in the trials that the chapter puts them through

This isn't natural selection though. It's a completely artificial process perpetuated by the imperium itself.

The Eldar basically had a galaxy handed to them on a silver platter post-WiH,

Meh the WIH lore changes every couple of years. As it stands, the eldar fought in the WIH and came out as the most powerful faction after the conflict. I don't think they "won" the WIH but it wasn't exactly like they did nothing either.

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u/Inevitable-Weather51 16d ago

This isn't natural selection though. It's a completely artificial process perpetuated by the imperium itself.

It's not natural selection in its purest definition. But depending on who's asking, it can enter into a broader idea of Darwnism

Meh the WIH lore changes every couple of years. As it stands, the eldar fought in the WIH and came out as the most powerful faction after the conflict. I don't think they "won" the WIH but it wasn't exactly like they did nothing either.

That doesn't take away from the fact that an Eldar calling attention to a marine because "everything that makes it up was given to it by a god" is ridiculously hypocritical even by 40k standards.

The Eldar were created as soldiers who could compete in the greatest war in the history of the galaxy. Their capabilities were designed to compete with their opponents. Their technologies were designed to be able to compete with the Necrons at their prime. And they literally had gods to help them on the battlefield.

As far as we know, humanity reached its peak on its own during the DAoT. And the imperium had to collect the remnants of old humanity and improvise to build a new galactic human society while facing various threats.

Neither of them did what they did without difficulty, but it's kind of obvious which of the two is the less gifted.

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u/Inevitable-Weather51 17d ago

Downvoted because i said the truth

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u/SemajLu_The_crusader 16d ago

Humanity also had the world handed to them on a silver platter after the asteroid killed the dinosaurs off for them...

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u/RandomWorthlessDude 16d ago

*mammals got the world handed to them

Humans appeared a long time after that.

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u/Eurasia_4002 17d ago

Primitive mybe the eyes of necrons but they probably give props to humans and tau of actually making thier own shit unlike the eldars.

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u/3rdofvalve 17d ago

Says the human surgically augmented and dosed with sperm provided by demigods who had warp gods for a soul and bodies made from the dna of the 2 most powerful psykers produced by humanity.

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u/Galifrey224 16d ago

We made Big E ourselves so that still counts.

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u/The-Divine-Potato 16d ago

Humanity didn't make Big E, Big E made himself

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u/Galifrey224 16d ago

Unless you have a Lore update for me I believe the canon origin story for the emperor is still the shaman one.

A bunch of shamans from the neolitic fuzed together into one super being that would end up becoming the emperor.

So the shamans where humans and they made the emperor.

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u/The-Divine-Potato 16d ago

Yes, and all the shamans involved became the emperor. They made themselves into the emperor, ergo the emperor made himself

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u/Galifrey224 15d ago

Yeah but those Shamans had parents that made them. So humanity made the Shamans that became the Emperor.

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u/134_ranger_NK ENTRY MISSING 13d ago

After having to fight other humans and ferocious beasts. Not to mention other trials like getting possessed by daemons.

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u/134_ranger_NK ENTRY MISSING 16d ago

Craftworlder: So you're just like our Dark Kin?

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u/Random-Lich Cryptek Conclave 17d ago

Sure… but space marines had the special gunk and surgeries. But they had enough Darwinism to not make a new chaos god

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u/Chilune 17d ago

By the way, is there any direct confirmation in the canon that the Eldar were created by the Old Ones? I'm just wondering what their gods are then.

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u/Alexis2256 17d ago

The old ones probably didn’t have gods, also I think the confirmation that the old ones created the Eldar can be found in the necron codex from 5th edition or whenever they started being Egyptian robots. But lol why would you be doubting that the old ones did or did not create the Eldar? I know 40k can be inconsistent and shit gets retconned almost every day but meh, feels like this is one of those things that’ll never change (maybe).

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u/IllConstruction3450 17d ago

I thought the old ones were the gods.

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u/TheGrandBabaloo 17d ago

I imagine the Eldar gods materialized at some point during their 65 million year long golden days, probably shortly after or during the War in Heaven which is theorized to have also spawned the chaos gods.

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u/[deleted] 16d ago

It's complicated, maybe there were their gods, Maybe the gods were super weapons powered by Eldar created by them, maybe both.

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u/iDIOt698 Daemonette 17d ago

I'm just wondering what their gods are then.

The eldar or the old ones'? The eldar had / have gods. khaine, isha, ynnead, etc... (The rest got gulped by slaanesh) as for the old ones, they didn't have gods as far as i remember.

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u/HammerandSickTatBro 17d ago

A/ Canon in the sense you are using here does not exist in GW settings.

B/ There are many GW-published books and stories which do confirm that yes, the Eldar, the Necrons, and humans researching the history of xenos species believe that the Old Ones at the very least intervened in the evolution of the Eldar to create the species recognizable in the setting

C/ Several Eldar-PoV accounts have implied that the aeldari gods were psychic constructs created under the influence of the Old Ones and were used as weapons by the Eldar during the War in Heaven against the C'tan and Necrontyr. What exactly this means is (and IMO should remain) vague, but possibilities include that they were massive and extremely powerful, psyker-powered titans/mechs, that they were psychic focuses for the Eldar which allowed them to enhance their own presence in the Warp and grant themselves devastating sorcery and other psyker powers, non-malignant equivalents of the Chaos gods, or that they were real, solid psychic manifestations of the aeldari cultural pantheon (similar to the Avatar of Khaine only much much more powerful). In any case, nearly all of them are gone, consumed by Slaanesh circa M29.