“What was it like, back then? Just sheer joy, I’m told. Entire civilizations, rendered down for stimulants. Stars drained dry of their power, for a decade-long soiree. Oh, to have been alive and powerful in the last days of Empire—before She-Who-Thirsts crashed the party…”
— Gyrthineus Roche, former Archon of The Last Blade.
Sixty million years ago, the Old Ones and the Necrons fought The War in Heaven. The Old Ones lost, but their mantle was inherited by one of their creations—the Eldar, a psychically-powerful race of immense sensitivity. Over the subsequent millenia, they ruled the galaxy, slipping over time deeper and deeper into depravity and arrogance.
Their golden age ended with the birth of Slaanesh, the Chaos God of pleasure. At the moment of her birth, the core of the Aeldari civilization was utterly destroyed, its citizens’ souls and even its gods consumed by the nascent god. Where the Aeldari homeworlds once were, now there is only the Eye of Terror, a massive rift into the Warp.
A few ascetics survived on Craftworlds, becoming the modern Aeldari; but far more survived in the hidden cities of the Webway, built in the warp itself. These cities over time have agglomerated into Commorragh, an impossibly vast non-Euclidean space. Here the ancient Aeldari continue their decadent practices, but now with purpose, for only inflicting pain on others rejuvenates their souls as Slaanesh constantly draws at them.
An arrogant Archon brought a Drukhari raiding party to Gladius Prime, to take advantage of the distracting Ork invasion to gather wealth, power and workers. Unfortunately, someone followed him, someone equally ancient and decadent…