Did someone explain to Owlcat what Aeldari are?

[Hex: Onii-Chan]

Okay, so, it really feels like they looked at a few memes and then decided "Good enough, we got the jist". Yrliet is by FAR the worst written Aeldari I have ever witnessed in any of the games, books or animation. The other Asuryani aren't much better, but she just snipes the cherry off the cake.

Aeldari are supposed to be insanely persuasive. As in - to the point where every character warns you not to trust their honeyed words. Because even the most battle-hardened Banshee is able to play the role of a needy, horny space-elf that "was ostracized for dreaming of having a hunk of raw, human power taking care of... all of her needs [blushes and turns away full of shame], if only the Rogue Trade didn't see her as an ugly, abominable Xenos [looks back with big deer eyes full of hope]"

They have literally spent millions of years perfecting the craft of diplomacy, persuasion and seduction. Yes, she would think the same thing Yrliet does, but nobody would see through her facade.

Yrliet? "Dumb Mon'keigh, why Mon'keigh dumb? Omg, can Mon'keigh do anything right? Liek, omg, Mon'keigh, stop letting your feelings control you, Mon'keigh so bad at everything, omg" - B!tch, you're supposed to be an infiltrator and you need my help, but every word coming out of your mouth makes me want to jettison you and use your spirit stone as an ornamental butt plug, pipe the ♥♥♥♥ down.

Not only that - she has no grace or elegance in her behaviour. It's rash, emotional and direct. No subterfuge (aside from the hamfisting after Chapter 2), no double-meanings, no nothing. It's a more ♥♥♥♥♥ Sororitas that has 0 respect and constantly insults everything and everyone.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[corisai]

Originally posted by treahnurb:

So it could be a) her writing is just bad, yes, always possible or b) she is - for an Eldar - just very, very stupid/or maybe just very young and that is the ONLY way it can actually work with her being a companion at all?

Plus she's VERY stressed by Warp-travel. It's much more painful for eldar then for us, humans (Marajai even have a special event telling us about it).

[treahnurb]

Originally posted by corisai:

Originally posted by treahnurb:

So it could be a) her writing is just bad, yes, always possible or b) she is - for an Eldar - just very, very stupid/or maybe just very young and that is the ONLY way it can actually work with her being a companion at all?

Plus she's VERY stressed by Warp-travel. It's much more painful for eldar then for us, humans (Marajai even have a special event telling us about it).

Very true, I haven't considered that but you got a very valid point. Marazhai's first warp travel went very bad so we know how that could end up and she literally endures this every single time with nothing but willpower and meditation.
Guess that would make me cranky too.

[Antearz]

Originally posted by holy-death:

Reminds me of Kerillian from Vermintide series.

Originally posted by Antearz:

You do Realize that Eldar are Individuals and dont Necessarily Conform to the Standard right ?

Not to mention. Who Says she Cant do that. She might just Choose not to.

The problem is, it doesn't help the player to decide to hang out with her. At least she should be manipulative enough to make the Rogue Trader do what she aims him to do.

The Eldar have so often made mistakes and wasted entire Ships or even Worlds due to their Arrogance and Distrust towards other Races.
So Yeah.....

[Daliena]

Originally posted by Antearz:

Originally posted by holy-death:

Reminds me of Kerillian from Vermintide series.


The problem is, it doesn't help the player to decide to hang out with her. At least she should be manipulative enough to make the Rogue Trader do what she aims him to do.

The Eldar have so often made mistakes and wasted entire Ships or even Worlds due to their Arrogance and Distrust towards other Races.
So Yeah.....

To be fair, "arrogance and distrust towards other races" describes basically everyone in 40k.

To be less fair, the Eldar can -literally- see the future and yet seemingly their racism is stronger than their belief in their own divinations when their powers tell them "Yeah this one's gonna go badly for you if you insist on looking at everyone else like something you just found on the bottom of your shoe"

[jonoliveira12]

Originally posted by Daliena:

Originally posted by Antearz:

The Eldar have so often made mistakes and wasted entire Ships or even Worlds due to their Arrogance and Distrust towards other Races.
So Yeah.....

To be fair, "arrogance and distrust towards other races" describes basically everyone in 40k.

To be less fair, the Eldar can -literally- see the future and yet seemingly their racism is stronger than their belief in their own divinations when their powers tell them "Yeah this one's gonna go badly for you if you insist on looking at everyone else like something you just found on the bottom of your shoe"

The Eldar, more than most, have earned the distrust against them. Humanity was the good neighbour of the galaxy once, The Eldar literally accelerated human genocide after the Men of Iron revolted, out of sheer envy and pettyness.

And what did they achieve after? Birthed a Chaos God, tore a hole in the galaxy where Super Mega Hell On Steroids can seep through, and sealed their fate to slow, agonizing extinction, and eternal torment on the bowls of their collective child.

[Daliena]

Originally posted by jonoliveira12:

Originally posted by Daliena:

To be fair, "arrogance and distrust towards other races" describes basically everyone in 40k.

To be less fair, the Eldar can -literally- see the future and yet seemingly their racism is stronger than their belief in their own divinations when their powers tell them "Yeah this one's gonna go badly for you if you insist on looking at everyone else like something you just found on the bottom of your shoe"

The Eldar, more than most, have earned the distrust against them. Humanity was the good neighbour of the galaxy once, The Eldar literally accelerated human genocide after the Men of Iron revolted, out of sheer envy and pettyness.

And what did they achieve after? Birthed a Chaos God, tore a hole in the galaxy where Super Mega Hell On Steroids can seep through, and sealed their fate to slow, agonizing extinction, and eternal torment on the bowls of their collective child.

And they learned just about nothing. They can't behave as openly as they did at the height of their empire anymore, but they still pretty much operate on the "Better a trillion humans die than even one Eldar be put in danger" and endlessly attempt to manipulate the younger races to fight their battles for them.

Honestly, if they had, at any point during their history, put in half as much effort into working with others rather than what they've got going now, I wonder what the galaxy would look like.

[I'm A Distraction!]

To be fair, Yrliet seems hardly the manipulator type. She seems young for an Eldar (she's only on her second path, after the child one it seems, and it was spent mostly away and in relative isolation as a scout), and the events of her recent life have left her quite emotional, made even worse by traveling through the warp on your ship. And her time amongst humans seems to be mostly with the Slaanesh worshipping Governor who thought she was a mutant, not another species.

I will say in general I appreciate Owlcats writing of the Eldar. I usually have a soft spot for them on the idea of a mutual alliance against chaos, and this game has convinced me that the galaxy would be better off with them purged, lol.

[sirfuzzzy]

I havent paid much attention to 40k lore since 2nd edition and most recently Dawn of War 2. Since when are the Eldar considered diplomatic or charismatic? Since when is ANY SPECIES diplomatic and charismatic? They all hate each other. That was the whole point of the setting. The mecha fish people came along and were the only "good guys" I suppose but I've never heard a single thing anywhere about charismatic, diplomatic space elves. What changed in the lore?

[Doc]

Originally posted by jonoliveira12:

It is a fan theory taht the Eldar and the Humans have similar ape ancestry from Earth, the Old Ones just found the hominids with the biggest psychic potential in the species, and uplifted them, to create their warp-using super soldiers for the War in Heaven.

they did some really weird ♥♥♥♥ when they uplifted the eldar then, since iirc per Xenobiology their poop is crystalline

[I'm A Distraction!]

Originally posted by sirfuzzzy:

I havent paid much attention to 40k lore since 2nd edition and most recently Dawn of War 2. Since when are the Eldar considered diplomatic or charismatic? Since when is ANY SPECIES diplomatic and charismatic? They all hate each other. That was the whole point of the setting. The mecha fish people came along and were the only "good guys" I suppose but I've never heard a single thing anywhere about charismatic, diplomatic space elves. What changed in the lore?

Tau are diplomatic, but they want to enslave everyone else into their empire. It's golden chains, but slavery nonetheless (and they're coming around to the idea that humans are too prone to warp corruption to keep alive).

[Butcher]

Originally posted by sirfuzzzy:

I havent paid much attention to 40k lore since 2nd edition and most recently Dawn of War 2. Since when are the Eldar considered diplomatic or charismatic? Since when is ANY SPECIES diplomatic and charismatic? They all hate each other. That was the whole point of the setting. The mecha fish people came along and were the only "good guys" I suppose but I've never heard a single thing anywhere about charismatic, diplomatic space elves. What changed in the lore?

Aren't chaos gods diplomatic? They accept everyone including orks.

[Daliena]

Originally posted by sirfuzzzy:

I havent paid much attention to 40k lore since 2nd edition and most recently Dawn of War 2. Since when are the Eldar considered diplomatic or charismatic? Since when is ANY SPECIES diplomatic and charismatic? They all hate each other. That was the whole point of the setting. The mecha fish people came along and were the only "good guys" I suppose but I've never heard a single thing anywhere about charismatic, diplomatic space elves. What changed in the lore?

The word the OP is looking for is "manipulative". And ninety-nine times out of ten, they don't let you know that you're involved in the schemes of an Eldar either, using shrouds to pretend like they're members of another species as we see with the Farseer on Janus pretending to be human and using a facade of loyalty to trick the rebels into doing his dirty work, instead of just approaching them as a space elf and charming them into believing him by sheer charisma, or they'd nudge events to otherwise make you think it's actually perfectly reasonable instead of dancing to the tune of a treacherous alien.

Then you get times like the Battle of Port Demesnus. Where the greatest Farseer of the entire Eldar species got a vision saying "Yeah if the humans manage to use a time-warping weapon, your whole plan is going to ♥♥♥♥", and he dismisses it off-hand as a false vision because as if some primitive apes would have such weaponry. One Stasis Grenade later, everything's going to ♥♥♥♥

As a result, a Harlequin tries to "charisma" a Deathwatch Marine by stating - for once perhaps truthfully - that if the Marines back off, then a colossal blow will be stuck against their common foe in Chaos, or the Marine can kill him, and doom a trillion human souls over the course of the years.

The Marine promptly ventilates his skull, the ritual to awaken Ynnead is disrupted, and so it goes. So much for charisma.

[sirfuzzzy]

Originally posted by Daliena:

The word the OP is looking for is "manipulative". And ninety-nine times out of ten, they don't let you know that you're involved in the schemes of an Eldar either, using shrouds to pretend like they're members of another species as we see with the Farseer on Janus pretending to be human and using a facade of loyalty to trick the rebels into doing his dirty work, instead of just approaching them as a space elf and charming them into believing him by sheer charisma, or they'd nudge events to otherwise make you think it's actually perfectly reasonable instead of dancing to the tune of a treacherous alien.

That sounds like the Eldar I know. Not sure if OP is confused about Eldar or using wrong words. Thank you for taking time to respond. Happy Holidays

[sirfuzzzy]

Originally posted by Butcher:

Aren't chaos gods diplomatic? They accept everyone including orks.

Fair point. I actually always considered Papa Nurgle the only good guy in 40k but no one ever agreed with me. He is a lover of life and just plays the numbers game when it comes to his humanoid gardening. It's one humanoid life to feed billions of smaller lives. Compared to our supposed creator god who has us killing and eating other life forms on a 1-4 scale every single day on average I would say he is the epitome of decency and goodness.

[tbloxham]

Yeah, I've never really got the sense that Eldar are swimming in personal charisma. Eldar are manipulative through their catspaws and through leading false trails and what not. They certainly can be individually deceitful and charismatic, but for the most part they just think humans are just so ridiculous, clumsy and uncultured its hard for them to take us seriously. We look like a disfigured joke to them, other than the marines and primarchs (who at least look like weapons) a regular human just looks like gibbon wearing a hat to them.

There likely are Eldar paths of diplomacy and persuasion, they are just rarely used paths, and more commonly used in dealings with other Eldar.

Most of the lore regarding the interaction of humans and Eldar say that the Eldar don't look 'nice' to humans either. They look weird, wrong and predatory. Slightly off putting and scary in the way they move. Like an insect which had taken the shape of a human.