Warhammer 40K Theories: The Aeldari Destroyed The First Human Empire
What really ended the Dark Age of Technology. It might be our pointy-eared frenemies – the Aeldari.
For the most part modern human history in 40K starts with the rise of the Emperor and the Unification Wars. Before that very little is known of humanity’s spread to the stars and what it did there. Between the present day and around 30,000 history is mostly a series of question marks. But humanity did spread to the stars, populating countless worlds and reaching great heights. They formed a great empire. But something brought it down. Lets take a look at one theory about that.
The First Steller Empire
Sometime around M18, humankind developed the twin technologies of the Warp Drive and Geller Field. Though mankind had already started its Steller exodus and reached other worlds, the slow travel times meant expansion was slow and each colony was isolated. The creation of the Warp Drive opened the galaxy to quick colonization and humanity bloomed, spreading across the vast reaches. Here, during the Dark Age of Technology (in fact a Golden Age) human technology reached a height never since matched. This period is also sometimes known as the first human Steller Empire, though in truth we don’t know what kind of government or governments it had. Most worlds of the Imperium can trace their human population back to this period.
End of An Era
Though we don’t have exact dates, this Golden Age did come to an end. The Golden Age started as early as M15 and ended by M25. We don’t know exactly why the Dark Age of Technology came to an end. There have been various reasons given – too many rogue Psykers, powerful warp storms, wars with the AI controlled Iron Men. Any of all these could have happened. Maybe even all of them happened.
While the cause is unknown, the result is; anarchy, death, and the collapse of human civilization. The great light of human progress went out and the Age of Strife began. The cloak of Old Night would lay across human history, until the arrival of the Emperor. It’s easy to see the end of the Golden Age as a result of natural or internal issues, but what if there was an outside source for it?
Humans Were Not Alone
When humans spread to the stars they would not have found them to be empty. Now a lot of the classic 40K races would have been missing. The T’au were in their infancy, the Necrons slumbered still and Hive Fleets had not yet reached our galaxy. Still, huge numbers of Xenos races populated the worlds humanity sought to settle. Many of these would have been small and minor races. However some of the major 40K races were around then as well. The Orks in their teaming multitudes lived among the stars and it was there as well that the Aeldari Empire flourished.
Rival Empires?
At the time of humankind’s great exodus the most powerful race in the Galaxy was the Aeldari . This long-lived race had come to dominance after the end of the War in Heaven and built a massive and technologically advanced Empire. The history of this Empire is pretty sketchy, with very little known. We know it got its start sometime after the conflict with the Necrons, about 60 Million years ago, and that it ended in M30 with the birth of Slaanesh and the opening of the Eye of Terror. The Empire is said to have reached its height, of some 10,000 worlds, right before its destruction. Honestly that’s kind of not a lot for 60 Millions years!
All this means that the Aeldari Empire was a massive galaxy-spanning, and possibly still expanding concern right at the time when humans were spreading across the galaxy and building their own first Empire. Unlike mankind with it’s plodding warp-jumping technology, the Webway was mature and well-established, allowing the Aeldari to abiliy to out maneuver mankind on a strategic level, or even hide or muster forces entirely outside of real-space in early Commorragh.
It seems impossible that the two races would not have come into contact. Indeed we know the the Xenos Cabal, which includes Aeldari, was active on Terra as far back and the 20th Century. Given that they must have been in contact is it possible that the two Empires fought a war? Was this the reason behind the end of the Dark Age?
Evidence For A War
There isn’t a ton of evidence about any kind of war during this period, but that is mainly because we have almost no evidence for anything at all in this period. We do know that the Emperor certainly distrusts the Aeldari, and all Xenos, and sought to destroy them. He knew a lot about them, and though they might seem like good allies for humans, He chose to wage war on them, maybe out of a lingering hatred for how they undermined the early human Empire.
The Aeldari also tend to look down on humans as less advanced, and yet the technologies of the Dark Age often seem to rival their tech in many ways. However if the Aeldari had won a war against humans in the past it would make more sense for them to look down on them. Lastly, it just makes a certain amount of sense. It’s hard to think that these two massive empires were expanding in the galaxy at the same time and didn’t come into a major conflict.
Let us know what you think about this theory, down in the comments!
